Intelligence Reform

The US Intelligence Community is currently undergoing various reforms in the wake of events of September 11 2001, and issues of poor intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war. These reforms include a new Intelligence Director to oversee all the agencies that make up the US intelligence community, but little real change to the existing structures.

Currently there are 15 agencies, services, organizations, or bureaus that make up the US Intelligence Community. That's right, 15! People usually think of the CIA, the FBI, and maybe the NSA, but you should not forget the likes of Coast Guard Intelligence, Department of Energy, Department of State, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Veteran CIA analysts, resigning in disgust, are already complaining of the excessive layers of bureaucracy just within their own agency. Adding another bureaucratic layer on top of all of that in the hopes of claiming "unity" represents little more than a cosmetic solution.

What structure should the US Intelligence Community take? Ideally there would be only three clearly delineated agencies: Domestic Intelligence, Foreign Intelligence, and Military Intelligence. Open channels of communication between these should exist to not only assist information sharing, but also to avoid toe-stepping as much as possible.

Why only three agencies, and why those divisions? Generally speaking it is best to centralize intelligence collection and analysis as much as possible. Centralizing intelligence aids information sharing, and aids understanding of the broader picture, particularly at the analysis level. Some level of division will still be necessary however. Intelligence agencies require specific government approval to carry out what they do, as many of their activities would be otherwise illegal. Ideally you want to give your collection people as free a hand as possible; However, you also want to protect your own citizens' privacy where possible. It is logical, then, to have at least two agencies: One dealing solely with foreign intelligence, and barred from dealing in any intelligence collected from US citizens; A second that is solely for domestic intelligence, and given a far stricter mandate. It is also wise to disassociate general intelligence (both domestic and foreign) from military intelligence. Collecting and analysing intelligence for active battlefield operations is clearly a very different job than most intelligence collection and analysis. More importantly, however, it makes very good sense to divorce those collecting and analysing the intelligence that may precipitate military actions from those responsible for prosecuting those military actions: both from the view of democratic oversight, and real or perceived bias in analysis of intelligence. Ideally an intelligence agency should simply and impartially collect, analyse and report intelligence, leaving policy creation and application up to those democratically elected to do so. The only reasonable exception is the application of wartime intelligence on the battlefield.

The key points here are: As few divisions as possible; Where divisions are necessary, they should be clear, and have as little potential overlap (and hence duplication of effort) as possible; Wherever possible intelligence analysis and reporting should be separated from military (or related) operations based on that analysis.

How does the current US system compare to our theoretical system? It is not even close. There are 15 different agencies with a huge range of overlap and duplicated effort. Worse still, there are new secret agencies being set up to run in parallel to and circumvent the existing agencies. From the standpoint of separation from the military, the NSA is part of the Department of Defense, and the CIA, while technically independent, is closely tied to the DoD. Worse: the CIA is responsible both for general intelligence, and for active (non-intelligence) operations.

Can recent intelligence failures be, at least in some way, attributed directly to these problems? Yes. Take Iraq. There were two significant issues on that one. First was that Donald Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence collection and analysis group specifically for Iraq, creating needless overlap and confusion on top of what already existed (Myth #4). Secondly we have the fact that the CIA is intimately tied with defense and the military (even carrying out their own operations). It was in the CIA interests to find evidence to support war. Of course analysts are supposed to be objective, and most probably are, but in the end being part of defense must influence the culture at the agency: it will effect the way people think, and the things they look for. How about 9/11? Well, that's much less of an intelligence failure, in the sense that seeing such things coming, managing to spot some particular pattern amongst the noise (or, amongst the million other possible patterns) is hard. Still, the issue there was largely to do with intelligence sharing, and the fact that there were several small intelligence agencies beholden to their own little government department that had useful information, but no concept of the big picture. As long as there are not clean and obvious divisions between agencies, along with clear channels of access (allowing information to be centralised at the agencies) the issue of everyone wanting their own agency is going to occur.

So what should be done to remedy US intelligence woes? A complete gutting of the current structure to set up something along the lines outlined above. Ask anyone who actually specialises in intelligence what the ideal would be and they'll tell you much the same. The current system is old, and layered with cruft and excessive bureaucracy. Adding new layers of cruft and bureaucracy to patch perceived holes is not going to fix it.