Intelligence: Backing Into the Future
Article Summary and Author Biography
The main premises and objectives of the Boren and McCurdy bills on reorganization of the US intelligence community are clearly right, but they have certain features inconsistent with those promises (1) the assumption that the NSC "will remain the paramount policy forum for the President", when it is "in some respects an anachronism" (2) the proposed centralization of budget control under the DNI (3) the proposal to remove certain analysis functions from the CIA would result in its becoming more like the 'dirty tricks' organization that its "dubious image" already presents it as being (4) the proposed new Directorate for Estimates and Analysis ignores the historically-proven need for competition, rather than centralization, in this area.
Ernest R. May is Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard University. He directs the Intelligence and Policy Program at Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government and is Chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Defense Intelligence College. This article is adapted from testimony before the Senate and House intelligence committees.
Congress is considering legislation to reorganize the U.S. intelligence community. As currently drafted, the pending bills would solve problems of the past, not problems of the future.
The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency. That act and later executive orders govern what is called the intelligence community, which extends far beyond the CIA. Early in 1992 the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees, David Boren and David McCurdy (both Democrats of Oklahoma), introduced nearly identical bills designed to replace those mandates and reshape the structure of intelligence.
The Boren and McCurdy bills call for replacing the current Director of Central Intelligence with a Director of National Intelligence. This DNI would preside over four separate agencies. There would be one for each major category of collection—human intelligence, signal intelligence and imagery—and a fourth agency to produce analysis of the intelligence received. The DNI would also control most of the government’s spending for all kinds of intelligence.
Both Boren and McCurdy hope for debate. Neither proposes that his bill be enacted exactly as is. This is sensible. The 1947 charter did duty for 45 years; any new charter should also last.
II
The main premises and objectives of the two bills are clearly right. The world has changed; we nevertheless need secret intelligence. We also need to ask, as do both bills, whether in this changed world the intelligence community will serve "the needs of the government as a whole in an effective and timely manner."
First, change. Both bills say that a new era is opening. The Senate version allows only that the threat from the former Soviet Union has "considerably diminished." The House bill acknowledges the "end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union."
In actuality, three changes have occurred; all are potentially revolutionary. The virtual disappearance of the Soviet threat is only one. A second change is the near disappearance of any comparable threat. Before the Cold War, after all, there were the Axis powers and fascism and, earlier still, monarchism. Americans now face no menace from any foreign military power or any hostile ideology...
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