WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) -- Part 2
Imagine a giant chariot out of the "film Ben Hur" pulled by not four, but 16 different powerful horses, all of them straining at the bit to gallop off in different directions. Then imagine trying to steer it. That is the thankless job of retired Vice Adm. John Michael McConnell.
When "Mike" McConnell succeeded Ambassador John Negroponte to become the second director of national intelligence in U.S. history, he took responsibility for coordinating the work of 16 different intelligence agencies in the U.S. government, 12 of them coming under the tent of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Investigations, both official and by journalists, into the failure to prevent the 2001 attacks clearly revealed that the shackles imposed upon both the CIA and the FBI in the 1970s limited both agencies' freedom to aggressively monitor and coordinate intelligence on potential terror threats. The CIA's extraordinary reluctance to share key intelligence with the FBI on the Sept. 11, 2001, conspirators proved crucial in the failure to prevent the attacks of that day.
The Patriot Act and administration pressure has significantly improved that aspect of the intelligence cooperation situation. So did the creation of the post of director of national intelligence. However, the CIA under its more effective current director, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, is still struggling to make up for the administrative chaos and morale collapse it experienced under his predecessor, Porter Goss.
Hayden ran the NSA extremely well. And the talent pool available in the U.S. intelligence community for experienced executives who have run large U.S. security organizations well over the past decade is not a big one at all.
Hayden's decision, backed by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, to bring back Stephen Kappes -- the widely respected former CIA Director of Operations -- as his Number Two after Goss forced Kappes out was rightly seen as a strong message that Hayden would listen to the best of the agency's intelligence veterans as he seeks to reform and revive it.
Also, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld frustrated many of Negroponte's efforts at more effective integration in his determination to jealously keep the huge intelligence operations of the U.S. armed services and the Department of Defense under his own control.
Negroponte received high marks for his industry, intelligence and commitment as the first director of national intelligence in trying to tackle the Herculean task of coordinating the work of all the major agencies in the $35 billion to $40 billion U.S. intelligence community. In an administration notorious for the lack of managerial skills and driving, effective leadership in getting federal agencies and departments to deliver what they promised or were funded to provide, he stood out as an effective hard-charger.
But there were limits to what Negroponte was able to do. And his frustration at not being able to do more to integrate the long-established and well-funded, bureaucratically secretive and mutually jealous rival intelligence establishments may have factored into his decision to leave the DNI post to accept the Number Two slot at the State Department under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Negroponte's departure from the DNI job came only a few months after his own number two at DNI, Gen. Hayden, moved over to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Hayden brought the kind of serious intel/military management, leadership and administrative skills that the CIA so conspicuously lacked during the interregnum of Hayden's predecessor Goss.
However, the loss of such an effective Number Two at DNI, followed so quickly by the departure of Negroponte himself, left that office effectively decapitated, as concerned congressmen on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill noted.
Retired Vice Adm. McConnell, the administration's choice to replace Negroponte, has been well liked and respected through his career and is an effective military manager and coordinator. He ran the National Security Agency under Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton. But he lacks the longstanding access to other powerful current administration officials that gave Negroponte his clout.
McConnell has made clear in public comments that he is not happy with the current state of integration of the U.S. intelligence community. Now he also faces a Democrat-controlled Congress that may be more reluctant to centralize U.S. intelligence than its republican predecessors were, fearing an undue concentration of power.
It therefore seems entirely possible that in the hands of McConnell the position of DNI runs the risk of lapsing into effective powerlessness.
Far from becoming the "czar" of American intelligence, as the Bush administration and Congress originally envisaged, the DNI may be relegated to the permanent role of "clearing house" between a group of intelligence agencies more dominated by the Department of Defense and by military officials than ever before.
Things were expected to improve under Rumsfeld's successor, recently-appointed Defense Secretary Robert Gates who was a veteran CIA official himself and eventually served with discussion as the CIA's boss under President George H. W. Bush. But it is as yet too soon to see if that is in fact occurring.
Another concern both among long-time intelligence professionals at the CIA and among Democrats on Capitol Hill is that the U.S. intelligence community is being unduly dominated by senior officers from the military services. No-one doubts Gen. Hayden's integrity, track record or managerial skills, or those of Adm. McConnell. But the fear is that they will focus resources overwhelmingly on dealing with military, tactical, short-term threats that the "global war on terror" focuses on.
Strategic and political intelligence, assessing the long-term goals of major governments and the military capabilities they have and are developing to achieve them could be dangerously neglected by retaining the focus on current priorities, some critics argue.
Finally, McConnell, Hayden and their colleagues face the continuing challenge of bringing gargantuan, decades-old bureaucracies designed to combat the Soviet and Chinese super-states up to speed in a world of small, adaptive, Internet-savvy Islamist revolutionaries. It is akin to training a Jurassic Park triceratops to hunt small, agile mammals.
Even Ben-Hur might think twice before trying to do that.
Part 3 will ask: Does the Department of Homeland Security need reform? By Shaun Waterman.
