1. You asked yesterday for an analysis of the options presented for
discussion in Part III of the PRM 11.
We understand that you found the paper confusing and an unsatisfactory
basis for a discussion with the President on the issues raised.2 After carefully studying the paper, we
certainly agree that the treatment of the options is confusing and that
the paper itself could stand considerable improvement. From a tactical
standpoint, however, this paper, as it stands, may provide you with a
strong negotiating position. As you pointed out in our discussion, we
may be able to use selectively parts of this paper as takeoff points to
buttress your argument for line control options. When we finally
unravelled the intertwined options and tracked through the analytical
and descriptive sections, we realized that the paper contains
persuasive, if disjointed, logic for centralization and puts forth line
control options (5 and 6) that can be used as your “go for broke”
[Page 259]
position. From our
perspective, the obvious weaknesses of this paper play to our strength.
For example, in discussions with the President, Secretary Brown, and Dr. Brzezinski, you can be positive about
the logic for centralization and strongly support two of the options.
None of the other options make much sense to us. This tactic puts
Secretary Brown in the unenviable
position of either pushing for an unattractive option or embarrassing
Dr. Brzezinski by stating that
the paper poorly presents the options and is, therefore, an inadequate
basis for discussion. Neither of these approaches would seem to be very
promising avenues for Secretary Brown to select. The critique of the options in the
attached paper is designed to help you exploit the tactical opening
presented by PRM 11.
2. There are also important tactical considerations in deciding whether
your first choice is a variation of Option 5 or Option 6. Because
Options 5 and 6 are alike in giving to the DCI line control over the essential elements of the NFIP, a choice between them rests largely
on your choice of tactics. We can envision two scenarios. You could
press for Option 6 now, arguing the need for centralization and
functional realignment of the Community for all the reasons we have
discussed elsewhere. We believe it would be wiser, if you choose this
course, to state in broad terms the organizational objectives you will
seek to carry out as you proceed with the reorganization, rather than
describing a detailed organization at this time. This would maximize
your flexibility and make it more difficult for others to attack on
organizational details which should not be allowed to cloud the large
issues. Such objectives might include:
—The desirability of an integrated estimating and production organization
directly responsible to you.
—The desirability of placing collection programs under unitary management
with clear responsibility for maximizing the use of collection resources
to meet intelligence needs of national and military customers.
—The need to build procedural arrangements that guarantee that all
activities of intelligence are conducted in a legal and ethical
manner.
3. If you adopted this strategy and encountered major opposition to a
functional realignment, you could fall back to Option 5 and offer to
consider functional realignment at a more deliberate pace and with the
full participation of those who would be affected.
4. Alternatively, you could press now for line control without functional
realignment, reserving the right to consider that later. Under this
approach, a reasonable fall-back position is much harder to envision.
One approach would be to argue for line control over [2 lines not declassified] Your reasons for giving way on some
parts of the CCP might be that over the
long term you believe that effective unified
[Page 260]
central management of CIA, NSA, and the [less than 1 line not declassified] are more
critical to your ability to meet national intelligence needs than is
control over [less than 1 line not declassified]
and tactical COMINT collected by some CCP units. You also may want to consider giving DoD control over some clearly tactical
portions of the NRP. In any event, your
fall-back position, if you press first for Option 5, is less
satisfactory.
5. This memorandum and the attached paper represent a quick first cut on
a very complex problem with complicated organization and political
issues. We would like to meet briefly with you once you have had a
chance to read our paper. Our ability to provide you with useful staff
assistance would be improved by a few more sessions similar to the short
meeting in your office on Thursday morning.3
Attachment
Paper Prepared in the Central Intelligence
Agency5
Washington, undated
A PRELIMINARY CRITIQUE OF SECTION 3 OF PRM/NSC 11
The PRM sets forth a number of
objectives and principles designed to serve as benchmarks for
analyzing the desirability of various changes in the Intelligence
Community. This list is important because it gives purpose to the
discussion of options. Without it, we are confronted only with a
struggle for power and a mindless debate about abstract changes. The
list is summarized here, and we have attempted to use it as the
basis for our critique of the options which follow.
