IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century
Staff Study Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence House of Representatives One Hundred Fourth Congress
One of the centerpieces of the Intelligence Community for
the 21st Century (IC21) review is a hard look at Intelligence
Community (IC) management and the development of a proposed community
model that synthesizes the findings and recommendations of the
other staff studies. At the beginning of this
undertaking, a hypothesis was developed that the IC and its customers
would benefit, either through performance enhancement or cost
reduction or both, from a more corporate approach to intelligence.
This hypothesis was then "tested" in the following
specific areas: planning, programming and budgeting;
collection management; production management; personnel management;
and research and development. The goal was to identify what specifically
would improve management of these areas, and whether or not a
more corporate approach would be constructive. Then, if a more
corporate approach were dictated,
to identify what changes in organization, function, and authority
would be required to achieve it.
Perhaps not surprisingly, we discovered that the Intelligence
Community would benefit from a more corporate approach in each
of the major areas we addressed. In order to form a flexible
"tool kit" of capabilities for the future, the Director
of Central Intelligence (DCI) and his staff require additional
authorities and different management structures to create a unified,
effective and efficient community. Services of common concern
should be consolidated at the community level. Programming and
budgeting and personnel management must be more centrally managed.
Collection must be managed coherently
across the disciplines, with increasingly difficult resource trades
made at the community level in an informed, all-source process.
Improved synergy during collection operations, which will become
more and more critical to success in the 21st century, requires
movement away from the traditional stovepipe
approach to collection. Research and Development requires closer
coordination with requirements, and a contingency fund for "good
ideas" should be established to allow the community to take
advantage of
technological targets of opportunity.
The community needs to become a corporate entity; personnel
reform that promotes lateral movement among agencies and a community
SES cadre is essential. The primacy of all-source analysis needs
to be reinforced, and strong links forged between analysts and
policy-makers and analysts and collectors. The
community should be, and to an extent already is, moving toward
a "virtual analytical environment" that requires a new
set of skills and management techniques. Increased centralization
of management
functions must be balanced by a strengthened and independent evaluative
function.
Clandestine operations will continue to be both the riskiest
and potentially the highest-payoff intelligence operations, becoming
increasingly important in the 21st century due to the likely nature
of future targets. This aspect of the intelligence community
requires a more intensive level of management
involvement on the part of the DCI and should be housed in a separate
organization, with a direct reporting chain to the DCI.
The defense intelligence community also stands to benefit
from more coherent and centralized management. A Director of
Military Intelligence with enhanced control over defense intelligence
programs and operations would serve as both a senior military
advisor to the Secretary of Defense for
intelligence, and a locus for the close coordination required
between the national and tactical intelligence communities and
budgets.
One of the centerpieces of The Intelligence Community in
the 21st Century (IC21) review is a hard look at Intelligence
Community (IC) management and the development of a proposed community
model that synthesizes the findings and recommendations of the
other staff studies. At the beginning of this
undertaking, a hypothesis was developed that the IC and its customers
would benefit, either through performance enhancement or cost
reduction or both, from a more corporate approach to intelligence.
This hypothesis was then "tested" in the following
specific areas: planning, programming and budgeting;
collection management; production management; personnel management;
and research and development. The goal was to identify what specifically
would improve management of these areas, and whether or not
a more corporate approach would be constructive. Then, if a more
corporate approach were dictated, to identify what changes in
organization, function, and authority would be required to achieve
it. Although
they are presented first in this document, the role and authorities
of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) were considered
last, in the context of the needed changes in the above-mentioned
areas.
It immediately became clear that it is impossible to measure
the effectiveness of something without a standard by which to
measure -- an understanding of the purpose and role of intelligence,
and its appropriate relationship to policy and national strategy.
With very little research it became apparent that
there has historically been disagreement on these topics, and
that the level of disagreement is greater today, in the post-Cold
War period, than it has been for some time. This makes it necessary
to examine
these issues in at least a cursory way in order to establish some
assumptions without which the answers to the questions posed by
this study would be meaningless.
At the most basic level, there have been, and remain, two
diverging views of the appropriate role of intelligence in the
United States. One view maintains that intelligence provides
impartial and objective information to policy-makers; intelligence
is a truth-seeking profession and the policy community is a
customer who does not and should not influence the product. The
other, and less widely held, view is that intelligence is in fact
an instrument of policy and should be used to both shape and further
policy
goals: the intelligence and policy communities must act as partners.
The question of whether intelligence informs policy or serves
it is truly a chicken-or-the-egg issue -- we believe it must do
both at different times. Tending too far in either of these directions
threatens lack of relevance on the one hand, and
politicization on the other. The challenge for the IC is to maintain
a balance of objectivity and involvement, a goal that can only
be met with the cooperation and understanding of the policy community.
This study assumes that the basic structure of the United States
government, including its policy apparatus, will remain relatively
stable at the departmental level, but that the policy community
may be
influenced positively by recommended changes in its formal relationship
to the IC.
Another basic question that must be raised is that of the
evolving definition of national security. Although there may
be a consensus that intelligence exists primarily to identify
potential threats to the national security of the United States,
the definition of those threats, and perhaps the threats themselves,
change over time. We have seen an evolution from nation-based
threats and conflicts to trans-national threats and regional and
ethnic strife. New areas of intelligence emphasis, such as proliferation
and
terrorism, clearly represent emergent threats to our national
security. Other, less clear-cut areas of endeavor, such as economic
and environmental intelligence, remain subjects of debate concerning
the closeness of their relationship with national security, how
much value intelligence actually adds to these
areas, and at what cost to other, higher priorities. Regardless,
all of these areas of endeavor represent a new level of complexity
for the IC, requiring an "interdisciplinary" approach
to intelligence and a different
set of skills than that needed in the Cold War world.
Each Administration will be faced with defining threats to
national security, and the results will vary. In the absence
of definitive guidance, the IC will inevitably try to be all things
to all people. Therefore, it is a mistake to structure the community
to meet currently articulated or even projected future threats
except in
the most general sense. In looking to the 21st century, it is
important to reach a consensus on the core missions and capabilities
of the IC, and to add to those missions only on a pay-as-you-go
basis. The
new approach to mission-based budgeting, which creates four primary
mission areas (support to policy makers, support to military operations,
support to law enforcement, and counterintelligence), and within
those areas identifies core capabilities, sustaining capabilities
and supporting capabilities, appears to be a move in the right
direction. The community of the future should be based on the
capability and flexibility
to perform those basic functions -- a "tool kit," if
you will, for the challenges of the next millennium.
Within the IC, there are a series of checks and balances.
Starting at the top, the relationship between the DCI and the
Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) epitomizes an important tension
in the community: support to military operations (SMO) versus
support to national-level policy makers.
Considering that military operations are an instrument of policy,
SMO is in fact another facet of support to the policy-maker, but
it is of a different and potentially all-consuming sort. The
Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest customer of intelligence
information, and that justifies its significant voice in the
process; the DCI, however, must be able to protect the equities
of the civilian policy-makers and the longer-term interests of
the nation (a more detailed discussion of this tension is contained
in both the
Intelligence Support to Military Operations and the Intelligence
Community Surge Capability staff studies). That much of the intelligence
community is a shared resource is at times problematic, but is
in
accord with statutory direction to "eliminate waste and unnecessary
duplication within the intelligence community." It makes
sense from a resource perspective, as long as appropriate management
safeguards
exist to ensure that no customer's needs are shortchanged in the
process.
