HOW HE SEES IT Intelligence chief must have authority

By STANSFIELD TURNER
WASHINGTON POST
The 9/11 commission's recommendations don't create a new intelligence structure. Mostly, they repackage what we have now. For instance, the recommended position of national intelligence director (NDI) already exists: It's the director of Central Intelligence (DCI) created by the National Security Act of 1947, with responsibility for coordinating the nation's 15 intelligence agencies. The DCI today has a staff just for this coordinating function.
We don't need a new layer of bureaucracy. What we do need is a review of what authority a coordinator of intelligence should have, whether we call him or her an NID or a DCI.
Premise is sound
The commission recommendation of separating the NID/DCI from the job of heading the CIA is a fine idea. The two jobs are more than one person should try to handle. And there is a conflict of interest in running one of the agencies that's being coordinated.
A serious problem today, which the commission addresses nicely, is that the 1947 law did not give the DCI sufficient authority to ensure adequate exchange of data among the agencies. It would take only an executive order from the president to give the DCI, or a new NID, the authority to set the standards for classifying secret intelligence materials. Today, each of the heads of the 15 agencies can create classification categories so as to exclude other agencies from their data. Some intelligence does deserve special treatment. But that should be decided by the NID/DCI, who has the national interest in view, not someone with an agency's perspective.
The same presidential executive order could give the NID the authority to set the budgets for all 15 agencies, to reallocate funds and people between them, and to set priorities for both collecting and analyzing intelligence, thus implementing the intent of the 1947 law. President Carter gave me, as his DCI, that authority. This enabled a far greater degree of coordination than we have today.
Fixed term for chief?
Should a new NID be given a fixed term -- not to coincide with the president's -- to help insulate him or her from political pressures to twist the intelligence? Absolutely not. Why? First, because one responsibility of the chief of intelligence is to be intelligence adviser to the president. A harmonious working relationship between the two is essential. In the past, a number of DCIs have resigned and a number of others have been fired just because of a lack of rapport with the president. Second, because the NID/DCI's authority derives in good measure from the support he or she receives from the president, especially vis-a-vis the more powerful secretaries of defense and state. A close relationship with the president is a NID/DCI's lifeblood.
Finally and most importantly, a fixed term is a bad idea because we shouldn't overreact to the accusation of the day -- that is, the assertion that the Bush administration may have pressured DCI George Tenet and his people to slant the intelligence on Iraq. The idea behind a fixed term is to make the NID more independent, rather than serving at the pleasure of the current president. Thirty years ago we reacted in exactly the opposite direction, establishing congressional and executive controls to rein in powerful DCIs and prevent them from overstepping legal and ethical bounds, as they were accused of doing in the 1950s and '60s.
Let's not now re-invite this problem of the past in dealing with a problem of today. All that is needed is to select as NIDs people who will stand up to improper pressures. We also have two congressional committees on intelligence whose job it should be to blow whistles at the slightest sign that the intelligence process is being politicized.
X Turner, director of Central Intelligence from 1977 to 1981, is on the faculty of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.