Government Executive - Authors - Warren L. Nelson

Don't Judge a Spy by his Cover

Warren L. Nelson — Sat, 01 Mar 1997 00:00:00 -0500

As someone who spent most of my career dealing with military issues, I am frequently asked to talk to groups about the military. I'm also a graduate of a Quaker high school, and I usually begin my speeches by describing the Nelson Axiom: The only concentration of pacifists in Washington is located in the Pentagon.

Unfortunately, this rarely elicits a laugh, though it does draw any number of querulous stares as I explain that the military has become reluctant to use military force. Sometimes it seems only generals and Quakers can say no. Conservatives want to use the military to bash folks they hate, like Libya's Muammar Qadhafi. Liberals want to use it to protect the weak in places like Somalia. Diplomats want to use it to gain leverage to solve problems they have been unable to solve through traditional diplomacy. Congress members want to use it to solve their frustration over unsolvable problems like drug smuggling and the flow of illegal immigrants. And the White House wants to use it to avoid criticism for not using it-and will generally approve its use in doses small enough to avoid arousing public ire but not large enough to do any good.

But the military has a deep-seated reluctance to deploy massed force. Some citizens have come to understand that curious bent in the last few years as a multitude of articles have described how Gen. Colin Powell found one excuse after another to fight fighting in the Persian Gulf.

Now, for the Nelson Corollary to the Nelson Axiom: The largest concentration of opponents to covert operations is in the Central Intelligence Agency.

Just as the military got stung in Vietnam, so the CIA has gotten stung-oh, so many times-in its covert actions. The response has been the same-think twice (make that 20 times) before taking action.

I have just finished reading the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Iranian arms deliveries to Bosnia. As is often the case, the meatiest part was totally ignored by the media. The report explains how State and Defense department officials were concerned that the Bosnian Army was on the verge of defeat in 1993 and began mulling over trying to save it through a covert delivery of weapons, in violation of the U.N. arms embargo.

Built-In Reluctance

"CIA's reaction to talk of covert operations was largely defensive," the report says. "The Agency is a generally cautious institution regarding covert action, especially among personnel who handle European and Eurasian affairs. In the wake of intermittent scandal over more than two decades, most CIA personnel want covert actions to be handled by the book, pursuant to explicit presidential and policy maker direction. Legal strictures in Title V of the National Security Act of 1947 and in Executive Order 12333 are reinforced by the memory of Iran-Contra and the sense that any out-of-channels activity is dangerous, if not illegal."

In fact, the committee said this built-in reluctance has reached such extremes that one CIA officer asserted that CIA employees were statutorily barred from even proposing covert actions-a myth that reminds me of the kid in sixth grade who wouldn't join in putting pennies on the railroad tracks because he said it was illegal.

The Senate report says the professional corps at the CIA greeted the Bosnia proposals emanating from other agencies with "institutional caution." It says at various times CIA professionals argued that such a covert operation would be costly (the budget argument) and could not be kept secret for long (the political embarrassment argument) and urged the director of central intelligence to oppose the covert aid proposals "strongly."

When a proposal was aired that the United States look the other way while the Muslim world provide arms clandestinely, CIA officials who were not lawyers argued that such a policy would be a covert action and would thus require a written "finding," a formal bureaucratic process and notification to Congress. This legal argument was raised even though, as the report states, "Executive branch lawyers would later be far from certain that such encouragement to a third party would constitute covert action, arguing that only actually supporting the foreign action through assistance, direction, direct participation or the like would constitute 'covert action' under the law; but CIA officials erred on the side of caution."

Notice this portrait of the CIA is vastly different from that provided in the media, where the latest wrinkle has the intelligence agency giddily marketing crack cocaine in Los Angeles like church ladies at a bake sale trying to raise funds for new pews. The report describes the CIA as cautious, not as champing at the bit to get out there and play James Bond-as the public would believe.

Shedding the Image

Unfortunately, the image of the CIA as an institution eager to kill clandestinely and the military as an institution eager to kill publicly is hard to, well, kill. The horrid truth would be the ruin of far too many cheap novels and adventure films. Imagine Sylvester Stallone as an agent who checks with the lawyers before lifting that .50-caliber machine gun to his shoulder. Contemplate 007 spending his days behind a desk crafting a "finding" for the President's signature that would describe not only his mission but circumscribe the means by which he could carry it out. Imagine in a Tom Clancy novel, the admiral telling Jack Ryan his brilliant idea had been disapproved because it was not in compliance with Section so-and-so of the National Security Act. Or, more to the point, imagine those rough-and-tough characters all telling the National Security Council that its proposal for a covert action is cockamamie: "Don't you understand? It's too expensive and will bust our budget. It'll be impossible to keep from the media and will embarrass us all. Furthermore, it's illegal. And on top of that, it won't work no matter what kind of poison-gas-shooting pen combined with satellite communication system old Q has invented for us."

A natural reaction is: "Why should we bother having a military if it's reluctant to fight, and why should we bother having a CIA if it's reluctant to go out there and pitch over prime ministers?" Actually, to modern officers and agents that's exactly what citizens should want in their military and intelligence agencies-reluctance.

Covert Converts

R. James Woolsey, who served as the director of central intelligence during the first two years of the Clinton administration, puts it this way: "Just as a doctor should not advocate surgery in the first instance, just as a lawyer should not advocate going to court in the first instance, so intelligence officers ought not to advocate covert action and the military ought not advocate war in the first instance. But they need to be prepared and willing to do so when the President makes a firm decision to order them into action." (Woolsey, by the way, is a practicing lawyer.)

Woolsey has often said covert action is a small part of what intelligence agencies do-less than 1 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget. (Note: Covert collection is spying, gathering data to make better-informed policy makers; covert action is trying to change the world, toppling governments and such.)

That wasn't true in the 1950s. Some estimates put covert action at two-thirds of the intelligence budget before the Bay of Pigs brought some restraint. Back in those days, the CIA was in the philosophical domain of Frank Wisner Sr., Richard Bissell and others who saw their mission as defeating communism and changing the world. Shunted aside were men like Richard Helms, who argued that the real mission of the agency ought to be to collect and analyze intelligence for policy makers. After the Bay of Pigs, the Wisners and Bissells were shunted aside and the Helms view came to prevail in successive decades.

That doesn't make the CIA a land of nerds. There are lots of aggressive case officers in the CIA today. And one former intelligence official underscored the word "aggressive" and emphasized it as a compliment. "You want an officer who can be very aggressive, who is a risk taker, when he is out there trying to recruit members of the Hezbollah in Lebanon," he said. "That's collection. That's the key mission of the agency. I don't know anyone who any longer would say the agency's key mission is covert action."

When someone in the White House, Pentagon or State Department proposes a covert action, the former official said, the CIA has a tendency to accentuate the negative. "From top to bottom, everyone will say, 'Whoa! That's dangerous. That's difficult. People could get killed. The logistics are a lot more difficult than you think. Are you sure you want to do this?' " If the political leadership persists, the next step is to draft a formal plan followed by a written "finding," which the president must sign. None of this "wink and a nod" stuff anymore. While this sounds bureaucratic and time-consuming, the former official said approvals have been done in a matter of days when time was crucial.

He said the proof that the Wisner-Bissell days are a "historical artifact" came in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan's CIA chief, William Casey, had to "dragoon" the agency into Afghanistan. Once ordered in, the agency saluted and was committed. But the agency at the start was opposed to diving into the Afghan pool for fear we might be at the shallow end.

