Opinion: Adapt operations to threat

A Times Editorial

Adapt operations to threat

Without casting blame -- there is plenty to go around -- we know that the events of Sept. 11 caught our intelligence services short. Clearly, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not have the operatives and intelligence-gathering network in place to know what Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network were planning on U.S. soil.

Congress has promised to address the problems that obviously exist in our intelligence services. That will require more than just pouring more money into the CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies. Major systemic and cultural problems must be addressed. The chairmen of both intelligence oversight committees in Congress are Florida lawmakers -- Democrat Bob Graham in the Senate and Republican Porter Goss, from Sanibel, in the House. However, there are doubts about whether they have the resolve to do the job.

Goss is a former case officer for the CIA and has been accused in the past of carrying water for CIA Director George Tenet, rather than scrutinizing CIA operations and providing real oversight. To his credit, Goss has been more forthright since Sept. 11 in expressing his concerns and has promised an inquiry. Still, he refuses to acknowledge that what happened was an intelligence failure. This kind of denial makes one wonder whether he will be a credible auditor.

Graham also has a history of being less than aggressive in addressing the agencies' managerial problems and entrenched culture -- which has seemed at times to be more about protecting turf than protecting the United States. Publicly at least, Graham's focus since the attacks has been in providing these agencies broader surveillance powers and more money. That said, a recent bright spot has been Graham's leadership in sidelining the CIA's involvement in assisting the Peruvian Air Force in shooting down suspected drug flights. Earlier this year, that program led to the downing of an American missionary plane and the death of two people. With unusual candor, Graham said the deaths were caused by a "lack of judgment displayed by key individuals (in the CIA)," and his committee recommended that the program be indefinitely suspended until a series of sweeping safeguards are adopted.

We need that kind of conviction in a broader investigation of the CIA. Something is seriously wrong at that agency. We knew that terrorists were plotting to strike American targets at home and abroad. Even after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and all the virulent anti-Americanism of Islamic extremists, the CIA employed only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speakers and did little human intelligence-gathering in the hottest areas of the world.

In a recent report in the New Yorker, writer Seymour Hersh describes the state of affairs at the CIA. According to a former agent, the collection of human intelligence in Afghanistan and other countries in Central Asia had nearly ground to a halt. "The agency was going away," said Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer for the Middle East -- one of the few who actually spoke Arabic. Due to the agency's suffocating bureaucracy, Baer said he often spent his days watching CNN. "No one cared," he said.

The public has a right to ask: What exactly have our intelligence services been doing with the $30-billion taxpayers fork over every year? We don't know, because the budgets of the federal intelligence services are classified information. Every year, we are told not to ask questions, just trust that the money is being spent wisely. But now, after the events of Sept. 11, there is a clear justification for greater transparency, accountability and congressional oversight.

Graham and Goss can no longer afford to mollycoddle Tenet and other agency heads who did not adapt their operations to the threat of terrorism.