Untitled Document

11 April 2005

Curveball

It is going to be 65 degrees and sunny today. The cherry blossoms and the tourists are here and everyone is addled at the beauty of the coming of the season of life. I watched the most remarkable golf shot of my life yesterday, broadcast from the Masters golf tournament. Brilliant sunlight flooded my patio, the air smelling of earth and growing things. Tiger Woods chipped onto the 16 th green at Augusta from sixty feet out , and the ball slid across the slick grass, approached the cup, hung on the edge, and dropped with all the drama of an operatic diva.

The crowd went nuts.

Here in town the sap is rising fast. People want to do things outside. The home opener of the new baseball team is going to happen this week, and the President is supposed to be preparing to throw out the first ball.

Hardened bureaucrats and tourists alike are wandering about with goofy grins on their faces. This weekend I saw them walking out in front of cars, expecting them to stop, and witnessed the buses filled with happy visitors doing the most remarkable things.

The pleasant weather has a pervasive effect on everyone. Harry Truman must have smelled the moist earth in 1951, the year of my birth, and sent a telegram to Doug MacArthur, telling him he was relieved of further duty as the Supreme Commander in Korea .

There were consequences of the action, since the General was a popular figure with the public. But Truman was uneasy with the General's strategy. He felt that MacArthur's serene self-confidence, and his willingness to invade China , overstepped his portfolio. It was an ugly thing, but the blossoms were pretty and it was time to do something. Assert Presidential authority. Show the General who was boss.

I saw the General and his wife last week, under the dome of the old City Hall in Norfolk . Well, at least I saw the cool dark marble of his tomb. He still seemed serene, if a bit distant.

They are telling Ambassador John Negroponte too assert his authority, too. It has been more than a month since the President named him to be the new Director of National Intelligence.

As is traditional, we have heard nothing publicly from the nominee, nor from his designated Deputy, Mike Hayden. It is not considered appropriate for them to speak, prior to confirmation. That is going to happen tomorrow. The Ambassador is the only witness scheduled to be questioned by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. No other witnesses have been called, and only one day is set aside for the proceeding. It looks like a lock, and no curves are likely to be thrown at him.

His nomination will likely fly on to the Full Senate, and we could have an actual DNI by the end of the week.

There has been an eerie sort of tranquility in the intelligence offices around town, people looking out the windows at the blossoming of the azaleas and the dogwoods, if they are lucky enough to have windows, that is. Everyone knows something is coming, something big. But there is no one in charge of it yet.

Porter Goss at CIA is still the figurehead, but largely irrelevant. The workforce is demoralized and a little adrift. His support staff for Community Affairs has been churning out papers and directives, but everything important is deferred until the new Boss can review them.

They do not even know something as simple as where they will work. The Community Management Staff has been lodged on the sixth floor of the Original Headquarters Building at the CIA campus at Langley since it moved from the District at the end of the Cold War, and has been accused of being a hostage to the CIA ever since.

Rumors are flying that the new construction at Bolling Air Force Base to accommodate the Defense Intelligence Agency will be appropriated by the Ambassador. But no one knows, not yet.

People have been whispering to Mr. Negroponte that he needs to do something big, and do it fast. That is a time honored tradition in Washington . I am curious as to what he is going to do.

The President's Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction was scathing in its litany of errors in the run-up to the war. Most of the conclusions are perfectly justified, including the ones about the conclusions which were based almost entirely on accounts from a defector who was code-named “Curveball.”

He was described by some of his handlers as being nuts, and a liar. But no matter. There was a policy imperative to be carried out, and when Curveball spoke about a fleet of mobile biological weapons labs, people listened. It was part of the “slam dunk” that DCI George Tenet claimed to have had on the whole Iraqi WMD question.

I'll say this, just in passing, that the issue here is one of policy, not intelligence. The policy makers demanded that the intelligence be found to support the conclusions that they had already made. No reform in the world is going to fix that problem. But now we have a law to conform to, and a massive reorganization to conduct.

And now we are about to have the man to do it.

When Vice President Dick Cheney took over the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense, he needed to assert his authority. The Air Force Chief of Staff was a fellow named Dugan. He was of the mind that his Service could win wars all on its own, if given sufficient resources. He was quite frank about his views, and provided a high profile target for Mr Cheney.

The new SECDEF didn't throw General Dugan a curveball. He threw him a strike, right between the eyes. The General was relieved and working out of a tiny office down in the second sub-basement of the Pentagon until his retirement was effective.

The people whispering to Mr. Negroponte have urged him to be bold, and assert his powers in the widest possible manner. They have told him to be swift, and ruthless.

The people that work for Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon have most of the intelligence money and most of the people. They also have not been idle, waiting for John Negroponte and Mike Hayden to ride into town.

So I expect that will be the first showdown, something big between the Pentagon and the new DNI. Something largely symbolic, but very important in terms of who is going to be directing what. Congress has told Mr. Negroponte to be in charge, and he is going to have to do something to prove that he is.

It may not have a great deal to do with intelligence, but this never was about that ,anyway. It is going to be a most entertaining spring.

I think Mr. Negroponte is going to have to leave the curve balls and Washington misdirection for later on in the season. For the first few innings, he is going to have to put some muscle on the fastball.