The popular "cowboy" images of the military and the CIA are, of course, related to the popular image of government as cocksure-pockets packed with too many tax dollars and offices staffed with too many people too eager to spend those tax dollars on stupid ideas.

The challenge for agencies like CIA and DoD-as well as every other agency-is to convey to the public that, despite a few loose cannons, the dominant attitude within the public service is, however odd it may seem, cautious and restrained public service.

Warren L. Nelson is a Washington-area independent writer who spent a decade as a national security reporter and two decades as a Capitol Hill staffer.

]]>

Where Term Limits Count

Warren L. Nelson — Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 -0500

erm limits are the political panacea of the 1990s. Cures all that ails ya. One thin dime; it won't make ya and it won't break ya. Lydia Pinkham's Elixir for the Body Politic.

Well, with a beginning like that I reveal myself as a typical inside-the-Beltway elitist who dismisses the wishes of the public. But before you turn the page, let it be known that this article will actually argue for term limits, though not the kind you've been reading about for years.

Term limits are very popular, both for state legislatures and Congress. Since 1990, 21 states have imposed them on their own legislatures while 23 approved them for Congress before the Supreme Court stepped in and said states couldn't impose such restrictions on federal offices. Those federal limits would have held senators to 12 years, while representatives would have been restricted to 12 years by three states, eight years by four states and a stingy six years by 16 states.

Along the way, House Speaker Thomas Foley lost his seat in large measure because he so visibly opposed the Washington state referendum that approved term limits. He then had the temerity to flaunt his opposition by supporting the court appeal that overturned the results.

So where do we stand now? In the November elections, 14 states voted on requiring a notation on the next ballot showing whether an incumbent Congress member had voted for or against a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on federal legislators. Nine of those states voted yes. Washington state was among the five that voted no, suggesting folks there may be having second thoughts.

Term limits are not a bad idea. The bad idea is the way term limits have been formulated. The idea being pushed is to limit the number of years a legislator may serve. Why? Because, say the sponsors, career politicians lose touch with the public. I fail to see any evidence of that. In 20 years of working on Capitol Hill, I never saw any difference between senior or junior Congress members in responsiveness to the public will. As a matter of fact, senior members didn't flounder as much as junior members when it came to discerning what that will was and, more importantly, discerning whether it was a passing fad or a true conviction.

Furthermore, the whole idea behind elections is that the public can toss out legislators who lose touch. Term limit supporters, however, argue that the powers of incumbency allow legislators to stay in office forever.

That's not what the election results show. Most years most legislators running for re-election do, indeed, win with regularity. But every so often, as in 1992, there is a sea change. The fact that there isn't a sea change every two years doesn't show that the system doesn't work, it simply shows that the public doesn't want a sea change every two years (which shows the public ain't so dumb). Meanwhile, about once a generation we have a sea change, demonstrating that the system does work.

The Ties That Bind

But all this hassling over term limits misses one very major problem-that legislators, whether they are in for six years or 60, spend their time on a few committees where they tend to align with groups whose interests they look after diligently. Take the House. There, most members serve on two committees. They choose them their freshman year. Naturally, they pick committees that provide the most help back home. If you're from farm country, naturally you seek the Agriculture Committee. If you've got a big Army base or a major defense contractor in your district, you go for the National Security Committee. And so on.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. The late Defense Secretary Les Aspin served 24 years in the House. As a freshman from a heavily unionized district, his logical first choice was the Labor Committee. He did not seek that committee, however. Was he dumb? No, but he knew that his vote on that committee would not be his own. He would always be looking over his shoulder and nodding to the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers and the Machinists unions. Instead, Aspin chose what was then called the House Armed Services Committee. Why? In part, because he was interested in defense issues. But, more importantly, because he had no military bases or major defense contractors in his district. There were generally only 14 military personnel assigned to his district-all recruiters. And the biggest defense contractor was Johnson's Wax, whose sales to keep military floors shining were an insignificant part of the firm's revenues. In sum, Aspin was free to act in the way he discerned as best for the nation.

But Aspin was an exception. It shouldn't surprise you that in the outgoing 104th Congress, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee is Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; the chairman of the Dairy Subcommittee is Steve Gunderson, R-Wis., whose district is described as having more cows than people; or that the second ranking member of the International Relations western hemisphere subcommittee is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., a Cuban-American. Nor is it surprising that all but two of the 35 Judiciary Committee members are lawyers or that one of those non-lawyers, Sonny Bono, R-Calif., one of the very few legislators ever to hold a copyright, chose the subcommittee that handles copyright legislation. All three Virginia members from adjoining districts around Norfolk-with its many military facilities-just happen to serve on the National Security Committee. The chairman of the Resources Committee is from Alaska, and the chairman of its parks, forests and lands subcommittee is from Utah. And the delegates from Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico all serve on the insular affairs subcommittee. I could go on, but there are 545 members of the House and Senate.

Term limits wouldn't change that kind of coziness. Legislators would still choose the same committees and continue the coziness. If you want to make a real difference, impose limits on the number of terms on a committee, not on the number of terms in office. Force legislators to shift to new committees, progressively moving further from the interest groups that prevail at home. Let's say your freshman congressman still gets to pick two committees. But he gets to serve on one for six years and the other for four years, at which point he must chose something else.

There is precedent for committee term limits. The House Budget, Ethics and Intelligence committees have term limits, all for specialized reasons-for example, no one would serve on the Ethics Committee if they had to stay there permanently.

There is a bad element to this idea. Legislators develop expertise in a few subject areas through long service on a committee. That expertise would be lost. However, the legislator would bring legislative (as opposed to topical) expertise to a new committee and bring a slightly different way of approaching issues and the broader perspective that comes from tackling more issues. The gain in breadth would at least equal the loss in depth. Legislators rely chiefly on staff for depth anyhow. It is breadth that the legislator is supposed to bring to the job.

The seniority system wouldn't change much under committee term limits. Senior members would still get first crack at chairing committees and subcommittees, but the privilege would be based on seniority in the House rather than seniority on the committee. Thus, committee members would likely be on their third or fourth pairs of committees before they became chairs. They would be that much further removed from the interest groups that dominate back home. They would have that much broader experience.

Distance and breadth. That's just what's missing.

Distance? Senior members now have spent years dining and traveling with the same narrow interest groups. That doesn't make them prostitutes. But it's hard to avoid being seduced when you always dance with the same guy.

Breadth? To be frank, members who have spent years on the same two committees commonly know very little about other issues. They read the newspapers and short memos to become "experts" sufficient to gull their constituents.

Most of the work of any legislature is done in committees. Major changes are rarely made on the floor. Apart from issues that are getting Page 1 coverage or heavily affecting their own districts, when it comes to bills on the floor from other committees, legislators tend to follow the lead of the senior member of their party on the committee. Think of it: Congress members who rail against interest groups vote with the chair or ranking minority member who has been making those interest groups happy for two or three decades.

Right now, you can expect a Detroiter to join the Labor (now Economic Opportunities) Committee and eventually become chair, and you can expect a Kansan to join Agriculture and eventually rise to chair. Think of the difference in perspective if the Detroiter chaired Agriculture and the Kansan chaired Labor.

Even with the kind of term limits now popular with voters, even with public financing of campaigns and a host of other reforms being bruited about, the current committee structure would still mean that mining policy would be determined primarily by Congress members with lots of mines back home. It's time to dig those guys out of the ground and let them try their hands at maritime policy.

