In the wake of the 9/11 disaster, Congress passed a 271-page statute to demonstrate that it was doing something about U.S. intelligence deficiencies. The centerpiece of this Legislation was the creation of the position of the Director of National Intelligence. The concept was that the DNI should lead and coordinate the government's fifteen intelligence agencies. Ten months ago, John Negroponte was appointed to this post.

It is fair to say that at this point in time the legislation has not achieved its lofty purposes. In fact, a bad situation has been made even worse. What we now have is another large and cumbersome federal bureaucracy in the intelligence area. Negroponte has hired qualified individuals to many of the key posts; they are not to blame. The difficulty is that the ultimate mission of the DNI is murky and confusing.

Negroponte was described by representative Jane Harmon (D-Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, as “a smart diplomat,” who “needs to stop being an ambassador.” Her comments reflect the fact that Negroponte has not moved aggressively to try to take control of the entire U.S. intelligence community as some in Congress had hoped.

But blaming Negroponte for this shortcoming is absurd. The goals and objectives envisioned by the proponents of the legislation were unrealistic. Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) hinted at the fact when he said, “We wanted lots of change fast and may be a little disappointed, but we may not have been realistic.”

Pentagon agencies spend 85% of the roughly $44 billion intelligence community budget and the vast majority of the 200,000 people in the American intelligence community work for DoD. Theoretically, most of these funds and people come under Negroponte's authority. Not surprisingly, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has not turned over control of the Pentagon's intelligence apparatus. Rather, in the time honored Washington manner of turf battles, he has issued a directive challenging Negroponte's authority and making his undersecretary for intelligence a necessary party to any changes involving the Pentagon's intelligence efforts. This battle with the Pentagon should have been foreseen, but wasn't taken into account in the statute.

Surely DNI would need a high degree of coordination with the CIA, and moreover DNI would be in charge of the CIA's intelligence efforts. Well, apparently not. Last year, CIA Director Porter Goss testified before a congressional committee that China's modernizing military forces “threatened US forces and interests in Asia.” Recently, Mr. Negroponte testified before precisely the same committee taking a much softer approach. In Negroponte's view, China is equated with India as a rising power in Asia, but not as threat to the United States. The whole idea of having a director of national intelligence was to have the U.S. intelligence agencies speaking with a single effective voice.

Arguably, the September 11 intelligence failure and the Iraqi WMD failure occurred because those in the field were far too removed and had no interaction with their agency's leadership that had the President's ear. With the new intelligence structure, that failing is exacerbated. A new layer of even more remote bureaucracy has been created. This is the last thing our intelligence effort needs right now.

At the end of the day, successful intelligence gathering is dependent on people. To be sure, technology is important -- satellites, sophisticated eavesdropping equipment and the like -- but individuals in the field are still the most critical component. The DNI will not be able to improve the qualifications or performance of these people. Indeed, their morale will be reduced because they are one step further removed from the decision makers.

At this point, there's little that Congress can do to fix the problem. After all, Congress was responsible for creating the unwieldy apparatus in the first place. The question is whether the Bush administration will take charge or simply let one more Washington bureaucracy further complicate our nation's intelligence gathering capability.