Intelligence test

(Washington, D.C.): We may have dodged a bullet. In its post-election lame duck session, the 108th Congress continued to resist intense pressure to approve a bill that purported to fix what ails the U.S. intelligence community (IC). Unless legislators are compelled to return after Thanksgiving for this purpose, the Nation will have been spared a well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive plan – one that purportedly addresses problems with the IC’s excessive bureaucracy and insufficient competitive intelligence collection and analysis, yet would do so in ways certain to result in more of the former and less of the latter.

Horatii at the Bridge

Thanks for this stay of execution are due principally to three chairmen: the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s General Richard Myers USAF and Duncan Hunter and James Sensenbrenner, leaders respectively of the House Armed Services and House Judiciary Committees. For their courage in the face of intense pressure from the 9/11 Commission and families, the White House, other legislators and the press, these men have earned the this column’s coveted “Horatius at the Bridge” Award, named for the ancient Roman who, according to legend, saved his city by singlehandedly keeping an enemy horde from gaining access to it.

Unlike the centuries-spanning fame earned by Horatius for his feat, those who have recently performed with similar valor have received nothing but harsh criticism. Presumably, this is because advocates of the intelligence reform bill understand a simple reality: The only way their legislation – or at least some of its most dubious provisions – could become law is if Congress were denied the opportunity fully to consider and debate such “reforms.”

‘The System is Broken’

It is no small irony that, at the same moment these Horatii are being castigated for opposing haste-makes-waste legislating, Capitol Hill is in tumult over language contained in another bill – the omnibus appropriations act – that could only have been adopted under similar circumstances. In the latter case, when no one was looking a couple of staffers reportedly inserted a wildly controversial provision affording heretofore unimaginable congressional access to individuals’ IRS tax returns.

The bipartisan sense of outrage over this dark-of-night maneuver was expressed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” by Senator John McCain, who rightly called it a prime example of how “the [legislative] system is broken.” Unfortunately, the same broken system produced the current 9/11 intelligence reform bill. In both cases, far-reaching decisions about the legislation’s final form were made behind closed doors by literally a handful of Senators, Representatives and staff. In both cases, artificial deadlines and the leadership’s understandable desire to exercise control over the process affords the rest of the Congress scarcely any opportunity even to review what is served up, let alone to propose and adopt needed changes.

Stay of Execution

As a result, had it not been for a warning expressed several weeks ago by Gen. Myers, there is every likelihood that the defective intelligence reform bill would by now have been signed into law. Thanks, however, to the Joint Chiefs chairman’s timely expression of concern about the impact this legislation would have on the timeliness and quality of intelligence provided to America’s war-fighters, that has not happened.

Armed with the Myers’ letter, the Armed Services Committee’s Rep. Hunter redoubled his campaign against, among other provisions, the bill’s transfer of direction and budgetary authority over defense intelligence programs from the Secretary of Defense to a newly created Director of National Intelligence. Some critics have seen in the Myers intervention the hand of current Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, whose head they would like to roll.

The “reformers” find this explanation less inconvenient than the alternative – and far more plausible – one: The apolitical, straight-shooting and Center for Security Policy Keeper of the Flame Award-winning Gen. Myers is persuaded that, from the U.S. military’s point of view, the present legislation is ill-advised, strategically and tactically. To his credit, Gen. Myers has had the guts to speak that truth to power.

Rep. Hunter was joined in his opposition at a decisive meeting Saturday of the House Republican caucus by Rep. Sensenbrenner, who was appalled at the conferees’ decision to remove several provisions added by the House of Representatives. The amendments were designed to counter terrorists seeking via illegal immigration to gain access to, and operate in, this country. A sufficient number of GOP House members agreed with these influential committee chairmen that Speaker Dennis Hastert decided to forego a vote on the bill until, at the earliest, next month.

The Bottom Line

In the days ahead, there will surely be demands that Congress force the intelligence bill through in December. Democrats will argue that doing so will be the sine qua non of bipartisan cooperation: Unless the President imposes lockstep discipline on his party, he is inviting even more aggressive use of obstructionist tactics by theirs. The press will make hay with Mr. Bush’s seeming inability to bend GOP congressional leaders and rank-and-file to his will. And within his own party, some will contend that this legislation is necessary, if not to prevent a future terrorist attack on our homeland, at least to keep Republicans from being blamed for it.

The truth of the matter is very different. The President, the Nation’s security and that of the American people will be better served if intelligence reform is conducted next year in a more deliberative, patient and orderly fashion. We should all be grateful to the three Horatii at the Bridge who made that possible.