Warren L. Nelson spent 20 years on Capitol Hill as a staffer on the Senate and House sides, working for individual members and then for the House Armed Services Committee.

]]>

Looking Back From the Future

Warren L. Nelson — Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 -0400

ith the demise of the Soviet Union and the ridicule heaped on its Five-Year Plans, you might think long-range planning in general would be in the dustbin of history. Not so. It's alive and well in the Air Force.

This month, Air Force officials are meeting to lay the foundation for the Air Force of 2025-almost three decades into the future. But this is not just some routine bureaucratic exercise whose product is likely to be read by a few Ph.D. candidates. It's different and needs to be taken seriously for at least two reasons:

First, it has the enthusiastic imprimatur of Gen. Ronald R. Fogelman, the Air Force chief of staff.

Second, this is not to result in a report produced by contractors or junior officers on the Air Staff. The options papers are being written by two- and three-star generals from the Air Force's operating commands, and the final positions will be produced by the four-stars who head those commands during a five-day head-banging session.

In other words, this exercise is at the level usually reserved for combat actions like Operation Desert Storm.

Fogelman and the Air Force's four-star generals meet three times a year for a day or two to discuss servicewide issues. For reasons lost in time, these meetings are dubbed CORONA. The October CORONA will be unusual. First, it will be much longer-Oct. 8-12. Second, only one topic is on the agenda: The Air Force of 2025. Third, Gen. Fogelman has cleared his calendar for the preceding week to prepare for this CORONA session.

An Air Force briefing paper says the goal of the new long-range planning effort is to develop "a coherent strategic vision for the Air Force in the 2025 time-frame, shared by senior Air Force leaders, articulating the contributions of air and space power to joint war fighting and to the future defense needs of the nation, and charting actionable courses to that future based upon logical and identifiable transition points."

That's a mouthful, but the key phrases in the statement reveal Fogelman's aim:

"Coherent strategic vision" indicates he wants to develop a doctrine to which the Air Force can cling and by which the service can guide itself now that the Soviets aren't providing a clear-cut threat.
"Shared by senior Air Force leaders" emphasizes that this vision will be written by the four-stars themselves.
"Charting actionable courses" points to Fogelman's insistence that this be an exercise in pragmatism and not science fiction.
"Identifiable transition points" could be the key phrase determining if this process holds any meaning for the future, because it means the products of this October's meeting must be reviewed at intervals. So if Air Force leaders decide to pursue 20 emerging technologies, at some point in the future that list will have to be pruned and less promising technologies dropped.

No Time to Wait

Fogelman is trying to draw the entire Air Force into his approach, not as the cure for all that ails the service, but as a tool for projecting it into the 21st century when everyone else is simply talking about the approach of the millennium.

"I call this approach, 'looking back to the present,' " says Fogelman. "It's just a common sense way to get the Air Force we need in the next century. . . . We must critically examine when a weapon system, an idea, a concept, is reaching the sunset part of its evolution and not wait for that to occur. In parallel, we must be developing the capability that will replace it. That is very difficult to do standing here and looking forward. I think if we try to project ourselves and look back, it's easier."

A small office under Fogelman oversees the process. It is headed by Maj. Gen. David W. McIlvoy, special assistant to the chief of staff for long-range planning. His deputy is a civilian, Dr. Clark Murdock, a former staffer for the late Les Aspin when Aspin was secretary of Defense and, before that, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. This office manages, but does not drive, the review. That is being done at the three-star level.

This year, the three-star deputies to the four-stars who head the Air Force's major commands have been meeting an average of one day a month to lay the foundation for the crowning week-long planning session. Starting with a list of 150 core issues, they have been winnowing that down to a manageable 16 to 18 topics that will go before the four-stars. The top officials will not get recommendations, but rather a list of options. They are expected to make firm decisions on some but to defer others for future review.

The Air Force won't release the list of topics. Some in the service fear the long-range planners may be out to ax the F-22 or some other favored piece of hardware. But Murdock emphasizes that a long-range planning effort of this nature is actually looking at what the Air Force will be like after the F-22. Hardware, he concedes, must be taken into consideration in that planning. But the question is less about existing hardware than about emerging technologies the Air Force should start investing in now so it can field useful platforms in 2025.

Murdock says the point is not to pick 2025's dominant technology in October 1996, but to earmark a dozen or so areas for research investment, some of which will fail to develop in the years ahead while others leapfrog ahead. Along the road to 2025, Murdock explains, as additional funding is pumped into emerging technologies, current funding will undoubtedly have to be withdrawn from existing systems. That's what Fogelman means when he speaks of a weapon system reaching its "sunset" era.

Murdock insists that long-range planning is not mere crystal-ball gazing. "You can't predict," he says. "But you can think about it in a disciplined way."

Those working on the effort emphasize the challenge posed by "wild cards" that litter efforts at long-term planning. Some would argue that the history of the 20th century has been one wild card after another. Others would say that the more things change, the more they stay the same, noting that this century is starting and ending with conflicts in the Balkans.

The Air Force planners have committed to paper some startling examples of possible 21st century wild cards-"fusion breakthrough . . . asteroid strikes earth . . . appearance of a 'Messiah.' "

Some Surprises

There are some surprises in the planning process.

For one thing, planners have dropped the old Cold War argument against preparing for small-scale challenges. For decades, the services assumed that if they could whip the Soviet military, they could certainly handle minor actions like seizing Grenada or evacuating U.S. nationals from a danger zone.

Now the Air Force's long-range planners are asking whether the service should be planning and assigning resources for a broader range of activities.

Another example: After four years in which the term "two MRCs" ("major regional contingencies," such as simultaneous wars in the Persian Gulf and on the Korean Peninsula) has dominated military discussion, the Air Force long-range planning process doesn't mention MRCs. Murdock explains that the "two MRCs" concept was designed as a base for determining how many planes, tanks and ships the services needed. The current long-range planning effort, he says, is the process of 'shaping more than sizing.' "

That effort involves looking at "strategic indications and warning (I&W)"-the intelligence community's jargon for figuring out what guy is plotting to hit you with what weapon. Looking back, strategic I&W in the Cold War was stunningly simple: The focus of our worries was full-scale war promulgated by Moscow. In 2025, however, we might have cause to fear a large-scale chemical attack spawned by a Middle Eastern terrorist group. Worse still, suppose members of U.S. militia groups got their hands on the nerve gas capabilities that were being developed by the Aum Shinri Kyo cult in Japan.

A Process for a Plan

Of course, there is no shortage of critics who assail the Fogelman initiative, asserting that it's a scheme to justify a mission to justify a budget. They point to vivid tales of mullahs run amok as creations of a too-fervid imagination. But Saddam Hussein's nuclear program was no figment of the imagination. Nor is Moammar Qadhafi's effort to develop chemical weapons. Nor is the vast chemical manufacturing process Aum Shinri Kyo was able to assemble undetected in a state where close police surveillance is accepted.

Some of these threats, however, are far from the type the Air Force would deal with. Presumably, the Air Force will not bomb a clandestine chemical plant some militia has managed to put together in a Denver warehouse. Murdock freely acknowledges that. "The challenge is security," he says, "not who provides it."

All of this may sound a little threatening. "Plans" smell of conspiracies to some. But the briefing documents emphasize, "The value of planning is planning, not the plan." In other words, the purpose is not to commit the Air Force to this weapon system or that mission. It is to think rationally about a future that cannot be discerned clearly, and then think about it some more in a few years, and some more after that-all the time shifting and adjusting as the fog that surrounds the future dissipates a bit and reveals a little more of itself. It is, in other words, a process for eventually producing more informed plans.

