[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Editorial: True Intelligence Reform, or None

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Editorial: True Intelligence Reform, or None

October 25, 2004
 


 

The independent Sept. 11 commission has come up with one
more worthy recommendation: doing nothing can be better
than doing the wrong thing. If House Republicans continue
to undermine an honest overhaul of the nation's
intelligence system, proponents should drop the matter
rather than accept a compromise that falls short of real
reform. 

The Senate passed a strong bill to give the country a
national intelligence director to bring order from the
chaos of 15 rival spy agencies that failed the nation. But
with time running out, House leaders play the
obstructionists. They are demanding a director who would be
more of a figurehead and ill equipped to break the
Pentagon's stranglehold on budgets or to forge a reliable
intelligence shield. Republicans also insist on another
package of anti-immigrant deportation and surveillance
powers, as if crackdown clichés were a realistic reform
tool. 

President Bush should demand the unencumbered Senate bill.
But the White House is sending mixed signals, leaving in
doubt its announced goal of enacting true reform by
Election Day. It backs some of the Senate's stronger powers
while opposing some of the House's civil rights abuses. 

House Republicans should be fed up with the current
system's manifest flaws; after all, they're making a point
of demanding that the Central Intelligence Agency release
the overdue inspector general's report about why no one has
been held accountable for the intelligence failures
documented by the 9/11 commission. 

If the House were more responsible, the work of the
bipartisan 9/11 commission would be successfully concluded
by now. But the panel is doing the nation one more service
by warning voters not to be misled by any hollow compromise
dubbed reform. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/opinion/25mon2.html?ex=1099723532&ei=1&en=856419fef6337521


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