January 27, 2005
Assistant Secretary Thomas Fingar
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)
U.S. Department of State
TOPIC:
Intelligence Reform: Why We Need It
Dr. Tomas
Fingar, a veteran of thirty-five years in the
intelligence community, briefed our Executive
Lecture Forum on why it was necessary to reform the
U.S. intelligence community. In starting his
lecture, he pointed out that “If we have done things
wrong, I am at least partly guilty of that sin. But
my job, my responsibility in the intelligence
community in the State Department, is to be as
subjective as it is possible to be. If I’m
spinning, I’m not doing my job. We are supposed to
call it as we see it.”
He
continued by asking the rhetoric question: “Why do
we need to be reformed? Why now?” The intelligence
community has several times been scrutinized for the
possibility of reform, he said. One was a
historical document in 1962, during the Kennedy
Administration. The document was a Blue Ribbon
Panel Report on reform of the intelligence
community. The next was the so-called Scowcroft
Commission Report. The recommendations in 1962 and
2002—forty years apart—were remarkably similar.
Indeed, if you didn’t know better, you would say
they changed the date on the document and
re-submitted it. One of the most notable
similarities was the call for the creation of a
director of national intelligence. Then, the most
major changes came in the 1970's, the so-called
Church Committee’s Report. Its’ simple proposition
was: There should be no spying on Americans by the
American government. The CIA— more broadly the
intelligence community—were being walled off from
doing things in the United States. In other words,
barriers were erected between the FBI and the CIA.
As we know it today, said Dr. Fingar, the failure
to share information caused the tragic events of
9/11.
Today the
focus, the political spotlight, is on 9/11—that
watershed development which changed everything. An
environment was created by 9/11 in which it became
possible to think about changing something as big as
reforming the intelligence community. With the
Intelligence Reform, he said, we needed to work out
a new system. The difficulty was how to coordinate
40 billion dollars worth of intelligence with the
Department of Homeland Security, another 40 billions
dollars and 170,000 people. Fortunately, the 9/11
Commission demonstrated a non-partisan approach.
They maintained this discipline of a non-partisan
approach in getting a unanimous product which had
very clear recommendations, many of which were in
the 1962 and the 2002 documents. The new
Intelligence Reform Bill included $80 billion
dollars and 200,000 people.
Dr. Fingar concluded: “The terrorist
threat is terribly important. Developing mechanisms
to deal with them is critical. But it is not the
only option through which one ought to review our
national security requirements. There is the
support to the military, support of diplomacy,
support of economic negotiations, just to cite some
of the other options that are pretty important. And
those of us, in the somewhat upper ranks of the
intelligence community—and I head one of the 15
agencies that are lumped under that rubric—this is
an opportunity that we have to seize. Let’s do
something right; and that is what we are trying to
work on now.”
