http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002858_pf.html
The Bush administration would make little progress before leaving office on top national security priorities including an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, political reconciliation in Iraq and keeping Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon. A regenerated al-Qaeda will remain the leading terrorism threat. Pakistan's "inward" political focus and failure to control the tribal territories where al-Qaeda maintains a haven is "the number one thing we worry about." The intelligence community has no reason to change its mid-2007 judgment that Iran had ceased work on designing a nuclear weapon in 2003. "But since the halted activities were part of an unannounced secret program that Iran attempted to hide, we do not know if it has been restarted."

Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have said they would make significant changes in the intelligence community. McCain has said he would set up a new agency, patterned after the World War II Office of Strategic Services, with "a cadre of . . . undercover operatives" to conduct unconventional and psychological warfare and covert action. Obama has said he would establish a fixed term for the national intelligence director, a presidential appointee, and would institute a national declassification center to reverse the rise in official secrecy under the Bush administration.