The resignation of CIA director George Tenet is bound to become yet another political football for President Bush's vitriolic opponents in this most-vicious-ever election year. However, it could present an opportunity for the current Administration as well. The appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense led to the beginning of a sweeping transformation  -- America's military is becoming a more mobile, flexible, precise fighting force. A new CIA director with vision could and should reconfigure our intelligence service to meet modern challenges in the same way. In a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, we need a less bureaucratic, more responsive, flexible, human-based intelligence agency.

The intelligence problems did not start with George Tenet's appointment as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in 1997. They began long before that, perhaps with the 1975 Church Commission report on covert action by the CIA in Chile, which stated that "covert action has been perceived as middle ground between diplomatic representation and the overt use of military force," and concluded that use of covert operations "may have been far too broad." The report recommended that "[g]iven the costs of covert action, it should be resorted to only to counter severe threats to the national security of the United States." This set the model for the CIA's opponents ever since, and has prevented any effective use of the Agency. Between Senator Frank Church and Stansfield Turner (President Carter's DCI from 1977-81), the Central Intelligence Agency lost most of its intelligence-gathering and covert operation capabilities, which were never fully regained. Turner revamped the CIA so that it ran, as he wrote to President Carter in 1977, "ethically and soundly." The only "ethical" way to gather information is by using technological means, instead of human. High-tech methods still worked against high-tech enemies like the Soviet Union, but (as we now realise) are almost completely useless for overhearing terrorists meeting in a cave in Afghanistan. The CIA designed for and focused on Eastern Europe was blind and deaf in the Middle East. We've been fighting a very hot war with a Cold War spy agency.

The "new and improved" ethical CIA's first major failure was the Ayatollah Khomeini's coup against the Shah of Iran in 1979, which no one was able to predict. After 241 Marines were killed in 1983 by a suicide bomber, a member of Iran-backed Hezbollah, the CIA's limited resources should have been increased and expanded to confront emerging enemies in the Middle East, but the CIA's ponderous bureaucracy resisted reform. Even after terrorists backed by Iraq bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, after the Cold War had already ended, the CIA was not reconfigured to meet the new threat. As a result, al-Qaeda and their affiliates were not prevented from bombing the Khobar Towers in 1996, the American embassies at Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998, or the USS Cole at a Yemeni dock in 2000. We also had no warning about 9/11, but that was due as much to the wall created between law enforcement and intelligence agencies by the now-infamous 1995 Gorelick memo as to lack of human intelligence.

Counter-terrorism isn't the only area where we have been nearly blind all these years, however. We had no idea, for instance, that North Korea reneged on their 1994 agreement to freeze their nuclear program before the ink was dry. We were unaware that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was selling nuclear know-how to the highest bidders in North Korea, Iran and Libya. We didn't know that Libya was much closer to a nuclear weapon than previously suspected when Moammar Ghaddafi phoned Italy's Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi to say, "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid." We only suspected that Saddam was cheating on the oil-for-food program with the complicity of France, Germany, Russia, China, and the United Nations itself. Worst of all, perhaps, was the fact that we could not tell how badly Saddam was cheating the UN's weapons inspectors, with what, where, and by how much. The threat of what Iraq might be doing right under our noses, with our enemies, was so severe that we needed to promise the use of force to make Saddam finally comply with his obligations under the 1991 cease-fire... and carry out that promise when he refused to do so.

President Bush's detractors seem to believe that we had no enemies during the 1990's. The truth is that we just didn't know who they were, where they were, or what they were doing. However, George Tenet can hardly be blamed for a systematic failure of our intelligence stretching back three decades. Instead of all the hand-wringing and finger-pointing that comprises the bulk of the workday in Washington DC, our elected officials should be looking for the person who can rebuild the CIA.

If the choice were mine, I might consider Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, currently the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Not only does he understand intelligence work from the perspective of its impact on policy decisions, but his selection would ensure smooth cooperation between the CIA and the Pentagon. If the White House is considering the option of combining various intelligence services into one, Wolfowitz would be a good choice to oversee that reorganisation. As a bonus, putting Paul Wolfowitz in charge of the CIA would drive the Liberals into a whirling dervish dance of hate and frustration.

Florida Congressman Porter Goss is a more likely choice, given that he was once a Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Services Officer and is currently Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence. He also served on the Subcommittee on Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counter Intelligence. He would bring insight and experience to the job that few others could, but may lack the drive to push through the exhaustive reforms necessary.

A bold choice would be Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, a non-partisan group whose analyses of defense policy are generally respected. Gaffney briefly served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under President Reagan. His views on the need for CIA reform with respect to human intelligence gathering and human analysis as well are widely known. Perhaps he'll have a chance to put his ideas into practice.

President Bush will most likely wait until after the election to name a new DCI, and that's wise. Few people would have the tough hide necessary to withstand the coming onslaught of criticism -- deserved or not -- from the Left. An appointee will have to face Senate confirmation hearings, if the Democrats in the Senate don't simply block the vote from taking place (as they blocked President Bush's judicial appointees from coming to a vote). The "findings" of the 9/11 inquisition will be made known in July... just in time for the Democratic National Convention.

After all, it's an election year, and the Democrats will stop at nothing to regain the White House.