A Particularly Bad Idea: Department of Intelligence
6th June 2010
No one should be happy with the performance of the ODNI. It was born of compromise and expediency and predestined to fail miserably. The understandable outrage of the families of the victims of 9/11 and a surge of national sympathy on their behalf spawned the 9/11 Commission, whose report and recommendations then heavily influenced the substance and urgency of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which carried Congress by large margins. Who could vote against it?! Rewiring the intelligence community was going to solve all our problems. Whatever misgivings President Bush had, he got the message—and he got out of the way. The bill created a new layer of bureaucracy called ODNI that hangs over the IC like the alien doomsday ship in the movie Independence Day. The Senate wanted the DNI to control the intelligence community. The House wanted the DNI to coordinate activity in the IC. Under current circumstances, the DNI can do neither.