Security That Isn’t Sexy

With the government still struggling to incorporate the Homeland Security Department, and with the intelligence flaws exposed by the 9/11 commission still raw, the idea of adding yet another layer of security bureaucracy in Washington strains credulity. Yet it has been a hot notion in Washington since President Bush floated the idea last week.

The glamour factor can’t be overestimated because the concept comes from Britain’s MI5, a domestic spy agency with sweeping powers that has no equivalent in the United States. Unfortunately, such a creation in the U.S. would more likely contribute to the confusion among the intelligence services that originally hampered their efforts to deter terrorists.

The White House is also campaigning for a renewal and even broadening of the Patriot Act, with its restrictions on civil liberties. Roving wiretaps, Bush proclaimed Monday, would allow officials to lock up “monsters -- terrorist monsters.”

Hold on. The problem has not been the amount of security but the quality of security. As intelligence expert Richard K. Betts warns in the latest Foreign Affairs, structural reform will not cure what ails the intelligence community. What it needs are more modest changes. According to Betts, “a number of specific improvements in collection, analysis, and sharing of information can be made, but they are not the dramatic structural shake-ups that slake the public thirst for solutions.”

In fact, Betts notes that ultimately the strongest defense against intelligence mistakes comes not from structural changes but from senior officials with good judgment and common sense. If, as the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reports in his new book, “Plan of Attack,” CIA Director George J. Tenet really told Bush that he shouldn’t have had any misgivings about the quality of intelligence concerning Iraq, and that the case for weapons of mass destruction was a “slam-dunk,” Bush should have removed Tenet from his post by now. Recent weeks have disclosed other deficiencies in Tenet. For example, Tenet disclosed to the 9/11 commission that even though he was briefed on the activities of suspected terrorist and so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui, he failed to alert anyone in the White House.

As the campaign season heats up, the administration will be tempted to embrace feel-good measures to reassure the public about its safety. But grand schemes won’t improve the performance of the Homeland Security Department and other agencies.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s modest proposal Monday for a new anti-terrorism task force is a little more promising because it takes officials from nine Cabinet-level agencies and forces them to work with one another. But unless Ridge and Bush ride herd personally on the group, the culture of interagency distrust will take over. Relentless attention to improving intelligence, not expansions of power, will best reduce the country’s vulnerability to terrorist strikes.