[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 133 (Thursday, November 18, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11485-S11486]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              PROBLEMS IN THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern over 
recent news reports detailing turmoil inside the Central Intelligence 
Agency since the arrival of the new Director, Porter Goss, and former 
members of his staff in the House of Representatives.
  As a senior member of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs 
with oversight responsibility for homeland security and the committee 
responsible for drafting the legislative reform on intelligence now in 
conference, I am deeply concerned about the impact the new leadership 
at the CIA may have on our national security.
  Since the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 
11, 2001, the Congress has been engaged as never before in efforts to 
reform our intelligence collection capability in terms of our ability 
to improve the technical means to collect and share critical 
information in a timely fashion. The key component to that reform is 
human capital. Time and time again in outside commissions, reports to 
the Congress, and in hearings, we have been told that our intelligence 
and law enforcement communities lack sufficient qualified personnel to 
collect and analyze information. I introduced legislation, S. 589, the 
Homeland Security Federal Workforce Act, which passed the Senate with 
bipartisan support last year and is now in the House, to help rectify 
that problem. Other Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have 
also introduced legislation to improve our intelligence and law 
enforcement workforce.
  This is why I am so disturbed by the news reports that senior members 
of the CIA are being forced to resign, are being pressured to fire 
subordinates, and there are fears that they may even be asked to tailor 
their analysis to support the administration's policies, according to 
the November 17, 2004, New York Times. I ask unanimous consent that the 
article be printed in the Record following my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S11486]]

  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. AKAKA. Among those who have been forced out or retired recently 
are the Deputy Director of the CIA, the Deputy Director of Operations, 
the second ranking member of the clandestine service, and the former 
head of the CIA bin Laden unit. Other resignations, retirements, or 
reassignments may follow.
  Apparently, Director Goss brought with him at least 4 former staffers 
from the House of Representatives and inserted them into senior 
positions at the agency where they have begun to force these 
resignations.
  This is troubling for two reasons: First, we cannot afford to lose 
any intelligence personnel, especially seasoned officers, in the midst 
of the war on terrorism. We have so few people we cannot fully staff 
the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, TTIC, that the President 
created to provide a coordinated counterterrorism response to the 9/11 
attacks. Secondly, our intelligence staff have been working 24/7 since 
the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq began. They need morale 
boosters, not the morale downers that come from the forced resignations 
of well-respected leaders.
  So desperate is the personnel situation that the intelligence reform 
bill, S. 2845, now in conference, authorizes the establishment of a 
National Intelligence Reserve Corps for the temporary reemployment of 
former intelligence community employees during periods of emergency.
  Some would argue that the CIA is a ``damaged agency'' that needs to 
be reformed through ``hard love.'' Perhaps that is the case. Perhaps 
the operations directorate needs to be given new direction. I 
understand that both President Clinton and President Bush, in his first 
term, were focused on reforming the clandestine operations through the 
efforts of Director Tenet and that those reforms were yielding results. 
But if those results are insufficient, more needs to be done.
  If a ship needs to change course and requires a new crew, the new 
crew needs to knows both how to pilot a ship and how to plot a course. 
So far, the current upheaval at the Central Intelligence Agency makes 
me worry that the current new crew may not measure up to that 
challenge. I would like to be proved wrong because our national 
security depends on it.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the New York Times, Nov. 17, 2004]

     New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers To Back Administration Policies

                           (By Douglas Jehl)

