Washington Post editorialist and former Sunday “Outlook” section editor David Ignatius, author of spy novels such as Body of Lies, Agents of Innocence and SIRO, couldn’t have been any more correct when he opined in a Thursday op-ed that the on-going turf war between CIA Director Leon Panetta and his ostensible superior, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dennis Blair, has exposed the “botched reorganization” of the US Intelligence Community (IC).

This “bureaucratic battle was unfortunate, but it will serve a useful purpose if it forces the White House, finally, to clarify the intelligence reorganization process that created the DNI structure in 2005,” Ignatius wrote.

HSToday.us reported early on that one of the DNI’s biggest challenges would be to be recognized as the IC’s CEO while at the same time being able to have productive relationships with the other members of the IC that are not based on turf issues, but rather team issues.

As former CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle told HSToday.us way back when, “the biggest issue is, he’s going to have to come out as a credible player, and demonstrate that he’s willing to use the mandate [to reform the IC]. But he has to be careful how he does it, because if he has to go too often to bat – to the Presidential piggybank for influence – it shows that he doesn’t actually rule the kind of power that you need to personally” – and which the DNI is supposed to inherently possess under the IC reorganization if he’s to effectively lead the Community.

Author of, “Denial and Deception: An Insider’s View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11,” and a counterterrorism expert who was the top-ranked female Arabist in the CIA when she retired as a covert officer, Mahle presciently said the DNI must “especially have the President’s full support ...”

“The DNI shouldn’t have to be going to the President to resolve disputes – he needs to be able to exercise his congressionally mandated authority. Case closed,” said former CIA case officer Robert David Steele, a longtime champion of intelligence reform.

As for Panetta, Steele said in his typical un-mincing of words way that “his resistance to Blair on Station Chiefs, and to Congress on torture related operational traffic, Panetta has shown that he has been rolled by the clandestine service - he has failed to apply what he does know as a former Office of Management and Budget and White House leader, and allowed himself to become a pimp. The prostitutes are running the whorehouse.”

Although the origin of this kafuffle began back under John Negroponte, the first DNI who proposed what Mike McConnell after him proposed, but which was left unresolved because of pushback by the CIA and the lack of definitive action by President  Bush,  Obama finds himself in the same predicament with his DNI, whose authority he has not – apparently – supported and enforced. So it is that the functional control Congress’ IC overhaul gave to the DNI continues to reside in a dysfunctional state and the historic turf wars within the IC that were supposed to have been gotten rid of by the overhaul rage on.

The latest eruption occurred on May 19 when Blair, following up on the failed effort by his predecessor, Mike McConnell, issued an order that he was selecting who will be the top intelligence officers abroad as the DNI’s eyes and ears. And they wouldn’t necessarily be the CIA's Chiefs of Station. For more than 40 years, this role had been the domain of the CIA’s Chiefs of Station. But clearly the authority Congress gave the DNI allows the DNI to change this. The CIA has objected from day one. Hence the problem Obama finds himself in today.

DCI Panetta, in response, issued an edict that Station Chiefs ignore Blair's plan until the matter is resolved by Obama’s National Security Advisor Jim Jones, who Panetta has indicated he believed was still reviewing this left over problem from the Bush administration. Blair, not surprisingly, is said to have reacted to Panetta's action as “an act of insubordination.” Which also isn’t surprising given that the DNI is the nation’s chief Intelligence Community official and Panetta, while DCI, remains a veritable intelligence outsider.

While both Blair and Panetta’ arguments for and against the DCI choosing the top spies abroad have merit, that’s really not the big issue here. The real issue has always been whether the DNI’s authority is going to be upheld once and for all as mandated by law. And until a President makes it known loud and clear that the DNI is the top spook, the effectiveness of the DNI, right or wrong, will be seriously eroded.

But all the other IC chiefs under the DNI also will have to be put on notice that insubordination will not be tolerated, and that any efforts to undermine the DNI’s authority will be considered, as they should be, detrimental to the effectiveness of the IC as a whole and appropriate action will be taken.

As a matter of respect and practicality, however, any effort by the DNI to make the kind of historical change Blair and his predecessors have tried to make ought to be thoroughly made in consultation with the head of the impacted agency, which it’s not clear Blair did, although analyses of the move attempted by his predecessors are said to have been performed.

In short, as HSToday.us and intelligence authorities said at the time of the IC’s reorganization and the creation of the DNI, the DNI should not have to have to be going to the White House to get matters like this resolved. Under the post-9/11 reformation of the Intelligence Community,  the DNI is supposed to have the final say over such matters without having to call on the President to step into the fray.