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.

 

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Jerry Brewer, the Vice President of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm headquartered in Miami, Florida, is a guest columnist with MexiData.info.  He can be reached via e-mail at Cjiaincusa@aol.com.