73. Memorandum From the National Intelligence Officers to Director of Central Intelligence Bush 1

SUBJECT

  • A DCI-Oriented Approach to National Production

1. Much of the discussion of the future of the national intelligence production system has been framed in terms of concerns over the purity of the chain-of-command, the centrality of the CIA, and other narrow structural issues.2 Such an approach does not focus on the real question of how a national intelligence production system can best be fashioned to serve the DCI’s basic objectives.

2. The signals from the Executive, the Congress, and the informed public are strong and congruent: they point to a mandate for the DCI to lead, manage, and exercise resource authority over the entire Intelligence Community. Central to such responsibilities is his cognizance and command of the national intelligence production process. The [Page 242] product of that process is the Community’s principal reason for existence and the requirements of that product should drive both management and resource decisions. The focus of the DCI’s decisions, in other words, ought to be on the product as much as on the process.

3. By what criteria will the adequacy of product and process—and, hence, the effectiveness of the Intelligence Community’s performance under the DCI’s leadership—be judged?

—The product will clearly be assessed in terms of its analytic quality, timeliness and objectivity—and hence its usefulness to the national decision level.

—The process will be evaluated in terms of the perceived impartiality, equity, and even-handedness of the arrangements under which the Community elements participate in what is truly a common endeavor—and hence their willingness to accept and respond to central leadership.

The current debate does not focus clearly on these two fundamental DCI objectives of assuring a high-quality analytic product and creating a process that will elicit willing cooperation rather than active or passive resistance from the Community.

4. If these DCI objectives are taken as a point of departure, what should a national analytic and estimative intelligence production process seek to accomplish? Five key functions stand out:

—Management of an analytic and estimative system that will assure relevance, responsiveness, effective Community participation, and fair reflection of uncertainties and judgmental differences—including differences between government departments or Intelligence Community components and, sometimes, significant differences of informed opinion within departments or Community components.

—Development of improved analytic capabilities throughout the Community, especially with longer-term needs in view.

—Nurturing of the intelligence production base of CIA as a service of common concern for the whole Community (and the nation) and a recognized source of impartial analysis (i.e., no departmental policy or budgetary axes to grind).

—Interaction between producers and consumers to enhance policy relevance of the analytic product.

—Provision of sharply focused guidance to the whole range of collection systems, based on awareness of critical gaps and producer and consumer needs.

5. What institutional arrangement is best designed to perform these functions? It is our view that the existing NIO system, while far from perfect, can provide the basis of a production mechanism able to perform this particular mix of activities.

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—Being responsible directly to the DCI and operating under his authority, the NIOs are optimally positioned to cut across organizational barriers to focus Agency-wide and Community resources on production tasks; they also serve the DCI as his own substantive analytic advisory staff, viewing his needs and problems from his perspective.

—Their expertise and analytic bent, unfettered by line responsibilities, sensitizes the NIOs to the system’s critical dependence on human talents—they are able to alert the DCI to key needs for qualitative improvements and to energize the Community in anticipation of policy needs. Furthermore, since they work directly for the DCI, their discharge of these tasks can be free of concern for institutional equities or institutional positions.

—Their heavy dependence on CIA as a main repository of the Community’s analytic resources makes the NIOs strongly protective and promotional of CIA’s needs and problems. The NIOCIA relationship should be mutually supportive; in fact, symbiotic. It is not, in any way, an adversary relationship or zero-sum game.

—Being in continuous close contact with both producers and consumers under the DCI’s mandate, the NIOs are well equipped to strengthen the vital interaction between intelligence and the policymaker.

—Because of their knowledge of the value of the various collection systems to the national intelligence product, and the gaps in that product which specific collectors can fill, the NIOs can add a critical substantive dimension to the DCI’s resource allocation decisions.

6. The NIOs’ ability to perform these functions does not appear to be basically in question. The debate seems to turn more on what are perceived as inherent weaknesses in the NIO system, or tensions inevitably created by its operation. A degree of tension is probably unavoidable in any event in so complex a structure, and may in fact be desirable in the interest of creativity. The larger an organization or conglomerate—such as the Intelligence Community—the more obvious is the need for order. But if order is made the chief desideratum, it crowds out innovation and flexibility. Routine becomes an enemy of quality. Moreover, what are perceived as weaknesses and some of the tensions can be readily alleviated by certain changes in the present structure and procedures.

