Bill Gertz reports that Donald Rumsfeld is continuing his efforts to tame the Pentagon and cut through the layers of bureacracy. It's amazingly hard. I hope Rumsfeld will stick around for the second term.
Stephen Cambone has assumed sweeping power over the Pentagon's intelligence bureaucracy as the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence. We obtained a copy of a May 8 memorandum from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz setting up the new office. It states that the office takes over all 286 persons and policies attached to the intelligence, counterintelligence and security, and other intelligence-related issues that were in the portfolio of the assistant defense secretary for command, control, communications and intelligence, once the Pentagon's top intelligence official.Posted by Alan at May 23, 2003 10:58 PMMr. Cambone, a protege of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who has little intelligence experience, will have several deputies, including three charged with intelligence warning, war fighting and operations, and counterintelligence and security.
The key phrase of the implementing guidance memorandum relates to the office's power over other Pentagon intelligence agencies that in the past have resisted control by Pentagon policy-makers. It states that the new undersecretary will "exercise authority, direction, and control over the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Security Service (DSS) and the DoD Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA)."
The job of whipping the Pentagon intelligence bureaucracy into shape is formidable. Pentagon intelligence agencies consume the lion's share of the amount spent on intelligence overall, estimated to be about $35 billion annually.
Additionally, the memorandum states that the Pentagon's chief information officer has been given a new title — assistant defense secretary for networks and information integration — and will report directly to the secretary of defense, an unusual arrangement because most assistants report to an undersecretary. The post also comes with new authority over Pentagon space activities.