Well Shane, let me take the bait and propose what I believe is the only effective means to reform US intelligence – a new law.   And permit me to stay with your medical analogy. The US intelligence patient needs a cure, not just treatment of symptoms. But before I propose the cure, I must explain where intelligence reform really is today. 

             Contrary to popular belief, the 2004 IRTPA did not fundamentally change -- and it certainly did not reform -- the functioning of the intelligence community. And the much touted revisions to E.O 12333 simply reiterated the lack of change legislated by the IRTPA. 

             Today’s intelligence community essentially operates the same way it has for the past 60-some years. It is not an integrated enterprise; it is simply an aggregation of individual agencies and components that work for various cabinet secretaries, except for CIA which is an independent agency. And as such, sometimes these agencies cooperate with one another and sometimes they do not. Moreover, the “head” of US intelligence, the DNI, is not the CEO of US intelligence. He is a coordinator of this aggregation, as was the former position of DCI. And, as a coordinator, the DNI has no direct command and control over any major intelligence agency or component, save his own office.  

             What has changed under the IRTPA is that the CIA is no longer the first among equals across the intelligence agencies, as was the case under the DCI regime. Former DCI’s had direct authority over and responsibility for the CIA, and that tended to benefit CIA in the intelligence community coordination processes. Splitting the old DCI position into a DNI and Director of CIA has leveled the playing field among the intelligence agencies, but this is a change in form, not a change in function. And, CIA was not “central” to managing the intelligence community.  DCIs had separate community staffs to support their community coordination efforts, and those staffs where not in the CIA proper. 

             Of course, under the DNI, some advances in intelligence capabilities have been made, but not as a result of the IRTPA. The types of improvements made by the previous two DNIs are the same kinds of limited, evolutionary advances that have been made for decades under the old DCI regime, where community staffs pushed forward efforts to enhance intelligence community operations. The big improvements in US intelligence have almost always been technological and driven by the individual agencies for the purposes of improving individual agency performance. Unfortunately, such improvements simply keep the total intelligence capabilities of the community equal to the sum of its parts, while the goal of an integrated enterprise is to make the capabilities of the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

             To correct the fundamental operational and organizational problems that led to the 9/11 and Iraq WMD debacles, the community must become an integrated enterprise, not just remain an aggregation of sometimes cooperative agencies. And, almost everyone familiar with US intelligence agrees with this goal. Most proposed improvements, however, represent the same old marginal, sometimes Pollyannaish, adjustments to the system that have been offered up – and adopted – in the past, such as better leadership, better people, better pay, better information systems, better coordination, better personnel systems, etc. And of course, all of these types of improvements are helpful, but none of them have fundamentally changed how the community functions, nor have they changed the dysfunctional, agency-oriented culture fostered by the existing intelligence system. True integration -- jointness in the military lexicon -- will never occur under the IRTPA, just like it never occurred under the DCI regime, because the DNI does not possess the legal and bureaucratic ability to make it happen.  

             To create a true intelligence enterprise requires the intelligence system be organized, managed, and operated as an integrated -- joint -- system.   Today’s -- and yesterday’s -- hope that individual agencies will work together has not created truly integrated intelligence operations. And the bilateral cooperation between agencies, some of which has occurred, is not integration. Only a change in the law can set the foundation for an integrated intelligence system, just like a new law was needed to force integrated (joint) military operations among the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines -- the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. 

             To actually reform US intelligence, integrated (joint) operational units must be created to  bring together all of the intelligence capabilities across the individual agencies to carry out intelligence missions – i.e., understanding and warning about the major international threats facing our nation, such as terrorism, China, Iran, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, etc. Using a military analogy, the DNI needs his own combatant commands and combatant commanders to carry out these missions. And, these intelligence mission commands cannot effectively operate unless the major agencies and the commands come under the command and control of the DNI. Only an intelligence version of the Goldwater-Nichols Act can create these intelligence mission commands and make the DNI the CEO of US intelligence. Nothing less will lead to an integrated -- and truly reformed -- intelligence community that promotes a culture emphasizing the mission first, and individual agency interests second.  

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I agree with Mike on both the issue of covert action and the leadership of CIA.  On the former, the President needs some flexibility regarding covert action overseas.  The military bureaucracy is good at special ops.  But, special ops is not covert action.  Moreover, there are considerable legal implications for combatents engaging in covert action out of uniform vice civilian spies.  As for spies versus military, when it comes to flexibility I'll take the spies.

As for the leadership at CIA, which remains -- like it or not -- the centerpiece of human intelligence and all-source analysis in the Community, I am troubled that for the first time we have someone running the place who has next to no experience in the intelligence business -- except as a tangential consumer.  While the experienced pro Mike Kappas will remain as Deputy, he is not the ultimate decision maker.  At some point, we need to have a D/CIA system that, like the FBI, installs a professional law enforcement/judge for a specific period of time. 

It seems to me that giving covert action to the Pentagon is like asking your sclerotic dowager aunt to play one-on-one against against LeBron James.  Mr. James would have a hundred points before dear auntie got her sweat pants off.  Auntie's heart would be in the right place, but she would always arrive too late because she had to wait for the appropriate paperwork from her battery of doctors.

