WASHINGTON — If the new U.S. intelligence system the House approved Tuesday had been in place on Sept. 11, 2001, the al-Qaida hijackers might have been in foreign countries — or in custody — instead of in the cockpits of airliners careening toward the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
That, at least, is the theory behind the most significant restructuring of the U.S. intelligence system since the creation of the CIA in 1947. Making America safer from terrorist attack is the promise behind the intelligence bill the Senate is scheduled to vote on today. Approval would send it to President Bush for his signature. Whether the bill will make the nation safer is still a matter of debate.
The measure, which creates a powerful director of national intelligence who would wrest much budget control from the Pentagon to watch over 15 spy agencies, passed 336-75.
On Tuesday, the 63rd anniversary of another surprise attack, the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Sen. Jay
Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, came as close as anyone to making the promise explicit.
"There's a very good chance that had the bill (been in effect) . . . we might have had a chance not to go through the horrible experience that we did on Sept. 11th," Rockefeller said. "Those who think this bill is just another layer of bureaucracy or moving the boxes around . . . are really wrong."
Here's how the measure attempts to meet the shortcomings brought to light by the 9/11 Commission's investigation of the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks:
Problem: The CIA was forbidden from tracking foreign terrorism suspects once they entered the United States and delayed telling the FBI what it knew about two suspects who later became hijackers. Solution: Create a director of national intelligence with sweeping powers over both foreign and domestic intelligence, and a National Counterterrorism Center to track foreign and domestic threats; require information-sharing between the CIA and other intelligence agencies, FBI and local law enforcement.
Problem: The 9/11 hijackers used false documents to get legitimate driver's licenses, which helped with air travel. Solution: Require states to establish minimum identification standards for obtaining a license.
Problem: The CIA director recognized the al-Qaida threat but couldn't move funds into the intelligence branches best able to confront the terrorist group. Solution: Give the new intelligence czar the power to move up to $150 million from one intelligence branch to another to meet emerging threats.
Georgetown University visiting professor Jennifer Sims, who served in senior State Department intelligence posts during the Clinton administration, says some of the intelligence lapses before 9/11 were not structural failures but human error: the failure by FBI headquarters to react to a warning from its Phoenix office about Arab men in pilot training; the CIA's failure to place two terrorism suspects who later were 9/11 hijackers on a terrorist watch-list. The government has imposed changes to prevent those problems from recurring, she says.
"The structure (created by the 9/11 bill) in some respects would have helped," Sims says. But she argues that against terrorist threats, "decision-making needs to be more rapid and field-based, and you want to reduce the chains of command." The bill, she says, appears to enlarge the chain.
The bill's main thrust is creation of an intelligence czar, a post the 9/11 Commission said was sorely needed. The United States has never before had an official with power over both domestic and foreign intelligence and the authority to move money among agencies. Whether that makes America safer depends in part on how the White House fills in details the legislation only suggests. For example, the bill tells the White House to protect the flow of military intelligence to troops in battle from interference by the new czar — but doesn't say precisely how.
It's still unclear where the czar will work. The commission wanted the office at the White House, but the administration resisted that idea. The office won't be at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., because lawmakers concluded the czar would appear subordinate to the CIA. Secure sites available for the czar's office include an unobtrusive CIA building a block from the White House, a naval intelligence annex near the State Department, and secure buildings at the Tysons Corner business center in northern Virginia.
The bill's main thrust is creation of an intelligence czar, a post the 9/11 Commission said was sorely needed.