 President Bush was joined in the Rose Garden yesterday by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. (KRT Photo / Chuck Kennedy) |
Bush backs 9/11 panel's advicePlans antiterror center, seeks intelligence headWASHINGTON -- Nearly three years after the terrorist attacks on the United States, President Bush yesterday embraced the two main proposals by the 9/11 Commission for dramatically restructuring the nation's intelligence bureaucracy, asking Congress to create a new national intelligence director and announcing his administration's plans to establish a counterterrorism center to organize information from the nation's intelligence-gathering agencies.
"I want, and every president must have, the best, unbiased, unvarnished assessment of America's intelligence professionals," Bush said, announcing his decision in a Rose Garden appearance. Bush stopped short of accepting all the recommendations of the independent commission, whose final report last month triggered a rush to reorganize the government's system for analyzing national security information. Although the panel had proposed giving a national intelligence director authority over the budgets of the government's 15 intelligence agencies, Bush did not, and he also rejected a recommendation to make the new office part of the White House, and to give the director the power to hire and fire. The new director would be the primary adviser to the president on all intelligence matters and would have responsibility for coordinating the operations of the nation's 15 different spy agencies. The 9/11 Commission felt that the myriad agencies lacked a cooperative spirit and that one independent person was needed to oversee them all. The director would also oversee the counterterrorism center. In endorsing the panel's principal structural suggestions, Bush signaled his willingness to attempt a bureaucratic overhaul in the midst of a presidential campaign -- and opened an intense new phase in the political struggle over the issue of terrorism, already the centerpiece of the race. Within hours of the announcement, Senator John F. Kerry, who advocates all the panel's 40 recommendations, such as increasing diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and reaching out to moderate Muslims, accused Bush of continuing to delay changes that the Democratic nominee argued should have been underway for months, if not years. "If there is something that will make America safer, it should be done now, not tomorrow," Kerry said during a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Mich. "If the president had a sense of urgency about this director, and about the need to strengthen America, he would call the Congress back and get the job done now." Bush, who was initially reluctant to support the creation of the 9/11 Commission, dismissed Kerry's call for a special congressional session this month, arguing that lawmakers have already begun to consider the proposals and can wait until after their recess to take action. "They can think about them over August and come back and act on them in September," Bush said. Congress is split over how to proceed: While some members have interrupted their recess to hold hearings on the panel's report, including the House Government Reform Committee and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which have scheduled reviews today, others were quick to charge Kerry with politicizing the issue. House majority leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, accused Kerry of "opportunistic bluster," saying it was "pretty tough talk from a guy who has fewer days at work this year than he has houses." The White House sought to blunt criticism from not only Democrats but also Republican members of the commission, who said they would spend the month of August demanding that the administration enact their proposals. After Bush spoke, flanked by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice held a briefing for reporters to outline the reasoning behind the decision and to defend the areas where Bush departed from the panel's recommendations. Card, who was in charge of reviewing them, said the national intelligence director, as Bush envisioned it, would be the "primary intelligence officer for the president of the United States," replacing the director of central intelligence, a role that has been filled by the chief of the CIA since passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which would have to be amended by Congress. As a result, Card said, the new director "should have an awful lot of input into the development of any budgets in the intelligence community." Rice said the director would "strongly influence any final budget." The job would not, however, be located inside the White House, the president said, nor would it receive Cabinet-level status, as recommended by the panel. "I don't think that person ought to be a member of my Cabinet," Bush said. "I will hire the person, and I can fire the person. . . . I think it ought to be a standalone group, to better coordinate, particularly between intelligence and domestic intelligence matters." Still, Congress will have the final word on how the position is structured -- and could decide to modify the president's proposals. DeLay called Bush's decision to push for the creation of a national intelligence director "the right one. Our nation is still at risk, and never before has the need for a seamless national intelligence infrastructure been so great." Card said: "There are huge jurisdictional challenges that must be addressed by Congress. And since we do not play a role in that, that's part of the legislative branch responsibility, we'll work with them and encourage them to consider the recommendations, but we can't mandate that they do so." National security specialists gave a mixed response to Bush's approach; several said that without authority to directly control the budgets of the nation's spy agencies, the national director of intelligence would wield little power. As proposed, the position would not make much of a difference, they said. It "will make things worse because there will be one other person kibbitzing," said retired Lieutenant General William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. Odom and others said the establishment of a national counterterrorism center would likewise change very little, merely expanding the membership of the terrorist Threat Integration Center created last year. A senior intelligence official who asked not to be named described the president's call for both a national intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center as a "first step." The official said that without new legal power to overrule the variety of agencies that spend intelligence resources, the new position would not have much impact.
"I think it's an easy political fix, but not something that is going to make a significant difference in how the intelligence community does its work," the official said. "Unless the [new intelligence director] is given more control over resources, this is just another layer of bureaucracy." © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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