“ Under the terms of existing rules and resolutions the House and Senate intelligence committees lack the power, influence, and sustained capability to meet this challenge.While few members of Congress have the broad knowledge of intelligence activities or the know-how about the technologies employed, all members need to feel assured that good oversight is happening. When their unfamiliarity with the subject is combined with the need to preserve security, a mandate emerges for substantial change. ”

“ We do not recommend the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency. It is not needed if our other recommendations are adopted—to establish a strong national intelligence center, part of the NCTC, that will oversee counterterrorism intelligence work, foreign and domestic, and to create a National Intelligence Director who can set and enforce standards for the collection, processing, and reporting of information. Under the structures we recommend,the FBI’s role is focused,but still vital. ”

“ The problem is nearly intractable because of the way the government is currently structured. Lines of operational authority run to the expanding executive departments, and they are guarded for understandable reasons: the DCI commands the CIA’s personnel overseas; the secretary of defense will not yield to others in conveying commands to military forces; the Justice Department will not give up the responsibility of deciding whether to seek arrest warrants. But the result is that each agency or department needs its own intelligence apparatus to support the performance of its duties. ”

“ Such a system implicitly assumes that the risk of inadvertent disclosure outweighs the benefits of wider sharing.Those Cold War assumptions are no longer appropriate.The culture of agencies feeling they own the information they gathered at taxpayer expense must be replaced by a culture in which the agencies instead feel they have a duty to the information—to repay the taxpayers’ investment by making that information available. Each intelligence agency has its own security practices, outgrowths of the Cold War.We certainly understand the reason for these practices. ”

“ Integrated all-source analysis should also inform and shape strategies to collect more intelligence.Yet the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, while it has primary responsibility for terrorism analysis, is formally proscribed from having any oversight or operational authority and is not part of any operational entity, other than reporting to the director of central intelligence.2 The government now tries to handle the problem of joint management, informed by analysis of intelligence from all sources, in two ways. ”

“ He is expected to run a particular agency, the CIA. He is expected to manage the loose confederation of agencies that is the intelligence community. He is expected to be the analyst in chief for the government, sifting evidence and directly briefing the President as his principal intelligence adviser. No recent DCI has been able to do all three effectively. Usually what loses out is management of the intelligence community, a difficult task even in the best case because the DCI’s current authorities are weak.With so much to do, the DCI often has not used even the authority he has. ”

“ The FBI is just a small fraction of the national law enforcement community in the United States, a community comprised mainly of state and local agencies.The network designed for sharing information, and the work of the FBI through local Joint Terrorism Task Forces, should build a reciprocal relationship, in which state and local agents understand what information they are looking for and, in return, receive some of the information being developed about what is happening, or may happen, in their communities. ”

“ That is now the job of the generation that experienced 9/11. Those attacks showed, emphatically, that ways of doing business rooted in a different era are just not good enough. Americans should not settle for incremental, ad hoc adjustments to a system designed generations ago for a world that no longer exists. We recommend significant changes in the organization of the government. We know that the quality of the people is more important than the quality of the wiring diagrams. ”

“ So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need.The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional committee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, support, and leadership. ”

“ But we have noticed that some very large private firms rely on a powerful CEO who has significant control over how money is spent and can hire or fire leaders of the major divisions, assisted by a relatively modest staff,while leaving responsibility for execution in the operating divisions. There are disadvantages to separating the position of National Intelligence Director from the job of heading the CIA. For example, the National Intelligence Director will not head a major agency of his or her own and may have a weaker base of support. ”

“ In the field, the close connection to criminal work has many benefits. Our recommendation to leave counterterrorism intelligence collection in the United States with the FBI still depends on an assessment that the FBI—if it makes an all-out effort to institutionalize change—can do the job.As we mentioned in chapter 3,we have been impressed by the determination that agents display in tracking down details, patiently going the extra mile and working the extra month, to put facts in the place of speculation. ”

“ Information procedures should provide incentives for sharing, to restore a better balance between security and shared knowledge. Intelligence gathered about transnational terrorism should be processed, turned into reports, and distributed according to the same quality standards, whether it is collected in Pakistan or in Texas. ”

“ An argument against change is that the nation is at war, and cannot afford to reorganize in midstream.But some of the main innovations of the 1940s and 1950s, including the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even the construction of the Pentagon itself, were undertaken in the midst of war. Surely the country cannot wait until the struggle against Islamist terrorism is over. “Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. ”

“ Having interviewed numerous members of Congress from both parties, as well as congressional staff members, we found that dissatisfaction with congressional oversight remains widespread. The future challenges of America’s intelligence agencies are daunting.They include the need to develop leading-edge technologies that give our policy- HOW TO DO IT? 419 makers and warfighters a decisive edge in any conflict where the interests of the United States are vital. Not only does good intelligence win wars, but the best intelligence enables us to prevent them from happening altogether. ”

