The sun wasn't shining in Washington on 20 February, but retired Navy Vice Admiral Mike McConnell could still bask in the light of satisfaction. At a quarter past ten that morning, President Bush stood before an assembly of intelligence and national security luminaries at Bolling Air Force Base, the headquarters of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). They had come to see McConnell ceremonially take the oath of office as the nation's next spymaster-in-chief.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a long-time friend of the new DNI, sat in the front row. Next to him was CIA Director Michael Hayden, who, like McConnell, had once been chief of the National Security Agency. Like all three men, the graybeards of intelligence across the country were smiling: their own were back in charge.
In what one former official calls "the closest thing to an intelligence coup d'etat," a set of old hands is now on the wheels at the principal military and civilian agencies. The swearing-in of McConnell—who was also director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs during the first Gulf War and a former executive assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence—marked the official dawn of a new day. Career intelligence officials seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that, after two years of turnover, tumult, and uncertainty in the top ranks of the U.S. intelligence establishment, things might start to stabilize. From flawed analyses on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to bureaucratic infighting and feuds with the White House and a lack of experienced senior leadership, the intelligence community has spent the past two years beset by bad news and bad blood.
Four men guide this new intelligence constellation. Three were at Bolling that February morning—McConnell, Gates, and Hayden, an active-duty Air Force lieutenant general. The fourth, retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper, will surely play more behind the scenes, but he takes over a pivotal position, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the top spy slot in the Pentagon. Besides the quartet's decades of experience, another important quality binds them—they've all worked together before, and they know and like each other.
While McConnell ran NSA in the early 1990s, Clapper was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gates was head of the CIA. Meanwhile, Hayden held key slots on the White House National Security Council staff and in military intelligence. He became NSA director in 1999. Also, McConnell and Clapper have a Gulf War connection. When McConnell was the military official in charge of intelligence for Operation Desert Storm, Clapper was the assistant chief of staff for Air Force intelligence and played a leading role in coordinating the air campaign.
Experience is, of course, no guarantee of success, any more than is bonhomie. But as the intelligence agencies recover from a series of miscast leaders, many take comfort in what—and who—they know. As one former CIA official puts it, echoing the sentiment of many colleagues, "This is the intelligence professionals retaking the ground."
It's also an about-face by the administration. The new leaders are known for their non-ideological management styles, a marked change from the days when a cohort of neoconservatives held sway over national security policy, steered the country into war, and drove political wedges into the intelligence bureaucracy. "This is the revenge of the intelligence professionals," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian. "To take the job of running the intelligence community away from the ideologues and to put it back in the hands of those who probably are best suited to run the place."
A Rocky Road Home
It hasn't been an easy two-and-a-half years for America's spies. Before the new intelligence chiefs took power, outsiders had risen to the highest ranks. First, in September 2004, then-congressman Porter Goss was installed as director of the CIA. Supporters boasted of his stint as a clandestine CIA operative—before he entered politics—as proof Goss was a "company man." But others who knew Goss as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee recoiled when the Florida Republican burst through the doors at Langley with a small flock of his Capitol Hill aides in tow.
Goss mounted one of the most significant purges of the agency in recent memory. He and his former congressional staff alienated many experienced analysts and operatives through a combination of hardball management and a zealous pursuit of media leaks that even some CIA opponents likened to a witch-hunt. By the time Goss was done, several senior analysts and operatives had quit over his management style and what they claimed were his inappropriate political allegiances to the Bush administration. Observers were divided over whether Goss had done a service by ridding the agency of troublesome employees, or if he had needlessly caused morale to plummet. Whatever the case, Goss was unceremoniously given the boot after only 18 months on the job, a sign that Bush personally was dissatisfied with his performance.
In February 2005, Bush nominated John Negroponte, a career diplomat then serving as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to be the first DNI. Negroponte was no stranger to the covert intelligence world. As ambassador to Honduras in the Reagan administration, he was a loyal ally of the National Security Council staff and the President's expansion of military aid to the Central American nation. Insiders regarded Negroponte as one of the few Foreign Service officers who was on board with Reagan's policies of blocking communist expansion in neighboring Nicaragua through military means, and Negroponte was instrumental in getting the Honduran government's support.
