SPOOK SHAKEUP

The American intelligence community is quickly becoming a dinosaur. It has to stop fighting the Cold War and transform itself to combat new security challenges, such as terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and rogue states - now. Just last week, the 9/11 Commission expressed serious concern about the intelligence community - the IC, as we say in the biz. Members are even thinking about issuing IC-reform recommendations before completing their final report. The commission's early work has raised major doubts about IC leadership, cooperation, communications and information-sharing.

This piece of punditry has many flaws. First, the DCI serves at the pleasure of the president, not Peter Brookes. As long as Bush has confidence in Tenet, populist pressures suggesting replacement should be resisted.

Second, for someone who claims to have served with the CIA, DIA and Naval Intelligence, Brookes displays a profound lack of appreciation for the nature of national intelligence and the need for internal debate regarding credibility of sources and methods, likely patterns and scenarios, etc., as part of the evaluation process.

Third, introducing a new layer of management, in all due respect to Brookes, is not the way to reduce bloated bureaucracies and eliminate turf battles. It merely places one person in the position of chief lightning rod who will be fired immediately whenever the pundits call for it -- a "feel-good solution" with no merit in terms of strengthening national security. On the contrary, it guarantees a homogenized politically correct view of the world by a new official nervous about keeping his job.

Fourth, if there is anything wrong with Tenet's statement that it could take five years to rebuild an effective spy network, it is that it may be too optimistic. Brookes reveals little appreciation of how destructive a combination of agency turncoats and Congressional meddling have had in decimating our human intelligence capabilities and the time and effort needed to recruit reliable sources on the ground.

Fifth, if Brookes thinks that a new intelligence director is the key to "preventing" another 9/11, he is dangerously delusional. Intelligence is not a science where you discover the right formula and it solves all your problems. That is far too simplistic a view coming from someone at the Heritage Foundation. Good intelligence, properly shared, can lower the risk of future attacks, but that depends on the renewal of the Patriot Act, destruction of "The Gorelick Wall" between intelligence agencies and law enforcement functions, and active involvement of the military, Treasury, our allies and others to find and destroy terrorists wherever they are.

According to Osama bin Laden's latest tape, his terrorist road show is now headed to a theater near you.

According to his latest tape? Hasn’t every one of his tapes had the same message? Is bin Laden the new Journalist’s Boogieman? Hiding under every bed, in every closet and omnipotent? Yes, he might well succeed in orchestrating another deadly attack, but should we continually cower in fear?
Our Intelligence gathering and analysis does need to be overhauled - streamlined and better coordinated, but it should not concentrate entirely or even predominately on the Terrorist Threat - there are still nuclear capable countries who are not exactly friendly and there are countries important to our economy and security that are open to revolution and invasion.

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