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Plugging the Holes: Streamlining the Intelligence Community Now, decade passed after the end of the Cold War, but it continues to reverberate throughout the United States Intelligence Community. Since the beginning of the first Bush Administration, intelligence agencies have been reduced in size by some 30 % and priorities shifted away from the Soviet Union and its erstwhile allies (Best 2003: 4). Yet the post-Cold War world has its own complexities political, economic, and technological that continue to require the attention of intelligence agencies. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, dramatically demonstrated the changed nature of threats facing the United States.
The Intelligence Community is challenged by the variety of topics on which information is needed, changing technologies that may limit success in acquiring information, and, not least, by temporary and not-so-temporary needs for expertise in many different foreign languages. The world of intelligence has been upended by both politics and technology. The demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War are what get the attention, but the underlying transformation is longer and deeper. The history of the first stage of U.
S. intelligence, 1945 to 1990 or so, is the history of the last stage of the industrial age. By the early 1950 s, the main contours of Americas Cold War intelligence were in place. The CIA had moved from coordinating intelligence to collecting and analyzing it. While the CIA was more and more dominated by its clandestine service, it had come to be a major producer of analysis in its own right. The original intention was for the CIA to be the centralizer, the hub of a wheel of intelligence production.
In fact, it came to centralize by dominating, especially with regard to the overarching target, the Soviet Union (Treverton, 2001: 12 - 13). In the circumstances of the high Cold War, there were powerful arguments for targeting intelligence tightly on the Soviet Union, for giving pride of place to secrets, especially those collected by satellites and other technical means, and for centralizing intelligence and separating it from the stakes of policy agencies. None of these arguments, however, is so compelling today. There was one target and one preeminent consumer in form the president but in fact the National Security Council (NSC), encompassing the State and Defense departments, and the NSC staff. (Treverton, 2001: 14).
Accordingly, there was a certain logic to the way intelligence was and is organized. It was structured according to the different ways intelligence is collected: the National Security Agency (NSA) for intercepting signals, the Cia's DO for insiders SIGINT for signals intelligence and HUMINT for human intelligence, or spying could each concentrate on the distinct contribution it could make to understanding the Soviet Union. In the process, though, the INTs became formidable baronies in their own right. Now, however, no corporation would organize itself this way given its business, its production processes, and its market. The old structure just has to be wrong (Treverton, 2001: 15).
The events of September 11, 2001, made obvious that there may a need for a wide-ranging review of the organizational structure of the Intelligence Community. Media reports in early November 2001 indicated that a review of the Intelligence Community by an Administration panel, headed by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, would recommend transferring three major intelligence agencies to the direct control of the DCI and the separation of the DCI from day-to-day management of the CIA (Government Executive Magazine, 1 November 2001). The conferees on the FY 2002 intelligence authorization bill indicated their conclusion that todays intelligence structure is not suitable to address current and future challenges. (Best 2003: 5). The two intelligence committees at the conclusion of the Joint Inquiry into the 9 / 11 attacks recommended the creation of Cabinet-level intelligence position without managerial responsibilities for the CIA. A long-standing criticism of the Intelligence Community's int effort has been an imbalance between collection and analysis: that far more imagery is collected than can ever be evaluated with large quantities remaining on the cutting room floor. (Best 2003: 6) Intelligence budgets moreover reflect an emphasis on the procurement of collection systems with fewer resources allocated to processing and analysis.
Some also argue that priority is given to the concerns of operational military forces rather than to matters of interest to senior political leaders, e. g. , it has been alleged that in 1995 imagery analysts were concentrating on Serb air defenses to an extent that delayed finding evidence of mass grave sites of acute interest to the State Department. The House intelligence committee has concluded that, the emphasis on collection at the expense of downstream activities [i. e. , processing and analysis] permeates the [Intelligence Community] at all levels and in most collection disciplines. (Best 2003: 7). Some alternatives to current platforms and procedures may produce cost savings, but not a secret that they may be outweighed by increases found necessary in other areas.
Satellites will remain high-cost programs, greater numbers of UAV systems and human collectors will have to be supported and trained. It is expecting that intelligence activities will probably continue to absorb some 10 % of the defense budget in any given year. It is uncertain whether such percentages will be adequate to accommodate major changes in Nsa's operations, the acquisition of additional imagery platforms, and a reorganized human effort (Government Executive Magazine, 1 November 2001). Lawmakers have a sharp learning way when it comes to the secret, arcane $ 40 billion intelligence community, making the Congress work harder. With limitations of time on both intelligence committees, members have complexity building up knowledge and rely heavily on their professional staffers to prepare them for answering for their actions. The members don't even understand their own questions; it's obvious they " re being fed them from staff, says one higher-ranking intelligence official who has testified in committee sessions that are closed to the public.
We have to propose to them what questions to ask us its terrible. For their side, many on Capitol Hill protest that intelligence officials, whose nature is to provide as little information as necessary, can use their knowledge to intimidate members and redirect tough questions. (Kaplan, 2004: 3). For many intelligence officials, the committees failure to notice often slaps micromanagement. We were getting questions on $ 100, 000 line items in a budget of tens of billions, says James Simon, a former assistant director of central intelligence. No business operates that way. (Pennington, 2004: 14). There were a number of years indeed, some would suggest decades but a number of years in which defense spending in the United States country was going down, not up; where the intelligence community was delivering federal dollars to other programs and, in many cases, the defense became weaker, not stronger.
During that period of time of a number of years, also there was a radical decrease in funding for intelligence; at the very time when the commander in chiefs needed better and more information, rather than less information as defense was getting weaker, intelligence community was undermining that flow of information. We can particularly point to the 90 s and the Middle East, where the intelligence agencies went backwards instead of developing assets that were so critical. They have satellites; they have any number of other sources of information for intelligence base. But the human intelligence is most critical. (Ruffner, 2003: 29 - 34). Another problem is the availability of personnel trained in appropriate languages. Cold War efforts required a supply of linguists in a relatively finite number of foreign languages, but in recent years the Intelligence Community has needed experts in a wider range of more obscure languages and dialects.
Various approaches have been considered: use of civilian contract personnel, military reservists with language qualifications, and substantial bonuses for agency personnel who maintain their proficiency. The House Intelligence Committee has called for consideration of the establishment of a new Intelligence Community language training facility and for language proficiency requirements for intelligence analysts (Light, 2003: 71 - 72). Additionally, there is the need for close coordination among intelligence and law enforcement agencies in regard to narcotics intelligence. Some questions exist about the implications of the creation of this interagency structure for the DCIs statutory responsibilities for the national intelligence effort. Questions also remain concerning policy guidelines and procedures for the use of intelligence information for law enforcement purposes.
Concern has also been expressed about the role of U. S. intelligence agencies in support of counter-narcotics efforts in South America, with some observers expressing concern about the value of the contribution and others noting the danger of involving the U. S. in local insurrections fueled by drug money. Big attention have pointed to the dangers involved in U.
S. intelligence officials or contractors providing intelligence to foreign countries who use this data to attack suspicious civilian aircraft (Best 2003: 9). Cold War intelligence lived in a world where information was scarce; it relied on secrets not otherwise available. Its business was those secrets. Now, though, it faces an era of information. Information and its sources are mushrooming, and so are the technologies for moving information rapidly around the globe.
Given these circumstances, the business of intelligence is no longer just to provide secrets; rather, its business is to produce high-quality understanding of the world using all sources. The onset of an age of information has enabled dramatic changes that encompass the end of communism, the onset of the market state, with accompanying transformations in the roles of government and of private actors, the rise of emerging states, and the proliferation of non-state actors. Intelligence now has many targets, not one; many consumers, not just a few; and vast amounts of information that is to a great extent unreliable, not a scarcity of information that mainly comes from satellites or spies and is therefore regarded as accurate. Making conclusions from stated above it is getting obvious that changes in the nature of the world beyond U. S. borders, the focus of U.
S. intelligence agencies, have required a shift in the purposes and goals of the Intelligence Community. The persistent focus on Soviet submarines, missile silos, and conventional military capabilities; new threats include terrorism, transfers of weapons of mass destruction, and political, ethnic, and social upheavals in a variety of regions is gone. Gone also is the massive military infrastructure of the Soviet Union that could be observed by overhead imagery platforms. Intelligence agents must now be able to move beyond contacts with foreign government officials and tap into political sects and terrorist cells often having no perceptible infrastructure. The challenge now is to rebuild the U.
S. Intelligence Community to reflect this new world, especially human intelligence. Human intelligence is essential when are not governments located in massive buildings housing large bureaucracies, and enemies are groups of people living in scattered camps or houses around the world. The United States must recognize this new reality, reply effectively and constantly test and refine its worldview. Bibliography: Best, Richard, Jr. Intelligence Issues for Congress.
Congressional Research Service. The Library of Congress. October 6, 2003 Kaplan, D. Dont ask, Dont tell. U. S.
News & World Report; September 13, 2004 Light, J. From warfare to welfare: Defense intellectuals and the war on American city problems. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pennington, L.
Analysis: A Season of Fear. United Press International, September 9, 2003 Ruffner, T. Intelligence Community. Washington, D. C. : Center for the Study of Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency. 2003 Treverton, Gregory. Intelligence Crisis.
Government Executive Magazine, 1 November 2001. web Treverton, Gregory. Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information. Cambridge University Press. July 2001
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Research essay sample on September 11 2001 Number Of Years
