Feinstein Touts Measure to Create Intelligence Czar

Saying prewar intelligence disturbingly exaggerated the Iraqi regime as a “grave and growing threat to the American people,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Saturday promoted her proposal to create a national intelligence czar.

Feinstein, one of 77 senators who voted in favor of using force against Iraq in 2002, said she had relied largely on the now widely discredited intelligence reports that suggested Saddam Hussein had the potential to unleash weapons of mass destruction on the United States and its allies. The reports were repeatedly touted by the Bush administration in the lead-up to war.

Creation of a national intelligence director position -- possibly a new Cabinet-level job appointed by the president -- would help transform a tangled web of 15 intelligence agencies into an effective unit that could better deal with the new complexities of terrorism, Feinstein said.

“We need a new leader of the intelligence community,” Feinstein said during a speech organized by Town Hall Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

The audience of about 150 included current and former politicians and business leaders, Canada’s Los Angeles consul general and Fairfax High School students.

Feinstein first introduced legislation to create the position in 2002, but the idea has picked up momentum in recent months amid a series of critical reports questioning prewar intelligence.

The Feinstein measure, now supported by fellow Democrats such as Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and some Republicans, including Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, is scheduled to receive its first hearing Tuesday in Washington.

The concept of creating a director of national intelligence has been endorsed by a series of blue-ribbon panels, including the joint congressional committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, and by numerous House members, notably Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice).

However, the idea of centralizing authority over the nation’s intelligence agencies has not been embraced by the White House, and the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, criticized it as yet another layer of bureaucracy.

The CIA director is nominally in charge of coordinating the work of the country’s intelligence-gathering agencies. But critics note that the CIA chief does not have the power to hire or fire the heads of the other agencies, and that 80% of the intelligence community’s $40-billion budget is controlled by the Pentagon. As a result, congressional investigations have concluded, the CIA’s directives to other agencies are often ignored.

One member of the town hall audience questioned Feinstein on whether creating a Cabinet-level director of intelligence would politicize the agencies’ work. Feinstein conceded that was a possibility, but said such a position may be the only way to reform the intelligence community.

Though the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report blasting prewar intelligence did not conclude that the Bush administration distorted intelligence claims to make a case for attacking Iraq, Feinstein said Saturday that she considered that issue “an open question. And it needs more careful scrutiny.”

Even though the United States and its allies toppled Hussein, the military must continue to fight off insurgents and remain in Iraq until it has fully restored law and order to the country, Feinstein said.

“We have to stay the course,” she said. “Not to do so would probably enable the creation of a major terrorist state, and seriously destabilize a region vital to our national security.”