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| Bush Prepares to Sign Intelligence Reforms |
| 2004-08-27 |
| Amid a heated election-year debate on intelligence reform, President Bush prepared to sign executive orders Friday strengthening the powers of the CIA director and establishing a new national counterterrorism center. The moves will "improve our ability to find, track and stop terrorists," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. One executive order will give the CIA director additional authority on an interim basis to perform many of the functions of a proposed national intelligence director who would oversee all 15 of the nation's intelligence agencies. Bush also will work with Congress to create the position of national intelligence director, McClellan said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #5 Uh oh, agreeing with Rex twice in a day. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-08-27 5:17:45 PM |
| #4 I'm not saying that Bush was clairvoyant in creating Homeland Security and that it is necessarily serving all the needs as later addressed by the 9/11 commish, but it was certainly a proactive (ahem) move on his part to do what the commish ultimately decided was needed. As far as intel sharing, CrazyFool, again I have to admit to being confused because HS dept is supposed to be the dept that gets contacted with terror intel coming in from all corners of the country. "Enforcement" already belongs to the courts, "defense" already belongs to the military, the cops, and the intelligence services, so the only thing left is an overseer, which is what I understood Ridge and co. to be. |
| Posted by: Chris W. 2004-08-27 3:54:01 PM |
| #3 I agree with you, Chris. We have a CIA director's position. We have a chief of Homeland Security. The idea of appointing yet another highly paid bureaucrat suit to oversee both the afore-mentioned departments sounds suspiciously like GBW is "taking the path of least resistence" at the taxpayer's expense. If I am not mistaken, Rumsfeld himself was against the creation of a Terrorism Czar to oversee the CIA. The CIA's budget comes under Rumsfeld's wing, I believe, and I suspect Rumsfeld is seeing the Terrorism Czar and accompanying staff of pencil pushers as wasting funds that he could better use either at Defense or CIA. We know how great the Drug Czar worked in the past. Also, to add another layer of reporting to a gov't bureaucracy that's already inefficient and too heavy is stupid. Consolidating gov't departments under Homeland Security did not make things more streamlined as far as I can see. It just created a new head honcho position. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-08-27 2:10:44 PM |
| #2 Chris. Homeland Security is more the 'enforcement' and/or 'defense' arm (you know, like the INS'es catch and release policy which defense us badly....). This is Intelligence gathering analysis and SHARING. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-08-27 2:07:14 PM |
| #1 The 9/11 Commission made the reccomendation that the Gov set up some type of overseer for terror and to have one body control all terror intel. Am I right? Well, somebody tell me what the Dept of Homeland Security's job is then. Bush ALREADY acted on the 9/11 Commish's reccommendations, and he did it within weeks of 9/11 and long before their 2004 findings. Or am I nuts? |
| Posted by: Chris W. 2004-08-27 1:48:53 PM |