Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence after 9/11

Epilogue

165 Epilogue The momentum generated by the 9/11 Commission and the 9/11 Families, paired with the intelligence failures on 9/11 and Iraq and a competitive presidential election, propelled the most comprehensive reorganization of intelligence since the creation of the Pearl Harbor system in 1947. The Commission had devised a strategy based on the looming election and the support of the Families to get their reforms enacted into law. They capitalized on the pent-up demand generated over years of previous studies recommending that the Intelligence Community needed more centralized leadership. The Commission’s ability to dictate the congressional and executive agenda in the fall of 2004 and their considerable influence during the development of IRTPA ranks the 9/11 Commission as one of the most successful commissions in history. The fact that IRTPA even passed was a tremendous feat. Numerous commissions since 1947 had made similar recommendations that had gone nowhere.The extreme difficulty in forcing a reallocation of bureaucratic power was exhibited by IRTPA itself, which nearly collapsed on numerous occasions. But did the process yield the DNI a substantially greater package of authorities to succeed where the DCI was thought to have failed? Or did IRTPA create a “bureaucratic fifth wheel”as the 9/11 Commission’s executive director worried? Has the DNI suffered, in the words of Lee Hamilton, because he is “off in center field someplace?” The 9/11 Commission, President Bush, and Congress made affirmative decisions that they would only go so far in centralizing authority in a DNI. By leaving the largest intelligence agencies in the Defense Department,they considered and rejected a “Department of Intelligence” model in which all intelligence agencies would have been transferred under the explicit 166 Epilogue authority,direction,and control of the DNI.The Intelligence Community’s sixteen entities, except for the CIA, were embedded and would remain in their homes in cabinet departments.Because the country was engaged in two wars, it was thought to be unwise to uproot the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial Agency from the Department of Defense where they supplied troops in the field real-time battlefield intelligence. Even while preserving the“two masters”’system and rejecting wholesale change,1 nonetheless, the 9/11 Commission was trying to flip the balance of power from the cabinet secretaries to the new DNI. But significantly augmenting the power of the DNI was especially tough. Most of the DNI’s authority lies in the areas of building budgets.“The DNI will be required to manage the Community more by controlling resources than by command .”2 It is a hallmark of most legislative histories and democracy itself that original visions are compromised to accommodate the views of interest groups and bureaucracies. In this case, intense bureaucratic opposition from the Department of Defense and its congressional defenders limited the writ the DNI might have received. The final Congressional product contained less authority for the DNI than what the president had proposed and what passed the Senate. Despite the appeal of the 9/11 Commission and the 9/11 Families, the NSC and the legislative process jettisoned some of the features the Commission had recommended to give the DNI maximum authority. Specifically, the Commission’s provision that the DNI be in the White House and that the heads of important intelligence agencies be dual-hatted as deputies to the DNI were both thrown out by the White House and even the Senate, the most aggressive advocates for a strong DNI. A third feature, that the top line be declassified to facilitate an appropriation of funds directly to the DNI, was adopted by the Senate but faltered under White House and House opposition and was abandoned early in conference negotiations. The president,joined by the House,also insisted on a savings clause,a provision designed to ensure cabinet secretaries retained enough power to run their departments, a so-called chain-of-command provision. The provision arguably weakened the DNI’s hand in forcing departments and agencies to submit to its direction.3 Even though the ability of officers inferior to the secretary to refuse cooperation with the DNI by claiming abrogation of the chain of command was limited by President Bush’s 2008 executive order,its inclusion in IRTPA, especially in the eyes of those favoring a decentralized Epilogue 167 intelligence system, signaled that the DNI was at least symbolically below the cabinet secretaries...