Congress Weighs In on Intelligence Matters

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29 May 2000. Thanks to D.

The Washington Post, May 29, 2000

Congress Weighs In on Intelligence Matters

By Vernon Loeb

Washington Post Staff Writer

Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have now spoken on the state of U.S. intelligence, having filed their annual reports on intelligence authorization legislation for the coming fiscal year.

And a troubled state it is.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) faults the Clinton administration for underfunding the CIA and its sister spy agencies and says the administration's lack of commitment "is placing undue risks on its armed forces and its national security interests by not redressing the many crucial problems facing the Intelligence Community."

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) homes in on underfunding and an array of serious management issues that have defied solution for decades, ordering up a blizzard of reports from the secretive agencies on everything from press leaks to hiring practices by intelligence community inspector generals.

'Troubled' by NSA

Both committees saved their most breathless commentary for the perilous state of the National Security Agency, with the SSCI "increasingly troubled" by the NSA's inability to cope with new communications technologies and the HPSCI demanding "ruthlessly honest assessments" about which new signals intelligence (SIGINT) technologies the NSA can develop in house and which it needs to buy from the private sector.

More than a few intelligence reformers are now openly suggesting that the current NSA, sucking old-fashioned electronic communications out of the airwaves, may be obsolete in a very short time.

But neither committee dares go there, calling instead for vast new expenditures to arm Fort Meade against an array of new technologies encryption software, fiber optic cable, digital cell phones, the Internet that it may or may not be able to fully defeat.

Indeed, the committee reports are striking in their collective call for more, barely countenancing a need to eliminate massive redundancies in the community or save money through obvious efficiencies so that scarce funds can be spent on higher priorities someplace else in the budget.

Nor do the committees dwell on the fact, however hard-pressed the intelligence community may be, that the spy agencies are coming off five straight years of budget increases at a time when many other federal agencies have been sliced to the bone.

Calling for Budget Disclosure

Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) tried to add some perspective on the issue of intelligence funding as he argued in House debate a week ago for an amendment that would force CIA Director George J. Tenet to reveal more about the total amount now being spent a budget figure that is, officially, secret.

"This amount of money is more than the gross domestic product of virtually all our enemies combined," DeFazio said. "They would be frightened to death if they knew we were spending $30 billion to sneak around in their countries or to look at them from satellites or however else it is that we are monitoring their activities. Only $30 billion, only $30 billion? This is extraordinary."

And yet, given the cost of high-tech collection systems needed to produce the kind of real-time product policymakers and battlefield commanders have come to expect, $30 billion just isn't enough, or so both committees argue. The problems they outline are daunting, indeed:

The NSA lacks the "technological infrastructure and human resources needed even to maintain the status quo, much less meet emerging challenges" posed by encryption, fiber optics, an explosion of digital cellular telephone traffic and a global migration to the Internet.

Clandestine operatives gathering secrets abroad have been hampered by poor planning, extended support of military forces during peacekeeping operations and various other special operations, "thus limiting our efforts to rebuild our 'eyes and ears' around the globe," the HPSCI says.

Massive computer networks needed to process and disseminate imagery from a new generation of spy satellites are so "woefully underfunded" that intelligence agencies will soon face what the SSCI calls a "Hobson's choice" between cutting desperately needed modernization of signals intelligence or allowing much of the data streaming down from space to go unprocessed.

Airborne reconnaissance support for U.S. troops is actually decreasing at a time when it is more essential than ever because funding for U-2s and other existing surveillance aircraft is being siphoned off to pay for development of future reconnaissance technologies.

A new generation of spy satellites are behind schedule and over budget while "an insufficient priority on developing cutting edge technologies ensures that the core mission of space intelligence to collect secrets will continue to languish and become increasingly limited," according to the HPSCI.

The National Imagery and Mapping Agency lacks authority within the Pentagon to manage development of digital geospatial products, from new satellite imagery to computerized battle maps.

"As these critical requirements have grown at a rapid pace, the intelligence budget has become more and more inadequate, with existing resources increasingly drawn off to meet day-to-day tactical requirements," the HPSCI reports. "Global coverage and predictive, strategic intelligence have, as a result, suffered. This translates into the lack of warning of nuclear tests in India, our inability to monitor key facilities suspected of producing weapons of mass destruction because assets are focused on crisis areas, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the extreme shortage of [reconnaissance] assets in key areas of the world."

More Money Needed

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), the HPSCI's chairman and a former CIA clandestine officer, makes no bones about the need for more money, even though the community has been getting more as other parts of the government retrench.

"The world as it is today is a very much more complicated place than it was during the days of a mutual standoff," said Goss, thought to be the leading candidate for director of central intelligence if Texas Gov. George W. Bush is elected president in November. "We're dealing with new kinds of enemies that are in some cases much harder to categorize and get a target understanding of. Plus we've got technology a whole range of technology problems, and they're critical."

Goss concedes that the intelligence community has to start making tough choices about what it can fund and what it can't. But he believes a lot more money is necessary for intelligence in the information age if those choices are going to be made without shortchanging national security.

"I think we're getting our message across," Goss said, "and our message is simple: For a relatively small percentage of our defense budget, we get a tremendous return on that investment."

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Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post staff writer who covers national security issues, writes his biweekly IntelligenCIA column exclusively for washingtonpost.com. His newspaper column, Back Channels, is also carried by this Web site. Loeb answers questions from readers in monthly online discussions. He can be reached via e-mail at loebv@washpost.com.