Defense, CIA vie for power

Washington Times ^ | 11/30/04 | Rowan Scarborough

[kattracks]

At the heart of a dispute over legislative intelligence reform are confidential meetings between the defense secretary and the CIA director during which they decided where to point spy satellites.
    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet, and their staffs, talked frequently about where to position satellites that relay overhead images and overheard conversations during the war on terror.

[snip]

The procedure for "tasking intelligence assets," as the discussion is called, is spelled out in the 1947 National Security Act. Amended numerous times since then, the act details the working relationship between the CIA director and defense secretary.
    In practice, the law gives the defense chief broad powers to place satellites. In addition, the defense secretary directs and controls the budgets for three main providers of technical intelligence: the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which runs the network of satellites; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyzes images; and the National Security Agency (NSA), which intercepts electronic communications.
    The intelligence reform bill, which Senate and House members crafted in response to recommendations from the September 11 commission, is stalled in Congress over just how the relationship between the intelligence community and the defense secretary should be molded for the 21st century.
    House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, California Republican, opposes a compromise. He said the bill gives too much power to a new national intelligence director. The result, he warned, could be the director's interference in the chain of command between the defense secretary and his field commanders.
    "That means that when the Department of Defense has to have a satellite over Fallujah, for example, because they've got people being shot at on the ground, they need to know where the enemy is,"

[snip]

"You have to be able to control that agency."