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LUCY MORGANThe departing senator is pitching an ROTC-style college program to train future government intelligence agents.
TALLAHASSEE - U.S. Sen. Bob Graham sees a new role for himself when he leaves office in January.
He quietly has stashed money in the budget of the National Security Agency to start a pilot program to train future intelligence agents.
While the Reserve Officers' Training Corps prepares college students for the Army, Graham sees his brainchild as a solution to a problem related to the intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
A shortage of intelligence agents schooled in the culture and languages of the Middle East hampered the country's ability to penetrate terror cells, Graham said Thursday at Capital Tiger Bay in Tallahassee.
Graham was there to tout his new book, Intelligence Matters, The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia and the Failure of America's War on Terror. In it Graham says President Bush's leadership failures are so serious he should be removed from office.
Congress is considering intelligence reforms to avoid similar terrorist attacks, but Graham said success largely depends on Bush.
A senator since 1986 and Florida's governor for the eight years before that, Graham will be a private citizen for the first time in 39 years when he leaves office.
Graham ducked a question about whether he would take a job in a possible John Kerry administration, but joked his title might be "Super Doodle." That's the name his grandchildren call him when he's been an especially good grandfather.
National intelligence agencies now spend six or seven years training college graduates to work in other countries and often have to teach them the language, Graham said. Training college students could dramatically increase the talent and number of trained agents.
"He sees himself as the sort of godfather of the program," said Graham spokesman Paul Anderson.
Graham said he hopes to establish a leadership institute at a state university or a consortium of universities and would like to see the intelligence training program linked to the institute, Anderson said.
The first year's appropriation, a secret because it is included in the NSA's intelligence budget, will establish four pilot programs at universities. Although the schools have yet to be officially selected, the programs are likely to be at the University of Florida and the University of Miami, said Mary Chiles, Graham's statewide staff director.
At least one of the universities is likely to be in California, where Graham's former chief of staff, Charlie Reed, is university chancellor. Reed has advised Graham on establishing the program, Anderson said.