Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [94]
Centers can become competitors for resources with offices in agencies. This appears to have been the case with the NCTC and CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, according to the WMD Commission. As has been seen from the time that DCI Gates began creating centers in the early 1990s, the heads of agencies are not willing to siphon away scarce resources to an activity over which they will have no control (centers fell under the jurisdiction of the DCI and now are under the DNI) and from which they will receive no direct results. The WMD Commission recommended the creation of an additional center, the National Counterproliferation Center, which has a managerial role in line with the commission’s concept of mission managers to coordinate collection and analysis on specific issues or topics.
A bureaucratic debate has ensued on the nature of the centers. Although their goal is to bring the intelligence components into a single place, most centers had been located in and dominated by the CIA. Some people argue that the arrangement undercuts the centers’ basic goal—to reach across agencies. Defenders of the system argue that housing the centers in the CIA gives them access to many resources not available elsewhere and also protects their budgets and staffing. A 1996 review by the House Intelligence Committee staff validated the concept of the centers but urged that they be less CIA-centric. Given the location of the centers, however, other agencies are sometimes loath to assign analysts to them, fearing that they will be essentially lost resources during their center service. (A similar problem used to occur on the Joint Staff, which supports the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military services—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines—naturally preferred to keep their best officers in duties directly related to their service. This ended when Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, which mandated a joint service tour as a prerequisite for promotion to general or admiral.) Centers now are overseen by the DNI, which should serve to make the centers more community-based in terms of staffing. However, the setup raises new issues about how the DNI staffs the centers when he has no direct control over any analytic components comparable to the control that the DCI had over the CIA. DNI McConnell’s requirement that intelligence officers have “joint duty” assignments before being promoted to senior ranks (similar to the requirement for the military) may help make assignments to centers more attractive, especially for one’s most talented officers, as a means of assuring their continued promotion. Another issue for the centers is their duration. In government—in all sectors—ostensibly temporary bodies have a way of becoming permanent, even when the reasons for their creation have long since ended. A certain bureaucratic inertia sets in. Some people wish to see the body continue, as it is a source of power; others fear that by being the first to suggest terminating it they will look like shirkers. The situation has a comic aspect to it, but also a serious one, as these temporary groups absorb substantial amounts of resources and energy.
Thus, the question for the centers—or any other groups—is: When are they no longer needed? Clearly, the transnational issues are ongoing, but even they may change or diminish over time. One former deputy DCI suggested a five-year sunset provision for all centers, meaning that every five years each center would be subject to a hard-nosed review of its functions and the requirement for its continuation.
Finally, some critics question the focus of the centers, arguing that they are concentrating tactically on operational aspects of specific issues instead of on the longer term trends. Center proponents note the presence of analysts and the working relationship between the centers and the national intelligence officers (NIOs), who can keep apprised of the centers’ work, offer advice, and are responsible for the production of NIEs.
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