Another balance issue within the community is the role of
the program manager vis-a-vis the issue coordinator. The Needs
Process has established an increasing tension between the issue
coordinators,
who are looking across programs to fund priority activities that
contribute to their individual areas of responsibility adequately,
and the program managers, who are faced with satisfying the requirements
of all
of the issue managers and must make internal trades to build a
coherent and sustainable program. This would be more of a contest
if the issue coordinators had any real leverage over the budget
process, but currently they do not. A similar case is the lesser,
but still important, tension between functional managers
and program managers. Because the program managers build the
budget, and the issue coordinators and functional managers can
basically only advise and recommend, the balance of power is skewed
in favor of
the program managers. In any scheme of intelligence community
management, there will be competing requirements of this type.
The challenge is to create a programming and budgeting process
that minimizes
destructive competition and can adjudicate competing requirements
and priorities in a balanced way.
Finally, the Congressional intelligence oversight function,
unique to this nation, represents one of the legislative checks
on the executive branch that is the hallmark of our system of
government. The two intelligence committees, in turn, provide
a check on each other in the performance of this function.
Although this makes for a complex and sometimes inefficient system,
in the long run it protects the interests of the American people.
Within the IC as within the government at large, some of these
existing
balances may need to be recalibrated; overall, however, they
serve a useful purpose and should not be lightly set aside.
Perhaps not surprisingly, we discovered that the IC would
benefit from a more corporate approach in each of the major areas
we addressed. In order to form a flexible "tool kit"
of capabilities for the future, the DCI and his staff require
additional authorities and different management structures to
create a unified,
effective and efficient community. Services of common concern
should be consolidated at the community level. Programming and
budgeting and personnel management must be more centrally managed.
Requirements and collection must be managed coherently across
the disciplines, with increasingly difficult resource trades made
at the community level in an informed, all-source process. Improved
synergy during collection operations, which will become more and
more critical to success in the 21st century,
requires movement away from the traditional stovepipe approach
to collection. Research and Development (R&D) needs to be
more closely coordinated with requirements and a contingency fund
should be established to take advantage of technological targets
of opportunity.
The community needs to become a corporate entity; personnel
reform which promotes lateral movement among agencies and a community
SES cadre is essential. The primacy of all-source analysis needs
to be reinforced, and strong links forged between analysts and
policy-makers and analysts and
collectors. The community should be, and to an extent already
is, moving toward a "virtual analytical environment"
that requires a new set of skills and management techniques.
Increased centralization of
management functions must be balanced by a strengthened and independent
evaluative function.
Clandestine operations will continue to be both the riskiest
and potentially the highest-payoff intelligence operations, becoming
increasingly important in the 21st century due to the likely nature
of
future targets. This aspect of the IC requires a more intensive
level of management involvement on the part of the DCI and should
be housed in a separate organization, with a direct reporting
chain to the DCI.
The defense intelligence community also stands to benefit
from more coherent and centralized management. A Director of
Military Intelligence (DMI) with enhanced control over defense
intelligence programs and operations would serve as both a senior
military advisor to the SECDEF for intelligence,
and as a locus for the close coordination required between the
national and tactical intelligence communities and budgets.
The role and authorities of the DCI are central to achieving the goal of a more corporate IC. There are two broad areas at issue: (1) the role of the DCI vis-a-vis the President; and (2) the role of the DCI within the IC.
Several witnesses, including several past DCIs and Deputy
DCIs, noted that the degree to which the DCI visibly commands
the respect and confidence of the President is central to the
DCI's effectiveness. Realistically, however, there is no way
to mandate or to legislate a close working relationship between
these two officials. Two suggestions repeatedly surface regarding
the status of the DCI. The first is that he be made a cabinet-rank
official. The second is that he be given a fixed term of office.
The study group does not believe that either of these has sufficient
merit or would achieve the goal of a stronger DCI. The
third is that he be relieved of his responsibilities for the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and elevated to a position over the
entire IC.
Cabinet-rank for officials who are not members of the Cabinet
(i.e., the heads of departments) is merely an honorific. The
United States does not have Cabinet government; being designated
a member of the Cabinet does not in any real sense increase one's
authority. It certainly will not enhance or improve
the DCI's relationship with the President, which can only be based
on an existing level of trust and confidence. Indeed, mandating
Cabinet-rank for the DCI while doing anything less than creating
a true
Intelligence Department -- which no one has contemplated -- only
calls more attention to the disparity between the DCI's responsibilities
and his authority, even with the enhancements being proposed here.
The importance of the DCI's personal relationship with the
President is also the main argument against a fixed term. Proponents
of a fixed term argue that this would have several benefits.
Ten years is often suggested, as has been done with the Director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). First, and
perhaps foremost, a fixed term would provide for greater continuity
and stability than we now have. Until 1977, it was not customary
for the DCI to be replaced with a new administration. That is
no longer the
case. Moreover, the DCI's position has since been subjected to
fairly frequent turn-overs over and above presidential transitions.
From 1973-1977 there were five DCIs; from 1991-1996 there have
been
four DCIs. However, a fixed term could create the situation where
a President would inherit a DCI with whom he could not work.
Although there would be greater continuity, the DCI's effectiveness
would
diminish rapidly, a far greater loss. As noted, an analogy is
often drawn to the Director of the FBI. The comparison is inapt.
The DCI is the chief intelligence officer and deals directly
with the President. The Director of the FBI is not the chief
law enforcement officer; the Attorney General is and serves at
the
President's pleasure. In sum, a fixed term would not be an improvement.
The National Security Act states that the DCI is the head
of the IC and the President's principal intelligence adviser.
Neither of these designations for the DCI is the same as meaningful
control. If the IC is to achieve a greater degree of coherence
and corporate identity, then the role of the DCI has to be
changed. The glaring gap between his responsibilities and his
authorities has to be closed to the greatest extent possible.
The DCI should be viewed as a chief executive officer of the
IC, with purview over all of
its major functions and a greater degree of control over budgets,
resources and major policy issues that are common to all agencies.
However, the testimony of former DCIs and other former senior
IC officials
all concur that the DCI needs an agency "of his own"
-- i.e., the CIA -- if he is to have any real power within the
IC. The National Security Council
The National Security Act also places the DCI under the direction
of the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC is composed of
four officials: the President, the Vice President, and the Secretaries
of State and Defense. The IC is a service organization. It has
no meaning without its relationship to policy
makers. Thus, the DCI must have regular contact with the NSC
members. However, it is not reasonable to expect that they can
give the DCI and, through him, the IC, the kind of regular executive
guidance that
was envisioned by the National Security Act. Indeed, in each
successive Administration, there has been some sort of sub-NSC
group created to deal with intelligence, reflecting the shortcomings
of the NSC
itself to carry out this role.
Finally, many witnesses at hearings and staff panels and
the oversight experience of this Committee indicate that certain
intelligence activities -- clandestine operations and covert action
-- require special attention. These activities consume an inordinate
amount of the DCI's time, in terms of both management
and testimony before Congress. In the future, certain types of
offensive information warfare (IW) activities conducted in peacetime
or outside the context of a military operation may also fall into
this category. We do not question the utility of these activities
and believe that the United States must have
recourse to them. At the same time, executive control can and
should be made more direct. It is important for the DCI to maintain
close control over these activities.