One other passing thought on intelligence reform:  Why not sent one honest man or woman with integrity to run the CIA?  Of course finding one in this administration might be a tall oder.  We have: a president who has no experience at anything, domestic or foreign, except grinding the word "change"into the ground and having a talent for picking scofflaws for his closest asscoiates; a Secretary of State who, with her husband, is accepting millions of dollars from Arab tyrants against whom she is suppose to protect U.S. interests; a treasury secretray who was not aware the tax code applied to him; an attorney general whose reported speciality is helping presidents sell pardons to international fugitives; a chief of staff to the president who abandoned America during the 1991 Gulf War to serve Israel and so could never get an Intelligence Community clearance to access the sensitive data he now listens to daily; a potential CIA chief who gives speeches at $28K a pop for bankers he knew had greedily ruined the economy (Perhaps he was paid from funds in the first  bailout?);  and any number of aspiring cabinet members who seem to think paying taxes is an old-fashioned and optional activity.

After this litany, in fact, it might be more appriopriate to send a few talented CIA and IC officers to clean-up and reform the already highly malodorous Obama administration.   Those folks could, at least, pass a polygraph examination. 

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When we worked on Homeland Security 3.0 (September 2008) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Heritage Foundation, we took a long look at everything that has been done since 9/11 and we found a lot of good with each individual effort but we concluded something was still fundamentally lacking. Here is the problem as we saw it in the report and the answer.

The Problem:

An adequate national framework for implementing domestic intelligence is lacking. New intelligence missions have emerged following the 2001 attacks—at Pentagon for homeland defense, at the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the creation of new institutions to include the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counter Terrorism Center.  The FBI, too, is transforming from focusing primarily on criminal prosecution to terrorism prevention today.  From the threat side, an increase in radicalization and recruitment of radicalized individuals presents a distinct threat—with individuals unconnected operationally with al-Qaeda’s leadership, or from known linkages to international terrorist networks. This is a worsening global problem, which the United States is not immune. What intelligence is required, who is responsible for collection, what methods are permitted, and how that intelligence can be used or shared, are all questions that have at best been addressed in a piecemeal and incoherent fashion .   

The Answer

The president should issue an executive order for establishing a national domestic intelligence framework that clearly articulates how intelligence operations at all levels should function to combat terrorism while keeping citizens safe, free, and prosperous. This framework must articulate how the homeland security and counterterrorism community, particularly local law enforcement will conduct counter-radicalization efforts.  In particular, such a framework must establish who can collect domestically and why, what can be collected and how, and how the government will coordinate and oversee this process.  Most important, this doctrine must clearly articulate how all activities will support the dual priorities of enhancing security and protecting the liberties of a free society.

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Some more excellent and provocative ideas on our roundtable, most recently Robert Baer’s suggestion that Dennis Blair “give covert action to the Pentagon.” Baer has other interesting ideas, too, but that one jumped out at me. Probably Jim Clapper, too, if he’s reading.

Along the lines of what can DNI Blair and company do to ignite the kind of change—cultural or otherwise—that our experts have said the intelligence community needs, I offer this brief selection of comments. It’s by no means exhaustive.

Ron Marks: “This is one of those issues that the DNI office could have some effect on -- determining with some precision what the customers [of intelligence] really want and need from IC analysis.  It should certainly be one of top concerns for DNI Blair.” And on Congress: “Remember that both the House and Senate have ‘select’ committees.  Members serve at the request and direction of the leadership. … Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi must see to it that Intelligence and its reform are part of their agenda.”

Michael Scheuer: “The best way to ‘reform’ the Intelligence Community is to begin to kill our transnational enemies -- terrorists, proliferators, gangsters, and nacotrafiickers -- each and every time an opportunity arises or can be produced.”

Wayne White: “If a cross-community security clearance could be worked out, perhaps the most significant breakthrough in information flow could be achieved.”

There are many more insightful comments from more than a dozen of our experts, including Richard Hart Sinnreich’s observation that intelligence consumers—not producers—are responsible for many of the most serious intelligence failures. The discussion thread remains open!

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I would be surprised if this administration has the political capital to push through intelligence reform, at least as long as it's looking into the abyss of a depression. I'd imagine Blair and Panetta's marching order will be no intelligence scandals. What it can do is make long overdue improvements.  Here's what I would do if I were Blair:

1.  Link data bases. I find it almost unbelievable that seven years after 9/11 the FBI, State, and Immigrations cannot run an electronic trace in raw CIA and NSA databases. This doesn't mean the FBI should have full access, but rather a Google-like search capacity. If it finds a hit, it could then start negotiations for full access and terms for using the information. You'd be surprised the information in those acres of computers at the CIA and NSA.

2. Reduce the CIA presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under political pressure, the CIA has its best officers in these two countries -- and way, way too many.  in my personal experience the military when it has troops on the ground collects better intelligence than the CIA. The CIA then could shift officers to the black places on the map -- the West Bank, southern Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia, Pakistan, Nauru.

3. The CIA and DIA need a cadre of officers that can go where other American officials can't. A sort of dirty dozen. DIA needs to be able to insert a native speaking Arabic officer into Beirut, posing as an arms dealer, even going through the motions of selling arms to Hizballah. If this means the officer having a lower clearance, so be it. 

4. Give covert action to the Pentagon. The CIA is filled with liberal arts majors. They don't like covert action. They don't do it well.

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One of the more interesting hangovers of the pre-9/11 period is the continued insistence that the IC serves the President and the President alone; especially at CIA.  In reality, that is not the case -- nor frankly has it been for some time. 

The current customers of the IC have expanded beyond the usual national security policymakers (State/DOD) to now including those new "IC Partners" involved in homeland security -- everyone from the Transportation Security Administration to the Centers for Diesase Control.  The IC's ability to serve those customers, sadly, has not been good. They have often been treated like third cousins come from out of town to borrow money -- given a pittance and sent away wanting.

