The United States began its earliest experiments with mass psychological warfare with The Committee on Public Information run by George Creel during WWI. The process was continued in WWII by The Office of War Information, military intelligence, The Psychological Strategy Board and various other institutions.

The United States has been, to put it mildly, quite inept at leveraging its manifold organs of influence to deliver coherent, strategic, messages designed to impact the GWOT. It might be said that up until the Iraqi elections we were most proficient at shooting ourselves in the PR foot with the Arab world and with Europe.

What is needed here is not a new agency but a coordinator who can initially get the official USG agencies and departments to stay on” on message” and eventually begin crafting a strategic influence strategy that encompases a full spectrum of options to win the war of ideas.

Establish a new Foreign Counterintelligence Service:

American counterintelligence is dispersed and demoralized. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hannsen and similar cases over the years going back to the days of James Jesus Angleton have periodically damaged the standing of the IC while CI successes seldom, if ever, get reported or acknowledged properly.

Guarding all of our institutions in terms of security ( including IT security) is SOP but it is a failing CI strategy. Instead, those services and private groups capable of penetrating American intelligence represent far fewer variables. They should be targeted for aggressive network disruption on their home ground and third party locations so their resources can be drained away before they are employed against us. Fortunately, the Bush administration has begun moving in this direction.

Establish a permanent liason staff for Congressional relations:

While this might seem counterintuitive to bring the Congress deeper into IC policy given the past history of acrimonious relations between the CIA and Congress, neither the nation nor the IC can afford a return to the era of the Pike and Church committees any more than we can afford an IC removed from any oversight whatsoever.

Most members of Congress are responsibile and intelligent individuals who, after being made aware of the threats will act to prevent them from coming to pass and accept their share as a co-equal branch of government for national security. The IC will need that support during the tough times ahead when things go wrong as they inevitably will on occasion. Trust and professional consultation goes a long way to building that kind of relationship.

We cannot afford the cyclical ” gut the CIA” mentality any longer. The world is simply too dangerous, fast moving and chaotic. The NID must shield the IC from opportunistic, unfair, criticism by the occasional Congressional lightweight, as well as from its own worst instincts of insularity, bureaucratic territoriality, analytical timidity and operational dysfunction.

Good luck Ambassador Negroponte, you will need it.

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