CIA Creates New Position for Homeland Security

Reuters / ABC ^

[RCW2001]

CIA Creates New Position for Homeland Security

May 22

— WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amid the post Sept. 11 focus on protecting Americans at home, the CIA said on Wednesday it had created a new position to ensure intelligence information was delivered quickly to the White House office of homeland security.

"The intelligence community needs to do all it can to support the administration's efforts to organize and coordinate the many component parts of homeland security," CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement.

The move came amid congressional concerns that federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA need to improve information sharing among themselves and with other agencies so they can better protect the United States against terrorism.

Four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, killing about 3,000 people. The United States has blamed Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

Abu Zubaydah, the most senior al Qaeda member in U.S. custody, told interrogators recently that the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had been destined for the White House, a government source said.

The new homeland security position will be the main link between the intelligence community, which includes the CIA and other spy agencies, and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

Winston Wiley, the current CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence who oversees intelligence analysts, will take on the newly created position of associate director of central intelligence for homeland security effective May 28.

Jami Miscik, who was Wiley's deputy, will replace him as Deputy Director for Intelligence and becomes the first woman to hold that post at the CIA.

A CIA spokesman said the creation of the homeland security position did not signal any changes in the CIA's traditional role of gathering intelligence overseas, while the FBI conducts investigations domestically.

[goldstategop]

The CIA should gather intelligence inside the country as well as abroad. It should share whatever it knows with the FBI and other agencies and vice versa. 911 should have taught all of us how senseless bureaucratic turf is when it comes to keeping this country safe from attack.

[browardchad]

A new position -- that will go a long way to correcting the problems in our intelligence community, I'm sure. </sarcasm

[weikel]

The problem was more the FBI not sharing what it knew with the CIA at least from what I've heard.