The following recommendations are designed to resolve the
issues noted above. Beginning with the issue of executive guidance,
of the various sub-NSC bodies created to deal with intelligence,
the Committee on Foreign Intelligence (CFI) created by President
Ford in 1976 appeared to be among the
more successful, in terms of its stated role, its membership and
its performance. Interestingly, the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence proposed re-establishing this group in legislation
in 1992, as has the Aspin-Brown Commission. We believe that the
CFI, properly constituted and empowered, can more
usefully serve as a body to provide the DCI and the IC with the
necessary guidance and policy-maker oversight. This is not meant
to supplant the DCI's current direct access to the NSC members;
it is meant to give the DCI access on a more regular basis to
senior policy-makers who can give direction to the IC
and can listen to and relay IC concerns. Two Deputy Directors
of Central Intelligence
As noted, we do not find major flaws in the broader parameters
of the role of the DCI as currently described in legislation in
terms of his tenure or his responsibility for the CIA. The DCI
should continue to serve at the pleasure of the President and
continue to exercise control over the CIA and the
Community Management Staff (CMS), and have direct control over
the Clandestine Service. The DCI would, thus, continue to have
multiple major responsibilities. All DCIs have found this a broad
and sometimes difficult mandate. The ability to delegate is important,
although it has been done differently by
virtually every DCI. The current DCI, for example, relies on
two executive directors -- one for the CIA and one for the CMS.
Their titles belie their responsibilities. The positions responsible
for these two large parts of the DCI's portfolio should be enhanced
and their duties better defined. Given the
importance of their positions, Senate confirmation also appears
necessary. Some permanence in the DCI's supporting structure
is needed and can be achieved without losing necessary flexibility.
It also allows for greater institutional continuity, clearer
definition of responsibilities and improved congressional
oversight.
In order to minimize superfluous bureaucratic layering, we
concluded that the current position of Deputy DCI (DDCI) should
specifically be given day-to-day responsibility for the CIA, whose
enhanced analytical responsibilities are discussed below. This
would reduce layering, would continue to give the
DCI direct access to his major bureaucratic and institutional
base, and yet would relieve the DCI of many lesser administrative
concerns. Paralleling this first DDCI, there should be a second
DDCI for Community Management, for much the same reasons, with
purview over the collection, acquisition and
infrastructure elements of the IC. There are also changes in
the DCI's budget and personnel authorities, noted below. As currently
allowed by law, either the DCI or one of his DDCIs -- but no more
than one -- could be a military officer. The DCI would select
which of the DDCIs would act as DCI in his absence.
As noted above, the importance of the DCI's relationship
with the President is such that few prerequisites for nominees
should be imposed. However, to the extent possible, these DDCI
positions should be considered as professional as well as political
appointments and should go to individuals with
extensive national security or intelligence background. This
is especially important if a DCI with less such background is
chosen. The two DDCIs should be confirmed by the Senate, just
as is the current DDCI position. The Central Intelligence Agency
The CIA, which would now be directed by the DDCI, was envisioned
by President Truman as a coordinator of disparate intelligence
being produced by other agencies. The CIA quickly became a producer
in its own right because of policy-maker demands, the unwillingness
of then-existent agencies to
respond, and an aggressive CIA leadership. Although this is different
than President Truman's vision, we do not believe that this development
should be reversed. Indeed, it would appear more profitable to
underscore the CIA's analytical role by confirming it as the premier
all-source (i.e., deriving its analysis
from all intelligence collection disciplines) analytical agency
within the IC.
We concur with the observation of former DCI Richard Helms
that the President needs his own analytical group and that if
we did not have the CIA today we would probably invent it. Underscoring
this role means more than words. The CIA should house not only
its analysts, but the second- and third-
tier exploiters of the various intelligence collection disciplines.
By bringing them closer together we can improve the efficiency
of the all-source analytical process and achieve a true synergy
between collection
and analytical production. The Clandestine Service
Given the political and administrative problems raised by
clandestine operations and covert action, their bureaucratic tie
to the DCI must be made more direct. At present as many as two
or three officials are between the DCI and the CIA's Directorate
of Operations (DO). Moreover, there is no compelling
substantive reason for the DO to be part of the same agency as
the analytic Directorate of Intelligence (DI). This is largely
the product of historical accident and the bureaucratic aggressiveness
of DCI Walter
Bedell Smith, who expanded CIA activities into both operations
and analysis in the early 1950s, when other agencies failed to
meet policy-maker needs in these areas.
We believe that it would be better for the DO, renamed the
Clandestine Service, to be a distinct entity, under the direct
control of the DCI. This would rationalize the structure of
the CIA as the premier all-source analytical agency. The Clandestine
Service and the CIA can continue to be housed in the same
building. However, both the Clandestine Service and the CIA could
also be managed more effectively if they each had one major task.
The separation of the Clandestine Service should also reinforce
the fact
that clandestine Human Intelligence (HUMINT) serves the entire
community and not just the CIA. The Clandestine Service would
conduct all clandestine HUMINT operations, even those undertaken
by military personnel, who would be integrated into the organization.
There should be a Director of the Clandestine Service, reporting
directly to the DCI. This individual should be an intelligence
professional. After much debate, we recommend that this individual
not be subject to confirmation by the Senate. The sensitivity
of this position is such that the DCI must be free to
choose the man or woman upon whom the utmost reliance can be placed.
Senate confirmation raises a number of other political considerations
that might best be avoided. This recommendation, coupled with
the role of the new DDCI/Community Management, should also allow
a closer integration of collection
management and operations, and should enhance oversight of clandestine
operations. The Director should have a deputy who is a two-star
active duty military officer (further details are contained in
the
Clandestine Service staff study).
If the IC is going to achieve the goal of "corporateness,"
and if the DCI is going to function as a true CEO, then he should
have a greater say in the selection of his "corporate team"
-- the heads of the other major intelligence components. Current
law requires that the SECDEF "consult" with the DCI
in naming
heads for National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) defense
agencies. Although it is unlikely that the SECDEF would nominate
someone to whom the DCI is strongly opposed, it is possible.
Instead, the DCI's advice and concurrence should be sought. In
the unlikely event of disagreement, the issue could be
referred to the NSC Committee on Foreign Intelligence or, ultimately,
to the President. But the importance of a truly corporate team
requires a stronger DCI voice in this process. The study group
believes, however, that the role of the NFIP defense agencies
is so substantially different from that of the
other departmental elements of the NFIP that this arrangement
is not appropriate for the State, Energy or Justice Departments.
