Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (14 page)

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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

 
EIGHT SIMULTANEOUS BUDGETS
 
Over the course of a fiscal year (October 1 to September 30), eight concurrent budgets are in some state of being. This shows the situation during fiscal 2009:
Fiscal 2007 and 2008: Past fiscal years; some funds still being spent
Fiscal 2009: Current fiscal year, funds being spent
Fiscal 2010: Budget for the next fiscal year being developed by executive branch and Congress
Fiscal 2011: Intelligence program nearing completion
Fiscal 2012: Budget in early development in executive branch
Fiscal 2013 and 2014: Budgets in long-range planning in executive branch
 
The budget for the following fiscal year is going through the political processes. The budget for the year after that is being formulated by the executive branch and Congress. Finally, two future-year budgets are in various states of planning. A great deal of influence accrues to those individuals in both branches of government who can master the process and the details of the budget.
 
KEY TERMS
 
crosswalks
Deputies Committee
National Intelligence Priorities Framework
Principals Committee supplementals
FURTHER READINGS
 
The following readings provide background on the current organization and structure of the U.S. intelligence community. The list includes some studies of proposed changes that would enable the intelligence community to deal more effectively with the challenges it will face in the future.
 
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Report to the president, March 31, 2005. (Available at
www.wmd.gov
.)
Elkins, Dan.
An Intelligence Resource Manager’s Guide
, Washington, D.C.: Defense Intelligence Agency, Joint Military Intelligence Training Center, 1997.
Johnson, Loch K.
Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Lowenthal, Mark M.
U.S. Intelligence: Evolution and Anatomy
. 2d ed. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1992.
McConnell, Mike. “Overhauling Intelligence.”
Foreign Affairs
(July/August 2007). (Available at
www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86404/mike-mcconnell/overhauling-intelligence.html
.)
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States [9/11 Commission].
Final Report.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
National Intelligence Strategy
. Washington, D.C., October 25, 2005. (Available at
www.odni.gov
.)
—.
United States Intelligence Community (IC) 100 Day Plan for INTEGRATlON and COLLABORATION.
Washington, D.C., April 11, 2007. (Available at
www.odni.gov
.)
Posner, Richard. “The 9/11 Report: A Dissent.”
New York Times Book Review
, August 29, 2004, 1.
Richelson, Jeffrey T.
The U.S. Intelligence Community
. 4th ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.
U.S. Commission on the Roles and Responsibilities of the United States Intelligence Community.
Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1996.
U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century.
Staff study, 104th Cong., 2d sess., 1996.
CHAPTER 4
 
THE INTELLIGENCE PROCESS—A MACRO LOOK: WHO DOES WHAT FOR WHOM?
 
T
HE TERM
intelligence process
refers to the steps or stages in intelligence, from policy makers perceiving a need for information to the community’s delivery of an analytical intelligence product to them. This chapter offers an overview of the entire intelligence process and introduces some of the key issues in each phase. Succeeding chapters deal in greater detail with the major phases. Intelligence, as practiced in the United States, is commonly thought of as having five steps, to which this book adds two. The seven phases of the intelligence process are (1) identifying requirements, (2) collection, (3) processing and exploitation, (4) analysis and production, (5) dissemination, (6) consumption, and (7) feedback.
Identifying
requirements
means defining those policy issues or areas to which intelligence is expected to make a contribution, as well as decisions about which of these issues has priority over the others. It may also mean specifying the collection of certain types of intelligence. The impulse is to say that all policy areas have intelligence requirements, which they do. However, intelligence capabilities are always limited, so priorities must be set, with some requirements getting more attention, some getting less, and some perhaps getting little or none at all. The key questions that determine these priorities include, Who sets these requirements and priorities and then conveys them to the intelligence community? What happens, or should happen, if policy makers fail to set these requirements on their own?
Once requirements and priorities have been established, the necessary intelligence must be collected. Some requirements will be better met by specific types of collection; some may require the use of several types of collection. Making these decisions among always-constrained collection capabilities is key, as is the question of how much can or should be collected to meet each requirement.
Collection
produces information, not intelligence. That information must undergo
processing and exploitation
(usually referred to as P&E) before it can be regarded as intelligence and given to analysts. In the United States, constant tension exists over the allocation of resources to collection and to processing and exploitation, with collection inevitably coming out the winner; the result is that much more intelligence is collected than can be processed or exploited.
Identifying requirements, conducting collection, and processing and exploitation are meaningless unless the intelligence is given to analysts who are experts in their respective fields and can turn the intelligence into reports that respond to the needs of the policy makers. The types of products chosen, the quality of the
analysis and production,
and the continuous tension between current intelligence products and longer range products are major issues.
The issue of moving the analysis to the policy makers stems directly from the multitude of analytical vehicles available for disseminating intelligence. Decisions must be made about how widely intelligence should be distributed and how urgently it should be passed or flagged for the policy maker’s attention.
Most discussions of the intelligence process end here, with the intelligence having reached the policy makers whose requirements first set everything in motion. However, two important phases remain:
consumption
and
feedback.
Policy makers are not blank slates or automatons who are impelled to action by intelligence. How they consume intelligence—whether in the form of written or oral briefings—and the degree to which the intelligence is used are important.
Although feedback does not occur nearly as often as the intelligence community might desire, a dialogue between intelligence consumers and producers should take place after the intelligence has been received. Policy makers should give the intelligence community some sense of how well their intelligence requirements are being met and discuss any adjustments that need to be made to any parts of the process. Ideally, this should happen while the issue or topic is still relevant, so that improvements and adjustments can be made. Failing that, even an ex post facto review can be tremendously helpful.
REQUIREMENTS
 
