It’s been four years since the Sept. 11 attacks exposed serious disconnects and failures in American intelligence-gathering. Yet recent reports make clear that despite much-touted reforms, the Central Intelligence Agency is in disarray, and the FBI’s aversion to sharing information with other agencies remains an impediment.
Hopes that Porter Goss, former covert operative and one-time chair of the House Intelligence Committee, would whip the CIA into shape have dimmed. Goss succeeded George Tenet last year, taking over an agency tainted both by Sept. 11 and by intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons programs.
Goss has struggled from the outset and now is being blamed for an exodus of at least a dozen senior officials, including some he had recently promoted. The second in command of clandestine services told senators upon his departure that he had no confidence in Goss’ leadership.
Goss’ priority on getting more agents in the field to wean the CIA from relying too much on foreign intelligence services rankled many agency veterans, according to The Washington Post. Goss is said to be aloof and often unavailable.
The brain drain at the CIA is troubling and troublesome. “Hundreds of years of leadership and experience has walked out the door in the last year,” said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel. That’s a loss the country can ill afford in the midst of a complicated struggle against global terror.
Meanwhile, FBI Director Robert Mueller has made counter-terrorism the bureau’s top priority and has hired analysts and linguists, but the bureau hasn’t quite adapted to the new spirit of cooperation: Sometimes, it forgets to tell the CIA and State Department when it sends operatives overseas.
That runs the risk of the FBI getting the same information from the same source as the CIA agent, creating a false (and dangerous) impression that the information has been corroborated.
In March, Bush named career diplomat John D. Negroponte director of national intelligence to oversee all U.S spy agencies and to get them to share critical information. He has his hands full. Intelligence so jealously guarded that it can’t be used and acted upon does no one any good.
