Briefing the managers at C.I.A.

Dateline: Original Headquarters Building (OHB), CIA, 23 November 2004

■"Bush Wants Plan for Covert Pentagon Role: Studying paramilitary operations that the C.I.A. now runs," by Douglas Jehl, New York Times, 23 November 2004, p. A18.

■"Bush Urged to Get Pentagon In Step on Intelligence Bill," by Elisabeth Bumiller and Philip Shenon, New York Times, 23 November 2004, p. A18.

Flew down to DC today on a 0610 US Airways flight directly to Reagan National instead of my usual SWA flight into BWI. Why? The Agency is paying for my travel, and for some weird reason, they couldn't book SWA directly, so unless I wanted to make it complicated, it had to be US Airways through Reagan. What sucked about that was the very early-morning flight because US has so few direct flights (only one would have gotten me here in time for a noontime speech and it was the 0610), plus I can't fly out until 5pm. That combo makes for a nice 16-hour workday.

Ah, the logic of government contracting.

Nonetheless, it was nice to be asked to come down to Langley and brief a collection of the Agency's mid-level managers. Plus, the CIA really treats you nicely when you come to talk, giving you VIP parking (plenty of spots today, given the proximity of the holiday) and putting you up in an office if need be (two courtesies that have disappeared in the Pentagon since 9/11 due to a combo of security measures plus all the rebuilding/rehabbing of the place that will continue forever!). Plus they have their clearance-checking system in good shape, meaning that if you do the paperwork right, you can actually go to the bathroom without an escort.

I came into the building via the original entrance of the Original Headquarters Building, or OHB. This building used to be the entire facility until they created the modern, far more sleek greenish building right next door (I believe they call it the NHB, or New Headquarters Building).

I like coming in the old way because it's the entrance that Hollywood always tries to copy. It has the giant inlaid agency logo in the marble floor that you walk over, plus the stars on the walls for all the agents who've died in action over the years. Then there's the original dedication markers and the big statue of William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the forerunner agency, the OSS.

Once inside, it's like any other big government building: drab, miles of corridors, lotsa locked doors, and lotsa billboards where the thousands of employees advertise their desires and needs (for roommates, car buyers, car poolers, etc.). Also cool is the spy museum the Agency has here, plus the funky souvenir store (I once got my Dad some CIA golf balls, the joke being, "when you hit them into the rough, don't worry, THEY FIND YOU!").

The brief took place in a modest conference room, and I gave them a medium-sized version of the spiel (75 minutes), with an obvious focus on intell issues. Despite my great sleep deprivation (God I want to sleep in my own bed several nights in a row!), I performed reasonably well, and the Q&A was lively. I also handed out the book to the various seniors in attendance (dutifully signed) and signed a bunch of others for those who brought them along to the talk. All in all a good time, not to mention an interesting time to be back here taking gauge of the intelligence community's mood.

You know, that intelligence community is far less broken than imagined, and real fixes required have littleóif anythingóto do with creating a cabinet-level intell czar. As a group, the 15 elements of the intelligence community interact with each other fairly well. If we would only dial down the classification requirements, this network would work just fine. But because we stovepipe the information in this manner, the networks aren't allowed to function anywhere near peak capacity.

But instead of just dialing down the secrecy, we propose centralization, which by and large negates most of the best attributes of having that distributed network of agencies who all collect, process, and analyze a bit differently from one another. In short, we're more likely to get group think with a National Intelligence Director than without one. But until we rethink the ultra-secrecy of most of these information flows, no amount of deck-chair rearranging will do the trick.

The Pentagon isn't going to give up its control over the overhead assets (where the real money is) to a NID, and frankly, it should logically seek to pull CIA's covert stuff over into its bailiwick, because the overhead stuff defines the information superiority for the Leviathan warfighter, and the CIA muscle logically belongs there as well. This fight over the intell reform bill stems fundamentally from the lack of understanding regarding the natural bifurcation of the intelligence community in response to the natural post-cold-war bifurcation of the US military. In short, certain assets logically migrate to the Leviathan, whereas most of what Congress really wants to see centralized (if they thought about it for a minute) under a NID is far more logically associated with the SysAdmin force.

Here's the essential breakdown:

Leviathan =

Defense Intelligence Agency

Navy Intelligence

Air Force Intelligence

National Security Agency

National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

National Reconnaissance Office

CIA's direct action people.

Sys Admin =

Army Intelligence

Marine Corps Intelligence

Coast Guard

FBI

Dept of Treasury

Dept of Energy

Dept of Homeland Security

Department of State

CIA analytical

National Intelligence Council

That's the crude way of describing it, meaning the splits wouldn't be that neat (but that's how you'd describe the center of gravity for each element). You'd still have a IC-wide community management office that worked info-sharing among it all, but you'd let the various agencies serve their respective masters. In other words, let the Defense agencies, by and large, serve the Leviathan and let the departmental agencies (plus the lion's share of the Marine and Army intell) serve the SysAdmin force.

It was interesting to talk with my hosts after the brief, because the same reform-minded elements who invited me today invite me everywhere else I go in the national security community. As with all cannibalizing agents, they tend to think horizontally and plan adaptively. Never ones to wait on the perfect plan, they more interested in moving ahead and letting the chips fall where they may. But alas, that is always the problem for such reformers: the heavies on top want to see everything clearly before committing, less they lose budgetary control of the process. So again, the enemies of performance tend to be centralization and greed, whereas the proponents of reform tend to favor networking and sharing without reference to cost capture.

Guess which side is better suited to fighting a transnational insurgency of terrorists?

BTW, got another medallion today from my hosts. They opined it might be a collector's item soon, but I hope it won't be. The network-centric forces must prevail.

After the brief, I spoke with one senior manager who said he teaches an annual course for intell managers and that last summer he used the original Esquire PNM article. He said it was almost universally hated by the class, becauseóin his mindóit told them a bunch of things they did not want to hear. He noted that the only other author who seemed to get such a negative response from community managers was Art Cebrowski, my old boss in the Pentagon. I took this as a real complimentólike father, like son.

Anyway, glad this long day is my last for . . . I dunno, a week I guess. So it's back to Reagan and yet another flight home. Thank God we're not traveling anywhere for Thanksgiving. To me (especially this year), holidays are for staying put.

Here's today's catch, on a need-to-know basis!:

■ Sharing SysAdmin knowledge with Iraqi bureaucrats

■ Around the horn in China

■ America: the land of mutts and geniuses

■ A good example of why Puerto Rico really is in the Gap