Risk-averse managers targeted in homeland security debate

To build a good intelligence apparatus that gets critical information to top leaders, a new homeland security department must create "an environment that allows second- and third-tier managers to flourish [with] the right incentive systems," said Michael Bromwich, who served as inspector general at the Justice Department from 1994 until 1999.

Creating such incentives, he said, "is a matter of tone, of example, of exhortation, [and] of strategic planning in assigning top priority to these matters." It is easier to create incentives for a new organization than to incorporate them into a long-established bureaucracy, he added.

President Bush has recognized this information-flow challenge, not only by pushing for a centralized homeland security command but also by urging low-level intelligence experts to push back against risk-averse managers.

"If you're a front-line worker for the FBI, the CIA, some other law enforcement or intelligence agency, and you see something that raises suspicions, I want you to report it immediately," Bush said on June 6. "I expect your supervisors to treat it with the seriousness it deserves."

A critical test, said Bromwich, will come when an intelligence official sparks a firestorm, perhaps by opening himself or herself to charges of racial profiling. "There will be a lot of media and congressional pressure to hang him out to dry," Bromwich predicted.

Lower-level officials must be protected if those higher up want the new organization to be willing to act on incomplete information and make potentially controversial decisions, such as shutting down an airport the day before Thanksgiving, say intelligence experts.

"In the past, Congress and the press have excoriated CIA and FBI officers for alleged misdeeds.... From the point of view of the career officers, people were out there taking risks, and they got in trouble for it," said Jeffrey Smith, who was general counsel to the CIA in 1995 and 1996 and is now a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter.

A new Homeland Security Department will help deal with managers' aversion to risk because the department head's only responsibility will be homeland defense, said Stewart Baker, who was the general counsel at the National Security Agency from 1992 until 1994. The chief "has got to get that job done, and so he is less likely to be deterred by things that are potentially painful-bad press-than would someone for whom it is one of six jobs," said Baker, now a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson.

Moreover, once they are gathered in a focused organization, the lower-level intelligence experts and their midlevel managers should see a clear set of top-level customers for their work and also get constant guidance and support from the top, Baker said.

But Bill Arkin, an independent military analyst, argues that the government needs better intelligence analysts, not another bureaucracy. "Our problem from 1990 to the present is that we face a crisis of intelligence analysis ... because who wants to have a high-level job in the U.S. government as an intelligence analyst?"

Getting the right analysts and other staffers for the proposed department won't be easy, said Bromwich. They have to be trained well, understand how their enemy thinks, and, preferably, speak his dialect. "It is a lot easier said than done," Bromwich said.

Technology can help, but only after the department mission is made clear and a supportive bureaucratic culture starts to grow, Baker said.

"The culture comes first, not the technology," he said. But once culture and technology are in place and become complementary, each will foster the other, he predicted.