Ex-CIA Chief Urges New Reorganization of Intelligence System

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The recently revamped U.S. intelligence structure needs a further and more radical overhaul that would combine all intelligence-gathering under one roof, separate from the analytical function, a former chief of intelligence
said Thursday. The present system of 15 separate agencies is "dysfunctional," in that each agency tends to value its own intelligence findings ahead of all others, retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, who headed the CIA during the Carter administration, said in a speech to a business group.

Turner told his audience that constant "tweaking" of the spy agencies' functions and interplay by successive administrations "has not left us today with a coherent intelligence structure," nor is there any assurance, even now, that fresh intelligence on a specific terrorist threat or individual "would be shared by all those intelligence agencies."

Turner also said the U.S. military exercises "excessive control" over the collection of intelligence in a situation where terrorism has replaced war as the nation's primary security concern. During the Cold War, he said, "it was critical to keep the military's intelligence very, very good, but that was when the primary threat to our country was war," he said. "Today, as we all know, the primary threat is terrorism. That is not a primary concern for the military."

The recent creation of the new post of national director of intelligence, separate from chief of the CIA, to oversee the entire field of 15 agencies was "a good move," Turner said, "but also a bad move." That's because, he said, "largely due to resistance by the military, the new law did not give the new director any meaningful authority. ... His role is uncertain." Turner has outlined his concepts in a new book, "Burn Before Reading," that traces the history of American presidents and their intelligence chiefs from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush. He said Thursday that he had not discussed his ideas on reorganization with members of Congress or with John Negroponte, the veteran diplomat chosen by President Bush as the first national director of intelligence.

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