Bush Expected to Oppose Creating Intelligence Czar

[hang a left]

THE NATION
Bush Expected to Oppose Creating Intelligence Czar
Amid calls for a major shakeup of 15 U.S. spy agencies, administration is said to prefer giving the director of the CIA more authority.





By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Faced with a succession of scathing reports on prewar intelligence on Iraq, President Bush is likely to endorse centralizing authority within the spy agencies but oppose creating a single national intelligence czar, according to a senior Republican strategist familiar with White House planning.

In the weeks ahead, the strategist said, the administration is likely to support proposals to encourage more coordination by providing the director of central intelligence, who heads the CIA, with increased authority over the budgets of the 14 other intelligence agencies.


But the strategist said the president "in all likelihood" would oppose measures embraced by many legislators to create a national director with authority over all intelligence agencies.

Bush's emerging stance would put him somewhere between those who favor creating a new Cabinet-level position to oversee the intelligence community and those who would leave the organization chart as is. No matter how the debate comes out, the intelligence community faces potentially its biggest shakeup in decades.

snip>

[Racenut20]

1. DUH ! Isn't that Ridge's job ? Or was he there just to

strip 190,000 Government workers from their Civil Service benefits????

[truthisfreedom]

2. so let's get this straight... daddy's old crew?

that's the group he wants to make sure is in charge of EVERYTHING?

this election can't happen fast enough for me. bring it on.

[boobooday]

3. He's running out of war criminals to appoint

The more of these kinds of positions he creates, the greater the liklihood that somebody will go "off program" and tell the truth.

Couldn't have that!



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[havocmom]

4. Afraid and Intelligence Czar may insist on tests for ...

yeah, I can see why the shrub would be opposed.

[radfringe]

5. geee -- opposed to intelligence? --- wonder why?

and I wonder how long it will take him to flip flop on this?

opposed 9-11 investigation
then was for it

opposed Homeland insecurity as cabinet position
then was for it

opposed to WMD investigation
then was for it

[pinerow]

7. You make an excellent point...

now if we can get our so-called representatives and presidential candidates on the wagon; then I believe we would have a very ggod shot at winning this election.

Unless of course bin-laden decides to create another terror alert. <sarcasm>

[DS1]

16. federalized airport screeners

Steel tarrifs

[mantis49]

6. Isn't that supposed to be part of

the function of Homeland Security? Or is Ridge only supposed to keep us very afraid?

Do you have a link?

[NewJerseyDem]

11. Ridge doesn't have jursidiction over the FBI or the CIA

That was left out when the Homeland Security Department was created. That is why the Homeland Security Department is so stupid.

[jmowreader]

8. He's right, and he's flat wrong

I too oppose an "intelligence czar." But the changes that must be made to the intelligence structure can't be done while that little dictator and his PNAC buddies are at large and in charge.

We have fifteen separate intelligence agencies. Fifteen! No other nation segments its intelligence this badly.

Great Britain has three--MI5, which is kind of like the CIA; MI6, which is akin to the counterintelligence functions of the FBI, and Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, which is like the NSA. The British have two agencies to handle the FBI's functionality--MI6 for the counterintelligence side, Scotland Yard for the policing side.

Germany splits the FBI's criminal-justice function into a Federal Criminal Office and puts all of its intelligence capabilities into the Federal Intelligence Service.

The Soviets chose to follow a civil intelligence/military intelligence split and put their federal police force into the civil intelligence branch, the Ministry for State Security or KGB. Their MI assets were called GRU. Most if not all communist countries break it down the same way--I think (but may be mistaken) the North Koreans just use one agency.

We split our agencies up along functional lines, and we attempt to keep what those agencies do secret. This worked in the old days, before we had 24-hour news channels and Tom Clancy books--we were trying to protect the sources and methods used to collect the information in the report. But now, if someone gets a report from NSA they know it's from intercepted radio signals of some sort. A National Reconnaissance Office message was created out of data received from some sort of satellite, and so on.

This is what we need to do:

1. Get rid of George Bush and all of his cronies. They will turn this organization into the Gestapo if they get it.

2. Create one intelligence service, the National Intelligence Service, and one federal law enforcement agency, the National Police Department. All intelligence forces will belong to the National Intelligence Service, including the military intelligence forces of the four services. All federal law enforcement, including military police from the four services, will be in the National Police Department.

3. Design a good solid database system that supports compartmentalization of sources and methods information but allows agency-wide and interagency dissemination of sanitized data. Example: say the NIS signals-intelligence desk charged with watching Osama figures out he's going to be in Tora Bora tomorrow at noon. Right now, by the time we get the report from the collectors to the shooters, it's Tuesday and Osama's in Paris having his nails buffed. In a NIS/NPD scenario, the analysts figure this out, report it, the system sees Osama as a keyword and freaks out, the NIS people in Afghanistan call the 101st Airborne element closest to Tora Bora, they put two companies of grunts with a trailer full of ammo and about a dozen Mk.19 grenade launchers in Tora Bora tomorrow at noon, and we finally shoot the son of a bitch.

[Kellanved]

12. small addition

The German Intelligence Services are somewhat more complicated:

There are several Federal Services:
-BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst / Federal Intelligence Service): External Intelligence.

-MAD (Militärischer Abschirmdienst / Military Counter-Intelligence Service)

-ZNBw(Zentrum für Nachrichtenwesen der Bundeswehr/ Central Army Intelligence Agency): external Military Intelligence


-BKA (Bundeskriminalamt / FBI)

-BSI (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik/ Federal Agency for IT security)

-Bundesamt für Verfassungschutz: (Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution); internal Intelligence

-ZKA(Zollkriminalamt/ Customs)


In addition each of the 16 states operates both, a criminal and a constitutional Intelligence service. So there are another 32 agencies.

[jmowreader]

15. I was just going off my training

And what I'd been taught was that the Germans had two basic agencies: a federal intelligence agency and a federal police force.

My bad.

Now look at the way the Germans do business against the way we do it. All of them are integrated--the BND does communications intel, human intel, noncommunications SIGINT, overhead, you name it, they do it. As opposed to the US, who has a SIGINT agency, a HUMINT agency, an overhead agency...

This "one discipline per agency" shit is killing us. It killed three thousand of us in September 2001, or at least played a part.

Well, that and the fact that no one at CIA put a cattle prod under Dubya's ass in August 2001 and told him to grow the fuck up, when you're in charge of the lives of 270 million people you can't go on the way you are.

[CO Liberal]

9. Don't Use "Bush" and "Intelligence" In the Same Sentence!

Talk about an oxymoron....

:dunce:
Dubya

[Placebo]

10. Welllll

No one HONESTLY thinks that bush cares about really solving our intelligence problems in the US, right? At the moment, it works perfectly to his advantage, and to the advantage of his campaign donors.

He'll do something that's highly ceremonial, looks good in photos, but is pathetically short in substance. (as he always does)

[Manix]

13. ..using Bush and intelligence in the same sentence is a oxymoron.

[salin]

14. headline to faux viewers: Bush to start A NEW FEDERAL BUREACRACY...

AGAIN.