Text of the Report - p. 6

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Russia and the United States

to discuss its implementation. The May 2008 Report on the Implementation of the Moscow Treaty states that the number of U.S. operationally
deployed nuclear warheads was 2,871 as of December 31, 2007.
Although the U.S. estimate of the number of Russian warheads is classified, it is known that Russia is also making considerable progress toward
the Moscow Treaty limit. Neither party expects to have any difficulty
meeting the treaty limit. The treaty contains no monitoring provisions.

The recent political environment has led to fears of a resurgent
Cold War relationship between the United States and Russia. The
upcoming expiration of START and, not long after, of the Moscow
Treaty will end the formal U.S.–Russian arms reduction and transparency regime unless the two nations reach agreement on further
strategic reduction measures. Despite the political tensions, they have
been discussing possible ways of resolving the limits and transparency
issues. But significant differences remain.

The Commission believes that the shared interests of the United
States and Russia on crucial security matters such as further reductions
of nuclear arsenals must transcend the tensions of the past several years.

RECOMMENDATION 7: The next U.S. administration
should work with the Russian government on initiatives to
jointly reduce the danger of the use of nuclear and biological
weapons, including by (1) extending some of the essential verification and monitoring provisions of the Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty that are scheduled to expire in 2009;

(2) advancing cooperation programs such as the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1540, and the Proliferation Security Initiative; (3) sustaining security upgrades at sensitive sites in Russia
and elsewhere, while finding common ground on further
reductions in stockpiles of excess highly enriched uranium;
(4) jointly encouraging China, Pakistan, and India to announce
a moratorium on the further production of nuclear fissile materials for nuclear weapons and to reduce existing nuclear military deployments and stockpiles; and (5) offering assistance to
other nations, such as Pakistan and India, in achieving nuclear
confidence-building measures similar to those that the United
States and the USSR followed for most of the Cold War.
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The Commission believes these recommendations can best be
achieved by undertaking a number of specific actions.

ACTION: The United States must work with Russia to rein

vigorate cooperative biological threat reduction programs in

Russia.

The next administration should launch a high-level political initiative that impresses on Russian leaders the need for continued international cooperation on biological security and nonproliferation issues.
In addition, in view of the changes in Russia since the CTR program
began in the early 1990s, the Department of State should lead an interagency effort in 2009 to rethink and restructure the CTR program to
align it with the circumstances and challenges in Russia today.

ACTION: The United States must work with Russia to sus

tain security upgrades at Russian nuclear sites.

The United States should continue to press hard for a Russian
commitment to adequate and transparent funding for the long-term
sustainability of the security measures at Russia’s sensitive nuclear
facilities. Plans should be accelerated, consistent with U.S. and Russian
commitments and statements under the Bratislava Initiative, as well as
the U.S.–Russia Strategic Framework Declaration of April 2008 and
other agreements.

ACTION: The United States must work with Russia to nego

tiate a post-START strategic nuclear framework.

The Commission believes it imperative that we continue to reduce
the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles in a structured and
transparent manner. Consequently, we believe that the next administration should engage with Russia at the earliest possible date to negotiate
additional reductions in both countries’ strategic stockpiles and to agree
on transparency measures that can be in place by the end of 2009, when
START expires. Such an agreement would send an important signal to
the rest of the world regarding U.S. and Russian commitments to negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to nuclear disarma

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ment. Setting additional benchmarks for further reductions would
serve as a natural reinforcement to continue this important strategic
partnership in fighting terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction.

ACTION: The United States should work with Russia and

others to promote India–Pakistan confidence-building measures.

India and Pakistan have agreed to confidence-building measures
that cover peripheral issues such as providing an annual listing of some
of their nuclear facilities and establishing hotlines between their military directors general and between their diplomats. To date, because of
a fundamental lack of trust between the two governments, these measures have not addressed core security issues or questions of nuclear
command and control issues due to a fundamental lack of trust
between their governments. If the United States and Russia were to
lead a multi-national effort, drawing on their own experiences during
the Cold War, this might help India and Pakistan to begin implementing confidence building measures to ameliorate expected destabilizing
aspects of their future nuclear force modernization.

