The acting head of the CIA yesterday said there is no need to create a national security “czar” to oversee the nation’s intelligence community — something the commission investigating the September 11 attacks is expected to recommend this week.
Interim CIA Director John McLaughlin said although a good argument could be made for the “idea of a czar to oversee the entire intelligence community,” he added, “it doesn’t relate particularly to the world I live in.”
“I see the director of central intelligence as someone who is able to do that and empowered to do so under the National Security Act of 1947,” Mr. McLaughlin told “Fox News Sunday.”
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that persons familiar with the September 11 commission’s final report said it will recommend the establishment of a Cabinet-level post to oversee the more than a dozen agencies making up the U.S. intelligence community.
That duty currently falls loosely under the responsibilities of the CIA director. But a separate, widely publicized report this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence largely criticized former Director George J. Tenet for not handling the duty effectively.
Additionally, an earlier report by the September 11 commission said CIA requests often fall on deaf ears at other intelligence agencies because the Pentagon, not the CIA, is in charge of the vast majority of U.S. intelligence-gathering budgets.
Still, Mr. McLaughlin, who became interim CIA chief when Mr. Tenet resigned July 11, said with some modest changes in the way the CIA is set up, the director of central intelligence could carry out the “czar” function “well and appropriately.”
Meanwhile, similar reports in the latest editions of Time and Newsweek maintain the September 11 commission’s final report says that Iran may have facilitated the 2001 attacks by providing eight to 10 al Qaeda hijackers with safe passage to and from training camps in Afghanistan between October 2000 and February 2001.
Mr. McLaughlin yesterday said several of the suicide-hijackers had passed through Iran on their way to the United States to execute the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. However, the interim CIA chief dismissed the notion that any solid link existed between the attacks and Iran, a notion also denied by the Iranian government yesterday.
“We’ve known for some time that, I think, the count is about eight of the hijackers were able to pass through Iran at some point in their passage along their operation path,” Mr. McLaughlin told Fox.
“This is not surprising,” he said. “Iran has been on the list of state sponsors of terrorism for many years. Iran is the place where Hezbollah, an organization that killed more Americans than al Qaeda before 9/11, draws its inspiration and its finances.”
But, Mr. McLaughlin added, “We have no evidence that there is some sort of official sanction by the government of Iran for this activity” or “some sort of official connection between Iran and 9/11.”
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry yesterday told reporters it was “normal that five or six people may have crossed the border within a couple of months” without the government knowing about it. He said Iran has increased its border security since September 11.
“Our borders are long, and it’s not possible to fully control them,” the Iranian spokesman said. “Even more people may [illegally] cross the border between Mexico and the United States.”
Mr. McLaughlin’s appearance on national television yesterday came amid a series of remarks he has made on news talk shows during the past week, signaling a significant shift in public-relations tactics by the CIA.
Fox host Chris Wallace pointed out that “CIA directors, acting or not, do not come on Sunday morning talk shows.”
Mr. McLaughlin said his reason for changing that was drawn partially from something Mr. Tenet once said about how “the cloak of secrecy should never stand in the way of an open and honest dialogue with the American public.”
Mr. McLaughlin added, “Everyone else is talking about us and saying things about us, and I think it’s time for someone like me to step out and … put some sort of a face on this mysterious thing called intelligence.”
The Bush administration is said to be considering several possible candidates to become full-time CIA chief. Leaders of the Senate intelligence committee from both sides of the aisle last week urged the president to make a nomination before the November elections.
Mr. McLaughlin declined to comment yesterday on whether he would accept if he is nominated. “I’m not campaigning for the job; I’m doing the job,” he said.
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