Don't stand there, do something!

The drive to bring about major change in the way the United States collects, analyzes and disseminates intelligence information became inevitable this summer with the completion of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study of intelligence failings surrounding the onset of the Iraq war, and the publication of the 9/11 Commission report. This has only been exacerbated in recent weeks by the unqualified acceptance of the 9/11 Commission recommendations by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and their qualified approval by President Bush. Congressional hearings on the recommendations were held during the August recess. Sen. Pat Roberts introduced a bill to split the CIA into three parts. The president decided to enhance by executive order the powers of the Director of Central Intelligence to kibitz on the programs and budgets of the 15 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community; and to create a national counterterrorism center. Since the president, Sen. Kerry and the U.S. Congress all agree on the need for substantial change, the unfolding drama will concern how much, when, and with what consequences.

There is common ground to begin with. Islamist terrorism has been identified as the primary threat to U.S. security for the future, and the need for first-rate tactical and strategic intelligence about this challenge is paramount. The intelligence committee and 9/11 Commission reports have both endorsed the concept of a director of national intelligence, an intelligence czar, to quarterback American efforts to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence on terrorist threats domestically and internationally. In fact, the commission's report contains a felicitous diagnosis of why a single director is needed: "The [intelligence] agencies are like a set of specialists in a hospital, each ordering tests, looking for symptoms, and prescribing medications. What is missing is the attending physician who makes sure they work as a team."

Conceptually, the director of national intelligence recommendation has little opposition among the major players, but as the Washington bromide goes, the devil will be in the details of pinpointing the director's powers. Will he or she have both programmatic and budgetary dominion over the entire intelligence budget of $40 billion? How will this sit with the secretary of defense who now controls 80 percent of the money and staffs the NSA, and the National Geospatial and Imagery Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office with uniformed personnel. How will this affect the chain of command? How will the DNI relate to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security?

In coordinating collection of terrorist intelligence both domestically and internationally, will it be the new director's responsibility to see that the intelligence dots are connected, as they so clearly were not prior to 9/11? Is this a shared responsibility with the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general? Who takes the blame if there is a missed hand-off? Again, there is some excellent analysis in the 9/11 Commission report pointing to current strengths and weaknesses in the methodology of the CIA and FBI in this area.

Commenting on the failure of CIA to "pursue" two of the 9/11 hijackers after they departed from its screen in Malaysia in January 2000, the commission noted that CIA is good at playing zone defense, following a suspected terrorist intensively when he passes through territory overseas for which the CIA station is responsible, but relinquishing responsibility after he leaves; and the FBI, which plays man-to-man. The FBI appears to be more interested in the "who" than the "where." Obviously, in the world of counterterrorist operations, these differing methodologies must be combined.

The point is that there must be more centralized direction of the intelligence effort against Islamist terrorism to avoid the 9/11 breakdowns, but is a structural reform of the process the place to begin? Does it make sense to throw out the whole current organizational scheme for intelligence as Sen. Roberts' bill would and create new entities for clandestine collection, analysis and science and technology?

I believe this is a remarkable historic moment to reexamine our intelligence capabilities in light of the 9/11 and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction intelligence failures. But I would not begin with the wiring diagram. I would start with the people. I would pursue the questions articulately posed by the SSCI report on the perils of "group-think" in intelligence analysis; and ask if this is unavoidable in any sizable bureaucracy, and what can be done to temper it, if it produces harmful results.

Further, I would grasp the challenge posed in the commission's report that a way must be found to "institutionalize imagination" — something they note bureaucracies are not famous for — so that in future we might foresee the next terrorist innovation.

In sum, I believe it is imperative that we make use of these studies and the calamitous events and circumstances on which they reported to baseline the work of the intelligence bureaucracies in order to improve their performance against the radically different threats of our time; but that we not do it in haste, or during the run-up to a presidential election; or with cover your backside motives as the guiding principle. Let's hold hearings on the reports in the next Congress; reflect on the changes we intend to make; and do it with the confidence that we are not throwing out the good with the bad and are acting for the long term. Frederick P. Hitz is a lecturer in the Wilson School. He served as the first presidentially appointed inspector general of the CIA from 1990 to 1998. You can contact him at fhitz@princeton.edu.