Tomorrow's 'Rogue Elephant'
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON
The Congress's September stampede is on. One purpose is to force votes that will embarrass the political opposition.
From the G.O.P. comes the constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage. This Bush-supported grandstand play has no chance of final passage in a two-thirds' vote, and rightly so: the Supreme Court should be asked to decide conflicts among the states before any move is made to pre-empt or overrule its decision.
But on another issue, because the court long ago decided that an amendment to prohibit flag-burning was unconstitutional, here comes an amendment to overrule it. House Republicans will pass this, knowing the Senate will deny passage late this month, hoping thereby to knock off a few free-speech senators.
But the real danger to the nation in this month's billmanship is the slapdash, quick-fix, pre-Election Day rush to install an intelligence "czar" who could merge spying with law enforcement and mix intelligence assessments with policy guidance.
This is an attempt driven by Democrats who belatedly want to show how hot they are for waging war on terror, and joined by Republicans eager not be out-crackdowned by the panicked new converts to untrammeled foreign and domestic espionage.
First was Senate Intelligence, the Mr. Magoo brigade that is desperate to cover up its oversight misfeasance. (Its secret report in 2001 about the killing of 17 sailors aboard the U.S.S. Cole is too embarrassing to be unclassified.) This "break up the Yankees" plan by the Republican Pat Roberts sets up three separate C.I.A.'s - stripping intel from the Pentagon, further dispiriting the crew at Langley and busting up the F.B.I. But Democrats are hooting because it dares to deviate from the blueprint laid down by the lionized 9/11 panel.
Marching lock step with the recommendations of the high-powered private lobbying group that used to be the 9/11 commission, the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs yesterday unburdened itself of a 280-page omnibus bill. Senators posed with Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, each promoting himself in the media primary for election to czar.
Ordinarily sensible senators like Joe Lieberman and John McCain touted the centralization, their dots apparently connected by the feeling that unless something passed before the election deadline, no changes would ever be made. But we are being hustled into a huge reorganization of our government under unnecessary pressure. For example:
Nobody in Congress was watching the store. "We should strive to never again read a report," says McCain, "that calls Congressional oversight 'dysfunctional.' " So what is being done about this, in the race to legislate? Zero: a "sense of the Congress" resolution kicking the can down to a "task force" in the next Congress. But you can't fix the watchers without simultaneously fixing their watchmen.
And what about the commission's ingenious reformist idea to put more spies on the ground? James Pavitt, our chief clandestine spook until he quit last month, wrote in The Washington Post that "human intelligence capabilities were badly depleted during the 1990's" and revealed "a 30 percent decline in funding for the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations, the men and women in the clandestine service who penetrate terrorist networks, recruit spies and steal secrets."
The proposal to be railroaded into law would concentrate power in one unelected official. It would eviscerate the coordination function of the national security adviser, invite budgetary rivalry with the homeland security secretary and guarantee operational clashes with military officers in the field. Disagreement between the president and the new boss of all covert bosses could paralyze the nation at a moment of crisis.
This pre-election panacea not only demolishes the barrier between information provider and policy maker, but also undermines analytical conflict and institutionalizes the "groupthink" it professes to cure.
After dangerously marrying the law officer and the spy, it sets up a soothing and toothless Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board likely to be as feckless as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Call me unduly cautious - call me soft on terror - but have we thought through the downside of this brilliantly publicized, timorously debated, posterior-covering legislation? Don't we trust ourselves to elect a responsible president and Congress to deal with this soberly only a few months from now?
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
