Intelligence Reform: The Right Time, The Wrong Bill

BRENDAN MINITER of the WSJ makes the case for stopping this bad bill. Do we need intel reform? Yes, but this bill is not it...More to follow//JW sends.

Before we get too far into the details--and there are a lot of details that have not been widely reported but will nonetheless make you cringe--let's pause for a moment to consider the politics. Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, responded to a reporter's question this way: "If there is another major terrorist attack on our soil--and sadly, there will likely be one--we will have only ourselves to blame. Congress had a chance to protect America, and Congress failed." She's hardly alone. This seems to be part of a new Democratic offensive.

This strategy is a dangerous one for America. Talking down American power and misleading our enemies into believing that an attack could damage the political party that is most vigorously pursuing the war on terror--à la Spain--invites disaster. What Osama bin Laden needs to understand is that his is a hopeless cause destined to leave him a broken and humiliated man.

This is where intelligence reform comes in. The right reforms will make America even stronger. But the 9/11 Commission suggested a complete overhaul of the intelligence community, including creating a national intelligence director to lord over the CIA and other agencies as well as control the budgets for the intelligence agencies inside the Defense Department, create a National Counter Terrorism Center and make public the intelligence budget.

The Senate picked up these recommendations--including provisions to allow the new national intelligence director to pull money and personnel away from the Pentagon's intelligence agencies. Under the Senate's plan, the National Counter Terrorism Center would also have "operational control"--meaning the new intelligence czar could order soldiers and CIA operatives, for example, to carry out missions overseas without any input from the director of the CIA or the secretary of defense.