Randall Fort, a former corporate officer with Goldman Sachs and program director at TRW's space and defense groups, is the assistant secretary for intelligence and research in the State Department. This position includes directing State's in-house intelligence unit, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR (State Department, September 22, 2006; UPI, June 12, 2006). Fort also served in a number of posts during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including working as the director of the Office of Intelligence Support at the Department of the Treasury and as deputy executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).
After President George W. Bush nominated Fort to the State post in June 2006, some commentators interpreted it as an effort to rein in the typically independent-minded INR, which had dissented from several intelligence reports produced by the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Fort replaced Carl Ford, a conservative Republican who was an outspoken opponent of the nomination of John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. During the Senate nomination hearings, Ford said of Bolton: "I've never met anyone like him ... in terms of the way he abuses his power and authority over little people. ... The fact is that he stands out, that he's got a bigger kick, and it gets bigger and stronger the further down the bureaucracy he's kicking" (San Antonio Express-News, June 4, 2005).
Randall Fort, on the other hand, has been a firm Bolton supporter. He reportedly wrote a letter in support of the nomination during Bolton's Senate confirmation hearing, according to United Press International (June 12, 2006).
But the real concern was whether, under Fort's directorship, the INR would continue to provide an independent and critical voice on intelligence issues, as it did during the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Fort's past record provided few clues at to what course he might take in office; however, he has had much experience working for intel agencies. Fort is in his second stint at INR, having served as deputy assistant secretary for functional analysis and research under Bush senior. He also served intelligence-support roles in Reagan's Department of the Treasury and with PFIAB. Fort's tenure at PFIAB overlapped with that of Gary Schmitt, the executive director of the Project for the New American Century, who directed PFIAB from 1984 to 1988.
According to Joshua Micah Marshall, writing in his Talking Points Memo blog on June 13, 2006, INR was "one of the few, perhaps only, U.S. intelligence agencies to be consistently skeptical and correct about Iraq's phantom WMDs." Indeed, before the Iraq War, the INR published a comment stating that Iraq might be seeking a nuclear arsenal, but that it considered "the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."
The Senate's June 2004 "Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq" recounts a number of cases in which the INR opposed the Pentagon and other intel outfits. For example, regarding the Iraqi aluminum tubes allegations, which Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials used to support their claim that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal, the Select Committee reported: "Although the [Department of Energy's] Office of Intelligence and the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research both assessed that the aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking were probably not intended for a nuclear program, only INR disagreed with the assessment that Iraq had begun reconstituting its nuclear program."
The Select Committee also highlighted INR's critical assessment of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which was used by the White House to build the case for war. According to the committee: "An INR chemical and biological weapons analyst told committee staff, 'There's no question in my mind that the process was rushed, and I've never participated in an NIE that was coordinated in the manner in which this was.' The analysts said that more time would have allowed 'the key judgments to better reflect what was in the back of the book. ... We failed in adequately coordinating the key judgments.' He noted that this is a particular concern because many readers do not read more than the key judgments."
Since taking over at INR (Fort's nomination was confirmed by the Senate on August 3, 2006), the only highlight has been his participation in preparing the January 2007 "Annual Threat Assessment and U.S. National Security Challenges," which is annual congressional testimony delivered by the intelligence services. Testimony was given before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on January 11, 2007, by then-Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte; CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden; Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples; FBI Director Robert Mueller; and INR Director Fort.
Among the issues highlighted in the intelligence officials' testimony was the continuing threat from terrorism and the situation in Iraq. Negroponte highlighted the continued threat posed by al-Qaida as well as from other groups, including Hezbollah, which he said was "backed by Iran and Syria. As a result of last summer's hostilities [with Israel], Hezbollah's self-confidence and hostility toward the United States as a supporter of Israel could cause the group to increase its contingency planning against U.S. interests." He added: "I emphasize that we, the United States, do not and could not accomplish our counterterrorism mission unilaterally."
Regarding Iraq, Negroponte argued that one particular objective should be persuading Iraq's neighbors "to stop the flow of militants and munitions across their borders: Iran's lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly exacerbates the conflict in Iraq, as does Syria's continued provision of safehaven for expatriate Iraqi Ba'thists and less-than-adequate measures to stop the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq."
The New York Times reported about the hearing: "The officials agreed that the Iraq war had helped fuel Islamic radicalism around the globe and had most likely bolstered the recruiting efforts of al-Qaida " (New York Times, January 12, 2007).
Prior to taking his most recent post at State, Fort parlayed his earlier government experience to the private sector, working as director of global security at Goldman Sachs. That position entailed overseeing "all physical and personnel security measures," according to Fort's bio page at the Eisenhower Institute, a centrist policy think tank where he served as a board member before taking on his most recent post at the State Department.
Fort's nomination coincided with a number of other moves by the Bush administration involving executives from Goldman Sachs. Hank Paulson, who became secretary of the Department of the Treasury in July 2006, was Goldman Sachs' chief executive; and Joshua Bolten, who became White House Chief of Staff in April 2006, is a former executive at the bank (Financial Times, June 9, 2006). Robert Zoellick, previously the number two at the State Department, announced in mid-June 2006 that he was leaving the administration to take up a job at Goldman Sachs, where he had worked before being tapped to serve in the George W. Bush administration (BBC, June 19, 2006). (Zoellick is now World Bank president, following the departure of Paul Wolfowitz.)
Fort's other past experience, according to the Eisenhower Institute, includes being "one of the first foreigners ever" to serve as an assistant to a member of the Japanese Diet; working on the staff of former Rep. Bill Gradison (R-OH); and being selected as a Henry Luce scholar.
