The Smart Way to Redo Intelligence : Reform too important to be left to bureaucrats

Congress chartered the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, just about the time that George F. Kennan was warning from his diplomatic post in Moscow that the Soviet Union was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi .”

The Cold War that gave rise to the CIA has ended. No one can say for sure that the former Soviet Union won’t someday regress to its old Stalinist form, and of course the need for U.S. intelligence capabilities commensurate with the nation’s global responsibilities goes on. What’s recognized at the same time is that a changed world demands changes in how intelligence is organized. A debate on what changes to make is getting under way in Washington, though debate may prove to be too mild a description. What could lie just over the horizon is the mother of all bureaucratic battles.

THE DEBATE: The chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees, David L. Boren and Dave McCurdy, both Democrats from Oklahoma, have now put their ideas up for discussion. What they seek is an end to duplication in intelligence collection and analyses; consolidation of activities currently spread among a dozen or more different entities; and a redistribution of responsibilities to give greater power to some intelligence branches while lopping off others altogether.

These ideas evoke the worst nightmares of bureaucracies: a loss of political clout, of jobs, of status. That’s why much of their general thrust could well encounter ferocious bureaucratic resistance. Boren and McCurdy make clear that their proposals aren’t engraved in stone. They also make clear their belief--the soundness of which can’t be questioned--that restructuring the costly intelligence apparatus is too important to be left to the bureaucrats. Robert M. Gates, the director of Central Intelligence, already has panels at work on ideas for reorganizing intelligence. These ideas will become very much a part of the debate. What the committee chairmen are saying is that Congress intends to have the last word in that debate.

THE DECISION: The first and final words in a new charter reorganizing the intelligence community should be based on a cool and sweeping appraisal of world realities as they are likely to emerge in the decades ahead. The disappearance of the Soviet Union as a power capable of mounting a global military threat has not meant the disappearance of such threats, only their relocation, perhaps even at some point within the former Soviet Union itself.

The chief goal of U.S. foreign policy remains a politically stable world, secure from the threat of cross-border aggression. Intelligence is a vital support of that goal. The challenge to Congress and intelligence officials now is to find the most efficient and cost-effective ways to reorient toward the new era.