The bottom line for all these problems lies in the IC All-Source analysts incapability of thinking of any of these organizations as customers -- State/INR being a notable exception.  The typical approach has been to give'em what is produced.  The feedback mechanism from the policymakers has been weak at best -- despite efforts by former ADCI for Analysis and Production Dr. Mark Lowenthal's efforts during his stint in office.  In many ways, a reflection of the Soviet Union's production and consumption methods.  We make brown shoes, you get brown shoes.

This is one of those issues that the DNI office could have some effect on -- determining with some precision what the customers really want and need from IC analysis.  It should certainly be one of top concerns for DNI Blair.  In DC, there is nothing worse than being irrelevant.  The Obama people will have little patience with stale, untailored analysis.

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So far, most comments have focused on intelligence providers. But a case can be made that our most serious recent “intelligence failures” have had more to do with its consumers. Evidence isn’t hard to cite: after 9-11-01, the intelligence community was accused of insufficient imagination; two years later, when the justification for invading Iraq lay in shreds, the same community was pilloried for exhibiting too much imagination.

Decision-makers get the intelligence they deserve. Years ago, one of my students at the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth wrote a monograph entitled “Reading the Entrails of Goats,” a literate, lucid, and utterly damning indictment of the military’s recurring efforts to turn its intelligence officers into soothsayers. Instead, he argued convincingly, no amount of collection however extensive and analysis however meticulous ultimately can relieve the commander himself of the responsibility to judge what intelligence to act upon and how.

What’s true of military commanders is even more true of political decision-makers. The reality is that, confronted with information susceptible of being interpreted in more than one way -- and that characterizes almost all intelligence – decision-makers’ invariable tendency is to choose the interpretation that confirms whatever course of action they prefer anyway.

None of this argues against the very thoughtful suggestions offered by other commentators to improve intelligence production and oversight.  Doubtless better ways can be found to generate and present intelligence, a more sensible balance achieved between technical and human sources, and improved procedures developed to coordinate and monitor the efforts of competing intelligence agencies. But long experience, our own and others’, should curb exaggerated expectations that changes in organization and procedures alone, however well-intended, will enable us to evade future misjudgments. We’ve heard similar arguments after every strategic surprise from Pearl Harbor to 9-11. Heads have rolled and organizations and procedures have been changed. The problem persists.

In the end, intelligence will never be any better than the wisdom and prudence with which it is applied. If Adm. Blair can come up with some more reliable mechanism through which to institutionalize consumer skepticism about and caution in applying the intelligence he’s charged with furnishing, he’ll do both those consumers and the providers a favor.

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 Amy Zegart has hit on a very important point regarding any IC reforms -- the role of the Congress.  Adapting a quote from a former Vice President, what this country could really use is Congressional oversight.  In that crucial role, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees have been sorely lacking.

There are some very good staff and members of both committees fighting an uphill battle -- let's face it, no one is going to get reelected on intelligence reform.  And, it is tempting to go on at great length regarding collective "failures": not producing authorization bills, "gotcha" reviews of programs, and some staff less devoted to reform and oversight than chastising their former intelligence agency employers.  Those are symptoms of a deeper challenge.

The blame for this "intelligence drift" on reform has to go squarely to the Congressional leadership.  Having served as Intelligence Counsel to two Senate Majority Leaders, let me tell you -- if they care, things get done.  Remember that both the House and Senate have "select" committees.  Members serve at the request and direction of the leadership.  That being said, the leadership must care about what these committees do and how they get things done for the process to be truly effective.

Bottom line:  Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi must see to it that Intelligence and its reform are part of their agenda.  It may not be sexy politics, but it is crucial to successful national security.

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The best way to "reform" the Intelligence Community is to begin to kill our transnational enemies -- terrorists, proliferators, gangsters, and nacotrafiickers -- each and every time an opportunitry arises or can be produced.  The "failure of intelligence" more often than not is a failure of political will to act in a lethal manner.  As a result, the world is now awash in transnational enemies of America.  Their numbers are so large that the Intelligence Community really cannot do anything but collect ever-more intelligence about those miscreants who their effete leaders will not kill.  The military, of course, is the preferred kliing agent, but some intelligence agencies could pitch in and do their share.  Killing enough of these folks and their supporters might make each of the transnational threats more containable through the use of the intelligence and Special Forces communities.  Today, there are far too many of them, they simply overwhelm the capabilities of the IC and Special Forces.

A final major intelligence reform for each of us to consider is that no American should ever vote for a politician who. in wartime or during a threat to America, harbors the idea that a foreign life has just as much value as an American's.

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Twenty-six years in the Intelligence Community (State/INR) left me with the impression that no single organizational fix would ever substantially improve results.  And many have placed far too much emphasis on structural changes aimed at improving the overall intelligence product.  I personally believe the jury is still out on whether the creation of the DNI architecture has been an overall success--and, if so, to what degree.

That said, one key organizational (or structural) impediment to the richest possible dissemination of the all-important data available to analysts across the Intelligence Community is the far too restricted flow of information between agencies--something already noted in this discussion.  However, agencies have never been able to slice through the Gordian Knot of mistrust surrounding the security clearances issued by other agencies.  If a cross-community security clearance could be worked out, perhaps the most significant breakthrough in information flow could be achieved.  Yet, the difficulty of achieving this goal cannot be underestimated.  I once sat on an organizational working group back in the 1990's with the objective of breaking down inter-agency problems related to information sharing, and the exercise effectively came to an end when the security arms of two agencies in particular objected vigorously to any proposals that would take down the firewalls in place that had played such a major role in blocking precisely such coordination.