Additional measures that could be taken under the leadership of
the United States and Russia to promote nuclear stability in South Asia
are discussed in the preceding section of this report.

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The massive departments and agencies that prevailed in the great

struggles of the twentieth century must work together in new ways,

so that all the instruments of national power can be combined. Con

gress needs dramatic change as well to strengthen oversight and focus

accountability.

—The 9/11 Commission Report

The White House

Members of Congress and experts inside and outside of government
have noted that no single person is in charge of and accountable for
preventing WMD proliferation and terrorism, with insight into all the
committees and interagency working groups focused on these issues.
Indeed, the current Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism told the Commission that he devotes only about 15 percent of
his time exclusively to WMD terrorism and that the Senior Director
for Counterproliferation does the same. (He subsequently explained
that certain Homeland Security Council officials spend 100 percent of
their time on matters related exclusively to WMD terrorism.)

Reacting to these concerns, Congress passed the Implementing
Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 (Public Law
110-53)—establishing the Office of the United States Coordinator
forthe Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and
Terrorism. The Coordinator would serve as the principal advisor to the
President on all matters relating to the prevention of WMD proliferation and terrorism. The Coordinator would also be responsible for formulating, advocating, and overseeing the execution of a comprehensive
and well-coordinated U.S. policy and strategy in this area.

The Bush administration initially opposed creating the position of

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the WMD Coordinator, arguing in a Statement of Administration Policy
that such a post was unnecessary “given extensive coordination and synchronization mechanisms that now exist within the executive branch.”
The White House also raised constitutional concerns, suggesting that
Congress cannot direct the President to establish a Senate-confirmed
position within the National Security Council (the office in which the
Coordinator would logically reside). As of this writing, the position has
remained vacant for nearly 15 months. In September 2008, the administration briefed the Commission on a recently developed proposal regarding the Coordinator. Since it was so close to the presidential election, the
Commission counseled the White House to discuss this proposal with the
incoming administration before making a final decision on it.

Although we have come a long way since 9/11, one of the central
criticisms leveled by virtually every commission and panel that studied
what went wrong leading up to the attacks of 9/11 was that the U.S.
government suffered from a serious lack of coordination among the
various agencies whose job it is to keep us safe.

Today, the President’s national security policymaking is overseen by
two parallel councils: the National Security Council (NSC) and the
Homeland Security Council (HSC). The artificial distinction between
“national security” and “homeland security,” emerged after the attacks
of September 11, 2001, and resulted in the creation of the HSC to complement the NSC. Each council has its own supporting staff and coordinating mechanisms. The HSC has focused on a rapidly expanding area
of policy over the past several years, but having two separate councils
and staffs has caused redundancy and has also diffused accountability
through multiple, often conflicting policy-coordinating mechanisms.

The number of Policy Coordinating Committees (PCCs) that deal
with WMD issues has increased, accompanied by a considerable duplication of committee agendas and taskings. Information provided to the
Commission by various agencies revealed nearly 200 interagency committees and working groups that address WMD, counterproliferation,
and counterterrorism issues.

For example, one agency calculated that its senior officials attend

• 22 PCCs, sub-PCCs, interagency working groups, and interagency policy groups that hold weekly meetings
• 69 that hold monthly meetings
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• 198 that hold meetings annually, semiannually, quarterly,
bimonthly, monthly, biweekly, weekly, or on an ad hoc basis
A significant side effect of the redundant coordinating meetings is
their consumption of considerable senior-level time and attention.
Officials from the agencies that participate in all these meetings shared
their concerns with our Commission.

“There are some issues that nobody manages,” one agency official
told the Commission, “and other issues that have too many managers.”
A number of officials from various agencies spoke of multiple meetings
with a lack of sufficient coordination. According to one official, too
much time at White House meetings was spent on management issues
and not enough on strategic thinking. Another official said that he
spends so much time going to interagency meetings that his time for
actually performing his agency job was very often “crowded out.”

RECOMMENDATION 8: The President should create a
more efficient and effective policy coordination structure by
designating a White House principal advisor for WMD proliferation and terrorism and restructuring the National Security
Council and Homeland Security Council.

The Commission endorses specific actions to implement this recommendation.

ACTION: The next Congress should amend Public Law 11053 to eliminate the requirement to establish an Office of the
United States Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of
Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, while retaining
the mandate to appoint a senior presidential advisor with the
responsibilities of the Coordinator.

The Commission strongly endorses the creation of a senior White
House advisor whose sole responsibility is to serve as the President’s
advocate and overseer of the policy nexus between WMD proliferation
and terrorism. The position of senior advisor could readily be placed
within the National Security Council structure. Alternatively, such an

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advisor could be placed within the office of the Vice President or made
the head of a separate White House office.

The Commission is concerned that the provision of the 2007 act
requiring that this position be Senate-confirmed could raise issues of
authority and conflicting guidance within the Executive Office of the
President. Senate-confirmed officials are normally accountable to Congress and can be called to testify, but the NSC staff members advise the
President and do not appear before Congress. Senate confirmation
would therefore likely compel the next President to place the Coordinator outside of the NSC staff.

In short, the next President may well prefer that the senior advisor
not be a Senate-confirmed position. If he does, we believe that Congress should amend the law to reflect the President’s decision.

We emphasize that to be effective, this senior advisor must be seen
as speaking for the President by all relevant departments and agencies,
as well as the White House. He or she must have the authority to call
meetings, task agencies, and resolve interagency conflicts. The advisor
must also have the budgetary authority (including a direct link to the
Office of Management and Budget) to assess funding levels, fix shortfalls, and adjust programs. The advisor should play the lead role in
coordinating policies and operations to prevent WMD proliferation
and terrorism and would be responsible for advising the President
about how policy decisions across government—foreign policy, defense,
trade, and so forth—would affect the mission of preventing WMD proliferation and terrorism.

Such an advisor would have enormous responsibilities and would
need to exercise commensurate authority across agency lines. The
advisor should not be, or be perceived as, a junior appointee. Accordingly, the Commission urges the appointment of a person of recognized distinction in the field of WMD proliferation who would enjoy
the full support and confidence of the President. The senior advisor
must be seen as the alter ego of the President on issues of WMD terrorism and proliferation.

The Commission believes that this senior advisor should also play
a central role in promoting a strong working relationship with Congress on preventing WMD proliferation and terrorism. In particular,
the advisor could help bring improved clarity to those issues about

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which there is a substantial difference between Congress and the executive branch.

The advisor should seek to constructively intervene on the critical
issue of container port security, which has recently become contentious. Congress included in the Implementing Recommendations
of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 a requirement that by 2012, all
cargo containers must be scanned before being shipped to the United
States. The Departments of Energy and Homeland Security have
taken steps to scan a portion of cargo overseas, and nearly all cargo as it
arrives in the United States, but they have resisted meeting the comprehensive requirement included in the law, arguing that a risk-based
approach focused on the largest ports overseas is more cost-effective.

Finally, the advisor should also ensure that appropriate red team
exercises are conducted across the federal government with respect to
WMD terrorism prevention, preparedness, and response. Red teaming is done by designated operational and subject matter experts to discover weaknesses in a plan and to identify how it can be improved. Red
team exercises, conducted in structured environments to avoid the risk
of public panic, can give participants an opportunity to test procedures
and to identify gaps—operational, analytic, or technical—and whatever authorities are needed prior to an actual event.

ACTION: The next President should restructure the Homeland Security Council and National Security Council by consolidating both staffs under the NSC framework. Congress
should revisit the statutory creation of the Homeland Security
Council and evaluate whether two separate councils are necessary.

The U.S. government must abandon the notion that “homeland”
security is somehow different from “national” security, much as it has
recognized that domestic intelligence, which is largely focused on the
homeland, is a central element of protecting national security. Operationally, the U.S. government functions without recognizing a division
between national security and homeland security, yet these seams exist
in policy coordination, and indeed have been institutionalized. The
creation of the Homeland Security Council was a stopgap measure to
coordinate a subset of national security policies while the Department

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of Homeland Security was being established. Now that the Department of Homeland Security is fully operational, however, the two parallel councils create ambiguity and unnecessary redundancy, lead to
multiple and conflicting policy coordination mechanisms, and dilute
accountability for specific issues.

To resolve these problems, the responsibilities of the HSC staff
should be transferred to the NSC staff and redundancies should be
eliminated. The Homeland Security Advisor should continue to serve as
the President’s principal advisor for preparedness and response to natural disasters and for vertical integration of federal, state, local, tribal,
and territorial authorities. The Homeland Security Advisor would also
be responsible for public-private cooperation on issues such as critical
infrastructure protection and for interacting with organizations such as
the National Governors Association, the National League of Cities, the
United States Conference of Mayors, and chambers of commerce.

Congress

The current structure of congressional oversight of national security is
a relic of the Cold War. It has not evolved in response to the changing
nature of the threats that the United States faces in the 21st century.

Since the dawn of the atomic age, Congress has undergone substantial reorganization only once and partial reform rarely. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 restructured committee jurisdictions.
In the 1970s, some incremental reforms were undertaken. And the few
other reforms enacted in the 1990s were, in the view of most analysts,
largely cosmetic.

Congress has pressured the executive branch to reform itself in ways
that reflect the crosscutting, transnational nature of many of today’s
national security threats. Yet Congress has carried out only minor
reforms of its own structure, instead preserving institutional stovepipes
and protecting jurisdictional turf. Congressional oversight has thus been
hampered by the fact that national security priorities such as the federal
government’s efforts to prevent weapons of mass destruction proliferation transcend the antiquated jurisdiction of any single committee.

Two recent commissions have called for fundamental changes in
the national security oversight structure of Congress.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States (9/11 Commission) proposed a new, unified structure for the

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oversight of intelligence and counterterrorism programs, through one
of two models: (1) a single committee in each chamber of Congress,
with combined authorizing and appropriating authorities, or (2) a joint
bicameral committee, modeled after the Joint Committee on Atomic
Energy. The 9/11 Commission also proposed the creation of a single
streamlined oversight structure for homeland security.

The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United
States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (the Silberman-Robb
Commission), which focused on the intelligence community’s abilities
to identify, warn about, and respond to WMD proliferation and related
threats, recommended “that the House and Senate intelligence committees create focused oversight subcommittees; that the Congress
create an intelligence appropriations subcommittee and reduce the
Intelligence Community’s reliance on supplemental funding; and that
the Senate intelligence committee be given the same authority over
joint military intelligence programs and tactical intelligence programs
that the House intelligence committee now exercises.”

Congress responded to those calls for substantive change in the
structure of congressional oversight by taking a few incremental steps—
some of which made the legislative oversight process more cumbersome.

The Senate removed the term limits for members of the Select
Committee on Intelligence, thereby allowing experienced members to
continue serving (as they do on other Senate committees). The House
of Representatives created a Select Intelligence Oversight Panel on
the Appropriations Committee to review budget requests for intelligence activities and to align authorizations and appropriations for intelligence community activities. The panel includes members from the
Appropriations Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

In response to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation to create
dedicated oversight committees for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the House formed the Homeland Security Committee,
while the Senate merely renamed its Governmental Affairs Committee—which became the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee—and gave it additional jurisdiction over DHS.

But other House and Senate congressional committees still
retained their jurisdiction over the agencies that had been moved into
DHS. Thus, the creation of these new committees (and subcommit

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tees) did nothing to streamline the number of congressional panels to
which DHS must respond. In the House, 16 committees and 40 subcommittees now assert jurisdiction over DHS. In the Senate, 14 committees and 18 subcommittees share this responsibility.

The need for DHS to report to multiple committees and subcommittees makes it more likely that the department will receive conflicting direction from Congress, and unnecessarily increases its workload.
By relying on such a splintered structure, Congress has jeopardized its
ability to perform effective oversight of DHS. As Thomas Mann and
Norman Ornstein have observed, “Congress’ failure to oversee the
DHS has been crushing.”

“It was a disappointment but came as no surprise to us that the
Congress did not act on the Commission’s recommendations,” Lee
Hamilton, the former Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, noted in
late 2007. “It is much easier for the Congress to reform the Executive
branch than it is to reform its own institutions.”

That Congress has yet to adequately organize itself to cope with the
nuclear age, much less the post-9/11 era, is deeply troubling and
demands action. We understand that reforming and streamlining the
processes of Congress is not easy; members of Congress understandably
do not like to relinquish the committee or subcommittee chairmanships
they worked for and waited years to obtain. We also recognize that leaders from both parties in Congress have pushed for reforms, with some
successes. But the urgency of the situation requires that Congress do
much more.

RECOMMENDATION 9: Congress should reform its
oversight both structurally and substantively to better address
intelligence, homeland security, and crosscutting 21st-century
national security missions such as the prevention of weapons
of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism.

We are the third bipartisan commission to urgently and unanimously recommend that the legislative branch reorganize its oversight
and budgeting processes so as to most effectively work to prevent
WMD terrorism. Given the threats now facing the United States, the
difficulties of institutional change and jurisdictional competition are not
acceptable excuses for the failure to act on these recommendations.

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Congress’s failure to reform itself has resulted in ineffective oversight of important national security threats and missions that transcend
the jurisdiction of a single committee. These include federal efforts to
assess and prevent WMD proliferation and terrorism. One consequence of Congress’s failure to adapt to the evolving nature of national
security threats is the outsourcing of national security oversight to
external commissions like this one.

The next President should establish a greater level of trust by
reaching out to Congress on intelligence issues, improving consultation with the intelligence committees, and making clear that Congress
should play a vigorous role in overseeing intelligence. For its part,
Congress should use its oversight to build cooperation and a shared
sense of mission with the intelligence community and the President.
The leaders of Congress should take responsibility, especially in their
own parties, for ensuring that members do not make intelligence a
political issue. This cooperative approach must be balanced by Congress’s legitimate interest in checking executive branch power and protecting civil liberties.

ACTION: Congressional leadership should establish an Intelligence Subcommittee on the Appropriations Committees in
both chambers of Congress with jurisdiction over the National
Intelligence Program and Military Intelligence Program budgets. These subcommittees should include members drawn
from committees with oversight responsibilities for programs
funded by the National Intelligence Program or the Military
Intelligence Program.

The creation in 2007 of a Select Intelligence Oversight Panel on
the House Appropriations Committee was a positive first step toward
long-overdue reform, but Congress needs to go further. Specifically,
separate House and Senate Appropriations Intelligence Subcommittees should be created and given responsibility for both the National
Intelligence Program and the Military Intelligence Program. The
annual appropriations bill for the two types of intelligence programs
would be reported by this new subcommittee and then passed to the
full Appropriations Committee in both chambers, without substantive
review by any other subcommittee.

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In the Senate, the National Intelligence Program and the Military
Intelligence Program budgets are appropriated through the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee. This arrangement poses a number of
challenges. While the authorizers on the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence devote a large majority of their time to overseeing the
intelligence budget, the attention of defense appropriators is divided
across the greatly increased post-9/11 budgets, emergency supplementals for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a larger National
Intelligence Program that funds sensitive and critical operations.
Today, the challenges and risks of the post-9/11 world demand the full-
time attention of an appropriations subcommittee.

ACTION: The Senate and House Homeland Security Committees should be empowered as the sole authorizing oversight committees for the Department of Homeland Security
and all agencies under the department’s jurisdiction.

While recognizing that crosscutting programs may require consultation with other committees, the Senate and House Homeland Security
Committees should be empowered as the sole oversight committees for
DHS and commit to producing annual authorization bills for the department’s activities. Committees that traditionally have had jurisdiction
over agencies that are now a part of DHS should no longer have this
authority. It is in the interest of DHS, Congress, and ultimately the
nation to streamline and strengthen congressional oversight.

ACTION: Congress should build capacity to conduct effective oversight of crosscutting terrorism and WMD issues by
such means as creating an office on the model of the Office of
Technology Assessment.

