Wall Street Journal Editorial - Change is Now Inevitable
Wall Street Journal: Change Is Now Inevitable
BY CHRISTOPHER COX
When the dust settles, today's 9/11 Commission report may well be remembered as much for what it did not contain as for its factual exposition and recommendations.
The now-notorious series of events during which Clinton administration official Sandy Berger took national security documents from the National Archives has highlighted the hyper-politicization of the Commission's work. For not only was there inexcusable laxity in the handling (and unauthorized destruction) of classified documents by someone who clearly knew better, but the same laxity was shown by the Commission itself in its muted response to the violations-apparently out of political favoritism for one of their own.
Established protocols for informing the congressional intelligence committees of the security breach were not followed. Nor, at Tuesday's briefing to the House Leadership by the Commission, could Chairman Tom Kean and Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton say whether the specific documents destroyed by Mr. Berger had at any prior time been inspected and reviewed by commission staff. Yet the documents involved, written by former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke, have been at the center of the controversy over the adequacy of the Clinton administration's response to the growing al Qaeda threat.
While many are concerned with which laws may have been broken, a more fundamental question is why Mr. Berger, by any objective reckoning a subject of the Commission's investigation, was reviewing sensitive materials in order to determine which Clinton administration documents would be provided to the Commission. The destroyed documents reportedly contained more than two dozen recommendations for action against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network-a measuring stick for the Clinton administration's response.
The fact is that Sandy Berger, like so many of those involved in the Commission's investigation such as high-level Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick, had an overpowering conflict of interest.
Nor has the Commission's report-released on the last day of the session before the national political conventions-been provided in time for Congress to act this year. House Speaker Dennis Hastert implored the Commission's leadership to provide their recommendations this spring, so that committees could have hearings and mark up legislation. The official position of the Commission was that they needed more time. But even when the report was finished last weekend, it was still withheld from Congress in order to orchestrate a carefully timed public relations blitz heralding its simultaneous release at bookstores across the country. It is difficult to imagine a national security rationale for providing the final text in electronic form to commercial publisher W.W. Norton & Co. but refusing to release it even to Congress, which commissioned the report.
In spite of these and other coruscations of political heat and light that have marred the Commission's deliberations, their work will endure because of the importance of the subject matter. In particular, the unanimous, harsh criticism of the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies for poor information-sharing and analysis should provide the final coffin nail for the old order of stovepipe divisions of counterterrorism authority and responsibility.
The tragic results of these analytical and sharing failures are by now well known: Two of the hijackers' names should have been added to a terrorism watch list; the FBI didn't know what it had when it arrested Zacarias Moussaoui; the several failed attempts to kill or capture bin Laden were the result of inadequate focus on an underappreciated threat. The 9/11 Commission has provided the ultimate, authoritative verdict that our intelligence gathering and sharing system was not responsive to the threats America faces from abroad, and to the real and growing risks of terrorism in our own backyard.
Now we know better. And yet the Commission's admirable recommendations, as my dialogue with the co-chairmen yesterday made clear, are far more tentative than their findings of fact. There will be no quick fixes. The process of reform must be cautious, deliberate, and long term. How big is this task? The intelligence community employs enough people to populate a mid-size U.S. city. It includes 15 separate agencies, each with unique and complex capabilities and missions critical to our security. Several of these missions are focused not on terrorism but on the not-yet eliminated threat of future war between nations. We cannot afford to degrade any of these capabilities as we restructure. Pushing the panic button, just as failing to move with dispatch, would be an egregious mistake.
The Commission report is not a lone voice but only the latest authoritative call for an intelligence overhaul. Several previous commissions and task forces, including the Bremmer, Hart-Rudman, and Gilmore commissions, recommended substantial reforms that went unheeded during the Clinton years. The Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees produced a highly critical report on pre-9/11 intelligence last year that got more, but not enough, attention. Far-sighted recommendations have yet to be implemented-in part because both the Executive and Congress have found them too hard to do.
It is certainly true that President Bush, a bedrock intelligence supporter, responded swiftly to the 9/11 attacks by sharply increasing the community budget and by establishing new units-such as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and the Terrorist Screening Center-to fuse data, integrate foreign and domestic analysis, and force collaboration across the agencies. Likewise, the Patriot Act removed obstacles for intelligence and law enforcement agencies to pursue terrorists, and added to their authorities to do the job. The Department of Homeland Security offered hope to first responders that they would be trained and equipped to prevent terrorist attacks, protect infrastructure, and respond effectively to an attack should one occur.
