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Column 121806 Brewer

Monday, December 18, 2006

 
Pick for House Intelligence Committee
Chairmanship has Border Area Background
 

By Jerry Brewer
 
House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi recently chose
Texas Representative Silvestre Reyes to take over as
chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence next month. Pelosi boldly stated, “For the
first time in six years there’s going to be some checks
and balances. We will see true oversight and real
consequences.”
 
First and foremost, intelligence must continue to be an
exceptionally vigilant security and intelligence system.
Better understanding of modern intelligence through
appropriate disclosure of its functions, resources,
limitations, and product should be discussed in the U.S.
political arena. However, secrecy must be respected
and protected.
 
U.S. intelligence agencies must be run within strict legal
guidelines and under U.S. constitutional structure.
Many internal traditions must be reformed. In many
instances an overhaul of existing mindset within the
intelligence agencies must take place among seniors
and veterans of the respective organizations. What is
proper and improper must be clearly defined.
 
Out of a more clear understanding of intelligence must
come a better public appreciation for the protection of
U.S. intelligence secrets, sources and methods. Only
ignorance, suspicion and misunderstanding can result
from unofficial leaks to media and partisan political
entities. Intelligence requires protection. Public
criticism with appropriately guided oversight could bring
more acceptance and expectations of some covert
political and paramilitary action that may be needed.
 
Chairman-to-be Reyes will have a monumental task in
learning and analyzing the decades of clandestine
international culture of this nation’s spy organizations.
Untangling its complexities, seeing the biases and
misperceptions up-close and personal will be a sobering
experience. He will learn the hardcore doctrine of “one
nation’s terrorist is another nation’s freedom fighter.”
 
Untangling that complicated web alone is a Pandora’s
box and a basic initiation into the world and culture of
the intelligence community. Clandestine operations in
dangerous areas of the globe are the basic arenas
uniquely grasped in survival mentality among the cadre
of true patriots of intelligence officers. The end product
of the intelligence process eventually reaches the
nation’s leaders to be heralded, critiqued or ignored.
Let us not kill the messengers, nor continue to
humiliate them for their dedicated service.
 
Reyes is no novice to bureaucracy or law enforcement,
having been a Sector Chief in the U.S. Border Patrol
prior to his retirement, and now serving in Congress.
He knows that clear legislation will give true direction to
intelligence practitioners. Their reassurance of
propriety with appropriate oversight will guide their
supervision and performance.
 
Elected leaders and representatives will need to confine
their oversight of intelligence to activities that fall
within a strict interpretation of its legislative charter.
These efforts must not be a witch-hunt to punish career
clandestine service veterans for loyal service to their
nation and Commander in Chief. Rather, confine
oversight to strict legal guidelines and within the U.S.
constitutional structure.
 
Undoubtedly Reyes will be prepared to understand real
and critically complex challenges of the world ahead.
The analytical arena will require improvement. Reyes
must not be used as a political pawn to undermine true
world and homeland needs, by tearing down the
integrity and polluting the decision-making process and
intelligence apparatus.
 
Reyes is the first Hispanic to chair the House
Intelligence Committee, and with 26 years of U.S.
Border Patrol experience in terms of U.S. homeland
security he has certainly paid his dues. Too, he is a U.S
Army veteran who served in Viet Nam.
 
The selection of Reyes can also be described as a
strategic and proactive appointment, this due to recent
events in Latin America demonstrating leftward leanings
and emerging threats to democracy. As well, he is
expected to bring a fresh perspective to border area
security needs and immigration issues.
 
There is no doubt that a former practitioner in the
related cycle of the intelligence process can be
effective. The new Congress will face the true impact
and responsibility firsthand on issues of terrorism,
nuclear proliferation and delivery systems, drug
trafficking, transnational crime via gangs and human
trafficking, as well as ethnic and religious mayhem.
Intelligence will remain a key component of chief policy
makers in assessing threats to the United States, as
well as other free nations.
 
Abstract truth must be synthesized through the
necessary intelligence protocols to effectively reach our
national leaders for strategic and tactical decisions.
Intelligence and its sources and methods must be
protected. Intelligence is not a toy and chairman-to-be
Silvestre Reyes must not be used as one.
 
——————————
Jerry Brewer, the Vice President of Criminal Justice
International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm
headquartered in Northern Virginia, is a guest columnist with
MexiData.info. He can be reached via email at
www.cjiausa.org. jbrewer@cjiausa.org