Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles

"AIR TRAVEL HAS BEEN MUCH more comfortable," observed Britain's Prince Philip recently. Then he added, "Unless you have to travel in something called `economy class,' which sounds ghastly." He doesn't seem to realize that 95 percent of us non-royals have to travel in `ghastly class.' Other evidence that the royals don't quite get it comes from a recent article about Prince Charles in The Guardian, in which a guest described a showing of the movie Gosford Park at one of the prince's residences: "We went in for a screening and there were plush chairs for us at the front and plastic chairs in the back for the staff."

ALTHOUGH THE HOMELAND Security Agency was less than immaculate in its conception--indeed, its announcement seems to have been driven by the desire to keep Coleen Rowley's testimony that afternoon from dominating the front pages the next morning--it nevertheless strikes me as, on the whole, a good idea. It may have been hastily put together by the Bush administration, but it had already been pretty well thought out by people like Gary Hart, Warren Rudman, and Joe Lieberman.

But if this giant agency is going to work, I suspect it will need bipartisan administrators as well as godfathers. There simply aren't enough Republicans who have manifested a passion for making government work. (Quick, name three.) If a thoroughly dysfunctional agency like the INS is going to be turned around, it will take someone at the top like James Lee Witt, who did just that for FEMA.

So far, the Bushies have not shown a lot of aptitude for new agency creation. The Transportation Security Agency, founded last October, has only been able to staff one airport. It is for this reason that, while I like the idea of the new agency, I have to be pessimistic about its short-term prospects.

There is also the cart-before-the-horse problem. Even a splendid Homeland Security Agency would be of little use if the CIA and the FBI can't identify the terrorists it is supposed to keep from doing harm. Both agencies need major reform now, and it seems to me that should have priority over the creation of a new agency. There are far too many examples of the CIA's haplessness--see the article by Loch Johnson in our July/August 2001 issue--but nothing captures their flavor better than a small one unearthed by The Wall Street Journal's David Cloud. It seems that for its information from Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, the agency was, on September 11, relying on one agent who spent six months there and six months at his country home in Virginia. The FBI's mishandling of tips from Kenneth Williams and Coleen Rowley was embarrassing. Now comes the news that the FBI is importing analysts from the CIA which, according to Loch Johnson, an authoritative critic of the agency, is itself short of quality analysts.

BOTH AGENCIES COULD USE AN infusion of talent, but even more they need better communication within themselves and with one another.

Most of the employees at both places are able enough when they start, but as they rise up the ladder, too many become so thoroughly bureaucratized that they are incapable of a thought that is not protective of their own careers or the survival of their bureaucratic unit. They don't want to have anything to do with something that might get them into trouble or is out of the box. Thus, good ideas from the Phoenix and Minneapolis offices are cut off before they reach the top of the agency. The same turf-conscious bureaucrats are the ones who are behind the mutual jealousies that cause the communication problem between the FBI and CIA.

We must find a way of making sure that these mid-level bureaucrats think twice or three times about squelching something the director should hear, and the way to do that is to make them think the director might find it out anyway. Here's my solution: George Tenet and Robert Mueller should identify 50 to 100 of their smartest and least bureaucratic subordinates and attach them to the director's office as extra eyes and ears. They should visit field officers like Rowley and Williams and talk to lower-level employees at the headquarters asking what they know that the director should know but...