Intelligence chief challenges

President Obama’s nominee to head the intelligence community appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week and made encouraging noises about maximizing his mandate and cooperating with Congress. Retired Air Force Gen. James R. Clapper, who would be the fourth director of national intelligence, insisted that he wouldn’t be a “titular figurehead or a hood ornament,” an implicit acknowledgment that his predecessor, Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, had been marginalized, losing turf wars to the CIA and the president’s in-house intelligence adviser.

Clapper’s assertiveness comports with Congress’ desire after 9/11 to designate an official who would coordinate 16 intelligence agencies and serve as the president’s principal adviser on intelligence matters. The problem is that Congress circumscribed the director’s authority over budgetary and personnel matters while leaving to the president, as it had to, the decision about whether to turn first to the director or to his own national security staff for day-to-day advice.

The big question is whether the president would allow Clapper, to the maximum extent possible, to manage the intelligence community, including the CIA, in the way the secretary of State manages her department. Congress is taking some modest steps to increase the director’s influence, but the best guarantor of that will be the president. It is Obama, for example, who would have to insist that Clapper’s priorities be reflected in proposed budgets.

One challenge for Clapper’s management skills would be eliminating duplication in an intelligence apparatus that has expanded exponentially since 9/11, a development documented in a recent Washington Post series. “One man’s duplication is another man’s competitive analysis,” Clapper told the committee. That’s a valid observation in some contexts, but the Post series described operational overlaps both within the intelligence community and between government employees and a constellation of contractors. Clapper owes the administration, and the taxpayers, an open mind about whether efficiencies in a $75-billion budget are possible.

Finally, Clapper assured the committee that he intended to “build upon and increase the trust between Congress and DNI.” Given complaints that Congress wasn’t adequately informed about several aspects of the war against terrorism, “increase” is the operative word. An authorization bill recently approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee would require written notifications of intelligence activities and explanations of the legal rationale for them. One way for Clapper to prove he’s not a hood ornament would be to take congressional oversight seriously.