On the DNI

As the intelligence community was rebuilt after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, two additions were seen as crucial to addressing systemic breakdowns: a new director to force often-squabbling agencies to work together, and a counterterrorism center to connect threat data dots. But developments this week underscored the extent to which those two institutions have struggled to carry out their missions, and are increasingly seen as hobbled by their own structural flaws.

The resignation of Dennis C. Blair as director of national intelligence Friday means the position will soon be turned over to a fourth occupant in little more than five years. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the job has come to be viewed as a thankless assignment - lacking in authority, yet held to account for each undetected terrorist plot...

More at The Washington Post.

Dispute Over France a Factor in Intelligence Rift - New York Times.

An already strained relationship between the White House and the departing spymaster Dennis C. Blair erupted earlier this year over Mr. Blair's efforts to cement close intelligence ties to France and broker a pledge between the nations not to spy on each other, American government officials said Friday. The White House scuttled the plan, officials said, but not before President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had come to believe that a deal was in place. Officials said that Mr. Sarkozy was angered about the miscommunication, and that the episode had hurt ties between the United States and France at a time when the two nations are trying to present a united front to dismantle Iran's nuclear program.

Officials said the dust-up was not the proximate cause of President Obama's decision to remove Mr. Blair, who announced his resignation on Thursday, from the job as director of national intelligence, but was a contributing factor in the mutual distrust between the White House and members of Mr. Blair's staff. The episode also illuminates the extent to which communications between the president's aides and Mr. Blair had deteriorated during a period of particular alarm about terrorist threats to the United States...

More at The New York Times.

Ousted U.S. Spy Chief 'Faced Rebellion' - Daniel Dombey, Financial Times.

High-profile intelligence reforms since September 11 2001 have not done enough to protect the U.S. against future attacks, analysts and experts said on Friday, following President Barack Obama's decision to remove the country's spy chief. Mr Obama obtained the resignation on Thursday of Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, the most high-level departure from his administration yet. Mr Obama's move threw the spotlight on often warring U.S. intelligence agencies, which have a $50bn (€40bn, £35bn) budget and are at the forefront of the battle against al-Qaeda - not least through CIA drone strikes in Pakistan.

The effectiveness of the U.S. intelligence effort has been under public scrutiny after two recent failed bombing attempts, in an aircraft above Detroit last Christmas day and in Times Square this month. While many White House officials faulted Mr Blair on alleged personal failings, the administration also ack­nowledges that his role was still not adequately defined...

More at The Financial Times.

Clapper Leading Candidate for National Intelligence Post - Ellen Nakashima and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

... Clapper, who has spent more than 45 years in intelligence work, is the leading candidate to become the next DNI. The extent of the authorities the next occupant of the post will wield is a significant issue for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which will hold the confirmation hearing. "The committee has generally taken the position that the DNI needs to be a strong position, filled with a strong person," a congressional aide said.

Some question whether Clapper would want a job that is widely regarded as lacking sufficient authority to coordinate 16 intelligence agencies, ranging from the CIA and NSA to the FBI and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Clapper's former agency. DNI Dennis C. Blair, who announced Thursday that he was resigning, struggled to fully assume the role of the president's chief intelligence adviser. Hayden said that if Clapper, 69, were the nominee, he would urge him to secure President Obama's commitment that he is the go-to guy on intelligence. "He has got to believe that the president believes he is senior intelligence adviser," Hayden said...

More at The Washington Post.

Former DIA Analysts Rip Clapper's Leadership - Jeff Stein, Washington Post.

Two former top Defense Intelligence Agency officials say retired Air Force Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., a leading candidate to be the next Director of National Intelligence, nearly wrecked the agency's analysis wing when he ran the organization in the mid-1990s. Clapper, currently Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, ran the DIA for three years before retiring in 1995 after 32 years in the Air Force.

According to the two former top DIA officials, Clapper's major initiative - to reorganize intelligence analysis by specialists in enemy weapons, rather than specialists in countries and regions - wreaked havoc at the agency and significantly downgraded its understanding of foreign events. One of the analysts, Jeffrey White, who was chief of Middle East/Africa military assessments, among other top jobs during a 34-year career at the DIA, said Clapper eventually realized the mistake he made and reversed course...

More at The Washington Post.

Mr. Blair's Departure - New York Times editorial.

It is unsettling to watch yet another shake-up in the intelligence community. As the aborted Times Square and Christmas Day bombings proved, militant groups are determined to strike here again. A well-functioning spy network is truly a matter of life and death. Dennis Blair, who was forced out on Thursday by President Obama, is the third man to have served as director of national intelligence since the job was created in 2004 in the flurry of post-9/11 reforms.

The brainy, retired four-star admiral (and former chief of the United States Pacific Command) seemed well suited to ride herd over 16 competing spy agencies. He quickly clashed with Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director (and true Washington insider), bristled at what he saw as White House micromanagement, struggled to figure out how to work the nonmilitary bureaucracy and never developed a relationship with Mr. Obama...

More at The New York Times.

Blair's Replacement Has Problems to Solve - Washington Post editorial.

The resignation of Dennis C. Blair as director of national intelligence was the product of personal as well as institutional failings. A retired admiral with a distinguished record of service, Mr. Blair's political judgment looked questionable from the beginning of his DNI tenure, when he nominated a former ambassador with close ties to China and Saudi Arabia - and crackpot views about the Israel "lobby" - to chair the National Intelligence Council. After the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing, Mr. Blair told Congress that the Nigerian suspect should have been questioned by the interagency interrogation group created by the administration for terrorism cases - only to acknowledge later that the team had not yet been launched.

But Mr. Blair's biggest problem was his poor management of the problem he inherited from his three, also short-lived, predecessors: the lack of clear authorities and responsibilities for his office, which was created by Congress in 2004 in an ill-considered attempt to respond to the intelligence failures before Sept. 11, 2001. Though it has mushroomed into a quasi-agency with 1,500 employees, the office of the DNI has never exercised authority over the nation's other intelligence agencies or solved the problem of their failure to share and synthesize information about key threats...

More at The Washington Post.

Dennis Blair Departs - Wall Street Journal editorial.

Intelligence disputes are usually murky, though the sacking of Dennis Blair isn't among them. Explanations for the Director of National Intelligence's exit this week range from Mr. Blair's turf wars with the CIA and at the White House to the failure to pre-empt three domestic terror attacks, two of which failed out of blind luck. But Mr. Blair is really a casualty of the failed "intelligence reform" of the last decade.

Mr. Blair's successor will be the fourth DNI in the five years since the office was stood up in 2005, and this unfortunate man or woman will also supposedly integrate and manage the 16 intelligence satraps. As we and other critics predicted at the time, however, the DNI has merely become another bureaucracy layered on top of the other bureaucracies, with some 1,500 employees often doing what others elsewhere also do. In a bureaucratic classic, Mr. Blair and CIA chief Leon Panetta clashed last year over naming intelligence chiefs abroad. Mr. Panetta won...

More at The Wall Street Journal.