U.S. May Throw One More Set of Initials Into Narcotics War

Facing new pressure to make sense of the international drug trade, the nation’s intelligence agencies have so far come to only one consensus: Not enough is known.

The Bush Administration’s solution? Create another agency.

Thus, from the alphabet soup of government spy shops--CIA, DIA and NSA; DEA, CNC and C3I; even FINCEN, EPIC and INR--may soon emerge a new abbreviation: NDIC, the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Its proponents say existing agencies are too often concerned with protecting sources or making the next bust. They contend that the additional $46-million center, with a special staff of trend-spotters, will provide a “strategic” look, now missing, at the drug world.

But, behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, critics have begun to wonder aloud whether more is really better--even when it comes to intelligence.

“What you need is coordination,” one key congressional aide said. “You don’t need layers on top of layers.”

The debate is made particularly sensitive by the deep mistrust and jealousies that tangle relations within the American intelligence community. But it revolves around a question fundamental to the way Washington works: Is expansion the key to success?

The irony is that the add-on agency is supposed to resolve problems created by past proliferation. In the last 13 months, the CIA and the Treasury Department have established counternarcotics centers of their own.

These add to a field already crowded by newly created Customs Service and Coast Guard commands, control and intelligence centers and separate facilities operated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies.

The problem is that the intelligence agencies have turned into intelligence hoarders. Law enforcement officials fear that sharing might jeopardize cases. A protective CIA and other services cite national security concerns.

Indeed, the Justice Department recently concluded that the intelligence buildup has in fact “hindered a coordinated, unified approach.”

“Currently, agencies have pieces of the puzzle in their own files and reports, but nowhere does all the information come together,” the department said in a report justifying the need to create the new agency.

The Administration insists that the new counternarcotics center would neither duplicate nor compete with existing agencies. Instead, it would serve as a sort of intelligence command post, scrutinizing others’ files and assigning them missions in hopes that clear-cut patterns might emerge.

Federal officials concede that the state of current knowledge is poor. A recent government attempt to gauge world cocaine production turned into what one participant termed a “fantasy derby” as the DEA and U.S. Southern Command, while offering little solid evidence, bickered over estimates that varied by a factor of three.

At the same time, Administration officials acknowledge that the federal government knows so little about drug-trafficking organizations that this is the principal “void” the NDIC might fill.

Such frank admissions of ignorance about what some view as the nation’s principal national security threat may help the Administration plan get a favorable reception on Capitol Hill, where the anti-drug label usually guarantees budgetary riches.

But some members of Congress, including Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), have begun quietly to suggest that fewer might be better. At the private urging of a wide range of government experts, they are considering an alternative plan that would force existing intelligence agencies to consolidate anti-drug resources.

“The NDIC would just add another level of bureaucracy on top of the existing layer,” one Senate Democratic aide said. “It’s time to say enough is enough.”

Staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.