Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/washington/28intel.html
July 28, 2006
Report Faults Pace of Intelligence Overhaul
By MARK MAZZETTI [HPSIC report] [clearly IC entities knew it was coming] [note FBI’s preemptive move yesterday to blunt it] [however, where is Negroponte?] [seems AWOL] [last thing I remember reading was about realestate for the ODNI] [****************] [augers poorly] [use nsc ms] [use psci 455] [********]
WASHINGTON, July 27 — In a blunt assessment of the efforts to overhaul the United States’ spying apparatus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers criticized the director of national intelligence [*********] on Thursday for a “lack of urgency” in addressing failures that led to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the faulty assessments about Iraq’s banned weapons programs.
The assessment was in a report by the House Intelligence Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight [************] [check web site] [************]
More than a year after the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, was given a mandate to fuse the operations of 16 disparate intelligence operations, the report said that an incremental approach had been taken when urgent steps were needed to correct “the deficiencies identified by study after study.” [***********]
The report, the first official report card on Mr. Negroponte’s office, also concluded that one of the primary reasons for the intelligence failures before the Iraq war — a “groupthink” among analysts across the spying community — had yet to be seriously addressed and that intelligence analysis remained clustered around just 10 percent of the available data. [****************]
“Judging from the analysis presented in the briefings the committee has received on various topics over the past year,” the report stated, lawmakers were “concerned that the analytical community is still too risk-adverse and subject to groupthink.” [use for nexis search] [*************]
The report also criticized continued lack of communication between spy agencies and a cumbersome bureaucracy that governed security clearances. Noting that “information sharing within the community is one of the most critical tenets of intelligence reform,” it stated that progress on that front was “limited to understanding the task at hand.”
The criticisms echoed complaints voiced in recent months by top lawmakers, including Representatives Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, and Jane Harman, Democrat of California, the senior members of the Intelligence Committee. [*************]
In a statement, Mr. Negroponte said Thursday that the report “helps us take stock of our progress and chart the way ahead.”
“We recognize that change does not come easily to large enterprises,” he said, “and that we must continue to aggressively work to fulfill the mandate of the intelligence reform legislation.” [he’s almost finished] [when that’s his response, be prepared for some shakeups] [*********************]
In addition, Mr. Negroponte, whose office opened in April 2005, also issued a progress report, citing the achievements of his office in carrying out recommendations of a 2005 White House commission that studied the failures in assessing Iraq’s weapons. [********]
His report cited improvements in intelligence sharing between the United States and its allies, including a recently completed project that allows the British, Canadian and Australian intelligence services access to classified American systems. The report also cited new “structural changes,” like creation of the National Security Branch at the F.B.I. [is he referring to Mueller’s announcement yesterday or to previous] [check] [!!!
The changes at the Federal Bureau of Investigation were also noted in the House report, which concluded that “the transformation of the F.B.I. to an intelligence agency with law enforcement power is starting to take root.”
Lawmakers praised Mr. Negroponte for having the intelligence briefing that is delivered to the White House each morning draw its analysis from across the intelligence community, [***********] and no longer just from the Central Intelligence Agency.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company