George Bush's stance on CIA

CIA: After being accused of such intelligence failures as the 9/11 attacks and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the 9/11 Commission has come up with several ways ensuring the CIA never has another mental breakdown. To find out exactly what this commission came up with go to page 22 of the following webpage:

George W. Bush:

Description of candidate's position: President Bush has issued orders to enhance the powers of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and to create a new National Counterterrorism Center, which could eventually subsume the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). The order to expand the CIA director's authority is viewed as an interim step until Congress passes legislation to establish a new National Intelligence Director with a supporting agency.

Quotation from the candidate: "I want, and every President must have, the best, unbiased, unvarnished assessment of America's intelligence professionals. I look forward to working with the members of Congress to move ahead on this important reform. I strongly agree with the commission's recommendation that oversight and intelligence, oversight of intelligence and of the homeland security must be restructured and made more effective. There are too many committees with overlapping jurisdiction, which wastes time and makes it difficult for meaningful oversight and reform. From the Bush website.

Assessment of the proposal:

Positive: Edward Atkeson, a retired U.S. Army general who served as an intelligence officer in Europe during the Cold War welcomes the proposal to create a new intelligence oversight position. He told RFE/RL such a post would remove many burdens from the CIA director, including the responsibility for giving the president his daily intelligence briefing.

Negative: Some observers say a major restructuring of the U.S. intelligence community does not make sense. Anthony Cordesman, a former intelligence analyst for the Defense and Strategic departments, is now a senior scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "[The proposal] attempts to fix the problem in general by changing the leadership of the intelligence community," he told RFE/RL. "This is a typical Washington problem, that if you change the organization chart you've solved the problem".

Comparison: Both the President and John Kerry believe that our current intelligence programs must be restructured. They both have taken in account and agree with the recommendations given by the 9/11 Commission. Senator Kerry believes we must act quickly to enact their recommendations in order to ensure a safer America. The Bush Administration believes that this reform will establish an intelligence structure to protect America for years to come, and it is important to get it right. President Bush has however already implemented 36 of the 41 recommendations given by the 9/11 Commission.

Link to Kerry's CIA issue page.