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The New York Times > Washington > Caution and Years of Budget Cuts Are Seen to Li... Page 1 of 5

P O I N T E R . F R I E N D LY FORMAT

STOXSEREO K

May 11,2004

Caution and Years of Budget Cuts Are Seen to Limit C.I.A.By DOUGLAS JEHL

W ASHINGTON, May 10 - Even now, 32 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, America's clandestineintelligence service has fewer than 1,100 case officers posted overseas, fewer than the numberof F.B.I, agents assigned to the New York City field office alone, government officials say.

Since George J. Tenet took charge of the Central Intelligence Agency seven years ago, rebuilding thatservice has been his top priority. This year, more new case officers will graduate from a year-longcourse at Camp Peary in Virginia than in any year since the Vietnam War. They are the products of

aggressive new recruiting aimed in particular at speakers of Arabic and others capable of operating inthe Middle East and South Asia.

But it will be an additional five years, Mr. Tenet and others have warned, before the rebuilding iscomplete and the United States has the network it needs to adequately confront a global threat posed byterrorist groups and hostile foreign governments. In an interview on April 30, James L. Pavitt, who asthe C.I.A.'s deputy director for operations oversees the clandestine service, said he still needed 30 to 35percent more people, including officers based overseas and in the United States, supervisors andsupport workers.

"I need hundreds and hundreds, thousands," Mr. Pavitt said. At a time when the United States isfighting a war on terrorism and a war in Iraq, he said, "we are running hard to get the resources weneed."

On Capitol Hill and among former intelligence officers, most experts agree that the clandestine serviceneeds improvement, but there is some debate about whether the agency is addressing the rightproblems.

"The question is, should you require better before you get bigger?" said a senior Congressional official,describing a question on Capitol Hill that he said had been prompted by inquiries into intelligencefailures involving Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.

The size and scope of the clandestine service, whose overseas officers recruit and supervise spies andwork with foreign intelligence services but rarely try to infiltrate foreigntargets themselves, has alwaysbeen among the government's most closely guarded secrets.

But as the dimensions of the intelligence failures on Iraq and Sept. 11 have come to light in recentmonths, so too has a picture of American spying operations stretched thin through the 1990's and onlynow recovering.

In numbers, Mr. Pavitt said in the interview, the clandestine service hit a low point in 1999, when itsranks had been trimmed by 20 percent from its highs during the cold war. And in morale and sense of

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2. Sept. 11 families slam Congress for failing to follow through

ALEXANDER BOLTONThe Hill

Relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks say the House and Senateintelligence committees have failed to follow up on the recommendations of their joint reportissued at the end of 2002.

The recommendations, made after a joint investigation by the committees, preceded the currentinvestigation by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, known asthe Sept. 11 commission.

The family members, whose vocal advocacy was instrumental in persuading Congress andPresident Bush to create the independent commission, say there is no evidence that any of thefindings of the joint congressional investigation have been implemented.

In addition, the families charge that the lack of congressional follow-up fits into a larger pattern ofweak oversight and supervision of federal intelligence agencies byCongress.

Some of the family members are questioning whether Congress can adequately scrutinize theadministration when the same party controls both branches. To this point, Congress has largelyavoided blame for the intelligence failures leading to Sept. 11 or for hindering efforts to reformnational intelligence operations.

Some leading victims' family members are also criticizing the Sept. 11 commission for failing toaddress sufficiently the issue of weak congressional oversight of the intelligence community, oneof the commission's mandates. Several commission members previously served in Congress.

However, sources on the commission and on the Senate Intelligence Committee say they havealready held several staff-level meetings on how to overhaul congressional oversight of thenational intelligence agencies.

Reforms under discussion include making the House and Senate intelligence panels permanentinstead of select committees, lifting term limits on membership,unifying budgetary control of national intelligence operations and declassifying the overallintelligence budget as well as the budget for individual agencies.

'We have some issues with the intelligence committees, namely that they had the joint-inquiryreport released in December of 2002, it's been in their hands for almost a year and five months,and they have yet to have a hearing on any of the public recommendations," said KristenBreitweiser, a member of a highly visible group known as the Family Steering Committee, whichrepresents many of the victims' families.

Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron, died in the collapse of the World Trade Center's second tower,said she and other family members met with the top Republicans and Democrats on the Houseand Senate Intelligence Committees last fall to ask that the panels follow up on their 2002recommendations with a hearing.

'They promised public hearings after the new year, and we are entering the month of May andhave yet to see any public hearings," she said, adding that there is no evidence that Congresshas followed up on its recommendations after the joint Sept. 11 inquiry. "Congress is great at

PRESS CLIPS FOR MAY 5, 2004


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"Bob has been a really invigorating addition to the commission," says Lehman. "He asksquestions that are really insightful and provoke everybody to think about new ways of looking atproblems. He's been absolutely nonpartisan."

