Panel Denounces Spy Agencies

More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies remain poorly coordinated, have resisted reform and produce work that is “increasingly irrelevant,” a presidential commission concluded Thursday in a scathing new report.

Despite vast increases in funding and manpower after 2001, America’s 15 intelligence services were “dead wrong” about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and were still “often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about,” the panel warned.

“Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world’s most dangerous actors,” the nine-member panel concluded after a yearlong inquiry. “In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or 10 years ago.”

The withering critique of America’s spy services, delivered Thursday to President Bush, provided vivid new details about the intelligence debacle before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, including the role of a now-discredited defector code-named “Curveball.”

The 601 pages of unclassified material released to the public hinted that similar problems of inadequate collection and shoddy analysis also may undermine U.S. assessments of nuclear programs and regime intentions in Iran and North Korea. But those details were classified and panel members refused to discuss them.

The report is the latest in a series of harsh, high-level critiques of U.S. intelligence since Sept. 11.

But it is the first to conclude that the CIA and other U.S. agencies have failed to adequately respond to back-to-back failures on Al Qaeda and Iraq -- and to highlight glaring shortcomings in the war on terrorism.

Despite what the report calls clear signals from Bush to coordinate agency efforts, the panel found that a “turf battle raged” for more than a year between the CIA Counterterrorist Center and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which was created after Sept. 11 to better coordinate the government’s counterterrorism intelligence and operations.

The commission warned that “the war between agencies that are tasked to fight the war on terror will continue” unless John D. Negroponte, the president’s nominee for the newly created position of director of national intelligence, can resolve the dispute.

Panel members also urged Bush to “fully empower” Negroponte to ensure that he could control and corral intelligence officials seeking to preserve their autonomy.

“Sooner or later, they will try to run around -- or over -- the” director of national intelligence, the panel warned.

The report puts new pressure on Bush, who has held office during two of the worst intelligence fiascos in modern U.S. history and who has struggled, along with Congress, to reform the sprawling, $40-billion-a-year intelligence system.

The latest assault on CIA credibility may hinder Washington’s efforts to convince skeptical governments that despite Tehran’s denials, Iran is secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

The panel is formally known as the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Bush accepted its report from the co-chairmen, Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal judge, and former U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), in the Executive Office Building.

“The central conclusion is one that I share: America’s intelligence community needs fundamental change,” Bush told reporters.

Bush promised “concrete action” on the panel’s 74 recommendations, many of which can be carried out without congressional approval. “To win the war on terror, we will correct what needs to be fixed,” he said.

Fran Townsend, the White House domestic security advisor, told reporters Thursday that the review and implementation process would be completed within 90 days.

“You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks,” she said.

The proposals include an array of organizational changes designed to increase information-sharing and reduce bureaucratic wrangling among the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and other intelligence-gathering agencies.

The panel urged the CIA to create a human intelligence directorate to oversee the clandestine service, the 1,200 or so spies that the CIA employs, and to coordinate with other U.S. agencies -- principally the FBI and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency -- that increasingly conduct espionage operations overseas.

Silberman acknowledged the proposal would encounter resistance at CIA headquarters. “It’s hard to take an organization that does an excellent job at what it does and try to get it to do other things,” he said.

The report refers to the CIA and the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on electronic communications, as “vast government bureaucracies” that routinely reject change.

Overall, it notes, the intelligence community “has an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations.”

“Change within this community is going to be very difficult,” Robb said at a news briefing.

“They’re still in some respects fighting the last war,” Robb said. “Some very capable people with some very sophisticated tools are still in an environment that is much like the Soviet era, where we were going against a very different enemy.”

CIA Director Porter J. Goss acknowledged the need for “more robust collection and more rigorous analysis.” The intelligence community “can and must do better -- and it is determined to do so,” he said in a statement.

But Goss’ predecessor, George J. Tenet, who resigned as CIA chief last summer as criticism intensified over Iraq, complained that the commission did not acknowledge the rebuilding of America’s spy services during his seven-year tenure.