Because of current jurisdictional stovepipes, the congressional
oversight structure discourages rather than fosters coordination on
crosscutting issues. On nuclear terrorism, for example, the Homeland
Security Committees may address homeland preparedness and
response, but they may not be able to discuss potential sources of fissile
material or overseas efforts to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation—
because jurisdiction for those issues rests in the Foreign Relations,

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Intelligence, and Armed Services Committees. The committees must
do more to share information on crosscutting issues such as WMD proliferation and terrorism, and they must have experienced staff members with the appropriate expertise.

To enhance the technical and scientific expertise available to
members, Congress should expand fellowship and detail opportunities
from the nongovernmental sector. And to provide advice to members
of Congress on technical issues, Congress should establish an office
similar to the Office of Technology Assessment, which served this
function for 23 years. In a recent positive development, some Intelligence Committee members and staff directors participated in training
programs aimed at enhancing their oversight.

ACTION: Congress should work with the next administration
to ensure that key aspects of U.S. law are followed with
respect to required assessments of nuclear proliferation risks
and the relative economic cost of civilian nuclear projects
overseas.

A large body of domestic law has been developed over the past
half-century to guide U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy. The Atomic
Energy Act of 1954, for example, requires nonproliferation assessment
statements for any proposed nuclear cooperative agreement. But Congress did not hold hearings on Turkey or Saudi Arabia, nor did it conduct a review of the cooperation arrangements with Russia or India,
particularly to ensure that the latter complies with the Henry J. Hyde
United States–India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006.
Congress should make every effort to conduct a complete review of
nuclear cooperation agreements that are presented to the legislature.

A second shortcoming in congressional oversight of nonproliferation activities is its failure to hold the executive branch accountable for
laws regarding the safeguarding of peaceful nuclear programs. Under
the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the U.S. government is required to
ensure that International Atomic Energy Agency inspections (of nuclear
technologies or materials controlled under international agreements) are
capable of providing “timely warning” of any diversions for military purposes. But the executive branch has not defined the requirements for
IAEA inspections to provide “timely warning,” nor has it indicated

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whether inspections of U.S.-origin nuclear materials meet the standard.
Congress has failed to address the issue.

Finally, there has been no attempt to implement Title V of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978, which requires the U.S. government to do general and country-specific assessments of the relative
merits of nuclear and non-nuclear energy sources for meeting the
energy needs of developing nations. Such comparative assessments are
needed to inform decisions on U.S. support for proposed nuclear power
projects in such states as Egypt, Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia and to
assist other developing states in perfecting their own energy plans.

The Intelligence Community

The intelligence community is implementing the most sweeping organizational changes since 1947 in response to the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Congress created the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to serve as the head of the

U.S. intelligence community and to improve coordination among the 16
intelligence agencies. Although important work remains, significant
progress is being made with respect to cross-organizational integration
of intelligence collection and analysis. Past barriers to performing joint
intelligence work are weakening and the number of collaborative efforts
is increasing.
The Commission believes that praise is warranted to Congress for
its efforts to push intelligence community reforms and to all of the
agencies for their responses both to congressional initiatives and to the
attack on 9/11. Examples of important new initiatives include the work
of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the ODNI’s 500
Day Plan, the revised Executive Order 12333, and the revised Attorney
General Guidelines. Interviews with numerous current and former
intelligence officers, as well as policymakers and nongovernmental
experts, lead the Commission to believe that many of these reforms
need time to settle and mature. Over the past four years, the intelligence community has had five different leaders. Creating additional
organizational churn at this time is unlikely to serve the best interests
of U.S. national security or to enhance the performance of the intelligence community. CIA Director Michael Hayden recently noted in
public comments, “We have been pulled up by the roots to check how
we are growing on about an 18 month cycle for about the last six

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years....We’re suffering reform and transformation fatigue.” Under
the circumstances, and recognizing that further reform might well be
advisable in the future, we make no substantial recommendations
relating to such changes at this time. We think it best to allow the current process of reform to continue unabated without significant added
organizational change.

We note that despite the progress that has been made, small pockets of resistance to the changes brought about by the congressionally
mandated reforms persist. The Commission found that some senior
CIA officers continue to resent and resist the changes that shifted
authority for leadership and management of the intelligence community to the DNI. A former CIA executive described the CIA’s attitude as
“rage toward the ODNI.” While that view may represent only a subset
of CIA personnel, the Commission encountered multiple examples of
senior CIA officers expressing hostility and disdain toward the ODNI.
The CIA Director needs to make organizational cooperation a priority.

