Bush Signs Bill to Reorganize Intelligence Gathering (Update1)

Bush Signs Bill to Reorganize Intelligence Gathering (Update1)

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush signed into law a bill creating a director to oversee U.S. intelligence gathering and making other changes the Sept. 11 commission said were needed to prevent future terrorist attacks.

The legislation is the largest reorganization of U.S. intelligence gathering since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, Bush said. It establishes a national counter-terrorism center to analyze threats, adds 10,000 border patrol agents, and requires new steps to tighten protection of aviation, ships, trains and pipelines.

``America, in this new century, again faces new threats,'' Bush said at a ceremony in Washington attended by families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and members of Congress. ``We face stateless networks. We face killers who hide in our own cities. We must confront deadly technologies.''

Bush initially opposed creation of an independent commission to study Sept. 11, and during its work the panel fought with the White House over access to classified records. After the commission released its report this summer, Bush said he didn't agree that the intelligence director should have full authority over the intelligence budget, another issue on which he ultimately relented.

The new law embraces most of the 41 recommendations of the commission that investigated the al-Qaeda-led attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington that killed 2,973 people on Sept. 11.

Intelligence Director

The commission said faulty intelligence gathering, law enforcement, border and airport security contributed to the failure to stop the attacks. Its final report said a director of national intelligence should be created to oversee and coordinate the nation's 15 intelligence agencies.

The new intelligence director will require Senate confirmation. Leading candidates include White House homeland security adviser Frances Fargos Townsend and Sept. 11 commission member John Lehman, said Timothy Roemer, another member of the commission and former Democratic congressman from Indiana.

Porter Goss, who was confirmed Sept. 22 as CIA director, isn't in the running, said Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who's chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Congressional Negotiations

Members of the commission and relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks made regular trips to Capitol Hill to press lawmakers to pass the legislation. After the Nov. 2 election, Bush publicly embraced the measure. ``The bill is necessary and important,'' he told reporters on a Nov. 30 trip to Canada.

House Republicans such as Representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin threatened to block passage of the measure last month, citing concerns it didn't do enough to combat illegal immigration and would endanger soldiers in the field by giving the new director too much power over military intelligence gathering.

After two months of negotiations, Congress returned for a final legislative session to pass the bill. The House of Representatives approved it Dec. 7 by 336 to 75, and the Senate cleared it the next day by 89 to 2.

New Approaches

Two former CIA officers said the legislation and the new intelligence director will do little to fix problems that led to the agency's failure to foresee and prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or correctly assess Iraq's weapons programs. The CIA must be willing to take risks and scrap approaches to intelligence gathering rooted in the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, they said.

``We haven't gotten off the drawing board yet,'' said Michael Scheuer, a CIA officer who left the agency last month after almost two decades.

The new intelligence director is ``going to sit over the top of these 15 organizations without controlling any single one,'' said Scheuer, author of ``Imperial Hubris,'' a book that criticized the U.S. handling of the war on terrorism. ``He becomes the prisoner of the barons who run these 15 groups.''

The bill doesn't put an end to a culture at the CIA that has failed to infiltrate terrorist groups or strike at them effectively, said Scheuer and Michael Vickers, a former Army Green Beret and CIA officer.

``Real change will likely come from within the agencies and the head of the CIA,'' Vickers said. ``If the directors of the several agencies won't do their jobs, I don't know if a new director is going to be able to change that.''

Last month the director of the CIA's clandestine services, Stephen Kappes, and his deputy, Michael Sulick, resigned, and former Deputy Director John McLaughlin retired.

Representative Rob Simmons, a Connecticut Republican who supported the bill, Goss is leading a necessary shakeup at the CIA, and a new intelligence director will help that cause.

``This begins the process of fixing things at the top,'' said Simmons, who served as a CIA officer from 1969-1979. ``At a time when the United States is a target of global terrorist organizations who could have access to weapons of mass destruction, we need to do better.''

To contact the reporter on this story:
Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3 [at] bloomberg.net or Roger Runningen in Washington at (1) rrunningen [at] Bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Joe Winski at jwinski [at] bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 17, 2004 11:18 EST