if necessary. mr. thornberry. mr. morell, in addition to the reasons you were discussing with mr. lobiondo and mr. rooney on why this is important, there is another area i want to ask you about. we have heard for some time about the involvement of the national security council staff in day-to-day running of military operations, intelligence operations around the world. secretary gates talks about this very explicitly in his memoirs and his anger at the micromanagement coming from the same staffers at the white house and talks about secretary clinton s view of the same thing and others have written about that frustration. you served as deputy director of