Good David Ignatius column on What James Clapper’s Nomination Means:

The DNI flap has been fascinating in what it shows about Obama’s approach to intelligence. He wants facts, not commentary; he mistrusts aides such as Blair who let their personal opinions show, and he correspondingly values low-key colleagues such as Gates; he wants to oversee intelligence not from a separate fiefdom but from inside the White House, where former CIA official John Brennan serves as deputy national security adviser.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), read this column. Ignatius’s insightful observation indicates that your problem isn’t whether Clapper is an obstacle to a strong director of national intelligence. It’s whether John Brennan and President Obama are those obstacles. Institutional powers matter. They matter a lot. But unless the structure of the intelligence community changes radically, the strongest you can make the job is akin to a powerful congressional committee chair, not a cabinet secretary, to use the formulation of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former CIA director. More radical changes would require a presidential commitment, and clearly Obama would prefer intelligence to be ultimately answerable to John Brennan at the White House. Accordingly, that’s going to be the official to whom the leadership of the intelligence agencies look to for their cues, whether or not Clapper gets confirmed and no matter what Clapper tells Feinstein when they parley in the coming days.

The long statement conspicuously withholds approval for Clapper’s nomination. “I am very much in favor of a strong DNI, which I believe to be essential to national security,” Feinstein clarifies, and to that end, she says she wants to hear what Clapper thinks of the expanded authorities for the job that she put in last year’s intelligence bill. (The relevant sections begin with Section 303, for those keeping score.) Before she takes up Clapper’s nomination in committee — “we are now preparing questions,” she pledges ominously — she wants the committee to finalize next year’s intelligence bill, and strongly hints that bill will contain provisions that give the nation’s top intelligence chief greater authority over the Defense Department intelligence assets Clapper currently overseas.

Key to Clapper’s nomination, Feinstein hints, is his answer to “whether he believes a stronger DNI would weaken the authorities of the Secretary of Defense.” That’s the oversight equivalent of a well-forecast high inside fastball. But Clapper hinted in April that he doesn’t believe a DNI should hit for power. I’m going to stop this metaphor. But clearly the central question surrounding Clapper’s prospects for becoming DNI is, to put it cynically, whether he’ll tell Feinstein what she wants to hear.

The full statement follows:

“I intend to meet with General James R. Clapper in the next couple of days to discuss his nomination to be the next Director of National Intelligence. In line with the standard Committee process for reviewing nominees, we are now preparing questions for General Clapper to answer before we will hold a confirmation hearing.

I intend for the Committee to do its due diligence on General Clapper’s nomination, as we do for all nominees. I am particularly interested in his views on the powers of the DNI, the appropriate role of the DNI with respect to agencies within the Department of Defense, and his views on the importance and appropriate role of congressional oversight of intelligence.

I believe that any DNI will be effective only if he has the authority – both on paper and in practice – to oversee and have strategic direction over the 16 agencies that make up the Intelligence Community. I am very much in favor of a strong DNI, which I believe to be essential to national security. The Fiscal Year 2010 Intelligence Authorization bill provides additional authorities and flexibilities for the DNI, and I will ask General Clapper his view of those provisions, and whether he believes a stronger DNI would weaken the authorities of the Secretary of Defense.

The Intelligence Authorization bill is the Committee’s top priority right now. We have already begun to review General Clapper’s record, and I would intend to take up his nomination once the authorization bill is passed.”

Many of the murmurings I’ve heard from intelligence veterans have concerned the untenability of the DNI position, an intended fix to the old CIA-centric intelligence leadership that’s created an odd hybrid of management over 16 agencies without correlative budgetary authority and a perhaps naive distance from active intelligence operations. If people on TV are upset that a series of failed-but-attempted domestic terrorist attacks have happened on “Blair’s watch,” as I’ve heard more than one cable pundit say over the past 18 hours, they’re misunderstanding the DNI. S/he’s not supposed to prevent those attempts from happening. S/he’s supposed to organize, structure and resource the intelligence community so relevant agencies can prevent those attempts from happening. That’s why the Senate intelligence committee report that found a disorganized National Counterterrorism Center — something the DNI is responsible for — was damaging. What the DNI should also be doing is focusing the intelligence community around answering why these domestic terror attempts are happening, particularly using American citizens as operatives.

If that operational distance sounds untenable, that might be because five years of unhappy experience since the 9/11 Commission sought greater intelligence consolidation is prompting a re-think in intelligence circles. When I asked a veteran career intelligence officer with experience in various intel agencies what he made of Blair’s departure, the response I got back started with “Good!” Like several intelligence officers who serve out in the dangerous parts of the world, the prospect of an increasingly top-heavy bureaucracy distanced from field concerns is an unpleasant one.

“Blair’s biggest move was to try to grab turf from CIA over station chiefs, instead of doing serious work like developing a plan to better integrate [intelligence community] bureaucracies, where joint-minded personnel and promotion policies could create positive change. But that’s hard work and not sexy,” the intelligence officer emailed. “The current system creates bureaucrats whose focus is building their empire — more bodies, more money — all in the name of national security. His position was created to fix the intelligence bureaucratic failures, but growing bureaucracies to fix bureaucracies is a losing bet.”

In fairness to Blair, you can find an effort at “joint-minded personnel and promotion policies” — or, at the least, a commitment to the idea of them — in his August 2009 National Intelligence Strategy (PDF).

But don’t expect either the Obama administration or Congress to have any appetite for root-and-branch restructuring of the DNI position. That would be a major structural reform five years after the last major structural reform, and the national agenda is already too clogged to tolerate such a thing. Instead, expect the confirmation hearings of whoever ultimately replaces Blair to be a colloquy on what statutory changes are necessary to make the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a more coherent structure.

Whether that’s ultimately a laudable goal is up for debate. In 2007, a former senior intelligence analyst, Robert Hutchings, testified to Congress that the creation of the DNI itself reflected what he called a “Coordination Myth” about intelligence. That myth, he said, was

that it is somehow possible to “coordinate” the work of hundreds of thousands of people across dozens of agencies operating in nearly every country of the world. Anyone who has worked in complex organizations knows, or should know, that it is possible to coordinate only a few select activities and that there are always tradeoffs, because every time you coordinate some activities you are simultaneously weakening coordination among others. To cite just one example, the creation of the National Counterterrorism Center may have enhanced interagency coordination among terrorist operators, which is a good thing, but it has surely weakened coordination between them and the country and regional experts. The net result is that the Intelligence Community is probably stronger in tactical counter- terrorist coordination but is surely weaker in strategic counterterrorism. While we are looking for the next car bomb, we may be missing the next generation of terrorist threats.

Anyone observing the current debates over drone strikes, increased radicalization and their relationship surely recognizes the current relevance of Hutchings’ fear. When I asked him what he thought about the next DNI, he quipped, “Please quash those burgeoning rumors that I will be tapped.”

Assuming the report pans out — and I doubt it wouldn’t — it’s telling that President Obama will have fired an intelligence chief after several low-grade attempted terrorist attacks failed but President Bush didn’t fire his after a major domestic terrorist attack succeeded.

Two weeks ago, anonymous administration officials had said an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, living in Yemen and producing scores of incitement-filled sermons about the alleged Islamic imperative to kill Americans, could be targeted for assassination. The legal basis for such a thing has not been disclosed. So in a brief press Q-and-A with Blair, I asked what legal authorization he had for targeting an American citizen like Awlaki. Blair replied broadly that his authorization came from the law and the Constitution, pledged the intelligence community would “follow all rules” given to it by the “executive branch [and] the congressional branch” and then ended the press conference. There were more cupcakes.

I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA and the Justice Department two weeks ago to find out the actual legal basis claimed by the Obama administration for targeting an American citizen for death without any provision of due process.

“Some of the plots disrupted since 9/11 have involved attacks on a smaller scale than those in 2001, but the most recent plot for which we knew the target was the London-based aviation plot in 2006, which involved mid-air attacks on multiple aircraft,” Blair said in his annual congressional briefing on threats to the country. Nice and caveated. But there’s progress: “We can take it as a sign of the progress that while complex, multiple cell-based attacks could still occur, we are making them very difficult to pull off.”

At the same time, the recent successful and attempted attacks represent an evolving threat in which it is even more difficult to identify and track small numbers of terrorists recently recruited and trained and short- term plots than to find and follow terrorist cells engaged in plots that have been ongoing for years.

Third, while such attacks can do a significant amount of damage, terrorists aiming against the Homeland have not, as yet, been able to attack us with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.

Recent disrupted plots, Blair continued, provide clues as to possible targets for attack in the United States: “the Metro system in Washington D.C., bridges, gas infrastructure, reservoirs, residential complexes, and public venues for large gatherings.” Another avenue of potential vulnerability: “We cannot rule out that al-Qa’ida’s interest in damaging the US economy might lead the group to opt for more modest, even ‘low-tech,’ but still high-impact, attacks affecting key economic sectors.” (At the risk of being macabre, AIG’s new bonuses might even make those attacks poll well. … OK, I’ll stop.)

Finally, homegrown Muslim extremism appears to be on the rise. But it has more to do with spreading extremist ideology than actually contributing to attacks, Blair said.

