And while the Director of Central Intelligence should report directly to the DNI, the powerful and independent-minded leadership and bureaucracy of the CIA reportedly resented the intrusion of another layer of administration into their affairs and have fought against DNI attempts to assert his legal authority. The IRTPA sets out the position of DNI as one that would coordinate and encourage cooperation, rather than a “command” position like the Secretary of Defense. This is an authorities issue, bureaucratic problem, and personality challenge combined. The DNI also cannot dictate to the heads of the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the way that the Secretary of Defense, for instance, can issue orders to combatant commanders. Unlike the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, the DNI does not oversee his entire domain, nor do the various agencies, other than the CIA, report directly to him. These two criticisms are not mutually exclusive.Ī number of observers and experts have noted that the Director of National Intelligence lacks any real control over the IC. Criticisms of this structure have come from two completely different directions, with some experts arguing that the DNI has too little power, while others argue that there is already too much centralization and bureaucracy in the IC. There are also a few mission-organized units, such as the NCTC, that bring together intelligence professionals from all the agencies with their own organically grown workforce to address specific areas of concern. There are two main structural challenges confronting the IC, each of which seems to contradict the other.Ī Powerless DNI and Bureaucratic Bloat: Too Much Centralization or Too Little? The current organizational structure of the IC is dominated by 17 diverse agencies, with the DNI as the nominal head. Defining the Problem Setīefore presenting potential solutions to the serious challenges that exist within the intelligence community, it is important to carefully describe the specific structural, analytical, and cultural issues that must be reformed if the community is to be made ready to deal with the new security environment. The IC must, therefore, become the kind of federated enterprise-organizationally, analytically, and culturally-that can constantly learn from, and adapt to, this highly volatile environment in order to better support decision makers. There are also well-grounded fears that this situation will be the “new normal” for at least the next decade. must depend for support in dealing with these threats and challenges. The need for reform is made more urgent by the increasingly complex national security environment that the United States is facing, one that is dominated by violent non-state Islamic extremists anti-status-quo states China, Russia, and Iran and a weakened or alienated set of allies and partners around the globe on which the U.S. In this Backgrounder, the focus will remain on analysis and improvements to the analytic aspects of the IC. It is noteworthy that the community’s intelligence collection-clandestine and open source-appears not to have focused on the deeper questions of regime stability and the underlying causes for the Arab Spring. The intelligence failures surrounding the Arab Spring were especially important, since the IC had not understood the implications of an entire series of seismic shifts in the strategic landscape, suggesting that there are serious problems with the analytical side of the community. In quick succession, the IC failed to predict the so-called Arab Spring, the resurgence of al-Qaeda, the adventurism of Putin, the aggressiveness of China, and a number of terrorist attacks on the U.S., from the Detroit “underwear bomber” to the San Bernardino massacre. The critics pointed to the anomalous position of the DNI, a neglect of strategic analysis, accusations of the politicization of intelligence, and the difficulties that the IC has with failure, learning, and adaptation, as signs that all was not well within the IC.Ī series of stumbles over the past seven years have given credence to the red flags raised by these experts. ![]() Before the ink was dry on the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), there were warnings from insiders as well as outside experts that the law had not fully dealt with the challenges facing the IC. ![]() intelligence community (IC) carried out after 9/11, including the creation of the Director for National Intelligence (DNI) and the National Combatting Terrorism Center (NCTC), there is widespread agreement that more remains to be done.
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