"The trick," says one briefing paper, "is knowing how much insurance to buy for what." Another says, "Planning in this realm involves judgment when to bring improbable but plausible events or developments into the range of institutional action." Those sound like more nuanced variants on the classic defense question posed more than three decades ago by Alain Enthoven: "How much is enough?"

We still don't know the answer. The Air Force long-range planning effort won't answer it either. But it is a serious attempt to fashion a process by which we may make a more rational stab at answering it.

]]>

For Your Eyes Only

Warren L. Nelson — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

July 1996

NATIONAL SECURITY

For Your Eyes Only

Now the intelligence agencies can help federal executives get the information they need.

By Warren L. Nelson

hen we hear the words "intelligence agencies," most of us think about overthrowing unfriendly governments and garroting somebody in the dark of night. What we don't think about is how intelligence agencies can help federal executives do their jobs.

The James Bond stuff is a minor part of intelligence. In fact, covert action is not even intelligence, although most countries tuck their covert action operatives into their intelligence agencies since both share a passion for secrecy. Intelligence is simply a system by which governments gather and package information others don't want them to have. Almost every government agency can use intelligence-not just the military and embassies. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the United States devoted great effort to gathering intelligence on Soviet grain production for Agriculture officials because its wild fluctuations had so much impact on the grain markets.

During the Cold War, the overwhelming intelligence priority was the Soviet Union. But in the 1970s, intelligence officials began to notice that the Red Menace was not the only foreign challenge the United States faced. First, oil sheiks made us wait in line at gas stations. Then, the Japanese began gobbling up markets we had taken for granted. Next, it was terrorism coming out of the Third World, followed by drugs, not to mention pollution and nuclear proliferation and economic challenges from surging Asian countries. Now that the Cold War is over, the intelligence community has spare capacity to meet those challenges. It also wants to protect itself and its budget from legislative assault by trying to serve more agencies, who will then put in a good word for the intelligence folks with the OMB and Congress. So today's CIA buzzword is "outreach."

There are two common responses when the intelligence community offers its services. The first is, "You can't possibly be of any help to me. Yeah, I sometimes deal with foreigners, but I'm involved in labor or environmental or agricultural or trade or (fill in the blank) issues." The other common response is, "Hey, great, you can tell me how the International Civil Aviation Organization is going to vote on my issue, or what the price of rubber will be in Malaysia next spring, or when the troublesome head of the labor federation in Vanuatu will die." Few understand what intelligence can and cannot do for them.

What Intel Can Do

There are some simple things intelligence can help federal executives accomplish. For example, the CIA has tons of biographical information. If the transport minister from Majnoonistan is coming to talk railroads with you, the CIA might be able to provide some biographical data on this fellow, plus a memo on what's happening with Majnoonistani railroads. And, if you get your request in early, the agency can provide some intel on what this Minister wants out of the United States, how he negotiates, what his political goals are.

Even the simplest half-page bio can tell you a lot about your opposite number's education, hobbies and political disposition. It's best, however, not to telegraph that you've been checking on him by saying, "Have a seat. I hear your wife graduated top in her class from Southern Idaho U. in 1942 with a major in trigonometry."

What Intel Cannot Do

Biographical data lacks the pizzazz of something "Q" invented for James Bond. But it's real. Unfortunately, many intelligence consumers lose touch with reality in the realm of spydom. Prior to becoming director of central intelligence in 1950, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith said, "America's people expect you to be on a communing level with God and Joe Stalin. . . . They expect you to be able to say that a war will start next Tuesday at 5:32 p.m." Nothing's changed. In the decade it took Leonid Brezhnev to expire, the CIA was perpetually asked, "When will Brezhnev die?" In the early 1980s, a key issue was whether the Soviets would invade Poland as it had Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Reams of paper were devoted to analyses explaining the pressures and counter-pressures on the Politburo. But some people just wanted a yes or no answer when there was none: The Politburo was keeping its options open.

There is a tendency to confuse the complexity of a foreign society with the simplicity of a Hollywood script, and to ask why the CIA has failed to filch the script. But there is no script. Real life is filled with too many variables to make predictions an exact science. One way to grasp this is to reverse the process and look at foreigners analyzing the United States. Any number of other countries' intelligence officers stationed in Washington may well be fired this November if their projected presidential victor fails to win the November election. Do not expect the CIA to be able to tell you something about a foreign society that only a Ouija board could tell you about American society.

The Four Building Blocks

Intelligence is divided into four major activities: dissemination, protection, collection and analysis.

Dissemination is the art of getting information to people who need it to do their jobs. While it sounds mundane and lacks the drama of collection, speedy dissemination has been critical since Dec. 7, 1941. That day a warning to prepare for an attack was sent by commercial telegraph and delivered by bicycle messenger to the commander of Pearl Harbor as he viewed the smoking ruins of his command. Dissemination, however, flies in the face of secrecy. The intel world does not distribute fliers or junk mail touting its services. It classically deals with a narrow world of consumers. In the post-Cold War era, it is now ready-and eager-to broaden that world. The CIA has even produced a pamphlet and a Web page providing information about the agency's services.

Protection runs the gamut from counterin-telligence (looking for the other guy's spies in your agency) to clearances, polygraphs, safeguards of classified material. It is a pain when your neighbors are asked during background investigations about your bad habits, or when you have to take a nerve-wracking polygraph, or when you forget to lock up the classified material one night and have to climb out of bed and race back to your office hoping your error hasn't been discovered. And the pain increases as you pass from a Confidential clearance up to Secret, Top Secret and on to Special Compartmented Intelligence or Code Word Intelligence, where the names of the code words that give one access to intelligence are themselves classified Top Secret.

What's being protected is rarely the information, but sources of it and the methods used to gather it. When it comes to sources and methods, "don't ask, don't tell" has been the policy for centuries. There is no worse crime than to stand up in public and say, "The CIA has given me a report that shows I'm right and you're wrong." The CIA will descend upon the offender like the plague.

Collection is the gathering of data. It may be humint (human intelligence), such as a report from a spy on a meeting he attended. It may come from listening in on telephone calls or, nowadays, fax transmissions and electronic payment transfers. It may be an infrared image taken by a satellite showing crops infested by disease. It may be a telephone book from a Health Ministry showing they have only a small division dealing with AIDS while their biggest division deals with radiology, although the government claims to have no nuclear program and asserts it is devoting vast sums to AIDS detection.

Collection can involve unsavory sources. The CIA has repeatedly been condemned for paying such characters as torturers in Guatemala for information. Police informers generally have criminal records. Therefore, the CIA will learn more about governments who pollute, torture and proliferate by talking to people who pollute, torture and proliferate than it will by talking to saints.

The inherent difficulty with collection is that the intelligence community collects what it can, not necessarily what this country needs. The constant challenge is to get what is essential. Whether needed or not, the product of collection is called "raw" intelligence.

After collecting all those telephone books, photographs and transcripts, the next task is to make some sense out of that horde. Raw intelligence is cooked. But since that sounds like cooking the books, it is called "finished" intelligence. The analytical people mix the classified material in a bowl with even larger quantities of publicly available data, stir in a few cups of scholarly knowledge, add a soupçon of intuition and, voila, you have what everyone hopes is a useful product.

Analysis falls into three major categories: basic or static, current or dynamic, and estimative or predictive.

