New intelligence office must fix information breakdowns.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

Military commanders often have complained that the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy fails to adequately satisfy their needs for up-to-the-minute information about the enemy. Their frustration has been further exacerbated by the fact that, when intelligence does arrive, it is likely to be "late, unfocused and insufficient," said a top aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

On March 1, the Pentagon is due to report to Congress on its plans to stand up its own intelligence unit, whose sole mission is to ensure that military operators get the information they need, on time. Heading that office will be an undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who will make certain that "intelligence exists as a service to operations," said Richard Haver, Rumsfeld's special assistant for intelligence.

"The connection between intelligence and operations has long been neglected," Haver told military officers and contractors attending a conference of the Surface Navy Association.

To fix this gap, the Pentagon needs an in-house operation that can cut through the unwieldy red tape that frequently slows down the flow of information to military commanders in the field, he explained.

Rumsfeld views this as a serious enough problem to warrant the creation of a new undersecretary of defense, a rare occurrence, said Haver. The secretary "chartered this organization to connect the operators back to someone who is going to represent them."

The intelligence post would be the fourth defense undersecretary, joining those for policy, acquisition and technology, and personnel and readiness.

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed that the operators and the intelligence agencies, for a long time, have lived in isolated "stovepipes." That is not acceptable in today's world, where the enemy is "adaptive," Myers told reporters during a media breakfast. The desirable situation is for the intelligence folks and the operators to be "totally integrated," Myers said.

Haver noted that an unresponsive intelligence service is "one of the broken pieces in the Defense Department."

The operators "don't find the intelligence world user friendly. ... They get a long litany of bureaucracy they have to work through to get things done, layers of procedures, tasking orders.

"The Defense Department has to see that the right tools are built, the right systems are procured," Haver said. "The secretary wanted to create an undersecretary whose job was devoted...