Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern over recent news reports detailing turmoil inside the Central Intelligence Agency since the arrival of the new Director, Porter Goss, and former members of his staff in the House of Representatives.
As a senior member of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs with oversight responsibility for homeland security and the Committee responsible for drafting the legislative reform on intelligence now in conference, I am deeply concerned about the impact the new leadership at the CIA may have on our national security.
Since the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, the Congress has been engaged as never before in efforts to reform our intelligence collection capability in terms of our ability to improve the technical means to collect and share critical information in a timely fashion. The key component to that reform is human capital. Time and time again in outside commissions, reports to the Congress, and in hearings, we have been told that our intelligence and law enforcement communities lack sufficient qualified personnel to collect and analyze information. I introduced legislation, S. 589, the Homeland Security Federal Workforce Act, which passed the Senate with bipartisan support last year and is now in the House, to help rectify that problem. Other members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have also introduced legislation to improve our intelligence and law enforcement workforce.
This is why I am so disturbed by the news reports that senior members of the CIA are being forced to resign, are being pressured to fire subordinates, and there are fears that they may even be asked to tailor their analysis to support the Administration's policies, according to the November 17, 2004, New York Times. I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record following my remarks.
Among those who have been forced out or retired recently are the Deputy Director of the CIA, the Deputy Director of Operations, the second ranking member of the clandestine service, and the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit. Other resignations, retirements, or reassignments may follow.
Apparently, Director Goss brought with him at least four former staffers from the House of Representatives and inserted them into senior positions at the Agency where they have begun to force these resignations.
This is troubling for two reasons: First, we cannot afford to lose any intelligence personnel, especially seasoned officers, in the midst of the War on Terrorism. We have so few people we cannot fully staff the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) that the President created to provide a coordinated counter-terrorism response to the 9-11 attacks. Secondly, our intelligence staff have been working 24-7 since the War on Terrorism and the war in Iraq began. They need morale boosters, not the morale downers that come from the forced resignations of well-respected leaders.
So desperate is the personnel situation that the intelligence reform bill, S. 2845, now in conference, authorizes the establishment of a National Intelligence Reserve Corps for the temporary reemployment of former intelligence community employees during periods of emergency.
Some would argue that the CIA is a "damaged agency" that needs to be reformed through "hard love." Perhaps that is the case. Perhaps the operations directorate needs to be given new direction. I understand that both President Clinton and President Bush, in his first term, were focused on reforming the clandestine operations through the efforts of Director Tenet and that those reforms were yielding results. But if those results are insufficient, more needs to be done.
If a ship needs to change course and requires a new crew, the new crew needs to knows both how to pilot a ship and how to plot a course. So far, the current upheaval at the Central Intelligence Agency makes me worry that the current new crew may not measure up to that challenge. I would like to be proved wrong because our national security depends on it.
