TOPICS
TOPICS
National intelligence chief: Scope of intel activities continues to expand
The breadth and reach of activities undertaken by the U.S. intelligence community has grown significantly in recent years and shows no sign of abating under the Obama administration, causing at least two key GOP lawmakers to sound alarm bells that the community is being overtaxed.
Far from reducing the role of the U.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration has expanded the scope of its work by requiring a daily intelligence briefing on the global economic crisis. Administration officials are discussing putting the National Security Agency in charge of the nation's cybersecurity efforts, a move civil-liberties advocates said was ill- advised.
"It is becoming overextended," House Intelligence Committee ranking member Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said of the intelligence agencies. "It is doing things that are inherently already being done by lots of other organizations in government."
Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., called it a mistake for intelligence agencies to focus on issues such as climate change and the economy. "Not only can we not afford to divert scarce resources away from the fight against terrorism but the intelligence community lacks expertise in these areas," he said.
Civil liberties advocates argue there needs to be more controls on the intelligence community to protect the rights and privacy of U.S. citizens. "Once an agency has power, it's very difficult to ratchet that back," said Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, speaking Thursday at his first news conference, described what he called the "enormous complexity" the intelligence community faces.
"As you've seen, this administration has widened the scope of national security," he said. "It's gone way beyond just worrying about nation-states that can oppose the United States.
"We have to scan and understand a much wider set of challenges, a complex range of issues from nation-states that are challenging us to nation-states that are failing us to issues that cut across that such as cybersecurity, global climate change, Muslim extremist groups using violence [and] proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
Blair added that responsibilities also include "merging intelligence activities in the United States" undertaken by the FBI and Homeland Security Department "with what we do overseas to keep the country safe at home."
The intelligence community has developed a color-coded national intelligence priority framework to track threats and priorities, Blair said.
"It's about a 70-by-70 [cell] matrix with countries and issues down one side and then specific things that we need to know about that issue on the other side," he said, referring to an Excel spreadsheet he uses. "If you showed a time-lapse picture of that national intelligence priority framework you'd see colors shifting over time as things come up in terms of the threat or in terms of opportunity."
Blair gave no indication the nation's intelligence agencies were overtaxed.
Bond and Hoekstra said the intelligence community should have cybersecurity responsibilities. Bond said agencies also cannot ignore threats to the nation's energy security.
But they said climate change and economic assessments can be done by other agencies.
"We're in the mode right now where we're rebuilding the intelligence community," Hoekstra said. "We just need for them to be very, very good at what they do and you can't water down their effort by spreading them so thin."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she agrees with Blair's assessments on emerging threats, but did not comment on whether the agencies are overextended. She specifically said Blair is correct that climate change "could well become a national security issue."
COMMENTS
- We cannot do a credible job without good human intelligence. However, we have seriously undermined this capability by moving towards visa waiver travel. Taxpayers expect that visas are granted only after the required due diligence is done. It is tremendously inefficient, expensive and on occasion politically unwise to expect criminality, health and background checks to be accomplished and efficiently dealt with in the two hours prior to a subject’s arrival plus the few moments an officer is expected to complete an inspection or interview. In addition, when you do not have a counsel officer in the loop, who on occasion meets face to face with foreign law enforcement weather it is to discuss the outright criminally inadmissible, view an application and make health related referrals to health officials (who have a fiduciary responsibility towards our interests rather then the afflicted) or other person’s of interest, you not only loose the ability to determine what intelligence we think should be actionable based on our understanding of the cultural terrain you degrade our intelligence because we don’t benefit from the foreign officials judgments and insights as that official is uniquely familiar with their cultural terrain. Are even the basic databases related to visa waiver applicants’ criminality being vetted? Just like the Immigration Inspector that had a bad feeling about the 9/11 terrorist counselor officers are our first line of defense against those who may do us harm. Let’s stop them abroad and not let them on board! WEB Posted April 1, 2009 11:23 AM
- Did Congress ever fund the power supply for the N.S.A.'s new computers and software? N.S.A. could not run their surveillance software because the system would crash. My second question is the translator staffing problem all of the agencies are having. Weather and natural disasters are a legitimate concern, since that is the newest technology we use to attack other countries. Those white lines in the sky, chemtrails, are full of chemicals that alter the weather, barium and aluminum being the main toxic ones. In addition, the High frequency Active Auroral Research Program, HAARP, is altering our weather and sending waves into fault lines to trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. We are not the first country to experiment with this technology. That said, one of the main threats to our country is not physical but economic. A cyber attack that wipes out our financial data or severely cripples the networks will cause chaos. Check out the latest Bruce Willis movies to see the dynamics of that one. Stuff that explodes has gone the way of spears and catapults. Anthony Weishar Posted April 1, 2009 8:41 AM
- Some classic governance tensions here – classic examples of very hard choices that politicians and the voting public generally ignore, and journalists can’t [or wont] challenge. #1 Tension – Money, what money? Where will the money come from to fund the new climate monitoring mission - --more money beyond whatever efficiencies are gained from giving this task to the military rather than say the Energy Department. #2 Tension – Centralize efficiency vs. De-centralized certainty. A very good reason why pre-9/11-- all the services grew their parochial intel groups [and I guess are still growing them] is precisely this kind of weather mission creep. Op-ed smarty pants always make the cheap point by discovering bureaucratic redundancy -- oh so wasteful, oh so ignorant - yet when Navy will now need to calibrate it's weather balloons, etc. for national weather threats - what SecNav is not going to argue for more people to assure combat intel and the new civilian-world weather threats? Oh, I can just hear the speakers at the Navy League Forum – will Senator Feinstein be invited? #3 Tension – Post Catastrophe Resolutions and Sleepy Memories -- This story is a classic example of our civic forgetfulness if not fickleness. It’s a classic example of those easy after-the-fact resolutions, citizen talk-talky and Senatorial huff-and-puff, so sad and predictable. Yo, concerned citizens, do we remember post 09/11 – oh my, how intel was the topic of the day – let’s find the dummies who couldn’t find the clear threat indicators – the new female FBI lady from Minnesota - Dems a-bashin Condi, Repubs a-bashin ACLU, Larry King on the hunt, all citizens just red hot for CHANGE – the greased-easy new hole choices for our coolest media editors. Goodness, the new intel czar was going to better focus immediate threats, head-up a lean-and-mean intel community with new junkyard dog authority, stamp out parochial views, just get stuff in order, ya know? Yeah, yeah, yeah – now you remember, eh? Whew! Now that our memories are firmly reset on the important stuff of long ago-- we can return to the important stuff of today -- so, what about that Final Four? Plus ca change. Concerned Retiree Posted March 31, 2009 8:49 AM