Kerrey, of course, is fully capable of making his own quick work of complaints aimed at him: "I'mnot in politics anymore and I don't give a damn."

He has two years remaining on his New School contract and, while he won't rule out a politicalcomeback, he's not encouraging such speculation.

For now, Kerrey is content to be the free spirit on the 9/11 Commission and to informally push fora rewrite of the Iraq fix-itmanual. Bush, he believes, erred by framing the war as "a religiouscause," a quasi-biblical clash between right and wrong, between noble Christians and misguidedMuslims.

Kerrey, for one, is willing to entertain the notion of turning prison operations over to the Iraqis.The sooner they get the hang of running their own country, the better. The key, he says, isn'twhether they like Americans. It's whether they believe this newfound freedom can ease theburdens of their daily existence, whether Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites can put aside centuries-

old grudges and forge a singular national identity.

At the moment, Bob Kerrey - former professional soldier, current amateur poet - hears beautiessoft and quiet calling. He's overlooking street demonstrations, beheadings, prison-photo falloutand all that chatter about parallels to Vietnam. He is casting his lot with the starry-eyed idealists.

"I believe that you cannot establish a democracy without some naivete. Because there's thepresumption in democracy that people will do the right thing."

14. A Kerry-Kerrey Ticket?

MICHAEL KELLYThe Omaha World-Herald

The Dallas Morning News asked Democratic pundit James Carville who will be John Kerry'srunning mate.

"It will be Bob Kerrey, "Carville said, "and it will happen two weeks before the convention."

A Kerry-Kerrey ticket? Rockin' Bob, 60, the former governor and U.S. senator from Nebraska, hasraised his profile anew with pointed questioning on the 9/11 commissiqn.

15. Tenet speaks to A&M grads

LAMONICAThe Houston Chronicle

CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged that his agency has made mistakes, but defended itand its values Friday during a commencement ceremony at Texas A&M University.

PRESS CLIPS FOR MAY 15-17, 2004 21


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9. How to Set the C.I.A. Free

THOMAS POWERSThe New York Times

Recent staff reports from the 9/11 commission, soon to be followed by the results of a Senateinvestigation into flawed intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, lend powerful new support toconclusions long fermenting in official Washington: American intelligence is broken, and themoment is ripe to do something about it.

Prominently at stake in any reorganization will be the title and job description of the director ofcentral intelligence, the post soon to be vacated by George Tenet. Successful reform will requirethree things: more independence for the C.I.A., fewer distractions for the person running it, andsome way to divide up the whole intelligence pie while compelling our myriad organizations tocooperate.

Change will not be easy or automatic presidents and directors of central intelligence both likethe way things are arranged now, and the C.I.A. has weathered many storms in the past. Whatpromises to make the difference this time are the succeeding body blows of the full reports fromthe 9/11 commission and the Senate due later in the summer. Mr. Tenet is reported to have told

friends that he is not being chased out of his job "by a piece of paper," but it seems clear thatneither he nor the White House was looking forward to weeks of explaining why the C.I.A. missedthings it ought to have seen before Sept. 11 and then conjured up stockpiles of Iraqi weapons ofmass destruction that weren't there.

Intelligence errors so glaring inevitably raise two urgent questions: how could the C.I.A. havefailed so completely on questions central to its mission? And what can be done to ensure it neverhappens again?

Chapter and verse on the C.I.A.'s failures will come first in the two official reports, followedeventually by a list of recommendations for improving American intelligence from senators andcommissioners. But too long a list will diffuse attention and weaken resolve. The challenge facingreformers is not to tighten every loose nut and bolt, but to identify what is really broken and comeup with ways to fix what matters most.

Three years of official studies, public debate and news reporting on 9/11 and Iraq, amply backedup by the history of secret intelligence during the cold war, suggest that the many dysfunctions ofAmerican intelligence may be reduced to two: resistance to cooperation between separateintelligence organizations (especially between the C.I.A. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation);and the tendency of intelligence officials and organizations to interpret thin or ambiguousevidence to support the assumptions or desires of the next official or organization up the chain ofcommand.

A frequently cited example of the latter was the ability of Air Force intelligence, beginning in the1940's, to repeatedly find evidence of dangerous new Soviet bombers or missiles that urgentlyrequired research and development of whatever was at the top of the Air Force wish list.Naturally, Air Force intelligence officers never admitted this systematic abuse of the evidence just as C.I.A. officers from George Tenet on down vigorously deny now that analysts devisedscary claims about Iraqi weapons because that was what the White House wanted. But thepattern is the same, and in the long run in the intelligence world, as elsewhere, bosses get whatthey want.

The best solution to this problem and to that of bickering among agencies is arguably the same: acabinet-level official, over the director of central intelligence, responsible for all Americanintelligence service. Public discussion of such proposals so far has focused on a "nationalintelligence director," but without making clear how much the director is intended to direct.

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