The defense agencies are primary collectors and producers of
intelligence without whom the DCI could not perform his statutory
functions, while the other departmental elements are
analytical efforts focused on tailoring intelligence products
for their departmental consumers. Therefore, we recommend no
change in the selection process for those activities. Director
of Military Intelligence
The Defense Department -- civilian policy makers and military
services at all levels -- is one of the largest components and
mostly important customers of the IC. Many of the larger organizational
issues noted for the IC at large are also found within the defense-related
part of the IC. Enhancing the DCI's
authority solves some, but not all, of the problems. It is
important that the defense intelligence establishment also have
a single, uniformed official who is both responsible for and empowered
to
address these issues, or to advise the SECDEF about them. We
believe that this should be a three-star military officer, carrying
the title of Director of Military Intelligence (DMI). The study
group also believes that this individual should be dual-hatted
as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the
program manager of the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP),
and program coordinator for the Tactical Intelligence and Related
Activities (TIARA). Although previous proposals for a DMI have
sought a four-star office, the study group believes a four-star
officer is neither appropriate nor likely to be
approved. For the senior military intelligence officer to be
on a par with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS)
and the Commander in Chief is not appropriate for a supporting
function such as intelligence, and could potentially promote an
unhealthy rivalry between the DMI and the DCI,
particularly if the DCI were to remain as currently constituted,
i.e., not of cabinet rank. The DMI would report to the DCI on
IC-wide issues and activities.
The three-star DMI concept consolidates management of defense
intelligence across the NFIP (DIA), JMIP and TIARA and continues
to provide intelligence support to both OSD and CJCS, via the
J-2, and a unified J-2/DIA staff. The DMI would not control the
DoD agencies within the NFIP, but would be
responsible, as currently, for all defense analysis, production,
and overt HUMINT operations. As program manager for JMIP, the
DMI would ensure a coherent program that complemented national
and tactical capabilities. As program coordinator for TIARA,
he would ensure that the services' intelligence
programs were interoperable and consistent with the larger intelligence
architecture. The DMI would need a significantly enhanced staff
element to handle program and budget activities for the JMIP and
TIARA formerly handled by the office of the Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Command, Control,
Communications and Intelligence (ASD(C3I)), and to be responsible
for defense intelligence architectures and coordination with the
community systems and architectures office. Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence
The position of ASD (C3I) is, in the study group's view,
an artificial construct. Although C3I for the Warrior and related
concepts have been constructive in encouraging the Services and
DoD to integrate intelligence and information handling techniques
better into Command, Control and Communications (C3)
architectures, integration of C3 and Intelligence as staff functions
has simply not happened, either in ASD(C3I) or in the Joint Chiefs
of Staff (JCS). One can also make an argument that in the Information
Age, intelligence needs to become increasingly linked to operations;
C4I for the Warrior may support this
operational concept in theory, but is of limited utility for staff
planning purposes. To date, most, if not all, Assistant Secretaries
for C3I have placed primary emphasis on the "C3" rather
than the "I." Similar emphasis must be placed on intelligence
if doctrinal concepts such as Dominant Battlefield Awareness are
to be realized. One aspect of this increased emphasis is a more
corporate approach to intelligence as embodied by a DMI. The
other aspect is a stronger policy presence in Defense. Consequently,
the study group believes that defense intelligence would be better
served by having a separate Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (ASD(I)), an option that
the SECDEF could exercise at any time. Regardless, the role of
the ASD(C3I) or ASD(I) should be policy, planning and oversight;
the programmatic and budgeting functions that have devolved to
ASD(C3I) should be handled by the DMI
staff. Infrastructure Management
Numerous studies and reviews of the community, including
the National Performance Review, have concluded that there are
efficiencies and potential cost-savings to be had by consolidating
infrastructure and "services of common concern." During
the course of this study, it became apparent that it makes
sense to combine under centralized management, although not necessarily
in one place, such community functions as personnel management,
security, certain types of training, communications, and automation./1/
Although many of the personnel performing these functions could
remain physically in
place as support detachments, the study group believes that an
Infrastructure Support Office should be established to manage
these areas across the community. The growth of the IC and proliferation
of distinct agencies have led to unwarranted duplication in what
are, essentially, administrative and logistical
functions. This is not only duplicative and costly, but also
can harm the ability of the IC to operate as a corporate whole.
Finally, these recommendations raise one final question about
oversight. There is, currently, a statutory Inspector General
(IG) for the CIA and for DoD. In order to ensure that major IC-wide
functions are available to necessary scrutiny, the current CIA
IG should serve as the IC IG, operating, when necessary, in conjunction
with the DoD IG for NFIP Defense agencies.
The Deputy Director should be a two-star military intelligence officer.
One of the IC's main shortcomings is an inability to manage
collection optimally across disciplines or "INTs."
This shortcoming is reflected in two areas: in short-term collection
management against current intelligence problems, and, more seriously,
in longer-term resource reallocation between collection
disciplines based on an examination of intelligence needs, the
most appropriate mix of collection assets to fulfill those needs,
and an evaluation of how well those assets perform against their
tasking. Collection requirements and tasking are currently handled
by committees that make resource and tasking decisions in
a single-source context that does not promote an optimal all-source
approach to collection problems. In the global and resource environment
envisioned for the future, competition for collection assets,
already stiff, will only increase. Trans-national problems such
as proliferation require integrated, all-source
solutions.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, even as more information
becomes available from open sources, the remaining "hard"
targets have become tougher to crack, also necessitating a coordinated,
multi-INT approach. The tension between military requirements
-- now expanded to include humanitarian and
peacekeeping missions -- and longer-term national interests will
become greater and the mechanism for making decisions such as
whether or not to move a satellite from one region to another
must become
more robust. The IC needs a management staff with the resources
and authorities to build and maintain
coordinated collection program, and keep it in balance with the
production and infrastructure elements of the community.
What community management is currently provided comes from
the National Intelligence Collection Board, a companion organization
to the National Intelligence Producer's Board. Although this
forum is beginning to become more "energized" under
its new chief, it is not yet the body to compel the needed
integration of the collection process within the community. The
fact that the Executive Director (ExDir) for Community Affairs
and the Associate Director of Intelligence for Military Affairs
are planning the establishment of a Collection Operations Management
Group indicates an awareness of this problem.
This organization, or something like it, needs to exist at the
community level, with representatives from the programs and DoD/JCS,
to provide an integrated forum for collection decisions and to
mediate conflicts between short-term military and longer-term
policy-maker support. This organization could either
supersede or be superimposed upon the current entities involved
in single-INT tasking: COMIREX, the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)
Committee, the Measures and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT)
Committee, and the National HUMINT Requirements and Tasking Center.
For short-term collection against current intelligence targets,
there are two collection management centers within the Community,
one at the CIA and one at DIA. Although these centers can be
said to work reasonably well, the coordination mechanism between
them is not well-defined. Also, tasking
collection or requesting information within the current system
is inefficient. At some point in the requirements chain, a customer
with a requirement must submit a SIGINT or Imagery Intelligence
(IMINT) collection request, rather than a general request for
information. It is virtually impossible for a requestor to ascertain
whether the information he requires has already been collected
and exists in a database somewhere or must result in new collection
tasking. The IC needs a system that centrally
manages information requests, and a focal point for managing this
process across the community. Although some progress has been
made towards this goal, it has been done mostly on an "INT
by INT"
basis rather than as a community-wide, all-source effort. However,
the Intelligence Systems Board (ISB) has proposed a Request For
Information (RFI) management system that would further this goal.
One cannot discuss collection without addressing "stovepipes."
To illustrate the long-standing nature of this debate, the following
is a quote from Community Management Task Force Report commissioned
by then-DCI Robert Gates and conducted by Danny Childs and Rich
Haver in 1991: "We have made
one key assumption -- that vertical collection management structures
are created. We should note, however, that there is a body of
opinion that strongly doubts the wisdom of creating such 'stovepipes.'
