President Bush's executive order last August that established the new National Counterterrorism Center and the intelligence reform legislation that he signed in December have created conflicts in counterterrorism policy that need to be resolved, according to a report released last week by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
At issue is Bush's relationship to the new director of national intelligence (DNI), who is to be the president's chief adviser on intelligence, and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the organization established to integrate and analyze all counterterrorism intelligence and do strategic planning for counterterrorism operations.
 
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In what the report calls a "possibly stark contradiction," the law specifies that the NCTC director is to report directly to Bush on "planning and progress of joint counterterrorism operations," and to the director of national intelligence on budgetary and other issues.
With such a "bifurcated structure," the report notes, "it is not implausible to foresee potential conflicts between the DNI and the director of NCTC concerning who is the president's primary adviser with respect to joint counterterrorism operational initiatives." CRS also questions whether the primacy of the DNI is "undermined by establishing a separate reporting channel to the president for certain counterterrorism operations."
The report says that although the law "will take precedence legally (over the executive order), ambiguities in implementation may cause confusion which could undermine the intent of integrating the counterterrorism function."
Another contradiction between the law and the executive order is over the status and rank of the DNI and the NCTC director. Under the law, both are to be presidential appointees who are confirmed by the Senate. Under the executive order, the NCTC director is selected by the president's chief intelligence adviser, now the DNI. The acting NCTC director is John O. Brennan, a former CIA senior official.
The report suggests that Congress could resolve the conflicts by amending the law, but must wait to see how Ambassador John D. Negroponte, Bush's nominee to be the DNI, responds next month when he appears at confirmation hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The report of Bush's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction may also offer solutions. Established more than a year ago and co-chaired by Judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), the panel is to issue its report by Thursday.
The panel was asked to examine the organization and capabilities of the intelligence community with regard not only to WMD but also to terrorism and foreign government activities. Unlike the Senate intelligence panel, which focused on failures surrounding Iraq's weapons, the commission has looked into the intelligence performance with regard to Iran and North Korea as well as Libya and the nuclear proliferation network of Pakistani scientist Abdel Qadeer Khan.
In November, the task of the Silberman-Robb panel was expanded by Bush, who ordered CIA Director Porter J. Goss to send the panel his plans for expanding by 50 percent the number of CIA analysts and operations officers. The panel also said in December, after Bush signed the intelligence restructuring legislation, that it "will consider the recently enacted reforms as part of its broad examination of the Intelligence Community."
Silberman and other panel members agreed that they will not give interviews until their report is released. But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), based on what he learned as a commission member, has in the past criticized the failure of U.S. intelligence to have its own, new intelligence about the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran.