Objectives and Principles
—The Community must be structured and managed so as to provide
responsive intelligence support to the wide diversity of consuming
organizations at many levels.
—US intelligence must be responsive
in two senses. It must be relevant to the real needs of US decision makers. It must be
responsive to needs that the consumer does not yet fully appreciate,
not just for today’s problems, but for the future as well. It must
also be timely.
[Page 261]
—US intelligence must be accurate,
analytically penetrating, and sophisticated.
—Intelligence judgments must be candid and objective, unbiased by
policy preference.
—Its activities, particularly the most expensive activities of
intelligence collection and processing, must be managed in an
efficient or generally cost effective manner.
—Our intelligence system must be able to share data and judgment
within itself, and, on major issues, to collaborate in disciplined
agreement or disagreement.
—US intelligence must be capable of
supporting the conduct of war with the minimum of disruptive
transition.
—US intelligence must be organized to
minimize any potential of subverting constitutional principles and
basic individual rights. Its activities must be demonstrably
consistent with US legal and basic
political standards.
Weighing the eight basic options presented in the PRM against these objectives and
principles, we believe only Options 4, 5, and 6 merit serious
discussion. You will find a detailed analysis of these three options
and the variations on them in the narrative presented below. Our
analysis of Options 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8 is limited to the following
comments:
—Option 1 represents an attempt to improve marginally the status quo
by making somewhat more specific the rules under which the DCI influences resource allocation
decisions within the PRC or on his
own. Unfortunately, few specifics are presented which would explain
how precisely this would be done or how the DCI might use the prerogatives apparently provided to
meet his responsibilities. The basic problem is that language
changes in an Executive Order cannot modify existing statutory lines
of authority. While most of the proposed changes in the Executive
Order are sensible, we doubt they would have any significant impact
on your real ability to achieve the objectives and principles set
forth above.
—Option 2 calls for a further decentralization of the Intelligence
Community by increasing the current ability of department heads to
ignore selectively DCI (PRC I) priorities. It is clearly a
step backward to the pre-1973 era.
—Option 3 is beyond our comprehension. We do not understand what is
contemplated here.6 The
option would appear to scrap all of
[Page 262]
the efforts undertaken since 1973 to build
some centralized control over the Intelligence Community and take us
back to the basic relationship which obtained between DoD and CIA in the 1960s. Alternatively, if legislation to
implement this option is contemplated, the option appears to be
designed to give the DCI budgetary
authority over the Intelligence Community as in Option 4, but
apparently leaving departments free to reprogram funds into or out
of intelligence programs as desirable.
—Option 7 represents the DCI as the
“titular” head of the Intelligence Community. It removes his line
control over CIA, including
intelligence production components, and gives all resource
management authority to the Secretary of Defense. The DCI is left with the responsibility
for setting requirements and priorities and production of national
intelligence. Essentially the DCI
becomes an intelligence staff aide to the Secretary of Defense.7
—Option 8, which places the DCI in a
subordinate line position to the Secretary of Defense but in charge
of the four national intelligence elements of the NFIP with all the powers outlined in
Option 5, is at least organizationally workable because one manager
would control the majority of Intelligence Community assets. This
option has only one major flaw, but we believe it is fatal. Even an
exceptionally strong DCI would not
be able to keep the Intelligence Community from increasingly coming
under the influence of DoD
requirements and Departmental policy influence. We doubt that
intelligence judgments and estimates could remain free of
departmental policy influence regardless of the best intentions of
all involved.
Options 4, 5, and 6 deserve more detailed analysis. As noted in the
PRM, these options scrap the
present DCI-White House-DoD-State collegial PRC (I) system entirely. They
represent basic structural changes to the Intelligence Community by
changing degrees of line, resource, management, and tasking
authorities. As noted in the PRM,
“This course is appropriate if one assumes:”
“—Greater centralization of authority and responsibility over the
diverse elements of the Intelligence Community is required.”