Basic or static intelligence works like an encyclopedia. It once consisted of filing cabinets filled with information. Now it consists of computer disks containing maps that pinpoint Iraqi chemical sites suitable for bombing; demographic data on foreign societies showing where disaffected minorities dwell; and biographies. In World War II, basic intelligence was used to find out whether the beaches U.S. troops would land on could support their equipment. Analysts used magnifying glasses to study photos of kids building sand castles on beaches in North Africa, the Pacific islands and Normandy.

With today's information explosion, the challenge is more often how to whittle down 1,000 pages of newspaper clippings, technical publications and communications intercepts to a two-page memo focused on a policy-maker's particular need. But the old order is not completely dead. Before Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf could launch his famous "left hook" in the Iraqi desert, several Army intelligence officers spent days at the Library of Congress trying to determine the location of soft sands that would halt tank movements. They poured over yellowed journals written by archaeologists who traveled the area by camel early in this century. Basic intelligence ranges from lists of the members of the Palestine National Congress to technical analyses of the Saudi economy.

Current or dynamic intelligence resembles a daily newspaper. In fact, its primary delivery mechanism for decades has been the National Intelligence Digest (NID), a daily magazine with a circulation of only a few hundred copies. Every page of each copy bears the reader's assigned number printed in 4-inch light gray numerals over the text to discourage the reader from making photocopies. Current intelligence is call dynamic because it changes with every passing hour. To get in tune with the 20th century, the intelligence community has started a CNN-type television system. Current intel is generally used by national security wonks.

Estimative or predictive information is the intelligence world's crystal ball for predicting the future. The chief vehicle is the National Intelligence Estimate, a report issued when needed on a single topic. It is the corporate wisdom of analysts from the intelligence community: the CIA; Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); National Security Agency (NSA); State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR); and other small, specialized intel shops (e.g., Energy Department, Treasury). Do all these analysts agree? No. Sometimes the reports include footnotes such as, "DIA dissents from this judgment. It believes too much emphasis is being placed on data supplied by a single and unproven source."

Estimative intelligence is commonly misunderstood. Its usefulness is not in declaring that the ruler of Majnoonistan will be overthrown next Monday, but that the ruler of Majnoonistan is likely to be replaced in the next few months by either X or Y. And what we know of X indicates he would change policies that interest us while Y would probably change another set of policies. American policy-makers then have a document that enables them to plan, not just stumble through an ad hoc response because newly installed President Y has surprised them.

Finished intelligence comes in four forms: indications and warning, technical, actionable and informational.

Indications and warning, the most sensitive type of finished intelligence, is the art of divining whether someone is about to launch a war. Our intelligence system did forecast Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait. But it didn't make much difference. For one thing, the warning came close to the actual attack and we had no time to deploy military power. Equally important, none of the Arab countries in the region believed Saddam would attack and were unwilling to accept American military deployment as a deterrent. So, our intelligence product was simultaneously brilliant and useless. Today, significant resources are devoted every hour to watching more than 100 indicators of North Korea's military action. Virtually all American and Korean policy-makers believe Pyongyang is capable of attack, so, in this case, those who monitor indications and warning know they will be heard if they ever ring the alarm.

Technical intelligence mostly involves analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of foreign military equipment.

Actionable intelligence, the most rapidly growing form, is data that indicates a firm in Germany is about to sell chemical weapons components to Iran, or a bank in Italy is about to receive a major deposit of laundered money from a criminal syndicate. With this information, diplomats in those countries can ask the foreign ministry to intervene. In wartime, it could be a list of buildings of the kind we saw flickering on our TV screen in January 1991 just before a precision guided bomb made ruins of it during the Persian Gulf war. The real meat of the intelligence business today, actionable data is driven by the three great "counters" that have replaced the Red Menace: counter-terrorism; counter-crime (mostly drugs and international criminal syndicates); and counter-proliferation (halting the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the missiles used to deliver them).

Informational intelligence comprises more than 90 percent of everything the CIA produces-the bios, the analytical booklets and the daily NID-to help decision-makers make informed decisions.

Getting What One Needs

Agencies outside the national security arena rarely need the daily NID and its current intelligence. But basic and estimative intelligence can be very useful. The problem is getting what you want and need. If you wish to order up a fast bio of the French Prime Minister, it's in the files. But not so for the person who was just named Minister of Supplies in Fiji last month and who is coming to talk to the General Services Administration next month. That bio would require tasking.

Tasking is simply a matter of telling the collection people to collect what you need and getting the analysts to package it in a useful way. You think Burma is pumping pollutants into one of its rivers? Maybe there's a photo in the files, but if not you'll have to put in your request and wait in line for the satellite to pass over the target. A new consumer will usually be put in contact with an analyst. The analyst's first task is to understand what the consumer needs. The analyst can then work with the collectors to try to gather the required information. What's desired may be too expensive or impractical, but it pays to ask. Caution: Even in these days when the CIA is marketing its wares, the analyst will determine what requested data the consumer "must have" versus what the consumer "can use." Many agencies have a CIA liaison office on the premises and listed in the agency phone book. If no CIA liaison office is available, consumers can call the CIA Public Communications Office at (703) 482-0624.

The product you get could be very impressive. The CIA's graphs, tables and maps are among the best in the government and are more user-friendly than those found in many news magazines. Many believe only CIA cartographers can excel at taking an oil company map, a satellite photo, a list of addresses and synthesizing them into a useful map without a lot of clutter.

That Cloak and Dagger Business

Covert action, such as restoring the Shah of Iran to his throne in 1953 and overthrowing the Guatemalan government in 1954, made the CIA a household name. In its first 15 years, the CIA concentrated much of its activity on covert operations. But even during this heyday of covert action, many in the agency frowned upon it. Critics argued that the job of a clandestine service was to collect information, and the multitude of schemes to defeat communism-many of which weren't publicized since they didn't work-were a distraction.

The No. 2 man in the clandestine shop in 1962 was Richard Helms, who so despised the agency's focus on covert actions that he was shut out of the Bay of Pigs. Lucky for him. After that failure, Helms and his ilk gained influence. Most popular literature asserts that the conflict in the CIA is between the analysts and the clandestine operatives. History points out that most central intelligence directors, including Helms, come from the clandestine side. In reality, the greater friction of the CIA's early decades was between proponents of covert action and proponents of clandestine collection as the CIA's main mission.

Most CIA analysts are akin to academics. They work with pen and paper, not cloak and dagger. To be most effective, they need contact with scholars. The macho image the CIA has carved out for itself makes it hard for CIA experts on, say, Latin American economics to talk with their counterparts in academia. Hardly a week goes by that some academic approached by a CIA analyst doesn't slam down the phone and refuse to have contact with a CIA "killer."

The CIA is not a refuge for killers. Even when it last considered assassinations in the 1960s, it failed, looking more like the Keystone Kops than the KGB. The CIA is a national resource for federal officials who need to know what is going on in the world.

]]>

God--The First Spymaster

Warren L. Nelson — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

July 1996

NATIONAL SECURITY

God-the First Spymaster

By Warren L. Nelson

n recorded history, the first use of spies is related in the fourth book of the Old Testament, in Numbers, Chapter 13. And the first central intelligence director was none other than God himself. The story tells of the time after the Jews fled Egypt and are headed for the Promised Land. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the people of Israel; from each tribe of their fathers shall you send a man."

