[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL A Vital Job Goes Begging

[Michael Butler]

 The New York Times
February 12, 2005
EDITORIAL
A Vital Job Goes Begging

Add to the painful postmortems of 9/11 this week's disclosure that federal
aviation officials were more lulled than alarmed by a steady stream of
intelligence warnings about Osama bin Laden in the months before the
terrorist attacks. As with numerous other intelligence failures uncovered by
the Sept. 11 commission, the warnings - dozens of them - were not deemed
specific enough to provide adequate defenses at the nation's airports,
according to Federal Aviation Administration officials. In 105 intelligence
reports received during the five months preceding the attacks, Osama bin
Laden or Al Qaeda were mentioned 52 times, according to the commission,
which faulted the F.A.A. for not doing enough to heighten security.

These latest details were contained in a chapter of the commission's final
report that was withheld by the Bush administration for months, heavily
censored and then released to the public only after Eric Lichtblau printed
details in The Times. They point to the cornucopia of intelligence that was
flowing through federal bureaucracies without benefit of an authoritative
analysis to pinpoint the looming threat. The F.A.A. got the reports through
a 24-hour liaison it maintained with the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department. It's not clear
from this latest report, or at least the portion the White House thought fit
for public consumption, whether those agencies passed on the warnings to the
White House.

It is clear that none of those agencies connected the dots in time. That's a
familiar, grim lesson, but, sadly, Americans should not conclude that it has
been taken to heart. The problem of "stovepiping" - rival intelligence
gathering conducted without effective coordination by the 15 national spy
agencies - still awaits a firm hand to bring order from bureaucratic chaos.
If anything, fresh mischief is afoot as the Pentagon is lately reported to
have created specialized overseas espionage teams, thereby angering the
C.I.A., while the F.B.I. is reported to be recruiting foreigners as overseas
spies, further raising C.I.A. hackles.

Still, no one's in charge. The newly created post of national intelligence
director is supposed to rein in these agency rivalries. But the job remains
vacant eight weeks after President Bush signed the intelligence overhaul law
that he reluctantly accepted after the 9/11 commission pressed Congress for
reform. One prime candidate, Robert Gates, a former director of central
intelligence, has already declined consideration for the job - which has
been so whittled down by back-room deals in Congress that it strikes many
Washington insiders as thankless. As now configured, it involves refereeing
disputes between the Pentagon and civilian spy agencies, minus the full
powers the director needs to hire and fire and to control the disparate
agencies.

For all his earlier reluctance, it will take President Bush to step up and
embrace the intelligence reform law with enough conviction to attract a
top-flight director willing to serve the nation and take on Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. His choice will then need the backing of the
president's moral and political authority. Otherwise, the nation's
intelligence shield threatens to slip even further.

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