It was an interesting week for intelligence issues. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the unclassified version of their report on the attempted Christmas day terrorist attack (http://intelligence.senate.gov/100518/1225report.pdf) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Dennis Blair, stepped down from the post amidst reports he had lost the confidence of President Obama. I’m stating the obvious but the fact his departure coincided with the release of findings of the Senate Committee was probably no coincidence. The unclassified report stated “there were systemic failures across the Intelligence Community (IC), which contributed to the failure to identify the threat posed by Abdulmutallab (Christmas Day Bomber).
ABC news first broke the story stating the Fort Hood, Christmas Day Bomber, and Times Square incidents were a factor “but the ultimate reason Blair is gone is because of the dissatisfaction President Obama and the National Security Staff had with Blair’s ability to share intelligence in a tight, coherent and timely way.” Apparently the President and the staff didn’t like his briefing style because his presentations “weren’t crisp or well-presented.” If that was really the underlying problem, it would have been easy to fix, simply find someone else on DNI staff to give the daily brief. Any intelligence professional who has had to give briefings will tell you one of the biggest challenges is determining how a decision maker likes to have his information presented. It sounds like a small thing but if you can do it successfully it goes a long way towards establishing your credibility. If a decision maker does not like the way you present information to them, you risk being considered irrelevant and will probably be fired at some point.
I believe the real cause of Mr. Blair’s departure was organizational politics coupled with a lack of understanding by many government officials of how the intelligence community operates and knowledge of what intelligence can and cannot do for you. First off, as currently structured, the DNI has the title of head of the IC but does not have the official authority to make it work or as some would say knock heads together if necessary to get all the organizations to play well with each other. In spite of the impression given in the media, there is actually a great deal of collaboration among the IC but there are turf battles that pop up from time to time and the DNI needs the authority to be the final say in solving these issues.
The following job description is taken straight from the official DNI web site: “The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) serves as the head of the Intelligence Community (IC), overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security. Working together with the Principal Deputy DNI (PDDNI) and with the assistance of Mission Managers and four Deputy Directors, the Office of the DNI’s goal is to effectively integrate foreign, military and domestic intelligence in defense of the homeland and of United States interests abroad.”
Of note, it is widely agreed among those familiar with how intelligence works, that the DNI is given the title but not the authority to actually make this work. In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee last week (http://homeland.house.gov/SiteDocuments/20100519102120-36576.pdf), the former co-chairs for the 9-11 Commission, former congressman Lee Hamilton and former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean stated: “the DNI (position) has achieved a meaningful measure of success in its first years…Nonetheless, there are still ambiguities that can contribute to mission confusion and lack of clarity about lanes in the road. This is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the DNI. Is the DNI a strong leader of the intelligence community (IC) empowered to lead the IC as an enterprise? Or is the DNI a mere coordinator, a convening authority charged with helping facilitate common inter-intelligence agency agreement?…The burden is on the President to clarify who is in charge of the Intelligence Community and where final authority lies on budget, personnel, and other matters.”
They went on to state in their view the “DNI must be the person who drives inter-agency coordination and integration.” They stopped short of recommending official changes many intelligence professionals believe are needed such as control over the intelligence budget and assignment of personnel, to ensure the DNI could actually carry out that part of his job. There lies the problem of relying on people for key judgments whose experience with the workings of the intelligence community is from the outside looking in. You can interview intelligence personnel and receive countless power point briefings but only if you approach the problem with knowledge gleaned from the inside can you truly gain an appreciation for the issues involved and possible solutions.
I’ve blogged before about my view that government officials need to visit various intelligence agencies and spend time sitting beside intelligence analysts observing how they actually do their job versus getting VIP tours and power point presentations. I mentioned in a Blog a few months ago that as far as I was able to determine, every President has visited the CIA but none has ever visited any of the intelligence agencies within the Department of Defense where 85% of the intelligence community works. I hope this situation has changed in recent weeks but still ask how you can fix what you don’t fully understand.
Case in point was the situation a few months ago when the White House sided with the CIA over the DNI in the controversy over appointing senior intelligence officials at overseas posts. By siding with a DNI “subordinate”, the White House was empowering the CIA as well as any of the other 15 intelligence agencies to go around or ignore the DNI if he makes a decision they don’t agree with. The “so what” factor is one of his primary tasks is the need to create a job structure that allows the DNI to be able to solve “turf” issues such as information sharing and developing interoperable intelligence data bases. That’s a difficult task if those who would prefer to maintain the status quo know they don’t have to cooperate with you. The challenge then not just for the DNI but for many other intelligence professionals is how do you perform your primary mission of giving the decision maker the information he or she needs in the time and format they require to make critical national security decisions when the intelligence architecture in place is insufficient for the task?
I’ll talk more on this and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence findings in my next blog. Again as always my views are my own.
