CIA opens center to prevent spread of dangerous weapons, technology

The CIA today announced the creation of a counterproliferation center that will lead the agency's efforts to detect and prevent the spread of dangerous weapons and technology.

The agency has worked on improving its counterprofileration capabilities since coming to the failed judgment in 2003 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, a conclusion that soon led to the U.S. invasion of the country. The new center will merge the CIA's counterproliferation division within the National Clandestine Service with parts of the agency's Directorate of Intelligence.

While the unit will serve as the main source of CIA intelligence on the spread of weapons of mass destruction, it will exist separate from the National Counterproliferation Center managed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The national center was created in 2005 through a law Congress passed to implement a recommendation of a national commission formed to study the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Since then, another national panel -- known as the WMD Commission -- concluded that an attack using a weapon of mass destruction will be carried out somewhere in the world by 2013. The most likely weapon in the attack would be a biological agent, the panel said.

But the creation of the CIA center comes at a time of mounting criticism that the nation's intelligence agencies have grown out of control and engage in redundant activities.

"As our nation continues to confront the threat of weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, and biological -- we must constantly strive for new ways to work across directorates, combining a diversity of expertise with a range of powerful capabilities to keep our nation safe," CIA Director Leon Panetta said of his agency's new center. "Our greatest achievements as an agency are the product of close collaboration among operations officers, analysts, targeters, technical specialists, and support officers."

The center is expected to take shape over the next several weeks and "more DI analysts and NCS officers will work side-by-side" there, Panetta added. It will be led by an "undercover NCS officer, with deputies for operations and analysis," the agency said in announcing the center's creation.