Boxing Over Briefs

Barack Obama has been president-elect for barely 10 days but already there are signs of tension among U.S. spy agencies over his intelligence briefings.

The squabbling centers around who should get credit for putting the briefings together and for supplying hot information and penetrating analysis to Obama and his national-security team. According to government officials, some of the more obscure and media-shy agencies worry they are not getting enough recognition for contributions they make to the intelligence outlook provided daily to the administration-in-waiting.

Two days after Obama's victory, the government's top spy, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, flew to Chicago with a small team to give the president-elect his first full-scale intelligence briefing. After the session, McConnell, who oversees the CIA and serves as the president's principal intelligence adviser, returned to Washington. He assigned further Obama briefings to Mike Morrell, the CIA's deputy director for intelligence—in practice, the agency's chief analyst. Two career CIA analysts deliver most of the oral briefing presentations, though representatives of intel czar McConnell's office are often present.

Within hours of Obama's victory, the CIA appears to have touched off jostling among intelligence agencies. On Nov. 5, the day after the election, CIA Director Michael Hayden sent a message to agency employees affirming the "central part" that the CIA would play in the "Intelligence Community's outreach to the President-elect."

Hayden's message noted that McConnell would "launch" the intelligence community's first official briefing of the president-elect and his "incoming administration." The message went on to note that the CIA had "already prepared a great deal of information" about itself for Obama's team.

Citing Hayden's unclassified message, media outlets published stories about how the CIA had mobilized rapidly to provide Obama with the same kind of daily intelligence feed President Bush receives from McConnell. Last Monday, however, the Web site of the intel czar carried its own statement reasserting its central role in the transition process.