June 12, 2005
A Man on the Inside
From the New York Times today:
Under pressure from the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to adopt the recommendations of a presidential commission and will allow the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, to help choose a powerful intelligence chief at the F.B.I., Bush administration officials say.The appointment would for the first time in the bureau's history give an outsider a significant role in the selection of a high-level official at the F.B.I., an agency long regarded by its critics as fiercely protective of its turf and resistant to change.
If Mark Felt's full story had not recently come to light, I wouldn't really understand how seriously to take the above statements. But when you consider that the last White House to try make F.B.I. appointments too directly was brought down for its trouble, it becomes clear how revolutionary this is.
(Something tells me that the F.B.I. agreeing to let the White House name their head of intelligence is not unrelated to the report put out on Thursday detailing some of the more obvious ways they screwed the pooch leading up to 9/11. Of course, that report by itself wouldn't be enough to bend the F.B.I. to the White House will. But reading these stories it's obvious that the White House has been softening them up for a while, and this probably isn't the last card in Bush's deck.)
It's also striking that the Administration's reaction to the Robb-Silberman commission's findings seems to be a lot more energetic than to previous commissions' findings and recommendations. I must make a note to find out what the differences are there.
There are some particularly ominous stars coming into alignment, here. One, we have the F.B.I.'s domestic spying powers greatly increased in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. We have a White House intent on restoring Executive powers to their pre-Nixon state. Now, we have the F.B.I.'s domestic spying organs being consolidated and placed under the supervision of someone appointed directly from the White House:
The intelligence chief would manage the bureau's national security and counterterrorism divisions, as well as its recently created Directorate of Intelligence, which coordinates the bureau's information-gathering efforts.[...]
The bureau has also agreed to accept other proposals by the commission. Most of them would give Mr. Negroponte's office greater influence over the F.B.I.'s intelligence spending, which accounts for more than a third of the bureau's budget of nearly $5 billion.
[...]
At the same time, officials said the Justice Department will accept another recommendation by the Silberman-Robb commission to establish a new national security division, bringing the department's main national security units together in a single office. Justice Department lawyers differed over the proposal, the officials said, but ultimately agreed to accept it at the urging of the White House.
No doubt the F.B.I. needs to undergo some serious reforms, the sooner the better. The past decade seems to have had nothing but bad news for them, from moles to incompetence to sheer disorganization and technological backwardness. In particular, the years since 9/11 have seen one hammer fall to the Bureau's reputation after another. But as important as strengthening our antiterrorism apparatus is, it is doubly important to do it right and maintain that delicate balance between national security and civil liberty. Do we trust this Administration to do this job properly? I for one do not.
Both the White House and the F.B.I. had their powers significantly curtailed after the Watergate scandals, and for good reasons. We have not changed so radically in the past 30 years that we can't make the same mistakes. But if all the organs of power are loyal to the same group, where does the next Deep Throat come from?
Posted by ben at June 12, 2005 02:38 PM