Old spooks club: In his recent column on George Bush’s military takeover of U.S. intelligence services Jon noted that “Using the military to fight a civilian force like al Qaeda is like using a chainsaw to perform an appendectomy.” His expressed concern was that the military and its contractors are already too close, and handing the intelligence agencies to the military creates a serious problem. True, but maybe the real bad news is not that these guys are former military, but that they are former intel operatives.
Shane Harris of National Journal has an alternate take on the military-intel triumverate. He seems to think it’s a positive thing that the new intel heads have all been intel heads before, as well as military officers, but leavens his analysis with just enough negative stuff to come off not sounding quite like a cheerleader for the spy team. He offers this sketch of the players:
In this new intelligence constellation, there are four key players, each of whom has led a major agency at least once. On January 5, President Bush nominated retired Navy Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, a former director of the National Security Agency, to be the second director of national intelligence. It falls to him as DNI to continue post-9/11 intelligence reforms and to act as a chief operating officer for the government’s 16 intelligence agencies.
Next is new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has his hands on 80 percent of the intelligence budget and so has the most muscle to flex. A former CIA director, Gates will bring a keen understanding of civilian intelligence operations to his job.
Days before McConnell’s nomination was announced, Gates asked retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, a deeply experienced uniformed intelligence officer, to take over the top spy job in the Pentagon, the undersecretary for intelligence. Clapper will replace a controversial civilian political appointee, Stephen Cambone, who was a close ally of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and had little career intelligence experience.
Clapper has held two top jobs, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite and aerial imagery and data.
Harris makes it sound like these guys get together for golf outings, barbecues and wife-swapping:
McConnell, Gates, and Clapper also have a friend in recently installed CIA Director Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force general who rounds out the new team. Hayden, who has been busy beefing up the CIA’s human spying efforts, appointed a career clandestine officer as his No. 2. Hayden is professionally close to McConnell and Gates, and several former officials said that he and Clapper are “old friends.”
“Here you have very trusted players who have been around each other for a long period of time,” said Fred Burton, a former special agent for counter-terrorism in the State Department who’s now the vice president of counter-terrorism and corporate security for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. Those relationships, perhaps more than anything else, bode well for their chances of success, Burton said.
While McConnell was leading the NSA in the early 1990s, Clapper was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gates was head of the CIA. Hayden held key positions on the National Security Council and in military intelligence, and he took over the NSA in 1999. Also, when McConnell was the military official in charge of intelligence for Operation Desert Storm, Clapper was the assistant chief of staff for Air Force intelligence and played a leading role in coordinating the air war.
Seems like old home week, don’t it? And why shouldn’t Burton hail the new chiefs? He’s a military contractor himself, just like McConnell. But just because they have experience, it doesn’t mean that they have ability.
McConnell has seen the intelligence world from two important sides — the government’s and a contractor’s. The intelligence community’s use of — and in some cases, dependence on — outside help is growing fast. Booz Allen has been a principal beneficiary of increased intelligence and security spending since 9/11. Among senior intelligence officials, McConnell has a rare depth of public- and private-sector experience that could be useful now.
But Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian, cautioned that McConnell’s 10-year-long absence from government is not necessarily a plus. He left the NSA as the agency was searching for a post-Cold War mission. Under McConnell’s watch, the NSA “got fat, bloated, bureaucratic, failed to adapt to the challenges,” Aid said.
McConnell was loath to oppose budget cuts and didn’t push to intercept communications on the Internet and through other emerging technologies, Aid added. Still, others are hopeful that if McConnell can now take up less sexy, but necessary, management tasks, it will free the others to focus on pure intelligence work.
Both Hayden and Clapper have experience taking over agencies in turbulent times. Under Hayden’s watch, the NSA began the painful transition from a Cold War eavesdropping organization capturing signals from satellites to one that monitors fiber-optic networks, cellphones, and the Internet. The results have been decidedly mixed, but Hayden was praised for his foresight.
For his part, Clapper took over the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency when it was struggling to keep pace with technological advancements in satellite photography and mapping, and to stay relevant and useful in wartime. Under his guidance, the agency began buying satellite imagery from the commercial sector and moved into a new homeland-security role, providing support for special events like the Super Bowl and political conventions.
Harris notes that with less than two years left in George Bush’s administration, it is unlikely that these guys will achieve any manjor intel reforms. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe that’s one reason to place former military/intelligence officers in charge — they know the rules, they know the games and they know how to get things done surreptitiously. These guys can wreak untold havoc in the spooky world of intel over the next 23 months. But, according to Harris, the other spooks are happy about the development:
As the agencies recover from high-level turnover and a series of miscast leaders, many said they’re taking comfort in the familiar. As a former CIA official put it, echoing the sentiments of colleagues, “This is the intelligence professionals retaking the ground.”
Mithras help us!