“—That setting forth various means for accomplishing increased
centralization while retaining mandatory and responsive service to a
broad range of consumers is needed.”
“—The present authority of the DCI
is inadequate for the responsibilities
assigned.”
[Page 263]
“—The DCI’s current control of
CIA and of the national tasking
mechanism and chairmanship of the collegial resource allocation
structure are judged to fail to provide the necessary responsiveness
from the Intelligence Community to his direction.”
“There is a . . . consensus that the potential resource savings to be
achieved by creating a single comprehensive national intelligence
analysis center serving all consumers is more than offset by the
inherent danger that differing judgments and perspectives would be
suppressed and denied to the users of intelligence. For that reason
none of the suggested options include centralization or other
significant intrusion on the continued existence of viable
competitive centers of analysis.” (Comment: We understand “viable
competitive centers of analysis” to be synonymous with departmental
intelligence units such as State and DIA.)
Option 4
Option 4 provides “full” DCI
authority over resource allocation to national intelligence
entities. He is specifically given the authority to select the
elements to be included in the NFIP (subject to departmental appeal to the NSC) and to review, amend or veto
expenditures he finds inappropriate or unresponsive to his needs. He
is given authority to set all collection and production priorities
and to task collection systems (though because he lacks line
control, he cannot ensure compliance with his requests). He no
longer shares resource allocation authority with the PRC, and the NFIP budget which he recommends is “fenced,” that is,
other program managers cannot add to or reduce funds made available
to the NFIP without DCI approval.
The PRM is rather vague on how
precisely these powers are to be conveyed to the DCI, though it seems to conclude that
new legislation would be required.
The “full” DCI authority over
resource allocation called for in Option 4 is not specified in
sufficient detail to clarify precisely what the DCI’s authorities would be or how
exactly he would exercise them. The intent, however, appears to be
to give him the authority to supervise an effective budget process,
to ask for and receive necessary information from the various
Community components and to prepare an integrated request to OMB and the President. Much less clear
is the DCI’s responsibility to
defend the budget before Congress, and even less clear or perhaps
nonexistent is his responsibility to ensure effective and legal
execution of the budget once appropriations have been approved by
Congress.
Our experience with the budgetary influence the DCI is able to exert over the
Intelligence Community through the mechanism of the PRC suggests that the purse string can
be used effectively generally
[Page 264]
to influence or to coordinate national
programs over a two- or three-year period of time. By themselves,
however, budgetary powers are not sufficient to carry out all the
basic responsibilities. The budgetary process can be used more
effectively negatively than it can positively. With this power the
DCI can exercise a slow veto
over programs he wishes to terminate but it is difficult to exercise
bold initiatives or to explore new and imaginative programs solely
through the control of funds in a long budget cycle.
Option 4 is unclear as to whether funds for programs recommended by
the DCI would be appropriated to
him for further allocation to the various members of the Community,
or whether his role essentially ends after the review of the program
leading up to Presidential [decision. There] is precedence for such
an arrangement. The so-called poverty program established in the
Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in the early 1960s in fact was designed to function in
this manner. The basic concept was that funds would be appropriated
to the Director of OEO but that the
responsibility for actually conducting programs would generally be
delegated to other existing departments of the Government. The
Director OEO would shape the budget
in accordance with his priorities, defend it before Congress, but
leave the day-to-day management of, for example, manpower training
programs, to someone else, in this case the Secretary of Labor. By
the late 1960s when OEO’s
appropriation was about $2 billion, about $1 billion was
appropriated to the Director of OEO
but transferred thereafter by him to the Secretary of Labor for the
conduct of manpower programs. The idea had appeal but in fact was
largely judged a failure. The Secretary of Labor had vastly more
influence over the budget which legally was to be prepared by the
Director OEO than one would have
thought, given the original concept established in law. We doubt
that were the DCI to have a similar
responsibility with respect to NSA,
[less than 1 line not declassified] today
the situation would be much different. Because the Secretary of
Labor directly operated the manpower programs and had much
experience with them, because he had good Congressional contacts,
because both OMB and the White
House turned to the Secretary of Labor instead of the Director
OEO for advice, OEO often found itself rubber stamping
what the Secretary of Labor had already agreed to do with others. In
fact OEO was never able to get the
Labor Department to concentrate on the activities it thought were
important in the manpower program area. Doubtless there have been
other analogous approaches to this problem in previous times
although we are not aware of any of significant size. In this
particular case, after a fair amount of backbiting between OEO and the Department of Labor and a
growing recognition by everyone that little was gained by
appropriating the money to OEO, a
decision was eventually made to appropriate
[Page 265]
the funds for these programs directly to the
Department of Labor. No one knew the difference.
