Establishing a national intelligence "czar" would seem sure to shake up Washington's massive spy bureaucracy, but US President George W. Bush's description of the job has been murky and members of the Sept. 11 Commission complained Tuesday his plan doesn't go far enough.
"We will be talking in more detail as we move forward on this," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in the face of criticism that Bush was too vague about the new director's authority. The unanswered questions mean Congress is likely to play a major role in defining the job and a proposed national counterterrorism center.
"No one is going to listen to this individual" without the ability to hire and fire and control budgets, said former Republican Senator Slade Gorton, a member of the commission.
Bush's proposal departs in key areas from the recommendations of the commission that investigated the deadliest attack on America and faulted the work of intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In particular, the president's blueprint would give the new director authority to "coordinate" the budgets of the nation's 15 intelligence agencies, as the current director has, but not the final say on how much they receive or how they spend it.
Giving the director control over intelligence budgets probably would ignite a turf battle with the Pentagon, which controls a large chunk -- 85 percent by some estimates -- of the nation's US$40 billion-plus intelligence budget.
"I know that Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld is going to oppose it," commission member Bob Kerrey, a Democrat, said Tuesday. Rumsfeld told the commission in March that creating an intelligence czar would be a"great disservice." The commission said the director should have the power to hire and fire the chief of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI intelligence office and other agencies. But Bush's plan simply envisions giving the director a say in those decisions.
"If you don't have the authority to pick the people, isn't a national director just a shell game and a shell operation?" said Senator Arlen Specter.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican member of the Sept. 11 panel, agreed.
"It makes no sense at all unless it has the power to break up bureaucratic layers, to remove bureaucratic layers," said Lehman.
"To carry it out, this national intelligence director has to have hiring and firing power, not just budget coordination power, but budget and appropriations and reprogramming power."
The proposed changes -- including the creation of a national counterterrorism center -- would be perhaps the biggest shakeup of the US intelligence community since the 1947 law establishing the CIA.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS