Strong intel director needed for better national security, experts say
President-elect Donald Trump has been persistent in his skepticism over the findings of the intelligence community on Russian hacking and has even been openly critical of the agencies, at one point citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for having said that the Russians had not given WikiLeaks hacked Democrats’ emails.
At the same time, Trump seriously considered cutting back the office of the director of national intelligence, including its top job, or even leaving the post unfilled in his administration, as CBS News’ Major Garrett reported this week (although Thursday afternoon he instead named former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to head the ODNI).
One of the people who advocated for the formation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, told CBS correspondent Jan Crawford that the DNI needs more authority than it had under President Obama.
Kean, one of the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, advocated for the creation of the ODNI after the commission found that agencies like the CIA and FBI were not sharing information that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
“Without the DNI we are much less safe in the United States and we can’t be there. We’ve got to get safer, not less safe,” Kean said.
“We still don’t share information adequately enough,” he said
President Obama’s first director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair (ret.), thinks the ODNI is “an inefficient organization,” but believes the office should be stronger.
“You should have the director of national intelligence responsible for the overall delivery of intelligence to the president,” he told Crawford.
“When it comes to matters of life and death, lives on the line, important information, you have to have accountability,” Blair also said.
Blair also said that there were too many times that the DNI was bypassed -- agencies went to the White House or straight to Congress, which “diffused responsibility,” undercut the improvements that needed to be made. His own tenure as DNI was ended when he was forced out after a power struggle with then-CIA Director Leon Panetta.
“You need to have somebody in charge, somebody who’s making calls on what’s important and who has responsibility,” Blair said.