And it is also true, and worthy of our most profound respect, that our intelligence officers have responded to the nation's call to arms. We must never forget this. In Afghanistan, Iraq and other dangerous corners of the world where terrorists threaten us, our courageous intelligence operatives in the field have taken great risks, heroically captured or killed al Qaeda leaders, and thwarted numerous terrorist operations-knowing that their president and their country stand behind them. We must continue to do so.
But there is a common thread in all of the critical reviews of our nation's intelligence, and in the wake of today's Commission report we ignore it at our peril. It is the lack of connectivity, interoperability, and information sharing across the agencies, especially between intelligence and law enforcement.
Good people failed repeatedly before 9/11 to get vital information to those who needed it. When information was shared, it was often too late for the recipients to take preventive action. Unfortunately, these same issues continue to complicate our efforts today, including the vitally important task of standing up the Department of Homeland Security. This new department's analysts need seamless access to their intelligence community counterparts, but long after 9/11 they are only now beginning to have it. Similar issues persist in other areas where improvements in federal, state, and local sharing are needed.
As the Commission report documents better than any effort to date, neither the president nor our country's dedicated intelligence professionals have been well served by the current structure of our intelligence community. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this month issued a scathing report on the performance of our intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, prior to the invasion of Iraq. Reliable clandestine sources and fresh information on Iraqi WMD were virtually nonexistent. Time-tested checks and balances were ignored. The lack of analytic rigor was pervasive. And, once again, coordination and collaboration across agencies was not up to the standard the president had set. At a minimum, it appears that existing structures and cultures set up good people to fail.
A few of the 9/11 Commission's proposals for reform in this area, however, miss the mark. The two principal recommendations-a mega national counterterrorism center, and an all-powerful intelligence czar-have not only been considered for decades, but seem especially unsuited to the goal of reducing bureaucracy. Increasing the authority of the Director of Central Intelligence, another alternative currently under consideration, could similarly achieve the desired budgetary and programmatic integration without adding another layer of management and interposing a new official between the president and the information collectors and analysts.
To get this job done right, Congress will need thoughtful reflection and quality time, not breast-beating and a rush to action. And the president must be allowed to lead the transformation of the intelligence community, not least because Congress will first have to get its own house in order if it is to provide the effective oversight that will be essential to success in any reorganized future. As Lee Hamilton put it to our House Leadership yesterday, our Congressional oversight of intelligence is the best in the world-but it is not as good as it needs to be. The 9/11 Commission report recommends a tight bicameral oversight committee that will integrate the review of both foreign and domestic intelligence. Whatever the disposition of this specific proposal, it will stimulate a healthy debate among members of Congress that will help us change the status quo and improve oversight.
The Commission also recommends the establishment of permanent House and Senate authorizing committees for the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland jurisdiction in both chambers, the Commission observes, is now spread across multiple committees and subcommittees, needlessly diffusing authority and responsibility. In making its recommendation for reform, the Commission is endorsing Speaker Hastert's decision in early 2003 to establish the Select Committee on Homeland Security, which I chair. My experience in attempting to collaborate with nine committees of jurisdiction in order to enact legislation on first responders, cybersecurity, emergency communications interoperability, port, aviation, and rail security, border security, and similar issues has convinced me that without a committee that is principally responsible for homeland security, congressional action will be well-nigh impossible.
The Commission's report will also provide needed balance in the discussion of the Patriot Act. It provides a ringing endorsement of the law's provisions to tear down the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence. And it unanimously supports updating the wiretapping and surveillance laws for the digital age.
The Commission's report has been released at a propitious time. In the coming year, we can expect a coordinated effort across the executive and legislative branches to make our country safer. The president will take positive initiatives to strengthen intelligence community organization and performance, and he will continue to boost the Department of Homeland Security.
The Congress will improve its oversight of both foreign and domestic intelligence. The House-and, I am confident, the Senate as well-will take the historic step of establishing permanent committees with adequate jurisdiction over homeland security to effectively oversee the third-largest cabinet department and the largest federal reorganization in half a century. Many of the inevitable and needed reforms will be fashioned not from the Commission's recommendations, but rather based on careful, studied inferences from its report of what happened on 9/11. This is perhaps as it should be, since the Commission spent far more time on its exhumation of the facts than on its admittedly tentative reform proposals. It matters little, however. The 9/11 Commission has performed its most central function brilliantly: it has made action inevitable. We will, I am confident, find ourselves in a better place, and the 9/11 Commission will have helped to get us there.
Mr. Cox, a Republican Congressman, is chairman of the Select Committee on Homeland Security and chairman of the House Policy Committee.