“By the mid- to late 1990s, American intelligence was nearly in Chapter 11,” Tenet said in a statement e-mailed by his spokesman. “We put in place a deliberate program to rebuild capabilities and recruit a modern workforce.... The transformation was in progress, but in no way complete, as this country examined the threat from Iraq.”

Some of the report’s most damning material is not about Iraq but about more recent problems in the war on terrorism. In particular, the report exposed a conflict between two agencies that were supposed to spot emerging threats and lead the U.S. response.

The National Counterterrorism Center was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to serve as the nation’s clearinghouse for threat data, and to prevent the breakdowns in intelligence-sharing that plagued the nation in the summer of 2001.

But the new center and an older counterpart, the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “continue to fight bureaucratic battles to define their place in the war on terror,” the report said.

The commission also cited breakdowns in coordination and simmering conflicts between agencies that publicly have sought to project cooperation since Sept. 11.

The CIA still “finds it difficult to obtain information from the FBI about ongoing investigations,” the report noted, saying such breakdowns were “reminiscent of the ‘void’ that the Sept. 11 attack plotters” exploited.

Bush created the commission last year after chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay warned Congress that prewar intelligence on Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction was “almost all wrong.”

No such weapons were found, and the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group concluded in October that the former Iraqi dictator had secretly abandoned his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs more than a decade ago.

The new commission is more emphatic.

U.S. intelligence “was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments” about Iraq’s illicit weapons, panel members wrote in a letter to the president summarizing their findings. “This was a major intelligence failure.”

The panel found no evidence that White House officials or other administration figures pressured intelligence analysts to shade or change their reports for political reasons. In response to a reporter’s question, Silberman said the panel did not interview Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

Silberman added that policymakers appeared too reluctant “to push the intelligence community as hard as they should for fear of an accusation of politicization.”

Working behind closed doors for a year, the commission studied intelligence on Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, as well as threats from transnational terrorist groups, to draw lessons for the future.

The nuclear disarmament of Libya’s radical regime, announced last year, is “fundamentally a success story,” and intelligence against terrorist groups has “made great strides” since the 2001 terrorist attack, the report concluded.

But the panel found that U.S. intelligence had “not developed the long-term, coordinated collection strategies” necessary to penetrate critical overseas targets.

The panel also chided Congress for failing to provide more oversight of spy services. It urged the House and Senate intelligence committees to keep better track of operations, budgets and problems.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, invited Silberman and Robb to meet with the committee next week.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised the report.

“We must learn from our past errors as we move forward to focus on North Korea, Iran and other areas of the world where the destabilizing threat of proliferation exists,” he said.

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Times staff writer Warren Vieth in Washington contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The findings

A summary of conclusions and recommendations in the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction:

What went wrong:

Widespread failure: The intelligence community was “dead wrong” in almost all of its judgments on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the war.

Collection: The intelligence community’s failure was due largely to analytical shortcomings, but there were also problems with those who collect intelligence. Much of the intelligence gathered by the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and others was either worthless or misleading.

Communication: In failing to communicate effectively with policymakers, the intelligence community did not adequately explain what small amount of good intelligence it had, or how much its assessments were driven by assumptions.

Adversaries’ programs: The United States still knows very little about the weapons programs and intentions of many of its adversaries.

The good news: Innovative and multiagency collection techniques have led to some successes.

What should be done:

Taking risks: The United States needs an integrated intelligence community that is more imaginative and willing to run risks.

Power: The president needs to give the new director of national intelligence the power to match his responsibilities. Under the new intelligence law, the director is responsible for integrating the nation’s 15 spy agencies. But this cannot work unless he stretches to the limit his legal authorities over budget, programs and personnel.

The FBI: Integrate the FBI into the intelligence community; combine its intelligence capabilities under the coordinating authority of the director of national intelligence.

Demand more: Policymakers should press the intelligence community to do its best. Analysts must be urged to explain what they don’t know, and agencies must reveal why they don’t have better information.

Source: Associated Press