7. What are the weaknesses and tensions and how might they be alleviated?

—The NIOs are criticized for undercutting and running athwart lines of command by commandeering analytic talent at subordinate levels. Our impression is that such instances are an exception rather than the rule. While NIOs do organize activities across the vertically structured intelligence organizations, they are under standing instruc[Page 244]tions to pass their tasking through normal command channels. Nevertheless, some line managers feel that they do not always share equitably in responsibility for projects conducted under NIO auspices. The following guidelines—which tighten what are supposed to be current procedures—would do much to alleviate this problem.

NIOs should make a point of levying tasks through the chain of command in order to minimize any element of interference with the management of production elements of the Community. All line managers should understand that this is the way things are supposed to be done and should be encouraged to raise objections with the NIO in question, with the D/DCI/NIO, or—in extreme cases—with the DCI if this rule is not followed.

NIOs, line managers, standing NFIB committees, and ad hoc working groups should all be responsible for assuring time for adequate review of projects conducted under NIO auspices.

—Line managers should not consider themselves to be relieved for their responsibility for the quality and timeliness of projects undertaken under NIO auspices; but should realize that they are given maximum opportunity to raise their institutional viewpoints, criticisms, suggestions for improvement, etc., during the Community-wide coordination phase of the production process rather than in initial drafting phase carried out under NIO supervision.

—What are frequently perceived as unscheduled NIO production demands are often resented by line elements of the Community, whose scheduled production may be disrupted. The NIOs, however, do not invent these demands. The demands are imposed by urgent consumer needs. It is a virtue of the NIO system that it provides a flexible means of receiving these demands and spreading the resulting work throughout the Community.

—Nevertheless, there is doubtless room for improvement in meshing major requirements with the ongoing work of the Community. One way to do so would be to make greater use of steering groups consisting of appropriate production managers from CIA, DIA, and INR, to consider major interagency projects, advise on their priority, and make recommendations as to the distribution of the analytic and drafting work. (Exceptions would be necessary for obviously high-priority crash projects.) This would allow production managers more voice in projects that involve use of their resources.

—The quality of Estimates, it is alleged, could be improved through a collegial review process.3

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—A review process could indeed prove useful, especially at the time an initial draft is completed, before it is circulated throughout the Community for coordination. (Review at the end of the production cycle, i.e., when a coordinated paper is ready for submission to the NFIB, would be much more cumbersome and do less to improve quality.)

—The current lack of formal collegial review within the NIO system is in part a function of the heavy present workload for most NIOs. This workload could be eased by a combination of measures tailored to the special needs of individual NIOs—some internal reallocation of tasks, some addition of assistants, some modest staff or drafting support—which would free NIO time for collegial review.

—Such review would be most helpful in the case of the broader military-political-economic Estimates—those which cut across geographic or functional lines or involve new and unfamiliar problems and hypotheses going beyond the conventional wisdom.

—Reviews of such Estimates could be further enhanced by the establishment of an external critique and review panel composed of several dozen broad-gauge specialists enlisted from the governmental, academic, business and journalistic communities. The panel could be drawn upon selectively (two or three for each paper) for participation in particular NIO collegial reviews. This would be a cost-effective way of providing a useful scholarly refereeing and advisory service and of offering some public assurance of impartiality. It would certainly be preferable to any attempt to superimpose a permanent additional coordinating body or board upon the system.

8. In sum, we believe that the NIO system, as originally conceived in Bill Colby’s charter of October, 1973 (a copy of which is attached),4 and with the kinds of modifications suggested above, will come closer to realizing the DCI’s key objectives—a high quality product and an equitable process—than any alternative solution so far proposed.

  1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, OPI 10, Executive Registry, Job 79M00467A, Box 13, Reorganization of IC 010476–300476. Confidential.
  2. On April 14, Lehman sent Bush a paper discussing options for adapting the national intelligence production system following the issuance of Executive Order 11905 (Document 70). While confirming the DCI’s authority over national production, the Executive order, according to Lehman, generated two new problems. First, no central management system existed for the Intelligence Community staff to support the newly-created CFI in its role as the central resource authority for the Community. Second, Lehman argued, the Executive order “institutionalized” the “trend over recent years toward a greater separation of the DCI in his Community role from the Central Intelligence Agency” causing “morale problems in the CIA, which sees itself as ousted from its ‘central role.’” (Central Intelligence Agency, OPI 10, Executive Registry, Job 79M00467A, Box 13, Reorganization of IC 010476–300476)
  3. There was already an experiment in competitive analysis of Soviet strategic forces between CIA analysts, known as “Team A,” and a group of civilian and military experts, known as “Team B.” Documentation on the Team A/Team B project is in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXXV, National Security Policy, 1973–1976, Documents 155, 159, 170, and 171.
  4. Printed as Document 11.