Anna Eshoo pushes for new national intelligence director Anna Eshoo pushes for new national intelligence director (September 08, 2004)

By Renee Batti
Almanac News Editor

Congress must move quickly if it hopes to implement a critical recommendation of the September 11 Commission that would make the intelligence community stronger and more effective, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, said last week.

The recommendation calls for creating a national intelligence director who would head all 15 agencies operating within the national intelligence community -- a plan Rep. Eshoo strongly supports but that is being opposed by some administration and intelligence officials.

The congresswoman, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, traveled to Washington every week in August -- when Congress is normally adjourned -- to participate in hearings on the September 11 Commission recommendations. She worries that if Congress doesn't authorize creation of the new position by the time it is scheduled to adjourn for the year on October 1, the opportunity could be lost, she said.

Some of the strongest criticism of the proposal centers on backers' insistence that the intelligence director have control over the intelligence budget and personnel.

Rep. Eshoo said such control is essential if the director is to do his or her job in a way that could greatly lower the risks of intelligence failures like those that led to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

She and fellow Democrats in the House last April introduced a bill, H.R. 4104, that she said was "prescient in a way" -- it contained some of the recommendations that the September 11 Commission made months later, including the creation of the national intelligence director position, with "full budget and personnel authority," she said.

With such authority, she insisted, the director "would be more than just a toothless tiger." And, she added, giving the intelligence director such authority would create accountability.

In spite of all the revelations that came out of the September 11 hearings, she said, "you noticed ... that no one was held accountable."

Ms. Eshoo said House Republicans weren't interested in 4104 at the time, but she believes the bill "is still very much part of the discussion" that she hopes will result in Congress' authorization of an intelligence director.

Sen. Roberts' proposal

During her August "break," Rep. Eshoo also helped fellow Democrats lead the charge against another proposal to dramatically alter the structure of the national intelligence community with changes in the CIA.

In an August 23 interview on PBS' "NewsHour," she criticized Sen. Pat Roberts' just-released proposal to split up the CIA's three major divisions; each division would have its own assistant intelligence director, and a new national intelligence director would have control over all the divisions.

"It's a radical departure from the recommendations of the 9-11 commission," Rep. Eshoo said. "I don't think (the proposal) is going anywhere... but what it would do is blow up the CIA.

"It would be very harmful, and would take apart what works now."

She and other Democrats also complained that Sen. Roberts, the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced the proposal without consulting Democrats, "which took a lot of people aback," she said.

Rep. Eshoo said the recommendation for a national intelligence director with budget and personnel authority is the way to go not only because it is based on what she believes is sound logic, but also because it was forged by a commission that looked deeply and exhaustively at intelligence failures that led to the terrorist attacks.

The recommendation "was unanimous, and it was bipartisan," she emphasized.

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