“ Congress should pass a separate appropriations act for intelligence, defending the broad allocation of how these tens of billions of dollars have been assigned among the varieties of intelligence work. ”

“ Congress should ensure that analysts are afforded training and career opportunities on a par with those offered analysts in other intelligence community agencies. • The Congress should make sure funding is available to accelerate the expansion of secure facilities in FBI field offices so as to increase their ability to use secure email systems and classified intelligence product exchanges. The Congress should monitor whether the FBI’s information-sharing principles are implemented in practice. ”

“ We therefore propose a new institution: a civilian-led unified joint command for counterterrorism. It should combine strategic intelligence and joint operational planning. In the Pentagon’s Joint Staff,which serves the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intelligence is handled by the J-2 directorate, operational planning by J-3, and overall policy by J-5. ”

“ Field intelligence groups have been created in all field offices to put FBI priorities and the emphasis on intelligence into practice. Advances have been made in improving the Bureau’s information technology systems and in increasing connectivity and information sharing with intelligence community agencies. ”

“ It is a problem to be resolved in policy guidance and agency management, not in the creation of redundant, overlapping capabilities and authorities in such sensitive work.The CIA’s experts should be integrated into the military’s training, exercises, and planning.To quote a CIA official now serving in the field:“One fight, one team.” Recommendation: Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret. ”

“ The most serious disadvantage of the NCTC is the reverse of its greatest virtue. The struggle against Islamist terrorism is so important that any clear-cut centralization of authority to manage and be accountable for it may concentrate too much power in one place. ”

“ National intelligence is still organized around the collection disciplines of the home agencies, not the joint mission. The importance of integrated, allsource analysis cannot be overstated.Without it, it is not possible to “connect the dots.” No one component holds all the relevant information. ”

“ The intelligence community should not be subject to that much disclosure. But when even aggregate categorical numbers remain hidden, it is hard to judge priorities and foster accountability. 13.3 UNITY OF EFFORT IN SHARING INFORMATION Information Sharing We have already stressed the importance of intelligence analysis that can draw on all relevant sources of information.The biggest impediment to all-source analysis—to a greater likelihood of connecting the dots—is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information. ”

“ Opponents of declassification argue that America’s enemies could learn about intelligence capabilities by tracking the top-line appropriations figure.Yet the top-line figure by itself provides little insight into U.S. intelligence sources and methods.The U.S. government readily provides copious information about spending on its military forces, including military intelligence. ”

“ Some of the saddest aspects of the 9/11 story are the outstanding efforts of so many individual officials straining, often without success, against the boundaries of the possible. Good people can overcome bad structures. ”

“ But even such cooperation as there was is not the same thing as joint action.When agencies cooperate, one defines the problem and seeks help with it.When they act jointly, the problem and options for action are defined differently from the start. Individuals from different backgrounds come together in analyzing a case and planning how to manage it. ”

“ A common set of personnel standards for intelligence can create a group of professionals better able to operate in joint activities,transcending their own service-specific mind-sets. • Divided management of national intelligence capabilities. ”

“ In some ways joint work has gotten better, and in some ways worse.The effort of fighting terrorism has flooded over many of the usual agency boundaries because of its sheer quantity and energy. Attitudes have changed. ”

“ FBI agents and analysts in the field need to have sustained support and dedicated resources to become stronger intelligence officers. They need to be rewarded for acquiring informants and for gathering and disseminating information differently and more broadly than usual in a traditional criminal inves- 424 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT tigation. FBI employees need to report and analyze what they have learned in ways the Bureau has never done before. Under Director Robert Mueller, the Bureau has made significant progress in improving its intelligence capabilities. ”

“ Few things are more difficult to change in Washington than congressional committee jurisdiction and prerogatives.To a member, these assignments are almost as important as the map of his or her congressional district.The American people may have to insist that these changes occur, or they may well not happen. ”

“ It should identify those elements of our transportation, energy, communications, financial, and other institutions that need to be protected, develop plans to protect that infrastructure, and exercise the mechanisms to enhance preparedness. ”

“ This system could revert to a focus on lower-priority criminal justice cases over national security requirements. Recommendation: A specialized and integrated national security workforce should be established at the FBI consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance specialists who are recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained to ensure the development of an institutional HOW TO DO IT? 425 culture imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security. • The president, by executive order or directive, should direct the FBI to develop this intelligence cadre. ”

“ It relied on proxies instead, organized by CIA operatives without the requisite military training.The results were unsatisfactory. • Whether the price is measured in either money or people, the United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations, secretly operating standoff missiles, and secretly training foreign military or paramilitary forces. The United States should concentrate responsibility and necessary legal authorities in one entity. ”