Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (9 page)

Read Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy Online

Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

In short, the intelligence community has entered a new era, with major new offices and relationships. How well various offices work and whether they achieve the desired goals will not be entirely evident for several years. In February 2005, President Bush nominated the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, to be the first DNI and Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), to be his principal deputy. However, in May 2006, DCIA Porter Goss stepped down and General Hayden replaced him. In January 2007, Negroponte was named deputy secretary of state and in February 2007 he was replaced as DNI by Mike McConnell, a retired vice admiral who had served as the J-2 (senior intelligence officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and director of NSA. Hayden’s former position as principal deputy DNI went untilled for more than a year. Thus, there was a fair amount of personnel turmoil in the senior intelligence positions during the first two years of the new structure. It also took more than a year to find a suitable new principal deputy DNI. Some observers believe that the problems encountered in finding suitable candidates for these jobs (including the first DNI nomination) reflects the inherent difficulty of the jobs themselves and the bureaucratic struggles they face.
General Hayden’s transfer, McConnell’s nomination, and the 2007 nomination of retired Air Force general James Clapper to be the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence (USDI) led some in Congress and some observers to raise concerns about the influence of the military in the intelligence community. Although there had been several DCIs and deputy DCIs who were military officers, they never served simultaneously. During the years in which there was a DCI and two deputy DCIs (one for the CIA, one for the intelligence community, 1996-2005), the law stated that only one of the three could be a military officer, meaning active duty or retired within the previous ten years. Supporters of the new team noted that McConnell and Clapper were retired, that they were all professional intelligence officers, and also pointed out that their extensive past experience of working together was an asset that would help overcome bureaucratic obstacles in their respective organizations.
One of the issues facing any DNI is the continuing disparity between his or her responsibilities for the intelligence community and his or her actual authority over the various agencies, a problem that existed under the DCI as well. DNI Negroponte was not seen as testing his authority to any great extent. (For a more extensive discussion of the state of intelligence reform, see chap. 14.) Negroponte spent more time giving general direction to the intelligence community, publishing a
National Intelligence Strategy
in October 2005, and other strategic plans. In 2007, DNI McConnell announced a more direct
100 Day Plan
and
500 Day Plan.
The
National Intelligence Strategy
and the
100
and
500 Day Plans
are worth examining for the insights they give into where the first two DNIs want to take the intelligence community. Negroponte’s
Strategy
identifies five mission objectives:
• Defeat terrorism
• Prevent and counter weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
• Bolster the growth of democracy
• Innovate analysis and target penetration
• Identify opportunities and vulnerabilities for decision makers.
 
The first two mission objectives are straightforward, identifying the two major threats facing the United States. Some controversy arose over the third objective of bolstering democracy. Critics argued that this was not a proper role for intelligence. It is important to understand the
National Intelligence
Strategy is a derivative document, based on the goals stated in the president’s
National Security Strategy,
which each administration issues several times during its term. The democracy objective therefore echoes a national security objective, just as do the terrorism and WMD objectives. It also reflects the fifth goal of identifying both vulnerabilities (terrorism and WMD) and opportunities (democracy). (See chap. 6 for a discussion of opportunity analysis.) To carry out these mission objectives, the National
Intelligence Strategy
then identifies ten enterprise objectives, which largely deal with how the intelligence community will work to improve its capabilities.
Some of these enterprise objectives reflect the findings of the various studies and commissions undertaken after September 11, 2001, and the Iraq WMD issue. Others reflect issues of much longer standing. The same is true of DNI McConnell’s
100
and
500 Day
Plans. (These documents can all be found at
www.odni.gov
.)
The
National Intelligence Strategy
is written at a higher strategic level than the
100
and
500 Day Plans,
which are more immediate action plans. Both DNIs were attempting to force a greater sense of community over a disparate group of agencies over which they exercised very little real control. The issue for either approach is how the DNI would use his somewhat limited authority to enforce these goals. Many of these goals are ambitious and some would require major changes in how agencies work or how they conceive of their role, as well as their culture. Thus, the
100
and
500 Day Plans
can also be seen as an attempt by McConnell to flex his bureaucratic powers to see how extensive they are. McConnell also felt that there was a disparity between his authorities under law and under the executive order under which he operated, signed by President Reagan in 1981. Therefore, he promoted drafting a new order to reflect the current structure.
DNI Negroponte correctly described the activities of his office as “a work in progress.” Congress, however, has expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of reform. A report from the House Intelligence Committee in July 2006 complained about a “lack of urgency” in intelligence reform. At the same time, efforts by some in Congress to enhance the DNI’s authority have run afoul of members protecting the interests of other agencies, particularly the Department of Defense (DOD).
How would one know that intelligence reform was working? The answer, based on DNI McConnell’s
100
and
500 Day Plans,
apparently would be the ability of the DNI to enforce a series of procedural and cultural reforms on the intelligence community. This is a laudable but somewhat vague result, which underscores the problems inherent in judging the pace of intelligence reform.
 
Figure 3-1
The Intelligence Community: An Organizational View
 
The U.S. intelligence community is generally perceived as being hierarchical and bureaucratic, emphasizing vertical lines of authority. Figure 3-1 offers such a view but also categorizes agencies by intelligence budget sectors: National Intelligence Program (NIP, formerly the National Foreign Intelligence Program, renamed to recognize the inclusion of homeland security and domestic intelligence); the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), made up of two former military intelligence budget programs; the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP); and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA).
The NSC has authority over the director of national intelligence, who in turn oversees, but does not direct, the CIA. The CIA, unlike the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at the Department of State or the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at DOD, has no cabinet-level patron but reports to the DNI, although the DNI does not have operational control over the CIA. The CIA’s main clients continue to be the president and the NSC. This relationship has both benefits and problems. The CIA has access to the ultimate decision maker, but it can no longer count on this access through its own director given that much of this role now comes under the DNI. The DNI and the new DCIA could become rivals for access to the president. The CIA as a whole could find itself in a weaker position compared with other intelligence agencies. A disparity always existed in that agencies other than the CIA had cabinet-level supporters. However, the DCI had authority across the intelligence community. With this lever gone, the CIA may find itself in a less enviable position. Signs were evident, both before and after passage of the new law, that other agencies sought to enlarge the areas in which they worked, usually at the expense of the CIA. The most prominent of these were the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DOD.
As noted previously, Porter Goss served as the last DCI (2004-2005) and the first director of the CIA (2005-2006). His tenure proved to be tumultuous, and the press reported numerous stories about friction between the staff that Goss brought with him from Congress and senior CIA officials, many of whom—especially in the Directorate of Operations—ultimately resigned. Goss’s short tenure indicated that the CIA remained central despite its director’s loss of responsibility across the intelligence community. DNI Negroponte found that he could not be effective in his role if the CIA was riven by internal bickering.
The secretary of defense continues to control much more of the intelligence community on a day-to-day basis than does the DNI. The panoply of agencies that are part of DOD—National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NIMA), airborne reconnaissance programs, the service intelligence units, and the intelligence components in each of the ten unified combatant commands—vastly outnumbers the CIA and the components under the DNI, in terms of both people and dollars. As a rule of thumb, the secretary of defense controls some 75 to 80 percent of the intelligence community. At the same time, the secretary of defense is unlikely to have the same level of interest in intelligence as the DNI does. In fact, much of the responsibility for intelligence within DOD is delegated to the USDI, a relatively new office that was created in 2002.
Control of the intelligence budget was one of the most controversial parts of the debate over the new intelligence structure. Those who advocated less sweeping change had argued that giving the DCI budget execution authority over the NIP (that is, the ability to determine the actual spending of dollars) would have solved the authority problems across the community as well as significantly increased the leverage of this position. However, such a minimalist solution was not politically palatable as it was not seen as sweeping enough. It also was opposed by DOD and its supporters in Congress.
In the debate over the creation of the DNI, DOD and its supporters argued successfully that the department needed to maintain control over the budgets of some national intelligence components: NSA, NGA, and the NRO. This devolved into an odd and factually off-base debate about the military chain of command and control of specific reconnaissance assets. The real concern was the ability of military commanders to call on intelligence support when they need it. This has been an area of growing controversy as many senior military commanders have increasingly come to treat national intelligence assets as their own.
The DNI develops and determines the NIP, based on the submissions made by the various intelligence agencies. The DNI can provide the agencies with budget guidance. The DNI can transfer or reprogram up to $150 million or no more than 5 percent of any NIP funds for an agency. Certain criteria were set out for such transfers, such as a higher priority or emergent need. Such transfers cannot be used to terminate an acquisition program.
Figure 3-1 is somewhat deficient in that it does not describe the varied functions of the agencies, which are central to their relationships. Several different ways of looking at the U.S. intelligence community are needed to get a better appreciation of what it does and how it works.
ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
 
Before examining further the structure of the intelligence community, it is useful to look at its basic functions.
The intelligence community has, in effect, two broad functional areas: management and execution. Within each of them are many specific tasks. Management covers requirements, resources, collection, and production. Execution covers the development of collection systems, the collection and production of intelligence, and the maintenance of the infrastructure support base. In Figure 3-2 a horizontal rule divides management and execution, but one function straddles the rule: evaluation. Evaluation (assessing how well one is meeting one’s goals) is not one of the strongest functions of the intelligence community. Relating intelligence means (resources: budgets, people) to intelligence ends (outcomes: analyses, operations) is a difficult task and is not undertaken with great relish. However, it is an important task and one that could yield dividends to intelligence managers if done more systematically and broadly. Although all agencies make an effort to evaluate their performance, the broadest evaluation activity in the intelligence community has been carried out within the
National Intelligence Priorities Framework,
created under DCI George Tenet in 2003 and now part of the DNI’s office.

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