Secrecy News: NORTHCOM's Powers; Background on Special Ops; Intel Agility
Secrecy News: NORTHCOM's Powers;
Background on Special Ops; Intel Agility
About
Secrecy News
SECRECY NEWS is an email publication of
the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Project on Government Secrecy. It provides
informal coverage of new developments in secrecy,
security and intelligence policies, as well
as links to new acquisitions on the Federation
of American Scientists web site. It
is published 2 to 3 times a week, or as events
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U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is the new U.S. military combat
command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado that is responsible
for the military aspects of "homeland security." But there is more
to it than that.
NORTHCOM has several distinct missions, including counterterrorism,
counterintelligence, critical infrastructure protection and the
protection of military bases and forces inside the United States, as
Jim McGee parsed the matter in a series of groundbreaking articles
he wrote on NORTHCOM in Congressional Quarterly Homeland Security.
"With almost no public attention or debate, the Pentagon is building
an intelligence operation in Colorado that will link together U.S.
spy agencies and federal, state and local police forces," McGee
wrote in CQ Homeland Security on October 22.
This is not intrinsically surprising.
"In order to defend the U.S. from attack, NORTHCOM has a strong
rationale for access to information collected by various
intelligence and law enforcement agencies," according to a recent
Congressional Research Service report.
"However, at a certain point, such access could create the perception
-- or the reality -- that the military is spying on U.S. citizens,"
CRS said.
"What type of access should NORTHCOM be given to various types of
sensitive data? What types of safeguards need to be established to
ensure that this data is used properly?" CRS asked rhetorically.
Funding for special operations forces -- elite military units with
specialized training that undertake particularly challenging, often
classified missions -- has escalated rapidly in recent years.
Oversight and accountability have arguably not kept pace. When the
Central Intelligence Agency undertakes a covert action, it must be
justified by a presidential finding, which must be provided to
Congress. It is not clear that any comparable procedure exists for
keeping tabs on special forces when they undertake analogous
clandestine missions.
At the root of the momentous failure of U.S. intelligence is a lack
of organizational agility, argues Bruce Berkowitz in a new paper,
referring to an inability to quickly come to grips with new threats
and challenges.
"Those critics who were looking for a 'smoking gun' -- a key piece of
intelligence that would have tipped off officials to the September
11 plot -- are missing the bigger picture. The failure wasn't
committed by our dedicated, motivated analysts and case officers.
The problem is that these people were locked into an organization
that is too slow, too inflexible, and too stuck in its ways to deal
with today's threats."
In a characteristically thoughtful essay, Berkowitz specifies the
features of an "agile" intelligence organization. (He might have
noted, though he didn't, the desirability of an information policy
that does not impose unnecessary obstacles to the dissemination of
intelligence information inside and outside of government.) And he
proposes benchmarks by which improvement could be measured.
See "Spying
in the Post-September 11 World" by Bruce Berkowitz in the Hoover
Digest, published by Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Fall
2003.