Moses, always the obedient No. 2, picked 12 men, all of whom are identified in the Bible by name, a clear breech of security. Moses then provided the world's first mission statement: "Go up into the hill country and see what the land is and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds and whether the land is rich or poor and whether there is wood in it or not. . . . Bring some of the fruit of the land." Moses asked for a heck of a lot of data.

The dozen men dutifully headed off and "at the end of 40 days they returned from spying out the land." We have no details of how they carried out this collection tasking, other than that they plucked a bunch of grapes and collected some figs and pomegranates to prove the wealth of the land.

Having collected their intelligence, they now had to analyze it. They came up with two conclusions. First, it was a rich land: "It flows with milk and honey." Second, it was well defended: "The people who dwell in the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large."

But there was one dissenter, as frequently happens. Caleb filed the first minority report: "Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it," he said, without, however, providing the essential details a professional should provide, such as a listing of weak points that could be attacked and strong points to be avoided.

The others, however, weren't about to let Caleb get his way. So, they proceeded to demonize the enemy and greatly exaggerated the threat. "The land . . . is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature." Thus, long before people spoke of the might of the Soviet armed forces, there were those who saw the enemy as 10 feet tall.

Now, this intelligence was disseminated far and wide among the people of Israel, suggesting that intelligence leaks have an historic pedigree and do not originate with The New York Times and The Washington Post. The people of Israel proceeded to lamentate like crazy. "Why does the Lord bring us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?" (where they had been enslaved). Thus emerged history's first version of the Better-Red-Than-Dead argument, or, in this case, Better Bound Than Buried.

Caleb, now joined by a second dissenter, Joshua, appealed to the Israelites not to be distracted by exaggerated tales of enemy strength. The pair pointed out that "the Lord is with us." While this argument has worked remarkably well to mobilize people throughout history, it failed miserably on this occasion-the sole instance when the argument was actually accurate. The Israelites stoned Caleb and Joshua for their trouble.

By this time, the chief spymaster had had it with the 10 spies who were stirring up the public with their inept analysis of what lay ahead. And, so, the chief spymaster did what many have done-or at least wished to do-with inept analysts throughout history: "The men who brought up an evil report of the land died by the plague before the Lord."

]]>

Hot Tips

Warren L. Nelson — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

July 1996

NATIONAL SECURITY

HOT TIPS

By Warren L. Nelson

he CIA has produced a glossy, 55-page pamphlet titled, "A Consumer's Guide to Intelligence," available by calling (703) 351-2053. Unfortunately, it fails to show off the agency's mastery of graphics and is excessively fascinated with organizational charts.

The CIA has also established a Web Page (http://www. odci.gov/cia) with the extremely implausible offer to tell "All you ever wanted to know about the CIA."

To hook up with a CIA analyst, contact your agency's CIA liaison office. If your agency doesn't have one, call the CIA Public Communications Office at (703) 482-0624.

]]>

The Ints and Outs of Intelligence

Warren L. Nelson — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

July 1996

NATIONAL SECURITY

THE INTS AND OUTS OF INTELLIGENCE

By Warren L. Nelson

ntelligence comprises several "ints," which are really nothing more than the methodology by which information is collected. Outside the technical world, three ints matter-COMINT, IMINT and HUMINT. The "ints" are:

SIGINT-Signals intelligence. A broad category that covers:
COMINT-Communications intelligence. Telephone taps; intercepts of fax transmissions; radio exchanges between pilots. In a word, words.
ELINT-Electronic intelligence. Electromagnetic, noncommunications transmissions like radar and IFF (aircraft identification signals). In other words, nonverbal electronic signals.
FISINT-Foreign instrumentation signature intelligence. A very special category aimed at keeping track of Soviet missile and nuclear developments. Telemetry transmitted from test missiles in flight; communications on test ranges; and signals from beacons used on test ranges.
IMINT-Image intelligence. Any imagery, infrared pictures as well as photos, from satellites and spy planes down to shots taken by Uncle Bob with his Brownie-assuming Uncle Bob travels to interesting places.
MASINT-Measurement and signature intelligence. Seismic measures that reveal a country has tested a nuclear weapon underground; chemical samplings of air and water used to detect chemical warfare agents.
HUMINT-Human intelligence. Spies.
ASKINT-With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we can now walk into the Kremlin and ask President Yeltsin's aides if they lost any warheads today. The answer one gets is mockingly called ASKINT within the intelligence community.

]]>

The Intelligence Community

Warren L. Nelson — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

July 1996

NATIONAL SECURITY

The Intelligence Community

By Warren L. Nelson

he Central Intelligence Agency is not the sole proprietor of intelligence. The intelligence community includes:

The Central Intelligence Agency. The director of central intelligence (DCI)is both the head of the CIA and of the intelligence community.
The Defense Intelligence Agency. Produces military intelligence for the Defense secretary, Joint Chiefs of Staff and combatant commands, such as Central Command that fought the Persian Gulf war.
The National Security Agency. The world's single most productive collection agency, which specializes in SIGINT collection.
The Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The State Department arm that produces finished intelligence in a form usable by diplomats.
The National Reconnaissance Office. Handles satellite development and management, but doesn't analyze imagery. Well over half the intelligence budget goes into satellites.
The National Imagery Management Agency. Created this year to centralize the production and analysis of imagery, whether from satellites or spy planes or Uncle Bob's Brownie.
Intelligence branches of the four armed services:
The Army Intelligence and Security Command
Office of Naval Intelligence
Air Intelligence Agency
Marine Corps Intelligence Activity
Agency intelligence divisions:
FBI (counterintelligence and law enforcement)
Treasury Department (economic intelligence)
Energy Department (nuclear proliferation)
Supra intelligence organizations:
The National Intelligence Council (coordinator of interagency estimates, the National Intelligence Estimates)
Community Management Staff (the DCI's main arm in trying to oversee this vast, sprawling empire)

]]>

The Powerhouse

Warren L. Nelson — Wed, 01 May 1996 00:00:00 -0400

peaker Newt Gingrich has unleashed a revolution in the House of Representatives. But it's not only a power shift to the right that he seeks, it's a power shift to the speaker's office.

In fact, the very first power move by the speaker was not against the Democratic Party but against the Republicans who were about to become the leaders of the 19 House committees. The speaker has centralized power in his office and reduced the might of the committee baronies.

For executive branch managers, this means the committees with which they have been cozy may be less able to help them. And that is just what the speaker intends. His power play is not simply personal aggrandizement. Republicans, Democrats and academics have argued for years that the committees were too friendly with the institutions they were supposed to oversee. The problem was viewed as acute with committees that had the narrowest jurisdictions. The House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, for example, was often dismissed as a wholly owned subsidiary of the merchant marine industry. Gingrich killed that committee outright. Few mourned.

The Seizure of Power

The speaker's first power move came in December 1994, before he was formally speaker, at the House Republican Conference meeting to organize for the 104th Congress. The first reform proposed in the Contract With America came up for a vote in that meeting. The issue was to cut House staff by 33 percent. It was framed as a symbolic gesture of the Republican intention to reduce bureaucracy and a way to set an example by starting at home.

The 33 percent cut, however, did not apply to the representatives' personal office staffs, which accounted for 80 percent of House employment. Nor did it apply to the Speaker's staff, which has grown from 18 before Gingrich to 27 now, according to the Congressional Yellow Book. Also excluded were other members of the House leadership and the Speaker's Advisory Group, which includes Gingrich's closest comrades even if they lack formal leadership posts.

