The Obama administration’s nominee to be the next director of national intelligence is likely to face questions from Congress today about the expansion of top-secret agencies and contracts, after reports in The Washington Post showing that these efforts have become “so unwieldy and so secretive” that effective oversight is impossible.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper is currently the undersecretary for intelligence at the Pentagon, where more than two-thirds of intelligence programs reside and where the explosion in contracting is prominent.
“We have seen a lot of disorganization in the intelligence community,” said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, which is holding Clapper’s confirmation hearing. “We have seen questionable expenditures. . . . We need to bring back into the government all of the things that we can adequately staff.”
Bond said such concerns are one reason the committee is pushing for an intelligence reauthorization bill that would establish legislative guidelines to enable Capitol Hill to strengthen its oversight of the community and its shadow workforce of contractors.
Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has long been concerned about the growth of the contracting workforce and has raised it in previous confirmation hearings, including those for Dennis Blair, who was pushed out in May as director of national intelligence after a tenure blemished by intelligence agencies’ failures to detect terrorist plots and political missteps that eroded his standing with the White House.
A committee report accompanying the 2010 authorization bill notes the panel’s concern about spy agencies’ “increasing reliance upon contract personnel” and said that according to Office of the Director of National Intelligence, they make up 29 percent of the agencies’ total staffing. “The committee believes that this figure is substantially above what it should be,” the report stated.
If the bill passes and President Barack Obama signs it, it will be the first time in five years that the intelligence community will have an authorization bill to guide its programs and policies. The current bill is being held up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is insisting on expanded notification of covert intelligence programs beyond a handful of senior House and Senate members.
In response to The Washington Post’s series, acting Director of National Intelligence David Gompert issued a statement Monday saying, “The reporting does not reflect the intelligence community we know.”
Said Gompert: “We work constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis, challenge conventional thinking and eliminate single points of failure. We are mindful of the size of our contractor ranks, but greatly value the critical flexibility and specialized skills they contribute to the mission.”
