Some have criticized the president's proposal for a Homeland Security Agency since it doesn't fold the FBI or the CIA into the mix, but keeps them as separate agencies. Do you think that's a mistake? Did your proposal fold them into the new agency?
No, no -- we recommended strong reforms of our intelligence services. But, to a person, we on the commission thought that intelligence collection and analysis should stay separate from acting upon that information, from operations.
Why?
Traditionally in this country -- and certainly in the mid-20th century -- it has been believed that it's important, for objectivity, to have those who collect and analyze not to be attached to those who implement. And I underscore the word "objectivity." You put under one roof those who collect and analyze intelligence with those who are going to use this intelligence and there will be all kinds of conflicts of interest and confusion over rules and missions.
You've been critical of the fact that there haven't been any jobs lost after 9/11. You said on "Hardball" Monday, "We're in an age where no heads roll. No heads have rolled after 9/11. And apparently, we're not living in that era where even people resign out of some kind of duty. So nobody is accountable these days." Who should be held accountable? Who would you fire if you were president?
Within a week after 9/11, I would have begun a search for a new CIA director. Not that there's anything wrong with Mr. [George] Tenet [the current CIA director] but the symbolism is very important -- people have to be held accountable. It's like Voltaire's famous statement [in "Candide"] about how the British hang an admiral on occasion to encourage the others.
It's important to say, if you're running a big institution and that institution suffers a serious deficiency, that you will be held accountable. But if nobody is sacrificed for a failure then nobody is accountable.
What's the risk of no one being held accountable? What happens then?
Just sloppiness, I suppose. The tendency to continue to do things the way they've always been done. If you stay in office after a major failure then there's no real criticism of the way things were being done. And it's very hard for the president to say to the head of the CIA or any other agency, "You failed but I'm not going to replace you -- but I want you to do things differently." You're saying two contrary things. You're saying: "I disapprove of what you did, but I'm also not calling on you to do anything differently." And the symbolism is important, also. That's been the pattern for the last 25 or 30 years, by the way.
You also don't have people accepting responsibility. After Sept. 11, I thought some senior people would have volunteered their resignations. Deputy directors of operations at the CIA, deputy heads at the FBI. Whoever didn't listen to the agents in the field. You'd think they'd tender their resignations. Now whether the resignations are accepted or not is up to the boss. Nobody accepts responsibility anymore. People at the top don't demand it so people in the ranks aren't expected to do it.
Bearing all this in mind, what's your take on Colleen Rowley, the field agent from the Minneapolis office of the FBI who before 9/11 tried in vain to get a search warrant for Zacarias Moussaoui's laptop computer and was rebuffed by Washington FBI officials?
Well that's what I think about it: that nobody was responsible. And it causes a loss of confidence in public institutions. There's no way somebody like me can find out who in the FBI building was responsible for not listening to her. That person -- her boss or her boss's boss -- should step forward and say, "It's my fault." But that just doesn't happen.
On "Hardball" you said that the first secretary of homeland security needs to be "a very strong leader ... because it's going to take some head-cracking to make it work." Is Tom Ridge that man?
I don't know. I don't know Governor Ridge well enough to know. The possible matrix I would use if I were making the selection would be: first of all, experience in Congress, familiarity with the congressional committee system, so you could organize this new agency in a way that responded to congressional concerns and interests. Second, a background in national security matters. And third, a background in intelligence. And you put that matrix together, it's a rather small pool of people: Sam Nunn, Warren Rudman and Lee Hamilton.
You just listed two Democrats and a McCain supporter.
I could find some Bush supporters, I'm sure. Oh, and a fourth element I would add to the matrix: people beyond ambition. People who don't want to run the agency for a year or two and then run for Senate or for governor.
Why do you think that President Bush and Vice President Cheney paid your commission's report so little heed?
You'd have to ask them that. I've never been good at answering questions about other people's motives. The only thing I can offer is deductive reasoning: I guess they thought it wasn't important. They had other issues to focus on.
But you can't on the one hand claim experience -- say that the Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell team are an experienced foreign policy team -- and then, on the other hand, claim at the same time, "We were learning our jobs." It doesn't work that way. You can't say you're the most experienced White House team ever and are going to hit the ground running, and then argue that you didn't do anything because you were still hanging pictures in your office.
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