The real purpose of the cut was not at all symbolic. It was practical-to reduce the powers of those committees and eliminate them as power centers rivaling the speaker's office. Needless to say, the incoming committee chairmen were not at all happy. But Gingrich showed his own mastery of practical politics that week of the organizing caucus. He scheduled the vote on committee chairmanships for the last day of the week, telegraphing to the chairmen-in-waiting that those who opposed his plan to slash their staffs should not expect to ascend to the chairmanships they had awaited so long.

He had already cowed the chairmen-in-waiting by refusing to back some to whom the seniority system would have handed chairmanships. For the Appropriations Committee, the most powerful of all the committees, Gingrich had reached down to the fifth-ranking Republican, Bob Livingston of Louisiana.

The effort to geld the committees went beyond cutting staff size. Some of the incoming chairmen wanted to keep Democratic staffers who had been balanced and fair with Republicans and who were the fount of institutional knowledge. For example, Rep. Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, the incoming Republican chairman of the House Transportation Committee, identified four Democratic staffers he wanted to bring on board the new Republican majority staff. Outgoing Chairman Norman Mineta of California said he would not raise any objection. But Gingrich forbade Shuster to hire the four.

Gingrich intervened similarly on several other committees. The most dramatic case was Armed Services, now National Security, the only standing committee to operate with a nonpartisan staff. Incoming Chairman Floyd Spence of South Carolina announced he would keep all staffers except for the half-dozen identified personally with outgoing Chairman Ronald Dellums of California. But Gingrich insisted that no one hired by the Democrats could be kept on the new majority staff. The Republicans on National Security knew they would have trouble handling even the mechanics of packaging the 500-page annual National Defense Authorization Act, no less its content, if that standard were applied and the entire professional staff axed. After weeks of haggling, Spence was allowed to shelter 6 Democratic appointees while 25 were fired.

Another change touted as democratization eliminated proxy voting in committees. Members sit on multiple committees and frequently have overlapping commitments, so keeping up attendance is difficult. Reform advocates argued that legislators shouldn't be able to vote if they hadn't attended the debate. Who could argue with that? Except that was not really the point of the proxy change. Under Democratic rule, a chairman would collect sheaves of proxy voting slips assigning voting rights to the chairman, who frequently cast a quarter of the votes and sometimes even a majority. With the Republican change, billed as a reform, committee chairmen were stripped of another source of power.

Another tool of control is found in the ob-scure netherworld in which conferees are named. After a bill has passed both the House and Senate, it is assigned to a conference committee to iron out the differences. The two versions often carry amendments having little to do with the original purpose of the bill. These amendments would normally fall under the jurisdiction of another committee-for example, a labor amendment attached to an environmental bill. The appropriate committee of jurisdiction traditionally claimed the right to have conferees named from its membership.

In the past, this was a process refereed by the House Parliamentarian. He would determine whether the amendment fell within a committee's jurisdiction under House rules. If so, that committee got conferees. The speaker would sign off on the Parliamentarian's determination. But now that the speaker's office rules, the process is used to punish recalcitrant chairmen. One staffer tells of working on a bill that contained an amendment unrelated to his committee and wholly within the jurisdiction of the Transportation Committee. But Transportation Chairman Shuster had angered the speaker so the speaker's aide, Len Swinehart, refused to allow Shuster's committee to have any conferees on the issue. A message was being sent about who is now boss.

The speaker broke no rules. The naming of conferees has always been within the speaker's discretion. But previous speakers had allowed the process to be handled dispassionately. The current speaker sees the process as a power tool.

Under a succession of Democratic speakers, committees operated almost autonomously. There was surprisingly little interference or oversight by the speaker. He mediated conflicts between committees and dealt with legislation once it hit the floor, but how committees handled legislation before it reached the floor was largely their business.

The new speaker and majority leader, however, hold frequent meetings with all the committee chairmen. And the leadership's staff holds similar meetings with the committee staff directors. The leadership pushes its themes and urges committees to advance those themes. For example, during the first federal shutdown last year, all the committees were urged to hold hearings that would effectively place the blame on the White House rather than Congress. These leadership sessions mobilize peer pressure on recalcitrant chairmen to act as Republicans rather than as agents of the interest groups affected by their committees.

The leadership's staff also rides closer herd. Under Democratic leadership, staffers attended committee meetings, talked to Members and staffers, then wrote memos to the speaker listing what issues were important to which Members and outlining problems that could emerge on the House floor. The Democratic leadership staffers were essentially reporters who went to the committees. But Republican leader- ship staffers are managers who call committee personnel to the leadership's offices to take directions and to defend themselves.

Gingrich has moved to make the three committees with the broadest powers subject to leadership discipline. They are Appropriations (which determines budget funds), Ways and Means (which determines taxes and has jurisdiction over many entitlement programs) and Rules (which runs the floor operations of the House as a kind of traffic cop).

The Rules Committee was made to heel in the early 1960s when liberal Democrats balked at the way its southern chairman bottled up civil rights legislation. Democratic speakers named Rules Committee members and expected them to listen to the leadership. Gingrich decided it was time Appropriations and Ways and Means joined the leadership team. The chairmen of the 13 Appropriations subcommittees had been known as the College of Cardinals for their ability to act on their own. Gingrich required signed loyalty pledges from the 13 Republicans before he would assent to their taking chairmanships. He indicated he expected all members of the two committees to bow to the leadership on core Republican issues.

Gingrich's tactics are similar to those of Joseph G. Cannon, known as "Uncle Joe," who was speaker from 1903 to 1911. Cannon had immense power to bend the institution to the national perspective. He even personally named the members and chairmen of committees. "Uncle Joe," however, had something of the autocratic streak noted in another Uncle Joe (Soviet variety) which prompted a veritable rebellion that stripped Cannon of his office and future speakers of most institutional powers. Only now, more than eight decades later, is Speaker Gingrich regaining much of the authority Cannon lost.

From the Wright Side

One strong voice of disdain for Gingrich has long been that of Jim Wright, D-Texas, the House speaker from 1987 to 1989, who was hounded, harassed, pursued and pummeled by Gingrich over a book publishing deal until Wright finally resigned both his speakership and the Fort Worth, Texas, seat he held in the House for 34 years. Wright describes Gingrich's policies, proclaimed in the Contract With America, as "shallow as a saucer, distractionary . . . [and] woefully lacking in substance." And those are the nicest words Wright has for GOP policy.

But when it comes to running the House, Wright and Gingrich share the same track, although Wright thinks Gingrich blows the train whistle too much. "I have to say he did well tactically," Wright told Government Executive. "I have to give him an A on that." Wright says Gingrich is totally correct in trying to make the members on Appropriations and Ways and Means responsive to the leadership. Wright says that is exactly what he aimed to do. "I tried to cultivate the idea that these were major leadership committees and anyone desiring a place on them needed to be willing to be the servant of the Democratic Caucus, the speaker and the majority leadership," Wright said. "I was never able to make it come about to the degree I wanted." His problem was entrenched Democrats who had no intention of changing. When Gingrich took power, however, not a single Republican representative had been in office during the last Republican majority, which was in 1954. "It violated the divine right of kingship for the (Democratic) leadership to intervene" in a committee action, Wright said in a tone that signaled more than mere frustration. "He (Gingrich) didn't have to violate precedent."

But Wright cringed at the way Gingrich yanked Rep. Mark Neumann of Wisconsin off the Appropriations Committee when Neumann failed to support part of the GOP leadership's program. "You ought to lead by persuasion, not by punishment," Wright said. "We did these things in a more subtle way. We didn't try to embarrass people."

