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An end to Spy versus Spy? |
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Tuesday, 05 July 2005 |
From today's Los Angeles Times editorial
Like the title characters in the movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," the FBI
and CIA have been an outwardly happy couple that are actually in
perpetual combat. The reforms that President Bush signed on to last
week could at least theoretically end the warfare, resulting in
agencies better able to focus on core missions. The job of persuading,
or forcing, them to do so falls to the director of national
intelligence, John D. Negroponte.
 CIA Headquarters - Langley, VA
Despite FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III's best efforts to resist
change, his agency is the decided loser — and the CIA the winner — in
the reorganization of the 15 agencies that have something to do with
intelligence, as recommended by a presidential commission.
The panel left the CIA mostly intact, and its leadership is already
cobbling out an agreement over territory with the Pentagon's even
larger intelligence apparatus.
The CIA is a winner here, as well — as coordinator of all use of human
spies, including by the Pentagon. The commission's report focused its
fire on the abysmal performance of the FBI, which has repeatedly been
drubbed for its 9/11 failures and, most recently, for an expensive
computer upgrade program that has proved a total bust.
The result is that Negroponte gets direct authority over new national
security divisions at the FBI and the Justice Department, including
budgetary power and appointments.
The FBI is smarting over the humiliation, but it could prove a boon for
the bureau. Historically, the FBI's record on countering espionage
plots, whether during World War II or the Cold War, is one of futility.
It's a basic misfit — of cops who catch bank robbers trying to chase
spies. Establishing a separate office in the FBI that answers to
Negroponte as well as Mueller will at least allow the rest of the FBI
to get on with what it does best, tracking down domestic criminals.
What's more, Negroponte won't be able to complain that he has powers only in name, not substance.
Congress tried and failed to persuade President George H.W. Bush in
1991 to appoint a director of national intelligence and reorganize the
spy agencies. Even President Truman's Cold War invention of the CIA
from the remains of World War II's elite spies was supposed to bring
intelligence under a powerful single chief.
Negroponte, known as a ruthless policy operative, understands that
history of failure. Unless he flexes the new muscles of his agency, he
will end up as part of just another sequel.
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