 Dick
Coffman is an international business and security
consultant and media commentator on intelligence,
homeland security and terrorism. He is managing
Director of Odysseus
Group International, which provides risk
management and security solutions to the transportation,
basic infrastructure and manufacturing industries.
Mr. Coffman specializes in ports and maritime
security and homeland defense. He is founder
and President of Coffman
Global Group, which leverages worldwide
networks for business development and marketing
in high technology, basic materials and capital
construction.
Mr. Coffman has conducted assessments of intelligence
operations for the U.S. Customs Service and
the Office of Naval Intelligence and for a
major defense contractor.
Mr. Coffman served 31 years in the Central
Intelligence Agency where he formed and managed
the Agency's first counterterrorism analytic
organization and served as Chief of Station,
chief of staff to the Director of the Clandestine
Service, coordinator of major worldwide covert
intelligence programs and CIA representative
to the NATO Commander.
He also served four years in the U.S. Marine
Corps, including duty in Vietnam in 1965 and
1966. Mr. Coffman remained in the Marine Corps
Reserves retiring in 1992 at the grade of
Colonel. Mr. Coffman is a student of military
history and an authority on the U.S. Civil
War.
Coffman
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October 18, 2004
The reshaping of US intelligence could be headed for a disastrous result at a time when intelligence could determine the outcome of the war on terror.
What has gone wrong? The 9/11 Commission's misguided intelligence recommendations and election-year pressures have driven politicians - many of whom should know better - into supporting ill-conceived but politically popular measures.
Adoption of the core of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations - a new director or "czar" of national intelligence and a centralized national counterterrorism center - is likely to do more harm than good. US intelligence will be distracted from the war on terror. Its energies and resources, including months and years of precious time and increasingly scarce intelligence professionals will be wasted on organizational and bureaucratic changes that seem unlikely to have positive impact on the war on terror.
Moreover, a rare opportunity to erase the risk averse culture that has plagued human source intelligence collection for a decade and beef up operational efforts against the terrorist target will be squandered.
When fully established the intelligence czar will add yet another layer of bureaucracy to the already time-consuming and burdensome superstructure of review and approval in Washington. The new director will need experienced personnel to staff his operation and information to underpin his decisions and actions, both of which must be drawn from an already over-stretched Intelligence Community.
And what conceivable value will the czar add to the tough and dangerous job in the field of penetrating terrorist organizations, identifying their operatives and cells and uncovering their plans, which is how the war on terror must be fought?
For its part, a new counterterrorism center will add to the welter and confusion of fusion and operations centers that sprang up all over Washington and the US in the wake of 9/11.
The new counterterrorism center will supplant the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) announced in the 2003 State of the Union and designed to integrate counterterrorism efforts of the CIA, FBI, DHS and DoD. Additionally, it's not clear what is to become of the CIA's own Counterterrorism Center in operation since the mid-80's and long considered a model for a successful integrated intelligence operation.
And from where, pray tell, will the manpower come to staff the latest attempt at an integrated, all-agency, centrally located counterterrorism center?
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In a larger sense, did the 9/11 Commission tally up the cost in funds, lost hours and declining productivity before it judged that a czar and yet another center was required?
How could our Washington leaders perform so badly on such a critical issue at a time of war?
The answer is that the Commission fundamentally misread the intelligence lessons of 9/11, and much of Congress and the White House were unable to resist the political pressures of elections in an evenly divided nation.
The 9/11 Commission succumbed to one of the most unfortunate urban legends of our time; that failure to "connect the dots" or adequately collate available intelligence blinded the nation to the coming 9/11 attacks. In fact, the paramount intelligence shortfall, then and now, is not collecting enough high quality intelligence identifying terrorists, their organizations, locations and plans. When smart analysts lack high quality dots, coordination problems invariably result.
Having misjudged the failures of 9/11, it's no wonder that the Commission - stocked with old Washington hands - sought an organizational fix and gravitated to the favorite Washington remedy of forming a highly centralized bureaucracy. The Congressional Research Service issued a report in July listing 15 separate proposals and recommendations stretching back to 1955 for centralized Intelligence Community leadership.
But, the Commission further compounded its error by recommending fundamental changes in Defense Department intelligence agencies that had virtually nothing to do with 9/11 while leaving untouched the FBI whose poor performance was at the heart of intelligence failures.
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© 2004 Richard Coffman. All opinions expressed in this article
are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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