Sign of the Times: House Intelligence Committee Criticizes NSA

t's not often that NSA is publicly rebuked. So sensitive is the agency's dual mission-code-making and code-breaking-that criticism, constructive or otherwise, is generally offered behind closed doors. But the Soviet Union is gone now, and NSA is in many ways a different agency than it was 10 or 15 years ago.

So perhaps a recent critique of the agency by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was simply a sign of the times. The GOP-led intelligence panel tore into NSA, saying previous attempts to repair management and budgetary shortcomings have been blunted by an agency that seems unwilling to change.

"The committee has concluded that very large changes in the National Security Agency's culture and method of operations need to take place, including changes in its budget methodology," the committee said in its fiscal 1999 report on the intelligence authorization bill. So concerned is the committee that it has threatened to take funds away from NSA if the agency "does not develop detailed strategic and business planning."

The committee says it has been forced to take serious action because NSA has resisted what the panel believed to be sensible reforms. "Outside management reviews, budget cuts and adds to reduce acquisition cycle time, plus cuts to lower the budget percentage allocated to support, were initiated in the fiscal year 1998 authorization process, but all have met resistance and have been deflected from their intended purpose," the committee said.

Further, the panel said NSA investments of money and personnel "in categories critical to the future" have been badly minimized: "NSA often cannot track allocations for critical functions that cross the old program and bureaucratic lines," the committee added.

The panel, chaired by Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., concluded that a "far more radical revision" of NSA's budget process is necessary. "Just as the military must train the way it will fight, NSA must budget according to the critical categories of a new and completely different architecture and mode of operations," the committee said.

And, perhaps most difficult of all, the agency will need to create a new culture in which a team effort produces a unified vision for the future, "rather than bubbling up disparate ideas and programs from across NSA and expending much of its energy on probable duplication," the committee said.