The CIA has only itself to blame for further erosion of its authority in the intelligence overhaul order signed by President Bush today.
The seeds of the realignment, which gives the Directorate of National Intelligence greater authority in managing the relationship of U.S. intelligence agencies with foreign services,among other things, can be found in the CIA's own Inspector General's report in 2007, which recommended agency officials be held accountable for the intelligence lapses that opened to door to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA Director, had fiercely resisted release of any parts of the report, and no CIA official was fired or rebuked for the agency's failures related to 9/11, specifically the failure of "50-60" CIA offers to inform the FBI that two al Qaeda operatives had entered the U.S. with apparent plans to carry our a major terrorist action.
The unclassified portions of the CIA Inspector General's report can be read here.
There seemed to be a confusion, meanwhile, on the breadth of the changes ordered today by the president.
The New York Times' Scott Shane quoted a top former CIA official who called the changes "underwhelming."
"I don't see a lot of change here," said Mark Lowenthal, a former CIA assistant director. He described the revised order as an "organizational update" that seemed "underwhelming" after months of speculation inside the government about how the powers of various agencies might shift.
But The Times itself did not post Shane's story, opting for wire service copy. It instead appeared only on in the Web site of the Times-owned, Paris-based International Herald Tribune.
The Washington Post's Joby Warrick, meanwhile first described the executive order as "major," but the word was deleted in a subsequent online edition.
The ACLU called the changes "significant."
"The most chilling aspect of this executive order is that the Director of National Intelligence can task any agency of the government to spy on you," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
The next time you're asked to give information to a government agency or official, you not only won't know where that information might go, you may not even know who's really asking the question in the first place. What effect these changes ultimately will have is unclear because the Department of Justice has previously issued a secret legal opinion saying the President does not have to follow executive orders. This kind of concentrated power, exercised in secret, is a lit fuse with our Constitution likely in danger of being burned.
UPDATE: DNI chief Mike McConnell called the order, "truly a historic day for our Community and the nation."
This Executive Order is the next, necessary step in intelligence reform and upholds the key themes of intelligence reform, namely: that the sum of our parts will produce better intelligence than each intelligence element individually; that we need a dedicated official - the DNI - with the responsibility and authority to lead and integrate this Community; and that the decentralized structure of the Community should remain intact, with most IC elements remaining embedded in cabinet departments.
![[RSS]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/rss_icon.gif){kind=icon}
![[ARCHIVES]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/archives_icon.png){kind=icon}