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The stakes are high. With the cold war over, critics have called for doing away with the CIA or radically reorganizing the entire intelligence community. Deutch wants to make adjustments to the system in place. However, for the CIA and other intelligence agencies to remain relevant, he believes the DCI must have the power to redirect all agencies to spy on new threats. The CIA is already upgrading many of its techniques: breaking into computer systems, intercepting faxes, experimenting with dead drops in cyberspace to receive secrets.
Deutch doesn't want to micromanage the day-to-day operations of other agencies. But he does want to coordinate their spending priorities so they don't work at cross-purposes. He sees himself as the conductor and the intelligence community as a collection of "beautiful instruments. When they play together well, you've got a symphony. When they play together badly, you've got noise," he tells TIME.
Before Deutch arrived at Langley last May, senior agency hands were forewarned by contacts at his former haunts in the Pentagon that this director wouldn't suffer fools lightly; they handpicked thick-skinned briefers who weren't easily intimidated to bring him up to speed on agency operations. At the CIA, nervous aides will often crowd around behind Deutch as he draws charts on his personal computer to illustrate reports on spy satellites. Taking charge is the only way Deutch knew how to do business. In February, on the Sunday morning after Cuban MiGs blasted two civilian Cessnas out of the sky, he trooped down to the White House Situation Room to make several phone calls. He ordered usually uncooperative intelligence agencies to make public secret signal intercepts that revealed the Cubans knew they were attacking planes over international waters. With the intercepts declassified, Deutch then turned to a computer keyboard to edit the press release.
In many ways, Deutch has been a one-man revolution, attempting to boost the morale of the lower ranks as he whipped the upper levels into line. He is on the agency's E-mail system so any officer can bypass channels and send him a complaint directly. He takes the employee elevators to his seventh-floor suite instead of using the private lift reserved for the director. He wanders the halls popping into offices to chat, and has told his spies they don't have to stand when he walks in to address them in the "bubble," the agency's main auditorium. When his CIA deputy, George Tenet, recently grew a beard, Deutch began introducing him to visitors as "Carlos," after the terrorist and master of disguises whom the CIA helped capture in 1994.
Still, analysts who don't do their homework quickly find that sessions with the onetime chemistry professor can be brutal. During a secret briefing on world narcotics trafficking, Deutch interrupted to ask what intelligence the agency had on a drug network. The analyst tried to dance around the subject for several minute until Deutch cut him off. "That's a long-winded way of saying we haven't got anything," he said icily. Though Deutch can be curt and opinionated, agency officials say, he will concede points when an analyst has his facts together, leaning back in his chair and gushing, "Fabulous."