Rethink the CIA

As investigators unravel the conspiracy behind the terrorist attacks on the United States, the agony will only increase. At each stage investigators will discover points at which the plotters could have been foiled. And weren’t.

U.S. intelligence failed to do the job it must. As Secretary of State Colin L. Powell put it, “We did not get the cueing we needed.” No organization should be scrutinized more closely than the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA director is responsible for directing the intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency as well as the CIA itself, and reports to the president.

The U.S. has astounding abilities in what the government calls national-technical means of verification. But satellite wizardry is not enough. Terrorist networks need to be penetrated and disrupted. One small part of a remedy is a review of guidelines, curbs and restrictions imposed on the CIA after a Senate committee, acting in the shadow of the Watergate scandal, in 1975 detailed the agency’s abuses over several decades.

A Clinton-era regulation forbidding the employment of certain foreigners to penetrate terrorist groups should be amended. In 1995, the administration barred agents from signing up suspected human-rights violators and required recruiters to disclose agents’ identities to Washington headquarters. The National Commission on Terrorism, which was created in 1998 after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, has strongly criticized this policy for its effect on morale and hindrance of intelligence-gathering. Then there is the question of assassinations of foreign leaders. On Feb. 18, 1976, President Gerald R. Ford signed an executive order banning foreign assassinations, primarily in response to U.S. plots from Cuba to Congo. The order is miscast for dealing with large-scale terrorism, which is a form of war; but modifying or reinterpreting laws and directives will not solve the fundamental problem, which is the CIA itself.

CIA Director George J. Tenet has said that the organization will “run to ground a vicious foe.” But this is the man who has boasted that America’s counter-terrorism program is “robust” and able to keep Osama bin Laden and his followers “off-balance.” The truth is closer to what former Middle East CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote in the July/August Atlantic magazine: “America’s counter-terrorism program in the Middle East and its environs is a myth.”

Tenet has taken a booster’s approach to the CIA, showing up in sweatpants for morning meetings and trying to be one of the guys at the notoriously cliquish agency. What he has not delivered is a sense of mission. The CIA lacks informants in radical Islamic groups, and Tenet enthusiastically embraced restraints on recruiting agents abroad. The CIA has been caught flat-footed numerous times, including the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa and the Indian government’s resumption of nuclear testing. The CIA’s problems predate Tenet, but he has not corrected them.

The mission of the CIA is to identify and protect against threats to the United States. It has done neither satisfactorily. Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is reportedly seeking Tenet’s resignation, and he is not alone.

A cautious bureaucratic approach is not what U.S. intelligence needs. The CIA must focus on and reward informed analysis and familiarity with local cultures and languages. U.S. miscomprehension of its hellbent enemies has cost us dearly.