Wright told a story from the early 1980s, when he was Democratic majority leader under Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, who held the speakership from 1977 through 1986. The appropriations subcommittee chaired by the late Bill Natcher of Kentucky had rejected some education funds the Democratic leadership was touting as an example of how Democrats cared for education while Reaganauts didn't. Wright told Natcher the money was important and he was going to introduce an amendment on the floor to add the money. Wright did, and the amendment passed. But Wright "heard murmurs on the floor saying, 'We'll see what happens in conference,' a threat to abandon the funds in later negotiations with the Senate in the conference committee. So Wright had O'Neill appoint him as a conferee, a violation of the unwritten rule that congressmen who didn't serve on the Appropriations Committee didn't become conferees on appropriations bills. Natcher was offended, as Wright knew he would be, at this slight. It was too subtle for the general public to perceive but discernible to other congressmen as an insult, nevertheless. Wright said he offered Natcher a deal: If Natcher would protect the funds, Wright would never show his face in any conference meeting. Natcher caved.

The 1995 variant on this "Wright stuff" has a different ending. When the new Republican-controlled Appropriations Committee faced its very first conference committee with the Senate, Gingrich added Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip and No. 3 leadership person, as a conferee. And DeLay attended. Rather pointedly, the speaker had not even waited for a problem to develop before intervening.

Overall, Gingrich gets high marks from the man whose career he destroyed. "Who am I to fault a Republican leader who effectively pulled all those strings together? I wouldn't fault him. . . . I'm not averse to strong leadership. Otherwise the House tends to heterogeneity. Rival suzerainties rule. The House becomes awkward, clumsy, unwieldy." But Wright would like Gingrich to learn some subtlety. He said Gingrich has "much in common with Guy Fawkes," the embittered Englishman who found the solution to his disgust with Parliament in trying to blow it up in 1605.

The Republican Revolution

The Republican revolution shouldn't be exaggerated. All revolutions claim more than they accomplish. There are more interest groups out there than Gingrich can fathom, and there is more activity going on in the committees than Gingrich can get his hands around. Furthermore, some in the House feel Gingrich is not so much a policy wonk as a policy dabbler. Now that he has become speaker and has access to the dark recesses of the intelligence world, he has become enamored or, some would say, seduced by it. One example is his heavily publicized "covert" action proposal to budget $20 million to topple the government of Iran-an idea that denizens of the intelligence world, conservatives and liberals alike, generally view as naive.

On the National Defense Authorization Act, the largest single authorization bill to come before Congress each year, Gingrich last year got involved in only one topic: the Seawolf submarine. But when he got involved, he got deeply involved. Gingrich personally brokered a compromise by leading a long meeting that brought together all the powers, including the Navy secretary and the CEO of the prime contractor. This kind of detailed work was never before done by speakers. But Gingrich has become enamored of the Seawolf, which fits in with his futuristic vision.

The Speaker also intervened last year in the Commerce Committee's work on the telecommunications bill, ordering changes to benefit the "Baby Bells" at the expense of AT&T. And with the Banking Committee, he ordered changes in a bill the committee had already voted on to allow banks to sell insurance. Gingrich directed that the language be softened for the insurance industry and less beneficial to bankers. "There are 250 insurance men for every banker in America," Gingrich said, indicating that in this case his concerns were less policy than politics. But he was also imposing a national perspective on a committee known to be closer to bankers.

Words vs. Numbers

At the beginning of the new Republican era, there was considerable expectation that the so-called "authorizing" committees would become irrelevant. The authorization committees are the dozen committees that deal with "words," or policy, as opposed to the Appropriations Committee, which deals with "numbers," or budget sums. Many feared the powerful Appropriations Committee would become omnipotent. This was because Gingrich started his reign by using the 13 appropriations bills as vehicles for his confrontation with the Clinton Administration, knowing they had to be passed to keep the government functioning.

It wasn't long before all the members caught on and started tacking "words" onto the appropriations bills. In the most dramatic example, Rep. Robert K. Dornan, the California Republican who chairs the National Security Subcommittee on Military Personnel, an authorizing committee, successfully pushed a floor amendment tacking an abortion "words" amendment to the Defense Appropriations "numbers" bill. He recognized the reduced significance of his own committee's bill, and perhaps unconsciously, he thus contributed to its decline.

The worst expectations didn't come to pass, however. Chairman Livingston of Appropriations had a full plate and was not interested in a power grab, and he did not encourage the trend to make his committee omnipotent. Also, the loading down of appropriations bills with controversial words brought the legislative process to a grinding halt. Number disputes are readily compromised by just splitting the difference, but word disputes are complex. Dornan's abortion language held up the defense bill for weeks. An amendment to ban lobbying by groups that receive government funds brought action on the Transportation Appropriations bill to a complete halt more than four months into the fiscal year. Livingston was aghast. "This system begins to stop when you start piling too much on these bills," he was quoted as saying by The Wall Street Journal.

The authorizers are still in the ring, but they have become slightly less relevant and considerably less independent. Executive branch managers looking to get some issue addressed in legislation can still work with their authorizing committees. But, if their issue becomes too visible, they will have to contend with the prospect that Speaker Gingrich, his powerful staff or some other member of the Republican leadership will intervene. The message is: Keep a low profile.

When all is said and done, Gingrich has made one simple but far-reaching change. Committee chairmen are no longer barons running their own fiefdoms independent of the king. Now they are mere noblemen who must bow before the might of the emperor or risk losing all that makes them noblemen, including their heads. The speaker is no longer King John, forced by the barons to sign the Magna Carta recognizing their independent status. Speaker Gingrich is Czar Ivan the Terrible who lets no offense pass without swift retribution. This is not bloody-mindedness by Newt Gingrich. It is the cool calculation of a thoughtful politician who believes power exists only if it is exercised. Speaker Gingrich has carefully researched the authorities of his office and is exercising them-even such obscure powers as the naming of conferees.

Will It Last?

Some suspect all this is a momentary phase, not a permanent change. One scholar who observes the House says, "I'm skeptical about projecting current trends. Some chairmen are just waiting for the opportunity to reassert their autonomy. You have to ask: How much will Henry Hyde [Judiciary Committee chairman] and Bud Shuster take?"

This view assumes that what we have seen so far is historically unique. "What happened last year evolved from the unparalleled unity of the Republican freshman and sophomore classes [those elected in 1992 and 1994], from their lack of roots in the institution [of the House] and from their indebtedness to Newt Gingrich," the scholar says. But will this last? Many think the centralization of power seen in 1995 will turn out to be a brief zenith rather than a permanent power shift. They point out that the freshmen and sophomores criticized the institution of the House in their campaigns. But they aren't the first congressmen to do so. Even in the 19th century, it was popular for candidates to trash Congress and promise to do everything differently if elected. It's nothing new to damn "Potomac Fever." Yet somehow the "flaming freshmen" of yore tend to end up as the institutional leaders of tomorrow. That long view suggests to some that "Czar Gingrich" will be reduced to a mere speaker before long.

Will that mean a return to the old days of 435 independent baronies? Not necessarily. Yes, 1995 was probably a zenith for concentrated power, but when the GOP freshmen see electoral doom ahead, they may decide it is better to leave the herd and tend the home fires. As they stick around, they will want to stay around. They will learn the ways of Washington and want to be their own masters. Yes, the Henry Hydes will grab back power. When all is said and done, power in 1997 will not be as centralized as in 1995. But it may still be far more centralized than before Gingrich ascended to the speaker's chair.

]]>