Each nation has a wide variety of national security and foreign policy interests. Some nations have more than others. Of these interests, the primacy of some is self-evident—those that deal with large and known threats, those that deal with neighboring or proximate states, and those that are more severe. But the international arena is dynamic and fluid, so occasional readjustments of priorities are likely even among the agreed on key interests. For example, the Soviet Union was the overwhelming top priority of U.S. intelligence from 1946 to 1991, after which the country as we knew it ceased to exist. The problems associated with its fifteen successor states have been very different and required different intelligence strategies. In the early years of the twenty-first century there has been a resurgence of Russian power, based largely on its control of oil and natural gas. Also, terrorism has been a concern of U.S. national security policy since the 1970s, but the nature of the terrorism issue changed dramatically in 2001. So, even for issues that have long been on the national security agenda, there are shifts in priorities and in the intrinsic importance of the issues.
Given that intelligence should be an adjunct to policy and not a policy maker in its own right, intelligence priorities should reflect policy priorities. Policy makers should have well-considered and well-established views of their own priorities and convey these clearly to their intelligence apparatus. Some of the requirements may be obvious or so long standing that no discussion is needed. The cold war concentration on the Soviet Union was one such priority.
But what happens if the policy makers do not decide, find that they cannot decide, or fail to convey their priorities to the intelligence community? Who sets intelligence priorities then? These questions are neither frivolous nor hypothetical. Senior policy makers often assume that their needs are known by their intelligence providers. After all, the key issues are apparent. A former secretary of defense, when asked if he ever considered giving his intelligence officers a more precise definition of his needs, said, “No. I assumed they knew what I was working on.” There is strong reason to believe that his view was not unique.
An obvious way to fill the requirements gap left by policy makers would be for the intelligence community to assume this task on its own. However, in a system such as that of the United States, where a strict line divides policy and intelligence, this solution may not be possible. Intelligence officials may feel that the limits on their role preclude making the decision; policy makers may view intelligence officials who seek to fill the void as a threat to their function and may even react with hostility.
The intelligence community thus faces two unpalatable choices. The first is to fill the requirements vacuum, running the risk of being wrong or accused of having overstepped into the realm of policy. The second is to overlook the absence of defined requirements and to continue collection and the phases that follow, based on the last-known priorities and the intelligence community’s own sense of priorities, fully realizing that it may be accused of making the wrong choices.
Some intelligence managers might take issue with this interpretation of their choices. They would note, correctly, that one function of intelligence is to look ahead, to identify issues that are not high priority at present but may be so in the future. But, as important as this function is, it is difficult to get policy makers to focus on issues that are far off or only possibly significant. They are hard-pressed to work on the issues demanding immediate attention. Intelligence officers may be tempted to “shop” an issue, that is, to look for some policy maker who will take interest in it and thus enhance its priority, but this comes very close to breaching the intelligence-policy barrier once again. Thus, the requirements conundrum remains.
Conflicting or competing priorities are also an issue. Although some sense of order may be easily imposed on certain issues, others may end up claiming equal primacy. Again, policy makers should make the difficult choices. In reality, most governments are large enough to have various competing sectors of interest either between or within departments or ministries. The result is that, once again, the intelligence community may be left to its own devices. In an intelligence community such as that of the United States, parts of the community may reflect the preferences of the policy makers to whom they are most closely tied. In some cases, there may be no final adjudicating authority, leaving the intelligence community to do the best it can. In the U.S. system, the National Security Council (NSC) sets the policy and intelligence priorities. The director of national intelligence (DNI) should be the final adjudicator within the intelligence community, but the director’s ability to impose priorities on a day-to-day basis across the entire intelligence community remains uncertain. All issues tend to get shorter shrift when too many are competing for attention.
 
Figure 4-1
Intelligence Requirements: Importance Versus Likelihood

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