http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/20/clapper-faces-confirmation-hearing-lead-unruly-intel-community/Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing for James Clapper to be director of national intelligence promises to be combative.
Neither committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., nor ranking Republican Kit Bond of Missouri have publicly voiced overwhelming support for Clapper, who is currently under secretary of defense for intelligence.
One of the complaints, heard from staffers on Capitol Hill, is that Clapper has not been the most transparent or open in his dealings with Congress. A former senior intelligence official also questions whether Clapper is best suited to the job because the source alleges he has contributed to the infighting about the role of the DNI, which has weakened the overall position.
When he was nominated for the position, which must be filled soon as a number of top officials at the office of the DNI will retire or leave by the end of August, President Obama said Clapper had the right skill set for the job.
"He's improved information sharing," Obama said in a Rose Garden news conference in June. "He possesses a quality that I value in all my advisers: a willingness to tell leaders what we need to know, even if it's not what we want to hear. And Jim is a forceful champion of his fellow intelligence professionals -- never forgetting what it was like to risk his own life during two combat tours during the Vietnam War."
Undoubtedly, Clapper who is arguably one of the most powerful and influential members of the intelligence community, will face questions about this week's Washington Post series on the U.S. intelligence community called "Top Secret America."
After a two year investigation, reporter Dana Priest claims too many agencies are doing too many reports about the same thing. Priest, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writes that no one in the intelligence community could answer a simple question: are we safer today than we were nine years ago after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"People inside say it is impossible to make that assessment because it has grown so big they cannot get a handle on that question," Priest told Fox News. "They cannot figure out what's working what's not working what's duplicative what should go away what should stay."
The acting head of the DNI, David Gompert, disputed the report's findings by saying some overlap in the system is intentional. It is designed, he said, to stop critical data from falling through the cracks.
Even before the report was published, the office of the director of national intelligence responsible for the intelligence community sent a memo to industry partners warning the newspaper's website, which for the first time brings together so much publicly available information into one place, amounted to a targeting document.
"Foreign intelligence service, terrorist organizations and criminal elements will have potential interest in this kind of information. Specifically, we recommend that companies affected by this publication and website assess and take steps to mitigate risk to their workforce, facility and mission," the office said in the memo.
Priest insisted that the paper worked with the government to avoid exposing sensitive information and even some members of Congress say the Hill is partly to blame for the explosion of organizations because no intelligence authorization bill has been in place for years.
"What it means is that you get a bureaucracy that can run amok because they have not received clear direction from Congress as to what Congress wants them to be," House Intelligence Committee ranking Republican Pete Hoekstra said.
Topic: Clapper Faces Confirmation Hearing to Lead Unruly Intel Community (Read 88 times)