CIA gets big Big Brother

2005-10-13 18:39

Washington - President George W Bush has approved the creation of a national clandestine service within the Central Intelligence Agency to oversee all US espionage operations, the government said on Thursday.

The action was the latest in efforts to overhaul US intelligence following its failures on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

The creation of the national clandestine service was announced jointly by the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, the new overseer of the US intelligence community under the reforms.

CIA director Porter Goss, who lost the intelligence oversight role in the shuffle, was designated the manager of national human intelligence.

Human intelligence is bureaucratic jargon for espionage and covert operations.

The head of the NCS will report directly to Goss, but will also work with Negroponte's office, a statement announcing the move said.

"I am confident that with the creation of the NCS, the US government will have a more cohesive and truly national human intelligence capability," Negroponte said in the statement.

The statement described the NCS as "the national authority for the integration, co-ordination, deconfliction, and evaluation of human intelligence operations across the entire intelligence community".

The CIA has traditionally been the main US agency conducting espionage.

But the defence intelligence agency has been pushing to expand its "human intelligence" arm, and is seeking rule changes that would make it easier for it to recruit US citizens and emigres as intelligence sources.

- AFP