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U.S. Intelligence Chief to Control Budget, Other Key Parts of FBI’s New Security Service
U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte will control the budget and other key parts of an office consolidating the FBI espionage, counterterrorism and intelligence services, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, June 29). Responsibility for the new National Security Service is another extension of the power granted to Negroponte in his job, which was created by the intelligence reform bill passed last year. “If there was any doubt about the DNI's authority, and whether the president was going to empower the DNI, that shouldn't remain today,” said White House domestic security adviser Frances Townsend. Creation of the new office is “a fundamental strengthening of our intelligence capabilities. It's not simply a moving of boxes. It's not simply a restructuring.” President George W. Bush ordered the new FBI office created in accepting 70 recommendations yesterday from his blue-ribbon commission on WMD intelligence. Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, Negroponte’s deputy, said the new office would institute new intelligence validation standards to prevent episodes that preceded the Iraq war, such as when an Iraqi defector known as Curveball fed U.S. intelligence agencies bad information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged biological weapons program (see GSN, April 8). The White House did, however, place some limits on Negroponte’s power. It rejected a recommendation that would have moved covert operations planning from the CIA to the National Counterproliferation and National Counterterrorism centers managed by Negroponte. “There were persuasive and strong arguments made against doing that, and we believe the reorganization of the CIA … will meet the same objectives,” Townsend said. The FBI loses significant levels of autonomy under the White House decisions, some experts said, according to the Times. Post-Sept. 11 efforts by FBI to shift from domestic crime fighting to combating terrorism were hampered by a culture that prized arrests and convictions over abstract threat analyses. While the agency had fought the changes, FBI Director Robert Mueller said yesterday he does not “see it as a loss of independence at all.” “We all have to work together. We cannot do it alone,” he said (Mazzetti/Schmitt/Vieth, Los Angeles Times, June 30). The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee expressed cautious optimism about the FBI overhaul. “The FBI will not get ahead of the terrorist threat if it doesn't have a fully dedicated intelligence service, and now it will,” Representative Jane Harman (Calif.) told the New York Times. “But this will require a massive culture change within the FBI because the guns and badges and the mind-set of the FBI don't totally fit with the challenges of countering terrorism.” The Times also reported that the responsibility for overseeing the FBI intelligence overhaul falls to Negroponte. The director of the new FBI National Security Service will report to Negroponte and Mueller. The president, in a memo to top aides, said the changes “ensure that the FBI's intelligence elements are responsive” to Negroponte and that the new office would be “subject to the coordination and budget powers” of the intelligence director (Douglas Jehl. New York Times, June 30). The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern about giving Negroponte power over the FBI. Spies have few constraints on operation, while FBI agents are bound by the Constitution, said Timothy Edgar, ACLU national security policy counsel. “What we could see is the spies in charge of the cops,” Edgar said. “You have a (director of national intelligence) who is in charge of mostly secret foreign intelligence and now is also in law enforcement. So does that mean we have a secret police? Our concern is we could be going down the road” (Shannon McCaffrey, Knight Ridder, June 30). Hayden said that changes designed to improve intelligence analysis could take years to institute, while others like the appointment of a human intelligence director could happen in months, the Associated Press reported last night. Harman and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said the reorganization would ensure “accurate, timely and actionable intelligence.” Harman added, however, that other issues needed “sustained attention” so that Negroponte is not “forever fending off turf attacks” (Katherine Shrader, Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, June 29).
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