It has taken many years to persuade military commanders that national assets will reliably be available to them in the event of conflict?.To shift control over crucial intelligence assets outside the Department of Defense risks weakening the relative military advantage of the United States ? and at the same time creates the incentive to divert resources into (likely inferior) intelligence capabilities, which would further reduce the available forces.
Dr. Schlesinger concluded his Olympian testimony last August with a call for Congress to ?remember Hippocrates? injunction: ?First, do no harm.? In altering the structure of the intelligence community, it is essential to deliberate long and hard ? and not to be stampeded into doing harm?.Reform may now be necessary. Yet, in the vain pursuit of a perfect intelligence organization, do not shake up intelligence in a way that does do harm ? and in pursuit of this will-of-the-wisp, damage in particular those military capabilities that we alone possess.?
Fortunately, this eminently sensible advice to ?do no harm? has recently been echoed by two highly influential, yet politically divergent editorial pages. On November 22, the Wall Street Journal observed: ?Congress wrapped up its weekend lame-duck session without passing intelligence reform, and you will no doubt be reading outraged editorials and political moans that the country is now less safe. Don't believe it. The opposite may be closer to the truth, since the proposed reshuffling of the intelligence bureaucracies would have taken months, if not years, to carry out ? and certainly would have turned some of our spy agencies' attention away from the actual collection and analysis of intelligence?.If this reform is really so vital, it will get done, but better to do it in more considered fashion next year.?
Then, on November 24, the Washington Post editorialized: ?Last weekend, Congress passed up the opportunity to adopt, after scant consideration, the largest reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community in half a century ? a measure that was rushed through both houses with election-year zeal and then concocted by a conference committee into a 500-page omnibus that hardly anyone had read, much less considered?.A better solution would be to pause, let this election-year stampede subside and urge a new Congress to try again.?
Perhaps the real reason some in Congress are so intent on getting ?intelligence reform? legislation done now is that consideration of this matter next year would almost certainly require action they are resisting and have not addressed in the current bill: Much-needed streamlining and other improvements in legislative oversight of the intelligence community. That possibility to do real good is another excellent reason for our leaders to avoid doing harm to American intelligence when the lame duck session resumes next week.