After what feels like a thousand years of campaigning, the presidential election kicks off in earnest today, with the Iowa caucuses. Michael Tanji, who spent nearly two decades as an intelligence officer, tells us what he'd like to see in a candidate...
At this stage of the race, nearly all candidates are painting with broad strokes and are short on details. Six months from now, however, the candidates for President should offer up much more specific information on how they plan to ensure the safety of the nation and her people. The national security-candidate is the one who is committed to:
- Vetoing defense spending bills that contain (or directing agencies to ignore) any earmarks. At the start of the long war would be a good time to send a strong, clear signal to a pork-crazed Congress that this is indeed war -- and that we're going to make war-related spending decisions based on what the troops need and what their leaders feel is essential; not what some constituent-contractor back in the home district thinks will boost the bottom line.
- Purging the intelligence community of long-time incumbents and golden-handcuffed dinosaurs. The people who presided over the greatest intelligence failures of the last generation and who continue to prepare for wars that will never come need to make way for the baggage-less generation. No one has led these communities through an intelligence-driven war, so their departure is no loss.
- Enhancing our counterintelligence capabilities. The espionage efforts of our most challenging adversaries are back up to cold war levels, but since the fall of the Soviet Union our counterintelligence and security capabilities have slowly been whittled away. The result has been cases like Nada Prouty, Ana Montes and the penetration of one of our most important intelligence facilities.
- Right-sizing the military and civilian intelligence community staff by eliminating duplication through consolidation and fighting for smart growth in key areas by proposing raises in manpower caps in human intelligence and all-source analysis disciplines.
- Refining the use of contractors in the defense and intelligence communities. Contractors are necessary and in some cases essential, but they should be used judiciously and over short periods of time. With a contractor costing the government nearly double what a civilian employee costs, and with contractors cannibalizing the civilian workforce, our current approach to contracting is untenable.
- Increasing transparency in national security decision-making practice. Making mandatory the inclusion of outside experts in all substantial intelligence assessments to reduce real or perceived politicization. Push as much "lesser-included" work (the Burundi's and
Bhutan's of the world) to academic institutions. Continue declassifying NIEs to restore credibility and confidence in our government's intellectual acumen. - Dispersing as much of the national security apparatus across the country as possible. Washington DC and its surrounds are expensive, congested, dilapidated and dysfunctional. Let agencies keep their headquarters elements in DC, but send everyone else to Dayton, Omaha,
Kansas City, Boise, etc. Not has the quality of life for tens of thousands of people improved, the community is also much more resilient to attack or natural disaster. - Focusing on the hardest problems of our age by encouraging real risk-taking against hard targets and encouraging the employment of unique approaches to the most pressing challenges. By the same token the candidate will communicate with enthusiasm their intention to back our most aggressive, legitimate actions against our adversaries, and to protect operatives from political witch hunts.
- Protecting what is truly secret and dispensing with what is not. Over-classification and abuse of the classification system is rampant, which means we spend too much time protecting information of dubious value.
Enlarge the Information Security Oversight Office and enhance their capability and authority to produce and enforce a sensible and effective classification policy. - Enforcing a strict adherence to administration goals and a no-tolerance policy towards those who cannot or will not get with the program. No more Alberto Gonzales's. Yes-men are to be avoided, but tolerance for those who actively undermine policy is a betrayal of the electorate.
-- Michael Tanji, cross-posted at Haft of the Spear
