| 01 July 2006 The Great Collector The legendary Charlie Allen was up on the Hill before the imperial city flushed out for the Fourth of July Holiday. He sat with great composure at the table in front of the raised dias where the members sit. His face was imperturbable, lined with crises that go back to the early days of the Vietnam War. He has been at this so long that he appears in a Harvard Case Study on the Achillle Lauro hijacking. Charlie is timeless, a Cold warrior who has made the transition from Kremlinology to countering the doctrine of the jihadis. I first met the legend in the flesh when I was working around the headquarters, and had the opportunity to attend his insistent National Intelligence Collection Board meetings. I think the issue was the long hunt for the cyberthugs who were stealing Department of Defense databases. There was a codeword for the operation that made it sound extra-spooky, and it went on for years. In the end, even Charlie was not able to pin the rose definitively on the bad guys. But his thorough and steady pressure to made all the elements of the community work together was something inspirational. After 9/11, his staff brought sleeping bags and slept at their desks until the system got itself organized against the new threat. That was the time of the year when the beauty outside collided with the urgency of pretending that the season was over. The gentle caress of the Virginia fall lingers on into November here, most years. There is something out of phase with the calendar and the evidence of our senses. The summer rhythm of the government is set to match the weather in the upper Midwest. After all, it was the summer solstice just last week, the real beginning of the astrological season. The days are just marginally shorter now, a handful of minutes on the way to the long darkness. The Fourth is the second of the major warm weather holidays, and once the smoke from he fireworks and the black powder blows away, there are a few magical weeks until Labor Day looms, and the college tuition bills are in the inbox, and the Czech lifeguards go away, and we are left with the prospect of fall. Get a grip, I said. Carpe diem. Enjoy the downtime. Don't worry about what is coming at the end of summer. Not yet. I remember saying that another summer, before the madness began. Charlie is known for being a workaholic. His definition of “leaving early” from the office might be to drive to he Kennedy Center for a concert at 7:00 pm. We wondered how he was going to take retirement. His job as the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection was abolished in the paroxysm of change that accompanied the intelligence reform bill. He was not the problem. He might have actually been the solution, had he been given a chance in the new structure. But out he went with the rest of the detritus of the old regime. It was something of a bombshell when it was revealed last fall that he was taking over the intelligence portfolio at the continuing organizational disaster that we know as the Department of Homeland Security. He just was not ready to go quietly into that good night, and that is why he was in front of the committees in the last week of the merry month of June. As the senior intelligence official for Secretary Chertoff, he deliberately rocked the boat as he told the Committee that the Department had no strategy for the systematic collection and dissemination of intelligence information. I looked at my calendar to make sure. It has been four summers since we acknowledged that we were at war. Democrats were shocked, shocked, to hear that no overall plan was in place. Business continues much as it always has, dependent on personal relations between the many entities who has responsibility for border security. Most of these are government, though utilities and other crtical infrastructure are in private hands. Others are sovereign native Tribes. That is what makes sharing sensitive information so challenging. This must have been a particularly galling moment for Charlie, since he was known as "The Great Collector" when he worked for DCI George Tenet. Some said Charlie never met a collection system he didn't like, regardless of the expense. But that was not fair. Charlie just wanted the truth. He agreed with critics who said the strategic plan should have been completed earlier. That was an indirect slam at his predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Pat Hughes. I know there must be winners and losers in the Washington game, no middle ground, and “fair” doesn't count. Pat did the best he could with what they gave him, and I would be happy to work for him again, anytime. In fairness, Charlie only agreed to accept the position if it was empowered and elevated out from under an assistant secretary, and reported directly to the Secretary. That gives him some authority and autonomy that Pat never had. Charlie said one of his top priorities since his arrival was development of "an intelligence campaign plan" that included integration of surveillance, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. It also must include the means to communicate the results to all the assorted lawmen out there who have no clearances and no training in dealing with the nuance of national data. Ambiguity is not a core value for the cop on the beat. When I worked (briefly )in the Homeland Security Operations Center, the way we communicated with the State and Local authorities was via Microsoft Outlook. It took longer to clear out the “returned mail, no such addressee” queue than it did to send out a warning notice. It was never clear to me that anyone actually got the things. There are good people still there who were just as appalled, and I am hoping things have improved since then. The Congressmen did not ask for a timeline to document when the plan would be completed, and Charlie is too wise to have offered one up. It is going to be a problem. The unmanned surveillance drone that Customs and Border Protection acquired with much fanfare just last Spring has already crashed. It has not been replaced. Homeland Security does not have the deep pockets of the Department of Defense, which assumes that things break, and purchases accordingly in bulk. What with the holiday coming up, and after that the mid-term elections, Democrats were all over Charlie about the Administration's failure to field an intelligence system that brought everything together. There was a certain deference to Charlie the Legend, while still making political capital on the DHS leadership. Of course it is not fair. But that isn't the point, is it? Congress itself demanded last year that the program once known as America's Shield be re-crafted as the Secure Border Initiative. “Shield” intended to solve the border problem with high-tech sensors and networks. “SBI” puts an emphasis on hiring new personnel. There does not appear to be enough money to do both. Industry is still watching to see when the money for technology will begin to flow. DHS cannot spend its way out of a paper sack, even four years after the war began, Charlie sat at the table, phlegmatic, while the politicians did their politics. Ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson paraded the recent report of the DHS Inspector General that cited deficiencies in the Homeland Security Information Network. It concludes that we are not adequately supporting State and Local officials. That is a no-brainer. Now that Charlie has let the cat out of the bag, perhaps something will happen. He may have a shot at turning things around. The ponderous mechanism of the Federal Communications Commission may free up some UHF spectrum currently used by the television Broadcast industry to show infomercials. I don't know anyone who actually watches UHF channels anymore, and maybe it is time to dedicate the public bandwidth to something important. The broadcasters are adamant that someone is out there in a trailer who needs their product, and are reluctant to vacate the public space. Maybe we can let Charlie talk to the disaster managers, and cops and firemen. Maybe he could even hear something back from them. Politics aside, no one wants Charlie to fail. Even Jane Harman, the sometimes acerbic ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, stated publicly that there was really no alternative to making border intelligence a success. Or I suppose there is. Charlie won't like it though, and neither will we. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |