The New Politics of Intelligence: Will Reforms Work This Time?

The failure to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, and the proliferation of official investigations trying to figure out what went wrong in both cases have combined to put intelligence issues in a very unusual position this year: at the center of a closely contested presidential campaign.

All the attention creates both an opportunity and a danger. The opportunity stems from the consensus that major reforms are necessary. Previous controversies over the quality of intelligence have generally been inside-the-Beltway debates leading to only minor reforms at best. That will probably be true this time as well. But if there were ever a moment when public demand might overcome the entrenched institutional interests that block radical change, this should be it.

The danger stems from the gap between the urge to do something and the uncertainty about just what that something should be -- as well as from the entanglement of intelligence and policy issues involved with the Iraq question in particular. Political points are scored by painting issues in broad swaths of black and white, but the real choices in this area are inevitably found among shades of gray, and ill-considered reforms could do more harm than good. At the end of the day, the strongest defense against intelligence mistakes will come less from any structural or procedural tweak than from the good sense, good character, and good mental habits of senior officials. How to assure a steady supply of those, unfortunately, has never been clear.

PROFESSIONALS AND POLITICIANS

In earlier cases when strategic intelligence has been a national political issue, the character of partisan alignments has generally kept the controversies within bounds. After Pearl Harbor, executive commissions and a congressional investigation revealed mistakes and charges of cover-ups that critics tried to use against Franklin Roosevelt in the 1944 election. By the time the full story came out, however, F.D.R. had died, the war had been won, and the country had moved on.