Top notch analysts are, of course, a major factor in all this.  However, they often are, yes, connecting too few dots, so analytic skill--even instinct--is critical to filling in the blanks.  Consequently, acquiring the best possible analytic talent is of inestimable importance.  Yet, we all are human, and even exceptionally good analysts will continue, here and there, to ascribe too much rationality to a  somewhat less predictable actor, too much irrationality to a leader or state that frequently behaves quite rationally, place too little weight on certain pieces of raw intelligence (and vice versa), and subconsciously slip into the rut of trying to fit incoming intelligence into gut theories of what drives certain individuals, states, or organizations and what fundamentally perpetuates various challenging problems.  Additionally, in the face of predictable differences of opinion among analysts, compromises will continue to be made in national intelligence products that leave the decisionmaker without a clear line of thinking upon which to base his or her own policymaking.  Finally, the products most commonly driving policy are not the NIE's that garner so much public attention, but much shorter and timely intelligence products.  NIE's are too long for many busy policymakers to digest in any case.  By contrast, analyses spanning the vast gaps between NIE's usually are compressed into formats that too often leave decisionmakers without a rich enough understanding of an actor or crisis.

One oddity that I found rather inexplicable (at least on the civilian side of decisionmaking at the most senior levels) was the frequent absence of any representative of the relevant portion of the Intelligence Community or even an agency's own intelligence shop in the room when the big calls were made.  As a result, misperceptions resulting from intelligence products that were either misread at the highest levels or were too short to convey adequate understanding needlessly influenced policymaking in its vital last stage.  Perhaps the access gained by the DNI has reduced this problem, at least at the White House.  But, organizationally, it is this last problem, plus inadequate intelligence sharing, that I found most frustrating in numerous episodes when policymaking fell short.  

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Let me sum up the discussion so far with a set of medical analogies. (I’m not a doctor, but I play one online.) Most of our experts appear to agree that legislative prescriptions are not the best course of treatment for what ails the intelligence community. At base, our patient is suffering from a “cultural” sickness, and we see the symptoms manifest in various ways.

Excessive secrecy, for instance. “The system is too balkanized by security concerns to support effective use of all-source intelligence,” Loren Thompson points out, citing a frequent criticism. “The next time you go to a craft fair at the Dulles Expo Center, take a look at the National Reconnaissance Office across the street. Four buildings that are barely connected, architecturally or culturally.  One does imagery, one does eavesdropping, but the twain seldom meet.”

Amy Zegart tells us that deep-seated cultural divides show up in FBI field offices, as well, where intelligence analysts have to fight for turf among the G-Men. “Special agents who carry guns and wear badges are still the heart and soul of the FBI. Egghead analysts are not allowed to run any of the Bureau's 56 U.S. field offices. They don't even run the vast majority of the FBI's most important intelligence units: the Field Intelligence Groups. And they are not treated as equal partners. As one analyst told me, ‘how can I tell an agent to read my report when I'm the guy taking out the trash?’”

Brian Michael Jenkins notes that there have been some “undeniable achievements” since 9/11. Reform is not lost, perhaps. . “As a consequence of concerted intelligence and law enforcement efforts worldwide, terrorists now operate in a more perilous environment. Many of their key operational planners, as well as lower-level operatives, have been taken out of action. Numerous terrorist plots have been discovered and thwarted.” But he sums up the arguably pessimistic view shared, I think, by most of our experts so far, and it gets to my initial point: “Reorganization can be legislated, but cultural change takes years.”

In writing about intelligence reform, I think that “culture” is the word I hear most often. Culture is what keeps agencies from acting as a coordinated, nimble network. It’s what keeps the FBI from talking to the CIA. It’s what keeps information locked away in silos, where it perishes. It’s what keeps the intelligence community from operating like a “21st century” information organization. We can argue over all that, and what a 21st century information organization really is, but for the purpose of present discussion, let’s presume that culture is the key issue. Then how do you change a culture? 

Our experts offer some ideas.  

"Obama's ‘Yes we can’ message galvanized a country,” Zegart says. “He now needs to bring that campaign message to Congress, and the intelligence committees directly, making clear that if Congress wants to be an equal partner in intelligence oversight, it has to start acting like one.”

Ron Marks suggests that new DNI Denny Blair resolve some of these problems by creating “a vastly slimmed down DNI with greater focus on a few, well-delineated fundamental issues would serve the IC no end of good.” So, get leaner and meaner. 

And Sen. Kit Bond, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the DNI needs to take charge, and make clear that he is the director of the intelligence community, not its coordinator.

These are only a few of the proposed remedies thus far. I’d be interested in hearing more ideas on how to revive our patient.

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"takfiri jihadis."  I guess my fingers are too big.

I think that the organizational "fixes" that have been made to the national intelligence community are quite enough.

The long standing "problem" (for all us non-CIA folks) of the conflict of interest inherent in the way the DCI was also Director of CIA has been resolved.  The DNI position must be held by a leader of vision, strength of character and intellect.  Is Admiral Blair that person?  I suppose that we will find out. 

The competence of US clandestine HUMINT remains the "long pole in the tent" with regard to the basic issues of the struggle with the takfifi jihadis.  The distaste of the American people for such activities remains a powerful obstacle to full development of that particular form of intelligence collection. 

