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            Well Shane, let me take the bait and propose what I believe is the only effective means to reform US intelligence – a new law.   And permit me to stay with your medical analogy. The US intelligence patient needs a cure, not just treatment of symptoms. But before I propose the cure, I must explain where intelligence reform really is today. 

             Contrary to popular belief, the 2004 IRTPA did not fundamentally change -- and it certainly did not reform -- the functioning of the intelligence community. And the much touted revisions to E.O 12333 simply reiterated the lack of change legislated by the IRTPA. 

             Today’s intelligence community essentially operates the same way it has for the past 60-some years. It is not an integrated enterprise; it is simply an aggregation of individual agencies and components that work for various cabinet secretaries, except for CIA which is an independent agency. And as such, sometimes these agencies cooperate with one another and sometimes they do not. Moreover, the “head” of US intelligence, the DNI, is not the CEO of US intelligence. He is a coordinator of this aggregation, as was the former position of DCI. And, as a coordinator, the DNI has no direct command and control over any major intelligence agency or component, save his own office.  

             What has changed under the IRTPA is that the CIA is no longer the first among equals across the intelligence agencies, as was the case under the DCI regime. Former DCI’s had direct authority over and responsibility for the CIA, and that tended to benefit CIA in the intelligence community coordination processes. Splitting the old DCI position into a DNI and Director of CIA has leveled the playing field among the intelligence agencies, but this is a change in form, not a change in function. And, CIA was not “central” to managing the intelligence community.  DCIs had separate community staffs to support their community coordination efforts, and those staffs where not in the CIA proper. 

             Of course, under the DNI, some advances in intelligence capabilities have been made, but not as a result of the IRTPA. The types of improvements made by the previous two DNIs are the same kinds of limited, evolutionary advances that have been made for decades under the old DCI regime, where community staffs pushed forward efforts to enhance intelligence community operations. The big improvements in US intelligence have almost always been technological and driven by the individual agencies for the purposes of improving individual agency performance. Unfortunately, such improvements simply keep the total intelligence capabilities of the community equal to the sum of its parts, while the goal of an integrated enterprise is to make the capabilities of the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

             To correct the fundamental operational and organizational problems that led to the 9/11 and Iraq WMD debacles, the community must become an integrated enterprise, not just remain an aggregation of sometimes cooperative agencies. And, almost everyone familiar with US intelligence agrees with this goal. Most proposed improvements, however, represent the same old marginal, sometimes Pollyannaish, adjustments to the system that have been offered up – and adopted – in the past, such as better leadership, better people, better pay, better information systems, better coordination, better personnel systems, etc. And of course, all of these types of improvements are helpful, but none of them have fundamentally changed how the community functions, nor have they changed the dysfunctional, agency-oriented culture fostered by the existing intelligence system. True integration -- jointness in the military lexicon -- will never occur under the IRTPA, just like it never occurred under the DCI regime, because the DNI does not possess the legal and bureaucratic ability to make it happen.  

             To create a true intelligence enterprise requires the intelligence system be organized, managed, and operated as an integrated -- joint -- system.   Today’s -- and yesterday’s -- hope that individual agencies will work together has not created truly integrated intelligence operations. And the bilateral cooperation between agencies, some of which has occurred, is not integration. Only a change in the law can set the foundation for an integrated intelligence system, just like a new law was needed to force integrated (joint) military operations among the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines -- the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. 

             To actually reform US intelligence, integrated (joint) operational units must be created to  bring together all of the intelligence capabilities across the individual agencies to carry out intelligence missions – i.e., understanding and warning about the major international threats facing our nation, such as terrorism, China, Iran, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, etc. Using a military analogy, the DNI needs his own combatant commands and combatant commanders to carry out these missions. And, these intelligence mission commands cannot effectively operate unless the major agencies and the commands come under the command and control of the DNI. Only an intelligence version of the Goldwater-Nichols Act can create these intelligence mission commands and make the DNI the CEO of US intelligence. Nothing less will lead to an integrated -- and truly reformed -- intelligence community that promotes a culture emphasizing the mission first, and individual agency interests second.