But still, Negroponte had always been a consumer of intelligence, not a producer, and was clearly no spy manager. So his selection as DNI left some careerists scratching their heads. Negroponte never really seemed to slide into the demands of his new role, which included briefing the President each morning on the profusion of national security threats and the thankless task of wrangling a cantankerous federation of intelligence agencies. Negroponte was often spotted at Washington's University Club on workday afternoons, swimming laps in the pool or getting a massage. In late 2006, the street gossip had it that Negroponte was actively making a play to be Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy, which would let him return to his State Department roots—in an influential and prestigious post—and help shepherd the department's Iraq policies for the administration's remaining two years. This January, the President formally offered Negroponte the job.
Now, with the decks cleared, intelligence observers look to Gates, McConnell, Hayden, and Clapper not only to re-inject professionalism, but also to make institutional changes that might outlast their arguably limited tenure. There's little reason to believe a new President, regardless of party, will keep them on in 2009. Therefore, the new spy chiefs have no time to waste.
The Real Director: Robert M. Gates
Gates wields the most political influence among the four men. McConnell may have the title "director," but the Defense Secretary controls the vast majority of the intelligence budget, and so is in a much stronger position to steer policy. (Gates actually turned down the DNI job before it was offered to Negroponte.)
Pentagon spy agencies, principally the NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages ultra-expensive satellites, account for more than 80 percent of annual spending, according to many estimates. The intelligence reform law that created the DNI's post doesn't give it the final decision-making authority on the budget; the DNI and the Defense Secretary have to jointly compile a spending proposal. McConnell and Gates, then, will hammer out the final numbers together, with Gates having the biggest say on high-dollar programs.
A former CIA director, Gates will bring a keen understanding of civilian intelligence operations to his job. No doubt that will come in handy for CIA Director Hayden, an active-duty military officer who has made rebuilding the clandestine spy service a priority. But Gates has already weighed in on another controversial aspect of the Defense-civilian intelligence relationship. In his December confirmation hearing, Gates was asked about the Pentagon's practice, under former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of producing separate intelligence products often meant to contradict the CIA's analysis on Iraq. "I just have the impression that they were . . . not gathering but analyzing intelligence reports and providing an independent evaluation of that reporting and an analysis based on that reporting to defense officials," Gates said. "I have a problem with that."
Asked whether, in light of those activities, the Defense Department should still have an undersecretary for intelligence—a position created under Rumsfeld's tenure—Gates clarified his ideas on separation of power: "[M]y instinct is there probably is value in the position. But I think it's more in the form of coordinating the different elements of the defense intelligence organizations and making sure…the needs of the warfighter are being met," Gates said.
As for working with civilian intelligence agencies, Gates tellingly, said the undersecretary should perform his job by "cooperating . . . and collaborating with the director of national intelligence and the director of CIA." That would leave Gates, of course, as the man to whom the undersecretary reports. The enormous power Gates now has is not lost on intelligence experts, including those who've worked with him. Says one former CIA colleague: "He's now more of a director of central intelligence than when he was the director of central intelligence."
Mr. Management: Vice Admiral John M. "Mike" McConnell, U.S. Navy (Retired)
With Gates in such a strong policy position, many experts see McConnell as a sort of chief operating officer for the intelligence community, an executive with a bureaucrat's touch. After his swearing-in, McConnell took the chance to outline his key priorities as DNI, and nearly all of them focused on hard-core management tasks.
"We will focus on our people, our policies, our collection, our technology, our analysis, and our operational results," he said. That's not code, but it is management-speak. "People" may be the one area McConnell can most easily make headway. A series of initiatives are already underway in the DNI's office to dramatically reform the intelligence community's human resources policies. Negroponte had issued new joint duty requirements, modeled on the military's, which say that any career employee who wants to advance to a senior management position now must work in more than one agency. The directive is meant to create a truer community workforce by exposing people to different working styles, rather than build up the ranks with single-agency careerists. McConnell also said he wants to "revamp" security clearance policies. Currently, it takes so long to get a clearance that new recruits are often sidelined for more than a year, unable to work because they can't handle classified material.
McConnell also spoke about "community-wide standards" for collecting and disseminating human intelligence and the importance of sharing intelligence among agencies and with state, local, and tribal governments. All these multi-agency policies are ones the DNI was set up by law to pursue, and those who know McConnell say he not only believes they're important, but enjoys the challenge of implementing them.
McConnell "really does understand the complexities of the community" and will embrace the managerial aspects, says Tim Sample, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an intelligence policy advocacy group for which McConnell has served as chairman. "There is a structure that Ambassador Negroponte has put together that can be used" to continue management reforms, he adds.
The DNI's office has done an admirable job of setting up a management team, experts say. Indeed, its staff of more than 1,500 people is drawn largely from the CIA's former community management staff. McConnell, then, might do well to worry less about nuts and bolts and call on his executive skills, which are arguably battle-tested. "We don't need management. We need leadership," says Mark Lowenthal, a former assistant director of central intelligence for analysis and production, who was deeply involved in human resources issues. "We've got more management than we know what to do with."
The Bridge: Lieutenant General James Clapper, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
Gates asked Clapper to take over the Pentagon's top spy job from Stephen Cambone, who was a close ally of Rumsfeld and had little career intelligence experience. Clapper is a deeply seasoned, experienced military intelligence officer, and is one of two officials in the new power structure—Hayden being the other—to have held the top job in more than one intelligence agency: He was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1995, and led the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency from 2001 until last year.
That Clapper is returning to government at the Pentagon is a coup in and of itself, and experts say it sends a message to the intelligence workforce. Clapper resigned from NGA in 2006, after running afoul of Rumsfeld and Cambone when he recommended that the agency be put under the control of the DNI, not the Defense Secretary. For Gates to pick a military officer, and a highly respected one at that, leaves many believing that the Pentagon will play a decidedly less political role on intelligence matters.
Clapper could end up being the bridge between Gates and the rest of the intelligence agencies. Gates made clear in his confirmation hearing that's what he thinks an undersecretary for intelligence should do. But moreover, those who know Clapper say it's a task that suits him. "He has a long and established reputation within the intelligence community. You're seeing a wonderful opportunity for teamwork here," says one former senior Defense official who worked with Clapper at NGA. "Knowing General Clapper, I can't believe that he would have accepted [the job] unless he really believed he could make a difference." Other former officials who know Clapper and Hayden describe the two as "old friends." That personal affinity may help repair relations between the CIA and civilians at the Pentagon, which were severely strained in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The Human Touch: Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, U.S. Air Force
General Hayden rounds out the intelligence quartet. Since taking over at CIA last May, Hayden has been busy beefing up the agency's human spying efforts. He appointed a career clandestine officer, Stephen Kappes, as his No. 2. Kappes was in charge of the CIA's clandestine work until he quit in 2004 after a highly publicized dust-up with Goss' staff over personnel issues. Bringing Kappes back, much like Gates bringing Clapper aboard, was taken as a signal that the bad days were gone.
In 2004, President Bush ordered the CIA to double its number of human intelligence gatherers, also known as the operators. The following year, CIA set up the National Clandestine Service, which absorbed the operations directorate and became the focal point of all human intelligence efforts across the community. In remarks to CIA employees in January, Hayden said he was diving in head first on his responsibilities as the "national humint manager." He asked the clandestine service to set up a governing body made up of human intelligence officials from across the intelligence agencies and the military. Hayden will chair the committee on a quarterly basis, and said he expected "to tackle issues associated with tradecraft, as well as coordination and deconfliction of our activities." In other words, the CIA is, and will stay, the intelligence community's central player in the world of human spying.
Negroponte happily ceded that responsibility to Hayden—who was once his deputy at the DNI's office—and there's no indication that McConnell will try to encroach on that territory. Gates, before he was confirmed, said he was unhappy that Donald Rumsfeld had set up a number of intelligence operations at the Pentagon that worked independently of the CIA. Rumsfeld, for his part, thought the Defense Department was too dependent on the agency for human intelligence, and so he set up Special Forces and Defense Intelligence Agency teams to recruit spies overseas; they ended up clashing with CIA teams in the process.
Gates gave every indication, before his confirmation, that he would rein in the Pentagon's new spies, and former officials close to him say that he wants to turn the operations back to the pre-Rumsfeld days, when the Pentagon left most of the clandestine activities to the CIA. Military personnel would continue to have access to the agency's intelligence. That would certainly mesh with what Hayden described in his January remarks as one of his top five goals as director: Integration.
"Integration of our great strengths as an agency, integration with the community, and working more closely with our foreign partners, this is the overarching theme of our strategic intent," he said.
Mr. Harris, a staff correspondent with National Journal, writes about intelligence and homeland security.