By Brian Bohl
The Presidential Commission on Intelligence recently released a denunciation on the entire intelligence community for its “dead wrong prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” The criticisms and advice dispensed by the committee should be heeded by the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies. The failure to analyze data sufficiently has already drawn the United States into one unnecessary overseas conflict and could do so again if steps are not taken to ensure the quality of military intelligence.
The complaints from the bipartisan panel predominantly centered on the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The commission chided the FBI for not effectively allocating power over field operations to the correct personnel. The CIA was faulted for inefficient utilization of agents. The New York Times reported that “the CIA was planning to leave too many case officers at headquarters instead of strengthening field operations in response to the president’s directive to increase by 50 percent the number of case officers.” Given the serious danger that North Korea and Iran will acquire and potentially use nuclear weapons, agents are needed in the field and not behind a desk. The intelligence community should learn from the mistakes in Iraq instead of ignoring them.
The CIA in particular needs to feel outside pressure to reform. The agency has continuously refused to provide specific deadlines for changes, claiming that internal improvements would be made in a timely manner. This general promise does not suffice. Steps need to be taken immediately to ensure sources are knowledgeable and credible to avoid future intelligence failures.
The response from President Bush’s administration was to appoint John Negroponte as the first director of national intelligence. While attempting to unify the intelligence agencies is a positive measure, it will not cure all the problems. The CIA has stated its biggest problems are training agents who have “overseas experience, language proficiency, cultural understanding and technical skills.” Money and manpower slated to go to Negroponte’s new office might be better allocated into those overseas ventures instead of creating a new level of bureaucracy.
U.S. intelligence officials should use the mistakes of the recent past to their benefit. Any new intelligence or personal accounts should now be more heavily scrutinized. Hopefully negotiations with North Korea and Iran won’t result in what happened with Iraq, or as the St. Petersburg Times reported recently: “Agents overlooked or misapplied clues, misread electronic surveillance and failed to question their assumptions or vet incriminating documents.”
The Commission was chaired by Republican Laurence Silberman and included Republican Senator John McCain, meaning that the complaints against President Bush and prewar intelligence were not just political rhetoric from Democrats. The key lesson to be learned is that oversight of the agencies is fine, but it is rendered useless if its actions are based on fraudulent information. The panel found that “the (intelligence) community’s position on Iraq’s biological weapons program was largely determined by sources who were telling lies.” If the United State’s actions are determined on false analysis, no added level of administration will make it more effective.