Rumsfeld Objects to Intelligence Tsar

The largely-invisible-these-days Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared recently to argue against the creation of an intelligence tsar (Editor's Note: Kensington Review house style uses the Russian, not Polish, spelling). While conceding such an official could offer "some modest" improvements, it would be a bad idea to give him budgetary authority or anything like that. As he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, "If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great." Maybe he has learned from attacking Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

The trouble with Mr. Rumsfeld's position, were he himself a credible individual anymore, stems from the loss of power that the military must suffer if reform of the intelligence community is to be a success. America has a good 15 intelligence agencies, and 80% of their budgets are under the control of the Secretary of Defense. When the intelligence community failed America on September 11, 2001, it was a failure of the Department of Defense, as Commissioner Bob Kerrey said. The DOD is the guilty party, and it needs to lose some of the power it has mismanaged.

Mr. Rumsfeld offered a red herring, "We would not want to place new barriers or filters between military combatant commanders and those agencies when they perform as combat-support agencies." Indeed, denying a military commander combat intelligence is a crime and counter-productive. However, his belief that those filters or barriers are the issue is wrong. The problem lies in the military controlling intelligence.

Everyone views the world from his own seat, and military professionals are no different that their civilian counterparts. A military training results in a military perspective. That is not what one wants in formulating foreign policy let alone in assessment of raw data. Diplomats, by virtue of their training, view the world as a place in which deals are cut, and they will use intelligence must differently than military leaders. The question is whose judgment is most appropriate in a bourgeois liberal democracy like the US of A?

Give a new intelligence tsar budgetary responsibility for all data collecting. Take all collection away from the Pentagon, and put it in an independent agency. Let all the departments of the government have access to the raw intelligence and let the analysts, each with his own bias and agenda, assess it according to the needs of his department. There will inevitably be conflicts among them. Adjudicating those disputes is what elected officials are paid to do. It is called making policy, and they are far better suited to it than Mr. Rumsfeld's team, as recent history has shown.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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