One concern is that powerful checks and balances will be needed
to compensate for the possible tendencies of such strong functional
managers to operate unilaterally and make decisions with an eye
to
resource advantage. A second concern is the possibility that
community requirements will not be equitably addressed without
the aid of a strong independent body as a requirements authority."
Although the existence of stovepipes was an assumption for
that report, the study group believes that it is no longer wise
or even possible to accept stovepipes as a given. There are real
benefits to be achieved by creating a more unified management
structure for technical collection operations. MASINT, in
particular, which many view as the "INT of the future"
because of its potential application for some of the more difficult
intelligence problems such as proliferation, would benefit from
an approach that does not view it as a competitor to SIGINT and
IMINT, but rather as a complementary discipline making use of
many of the same sources of collection (see the MASINT : Measurement
and Signatures Intelligence staff study for more details).
As noted above, the key to future success against difficult collection
problems with shorter and shorter timelines is to achieve greater
synergy between the collection disciplines. Wherever this occurs,
the results are greater than the sum of the parts. Instead of
designing cumbersome systems "after the fact" to
tip off collection assets operating within a completely different
conceptual and operational framework, these operations need to
be conceptually integrated from the beginning and managed coherently.
The
target environment itself is beginning to blur the lines between
the technical disciplines.
The truth is that, to a certain extent, stovepipes are unavoidable;
the issues are how far up they extend and whether or not a mechanism
exists to ensure interaction between them at the operational level.
Although the technical collection disciplines share many elements
(as several interviewees told us, "it's all
about bandwidth") and will undoubtedly become increasingly
similar in the future, there are nevertheless distinct skills
and training requirements associated with SIGINT, IMINT and MASINT
-- and HUMINT collection is significantly different from all the
others. Although the study group believes that all of the
technical disciplines would benefit from being managed in a coherent
fashion, the different endeavors are not, in the foreseeable future,
interchangeable, and it is important to maintain the levels of
expertise in each
of these areas that have contributed to our success to date.
Therefore, if the technical collection disciplines were combined
into one agency, as we recommend, there would in all likelihood
be "mini-stovepipes" within it. This would not necessarily
be a bad thing as long as there was cross-leveling
activity both at the operator level and at the top, where it would
all "come together" under the control of one individual.
Under a consolidated collection concept, technical control of
the various collection disciplines would be vested in the director
of the collection agency and delegated to designated functional
managers for each discipline. The director of the collection
agency would thus assume the Director of the National Security
Agency 's (NSA's) responsibilities as SIGINT advisor to both the
DCI and the SECDEF, and perform similar functions for IMINT and
MASINT.
Additionally, the best collection operations occur when collectors
and analysts work closely together, so it is important to keep
the "first-line" analysts or exploiters with the collectors.
These analysts provide immediate feedback to the collectors,
report on time-perishable information, and act as a "bridge"
to the
all-source analytical community, with whom they should be electronically
linked. Although we acknowledge that the dividing line between
first-line exploiters and second- and third-tier analysts is not
as clear-cut in the SIGINT arena as it is in the imagery world,
we nevertheless believe it is possible to
distinguish between these levels of analysis in a systematic way
(see the SIGINT: Signals Intelligence staff study for more details).
It is equally important to leave first-tier HUMINT exploiters
such as reports
officers with the HUMINT collectors.
Although the technical collection disciplines could reasonably
and effectively be combined into one agency, it is the opinion
of the study group that HUMINT collection can and should remain
apart, with overt HUMINT collection continuing to be conducted
by DIA and the State Department, and all
clandestine HUMINT collection operations falling under the purview
of the Clandestine Service (see the Clandestine Service's staff
study for more details on this concept). HUMINT tasking and operations
are
different enough that there is little to be gained by combining
its management with that of the technical collection disciplines,
and, as mentioned earlier, its risks are such that it warrants
a more intensive level of
organizational oversight.
There are, however, numerous instances where HUMINT supports technical
collection in extremely important ways. To maintain effective
cooperation in these areas, an aggressive rotation policy is required
to ensure that clandestine operations personnel are employed in
the collection areas supported by their
efforts, and that technical personnel are employed where they
can affect the tasking of HUMINT assets. It is also important
to note that clandestine HUMINT collection tasking and requirements,
along with all other collection operations, will be managed by
the CMS and reviewed by the National Intelligence
Evaluations Council (NIEC). (The NIEC is discussed in the Intelligence
Requirements Process staff study.
The study group also considered whether or not it was advantageous
to combine Open Source collection with the technical collection
disciplines. Although clearly areas of similarity exist, we determined
there was little to be gained from this proposal. Since the primary
focus of Open Source
collection is the management of huge amounts of information that
are readily available rather than the attempt to collect information
from denied areas or that the originator does not wish anyone
to have, it
was decided to place responsibility for Open Source with the analytical
agencies, primarily the CIA.
There are three primary, sanctioned producers of all-source
intelligence products in the IC: the CIA, DIA, the State Department's
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (the Department of Energy's
Intelligence Division is also an all-source producer of tailored
products for its departmental consumers).
Although the appropriateness of the State Department maintaining
its own analytical capability is rarely questioned, many have
suggested that the separate DIA and CIA efforts are not necessary.
However, in our view, reality dictates that the Defense community
must have its own analysis and reporting capability.
If we were to do away with DIA, it would be recreated in another
form somewhere in DoD. The study group also believes that the
DIA/CIA balance is of value to the community: they have largely
deconflicted their analysis and production, they have very different
customer bases, and there is inherent value to
maintaining the ability within the overall community to get a
"second opinion." CIA correctly views one of its roles
as providing an independent assessment of the efficacy of U.S.
military operations. Although DIA has no formally constituted
charter to challenge CIA assessments, in those areas that most
threaten
our national security, maintaining the ability to do competitive
analysis is prudent, as long as it is by design and not a result
of lack of management.
CIA and DIA, largely left to their own devices by the
CMS but questioned by Congress repeatedly over a period of years
for duplication of analysis and production, have made a great
deal of progress in coordinating and deconflicting their analytical
efforts and scheduled production. The fact that scheduled
production represents a smaller and smaller percentage of total
intelligence product in no way minimizes this achievement, but
also shows that this process is a moving target. The coordination
of finished products also does not address the issue of the community's
other analytical products, which are not
(theoretically) all-source -- SIGINT and IMINT reports.
Elements of the community have been moving independently
in a positive direction in the analysis and reporting area --
this is both the good news and the bad news. The good news is
that the community is using technology to work towards the types
of products that are most useful to the customer: multi-
source, multi-media products delivered electronically. The bad
news is that this is being done in a largely uncoordinated way,
resulting in the births of multiple, pseudo-all-source analysis
centers using many of the same sources of data and producing products
that look a lot like all-source products.
What the community needs is a coordinated approach to distributed
and collaborative analysis, similar to the concepts being developed
at NSA (the Analyst Driven SIGINT System being developed in conjunction
with NIDL/Sarnoff Labs) and DIA (the Joint Intelligence Virtual
Architecture, or JIVA). The
community needs to create a "virtual analytical environment"
that will maximize the efficiency of an increasingly scarce and
valuable commodity -- the analyst. Although exploitation and
first-level analysis
should remain with the individual collection disciplines, many
of the analysts currently doing SIGINT- and IMINT-centered analysis
should be moved, physically or, preferably, electronically, to
an all-source
enclave (CIA or DIA) to provide the understanding of the source
data and collection process required to produce high-quality all-source
analysis and reporting, with appropriate feedback to the collectors/exploiters.
