Security adviser presses for new intelligence analysis agency

The president should create a new, stand-alone agency to serve as an "all-source fusion and analysis center" for intelligence related to potential terrorist attacks, the chairman of an influential counterterrorism commission told a House Armed Services subcommittee on Thursday.

"There are misgivings with the idea of a new agency, but frankly, our commission doesn't seem to see any other alternative," James Gilmore, chairman of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, told lawmakers during a hearing on the panel's fourth annual report to the president and Congress.

The formal report is due next month, but members of the panel, commonly known as the Gilmore Commission, decided to release certain recommendations in advance, to help "inform the current debate" as policymakers implement legislation to create a Homeland Security Department.

Gilmore said a separate office to analyze intelligence would help overcome the information "segregation" that has hampered the ability of the FBI, the CIA and other agencies to work together to identify terrorist threats. "This organization will be ... more directed and focused on the potential for gathering information with respect to international terrorist organizations operating within the United States," Gilmore said.

The commission said the new National CounterTerrorism Center should be an independent agency, appointed by the president with Senate consent. The panel said the agency's status should be similar to that of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the General Services Administration.

The agency should operate separately from the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Department, according to the commission. But it recommended the permanent transfer of some FBI and CIA counterterrorism analysts to the office, along with representatives from the department.

Noting that the FBI's primary mission is domestic law enforcement and that the CIA's main focus is foreign intelligence, Gilmore said the fusion center would be better suited than either of those agencies to collect, combine and analyze information on domestic threats posed by international terrorist groups.

"The challenge is less of technology than of culture," Gilmore said. "The culture of these organizations must be addressed. Leadership must be applied to change those cultures to make them interact and work together more appropriately."

But Gilmore emphasized that the new office should comply with the same intelligence and surveillance laws, and civil-liberties protections, as the FBI and CIA. "The goal here is not to simply violate people's rights but to have proper information sharing and properly gathered intelligence," Gilmore said.

But Republican Robert Simmons of Connecticut, a former CIA operations officer, worried that establishing a new intelligence agency might further complicate the process of identifying terrorist threats. "I wonder if, by creating a third organization that has a limited collection function ... you're not actually just creating another bureaucracy under the same constraints that will buy us nothing more than an additional level of bureaucratic problems," Simmons said.