Yes, Mr. President, Foreign Intelligence is Different

Former Congressman Bob Barr’s take on our current intelligence climate.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II—a conflagration which the Allied Powers won due in no small measure to our ability to secretly obtain Axis military intelligence—the Truman Administration and the Congress comprehensively restructured our nation’s foreign intelligence system. Among other things, that effort (which at the time was highly controversial) birthed the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The fundamental underpinning of these dramatic changes to the manner in which foreign intelligence is collected, analyzed, distributed and presented to the president and other top civilian and military leaders is the notion that the highest and best intelligence requires a coordinated effort, with clear lines of authority and responsibility, all operating in a non-political environment of secrecy. While the theory behind this restructuring has never been fully realized—institutional jealousies continue to plague the effort – every previous president since Truman has at least understood (or come to realize) that foreign intelligence is unique, something that must be handled carefully and confidentially.

George H.W. Bush was perhaps the President who best understood the unique environment within which foreign intelligence must be considered. While this can be explained in large measure by virtue of the fact that he headed the CIA shortly before being elected President, it also reflects the fact that he was a user of the product of the Intelligence Community throughout his many years as a public official at the national level.

Bush 41 knew, for example, that charging the CIA with protecting “intelligence sources and methods” is far more than a technical term nestled within the CIA Act of 1949. He understood the reality that directly or indirectly revealing intelligence produced by our country’s intelligence agencies, without a clear and authorized objective, can and usually will have negative short and long-term consequences for national security goals.