By consolidating these efforts, we prevent the unnecessary replication
of analytic
effort by ensuring that this second- and third-tier analysis
feeds directly into an all-source product, rather than resulting
in an intermediate product that contains information from other
sources but is not actually or officially all-source. This maximizes
the productivity of the analysts and provides the customer with
a
faster and more comprehensive product.
The role of the CIA as the premier analysis and production
agency should be reinforced. The DDCI who manages the CIA should
also have primary responsibility for coordinating the community's
analytical efforts, to include determining when and for what competitive
analysis is justified. Most of the DCI's
centers will remain in the CIA except for those associated almost
exclusively with the current DO, which will become part of the
Clandestine Service (see the Intelligence Centers staff study
for more details). The CIA will also be the home of the National
Intelligence Officers (although one or two may reside
elsewhere, at DIA or State) and will be responsible for sponsoring
the production of National Intelligence Estimates when they are
warranted. The other role currently performed by the National
Intelligence Council, that of evaluation, should be assumed by
a new organization, the NIEC, which is independent of
the CIA and is chartered to evaluate both analysis/production
and collection against requirements. This evaluation activity
needs to be linked directly to both the community requirements
management, collection management and the program management
activities (see the Intelligence Requirements
Process staff study for more details), with the results of the
evaluations going directly to the DCI, the DDCI managing the CIA,
the DDCI for Community Management and the DMI.
The vast majority of the NFIP budget is embedded in the DoD
budget. This was done partially for security reasons, in the
case of the CIA, but there are practical and historical reasons
for this as well. The DoD provides 86 percent of the personnel
who conduct intelligence activities, both military and civilian.
Of the statutory elements of the NFIP, only six do not belong
to DoD: the CMS, the CIA, and the other Departmental elements
belonging to the State Department, Justice Department (FBI), Energy
Department and Treasury Department. The "fungibility"
of defense dollars -- i.e., the fact that every dollar saved in
intelligence can be used to fund other defense programs -- prompts
concerns about the motivation of DoD (and Congress) to adequately
fund intelligence in light of competing defense priorities. This
raises the question as to whether it might not be better for intelligence
and the nation to separate intelligence
funding from defense funding, either completely or partially.
Attempting to separate the intelligence budget from the defense
budget entirely would be extraordinarily difficult, and, philosophically,
it is difficult to argue that intelligence does not belong in
the defense account. In the view of the study group, under no
circumstances is it practical or advisable to
separate the joint and tactical intelligence programs from the
rest of the force structure that they support, so, at most, it
would be part or all of the NFIP that could be moved. However,
we also believe that moving intelligence activities out of DoD
would result in increased costs to the community that are now
borne as services of common concern by DoD. Although the programs
would be immune to the occasional across-the-board unallocated
reductions applied to all DoD programs, the costs of not being
part of DoD would probably far outweigh any savings in this regard.
Another implication of this change
would be that the total amount of the intelligence budget would,
in all likelihood, have to be declassified. Although sound arguments
can be made for declassifying the top line of the budget, and
the SECDEF may make the decision to do this, the study group remains
of the opinion that this would inevitably lead to
the disclosure of more information about the IC than would be
prudent.
If the goal of separating intelligence funding from the defense budget is to "protect" the NFIP, within the Executive Branch it is already, to all intents and purposes, protected. NFIP dollars, once identified, are effectively fenced.
Executive Order 12333 tasks the DCI to:
(o) Review and approve all requests for reprogramming National Foreign Intelligence Program funds, in accordance with guidelines established by the Office of Management and Budget;
(p) Monitor National Foreign Intelligence Program implementation, and, as necessary, conduct program and performance audits and evaluations."
This policy is deemed to continue and has never been seriously
challenged. Thus, the concept of the NFIP as a fenced program
is well-established and accepted in the Executive Branch. The
greatest risk to
the NFIP comes from the Legislative Branch, which is currently
free to "trade" intelligence dollars for defense dollars
in the appropriations process.
One way to address this problem would be to create a separate
line in the President's budget for intelligence. A separate
line would lead to either an Intelligence and Defense Appropriations
Bill or a completely separate appropriations bill (and appropriations
subcommittee) for intelligence. However,
separating intelligence from the rest of DoD (and, by inference,
the other departments) into a separate appropriations bill, as
was done with Military Construction some time ago, could well
make the intelligence appropriations bill more vulnerable to political
and fiscal winds, without the "cover" of the
larger DoD appropriation. In all, the study group believes that
it makes the most sense to leave NFIP funding in the various departments'
budgets, but recommend a rules change within the House of Representatives
that establishes some kind of a firewall between intelligence
and defense funding in the
appropriations process.
Assuming the intelligence budget is to remain in the defense
budget, the question of how many mini-intelligence budgets there
should be remains. There are currently three: the NFIP, the JMIP,
and TIARA. Theoretically, the TIARA programs are service-unique
and the JMIP programs support multiple services
or the theater/JTF. It is an article of faith in DoD that the
military services have the right to an organic intelligence capability
as part of their force structure to serve their unique needs.
The study group does not dispute this. This capability is logically
composed of the programs grouped into the TIARA
aggregation. The JMIP was established to provide more centralized
control over intelligence capabilities required for joint operations
and that serve multiple customers. These programs are at the
intersection between national and tactical intelligence and require
a more intensive level of management to ensure that
the boundaries are "seamless." There are, thus, logical
reasons to retain both the JMIP and TIARA budget categories; however,
their composition is a different issue.
The JMIP and TIARA budgets differ mostly in how they are
constructed. Both are aggregates of MFP II programs, but while
TIARA is merely the compilation of those intelligence and intelligence-related
programs that the Services have elected to fund, the JMIP is constructed
as a formal program and the
role of the Deputy SECDEF as program executive protects the program
from being "raided" by the Services. In practice, both
the JMIP and TIARA are a hodgepodge of programs, the result of
a series of unrelated and/or compromise decisions rather than
a coherent plan. The composition of the NFIP, JMIP
and TIARA was one of the nine key issue areas being examined for
presentation to the Expanded Defense Resources Board (EDRB) for
the fiscal year 1997 budget submission; it is to be hoped that
the results of that review will rationalize the division of programs;
regardless, the study group believes that
further guidance is required for DoD on the appropriate composition
of the JMIP and TIARA aggregation (see the Congressional Oversight
staff study for jurisdictional implications of these divisions).
In addition to the policy and jurisdictional issues concerning
the budget, there are serious problems with the mechanical process
as well. The Community has long suffered from a vacuum in planning
and guidance emanating from the DCI and his community-level staff.
Although DCI guidance to the various
functional managers is theoretically issued for each budget cycle,
it is frequently either not done, not received in time, and/or
not specific enough to affect the programming and budgeting of
the various programs. In addition, the requirements system for
the community, although much improved as a result of
the evolution of the Needs Process, has never been successfully
linked to the resource allocation process. Some of these issues
are being addressed by the DCI and ExDir of the CMS. The NFIP
budget has not previously been built in tandem with the DoD process;
until fairly recently, there were not even agreed
upon budget categories so that expenditures could be tracked across
national and tactical programs.