I never thought that the 9/11 intelligence failure was a failure of analysis, i.e., a failure to "connect the dots."  I have always thought that the problem was that there were not enough dots for the analysts to connect.  In other words, the failure was one of information collection rather than analysis.  Has that failure in the HUMINT area been "fixed."  I do not know but the fact that we have not captured or killed "the tallest man in Afghanistan" gives one pause. 

At the tactical level of military operations, the Army has many problems in the intelligence field.  After Vietnam, the Army decided that it would choose to believe that intelligence collection and analysis is about technology.  Takfifir jihadis do not make a satisfactory collection target for technology driven methods.  One can only hope that the Army will find its way out of that thicket.

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What can you say about an enterprise that spends a billion dollars per week, but after eight years still can't find the tallest guy in Afghanistan?  Probably that more money isn't going to fix the problem.

Speaking as one of the rare contributors who manage to get by without a security clearance, I believe that the biggest single challenge to productivity in the intelligence community is secrecy.  The system is too balkanized by security concerns to support effective use of all-source intelligence.

The next time you go to a craft fair at the Dulles Expo Center, take a look at the National Reconnaissance Office across the street.  Four buildings that are barely connected, architecturally or culturally.  One does imagery, one does eavesdropping, but the twain seldom meet.

Secretary Gates has been pushing to tear down bureaucratic barriers to the sharing of intelligence products, but it will take a long, long time to remove the cultural constraints.  Too many people benefit from the status quo.

We now need to focus on some fundamental issues to improve our intelligence capability.  I would start in five areas:

1. People.
Good intelligence, like most human endeavors, starts with good people.  Attracting and retaining top quality people to work in intelligence should be the top priority.  As in the rest of government, the pay, benefits, and personnel management practices in the intelligence community have lagged far behind the private sector.  Too many people have left government service, sometimes to work for a contractor and do the same job.  Too many others are never hired. 

We need to provide higher pay with the flexibility to reward excellence and to remove substandard performers.  We need to put greater emphasis on recruiting and hiring language specialists, and non-traditional officers and analysts, including foreign-born Americans.  We are the world’s melting pot, but we are not taking full advantage of our unique position.  We need more human collectors. 

The CIA and other intelligence organizations should grow substantially, and most of that growth should be out in the field, not in Washington.

2. Money.
We need larger intelligence budgets.  I know, I know – with our financial problems at home and the success in Iraq, the likelihood is that intelligence spending will be reduced.  It is particularly tempting to cut back on classified programs that cannot be debated in public.  But, spending more to improve our understanding of the world and our understanding of future trends is the smartest way we can spend a national security dollar.  It will not only save us money, but it will save lives.  If we are serious about increasing our human intelligence collection – as we should be – it will take money.  If we are serious about reducing our technological dependence on a few large systems, it will take money.  If we are serious about monitoring developments worldwide while also providing the military with all they need to accomplish their missions, it will take money.   We should not be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

3. Management.
We need to develop better management tools, such as metrics.  Metrics for intelligence is as difficult and controversial as metrics for education.  There has been some effort within the DNI to develop them, but those efforts have been uneven at best.  We should be able to objectively measure and track key indicators that can help guide our decision-making.  There are no silver-bullet metrics that tell us whether our intelligence capability is improving or whether the taxpayers are getting more value for their dollar.  But, objective measures are essential in virtually every business and industry to help evaluate current efforts and track whether progress is being made.  Among other things, metrics can help us sort out where the DNI structure adds value to our efforts and where it just adds to the burden of those producing intelligence.

Management improvements must include acquisition reform as well.  We cannot permit a continuation of the over-budget, behind-schedule projects that have, unfortunately, become the norm.

4.  Interagency collaboration
Progress has been made in recent years on information sharing, despite residual cultural resistance.  But, greater efforts are still needed.   Legitimate concerns about leaks and cyber security must be addressed in a way that does not allow information to be stovepiped.

To help break through the cultural barriers, employees of intelligence organizations should be required to spend time in another intelligence organization in order to be eligible for promotions, much as the military requires.

5. Improve congressional oversight.
Congress has unique responsibilities in overseeing the intelligence community.  As a host of studies and reports have found, that oversight is structurally deficient.  There are too many committees with some jurisdiction and none with the responsibility and tools needed for the job.  Of course, intelligence agencies take advantage of this situation, playing one committee off the other.  As the 9/11 Commission and many others have recommended, there should be no more than one committee in each house of Congress tasked with overseeing our intelligence efforts.  It should include members who are serious about developing the intelligence capability the nation needs in perilous times.

The 9/11 Commission recognized that “[o]f all our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important.  So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need.  The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable committee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, support, and leadership.” (9/11 Commission Report, p. 419).

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Addressing this question seriously would require a lengthy treatise. In a blog essay, one can do little more than touch upon some of the key issues. Following the trajectory of the question, my own comments will focus on dealing with terrorist adversaries, while recognizing that the United States confronts a broad array of security challenges that create diverse intelligence demands, from uncovering and preventing nuclear proliferation to combating narcotics smugglers in Northern Mexico.

To begin with, reforming intelligence is not the issue. That implies a legislative solution. What is needed are improvements. Progress has been made. As a consequence of concerted intelligence and law enforcement efforts worldwide, terrorists now operate in a more perilous environment. Many of their key operational planners, as well as lower-level operatives, have been taken out of action. Numerous terrorist plots have been discovered and thwarted. As I mentioned in a previous commentary here, improved intelligence does not get all the credit for preventing another 9/11 or a lesser terrorist attack in the United States, but intelligence efforts did stop some schemes and contributed to deterrence. Despite these undeniable achievements, challenges remain.

More than seven years after 9/11, outmoded thinking is still prevalent. Reorganization can be legislated, but cultural change takes years. Intelligence during the Cold War was a contest between national services—large, hierarchical bureaucracies, each dedicated to successfully penetrating the other side. Doing so was a difficult, painstaking process. Agencies had to concentrate on a few, hopefully reliable sources. Communication with those sources was difficult. The difficulties demanded a good return on the investment—really big secrets, which had to be tightly protected. Betrayal could mean catastrophic losses. That meant strict compartmentalization and rigid controls on access to information. Little was shared, and the information that was shared was processed and sanitized.

Today we confront loosely organized, non-government networks, which are constantly mutating. Events move fast. Intelligence produced is highly perishable. To have utility, information must be widely disseminated, not only to other federal agencies, but to numerous state and local law enforcement organizations and even to those in the private sector with security responsibilities.

Information sharing has improved, but it remains the biggest challenge and must be a priority. There are more collectors and far more consumers. We need to move information quickly. The Joint Terrorism Task Forces are working, but we still do not yet have the national network we need—not an American MI-5, but an agile, adaptive, virtual community. Sources and methods still must be protected, but our current classification and clearance protocols are outmoded.

The fusion centers that have been created with federal support are, for the most part, not really intelligence operations. They rarely produce intelligence. Rather, they are all-crimes, all-hazards information centers. Their contribution to counterterrorism varies, but they have come to play an important role in information sharing.

Intelligence capabilities at the local level must be enhanced. Before we connect the dots, we have to collect the dots. This requires more than funding fusion centers. It requires long-term support, training, equipment, all of which will have to be provided in an environment of growing complacency and growing pressure to reduce budgets.

At the international level, driven by a shared perception of a continuing threat, international cooperation among intelligence services and law enforcement organizations is unprecedented. But will we be able to sustain this level of cooperation, especially if the terrorist threat appears to be contained?

Government and citizens have placed greater pressure on authorities to prevent terrorist attacks. That means moving in on conspirators before bombs go off. Democracies don’t have established rules for doing this, and people are uncomfortable with the idea of omnipresent surveillance. We need a better legislative framework here. In today’s atmosphere, however, new legislation could become punitive and restrictive—at the very least, politically divisive.

If society is going to demand that law enforcement “move upstream,” it has to accept the fact that honest mistakes inevitably will be made. Unfortunately, public suspicions have been raised by revelations of collection methods that ignored existing rules, indefinite detentions without any access to challenge, abuse of those held in custody, and judgment procedures that lack any semblance of fairness. These were not mere errors, but in some cases reflect the deliberate bypassing of rules to support extreme assertions of executive authority in wartime.

Every democracy that has confronted a serious terrorist threat has been obliged to change the rules to facilitate the collection of intelligence, broaden police powers, and take into account technological developments, but democracy demands rules. Arbitrary authority is dangerous and in the long run self-defeating.

Government must ensure adequate and appropriate control, review, and oversight, even in heightened threat environments. These may take the form of executive control, judicial authorization, congressional review, or internal inspection.

As I wrote four years ago, oversight does not mean the formulation of volumes of rigid rules intended to cover every contingency, rules that can become obstacles to effective intelligence operations. It does require proper lines of authority and responsibility and education of those involved in oversight. Those involved in intelligence operations should see proper oversight as a means of support and protection against ill-founded and ideological attacks.

How a democratic society should deal with the possibility of homegrown terrorism—radicalization and recruitment to violence of citizens and residents—remains in the “too hard” category. Even the most benign suggestions about examining this issue in a thoughtful way now, rather than during a post-terrorist-attack panic, have been assailed as the being equivalent of the Spanish inquisition, the Nazi Gestapo, the Soviet KGB, and the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s. The ferocity of the objections suggests that beyond voicing legitimate concerns, recruiting and fund-raising goals require the invention of evil foes.

To meet these challenges, we should be able to make organizational and operational adjustments to improve intelligence collection and analysis and to reflect changes in the threat environment. We do not need another major reorganization, which, while giving the illusion of progress, may succeed only in creating further distractions.

Al Qaeda, understandably our current focus, is not the only constellation in the terrorist universe. It is now more decentralized. As the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai demonstrated, there are other groups that are able to plan and execute major terrorist operations. The number of targets of intelligence operations has increased. And as the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo’s subways and the Oklahoma City bombing demonstrate, terrorist events may arise from totally unexpected quarters. We must be prepared for surprises. These are not necessarily intelligence failures, nor should they become the basis for futile finger-pointing.

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President Obama faces two types of intelligence challenges: Policy problems in the dark corner of the room (Guantanamo Bay, interrogation techniques, extraordinary renditions) and plumbing problems in the bowels of the bureaucracy. Politically, he has been under tremendous pressure to focus on dark-corner-of-the-room issues. Already, President Obama has reversed the Bush Administration's most controversial policies: Guantanamo Bay will be closed; Interrogations will be kinder and gentler; And if Leon Panetta is confirmed, the CIA will be run by a man whose chief intelligence credential is that he was far, far away from Langley's taint during the past eight years. These changes grab headlines and send an important political message. But they are not the key to preventing the next attack. Fixing the bureaucratic plumbing is.

