The only meaningful way to rate the first year's performance of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is to judge whether or not the handiwork of the 9/11 Commission and political Washington has made intelligence better and the United States safer.

Focusing on process and organizational change might be edifying for bureaucrats and academics, but it badly misses George Tenet's point addressed above and absorbed intuitively by the nation on 9/11. We also can't hide behind such Washington clichés as "it's too early to tell," or "it's a work in progress." In a war against a determined, ruthless and active foe, every day counts and dithering could be deadly.

As outsiders, it's difficult to know whether intelligence has more effectively identified threats to the United States, pinpointed terrorist and other enemies and given the nation forewarning of attacks and other dangers ahead. But it's not impossible.

In fact, there is ample evidence all over the landscape that DNI's impact, at best, has been negligible and, more likely, an obstacle to strengthening intelligence.

The first piece of evidence comes from DNI's office itself, which trotted out its number two official, General Michael V. Hayden, and eight senior DNI officials to tell reporters about their first year on the job. Their claims of DNI success were painfully modest, if not disingenuous.

Hayden indicated the Intelligence Community is "taking a bit more direction" from DNI, and criticisms of it are "more about velocity and not direction."

The head of DNI analysis claimed there is new cooperation among analysts, experts and collectors. This is a common refrain repeated scores of times through the years whenever intelligence fell short or dots were not connected, but it amounts to saying, "We're doing more of the same, but better."

The head of DNI "customer outcomes" (is this an intelligence organization or a software company?) erroneously implied that, for the first time, the President had signed off on a prioritized list of intelligence targets developed by DNI. Such prioritized target lists were a staple of the Clinton Administration, not known for its strong stewardship or enthusiastic support for American intelligence.

Perhaps more is the sheer size of DNI, whose staff will grow to a stunning 1,500 personnel by 2007. This constitutes a huge layer of bureaucracy astride an already heavily layered intelligence bureaucracy, further encumbering its already stretched operational components.

How does this restore the derring-do of operational components, without which U.S. intelligence will be no match for terrorist foes? It would be one thing if DNI bureaucracy freed up the foot soldiers of intelligence to engage our terrorist enemies. Instead, in the manner of all bureaucracies, it has a massive appetite for personnel to staff it, information to give it sustenance, and credibility and interaction with existing agencies -- further sapping intelligence officers' strength, agility and resources.

By all accounts, the demands and outsized profile of DNI have further demoralized many intelligence agencies, contributing in the case of CIA to departures of experienced and talented officers.

That 1,500 figures pales when compared to the fewer than 100 CIA personnel who -- shoulder-to-shoulder with U.S. Special Operations Forces -- marshaled and led Afghan allies to drive the Taliban out of power and into hiding and sanctuary in late 2001.

If only DNI could claim it contributed to even minor operational successes in its first year. If there has been basis for such a claim rest assured that in today's Washington DNI would have found a way to take credit for it.

DNI arguably has even failed at its most basic mission to coordinate and integrate resources and energies of the intelligence community reducing overlaps, filling gaps and facilitating a streamlined and leaner national intelligence effort.

Instead, the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld is aggressively moving ahead in forming what amounts to its own, virtually independent intelligence organization, duplicating in some cases existing capabilities and components. This is partly in response to serious intelligence failures in Iraq, including assuring war planners that Iraqi military commanders and their units would surrender en masse at the war's outset, giving no forewarning of the Iraqi military plan to engage U.S. forces with irregulars rather than the main force Army, and offering little to no intelligence on the post-war insurgency. Not to mention the WMD fiasco.

The Pentagon's special operations capability has been beefed up substantially to provide the spearhead for the global war on terror, and Rumsfeld -- distrusting other national intelligence agencies -- believes that these forces need their own responsive, in-house intelligence capability.

Indeed, DoD has moved aggressively to fill gaps in national intelligence capabilities in the war on terror precisely because DNI has failed in at least two important areas to do so.

One is the continuing absence of a dedicated domestic intelligence capability along the lines of the British MI-5 organization that proved so crucial in combating the Irish Republican terrorist threat. This critical deficiency in U.S. counterterrorism defenses has been highlighted by virtually all serious public sector and private analyses of the situation, but neither DNI nor Congress and the White House have taken any corrective actions, preferring to fall back on the FBI, which still struggles to become a credible domestic intelligence capability.

The second (related to the first) is the inability of DNI to fulfill the intent of Congress to transform the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence organization into a central, coordinating mechanism for collection and analysis of the very unique and critical body of intelligence dealing with threats to domestic infrastructure and other likely terrorist targets. Rather, one hears about DNI and DHS going their separate and increasingly diverse ways in filling these gaps.

Year two could bring a more impressive record of success for DNI, although year two of DHS -- the nearest contemporary bureaucratic twin to the DNI exercise in Washington -- does not inspire confidence. Nor does the inertia common to bloated public sector bureaucracies that has been suggested by DNI's own self-assessments. And time is not on our side.