Assuming that most of the intelligence budget will remain a part
of the defense budget, it is critical to apply similar processes
to building the intelligence program and budget. The current
ExDir's new programming and budgeting process is a positive step
for several reasons. First, it rests the DoD portion of the
intelligence budget on a foundation of program merit rather than
relying on a good relationship between the DCI and the SECDEF.
Second, it forces the IC itself to do a much more rigorous budget
review than it has been able or tasked to do in the past, and
to integrate its review with the non-NFIP defense
intelligence programs, something that has never been done in a
systematic way. It also puts the IC on a better footing with
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is beginning
to play a more active role in vetting IC budget submissions.
Although this may or may not continue, it will always be a
possibility depending on the inclination of each particular administration.
The disadvantage to this new process is perceived to be "greater
DoD control" over the IC budget. However, the DCI and his
staff control the development and review of issues and the composition
of the program that is presented to the Expanded Defense Resources
Board. Although all capabilities are
included in the EDRB review process, formal budget action for
the non-DoD programs is reserved for the DCI and review is done
by the IC Executive Committee (EXCOM). Along with the rest of
the NFIP, these activities are subject to OMB review. DoD has
gained no new powers or authorities through this
new process, only more visibility into some intelligence programs.
As resources continue to be constrained, having DoD "buy-in"
to the intelligence budget is not a bad thing. And, as has always
been the case, in the final analysis the DCI has recourse to the
President if he views the results of the process
as unfair or inadequate.
A more subtle, but more important disadvantage to this process
is that it is still the "tail trying to wag the dog."
Currently, the program managers submit to the CMS a proposed
budget based on top-line guidance from the DCI that has been coordinated
with the SECDEF. The CMS does a largely surface
review of the submissions (often by personnel on temporary rotation
from the agencies they are reviewing) and may make some minor
changes to accommodate DCI priorities or some of the more vocal
issue coordinators. When the budget is finalized, it is sent
to Congress as part of the President's
Budget. When the Congress authorizes and appropriates the money,
it is appropriated directly to the program managers. The CMS
has no control over -- indeed, no visibility into -- budget execution.
If the DCI is to manage the Community as a corporate entity and
ensure that resource trades are made to
address priorities, he and his staff need more authority in the
intelligence budgeting process.
Although IC funding should still be appropriated to the
various Departments, the CMS must have formal authority for formulating
the NFIP budget, including the ability to monitor execution, withhold
funds and reprogram funds within the NFIP. Thus, the elements
of the NFIP should provide budget inputs to
the CMS, but the CMS should build the budget in the functional
categories mentioned above and submit the Congressional Budget
Justification Books (CBJBs) to Congress. The authority to reprogram
should be limited to not more than five percent of the losing
agency's budget over a one-year period, subject to
normal OMB review. The ability to withhold funds as a result
of execution review should be accomplished by a formal arrangement
between the DCI and SECDEF, allowing the CMS to identify to the
OSD comptroller funds to be withheld. These recommendations require
the CMS to be significantly
enlarged, and although rotational personnel should continue to
provide manpower and expertise to the staff, it must have a robust
cadre of core staff to perform these and other functions recommended
in this staff study.
The single most important change that needs to be made concerns
the organizing principle around which the budget is constructed.
Broadly speaking, the budget could be organized around programs,
missions, disciplines or functions. Notwithstanding the existing
budget structural categories, the current
budget is constructed around programs, even though each program
varies widely in mission and composition. Almost any other solution
would be an improvement; however the study group believes that
the most constructive way to build the budget is along functional
rather than programmatic or discipline
lines, in the broad categories of collection, processing and exploitation,
analysis and production, and infrastructure (to include R&D,
dissemination, etc). Building the budget this way would force
the types of trade-offs between like items that the IC has been
largely unable to achieve to date, and would eliminate
the current hegemony of the program managers in the budget process.
It would also present to Congress a more balanced picture of
the budget and the resource trades made to accommodate changing
priorities. Building the budget around disciplines hinders the
cross-discipline trades that need to occur, and building
it around missions is difficult, because so many capabilities
serve multiple purposes. While clearly any budget must start
with missions and the required capabilities to perform them, the
budget would more constructively be built around those capabilities
rather than the missions themselves.
Complicating the achievement of this goal is the community
method of budgeting and accounting itself. Although there are
standard budget accounting categories for the community, each
program defines these categories somewhat differently and has
its own unique budgeting and accounting system and
infrastructure. In addition, resource data are retrievable only
under the established budget categories, so there is no efficient
way to do cross-mission or cross-functional analyses -- for example,
to determine how much the community as a whole is spending on
computer support. The Committee has several times
engaged the CMS in discussions about how to do matrixed cost accounting
so that resources could be flexibly associated with more than
one category, but designing and implementing a system for the
community that would meet those needs while allowing the DoD agencies
to maintain necessary
compatibility with DoD is not a trivial undertaking. If the CMS
is given both the responsibility and the authority for building
the NFIP program and conducting execution reviews, as it should
be, a new programming, budgeting and cost accounting methodology
must accompany these changes, which will
standardize programming and budgeting procedures across the IC.
The IC continues to face a major personnel crisis that it
has, thus far, not addressed in a coherent way. The mandated
downsizing, conducted as it has been on a voluntary basis, has
left holes in the workforce that cannot be filled because there
is no head room to hire new people. The demographic profiles
of
NSA and DIA are a disaster waiting to happen in 5-10 years unless
some way is found to maintain a steady infusion of new blood into
the community. At the same time that the number of personnel
is declining, the cost of the remaining personnel is continually
increasing, meaning that there has been little if
any real savings associated with this painful process. As mentioned
earlier, the focus of our global interest is changing and requires
a different skill mix than the preponderance of political and
military analysts that
were the bread-and-butter of the Cold War.
A related issue that cannot be ignored indefinitely is morale.
Without the creation of some head room, prospects for promotion
are grim. Without a reasonable demographic spread, meaningful
career development is virtually impossible. Again, resolving
these problems is dependent at least in part upon the
ability to reduce the current workforce faster and more selectively
than the hitherto voluntary, incentivized approaches. Further
eroding morale is the lack of clear standards in some agencies
and the perception of unfair advancement of certain segments of
the population. A viable performance appraisal system across
the community is an important step to improving this situation.
Much of the discussion about the problems in the IC, and
particularly the CIA, has revolved around the culture of the community
and how it needs to change. However, it is difficult to change
a culture by simply moving the same people around in an agency.
New blood and fresh perspectives are required,
and they can be attained in two basic ways: hiring new people,
or "borrowing" people from other agencies and sending
your people to those agencies so they come back with some new
ideas. The IC overall needs to develop a "corporate culture,"
and it needs to do this primarily through personnel reform that
promotes the concept of a community of professionals rather than
a loosely connected group of agencies between which personnel
movement is very difficult, if not impossible. This was the whole
idea behind the personnel provisions of Goldwater-Nichols, which
was designed (largely successfully) to break down
the walls between the insular service personnel systems and promote
a culture of "jointness."
