DNI: Help Wanted, Again
By Shaun Waterman for ISN
“What would you think,”
external pageopined the Economist, in typically high-handed fashion this week, “of a boss who couldn't fire you, couldn't tell you what to do and had little control over your pay? You probably wouldn't even consider him your boss. And that's how most of the intelligence community thinks of Dennis Blair, who will step down Friday as director of national intelligence.”
This sentiment expertly encapsulates the conventional Washington wisdom about the post - Senator Diane Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, external pagesaid Monday that shehad “long been concerned that the director of national intelligence had more responsibility than authority.” And, as usual in a town that seems to favor glib tropes over real wisdom, it is at best 50 percent accurate.
True, the DNI does not have line management or hire-and-fire authority over the heads of the 16 US intelligence agencies he is responsible for. But he does have a significant degree of budgetary authority over their spending, especially on the big ticket procurement items so beloved of Washington agency heads and he does actually set pay scales and other personnel rules for civilian employees of the intelligence community.
And though the DNI does not pick the heads of the agencies, the same is basically true for many cabinet secretaries, whose senior staff have to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And, as John Negroponte’s role in shunting former Republican congressman Porter Goss out of his job as CIA director shows, the DNI can have a significant role in firing. Moreover, because the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, or IRTPA, which created the DNI post, specifies that he will basically provide the president with a short list for the director of the CIA, he arguably has a great deal of influence on the hiring side, at least over CIA, as well.
At a major conference on intelligence reform in April, Representative Jane Harman, the hawkish Democrat who headed the House intelligence committee when IRPTA was passed, external pagecalled the post “a work in progress.
“It’s 50 percent law and 50 percent leadership,” she noted of the DNI’s authority.
Nonetheless, as critics are quick to point out there have already been three DNIs in the five brief years since the post was established. None have been seen as unqualified successes, a fact which many have chalked up to the alleged mismatch between the post’s authority and responsibility.
Retired Air Force General Michael Hayden, whose bulging intelligence community resume includes stints as head of the two most powerful agencies, the CIA and the National Security Agency, as well as a term as principle deputy DNI, and who possesses a talent for pithy phrase-making that would be the envy of many sportscasters, external pageput it like this: “The DNI’s rucksack is […] more than a couple bricks shy of a load in order for him to do everything we expect him to do.”
Blair, of course, was, like many leaders in the US intelligence community, a holdover from the previous administration of George Bush. And, like many such holdovers, he was a former senior military officer -- an admiral who had headed US Pacific Command, the largest combatant command in the US military.
There is a widely held nostrum in Washington that such old military hands are good managers. “I’d have a reputation as a good manager too,” quipped one long time civilian senior intelligence official, “if I could have someone shot for disobeying my orders.”
Indeed, Mark Lowenthal, a former assistant director of the CIA, external pagetold the New York Times that “the relative weakness of the intelligence director position was especially frustrating” to Blair, who found himself in a position “where anyone who wanted to ignore him basically could do it.”
That external pageled the Washington Postto postulate that his departure “highlights a pattern of problems involving senior officials in Obama's administration who once served in the upper ranks of the military.”
So was his ouster inevitable? It was certainly widely predicted among intelligence insiders, following a string of embarrassing failures ranging from lost internal turf battles (for example over the question of who would appoint the senior intelligence officer in US embassies abroad) to the nearly disastrous failure to interdict the Christmas Day underwear bomber - despite the many clues intelligence agencies had about his plot.
Blair’s supporters argue that the White House never gave him the backing that anyone in the post needs. And that he was eclipsed by the president’s senior counterterrorism and homeland security advisor, former CIA official John Brennan - who had been pegged early in the administration as Obama’s DNI, before his potential nomination was scotched by his association with controversial Bush-era policies like rendition and torture.
In essence, they argue that, to use Harman’s formulation, Obama did not provide the 50 percent leadership that the DNI requires.
