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- Heibel comments on Obama's choice for intel chief
Contact: Debbie Morton at Mercyhurst College, 814.824.2552
Heibel says it’s the job, not the man, at issue behind Obama’s choice for new intel chief
President Obama’s choice of Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper as the new director of national intelligence will have little impact in strengthening America’s national security unless Congress does more to empower the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), said career intelligence professional Robert J. Heibel.
Heibel, former FBI deputy chief of counterterrorism and executive director of the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies, said Clapper has a good reputation and is largely respected in the intelligence community. Still, his ability to ensure that ODNI’s 16 agencies work as one integrated team in producing timely and accurate intelligence is a challenge one man cannot fulfill in today’s current political climate.
If Congress supports Obama’s nomination of Clapper, the Pentagon’s current intelligence chief would assume a position that holds inherent and serious defects. The DNI is not a Cabinet member and lacks much budget authority.
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created with good intentions after 9-11, but Congress, as it does so many times, did not give authority to the director to control the budgets of the agencies it oversees,” Heibel said. “No matter who the director is, I just see it as another layer of bureaucracy.”
Heibel said the situation is one of many likely to be addressed at next month’s global summit on intelligence that MCIIS is hosting in Dungarvan, Ireland.