There have been numerous studies done on personnel management
in the IC. As is pointed out in the report of the most recent
Intelligence Community Task Force on Personnel Reform, led by
Christopher Jehn, the same recommendations have been made again
and again, but never implemented. In the past,
the community has been unable to overcome the resistance of agencies
or individuals to address personnel policy issues at the community
level. However, we understand that the DCI and the Administration
are drafting a legislative proposal for inclusion in the fiscal
year 1997 authorization bill that
incorporates the recommendations of the Jehn report. The study
group is prepared to endorse all of these recommendations, particularly
the requirement for an effective performance evaluation system
and a coherently managed personnel system that would promote rotations
and lateral movement within the
community.
The Jehn report states that in the course of the task force's review of current personnel systems in the IC, "four principal problems emerged:
The task force's recommendations to counteract these problems were:
It is important to emphasize that a performance management
system would not be identical for each agency or skill area.
However, community-wide standards for performance appraisals,
compatible pay banding systems, centrally-managed personnel security
and a career development program are essential
elements for reducing duplication and facilitating lateral movement
within the community, thus promoting jointness and improving morale.
At a minimum, the SES system should be standardized at the community
level, and a rotational assignment should be a prerequisite for
achieving SES rank except in rare
circumstances. Dual tracks should be available for those personnel
who do not aspire to high levels of management but would rather
remain in specialized areas such as clandestine operations or
cryptomathematics. In addition, we believe the DCI should be
able to detail personnel within the
community as required to meet short-term surge requirements (see
Intelligence Community Surge Capability staff study). However,
this authority should be limited to no more than 180 days without
the concurrence of the parent agency.
The issue of how to reduce further the numbers of personnel
is a complicated one and no single solution will effect the required
change. Many of the recommendations in the Jehn report would,
over time, improve the community's ability to identify and terminate
poor performers, particularly if the DCI's
termination authority were expanded to the entire community.
The problem is how to address the critical time period of the
next 2-5 years before these recommendations, if implemented, could
begin to have an effect.
The agencies of the IC already have certain expanded authorities
beyond those accorded to other government agencies. They have
termination authorities (although only the CIA has a truly unambiguous
termination authority), but they have no special RIF authorities
or exemptions from the rules governing
RIFs of civil service personnel. The termination authorities
are not currently used for fear of lawsuits, a not unreasonable
fear in the absence of a performance appraisal system that could
produce a documentary record and justification for action. Limited
legislative authorities, such as the two percent
waiver and directed retirements of annuity-eligible personnel,
could provide some relief but could be extremely difficult to
get through Congress because of jurisdiction, fiscal and legal
challenges. These programs need to be approached as pilot projects
with the full cooperation of OMB in order to have
some chance of being instituted, and even then cannot be guaranteed.
However, it is the belief of the study group that the importance
of this issue makes these efforts worth making and we recommend
legislation for the Fiscal Year 1997 Intelligence Authorization
Act establishing pilot programs for the two
percent waiver and directed retirement of annuity-eligible personnel.
Proposals for one-time dispensations to either reduce personnel
or temporarily exceed mandated downsizing goals in order to allow
hiring of essential new personnel were rejected because, although
they may be effective in the short
term, they do not provide the DCI with tools to prevent a recurrence
of the current situation and to enable to IC to continually restructure
its workforce in response to changing priorities and targets.
Numerous interviews, panels and hearings confirmed the need
for better management of increasingly scarce R&D dollars.
Reports by an independent review panel on NSA's Advanced Research
and Development Program, the results of the Exploitation Technology
Working Group's review of R&D
efforts in the imagery processing and exploitation field, and
a wealth of anecdotal information support the contention that
advanced R&D efforts are not adequately focused on the highest
priority technical
problems facing the IC. The individual discipline staff studies
identify the critical areas requiring attention. Currently, although
there is an individual on the CMS charged with looking at Advanced
Technologies,
R&D efforts remain fragmented under the control of individual
program managers. The community coordinator has no budgetary
authority and, thus, a limited effect on the various programs
of the
community.
The various R&D efforts in the community require closer
coordination with the requirements management element to ensure
that R&D dollars are focused on the problems that are the
most critical, not the most topical or the easiest. It is the
study group's belief that the community also needs an R&D
fund, similar to the Military Exploitation of Reconnaissance and
Intelligence Technology (MERIT) program run by the NRO, to fund
promising R&D projects. Under this concept, a fund would
be established and elements of the IC could submit proposals on
an annual basis for low-cost, potentially
high pay-off technology demonstrations or experiments. These
would be evaluated by a formally constituted review board and
the available funds allocated to the projects based on merit.
The MERIT program has been an extremely effective, albeit limited,
response to the conundrum within DoD that it is
harder to get $2 million now for a good idea than to get a $20
million project into the planning cycle for two years down the
road.
Another issue that must be addressed by the IC is the cumbersome
acquisition process and the need to find a way to keep pace with
commercial technology developments, particularly in the automation
area. Each agency has automation plans and recapitalization plans
of varying degrees of effectiveness. The
result is that the community has a bewildering mixture of automation
support hardware and software, almost none of it compatible and
little of it state of the art. An important function of the ISO,
mentioned earlier, would be to establish standards and information
architectures for the entire community, building on
the role played by the Intelligence Systems Board today. The
community also needs a centralized fund for the life-cycle replacement
and upgrade of community automation equipment,and a contracting
vehicle that does not require the full-blown DoD procurement process
to be followed.
Consistent with the move towards corporateness and consolidation
where practical and efficient, the study group believes that many
R&D and acquisition activities should be consolidated for
greater efficiency and coherence. Portions of the NRO would form
the core of a new agency, but its scope
would be broadened to include development of all reconnaissance
systems, including airborne systems, and the sensor development
and acquisition activities currently undertaken by the Directorate
of Science and Technology (DS&T) within the CIA. This agency
would be called the Technology Development
Office (TDO) and would be funded via the NFIP and the JMIP (for
programs currently within the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance
Office (DARO)). The inclusion of the DARO in this concept would
facilitate the development of a truly unified air/space reconnaissance
architecture, an elusive goal thus far.
The TDO would have Section 8 acquisition authorities for NFIP
monies to ensure that the NRO's and CIA's traditional ability
to conduct streamlined acquisition is not lost, and would serve
as the acquisition executive with milestone approval authority
for the DARO programs. As with most of our IC21
proposals, this would not necessarily require the physical relocation
of these elements, but would rely upon a unified management approach
to the overall reconnaissance architecture and sensor R&D
arena.
Other areas of R&D, such as those conducted at NSA in
the signal processing area and specialized R&D in support
of clandestine HUMINT operations, would remain associated with
the agencies they specifically support, but come under greater
management review in the process of building the budget
functionally. The imagery and MASINT processing R&D currently
done at the NRO and DS&T would migrate to the TCA.
/1/The INFOSEC function, that is currently a non-NFIP MFP
III program, could also be managed by this consolidated activity
in better cooperation with communications and ADP; it could remain
at physically at NSA or the TCA, as later discussed, to continue
to enjoy the synergy between the "makers
and the breakers" of codes, but would respond to community
direction. Funding could be split between JMIP and TIARA, and
management coordinated with the DMI staff and DMI.
This document is sponsored by the U.S. House of Representatives on the United States Government Printing Office web site.
Questions or comments regarding this service? Contact wwwadmin@www.access.gpo.gov.
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