Back in April, Hayden noted that - in the aftermath of the Christmas bombing plot - “Director Blair was not nearly as visible as John [Brennan]." That was, he continued, “something that 100,000 people in the intelligence community, I’m sure, took note of.
“That was not a good thing,” he concluded.
This sentiment expertly encapsulates the conventional Washington wisdom about the post - Senator Diane Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, external pagesaid Monday that shehad “long been concerned that the director of national intelligence had more responsibility than authority.” And, as usual in a town that seems to favor glib tropes over real wisdom, it is at best 50 percent accurate.
True, the DNI does not have line management or hire-and-fire authority over the heads of the 16 US intelligence agencies he is responsible for. But he does have a significant degree of budgetary authority over their spending, especially on the big ticket procurement items so beloved of Washington agency heads and he does actually set pay scales and other personnel rules for civilian employees of the intelligence community.
And though the DNI does not pick the heads of the agencies, the same is basically true for many cabinet secretaries, whose senior staff have to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And, as John Negroponte’s role in shunting former Republican congressman Porter Goss out of his job as CIA director shows, the DNI can have a significant role in firing. Moreover, because the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, or IRTPA, which created the DNI post, specifies that he will basically provide the president with a short list for the director of the CIA, he arguably has a great deal of influence on the hiring side, at least over CIA, as well.
At a major conference on intelligence reform in April, Representative Jane Harman, the hawkish Democrat who headed the House intelligence committee when IRPTA was passed, external pagecalled the post “a work in progress.
“It’s 50 percent law and 50 percent leadership,” she noted of the DNI’s authority.
Nonetheless, as critics are quick to point out there have already been three DNIs in the five brief years since the post was established. None have been seen as unqualified successes, a fact which many have chalked up to the alleged mismatch between the post’s authority and responsibility.
Retired Air Force General Michael Hayden, whose bulging intelligence community resume includes stints as head of the two most powerful agencies, the CIA and the National Security Agency, as well as a term as principle deputy DNI, and who possesses a talent for pithy phrase-making that would be the envy of many sportscasters, external pageput it like this: “The DNI’s rucksack is […] more than a couple bricks shy of a load in order for him to do everything we expect him to do.”
Blair, of course, was, like many leaders in the US intelligence community, a holdover from the previous administration of George Bush. And, like many such holdovers, he was a former senior military officer -- an admiral who had headed US Pacific Command, the largest combatant command in the US military.
There is a widely held nostrum in Washington that such old military hands are good managers. “I’d have a reputation as a good manager too,” quipped one long time civilian senior intelligence official, “if I could have someone shot for disobeying my orders.”
Indeed, Mark Lowenthal, a former assistant director of the CIA, external pagetold the New York Times that “the relative weakness of the intelligence director position was especially frustrating” to Blair, who found himself in a position “where anyone who wanted to ignore him basically could do it.”
That external pageled the Washington Postto postulate that his departure “highlights a pattern of problems involving senior officials in Obama's administration who once served in the upper ranks of the military.”
So was his ouster inevitable? It was certainly widely predicted among intelligence insiders, following a string of embarrassing failures ranging from lost internal turf battles (for example over the question of who would appoint the senior intelligence officer in US embassies abroad) to the nearly disastrous failure to interdict the Christmas Day underwear bomber - despite the many clues intelligence agencies had about his plot.
Blair’s supporters argue that the White House never gave him the backing that anyone in the post needs. And that he was eclipsed by the president’s senior counterterrorism and homeland security advisor, former CIA official John Brennan - who had been pegged early in the administration as Obama’s DNI, before his potential nomination was scotched by his association with controversial Bush-era policies like rendition and torture.
In essence, they argue that, to use Harman’s formulation, Obama did not provide the 50 percent leadership that the DNI requires.
Back in April, Hayden noted that - in the aftermath of the Christmas bombing plot - “Director Blair was not nearly as visible as John [Brennan]." That was, he continued, “something that 100,000 people in the intelligence community, I’m sure, took note of.
“That was not a good thing,” he concluded.