Foreign and Domestic
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Foreign and Domestic The 9/11 Commission is crashing around town again, refusing to let the matter lie. They are no longer under the charter of the Congress, or the President, and they are acting in their own right, under the moral authority of The Dead. They are an inconvenience to the way things work around here. Things are supposed to happen in the hallways, or the cloakroom, or in the process of sequential referral of the big appropriations bills that march through the summer. It did not work like that when they published their recommendations, which became a best-seller. Blue Ribbon Panels are supposed to issue their reports and decamp in the night. Instead, the members of the Commission retained a high profile. Vice Chair Lee Hamilton kept a high profile, and so did former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. And of course the 9/11 Families. They held the vigils around town that forced the House to cave in and pass the Intelligence Reform legislation late last year. It would not have happened without their grim presence, since there are many who oppose the redistribution of power and money that comes with change. There is a concerted effort to keep the focus on the change. The 9/11 Commission has rented office space as a private organization, and intends to stick around. The Families of September 11 are formally chartered under that name, and so are a dozen other organizations that claim the mandate of the martyred. They are pursuing a variety of agendas. All of them seem concerned about the memorial at Ground Zero. There is talk that some well-meaning and well-heeled people want to place an International Freedom Center at the site, which will feature informative programs on issues around the world. That could include things like prisoner abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. As you might imagine, that makes the relatives of the Dead go spastic. They want to take back the memorial from the internationalists and keep the focus on who died there. In that objective, I wish them well. There are other causes I agree with, and some that I do not. The compensation issue is one on which I feel ambiguity, and the curtailment of some of our basic liberties causes me great concern. We all have a dog in that fight, and in the conduct of the war that seems to have no end. The fight goes on in Washington , too. The Families of September 11 (FOS11) is holding a series of nine forums here over the summer, regularly spaced to provide constant pressure on the Congress. The organization intends to highlight the progress in addressing the concerns of the 9/11 Commission, and issue report cards on the Congress and the Administration. The second of the forums was held this week, and it had some luminaries from the Commission, and the President’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. And the families, of course. They convened to discuss the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, which created the new position of the Director of National Intelligence. Since Ambassador Negroponte took the position two months ago, he has been under assault. There are people who are opposed to his exercise of the ambiguous authorities vested in him in the law. It is too soon to tell how he is really doing. Apparently, he intends to nominate competent outsiders to key leadership positions, and back them up with insiders who will take orders. A retired naval officer, a ship-driver named Scott Redd, has been named to be the new Director of the National Counter-terrorism Center . He will replace a consummate CIA insider named John Brennan. I think it is the pattern of things to come, and is intended to harness the expertise of the Spooks while placing them firmly under the thumb of the consumers of intelligence. That will make the Community responsive, and break the open the insularity of the devotees of what they used to call the Cult of Intelligence. It is not going to be unopposed, and there are those that would prefer to see the Ambassador fail. I am not one of them, and I am watching with interest how the battles go. When I was new to working the Hill, one of the old pros called me aside and told me that there were things that happened every year, and required constant vigilance. He told me that each session an amendment was offered up when the Defense Appropriation considered the Bill. It was always the same, and mandated that all Navy ship repair would be conducted in the Continental United States. The member who offered it represented a coastal district down South, and it was a sop to the people who contributed to his campaign fund. If enacted, it could have had the theoretical consequence of benefiting the Congressman’s pet shipyard, but it also would have crippled the Navy, which had ships that needed to be fixed where they were home-ported. Like Japan . The amendment was always beaten down, and was just part of the job. But it always came back, year after year, inexorable, just like the Blob. The same thing is beginning for Ambassador Negroponte. He has had some significant victories in his first seven weeks on the job. He appears to be consolidating his position with a series of tactical battles. The first was in early June, when FBI officials backed off their opposition to coordinating senior appointments with his staff. The G-men indicated they would accept joint authority for naming the new Bureau Chief for Counter-intelligence, who is effectively the number three man at the FBI. They thought they had dodged the brunt of the reform, Teflon-like. So the appointment was a huge deal. Previously, it would have been unthinkable that anyone but FBI Director Mueller would control the nomination, or that the appointee would come from anywhere except the loyal ranks of the Bureau. The second was the nomination of Scott Redd to head the NCTC. It was a near thing. There are a series of mandatory deadlines in the reform legislation. The Administration had been up against a 17 June date to make the appointment, and establish the chain of command for the newly-augmented center. Redd had most recently served as executive director of the WMD Commission. Under law and executive order, NCTC is to be the central organization for analyzing and integrating all foreign and domestic intelligence on terrorism and the conduct of “strategic operational planning” for counterterrorism operations at home and abroad. I cannot stress how important this is, since it strikes to the very heart of who is in charge of clandestine operations. This has traditionally been the purview of the CIA and FBI, and is likely to be the source of another turf fight with DoD. And the Congress, of course. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made a run on the new DNI in the Authorization Bill. He was forced to back off on his attempt to curtail Negroponte’s authority to manage personnel. It is one of the first precepts of management that if you cannot control your people, you cannot control anything. Hoekstra inserted language that would have limited the DNI’s authority to transfer CIA, Pentagon, FBI or other intelligence specialists to staff the NCTC. Had the language stood, it would have made the DNI a paper tiger. Democrats on the committee revolted, led by the tenacious Jane Harman (D-CA). They were supported by aggressive lobbying by Negroponte’s organization. The authority in question is hardly sweeping, since under existing law, he can transfer only up to 100 intelligence employees at a time. But it is a powerful tool, and a precedent, and it shows everyone who is boss. Armed Services Chair Duncan Hunter (R-CA) tried to insert a similar provision in the Defense Authorization Bill last month but was beaten back. Hunter was an opponent of the intelligence reform measure, and in a hallway, he encouraged Hoekstra to continue the attack in another committee. It is a small but significant victory. But like the member with the shipyard in his district, I think the language will keep coming up. It will require constant vigilance on the part of Ambassador Negroponte to beat back his institutional enemies. But with the 9/11 families watching, he will have some help. Admiral Bill Studeman was one of the participants in the Public Discourse Project on Monday. I admire him enormously, and had a chance to work for him at a distance when I was younger. He has always been a straight-shooter and a man of blunt honesty. He always says precisely what he thinks about things, and he is usually right. That is what got my attention. I had to swallow hard when I heard what he said. This is going to be more difficult than I thought. The Admiral says that it is going to take ten years for this to sort itself out. Ten years . I think we were all hoping that the reform would enable us to get better at beating the Bad Guys. But that depends on where and who they are. As we say when we raise our right hand to swear to uphold the Constitution, I guess that encompasses all enemies, foreign and domestic. Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra |
