Bartleby Press-9/11 Commission Proposals:It's Nothing New

9-11 Commission Proposals... It's Nothing New
This Author Proposed Much of it 60 Years Ago

When the 9-11 Commission released its report in July, its most significant recommendation called for a unity in the intelligence community. They identified a lack of coordination among the government's 15 intelligence agencies. A single entity was needed, the report said, to oversee and unite foreign and domestic security operations in order to prevent future terrorist attacks.

But for decades, George P. (Pat) Morse, author of America Twice Betrayed: Reversing 50 Years of Government Security Failure, continuously tried to bring to the attention of Commissioners, Congressmen, Senators, and even Presidents the same problem of fragmentation and redundancy in the intelligence community, as well as this solution of centralization.

Morse recognized this problem over five decades ago. In 1947, he presented his idea to Senator Robert A. Taft, only to watch it die at the hands of bureaucrats. A few years later, the proposal once again went to Congress, with broad support from both houses, only to die again, this time succumbing to entrenched interests like the FBI, ONI, and CIA, whose individual authority was threatened by the idea of a single security agency.

The proposal also went before President Kennedy, who found the idea so compelling that he asked his personal secretary to remind him to bring it up with Cabinet Members, resolutely saying "I want to do something about it." Two days later Kennedy flew to Dallas and another opportunity to consolidate America's security was lost. In 1996, Morse's proposal was put into a book--America Twice Betrayed explored in detail how a flawed, ineffective system fails to protect our country.

	Read an excerpt from America Twice Betrayed on Morse's proposal for a single central security agency
	Read the 9-11 Commission's Full Report

The 9-11 Commission now urges the same solution that Morse has advocated for over 50 years: unify the intelligence community. Security lapses are born from beauracracy and fragmentation. Rather than a dozen agencies handling our security efforts, we need a single person in charge of America's safety. In answer to the critics who say this will create a new bureaucracy, Morse says that we should not think like bureaucrats. He cites the example of Bill Donovan, the creator of the Office of Strategic Services, which ultimately became the CIA. Morse served as an aide to Donovan for a year at Nuremburg, preparing cases against the major Nazi war criminals. He witnessed first hand the work ethic that made Donovan's O.S.S. a national security wonder. Donovan got no cooperation from the entrenched bureacracies. But by the end of World War II, the O.S.S. had made significant contributions to fighting our country's enemies, making the OSS the most effective security agency in our country's history. Morse urges that we get back to that era.

More about Morse's book America Twice Betrayed