The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have begun to review whether the Pentagon has met legal requirements to keep them fully informed of its intelligence activities, Congressional officials from both parties said.
The reviews focus on what Pentagon officials acknowledged in recent weeks was the Defense Department's widening role in intelligence gathering. Its operations increasingly include the kinds of missions traditionally conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the committees are seeking to exert the same extent of intelligence oversight to the Pentagon that they have long applied to the C.I.A.
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The expanded Pentagon operations have also caused friction with the C.I.A., whose station chiefs are supposed to coordinate all United States government intelligence activities in their countries. Some former intelligence officials say that, outside of hot spots like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, coordination with the Pentagon on intelligence operations has been poor.
"No one should be out and about in the world doing intelligence collection without C.I.A. supervision," a C.I.A. official said this week. "Without coordination, you end up with chaos, and that's no one's objective."
Among the questions the Congressional panels are weighing is whether any of the Pentagon operations meet the legal definition of covert action under Section 503 of the National Security Act, which would require presidential authorization and Congressional approval. In general, the officials said, the Pentagon's position is that its operations do not, principally because the provision says traditional military activities should not be considered covert actions.
For now, the officials said, the intelligence committees do not seem likely to challenge that. But they said it appeared clearer that many of the Pentagon's new missions did fall under the definition of intelligence activities in Section 502 of the act, which requires all agencies to keep Congress informed of such activities.
The act's provisions dealing with Congressional notification have been tightened in recent years.
More indications of significant escalation of Special Forces activity. There are probably other places they maybe poking around, but all the rhetoric about Iran indicates to me that there is extensive Special Forces activities in Iran today. Comments by the Administration indicate they will support any organized group in Iran who want to seize power. Special Forces will be providing support. And if necessary, the US will use air power in support as well.
Complete Article
The New York Times
February 4, 2005
Congress Is Reviewing Pentagon on Intelligence Activities
By DOUGLAS JEHL and THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have begun to review whether the Pentagon has met legal requirements to keep them fully informed of its intelligence activities, Congressional officials from both parties said.
The reviews focus on what Pentagon officials acknowledged in recent weeks was the Defense Department's widening role in intelligence gathering. Its operations increasingly include the kinds of missions traditionally conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the committees are seeking to exert the same extent of intelligence oversight to the Pentagon that they have long applied to the C.I.A.
Among the officials who testified in closed sessions in recent days were Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, and Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, his deputy, Congressional officials said. They said Mr. Cambone promised to work with Congress to develop new reporting arrangements for Pentagon intelligence operations to guarantee adherence to the law.
They also said that Mr. Cambone had promised to cooperate with the intelligence committees, and that the tone of the exchanges had been collaborative, not confrontational. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Conway, said the meetings were a chance for the committees to "talk the facts" and make sure that the Defense Department was doing what it is required to do, "which is to inform Congress."
A provision of the National Security Act of 1947 requires that the intelligence committees be kept fully and currently informed of intelligence activities and be notified in advance about significant activities. In enforcing that provision, the committees have long focused primarily on the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. But the Congressional officials said that Republicans and Democrats on the committees now believe that new missions being carried out by the Pentagon, principally by Special Operations forces, should be subject to the same oversight.
In public remarks on Thursday, General Boykin gave a broad definition of evolving Pentagon plans to "operationalize intelligence" - institutionally support intelligence operations. Appearing on a panel before a military industry group, he did not mention his testimony before the intelligence committees.
"We're not talking about starting firefights in order to get intelligence," General Boykin said. "We're talking about looking at intelligence as an operation, much like the C.I.A. does. They run operations. When we run these same kinds of things, we consider it a staff function. My point is, you need to recognize that these are operations, and have a structure that supports these as operations."
Congressional officials declined to discuss most of those missions, saying that they remained highly classified. Among the expanded operations now acknowledged by the Pentagon is a new program in the Defense Intelligence Agency in which interrogators, linguists and other officers provide support to Special Operations forces.
The expanded Pentagon operations have also caused friction with the C.I.A., whose station chiefs are supposed to coordinate all United States government intelligence activities in their countries. Some former intelligence officials say that, outside of hot spots like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, coordination with the Pentagon on intelligence operations has been poor.
"No one should be out and about in the world doing intelligence collection without C.I.A. supervision," a C.I.A. official said this week. "Without coordination, you end up with chaos, and that's no one's objective."
Among the questions the Congressional panels are weighing is whether any of the Pentagon operations meet the legal definition of covert action under Section 503 of the National Security Act, which would require presidential authorization and Congressional approval. In general, the officials said, the Pentagon's position is that its operations do not, principally because the provision says traditional military activities should not be considered covert actions.
For now, the officials said, the intelligence committees do not seem likely to challenge that. But they said it appeared clearer that many of the Pentagon's new missions did fall under the definition of intelligence activities in Section 502 of the act, which requires all agencies to keep Congress informed of such activities.
The act's provisions dealing with Congressional notification have been tightened in recent years.
As under secretary of defense for intelligence, Mr. Cambone holds a post that was created in 2003, with policy responsibilities that extend from the Defense Intelligence Agency across the vast breadth of military intelligence.
Mr. Cambone and General Boykin have made plain their desire to expand the Pentagon's role in gathering intelligence.
Intelligence and other operations "are difficult to separate," General Boykin said in his appearance on Thursday. He said that information from combat patrols feed into the national-level intelligence system, and that patrols needed national-level intelligence if they were to identify and capture or kill terrorist or insurgent leaders because "our main challenge is finding the enemy."
"We are running intelligence operations every day on the streets of Baghdad and Afghanistan," he said. "Action creates intelligence."
General Boykin was asked whether the government should re-establish a program of identifying and assassinating specific adversaries, like Operation Phoenix, conducted in Vietnam by the C.I.A.
Emphasizing that he was giving his personal opinion, General Boykin said that America's conventional military forces and its Special Operations teams in Iraq and Afghanistan were "doing a pretty good job of that right now."
"We're going after these people," he said. "Killing or capturing these people is a legitimate mission for the department and for the interagency" process that coordinates national security policy.
"I think we're doing what the Phoenix program was designed to do, without all of the secrecy."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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