It's the mundane aspects of bureaucracy that led to the twin failures of 9/11 and flawed analysis in Iraq. Intelligence agencies have been working hard to address these deficiencies, but no one should be raising any mission accomplished banners yet. The list of challenges is long. My top three:

1. Coordination. Ironically, we have tried to solve coordination problems in intelligence by creating more agencies to coordinate.

Before 9/11, there were 12 federal agencies, with no one clearly in charge. Now there are 16 federal intelligence agencies, plus 40 state and local "fusion centers," 100 Joint Terrorism Task Forces, and a proliferating number of other committees, councils, and partnerships that are supposed to fuse threat reporting and intelligence efforts across agencies, levels of governments, and sectors. The pre-9/11 system had too many spokes and no hub. Today, we have too many hubs. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) needs to rationalize this behemoth system. But turf battles die hard, the DNI's office is relatively new, and its powers are weaker than they should be. DNI Admiral Blair will need to wrestle more control over the powerful and protected Pentagon intelligence agencies, bring the Department of Homeland Security more squarely into the intelligence system, and forge a coherent structure to connect state, local, and tribal officials with the feds.

2. The FBI. The Bureau is struggling to transform itself from a law enforcement agency to a domestic intelligence organization. After eight long years, it is still losing. Special agents who carry guns and wear badges are still the heart and soul of the FBI. Egghead analysts are not allowed to run any of the Bureau's 56 U.S. field offices. They don't even run the vast majority of the FBI's most important intelligence units: the Field Intelligence Groups. And they are not treated as equal partners. As one analyst told me, "how can I tell an agent to read my report when I'm the guy taking out the trash?" In addition, since the financial crisis, Congress is expecting the FBI to do more with less, focusing on economic crimes as well as counterterrorism. The FBI now runs the risk of failing at its new mission AND losing the capabilities and resources to succeed at its old one. Obama's intelligence team should consider ways of making the FBI's National Security Branch a more autonomous organization under the DNI.

3. Congress. During the 1990s, a dozen major unclassified government and nongovernmental studies issued 340 intelligence reform recommendations. The only organization that implemented zero reforms wasn't the CIA or FBI. It was Congress. That is still true today. The 9/11 Commission rightly called Congressional oversight "dysfunctional." And yet almost nothing has been done. Intelligence oversight is split between at least ten major committees. The intelligence committees are polarized and politicized. As one intelligence official told me, "Sometimes I just want to say in these hearings, 'Time out. My mother taught me this is just not how you behave.'" Improving oversight will require both structural and cultural changes. Handing the House and Senate Intelligence Committees appropriations power would be a good start, since it would finally give the most expert committees the power of the purse. Using the presidential bully pulpit is another important step. Obama's "Yes we can" message galvanized a country. He now needs to bring that campaign message to Congress, and the intelligence committees directly, making clear that if Congress wants to be an equal partner in intelligence oversight, it has to start acting like one. Obama can't do this alone. Instead, he should recruit a Republican with intelligence expertise and a knack for tackling tough issues in a bipartisan way: John McCain.

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Every national security institution of the U.S. government is overdue for reform, from DOD to State to Homeland Security to Intelligence. The blunders, misuse, and lack of discipline in the entire national security universe have left an institutional shambles. The new administration, like many, may assume the classic Washington default position – just pick of the traces and keep doing what we have been doing. That would be a mistake.

Intelligence (along with Homeland Security) underwent the biggest restructuring in the wake of 9-11. The jury is out, however, as to whether that restructuring made a substantial difference, especially given the lack of central discipline and runway budgets.

The new administration has already begun to engage on one of the bigger mistakes: the treatment of prisoners, surveillance, secret prisons, and a growing culture of actions that were “above the law.” Recovering civilian control, greater transparency, and behavioral discipline are all critical tasks that will require years of attention. This will be a challenge both for Adm. Blair and Director Panetta.

Second, it will be important for the intelligence community focus to be re-balanced. Driven by the obsession with terrorists and their organizations, the community’s attention has wandered from the other issues that face us, especially the potential disasters in fragile states. This is another challenge to both men.

Third, there needs to be a serious review of the degree to which intelligence operators are becoming yet another military service, with its own weapons and forces, operating without the same kind of scrutiny existing forces receive. Director Panetta will have to focus on this problem, backed up by Adm. Blair.

And fourth, the ODNI architectgure needs to be re-evaluated. Has it become too large; yet another intelligence bureaucracy to add to the 16 already in existence? How does it provide central direction, without becoming another competitor? Have the DNI’s authorities for budget and personnel control been under-used; and do they need to be strengthened?

The agenda is long and the tasks are difficult. We will see if Blair and Panetta rise to the occasion.

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DNI Blair is going to be in for a rough ride as he tries to overcome the failures of Intelligence reform going back to the end of the Cold War. Despite the efforts of thousands of good, patriotic people, the system is simply broken. A long string of analytical failures serves as grim testament to this awful fact. And it has not gotten better since 9/11.

So far, true intelligence reform has languished despite numerous veiled stabs at it (such as the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Protection Act of 2004) and a host of blue ribbon commissions and panels from Aspen-Brown Commission in the early 1990’s to the WMD Commission report of 2004. Walls and walls of reports signifying “mission not accomplished.”

To get to the heart of the problem, there is one fundamental question Blair must address: what real value added does the IC bring to our National Security. Currently, and sadly, the U.S. Intelligence Community is a first generation business lost in a new market; like the old IBM hanging on to mainframes in a PC world. Information was the Intelligence Community’s game. Control of information was its business. And unique access to others’ secrets was its advantage. Sadly, the Soviet Union is gone and the information technology explosion of the 1990’s happened. Twitter has replaced teletypes.

To swing the IC around to a new age, Blair must address three deep-seated, fundamental problems -- or he too will fail:

1. Revamp an inefficiently run and ineffectually designed and executed DNI structure;

2. Reverse a system built to satisfy the needs and desires of collectors of information with comparatively little support given to its most important product – assessment and analysis;

3. And, breakdown a fundamental lack of understanding of the new world of information in which the world outside the IC lives and works everyday.

The 2004 ITRPA bill that created the DNI has failed. DNI superstructure is bloated, wandering and ineffective. It has turned into a “mandarinate” issuing orders and supplying papers that few in the 16 member IC regard with any seriousness.

This is a shame since, in theory; the DNI could take on the severest strategic problems plaguing the IC – acting as its “over the horizon” guide and advisor. For instance, the issue of the sensible, coordinated purchase of high priced items such as satellites comes to mind. The DNI could strongly step into revamp a security system better suited for a Cold War than today’s total information challenges. And, the crucial element of workforce planning has been virtually ignored – how do you use and hang on to skilled people for a career of interest and progress in the IC. To resolve any of these issues, Blair must created a vastly slimmed down DNI with greater focus on a few, well-delineated fundamental issues would serve the IC no end of good.

Blair will also soon discover that the IC is not built to do analysis and assessment. It is built to collect information. Large scale, very costly programs dominate the budget of the IC and are often supported based on the sheer amount of material that can be collected – signals, imagery and human intelligence. Highly classified and pouring on top of already overburdened all source analysts, this fire hose of information do more to confuse that elucidate. Worse yet, the analysts are biased toward this easily available classified information choosing to ignore or overlook unclassified information more readily available.

Fundamentally, IC analysts do not do analysis – they do synthesis of ideas promulgated among them. Moreover, they cannot reach out to the “outside” world for fear of violating time honored security practices. They chafe under a “guild system” of intelligence review and training better suited for the Middle Ages that the 21st Century.

The bottom line is Blair must hammer home that the analyst is the point of the IC. All the information in the world is worthless unless it is successful analyzed and put into context for the policymaker – the ultimate customer. If they can’t use it because it is ill defined or simply uniformed, then the IC simply is not doing its job.

This leads to Blair’s third challenge – and it will be a sticky one – is the basic awful fact the IC just does not “get” the new world of information. The new DNI need look no further than how the IC accesses information to see why intelligence analysis can all to easily go off the mark. Nearly one-third of the FBI has no direct access to the Internet. The main body of the Intelligence Community restricts access to the Internet by analysts fearing the questions they ask on the net will expose too much about the greatest areas of interest to US intelligence, even though the President and his appointees publicly discuss these questions.

In other words, every kid with a laptop and a cell phone in the US can access information more freely than our most highly cleared professional intelligence analysts. The security regime, built to protect the system, is strangling it. This is a world capsized by new technology.

So what can Blair do: this revamping of intelligence gathering and analysis cannot be done in a vacuum. The DNI needs to seek out best practices in private industry. Corporate firms large and small have been dealing with the same challenges of information gathering and analysis for many years. The consequences they face are severe and swift – going out of business, for instance. Some sectors, such as the hotel and soft drink industries, have come up with some interesting practices to support their efforts to stay in business and prosper that recognize the need for speed, accuracy, and appropriate sharing of information and analysis.

None of the needed changes is going to be easy. And the U.S. Intelligence Community is not going away. If it does not adapt to the Internet Age, it will become the worst thing you can be in Washington – an expensive irrelevance.

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In the intelligence business, interesting information is often found in unexpected places—typically in a back alley or small café of some far flung foreign destination. But recently, I found some interesting information right here in Washington, D.C.—in fact, right in my office.

As I read though responses to pre-hearing questions from President Obama’s nominees for Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, I uncovered enlightening information about the future of intelligence reform.

In his responses to the Committee’s questions, Mr. Blair said that the DNI is “the head of the entire intelligence community, including both its collection and analytical capabilities” and serves as the President’s focal point for the provision of substantive intelligence. He said the DNI “develops the policies and procedures to guide the community,” “oversees their performance,” and “directs the implementation of the intelligence community’s budget.”

In short, the DNI is in charge.

Mr. Panetta, however, said, “much is left to be sorted out" in the relationship between the DNI and Director CIA to ensure greater efficiency and collaboration.

So in Panetta's book, it isn’t clear yet who is in charge. Interesting, but not surprising.

This is not a shot at the nominees—they are playing the cards they’ve been dealt. This is a shot at the dealer, or Congress, which created a system that failed to provide the clear direction we knew was needed.

When Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, there was a strong sense that the intelligence community lacked cohesiveness and that a strong leader was needed to head the community and give it direction. I voted against the reform legislation in 2004 because I believed then—as I believe now—that the DNI was given a lot of responsibility without the requisite authority needed to do the job.

The nominees' responses suggest that we still do not have the right balance and that the “turf” issues that have long plagued the intelligence community may remain in the new administration.

I am even more convinced this will not change without action by Congress, a commitment by the DNI to direct, rather than coordinate, the intelligence community, and a strong message from the President that he will be backing the DNI’s decisions.

The bottom line is this: we can't aford a turf war in our intelligence community.

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