“This report has a series of very interesting and compelling recommendations for improving the structure and operation of our Intelligence Community in order to bolster the security of our nation.

It speaks to the need to provide full management and budgetary authority of the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI). It recommends the establishment of ‘Mission Manager’ positions under the DNI to develop the strategies for collection and analysis for every major intelligence issue. This arrangement should allow the DNI to coordinate and reach out in a meaningful way across all the intelligence agencies.

The report supports increased use of what I view as a critical tool – the adequate integration of open-source material in the collection and analysis of intelligence. The Commissioners also speak to the need for toughened Congressional oversight, which is clearly necessary. And the report has several suggestions on the creation of an ‘integrated enterprise methodology’ to connect and prioritize intelligence collection among the separate agencies.

Perhaps the most important example of this methodology, in my view, is the creation of a new Human Intelligence Directorate. The Achilles heel of our multi-billion dollar intelligence apparatus is clearly human intelligence aimed at piercing the asymmetric non-state world of terror. We know that we need to expand and update our human intelligence techniques and this report is helpful in presenting a path to do so.

The bottom line is that the report points out what the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation clearly showed: that the WMD collection and analysis that led to authorization of the use of force in Iraq was badly flawed and in the words of this new commission’s transmittal letter, ‘dead wrong.’

In a chilling update two years later, the Commission indicates that the intelligence on nuclear weapons advances throughout the world is still very weak, especially with regard to non-state actors and terrorists, and leaves our nation extremely vulnerable.”