Dianne Feinstein: “I rise today to offer the Intelligence Community Leadership Act of 2002. This legislation creates the position of…”

“I rise today to offer the Intelligence Community Leadership Act of 2002. This legislation creates the position of Director of National Intelligence to lead a true intelligence community and to coordinate our intelligence and anti-terrorism efforts and help assure that the sort of communication problems that prevented the various elements of our intelligence community from working together effectively before September 11 never happen again. While this bill will certainly not solve every problem within the intelligence community, I believe it to be a necessary first step towards getting our intelligence house in order. The National Security Act of 1947, which created the bulk of our cold war era national security apparatus, created both the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Director of Central Intelligence, of which the CIA is but one component, as two positions occupied by one person. As Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the person in this position is the CEO of the Agency charged with collecting human intelligence, centrally analyzing all intelligence collected by the U.S. government, and conducting covert action.”