       Washington, Nov. 16.--Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence 
     chief, has told Central Intelligence Agency employees that 
     their job is to ``support the administration and its policies 
     in our work,'' a copy of an internal memorandum shows.
       ``As agency employees we do not identify with, support or 
     champion opposition to the administration or its policies,'' 
     Mr. Goss said in the memorandum, which was circulated late on 
     Monday. He said in the document that he was seeking ``to 
     clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road.''
       While his words could be construed as urging analysts to 
     conform with administration policies, Mr. Goss also wrote, 
     ``We provide the intelligence as we see it--and let the facts 
     alone speak to the policymaker.''
       The memorandum suggested an effort by Mr. Goss to spell out 
     his thinking as he embarked on what he made clear would be a 
     major overhaul at the agency, with further changes to come. 
     The changes to date, including the ouster of the agency's 
     clandestine service chief, have left current and former 
     intelligence officials angry and unnerved. Some have been 
     outspoken, including those who said Tuesday that they 
     regarded Mr. Goss's warning as part of an effort to suppress 
     dissent within the organization.
       In recent weeks, White House officials have complained that 
     some C.I.A. officials have sought to undermine President Bush 
     and his policies.
       At a minimum, Mr. Goss's memorandum appeared to be a swipe 
     against an agency decision under George J. Tenet, his 
     predecessor as director of central intelligence, to permit a 
     senior analyst at the agency, Michael Scheuer, to write a 
     book and grant interviews that were critical of the Bush 
     administration's policies on terrorism.
       One former intelligence official said he saw nothing 
     inappropriate in Mr. Goss's warning, noting that the C.I.A. 
     had long tried to distance itself and its employees from 
     policy matters.
       ``Mike exploited a seam in the rules and inappropriately 
     used it to express his own policy views,'' the official said 
     of Mr. Scheuer. ``That did serious damage to the agency, 
     because many people, including some in the White House, 
     thought that he was being urged by the agency to take on the 
     president. I know that was not the case.''
       But a second former intelligence official said he was 
     concerned that the memorandum and the changes represented an 
     effort by Mr. Goss to stifle independence.
       ``If Goss is asking people to color their views and be a 
     team player, that's not what people at C.I.A. signed up 
     for,'' said the former intelligence official. The official 
     and others interviewed in recent days spoke on condition that 
     they not be named, saying they did not want to inflame 
     tensions at the agency.
       Some of the contents of Mr. Goss's memorandum were first 
     reported by The Washington Post. A complete copy of the 
     document was obtained on Tuesday by The New York Times.
       Tensions between the agency's new leadership team, which 
     took over in late September, and senior career officials are 
     more intense than at any time since the late 1970's. The most 
     significant changes so far have been the resignations on 
     Monday of Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of 
     operations, and his deputy, Michael Sulick, but Mr. Goss told 
     agency employees in the memorandum that he planned further 
     changes ``in the days and weeks ahead of us'' that would 
     involve ``procedures, organization, senior personnel and 
     areas of focus for our action.''
       ``I am committed to sharing these changes with you as they 
     occur,'' Mr. Goss said in the memorandum. ``I do understand 
     it is easy to be distracted by both the nature and the pace 
     of change. I am confident, however, that you will remain 
     deeply committed to our mission.''
       Mr. Goss's memorandum included a reminder that C.I.A. 
     employees should ``scrupulously honor our secrecy oath'' by 
     allowing the agency's public affairs office and its 
     Congressional relations branch to take the lead in all 
     contacts with the media and with Congress. ``We remain a 
     secret organization,'' he said.
       Among the moves that Mr. Goss said he was weighing was the 
     selection of a candidate to become the agency's No. 2 
     official, the deputy director of central intelligence. The 
     name being mentioned most often within the C.I.A. as a 
     candidate, intelligence officials said, is Lt. Gen. Michael 
     V. Hayden of the Air Force, the director of the National 
     Security Agency, which is responsible for intercepting 
     electronic communications worldwide. The naming of a deputy 
     director would be made by the White House, in a nomination 
     subject to Senate confirmation.
       In interviews this week, members of Congress as well as 
     current and former intelligence officials said one reason the 
     overhaul under way had left them unnerved was that Mr. Goss 
     had not made clear what kind of agency he intended to put in 
     place. But Mr. Goss's memorandum did little to spell out that 
     vision, and it did not make clear why the focus of overhaul 
     efforts to date appeared to be on the operations directorate, 
     which carries out spying and other covert missions around the 
     world.
       ``It's just very hard to divine what's going on over 
     there,'' said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who said 
     he and other members of the Senate intelligence committee 
     would be seeking answers at closed sessions this week. ``But 
     on issue after issue, there's a real question about whether 
     the country and the Congress are going to get an unvarnished 
     picture of our intelligence situation at a critical time.''
       Mr. Goss said in the memorandum that he recognized that 
     intelligence officers were operating in an atmosphere of 
     extraordinary pressures, after a series of reports critical 
     of intelligence agencies' performance in the months leading 
     up to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.
       ``The I.C. and its people have been relentlessly 
     scrutinized and criticized,'' he said, using an abbreviation 
     for intelligence community. ``Intelligence-related issues 
     have become the fodder of partisan food fights and turf-power 
     skirmishes. All the while, the demand for our services and 
     products against a ruthless and unconventional enemy has 
     expanded geometrically and we are expected to deliver--
     instantly. We have reason to be proud of our achievements and 
     we need to be smarter about how we do our work in this 
     operational climate.''

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