In addition, while there have been significant improvements in
integrating foreign and domestic intelligence, persistent cultural gaps
remain. Some of these gaps can be attributed to the legacy of distinct
missions and to the functional boundaries that previously existed
between agencies of foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. The FBI continues to evolve from a purely law enforcement
organization to a national security organization with significant responsibilities for detecting and preventing terrorism.

The creation of the FBI’s National Security Branch and its WMD
Directorate is certainly a step in the right direction. The recent revisions to the Attorney General Guidelines provide standards, procedures, and authorities intended to help the FBI perform more
effective domestic intelligence collection and analysis. However,
greater collaboration between the intelligence and law enforcement
communities is needed to foster common understanding of the tools
and best practices that each may adopt.

The Commission also found that considerable progress has been
made with respect to improving information sharing across federal
departments and agencies, as well as with state, local, and tribal governments. The creation of state information fusion centers has
improved domestic information sharing. Such efforts are certainly
laudable, but they must be pursued in effective coordination with

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other efforts such as the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force model. In
that model, state, local, and federal law enforcement and intelligence
agencies conduct joint investigations of counterterrorism cases and
work to disrupt plots against the U.S. homeland.

In short, the Commission believes that the intelligence community is aggressively implementing the changes required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. We propose no
further organizational changes to the community at this time. However, the next President should direct the DNI to continue to look for
ways to streamline redundant organizations, layers of management and
staff, including a review of the effectiveness of the recently created
National Counterproliferation Center. As discussed below, the DNI
should identify challenges to current human resource strategies and
propose solutions to enhance the capabilities of the current workforce.

As part of the post-9/11 reforms, two new organizations were established: the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and National
Counterproliferation Center (NCPC). The directors of these two organizations act as “mission managers,” or senior coordinators, for all intelligence community efforts relating to terrorism and to WMD proliferation,
respectively.

The NCTC coordinates both intelligence and policy implementation on counterterrorism issues throughout the executive branch. The
director of this center reports to the DNI; he or she also reports
directly to the President on matters of strategic operational planning.
The director ensures that the operations and activities of executive
branch departments and agencies are consistent with the President’s
priorities. The NCTC pulls together policy analysts and field operators
from across the U.S. government counterterrorism community, including foreign service officers, DHS officers, FBI agents and analysts,
active duty military, and personnel from the Department of Energy
and other agencies. The center produces its own coordinated analyses
on terrorism and publishes warnings, alerts, and advisories. The NCTC
bridges the counterterrorism and counterproliferation nexus in strategic planning as well as analysis.

In contrast to the broader mission of the counterterrorism center,
the role of the National Counterproliferation Center is limited to
improving coordination and information sharing across the intelligence
community with respect to the collection and analysis of information

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on WMD proliferation and related hard targets. The NCPC identifies
long-term proliferation threats and requirements and develops strategies to ensure that the intelligence community is well positioned to
address them. The NCPC also reaches out to elements inside and outside the U.S. government to identify new methods or technologies that
can enhance the intelligence community’s capability to detect and
defeat future proliferation threats.

Two recent milestone events—the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the
2002 Iraq WMD estimate that resulted in sustained criticism of the
intelligence community—had a significant impact on the analytic community. But the counterterrorism (CT) and counterproliferation (CP)
communities took away very different lessons from those events.
Among the conclusions drawn by the CT analysts after 9/11 was that
they must be far more forward-leaning in their threat assessments and
must be willing to think creatively and take analytic risks. In contrast,
the lessons the CP analysts drew from the 2002 Iraq WMD National
Intelligence Estimate were to check and recheck every source, fully
vet all information, clearly distinguish what is known from what is
judged, and be extraordinarily cautious, even reticent, when preparing
intelligence and presenting it to policymakers.

In an effort to apply a more uniform set of analytic standards and
practices, the ODNI created the Analytic Integrity and Standards
Office in 2006. As a result, sourcing standards, the use of alternative
analysis, and the vetting of sources have improved. For example, all
human source information used in National Intelligence Estimates
must be reviewed and validated by the National Clandestine Service
prior to final review and approval by the National Intelligence Board.

