A Good Delay

LAST WEEKEND Congress passed up the opportunity to adopt, after scant consideration, the largest reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community in half a century -- a measure that was rushed through both houses with election-year zeal and then concocted by a conference committee into a 500-page omnibus that hardly anyone had read, much less considered. Intended to respond to the intelligence failures identified by the Sept. 11 commission, this "reform" quickly degenerated into a turf war among the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and their allies in Congress; it also became a vehicle for House Republicans seeking to promote unrelated but far-reaching changes in immigration law and police powers. Though we hardly sympathize with the agendas of the House committee chairmen who blocked what would have been a late-night vote Saturday, the legislation's failure strikes us as a benefit. More time and more careful deliberation is needed before such sweeping changes are enacted.

There's no question that improvements in U.S. intelligence gathering are called for. The Sept. 11 commission documented a breakdown in coordination and information sharing between domestic and foreign intelligence agencies before the 2001 attacks; investigations of the flawed intelligence on Iraq have shown that the CIA has grown weak in finding and maintaining human agents and that its analysts fell victim to "groupthink" on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Some responses to these problems have already been implemented, including an executive order by President Bush creating an intelligence counterterrorism center and increasing the powers of the director of central intelligence (currently the CIA director) over other agencies. Mr. Bush has also ordered a 50 percent increase in the number of qualified CIA clandestine operators and intelligence analysts.

Mr. Bush's new appointee at the CIA, Porter J. Goss, has made it clear that he intends to shake up the agency and its clandestine services, and he has made an aggressive start. Maybe too much so: While some of the protests emanating from the agency's professional ranks may represent standard bureaucratic sandbagging, the abrupt departures of several highly respected professionals and reports of arrogant behavior by Mr. Goss's aides give cause for concern. So does an e-mail Mr. Goss sent to agency personnel on "rules of the road," including the fact that "we support the administration and its policies in our work." Supporting the government, not the administration, is the proper goal; the former Republican congressman phrased it more aptly later in the same memo when he said the CIA should "provide the intelligence as we see it -- and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker." Mr. Goss and his aides should focus on making the changes needed for better operations abroad, not the inside-the-Beltway game of preventing and punishing what they regard as anti-administration leaks.

The congressional debate also is preoccupied with Washington process: The proposed reorganization of the intelligence community has embroiled the 15 agencies and half-dozen congressional committees it affects in trench warfare that appears increasingly detached from the actual problems it is meant to correct. A more powerful national intelligence director separated from the CIA might enforce better coordination among agencies, though as Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and a number of other veterans of national security have warned, the impact of that reorganization ought to be studied more carefully. What we've seen instead is a narrow but aggressive effort by the Pentagon and its congressional allies to preserve their control over the budgets of the three agencies that consume 80 percent of intelligence spending, and a parallel effort by House members to ram through immigration and policing measures that raise serious civil liberty issues and have never been the subject of hearings. A halfhearted White House speaks of overcoming these problems and passing the bill early next month. A better solution would be to pause, let this election-year stampede subside and urge a new Congress to try again.