Altogether, a picture of a determined terrorist network, but with significantly reduced capabilities than existed on 9/11.

yesterday several members of the administration’s national security team testified before the Senate concerning the attempted Christmas Day attack by the Nigerian terrorist of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. This testimony was troubling, and left some wondering why the administration is subjecting this terrorist to criminal prosecution instead of gaining the valuable intelligence that is needed in our war on Al Qaeda.

“Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, stated frankly that the Christmas Day Bomber should have been questioned by the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group; Blair went on to say that neither he nor other important intelligence officials were consulted on this matter. This raises several troubling questions:

“First, why were Miranda rights given to the obvious terrorist after only a brief session of questioning, which predictably ended his cooperation?

“Second, at what level of authority was this decision taken to treat him as a criminal defendant instead of an unlawful enemy combatant? Who made this decision?

“I asked this question last night of John Brennan, the President’s senior counterterrorism adviser, three times and he refused to answer. I think that the Senate is entitled to know precisely who authorized this.”

McConnell, following Blair, demanded to know why the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group didn’t interrogate Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, eliding the fact that even Blair subsequently conceded the so-called HIG is not yet operational.

How long until the White House dumps its director of national intelligence?

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (James Berglie/ZUMA Press)

If President Obama didn’t have enough headaches after the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority on Tuesday night, another one emerged for him at a Senate hearing on Wednesday morning: Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence.

During the first in a battery of congressional hearings about the failed bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, Blair, the nation’s top intelligence official, declined to endorse the Obama administration’s decision to try would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in federal civilian court — a decision that Republicans and conservatives have subjected to weeks of criticism. Asked by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) whether Abdulmutallab should be tried by a civilian court or a military commission, Blair replied, “I’m not ready to offer an opinion on that in open session.”

[Security1] Blair told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the administration should have used its newly created interrogation team, known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Unit or HIG, to extract information from Abdulmutallab. Republican lawmakers have suggested, without offering any specific evidence, that the U.S. lost access to valuable information from the al-Qaeda-tied Abdulmutallab after Mirandizing him and ultimately indicting him. Law-enforcement officials and Obama appointees, for their part, insist, also without offering specific evidence, that hours of FBI interrogations of Abdulmutallab yielded valuable intelligence.

“We did not invoke the HIG,” Blair said. “In this instance, we should have.” The HIG — which reports to the FBI and the National Security Council, not the director of national intelligence — has been previously described by knowledgeable administration officials as a tool for use almost exclusively in the interrogation of foreign-held detainees. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) quickly pounced on Blair’s statement, calling it a “guarantee” from the administration to opt out of the civilian criminal justice system in future cases of foreign citizens apprehended on U.S. soil in connection to terrorism, as many Republicans desire.

A senior administration official, speaking on background, contradicted Blair, saying the HIG is not yet operational — and, in any case, is supposed to be used for terrorism suspects detained overseas. “This is very basic, very clear,” the official said, expressing surprise that Blair would say the HIG should have been involved.

Blair — who is expected to appear before a classified hearing Thursday morning in the Senate intelligence committee — suggested that Abdulmutallab’s Christmas-time apprehension after Flight 253 landed in Detroit was more ad hoc and chaotic than the Obama administration has portrayed. Joined by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security and Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Blair said he was not consulted on the decision to charge Abdulmutallab. In a separate, simultaneous hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was also out of the loop. Shortly after the incident, Napolitano famously said “the system worked” after Abdulmutallab was subdued on Flight 253.

“We need to make those decisions more carefully,” Blair said about not using the HIG for Abdulmutallab and the decision to charge him in federal court. “It was made on the scene.” Asked later to clarify who was responsible for deciding to Mirandize the would-be bomber, Blair replied, “The FBI agent in charge on the scene.” Mueller stated at his own hearing that “the decision to arrest [Abdulmutallab] and put him in criminal courts” was made by FBI “agents on the ground.” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) expressed surprise that the decision to prosecute Abdulmutallab did not come from a more senior official.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the White House declined to comment on Blair’s remarks to the Senate panel, referring questions back to Blair’s office. But hours after the hearing concluded, Blair issued a statement conceding that the HIG would not have been a viable interrogation option in this case.

“My remarks today before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs have been misconstrued,” Blair said in the statement. “The FBI interrogated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when they took him into custody. They received important intelligence at that time, drawing on the FBI’s expertise in interrogation that will be available in the HIG once it is fully operational.”

Blair, a retired four-star admiral and former commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, has had a rocky tenure as director of national intelligence since Obama appointed him to the post last January. Last year, he tussled with the CIA director, Leon Panetta — technically Blair’s subordinate — over control of the CIA’s top intelligence officers in foreign stations. Blair lost that dispute, which had to be mediated by the White House. At Wednesday’s hearing, Blair occasionally appeared lost, misunderstanding senators’ questions and saying he wished intelligence officials leaking to the press would “shut the hell up.”