Effective collaboration between analysts and collectors is required.
The Commission found that the relationship between analysts and collectors has improved in some areas, and that one goal of intelligence reform
legislation—ensuring that analysis drives collection—is becoming a reality.
The most significant progress has occurred at the national level in organizations such as the National Counterterrorism Center, where analysts and
collectors from different organizations work collaboratively. Senior government officials told the Commission that the act of placing personnel
from the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and
other agencies together in one office has done more to improve information sharing and collaboration than have any technological solutions. Per

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Government Organization and Culture

sonnel working in such an interagency setting come to understand the
strengths, weaknesses, and roles of other agencies and see how the different agencies fit together as pieces of a whole. But the Commission also
found that progress has been slower in individual agencies, where analyst-
collector integration requires reaching across organizational barriers.

°°°

Meeting Future Needs

Half of today’s analysts entered the intelligence community after 9/11.
Because of attrition and hiring freezes during the 1990s, there are few
midcareer analysts. Consequently, analysts are being called on to
assume greater technical and managerial responsibilities earlier in
their careers. In particular, the Commission found that the intelligence
community’s base of science and technology expertise is not sufficient
to meet emerging demands in these areas.

With regard to nuclear weapons, the number of technical experts
available to the intelligence community is declining because of retirements and the reduction in innovative nuclear weapons–related work
at the U.S. national laboratories. Nuclear expertise remains in high
demand by the intelligence community because it serves as a hedge
against breakout capability and other technological surprises by state
and non-state adversaries. Accordingly, such expertise should be protected as a national resource.

In the field of biotechnology, engaging experts outside of government is particularly important, because developments are fast-moving
and most relevant expertise resides in academia, nongovernmental
organizations, and the private sector. The Biological Sciences Expert
Group, an advisory body to the National Counterproliferation Center
that gives the intelligence community access to outside scientists, is an
example of effective collaborative engagement with nongovernmental
experts to work on high-priority issues.

In addition, the number and diversity of the potential counterterrorism and counterproliferation targets present a major challenge for
collection. The main problem, a former senior CIA operations officer
succinctly told the Commission, is “collecting the dots” rather than
“connecting the dots.”

Particularly difficult is collecting intelligence on suspect state and
non-state biological weapons programs. Bioweapons programs can be

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Findings and Recommendations

hidden in seemingly legitimate scientific and industrial organizations;
they can be conducted in innocuous-looking facilities; and it can be
challenging to identify what is going on inside them through technical
means.

Richard Danzig, a former Secretary of the Navy, has argued that
traditional collection methods are not effective in this area and that a
paradigm shift is needed. Danzig maintains that intelligence collection
must adapt to the decentralized and transnational nature of biological
risk—and he has proposed an equally decentralized approach that he
calls “peripheral vision,” which would take advantage of the international networks among scientists, both formal and informal.

Such networks could be valuable for acquiring information, as well
as for detecting anomalous activities that might be related to state or
terrorist bioweapons efforts. The Commission believes that this
approach is an innovative solution to the problem of information collection and that an outreach strategy to the scientific community
should be developed in order to tap into this vast reservoir of open-
source information.

RECOMMENDATION 10: Accelerate integration of effort
among the counterproliferation, counterterrorism, and law
enforcement communities to address WMD proliferation and
terrorism issues; strengthen expertise in the nuclear and biological fields; prioritize pre-service and in-service training and
retention of people with critical scientific, language, and foreign area skills; and ensure that the threat posed by biological
weapons remains among the highest national intelligence priorities for collection and analysis.

Both within and across intelligence community agencies, the compartmentation of information remains a formidable challenge. A senior
intelligence official responsible for information sharing told the Commission staff that the flow of WMD-related information in the intelligence
community is still much less than it should be. Interviews with intelligence community analysts revealed a significant growth in the number of
codeword compartments related to WMD proliferation and terrorism.
One senior intelligence official expressed concern to Commission staff
about stovepiping within the analytic communities that deal with coun

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