Chairman of 9/11 commission calls on Pentagon to support reform

The chairman of the 9/11 commission on Tuesday said he sensed resistance to governmental reform coming from the Pentagon and called for a unified effort to make needed changes.

"Reorganizing government is very, very hard. We recognized that when we made the recommendation and we made the decision to [recommend] it anyway, because it's the right thing to do," the panel's chairman, Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor from New Jersey, told Government Executive. Kean said he sensed that the Pentagon's leadership was resisting some of the commission's recommendations for overhauling the intelligence community.

"I know that any time you move around power, you have resistance," he added. "We believe that people have to work together. There has to be a unified intelligence effort, and we believe we've recommended the right way to do that. But everybody's got to participate,and everybody's got to be part of it, including the Defense Department."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and acting CIA Director John McLaughlin testified Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee in response to the commission's recommendations.

Rumsfeld and McLaughlin expressed concern about creating a national intelligence director with as much power as the commission recommends. McLaughlin serves as both CIA director and chief of the central intelligence community. The Pentagon, however, controls about 80 percent of the $40 billion U.S. intelligence budget because eight of the nation's 15 intelligence agencies are within the Defense Department.

If the commission's proposals were adopted, a new national intelligence director operating inside the White House would manage the intelligence budget and have the power to hire and fire personnel, including officials at the Pentagon and CIA.

"If a consolidation of those agencies outside DoD were to be considered, we should be certain that it would actually help resolve the intelligence-related problems and difficulties that have been described by the 9/11 commission and that we face, and that they would not create additional problems," Rumsfeld said. "As an example of the latter, we would not want to place new barriers or filters between the military combatant commanders and those agencies when they perform as combat-support agencies. It would be a major step to separate these key agencies from the military combatant commanders, which are the major users of such capabilities."

McLaughlin cautioned against making any changes that would diminish intelligence support to military officials in the field.

"Speed and agility are not promoted by complicated wiring diagrams, more levels of bureaucracy, increased dual-hatting or inherent questions about who is in charge," he said.

McLaughlin added, however, that he believes the national intelligence director should have control over budgets and the authority to move people and resources.

Kean, who was interviewed before he heard testimony from the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the commission never recommended taking intelligence away from military commanders in the field.

"Nobody handling intelligence is not going to put the warfighter first," he said. "But remember that the citizen has got to be protected too. What we're trying to do is [create] something that does the whole job, and I think our recommendations will do that."

Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., also expressed concern about the proposed reforms on Tuesday.

"I'm of the opinion that we should not try and do the whole 9/11 in a single stroke," he said.

He said he "strongly endorsed" the idea of passing a law that formalizes cooperation between the defense secretary and director of central intelligence.

"I think if we did that, that would remove some of the concerns that the commission had," Warner told McLaughlin. "Perhaps we could change it so you're on an absolute co-equal status and give you the title of [national intelligence director] and try it for a while and see if it would work."

Warner also said McLaughlin's salary could be increased to a level equal to that of a Cabinet secretary.

"Why would I argue against that?" McLaughlin replied.