As reported in The Seattle Times, the 9-11 commission report recommends creating a new intelligence center, and to run that center "a new Senate-confirmed national intelligence director, reporting directly to the president at just below full Cabinet rank, with control over intelligence budgets and the ability to hire and fire deputies, including the CIA director and top intelligence officials at the FBI, Homeland Security Department and Defense Department."
Certainly, we have to do something. This sounds as good as anything, I suppose. But I already see trouble. First of all, you are placing a lot of power in the hands of one man, and I don't really see any checks or balances. What if this person is highly partisan, and that influences hiring/firing decisions, or what intelligence gets filtered up through this single bottleneck to the president and Congress? What if this person holds to a certain ideology, say for example neo-con, and therefore views and filters everything from a perspective of justifying pre-emptive attacks and a specific agenda?
And how will this change one of the key factors influencing information sharing in my mind -- money? If this one person controls the budgets, then instead of intelligence agencies jealously guarding intel or jurisdictions so that they can prove their value and avoid budget cuts by Congress or the president as much as possible, aren't they just going to do the same with the intelligence director? Won't they all be trying to prove their worth to this one person holding all the money?
I don't know. Obviously, this isn't even a reality yet, nor do we have all the details, but somehow, especially after these proposals go through the fun political process of budget limitations, compromises, pork barrel deals, lobbyist influence, military-industrial/ corporate protectionism, and all the rest, I'm not holding my breath for the commission's recommendations to be implemented in anything resembling a highly effective solution.
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