CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
May 30, 2008 – 11:37 p.m.
Will a Woman Helm U.S. Intelligence Next Year?
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
When the deliciously gossipy, Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter reported recently that a woman was in line to become France’s first female top spook, it got me thinking whether there were similar women who might be candidates to helm U.S. spy agencies in an Obama, Clinton or McCain administration.
The short answer is: Maybe. There are no obvious picks on the horizon, for sure, according to my unscientific survey. And mention of some of the “obvious” candidates for a Republican administration, like recently departed White House Homeland Security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, drew more hoots than huzzahs.
“I’ll leave the country if it’s Fran,” cracked a Clinton administration national security official, pleading for anonymity.
Yet Townsend’s resume — former Justice Department national security official under Clinton, and the chief of Coast Guard intelligence in 2001 before moving to the Bush White House — is no weaker than President Nicolas Sarkozy’s looming pick of Bernadette Malgorn to take over the DGSE, France’s foreign espionage and counterterrorism service. A graduate of the elite Ecole National d’Administration, Malgorn is secretary-general of the interior ministry, “which she joined when Sarkozy was the minister,” Intelligence Online reported in March. Before that she was a top administrative official, or prefect, in the Lorraine and Brittany districts.
Women have also run Britain’s top counterterrorism agency, MI5. But both Stella Rimington, who has published a best-selling memoir and three thrillers since retiring from MI5 in 2002, and her successor, Eliza Manningham-Bullers, who retired last year, came up through the spy ranks.
The names of three American women with similar credentials, who are virtually unheard of outside Washington’s close-knit intelligence circles, could emerge from the shadows as candidates to run the CIA, FBI, NSA or uber-spook National Intelligence Directorate in 2009, according to my soundings.
One is Joan Dempsey, a former top CIA official who started out in U.S. intelligence as “an 18-year-old Navy tech listening in on Soviet bomber and submarine traffic,” according to a 2004 profile in US news & World Report.
“Known as a tough, shrewd professional, Dempsey had risen to be the Pentagon’s senior civilian career intelligence officer before joining the CIA as George Tenet’s chief of staff,” wrote veteran national security writer David Kaplan. “She was, says one colleague, the best ‘closer’ he’d ever seen — someone who knew how to cut deals and get the job done.”
Tenet later gave Dempsey a baton to herd the sprawling, often-bickering U.S. spy agencies into one big family under the CIA’s management.
That effort ran into a wall at the Pentagon, but it could give Dempsey, now a vice president at the giant defense and intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamiliton, the street cred to take over the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a Democratic administration.
Likewise, career NSA official Maureen “Mo” Baginski had mixed success, at best, after Sept. 11 when FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recruited her to turn the gumshoe agency into an intelligence organization that could anticipate and derail terrorist attacks before they occurred. She left after a few bruising years.
“Baginski deserves a purple heart for her tour of duty at the FBI,” says Amy Zegart, who was both a Clinton administration national security council official in the 1990s and foreign policy adviser to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign.
“I am a big fan of Mo Baginski. She would be a good one,” said a former, but still influential, FBI official on terms of anonymity.
Will a Woman Helm U.S. Intelligence Next Year?
Both Baginski and Dempsey should be top candidates to run one of the spy agencies in 2009, said Zegart, author of “Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11.”
A similar resume belongs to Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year CIA veteran who moved over to the new DNI in 2005 to do what Tenet and Graham couldn’t under the pre-9/11 structure of U.S. intelligence: make the 15 spy agencies play nice.
That’s still a work in progress, according to an exhaustive CQ Weekly cover story by my colleague Tim Starks, though blame for that could hardly be laid at Graham’s feet.
Graham generated headlines in 2005 when she “inadvertently,” according to press reports, blurted out an open secret, the $44 billion annual intelligence budget. In today’s acrid Washington atmosphere, that’s enough alone to immolate her as a candidate to run any of the spy agencies, no matter her talents.
“Everybody at CIA winced when she did that, but were not surprised,” says a former senior CIA counterintelligence official, demanding anonymity in exchange for talking out of school. “A nice lady, but she does not have the qualifications to run the place. She did not have a lot of support at CIA when she was there.”
Likewise, the name of Jami Miscik, who ran the CIA’s intelligence directorate under Tenet, gets mentioned and nearly simultaneously crossed out because of her key role in preparing the agency’s misguided 2002 estimate on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
McCain’s camp might like her, but Democrats passing on her nomination to run any of the spy agencies would make the price awfully high for a new administration.
Process of Elimination
And that leads naturally to Rep. Jane Harman , who earned the respect of intelligence officials, moderate Democrats and Republicans for reaching across the aisle after 9/11 to give the White House much of what it wanted to pursue al Qaeda.
That also, unfortunately earned her the ire of fellow California Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , who dumped her as the obvious candidate to chair the House Intelligence Committee after the 2004 elections.
