One of the important conclusions of the 9-11 Commission was that the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies, working in their own areas and toward their own interests – “stovepipes,” in Washington parlance – kept agencies from sharing information and seeing patterns of threats. As a House and Senate conference committee works on the details of intelligence reform, it should remain focused on thoroughly removing these stovepipes even if it means delaying or dropping some of the better ideas in the remainder of the bills.

In a joint telephone press call yesterday, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Reps. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Jane Harman, D-Calif., the principal conference committee members on the reform, all seemed to acknowledge the tight deadlines they were under. They had hoped to have a bill to President Bush before the election, but are not close to that goal. Their best hope now is to complete their work before the end of the lame-duck congressional session, which begins next month. The most promising sign was that they all seemed to understand the importance of completing an agreement.

Yet there remains disagreement on what kinds of authority the national intelligence director would have, what the structure of the National Counter Terrorism Center would be, to what extent to include the Senate’s civil liberties board and the House’s new immigration and policing rules. The most important differences in the House and Senate versions of the reform are the extent of the new national intelligence director’s authority over budgets and ability to move personnel. The Senate calls for a strong budgetary role for the NID and, within limits, the authority to assign personnel among agencies as the threat dictates. The House version resists this.

Sen. Collins says convincingly that it is crucial and that agency staff should view their roles as working for national intelligence rather than a particular agency. The strong NID role, no less importantly, also clearly identifies an office responsible for the overall battle against terrorism; the House bill muddies that responsibility.

Nothing this important could be conducted without the affected parties trying to influence the outcome, which Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did early this week in a letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, that argues for keeping Defense between the NID and the budgets of combat support intelligence agencies. Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9-11 Commission, perhaps unintentionally pushed against the Senate negotiators in an e-mail that concluded “the House offer [on NID] is a significant improvement” over its earlier version, suggesting that it was the Senate that now needed to move its position. He later clarified that he preferred the Senate’s version of the reform, but asked, “Is the House language good enough – at least by the standards set by the commission?”

As of Friday morning – House Republicans were to offer another version of their reform yesterday afternoon – the answer is, No, it isn’t. But it’s clear that all conferees are acutely aware that if they do not reach a compromise by the end of the lame-duck session, they will have given up a rare chance for the reform of agencies that badly need it but have resisted it for 50 years. That’s a hopeful awareness.

For what little time remains, the conferees should focus on what is essential: clarifying budget authority for the NID, establishing an effective counter-terrorism center. If it can achieve these – which is far from certain – the committee would be successful in removing many of the “stovepipes” that keep the agencies apart. Anything less would be an opportunity badly lost.