April Fools

I am about ready for Spring. It seems like it is here, though we are going to have a pelting rain later, and more tomorrow. The season seems reluctant to change, and keeps fooling me.

I saw a lone blossoming tree of some sort- the pink one that is not a Cherry and too tall to be an Azalea- and realized it cannot be far away, even if it is still dank and a bit dark.

The Pope is failing over night. The last I heard was that he had a fever from a urinary tract infection, but this morning they say that the Holy Father has decided not to return to the hospital. He had a coronary event overnight, and was given last rites. The Cardinals of the Church are reportedly winging their way from around the world toward Rome.

I glanced at the recommendations of the President’s Panel of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the unclassified version that is on the web.

The road from 9/11, or parade, if you will, is indeed a strange one. I was staying temporarily at the BOQ at Ft McNair, one step up from living out of the trunk of my car, and commuting from the District to my job at CIA HQ. I came across the 14th Street bridge that morning, marveling at what a wonderful day it was starting out to be.

I don’t know why I wound up in Pentagon North Parking; it was not the easiest way to get on the GW Parkway north, but that is one of the ways I knew to get to it from the years of jogging there, and I motored up Boundary Channel Drive to the east of the vast parking lot.

I looked at the massive building in the rising light, and thought that all things considered, life was OK.

How little you know.

I got hung up with the relocation of senior people during the attack, not me, of course, I was just holding a horse. But I happened to be with George Tenet when the towers came down, and then, when all the airplanes were on the ground and the non-essential employees long dispersed into the chaotic traffic, I took my own leave. I was headed into the District again, and traffic was light going that way.

Motoring south from Langley, under the brilliant blue sky, I saw people rollerblading on the path next to the Parkway while the building burned, as if the early out was some sort of a September snow day.

Maybe it was. Thinking about what happened after that still makes me shake my head in frustration.

I retired, eventually, after tilting at a few windmills that ignored my efforts. The systemic problems that existed were papered up to the satisfaction of those who ran the Agencies and the Community. There was a certain spirit of jointness, and some new institutions, and the general feeling that now that we were no-shit at war, it was no time to overturn the applecart.

That had to wait. The 9-11 Commission did that, and the legislation that was rushed through thoroughly threw things into a mess that had the practical effect of shredding what had been teh CIA, and going into four months since the law was passed, Ambassador Negroponte and Lt Gen Mike Hayden are nominated but not confirmed.

They can do nothing until the Senate says they can.

And then, with that enterprise not even begun, we have the report of the President’s Commission on How Screwed Up the Intelligence Community Is. The Commission was directed to report out not later than the end of March, and here it is, big as life, on April Fool’s Day.

I’m in complete agreement, and have been for a long time. But there are reasons for everything. I observed to a co-worker yesterday that the office of the old Director of Central Intelligence had all the authority he needed to knock heads and rearrange budgets. But the last few men who occupied the office seemed unwilling to exercise the powers they already had in Law and Executive Order.

Or maybe I just didn’t understand how tenuous the alliances were, regardless of how close my vantage was.

There just wasn’t enough money to change things in the decade after the Wall came down. I remember briefing the Military Intelligence Program to the Director of the Agency responsible for it, and after the unexpected bills were paid, the salaries and lights and air conditioning taken care of, the New Initiatives in his multi-billion dollar program amounted to the Joint Target Toolkit, a software suite worth $1.5 million.

He looked at me with astonishment. “That’s it?” he said. “That is all the new stuff we can do in my entire budget?”

“Yessir,” I said. “Unless we go back to the drawing board.”

That is what the President’s commission has directed the Intelligence Community to do.

Judge Silberman and former Senator Chuck Robb are no fools. They are up front about that fact that the Intelligence Community is systemically resistant to change. But that didn’t stop his panel of experts from delivering what could serve as the action agenda for Ambassador Negroponte’s first hundred days.

Here are the first nine steps to fix everything, all in two paragraphs: ”The DNI should create . . . “Mission Managers” on his staff, with an integrated, end-to-end “collection enterprise,” linked together by an information management system to facilitate real and effective information sharing . . .and a ”lessons-learned” database with personnel supported by a central human resources authority . . . and a robust R&D effort for new technologies . . .under dynamic new standing oversight by the Joint Intelligence Community Council and a strengthened President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.”

The Panel also recommended that the President ask the Congress clean up its oversight act, but that is not something the President or the DNI have much authority over.

Oh, and the President should establish a ”small National Counter Proliferation Center,” to coordinate analysis and collection on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

The President asked for the Commission to help him decide what to do. I think he is going to hand the list to Ambassador Negroponte this month as a metric to determine how well he is doing in his new job.

I’m scratching my head over this one. It all seems like no-brainers, and many of these functions have been tried before. What is the difference between a ”mission manager” and an ”Assistant Director of Central Intelligence” assigned to coordinate collection?

There is a lot of centralization contained in the recommendations. But implementing that is going to be up to the Ambassador. We’ll see. I hope it is not just another April Fools thing.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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