The Week

Howard Dean is running for DNC chairman. We hereby endorse him again.

Most of official Washington is now busy hailing—with varying degrees of sincerity—the passage of the intelligence-reform bill. The White House badly wanted the bill, mostly for political reasons. It didn’t want the camera-hungry former members of the 9/11 commission to keep pounding it for failing to get the bill passed. And it wanted the bill off the decks so it could concentrate on next year’s agenda, including Social Security reform. The creation of a national intelligence director, and the rest of the bill’s bureaucratic shuffling, will do little by itself to improve intelligence. That will take an enhanced covert capability and strong leadership at the top, of the sort George Tenet did not provide (but which his replacement, Porter Goss, may be providing). The conservatives who balked at the bill managed to improve it: Rep. Duncan Hunter kept the bill from interfering with the military’s chain of command regarding its own operational intelligence. Unfortunately, important provisions tightening up the immigration system in ways suggested by the 9/11 commission’s own work, and pushed by Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, were left out of the final bill. But, hey, why ruin a mindless Washington rush to “do something” by insisting on good policy?

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Howard Dean is running for DNC chairman. We hereby endorse him again.

Most of official Washington is now busy hailing—with varying degrees of sincerity—the passage of the intelligence-reform bill. The White House badly wanted the bill, mostly for political reasons. It didn’t want the camera-hungry former members of the 9/11 commission to keep pounding it for failing to get the bill passed. And it wanted the bill off the decks so it could concentrate on next year’s agenda, including Social Security reform. The creation of a national intelligence director, and the rest of the bill’s bureaucratic shuffling, will do little by itself to improve intelligence. That will take an enhanced covert capability and strong leadership at the top, of the sort George Tenet did not provide (but which his replacement, Porter Goss, may be providing). The conservatives who balked at the bill managed to improve it: Rep. Duncan Hunter kept the bill from interfering with the military’s chain of command regarding its own operational intelligence. Unfortunately, important provisions tightening up the immigration system in ways suggested by the 9/11 commission’s own work, and pushed by Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, were left out of the final bill. But, hey, why ruin a mindless Washington rush to “do something” by insisting on good policy?