21-07-2010, 03:19 AM
Intel Chief: Don’t Get ‘Shrill’ About Spooks-for-Hire
![[Image: DD-SD-08-13537.jpeg]](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/07/DD-SD-08-13537.jpeg)
Some of America’s spy agencies probably rely too much on outside companies. But don’t freak out about spooks-for-hire just because of a newspaper article or two, Director of National Intelligence nominee James Clapper told the Senate intelligence committee Tuesday afternoon.
It’s an understatement to say that the Washington Post’s series on the sprawl of the intelligence community hung over Clapper’s nomination hearing. Most senators on the panel asked Clapper, the current chief of defense intelligence and decades-long intel veteran, about how he’d exercise control over one of its key themes: what Senator Olympia Snowe called the intelligence “mega-bureaucracy.” But Clapper wasn’t so thrilled with the series. “I think there was some breathless[ness] and shrillness to that that I don’t subscribe to,” he said, adding that he’s “very concerned about security implications” after the Post revealed the (not-so-specific) locations of companies contracting with the intelligence community.
But Clapper also vowed to address another of the series’ central premises: the intelligence community’s reliance on contractors. Only he wants to take a scalpel to the issue, not a chainsaw.
It would be a mistake, Clapper said, to look monolithically at contractors, or to presume that they’re distributed equally throughout the intelligence community. The National Reconnaissance Office — builders and operators of spy satellites — is one of the most reliant, he said, as it relies on contractors for “operations,” while the military services’ intel shops are far less so. And the reliance on contractors is a hangover of the post-Cold War drawdown of intelligence spending, something that stopped with a “screech” on 9/11, he said, leaving intelligence agencies with little choice but to bulk up personnel with contractors — and intelligence would not have been able to respond to post-9/11 counterterrorism requirements.
So instead of cutting contractors across the board — as last year’s intelligence bill sought to do — Clapper said it was more important to “come up with organizing principles for where contractors are needed and where they are not.” One place Clapper indicated he would look first: his own office, if confirmed. “I’m sensing that it’s got a lot of contractors,” he said, “and we have to look at whether that’s appropriate or not.” He solicited the committee to help him come up with those “standards” for the use of intel contractors.
That was enough to break the ice for Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the committee. Feinstain has been openly critical of Clapper’s fitness to take a job that’s short on budgetary and personnel authorities, out of fear that he’s too deferential to the Pentagon, which holds between 75 and 90 percent of intelligence assets, by most estimates. But collaborating with the next DNI on contractor standards was a prize for Feinstein, who pointedly said she’d be eager to do help ”when you are confirmed.”
Outside of the contractor issue, though, Clapper held to a more restrictive role for the next intelligence chief than most senators on the panel desired. He said that that he didn’t believe that “everything in the intelligence community needs to be run from the confines of the Director of the National Intelligence.” He resisted numerous efforts from Senator Barbara Mikulski to take charge of cybersecurity, something at least roughly commensurate with ex-director Dennis Blair. He was blase about personally delivering the President’s Daily Brief. And he resisted one of the major critiques of the Post’s intelligence series: that there are too many redundant, sprawling programs that make the intelligence agencies incoherent. ”One man’s duplication is another man’s competitive analysis,” Clapper said.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before President Obama nominated him to become the next director, Clapper argued in an April memo that the relatively weak bureaucratic position didn’t need additional legislative authorities to bolster it. But Clapper appeared to have overcome much of his congressional opposition. One senator, Richard Burr, portrayed Clapper as the last best hope for the director of national intelligence job, Congress’s post-major post-9/11 intelligence reform. “Your tenure as DNI,” Burr said, will establish “whether the structure can work.”
What the hearing never addressed, though, was what structure should be put in place if the fourth Director of National Intelligence in six years crashes and burns like the first three.
Credit: DoD
See Also:
Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/...z0uHO1VoMc
- By Spencer Ackerman
![[Image: envelope.gif]](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/wp-content/themes/wired/images/envelope.gif)
- July 20, 2010 |
- 5:53 pm |
- Categories: Paper Pushers, Beltway Bandits, Politicians
Some of America’s spy agencies probably rely too much on outside companies. But don’t freak out about spooks-for-hire just because of a newspaper article or two, Director of National Intelligence nominee James Clapper told the Senate intelligence committee Tuesday afternoon.
It’s an understatement to say that the Washington Post’s series on the sprawl of the intelligence community hung over Clapper’s nomination hearing. Most senators on the panel asked Clapper, the current chief of defense intelligence and decades-long intel veteran, about how he’d exercise control over one of its key themes: what Senator Olympia Snowe called the intelligence “mega-bureaucracy.” But Clapper wasn’t so thrilled with the series. “I think there was some breathless[ness] and shrillness to that that I don’t subscribe to,” he said, adding that he’s “very concerned about security implications” after the Post revealed the (not-so-specific) locations of companies contracting with the intelligence community.
But Clapper also vowed to address another of the series’ central premises: the intelligence community’s reliance on contractors. Only he wants to take a scalpel to the issue, not a chainsaw.
It would be a mistake, Clapper said, to look monolithically at contractors, or to presume that they’re distributed equally throughout the intelligence community. The National Reconnaissance Office — builders and operators of spy satellites — is one of the most reliant, he said, as it relies on contractors for “operations,” while the military services’ intel shops are far less so. And the reliance on contractors is a hangover of the post-Cold War drawdown of intelligence spending, something that stopped with a “screech” on 9/11, he said, leaving intelligence agencies with little choice but to bulk up personnel with contractors — and intelligence would not have been able to respond to post-9/11 counterterrorism requirements.
So instead of cutting contractors across the board — as last year’s intelligence bill sought to do — Clapper said it was more important to “come up with organizing principles for where contractors are needed and where they are not.” One place Clapper indicated he would look first: his own office, if confirmed. “I’m sensing that it’s got a lot of contractors,” he said, “and we have to look at whether that’s appropriate or not.” He solicited the committee to help him come up with those “standards” for the use of intel contractors.
That was enough to break the ice for Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the committee. Feinstain has been openly critical of Clapper’s fitness to take a job that’s short on budgetary and personnel authorities, out of fear that he’s too deferential to the Pentagon, which holds between 75 and 90 percent of intelligence assets, by most estimates. But collaborating with the next DNI on contractor standards was a prize for Feinstein, who pointedly said she’d be eager to do help ”when you are confirmed.”
Outside of the contractor issue, though, Clapper held to a more restrictive role for the next intelligence chief than most senators on the panel desired. He said that that he didn’t believe that “everything in the intelligence community needs to be run from the confines of the Director of the National Intelligence.” He resisted numerous efforts from Senator Barbara Mikulski to take charge of cybersecurity, something at least roughly commensurate with ex-director Dennis Blair. He was blase about personally delivering the President’s Daily Brief. And he resisted one of the major critiques of the Post’s intelligence series: that there are too many redundant, sprawling programs that make the intelligence agencies incoherent. ”One man’s duplication is another man’s competitive analysis,” Clapper said.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before President Obama nominated him to become the next director, Clapper argued in an April memo that the relatively weak bureaucratic position didn’t need additional legislative authorities to bolster it. But Clapper appeared to have overcome much of his congressional opposition. One senator, Richard Burr, portrayed Clapper as the last best hope for the director of national intelligence job, Congress’s post-major post-9/11 intelligence reform. “Your tenure as DNI,” Burr said, will establish “whether the structure can work.”
What the hearing never addressed, though, was what structure should be put in place if the fourth Director of National Intelligence in six years crashes and burns like the first three.
Credit: DoD
See Also:
- How Tight are Clapper and Gates?
- Intelcrats’ Awesomely Bad Pushback to ‘Top Secret America …
- NSA Should Oversee Cybersecurity, Intel Chief Says
- Search Top Secret America’s Database of Private Spooks
Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/...z0uHO1VoMc
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