Only DNI can spur info sharing across agencies, they say

The former leaders of the 9/11 Commission pointed to the Christmas Day bombing attack as evidence that the United States still cannot analyze information well enough, saying the solution to the problem would be a strong director of national intelligence (DNI) who could force information sharing.

"Information sharing remains the core problem in intelligence," testified Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, before the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday.

"Ii connect this problem to the authority of the DNI," Hamilton continued. "What you have in the Intelligence Community today are 16 very able, very patriotic, very professional groups with a lot of very talented people. They have operated traditionally very much within their own stovepipe, their own agency. They have felt that it is not necessary to share. The emphasis has been on need to know rather than need to share."

A high degree of information sharing will not happen unless someone has the authority to force it and that person must be the DNI, Hamilton prescribed.

But the DNI currently lacks the true power to do so, he lamented. Indeed, the position requires a legislative boost from Congress to increase his power.

As the necessary legislative fix is not on Congress' agenda, President Barack Obama should make it clear to the rest of the spy community that the DNI is in charge. Eventually, however, the law must be clarified, Hamilton said.

"It's still ambiguous," Hamilton remarked. "As long as you have that ambiguity, you are going to have these agencies fighting for jurisdiction and power," he remarked.

Hamilton appeared with former 9/11 Commission chair Thomas Kean, both serving currently as chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Preparedness Group.

Kean agreed that strengthening the DNI would solve many of the problems in the Intelligence Community today but also that boosting analysts at US intelligence agencies would help.

He called upon the federal government to recognize the importance of analysts and provide them with promotion opportunities and other incentives to fulfill their responsibilities.

High data volume

Hamilton said the diversity of threats facing the United States today underscored the need to strengthen the DNI.

The recent Times Square bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad, has been linked to the Taliban in Pakistan, while the Christmas Day bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, he noted.

"In both of these cases, al Qaeda affiliates thought previously as regional or local threats demonstrated their ability to reach the United States," Hamilton said. "We're well aware of the threat emanating from the tribal regions of Pakistan. We've also come to appreciate the increasing threat of homegrown terrorism as some Americans have become radicalized."

To defend against these various threats, Obama must define leadership roles within the intelligence community. The Bipartisan Policy Center held a conference on intelligence reform last month that highlighted the achievements of the DNI since the creation of the position by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-458).

Still the DNI could do more with more authority, Hamilton recommended.

"Is the DNI a strong leader of the intelligence community empowered to lead the IC as an enterprise?" he queried. "Or is the DNI a mere coordinator, a convening authority charged with helping facilitate common inter-intelligence agency agreement? The lack of clarity in its mission invites a host of other criticisms, including that the ODNI is too large, too intrusive, and too operational."

The DNI, as envisioned by the 9/11 Commission, must be a position that oversees interagency coordination and integration, Hamilton said. The DNI must act with sensitivity to the priorities and responsibilities of the individual intelligence agencies, but the office must lead and the President must provide it with the authority to do so.

The Bipartisan Policy Center intelligence reform conference also focused on how intelligence agencies have not put enough emphasis on domestic intelligence.

"The 9/11 Commission placed great emphasis on the need for the FBI to reform itself and build an organization that placed more emphasis on preventing attacks. To refocus attention on these issues, we will host a conference in the fall with top government officials and other experts to ensure we are taking the right steps along the path of reform," Hamilton announced.

Hamilton declared that a great deal of progress has been made on intelligence reform. Data is more widely shared than previously; analysts have begun to drive data collection priorities rather than the collectors; technology improvements have boosted collection and integration; the appointment of mission managers has helped intelligence gathering; and speeding security clearances has provided more qualified personnel to the Intelligence Community.

"The transformation is underway from a confederation of bureaucracies, in effect, in the intelligence community--some sixteen of them--to a network of collection and analysis," Hamilton said.

But the intelligence agencies still face a massive amount of data that "comes in by the truckload per minute," Hamilton said, making the management of data the single biggest challenge to the Intelligence Community.

"It overwhelms the ability of the Intelligence Community to analyze it. We simply have to do that better...than we've been able to do it," Hamilton said.

Domestic intelligence

Kean returned to the idea of "domestic intelligence" in his testimony.

"The Intelligence Community must become more competent in obtaining and using appropriate information on people who cross borders and may have nefarious intent, including Americans," Kean told the committee. "The failed attack of 12/25, cross-border drug violence, and other events last year highlighted the challenges we face due to our porous borders and the rapid mobility of modern society."

The intelligence agencies also must make the no-fly list used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) more "responsive and dynamic," Kean said.

The 9/11 Commission stressed the need for the FBI to build capabilities to prevent attacks rather than merely respond to them, Kean added. Such reform requires a focus on domestic intelligence. The Bipartisan Policy Center will examine if the FBI is doing enough to focus on domestic intelligence in its fall conference.

The failure to detect the threat that Abdulmutallab posed to the United States despite various bits of evidence that demonstrated his connections to terrorism demonstrates how US intelligence agencies cannot shift through the large amount of data that faces them, Kean emphasized.

"In an age when we are collecting more information than ever before, a major challenge is understanding, managing, and integrating a huge amount of information. The DNI needs to develop ways of dealing with intelligence information overload," he stated.