But Blair did not give cover to another line of attack from Republican senators: that Abdulmutallab should be tortured. Ensign asked Blair why it made sense to restrict interrogations of terrorism suspects to the techniques listed in the mostly-Geneva-Conventions-compliant Army Field Manual on Interrogations, as Obama insisted in one of the first executive orders of his presidency. Blair strongly strongly defended the decision. “We looked at that quite carefully,” Blair said. “We do not know if the same information obtained through extra-judicial measures [could not] have been obtained without them.”

Some civil libertarians were concerned by the hearing’s occasional tendency to relitigate the principles of trying terrorism detainees in civilian courts and treating them humanely. “The senators’ claim that the government had the right to seize [Abdulmutallab] and turn him over to the military for secret imprisonment and harsh interrogation is the same radical and discredited claim that President Bush made about his authority to seize anyone, including citizens, found in the U.S. and hold them without charge,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies. “The government went down that path, it flouted the rule of law and eventually had to be fixed by bringing criminal prosecutions.”

Additionally, some counterterrorism officials and outside experts have pushed back recently against the GOP talking point that Mirandization inhibits interrogation. According to a paper released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress’s Ken Gude, a detainee’s access to legal counsel is also not an obstacle to intelligence collection. “Terrorist suspects have given what U.S. officials call ‘an intelligence goldmine’ after meeting with attorneys,” Gude writes.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Mueller backed up that proposition. “We’ve had a number of cases in which through the process — the criminal justice process of the United States — individuals have decided to cooperate and provided tremendous intelligence,” Mueller said. “That is not to say that there may not be other ways of obtaining that intelligence. But, yes, in answer to your question, the criminal justice system has been a — a fount of intelligence in the years since September 11th.”

Update: This piece has been edited for clarity.

“My remarks today before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs have been misconstrued,” Blair said in a statement just emailed to reporters. “The FBI interrogated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when they took him into custody. They received important intelligence at that time, drawing on the FBI’s expertise in interrogation that will be available in the HIG once it is fully operational.”

Yes, that means Blair attributed responsibilities for interrogation in the Abdulmutallab case to an entity that doesn’t actually exist yet. And he’s the top intelligence official in the United States. I don’t know who “misconstrued” his remarks, either, but that’s the way to save face, I suppose.

Interestingly, Blair didn’t address his reluctance to affirm the Obama administration’s decision to prosecute Abdulmutallab in civilian court.

The big reveal is that Blair, the nominal overall intelligence chief, wants a much bigger role over the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan.

Since the CIA’s establishment in 1947, its officers have had a direct line to the National Security Council. No cut-outs, no go-betweens.  Blair and his deputies believed that the CIA’s National Clandestine Service was failing to provide a full picture of several of the agency’s largest covert collection and special activity programs. In particular, the DNI would often find out about CIA-initiated drone strikes in Pakistan well after the fact. The CIA was conscientious about briefing the National Security Council, but did not bother to loop in the DNI.

That won’t happen any longer. The CIA will keep its unfettered access to national security principals, and the DNI still doesn’t have the authority to order covert action programs, but the White House is now requiring the CIA to fully brief the DNI on all covert action programs and will seek from the DNI regular assessments of whether any program fits in with the nation’s intelligence strategy, which is set by Blair. Since Blair briefs Congress more often than Panetta does, it makes sense for Blair to know as much about covert action programs as CIA briefers would.

That might sound like bureaucratic box-checking. But for years, the DNI’s office — long before Blair took over — has quietly absorbed many intelligence analysts who look at long-term geopolitical questions, rather than analyzing the crises of the moment. Since the big question with the drone strikes is whether they ultimately enrage Pashtun Pakistanis by the civilian casualties they create — and therefore raise the question of whether the strikes are counterproductive — it’s not inconceivable that Blair’s office would take a more skeptical view of the program’s value than the CIA does.

But that’s not the only big piece of news Ambinder uncovers. Check this out:

The conflict became public earlier this year, after the CIA protested when the Director of National Intelligence appointed a senior National Security Agency representative to be the DNI’s representative in Kurdistan. Traditionally, the CIA’s chief of station had served as the foreign nation’s principal intelligence representative. But the NSA has a bigger footprint in Kurdistan, and the DNI decided that he would be better served by appointing an NSA officer to be his representative.

The conflict is not new. But the fact that it took place over Iraqi Kurdistan most definitely is. And the additional fact that Kurdistan is home to a National Security Agency presence is big big news. I would bet a lot of money that such a presence is geared toward some serious spying on nearby Iran.