Options 4A through 4E are responsive to basic
arguments that a serious conflict of interest is created if the
DCI is endowed with authority
over Community resources as specified above but simultaneously
maintains line authority over CIA.
Option 4A would attempt to ease this conflict
of interest by creating a new Director/CIA who would however report to the DCI. Although this would have some
cosmetic effect, it is unclear how exactly this resolves the
conflict of interest, since the arrangement is little different in
substance from that which exists today.
Options 4B, 4C, and 4D would have the
Director/CIA report to the
NSC, the Secretary of State, or
the Secretary of Defense, respectively, instead of the DCI. In creating a Director/CIA who would report to the DCI on budgetary issues and to the
NSC on other questions, the
DCI’s ability to command an
effective production process is greatly weakened. The Director of
CIA, like the [1 line not declassified] Director, NSA, would report to one boss for
policy and operational matters and to a second boss on resource
issues. Options 4C and 4D suffer from these same defects and in
addition, produce a situation in which the policy or operational
needs of the Department of State or Defense could fundamentally
alter the objectivity of the intelligence products prepared by the
Director/CIA who would report
to the Secretary of State or Defense. In short, we find Options 4B,
4C, and 4D totally unworkable.
Option 4E would disband CIA, adding CIA’s analytical element (DDI) to the DCI’s
immediate organization and spinning off other CIA functions to other departments
(unspecified, but probably Defense and/or State). This option at
least has the virtue of giving the DCI a capability to carry out his most fundamental
production responsibilities but would further weaken his already
tenuous ability to direct collection systems in support of his
substantive production needs, although it is true that his expanded
role with respect to the budget would offset this loss to some
degree. However, it seems inevitable that the CIA components transferred to other
Departments would eventually be recast to meet the intelligence
needs of those organizations, rather than those of the DCI, and the DCI’s budgetary authorities would not appear adequate
to prevent this from occurring.
Option 5
Option 5 would give to the DCI line
authority (which includes full and unambiguous resource authority)
over four national intelligence programs—CIA, NSA, [less than 1 line not declassified] The option
apparently contemplates that the four national intelligence programs
would
[Page 266]
retain their present
organizational integrity. Because a DCI who managed these four entities, however, would
relatively quickly discover ways to improve the organizational
structure resulting from this consolidation, we believe it is only a
question of time before Option 5 would be reconfigured to look
something like Option 6 discussed below. Giving the DCI line control over these four
entities would:
—Guarantee central, unitary control over the principal elements of
the national intelligence community, which means that one individual
would be responsible for the effective performance of most of the
community and would have effective authority to ensure the overall
quality of the effort.
—Make one individual responsible for the legality and propriety of
most national intelligence activities.
—Create the potential for resource savings through DCI total responsibility, resource and
line, over national systems.
As noted in the PRM, problem areas
introduced by this option include:
—How the unity of the existing US
SIGINT system could be
maintained (assuming that the Service Cryptologic agencies which
collect cryptologic information and feed it to NSA for processing remain in
Defense).