Still, Harman, an impatient taskmaster who now chairs the Homeland Security subcommittee on Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, would be on anybody’s short list for a top intelligence post in a Democratic administration. And after seven terms in Congress, she might be ready for it.
“ Jane Harman has the personal capacity, but given her background, I think she’d be set up for a Goss-like failure,” says a former top CIA official on condition of anonymity, referring to former Rep. Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., who chaired the House Intelligence Committee before presiding over three tumultuous years as CIA director during 2004-07. “One presumes she would not be so passive a captive of a poisonous staff as he, but still . . .
“Joan would be a better bet for DNI,” he added. “She’s a community type. As for Mo — well, she’d generate more than her quota of controversy, which should have high entertainment value.”
Will a Woman Helm U.S. Intelligence Next Year?
But of all the names being bandied about, the former official said, “the only ones who would be up to it would be Fran Townsend and Mary Margaret [Graham].”
“I see Fran as a non-starter politically,” he added. “Too much of an apologist for bone-headed Bush-era policies.”
“Fran Townsend was respected in the Bush White House and was rumored for a while to be a candidate to replace [George] Tenet,” says a former top CIA counterintelligence operative. “Her work in the White House was tangential in nature to CIA type intel work, but whether she could come into Langley with no real bureaucratic experience and take over would not be a good idea.”
Townsend recently resigned her White House post and is now senior adviser and outside consultant to U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Donohue.
“That leaves Mary Margaret,” said the other top CIA official, who once headed the agency’s Counterterrorism Center. “I think she would do a competent, middle-of-the-road job, but I certainly wouldn’t expect dynamic leadership.”
On the Fringe
Then there are the fringe candidates, favored by the left and right.
North Carolina Republican Rep. Sue Myrick , who in April launched a “wake up America” domestic anti-terrorism agenda, was put forth by a few intelligence agency hawks and provoked howls of derision from their opposite numbers on the left.
“If McCain really has gone as daft as his campaigning suggests,” said one, “Myrick is a natural.”
In a similar vein, a few liberal wags put forth Valerie Plame’s name to run the CIA.
“It was offered humorously,” Steven Aftergood, editor of the influential Secrecy News, conceded. “But it’s also a way of saying that as a nation we need to reverse course, in intelligence policy as in so many other areas. No more torture. No more extra-legal surveillance. And the last shall be made first, as somebody once said.”
Plame, outed as a CIA operative by Bush administration officials after her diplomat husband disputed President Bush’s pre-Iraq War claim that Niger was supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with yellowcake uranium, may be too busy promoting her book (and future movie) to be interested.
“Whoever it is,” says Zegart, now a professor of political science at UCLA, “will have to have four things: (1) tireless energy; (2) a natural strategic orientation; (3) the president’s attention; and (4) a very good BS meter.”
Will a Woman Helm U.S. Intelligence Next Year?
Zegart added, “If there’s one thing the next administration has to get right, it’s making our intelligence system work better. Every aspect of U.S. foreign policy hinges on it.”
BACKCHANNEL CHATTER
It’s a Mad World: The latest intelligence thriller from Washington writer James Grady, author of the iconic “Six Days of the Condor,” may be headed to the big screen. “Mad Dogs,” about a breakout of inmates from a secret CIA insane asylum, has been optioned by Lucas Foster, producer of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” among other quirky gems. “The option covers both feature and spin off TV series rights . . .” Grady told me. “Since the gone-crazy Mad Dogs characters are spies trained and triggered to search for truth, their efforts pack a punch. Plus, Lucas understands the motto of the novel: ‘It takes guts to be nuts.’”
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.
Comments
I think that Harman is a possibility for even McCain. She is a relatively " moderate " Democrat. Since Pelosi to put it mildly does not like her, she has no real future in the House.
You are fine in most respects on the facts, but wrong on saying Jami Miscik (with a C) would not be acceptable to Democrats. If you check the facts, you will find that was purged early on by Porter Goss (assumedly on VP's orders). She would make a fine DNI or Deputy (have heard John Brennan's name toss around also), and believe she would be perfectly acceptable to Democrats. -A
Dear Readers, I appreciate these and a cascade of other new names of women who could run U.S. intelligence agencies that readers have e-mailed to me. I'll do a follow-up on these and all the other entries in the near future. --Jeff Stein
I'm not sure Frances Townsend deserves consideration given her paltry investigation of the White House Lessons Learned report. A few hero stories and it was an unprecedented disaster don't constitute a competent analysis. What's surprising is her omission of the hospital with the highest number of patient deaths post landfall. LifeCare Hospital lost 24 patients. Guess who closed on their purchase of the long term acute care hospital chain just weeks before landfall? It's The Carlyle Group, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. I'm sure their risk manager is most grateful for Fran's faux pas. And Fran markets that same field as her expertise!
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