Ex-CIAers' take on creating one U.S. intelligence agency

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [johnmacsgroup] How to Reform the CIA and the FBI
Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 09:03:13 -0700
From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <amicus () well com>
To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
CC: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>, Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
References: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0405140725310.7022 () westnet com>

At 04:33 AM 5/14/2004, John F. McMullen wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/14/opinion/14WHIT.html?th
> OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
> The Needle in the Database
> By CHRISTOPHER WHITCOMB
> ...
> The problem breaks down in two ways.
>
> First, the government's intelligence community is made up of 15
> semi-autonomous and poorly integrated agencies. In addition to the F.B.I.
> and C.I.A., there are intelligence wings at the Energy and Treasury
> Departments. The military has intelligence cells within all five branches
> as well as a Defense Intelligence Agency.
> ...
> First, the government should integrate all intelligence programs in a
> single agency. Make the Central Intelligence Agency just what it is
> supposed to be: central. The director of central intelligence serves, at
> least in principle, as the president's chief intelligence officer. Give
> him the resources and authority to go with the title.
>
> Second, we should divide the C.I.A. into counterterrorism, war-fighting
> and diplomatic directorates to better manage all national security
> objectives. Make the C.I.A. a service provider for other government
> agencies; create a common strategic goal.

Up front, I'll note that I spent six years at the CIA, largely as an
intelligence analyst (but also coming in as what CIA calls a "career
trainee," a kind of junior exec program that involves interim assignments
in other directorates, and an "all-Agency" indoctrination); my last year
and a half were with the Intelligence Community Management Staff, the
smallish staff that manages the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI's)
oversight of the Intelligence Community.

Firstly, there are a lot of good reasons for there to be an Intelligence
Community, and not a "Single Intelligence Agency."  Whitcomb was career
FBI, which may be why he didn't think to comment on the fact that the IC
budget is hugely skewed toward Defense agencies.  In addition to
"intelligence cells" in the services, there are whole agencies under the
budgetary wing of the Pentagon, and "support to the shooter" is an enormous
part of what the IC does.  Here's a chart of the IC, with both hard and
"dotted" lines:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/Ann_Rpt_2002/appendA.html
(NIMA has since been renamed as the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency, and there is now an Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence at
the top of the DOD agency hierarchy.)

Absolutely that community could work together better, and some of what we
did in CMS was to shine the "flashlight of visibility" on programs that
ought to be more informed of each other, and either collaborating, or
dismantled.  But Whitcomb seems to fail to understand why there might want
to be various agencies, that either specialize in a given collection
mission (such as the NSA, or NRO), perform all-source analysis for
particular customers (CIA and DIA), or are organic parts of other agencies
or departments with primarily non-intelligence missions.

And I'm more than a bit amused that, after mushing all of these agencies,
roles and missions into One Big Agency, he would then turn around and
suggest balkanizing it into the various constituent parts that already
exist among the agencies today.

Ross

Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
http://www.stapleton-gray.com




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