—How sufficient responsiveness could be assured in crisis and war to
the command responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense and the
field commanders, given the fact that national collection assets are
essential to the conduct of military operations, and their
effectiveness in combat support is proportional to the extent they
are integrated into the military command and control system at all
echelons; and
—How the national assets themselves, which are critically dependent
on Defense-operated support activities, could be effectively related
to those support activities within Defense.
Option 5A would establish a Director/CIA who would be responsive in a line
command sense to the DCI, as would
the Director, NSA, and the heads of
[less than 1 line not declassified] This
seems sensible, indeed obvious, if further consolidation and
realignment along functional lines as specified in Option 6 is not contemplated. Because we believe,
however, that some realignment of these functions would be
desirable—if not now, certainly in the future—this step would seem
an unwise and unnecessary limitation on the DCI’s authority to design an adequate overall
organizational structure for the future, particularly since doing it
would require changing present statute.
Options 5B, 5C, and 5D, which would
apparently give line control over CIA to the NSC, the
Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense, respectively, while
leaving the DCI in command of [less than 1 line
[Page 267]
not declassified] NSA programs. These variations seem
conceptually inconsistent with the thrust of the basic Option 5.
They would deny the DCI direct
control over the existing CIA
production capability in the DDI,
and force him to develop a duplicative production organization in
order to carry out his most fundamental responsibility—advising the
President on foreign developments of interest. As in Options 4C and
4D, it seems likely that CIA’s
present focus on national problems would be subsumed to departmental
concerns if the Agency were transferred to either State or Defense.
We find these options utterly without merit from any reasonable
point of view.
Option 5E would disband CIA, moving the analytical components
(the DDI) to the DCI’s immediate organization, and
moving other CIA elements to other
unspecified organizations. If these “other” unspecified
organizations are under the DCI’s
line control, Option 5E is really Option 6. If they are not, the
same problems outlined for Options 5B through 5D apply. We see no
point to this option at all; indeed, as written, it does not make
logical sense.
Option 6
Option 6 is identical to Option 5 in that it would give the DCI (renamed the DFI) line control over the four
national programs but differs from Option 5 in emphasizing
management along functional lines.
Option 6A would provide for a DFI, assisted by three Deputies (for
National Intelligence Production, Resource Allocation, and
Collection), who would in the words of the PRM:
“—Task, allocate resources, and operate an Intelligence Analysis and
Production Agency (NIPA) composed
of present NIOs and CIADDI; a Clandestine Services
Collection/Operations Agency (CIA)
composed of present CIADDO and
supporting elements of DDS&T; a unified SIGINT Collection Agency (present
NSA); an Intelligence Space
Support Systems Agency (ISSS)
(composed [2½ lines not declassified]”
“—Retain resource allocation and tasking authority over DoD intelligence elements identified
as part of the NFIP and review
other intelligence elements.” (Comment: This point is oddly phrased.
If the DFI has line control over
the [less than 1 line not declassified]
NSA programs, they become his intelligence elements, not DoD’s, though they would probably
continue to be physically housed in Defense, at least for now.)
“—Be responsive to Secretary of Defense needs for timely support from
all his elements in crisis and war.” (Comment: How?)
This option places greater emphasis on management by functional
lines, stressing continued diversity in analysis by maintaining
separate centers while concentrating on reducing redundancy in
collection programs. The PRM notes
that the ability of the staff supporting the DCI
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would be critical in
ensuring that this greatly centralized structure was properly
responsive to the needs of the departments.
Option 6B is identical except that additional
DoD elements beyond NSA, [less than 1
line not declassified] would be selectively integrated
under DFI control. “In addition to
those elements assigned in Option 6A, those elements remaining in
DoD which substantially
contribute to National Intelligence collection would be integrated
into DFI agencies. NIPA would still consist of NIOs and CIADDI, and provide a national intelligence data base
accessible to all consumers. Army and Air Force HUMINT activity would be integrated
with CIA. Secretary of Defense
would manage the Defense Attache System IAW
DFI directives.”
