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Today's
Stories
February
9, 2004
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with Jewish
Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine in
Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide from
Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure: Our
Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan
Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
|
February
9, 2004
What's Wrong with the CIA
How
the Agency Should be Changed
By BILL CHRISTISON
Former CIA Analyst
The
disaster in which U.S. foreign policy finds itself arises mainly from
the lies of an administration that had long wanted war in Iraq. Even
George Tenet, protesting too much his own sterling objectivity, stated
in his February 5 speech that his analysts had “never said there
was an imminent threat.” Too bad that in the months before the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003 he made no effort to shout that statement
out to the world. It might have kept us out of an appallingly ill-considered
war. But Tenet’s silence before he came to see himself being sacrificed
as the scapegoat is merely more evidence that some of the real blame
for the debacle does accrue to inherent weaknesses in the U.S. intelligence
establishment. Since the debate we should have had right after September
11 has finally erupted, we should honestly address these weaknesses.
What is wrong with U.S. intelligence and what is to be done?
Historically,
the CIA has flourished or faded depending on the relationship of its
director with the incumbent president. The Agency’s internal structure,
however, influences this relationship. The CIA has two major, sometimes
conflicting, arms -- an operational unit carrying out covert action
and collection activities, and an analytical unit. Of the two, most
recent presidents have regarded the covert action and collection part
of the Agency as the more important. It is the part of the CIA that
allows an action-oriented president -- and what president wants to be
identified in any other way? -- to do things, to take actions, with
little oversight. This makes it difficult for directors of central intelligence
to present to the president reports and judgments from the analytical
unit if those reports criticize the president’s policy preferences
or the CIA director’s own covert action recommendations in support
of the president’s policies. Most CIA directors, therefore, are
often in conflict with themselves or their subordinates over these two
separate aspects of their job, and it is almost impossible for them
to do both parts equally well.
Two
changes are needed.
First,
the operational arm of the agency should become a separate organization,
with a new name and run directly out of the White House. All covert
operations should by law require the written approval of the president,
designated committee chairmen of the Congress, and the chief justice
of the Supreme Court. All three branches of government should be represented
here, even if a constitutional amendment is required to bring this about.
In
a democracy, covert operations should be exceptional, and the controls
over them should be exceptional. Generally, no covert intelligence operations
abroad should be carried out by other intelligence agencies, and the
number and size of such operations should be held to a minimum. The
multiplication of such operations in recent years, and the not so subtle
advertisement, indeed glorification, of them by the U.S. media, have
contributed substantially to the hatred of Americans that is steadily
expanding around the world.
Second,
the analytical part of what is now the CIA should become another separate
agency. It could either keep the present name or not, but its head should
be the head only of this analytical body. A critical change here should
be that under new legislation the head of this body would be appointed
for a ten-year term. The new agency should have absolutely no operational
or covert action responsibilities and, lacking such responsibilities,
it should pose no unacceptable dangers to our form of government. (The
head of the FBI, by the way, is already appointed for a ten-year term,
and the danger that arose under J. Edgar Hoover of an FBI director becoming
too powerful came about at least in part because the FBI director does
have significant operational and action responsibilities, including,
in conjunction with the Justice Department, the power of arresting people
or harassing them through the FBI’s investigative powers.)
The
positive result should be that a new director of this exclusively analytical
agency would have greater independence than present and previous directors
of the CIA have had and make him or her less a part of any given administration.
Senior officers of this new agency should be assigned to every other
intelligence agency to ensure that intelligence is passed to the analytical
agency, and those officers should by statute have access to every substantive
document produced by the other agencies.
Other
intelligence agencies should continue to produce and disseminate any
reports they wish, but the new agency, with its greater independence
and with access to all sources, would have primary responsibility both
for producing reports on its own initiative and for answering requests
for analyses from the White House and Congress.
Independence
from any president and any administration is the most important thing
now absent in the CIA’s analytical unit. Breaking up the CIA as
suggested above -- splitting it in two -- is in my opinion the only
way to achieve that independence.
A
personal note is necessary here. Although I no longer have access to
information that the present CIA director tells the president and other
top leaders of the government, I have studied the unclassified sections
of George Tenet’s briefings in recent years to committees of Congress.
He seems rarely to have said anything that President Bush would not
have liked to hear. In a world as complex as the one we live in today,
that is alarming.
Bill
Christison joined the CIA in 1950 and worked on the analysis
side of the Agency for over 28 years. In the 1970s he served as a National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser of the Director of Central Intelligence)
for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Before
his retirement in 1979, he was Director of the CIA’s Office of
Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit.
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