Op-Ed Contributor NYT

Spy vs. Spy

South Royalton, Vt.

THE resignation of Porter Goss after 18 months of trying to run the Central Intelligence Agency and the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to take his place make unmistakable something that actually occurred a year ago: the C.I.A., as it existed for 50 years, is gone.

Once the premier American intelligence organization, the agency has now been demoted to a combination action arm and support service for the rapidly growing Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by John Negroponte.

The C.I.A. used to coordinate, write and sign all "finished national intelligence" — no longer. The C.I.A.'s director used to lead the meetings of the heads of the numerous organizations that make up the "intelligence community" — no longer. The C.I.A. used to have final say on many aspects of intelligence "tasking" — no longer. Last to go was the role that made the agency pre-eminent, responsibility for briefing the president. Now that job belongs to Mr. Negroponte, with his $1 billion budget and staff of 1,500.

What finally humbled and gutted the C.I.A. after decades of Washington bureaucratic infighting was a loss of support where it counted most: the refusal of the Bush White House to accept responsibility for the two great "intelligence failures" that prompted Congress to reorganize our services.

The first failure laid at the feet of the agency was the inability to prevent the surprise attacks of 9/11. In fact, the C.I.A. (and others) warned the White House often during the first eight months of 2001 that an attack was coming and where it was coming from, but the Bush administration did nothing. For reasons of broad national psychology, the White House's failure to stir itself was simultaneously overlooked and forgiven by the public, while the C.I.A. (and others) got held to strict account for failing to predict the day and the hour.

The second failure was the claim — "with high confidence" — in a National Intelligence Estimate sent by the C.I.A. to Congress in October 2002 that Iraq was making vigorous progress on programs for weapons of mass destruction. But this finding was in effect dragged out of the agency by the White House and the Pentagon. Agency analysts working on the issue assumed that Saddam Hussein was up to something, but they knew their evidence was thin and ambiguous; many of their superiors knew about contrary evidence but suppressed it.

Everybody at the C.I.A. — from George Tenet, then the director, down — knew the agency could not tell United Nations weapons inspectors where to find anything over a period of months. The C.I.A. knew it didn't know what sort of weapons program Iraq really had, and absent White House pressure the analysts would have written an intelligence estimate reflecting their uncertainties. (It is worth noting that the Senate Intelligence Committee, despite a promise to do so, has been conspicuously reluctant to examine the source of the pressure for the drumbeat of alarming weapons intelligence, or how the White House made use of it.)

President Bush might have accepted responsibility for these two failures. He might have followed the example of President John F. Kennedy, who took the blame for the disastrous C.I.A. attempt to put a rebel army ashore in Cuba in 1961. Instead, the administration hid the existence of the pre-9/11 warnings for as long as possible and continued to insist for many months after the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons might still turn up, and it has blocked any official investigation of its role in exaggerating the slender intelligence that existed.

Blaming the C.I.A. for these failures led to Porter Goss being sent to Langley. First on his to-do list was to put an end to what White House perceived as a lack of loyalty to administration policy. This supposed treachery took two forms: leaks of pre-Iraq war intelligence findings that predicted problems the White House is to this day still trying to minimize; and pessimistic reports from the field that contradicted rosy announcements of progress from the Pentagon.

Mr. Goss, however, ran into two major obstacles: the agency's balkiness at being asked to fix something (intelligence collection and analysis) that wasn't really broken; and the demoralization of its ranks from playing second violin to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Historically the C.I.A. had a customer base of one — the president. When its primacy in reporting to the White House was taken away, the agency was being told in effect that henceforth it would be talking to itself.

In addition, on a purely human level, it is apparent that Mr. Goss rubbed practically everybody at the C.I.A. the wrong way. Wholesale resignations bled the agency of experience and talent, until the White House — and Mr. Negroponte — apparently concluded it was time for Mr. Goss to go, too.

The tasks faced by the next director of the C.I.A. will be those left unfinished by Mr. Goss — renewing the agency's pride and élan despite its narrowed role and lowered status; buoying the morale of intelligence analysts who know policy-makers are going to be reading paper from Mr. Negroponte's office now; and reviving the ability of the agency's Directorate of Operations to recruit human spies, infiltrate hostile organizations and mount clandestine operations.

At the same time, the C.I.A.'s next chief will have to protect the agency's flanks from determined turf-raiding by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has been building the Pentagon's capacity for recruiting human spies and running covert operations, which in his opinion do not require the same kind of oversight mandated by law for C.I.A. activities.

It may be that the White House chose Michael Hayden, an Air Force general now working as Mr. Negroponte's deputy who was chief of the National Security Agency for seven years, because they hope his rank will strengthen him in turf battles with the military. In other ways, however, General Hayden seems an odd choice, bound to meet trouble in the confirmation process.

His biggest problem may be the fact he created and helped to hide from scrutiny a large-scale N.S.A. eavesdropping program aimed at Americans, still illegal in the eyes of many. Or it may be that senators will brush that aside and object instead to his lack of experience in running a classic spy service, the sort the C.I.A. is intended to be — again.

RECRUITING spies is not best achieved through a chief-executive mentality focused on economy and productivity; running covert operations requires sensitive human judgment to keep out of trouble. If intelligence experience and "feel" were the most important qualities to look for in the next director, General Hayden would be at the bottom of the list. As his name goes to the Senate the road seems to be largely uphill; even many Republicans have objected to giving the job to a military officer, or to this officer in particular.

But somebody is going to get the job, and he won't get anywhere trying to "turn the agency around," if by that we mean make it what it once was — the premier American intelligence organization. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has that job now. Probably the best the next C.I.A. director can hope to do is get everybody back to work, while reminding the agency staff that there is honor in having fallen on your sword, and next time the national intelligence director will have to take the blame.

Thomas Powers is the author, most recently, of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda."