Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (13 page)

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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

In late 2004 and early 2005 a series of press reports indicated a unilateral expansion of DOD activities in intelligence. The fiscal year 2005 defense authorization bill included a provision allotting $25 million to the Special Operations Command to “support foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals.” Some believe this sounds like what the CIA has done and certainly did in Afghanistan. Some have questioned whether this puts DOD into the business of covert actions without the attendant legal apparatus of presidential findings and reports to Congress (for additional discussion, see chap. 8). The consensus is that the situation also raised the possibility that some of these foreigners might double dip, that is, solicit payments from both DOD and CIA. The WMD Commission had recommended that DOD be given greater authority for conducting covert action. However, according to press reports in June 2005, the Bush administration decided against the proposal. Within the NCS there is now an assistant director who coordinates all clandestine overseas HUMINT Collection.
More controversial were reports that DIA had created a Strategic Support Branch to augment its HUMINT capabilities. Again, this was seen as a way of minimizing DOD’s need to rely on the CIA for HUMINT. Some agreed that there could be unique defense HUMINT requirements related to planned or ongoing operations that the CIA might not be able or willing to fulfill if they competed with other priorities. But this activity raised questions about congressional oversight (including whether Congress had been informed about the creation of this new capability), the degree to which it overlapped with or encroached upon the CIA’s role, and whether sufficient coordination mechanisms were in place.
These issues may be moot for the time being, because Secretary Gates has already begun to scale back some of these initiatives, such as in the area of HUMINT. However, the war against terrorism will undoubtedly go on beyond Gates’ tenure and those of his new intelligence associates, thus raising the possibility of these issues resurfacing under a new national security team.
 
CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS. Also of great importance are the relationships of the two intelligence committees with each other and with the other House and Senate committees with which they must work. The oversight responsibilities of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are not identical, which accounts for their differing sets of relationships. The Senate Intelligence Committee has sole jurisdiction over only the DNI, CIA, and the NIC. The Senate Armed Services Committee has always jealously guarded its oversight of all aspects of defense intelligence. The relationship between Senate Intelligence and Senate Armed Services has been standoffish at best and hostile at worst. Antagonism has usually stemmed from the Senate Armed Services Committee’s reactions to real or imagined efforts by Senate Intelligence to step beyond its carefully circumscribed turf. Senate Armed Services has usually responded with punitive actions of varying degrees (such as delaying action on the annual intelligence authorization bill).
Both committees also jealously and successfully guarded their oversight of intelligence against possible intrusions by the then-Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (SGAC). However, legislation dealing with the reorganization of the intelligence community was referred to SGAC because of its role in government organization. This move was seen by some as a slap at the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose chairman, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., had offered a much more radical proposal for intelligence organization earlier in 2004.
The House Intelligence Committee has exclusive jurisdiction over the entire NIP—all programs that transcend the bounds of any one agency or are nondefense—as well as shared jurisdiction over the defense intelligence programs. This arrangement has fostered a better working relationship between House Intelligence and House Armed Services than exists between their Senate counterparts. This is not to suggest that moments of friction do not arise, but the overall relationship between the House committees has not approached the hostility exhibited in the Senate. However, the House Armed Services Committee was the strongest advocate for DOD interests in the debate over the 2004 legislation and in the 2005 intelligence authorization legislation.
Good relationships between the two intelligence committees and the House and Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittees are important for avoiding disjunctions between authorized programs and appropriated funds. Generally speaking, all appropriators tend to resent (and would sometimes like to ignore) all authorizers. Once again, the relationship between intelligence authorizers and appropriators has been smoother in the House than in the Senate. This relationship in the House became somewhat confused in 2007. As part of their reorganization of the Congress, the new Democratic majority, responding to one of the findings of the 9/11 Commission, created a Select Intelligence Oversight Panel (SIOP), bringing together intelligence authorizers and appropriators. The SIOP does not mark bills, as do the authorizers; nor does it appropriate money. Its primary role is to allow more thorough oversight of intelligence budgets and intelligence spending. The SIOP offers advice to the appropriators, who remain free to act on their own.
The House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees oversee State Department activities, but the relationship with their respective Intelligence Committee tends to be less fractious than the relationship between the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees. Finally, the two Judiciary Committees oversee the FBI.
The two Intelligence Committees themselves have an important relationship. The House committee’s jurisdiction is broader than the Senate’s. However, the Senate Intelligence Committee has the exclusive and important authority to confirm the nominations of the DNI, the DNI’s principal deputy, a few other subordinates, and the DCIA. The two committees often choose to work on different issues during the course of a session of Congress, apart from their work on the intelligence authorization bills. Despite differences of style and emphasis, hostility or rancor has rarely intruded, even in the face of divergent viewpoints.
THE INTELLIGENCE BUDGET PROCESS
 
The love of money is not only the root of all evil; money is also the root of all government. How much gets spent and who decides are fundamental powers. The intelligence budget is somewhat complex, although it has been simplified. The budget now has two components: the NIP and the MIP, which combines the Joint Military Intelligence Program and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities.
The NIP comprises programs that either transcend the bounds of an agency or are nondefense in nature. The DNI is responsible for the NIP. The MIP consists of defense and service intelligence programs. The secretary of defense is responsible for the MIP. The NIP is not quite three times as large as the MIP. This would seem to suggest that the DNI has a great deal of power with respect to NIP responsibility. However, given that the DNI does not have budget execution authority over NIP agencies, DNI power is again limited.
The following programs make up the NIP:
Civilian Programs
 
CIA (CIAP)
CIA Retirement and Disability System (CIARDS)
Counterintelligence (FBI)
Department of Homeland Security Program
INR (State Department)
National Counterterrorism Program
Office of Intelligence Support (Treasury Department)
Defense Programs
 
Consolidated Cryptographic Program (CCP)
DOD Foreign Counterintelligence Program (FCIP)
General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP)
National Geospatial-Intelligence Program
National Reconnaissance Program (NRP)
Community-wide Program
 
ODNI Community Management Account (CMA)
 
MIP is composed of intelligence programs that support DOD or its components that are not confined to any one military service. As the titles of some MIP programs indicate, many parallel NIP categories:
Air Force intelligence
Army intelligence
Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Program (DARP)
Defense Cryptologic Program (DCP)
Defense General Intelligence Applications Program (DGIAP)
Defense Geospatial-Intelligence Program
Defense Intelligence Counterdrug Program (DICP)
Defense Intelligence Special Technologies Program (DISTP)
Defense Intelligence Tactical Program (DITP)
Defense Space Reconnaissance Program (DSRP)
Marine intelligence
Navy intelligence
Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
 
Figure 3-4 arranges the components of the intelligence community by budget sectors. Not all of the agencies within a budget sector are controlled by the same authority. The solid lines denote direct control. The two double vertical lines show which part of the budget and agencies are national and which are DOD. There is an overlap, as some agencies are both national and defense, even if they fall into NIP or MIP. DIA straddles the line, containing both NIP and several of the MIP programs. Figure 3-4 also indicates the secretary of defense’s preponderant control over intelligence community resources.
The intelligence budget is shaped by a process that is lengthy and complex (see Figure 3-5). The budget-building process within the executive branch takes more than a year, beginning around November when the DNI provides guidance to the intelligence program managers. The
crosswalks
between the DNI and DOD—efforts to coordinate programs and to make difficult choices between programs—are major facets of the budget process. Crosswalks can take place at the program level or below and can go as high as the DNI and the secretary of defense. The budget process in the executive branch ends the following December, thirteen months after it began, with the DNI sending a completed intelligence budget to the president for final approval.
The following February the president’s budget goes to Congress, where a new, eight-month process begins. It consists of hearings in the authorization and appropriations committees, committee markups of the bills, floor action, conference committee action between the House and Senate to work out differences (both houses must pass identical bills), and final passage, after which the bill goes to the president to be signed. By this time, the executive branch is already working on the next budget. A major difference between the president’s budget and Congress’s should be kept in mind. The president’s budget is serious and detailed, but it is only a recommendation. Congress’s budget allocates money. Or, as the old saying goes. “The president proposes and Congress disposes.” Beyond this formal process is the increasing use of supplemental budget bills, which are appropriations above the amount approved by Congress in the regular budget process.
Supplementals
tend not to be favored by executive agencies as they may provide one-year money that is not sustained in the following years (see chap. 10 for more detail). For Congress, however, supplementals are a way to take care of agreed on needs without making long-term budget commitments.
 
Figure 3-4
Alternative Ways of Looking at the Intelligence Community: A Budgetary View
 
This seemingly endless process points up another important aspect of the intelligence budget. At any time during the year, as many as eight different fiscal year (October 1-September 30) budgets are in some form of use or development.
(See box, “Eight Simultaneous Budgets.”)
Two past fiscal year budgets are still in use, in the form of funds that had been appropriated previously. Although funds for salaries and similar expenses are spent in a single fiscal year, other funds—such as those to build highly complex technical collection systems—are spent over the course of several years. Funds also are being spent for the current fiscal year.
 
Figure 3-5
The Intelligence Budget: Four Phases over Three Years

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