RE-READING RICHARD SHELBY

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Aftergood, Steven" <saftergood () fas org>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 08:53:11 -0500
To: secrecy_news () lists fas org
Subject: Secrecy News -- 02/18/03

<snip>

RE-READING RICHARD SHELBY

When the findings and recommendations of last year's congressional
joint inquiry into September 11 were published, Sen. Richard
Shelby (R-AL) independently issued a lengthy statement of his own
"additional views" on the subject.

The bulky document was largely overlooked at the time, except for
its potshots at CIA Director Tenet, and by now it has nearly been
forgotten.  But Shelby's statement is littered with telling
observations and original insights, and no one with an interest
in intelligence policy should miss it.

Noting that "The CIA's Directorate of Operations usually refuses
even to let CIA analysts see its own operational cable traffic,"
Sen. Shelby establishes that dysfunctional information policies,
including inappropriate controls on information, are at the root
of much of what ails the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy.

"The fundamental intellectual assumptions that have guided our
Intelligence Community's approach to managing national security
information for half a century may be in some respects crucially
flawed," he writes.

Along the way, he challenges some longstanding practices that are
so deeply-rooted that no one normally thinks to question them,
such as the application of the "need to know" standard for
sharing information.

"It may not be true," Sen. Shelby proposes radically, "that
information-holders -- the traditional arbiters of who can see
'their' data -- are the entities best placed to determine whether
outsiders have any 'need to know' data in their possession.
Analysts who seek access to information, it turns out, may well
be the participants best equipped to determine what their
particular expertise and contextual understanding can bring to
the analysis of certain types of data."

But information sharing is not exactly the solution either,
"inasmuch as 'sharing' connotes ownership by the party that
decides to share it, an idea that is antithetical to truly
empowering analysts to connect all the right 'dots'."

As for intelligence reform, "hard-wiring the IC in order to fight
terrorists... is precisely the wrong answer, because such an
approach would surely leave us unprepared for the next major
threat, whatever it turns out to be."  Rather, "we need an
Intelligence Community agile enough to evolve as threats evolve,
on a continuing basis."

The new regime also poses challenges for intelligence oversight,
he notes.  "Since the Department of Justice has taken the
position that the intelligence oversight committees of Congress
should not be permitted to see any grand jury information, this
means that there is no oversight of what use is made of grand
jury material passed to the Intelligence Community.... The 108th
Congress would do well to consider the civil liberties
implications of passing grand jury information to the
Intelligence Community without effective oversight."

There is naturally much to argue over, and disagree with, in the
84 page report.  But on balance, Sen. Shelby's report is among
the most thoughtful and the most rigorously argued congressional
writing on intelligence in many years.

Sen. Shelby's December 10, 2002, report on "September 11 and the
Imperative of Reform in the U.S. Intelligence Community"
may be found here:

   http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_rpt/shelby.html



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

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