US Intelligence Is not a Political Function

Former CIA and NSA Director General Michael Hayden told Fox News Sunday this weekend that the Inited States has few good choices in dealing with Iran's push for nuclear weapons, saying he's OK with letting the six-month temporary deal with the country go forward, "But we should be truthful,...We have accepted Iranian uranium enrichment." The "red line" with Iran has clearly changed....Right now, the Iranians are far too close to a nuclear weapon," he said. "We have hit the pause button. Now we've got to negotiate hitting the delete button with them." When negotiations end, Hayden said, "Iran's going to be a nuclear threshold state." The deal, as currently structured, allows Iran to enrich uranium to 5 percent. Previous UN resolutions have called for a complete dismantling of its nuclear program and shipment out of the country of all nuclear materials. Also on Sunday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the US is in greater danger of a terrorist attack than it was prior to September 11 and has less ability to prevent such aggression by Islamist radicals. "I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that," Feinstein said on CNN's "State of the Union." She noted that : "The fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs. Trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there,...I think there is a real displaced aggression in this very fundamentalist jihadist Islamic community. That is that the West is responsible for everything that goes wrong and that the only thing that's going to solve this is Islamic sharia law and the concept of the caliphate." Republican Representative Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, agreed, saying terrorists are now focusing on smaller events, making it more difficult for the intelligence community to detect plots against American targets. "The threat level has never been more diverse than it is today and that's one of the bigger concerns that we have, and why we both would agree that the threat is higher today and we are probably less safe. The more efforts they try, the more perfect you have to be to stop something. That's a huge challenge," Rogers told CNN. "We're fighting amongst ourselves in this country about the role of the intelligence community. That is having an impact on our ability to stop what is a growing number of threats. And so we've got to shake ourselves out of this pretty soon and understand that our intelligence services are not the bad guys," Rogers said. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the unsettling assessment shared by the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs comes as Congress considers whether to reduce the intelligence community's ability to spy on Americans, as well as terrorist threats overseas. The Snowden leaks revealed that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, as well as the email content of messages going overseas. The revelation led to a rare bipartisan consensus in Congress to limit NSA activities or to require regular reports to Congress on its activities. Feinstein is pushing legislation to protect NSA practices but require more congressional reporting. But pethaps the real problem lies elsewhere. Until the 9/11 shock, intelligence was considered a professional activity largely separated from Washington politics and insulated from daily shifts in the presidential agenda. Today, details emerge of an Obama administration that has become, through its White House intelligence capability, the manager of intelligence goals and activities, rather than being the recipient of the results of American intelligence expertise. Intelligence is not a political tool or activity. It is the core function that provides for American security. What Congress ought to consider is how to stop the White House de facto leadership of the US intelligence community and put that leadership back into the hands of intelligence professionals, with appropriate congressional and White House oversight.