McCain Wants `Can-Do' Spies; Obama to Separate Agency, Politics

By Jeff Bliss

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain and Barack Obama agree that the next president needs to shake up U.S. spy operations. That's where the similarity ends.

McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has called the Central Intelligence Agency ``dysfunctional'' and wants to create a ``small, nimble, can-do'' espionage organization for bolder clandestine missions, modeled on World War II's Office of Strategic Services.

``What he's looking at is something that doesn't have the internal bureaucracy'' of the current spy network, says Kori Schake, a McCain adviser and former National Security Council aide to President George W. Bush.

Obama, the Democratic candidate, proposes to make the current system more effective, and free from political interference, by consolidating operations from different agencies and giving the director of national intelligence a fixed term of office, like the Federal Reserve chairman.

The top U.S. intelligence official ``really shouldn't be involved in the political process,'' says John Brennan, former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center and an Obama adviser. A fixed term also would ``ensure there is going to be continuity through presidents,'' he says.

Whoever wins Nov. 4, the next president must overhaul a $47.5 billion intelligence effort, spread through 16 agencies, that's still struggling seven years after failing to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks and six years after wrongly concluding that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Layers of Bureaucracy

The latest challenge involves revamping a 2004 law that was supposed to repair flaws exposed by 9/11 and Iraq, national security analysts say. The law established a new office led by a director of national intelligence, or DNI, to oversee the CIA and other intelligence operations. So far, the law has added a layer of bureaucracy without giving the director -- currently former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell -- enough authority over agencies' budgets, national security analysts say.

``The DNI is still very much a work in progress, and a lot people are thinking it's not working,'' says Mark Lowenthal, former CIA assistant director for analysis and production. The next president must get it right, because U.S. spies face an array of threats besides terrorists and hostile countries like Iran and North Korea, advisers from both campaigns say.

Intelligence agencies, for example, will have to help future administrations respond if global warming creates famines or water shortages that, in turn, generate civil unrest and terrorism, Brennan says.

Energy Security

The U.S. reliance on foreign oil will need to be factored into military and intelligence planning even more than it has in the past because of shrinking supplies, says McCain adviser James Woolsey, a former CIA director. ``Energy policy has a lot to do with national security,'' he says.

McCain, 72, wants to use the OSS, the CIA's predecessor, as the model for a modern-day agency for covert action, psychological warfare, and paramilitary operations. He has said he wants a group that will ``take risks that our bureaucracies today are afraid to take,'' such as sending agents to infiltrate terrorist groups.

Under the Republican's proposal, the organization would recruit college professors, business executives and first- generation immigrants who could work quickly and aggressively, advisers say.

Agents would be placed without diplomatic cover in enemy countries and militant organizations, a change from CIA undercover operatives who mostly work out of U.S. embassies and have diplomatic immunity if caught, McCain says.

`Rogue' Agency

The Arizona senator has been a critic of the CIA, even calling it a ``rogue'' agency and charging that intelligence officials leaked information detrimental to Bush's 2004 re- election campaign.

Some intelligence professionals think McCain's plan would only add to the intelligence bureaucracy and duplicate current efforts, Lowenthal says. ``If you start creating a parallel structure, you might create more confusion,'' he says.

McCain seeks to expand parts of the CIA, increasing the espionage and covert-operation division by 50 percent and doubling the staff for research and development. Those steps were recommended by the Robb-Silberman Commission, a panel McCain served on that was established after botched intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.

McCain also wants to beef up the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an intelligence-gathering organization. ``The FBI hasn't fully become part of the intelligence community,'' Schake says.

Playing Politics

Obama, 47, aims to keep U.S. spies from playing politics, after some intelligence officials were charged with telling Bush administration policy makers what they wanted to hear during the run-up to the Iraq War.

A Defense Department intelligence unit run by former Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith undercut other intelligence agencies in arguing for a link between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, according to a Pentagon inspector general's report last year.

Appointing the national intelligence director for a specific period, like the Federal Reserve chairman's four-year term, would help promote unvarnished analysis by removing a president's ability to fire the spy chief at will, Obama says.

To improve the quality of intelligence analysis, Obama proposes hiring more spies and analysts who know the local cultures and languages of world hotspots, and having spy agencies develop competing assessments of those regions.

Obama's plan includes a $5 billion, three-year program to foster cooperation between U.S. and foreign intelligence and law- enforcement agencies on sharing tips, guarding borders and uncovering terrorist financing.

Overlapping Operations

Obama also will look for ways to consolidate overlapping intelligence operations, Brennan says. One target may be the director of national intelligence's 1,500-person staff, which lawmakers have criticized as duplicating work at other agencies.

Democrats also would consider merging FBI and Department of Homeland Security intelligence offices across the U.S. that share information with state and local law enforcement officials, Brennan says. Too often, the ``cop on the beat in New York City,'' border agents and others don't get vital intelligence because the information-sharing effort isn't better coordinated, he says.

Whatever changes come under Obama or McCain, the next administration needs to be careful not to diminish the U.S. spying network's capabilities, says Loch Johnson, a political science professor at the University of Georgia in Athens who has written extensively about intelligence.

``The intel community does need to be small and more nimble,'' he says. ``But the U.S. is a world power'' and needs a massive spying effort.