A Plague on the Nation

March 31, 2005

Study Faults U.S. Response to Outlawed Arms

ASHINGTON, March 30 - A report on United States intelligence to be made public on Thursday concludes that the government has failed to respond to the dire threat posed by unconventional weapons with the urgency and national purpose displayed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"It's now been three and a half years since the Sept. 11 attacks," the report says in a section titled "Change and Resistance to Change." "A lot can be accomplished in that time."

"Three and a half years after Dec. 7, 1941, the United States had built and equipped an army and navy that had crossed two oceans, the English Channel and the Rhine; it had already won Germany's surrender and was two months from vanquishing Japan," the report continues.

The report of the presidential commission led by Laurence H. Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former Democratic governor and senator from Virginia, gives a grim account of the spy agencies' capabilities, despite a steady increase in the intelligence budget since 2001, to $40 billion a year from roughly $30 billion a year.

The report, the latest of several scathing assessments of intelligence failures, recommends dozens of major changes at the 15 intelligence agencies. But even before its public release, officials at some intelligence agencies privately expressed fatigue and scant enthusiasm for further reshuffling, noting the agencies have been in a continuous state of flux since the September 2001 attacks.

The succession of reports designed to fix blame for botched intelligence on the attacks and Iraqi weapons has generated some wariness and cynicism at the agencies.

"We've been spending so much time reorganizing, we haven't had time to see if the changes we've already made have worked," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

The nine-member Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was appointed by President Bush a year ago. The members met Wednesday at commission offices in Arlington, Va., to review the report and plan its presentation to the president on Thursday.

One official who has seen the entire report said the unclassified version totals about 600 pages, including appendixes. The classified version contains fewer than 100 additional pages, he said, but includes the only detailed discussion of current threats like nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

The report includes a detailed analysis of the shortcomings of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons and an active nuclear program. It also contains before-and-after assessments of intelligence on Afghanistan and Libya, since American specialists now have access to those countries and can compare what weapons were expected and what were found.

The report, which focuses its main criticism on the Central Intelligence Agency, proposes the creation of an antiproliferation center to gauge the threat posed by chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It calls for specific changes at agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is urged to create a more independent intelligence unit inside its existing structure.

Publicly, White House officials have said that the administration will embrace the report. But the officials who do the day-to-day work of intelligence said the report was being released at a chaotic time when they were still struggling to build the new organizations established by intelligence laws enacted late last year in response to earlier critiques.

John D. Negroponte, who last was ambassador to Iraq, has been appointed by President Bush as the first director of national intelligence but is only scheduled for Senate confirmation in two weeks. The new law gives him sweeping authority over the intelligence agencies, but how much control he will have in practice over fiercely independent, often competing agencies is uncertain.

Intelligence officials are still negotiating over which personnel from the C.I.A. might move to Mr. Negroponte's new operation, a delicate question that one former intelligence official says is comparable to "the partition of India, with the attendant communal violence." The intelligence reorganization adopted last year gives Mr. Negroponte a staff of 500, with an additional 150 people available to be temporarily assigned by all intelligence agencies. The C.I.A., which is expected to bear the brunt of the commission's criticism, has lost about 20 senior managers since Porter J. Goss replaced George J. Tenet as director last year, with some forced out and others taking advantage of the change in leadership to retire. Mr. Tenet's tenure was so long - more than seven years - that about 40 percent of C.I.A. employees had never worked under anyone else until Mr. Goss arrived.

A similar transition is about to occur at the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on foreign communications and is the country's biggest intelligence agency by work force and budget. The longest-serving director of N.S.A., Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, is departing to become Mr. Negroponte's deputy after overseeing six years of rapid change at the agency.

March 31, 2005

Strains on Nature Are Growing, Report Says

SLO, March 30 - Humans are damaging the planet at a rapid rate and raising risks of abrupt collapses in nature that could spur disease, deforestation or "dead zones" in the seas, an international report said Wednesday.

The study, by 1,360 researchers in 95 nations, the biggest review of the planet's life support systems ever, said that in the last 50 years a rising human population had polluted or overexploited two-thirds of the ecological systems on which life depends, including clean air and fresh water. "At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning," said the 45-member board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. "Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted."

The report said future strains on nature could bring sudden outbreaks of disease. Warming of the Great Lakes in Africa from climate change, for instance, could create conditions for a spread of cholera.

The study urged changes in consumption, better education, new technology and higher prices for exploiting ecosystems.