Gathered Intelligence Case Study

Congress has for a long time has tried in various ways to oversee the intelligence community which have shown to be sometime controversial, and a very difficult responsibility. What make this task so hard is the secrecy and sensitivity intelligence information finding, the sources, and the methods in which the information is obtain. Congressional oversight has evolved since the mid-1970s and a lot more since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The critics about Congressional oversight by some as being inadequate, ineffective, or worse, while at the same time proposal that was made in the 9/11 commission report was met with challenges from within the Legislature Branch and from the Executive Branch

Congress built upon the reforms of the 1970s by passing the Intelligence Oversight Act in 1980. This Act was an amendment to the Hughes-Ryan Act and obligated the IC to report covert actions to both the SSCI and the HPSCI prior to their implementation, unlike the ambiguous previous requirement of a timely manner. The Intelligence Oversight Act was noteworthy in that it constrained the intelligence community more than any previous legislation (Riley 2010). The two biggest shortfalls I see to the system is the number of contributors there are to the system on such a large scale. When I think about all of the redundancy built within the system, I think about all of the possible breakdown in communications that could take place. The second shortfall I see is the legislative leverage that is held over the Intelligence community. I personally believe this to be a mistake because this power could be held in a negative manner and to gain a political stance or agenda. The Congress can withhold money and resources, can leak information to the media and which could cause a mission or operation to

DNI Negroponte stated “The aim was to direct the required changes in intelligence practices but to accomplish that goal by empowering the intelligence agencies themselves to help lead the reform agenda.” Taking this approach Negroponte was able to mitigate the inherent weakness of his position by reaching out to the various agencies and getting them to advance his agenda. One of the ways he did this was by overhauling the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), the DNI “changed the process to ensure multiple intelligence agencies contributed to the PDB, which fostered collaboration, distributed the daily production burden, and encouraged agencies not accustomed to writing for the Oval Office to improve the quality of their product.” Moreover, Negroponte leveraged his direct access to the president in the PDB to continue to effect reform in the IC. “All of these meetings with the President reinforced and often drove the DNI’s intelligence reform

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “post 9/11 investigations proposed sweeping change in the Intelligence Community, resulting in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA). The IRTPA created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to oversee a 17-organization Intelligence Community (IC) and improve information sharing and ensure integration across the nation's IC.” The efforts of the ODNI and the IC to find and kill Usama bin Laden (UBL) following the events of 9/11 were more than sufficient in achieving their mission. It may have taken the IC 10 years of working together to successfully track down the location where UBL was hiding in Pakistan, but they did it and

Roles: Due to the ever changing environment in today’s world the role of intelligence has grown dramatically. Intelligence has become a very critical element in foreign and domestic policy matters dealing with terrorism matters. With the creation of the DHS after the unfortunate events of 9/11 the DHS intelligence arena has grown to more than 200 agencies and organizations. Some of the current roles in these organizations include the scrutinizing of terrorist group plans, proliferation of nuclear states, cyber threats, failing states, global warming, and the rationalization of the global economy. Also the FBI has the leading role of keeping the American soil as safe as possible dealing with home grown terrorism related issues. The FBI has

Understanding the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) priorities are necessary to recommend any initiatives that will have the most value to the intelligence community (IC). The DNI fully identifies to the IC what his mission, vision, and goals are. The DNI uses the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) to explain the objectives and the priorities for the IC. There are a few areas, which if made a priority would have a beneficial impact on the IC. These recommendations would not require a lot of resources. They include adapting one overall IC vision, enhancing current agency-to-agency communication, and furthering foreign relations within the IC.

The attack on the World Trade Center was not the first attack and was not the first time the US Intelligence Community had heard of Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. The role of counterintelligence from both sides the US and Al-Qaeda, lent to the information flow not only form the attackers but also to the ones who would ultimately respond. The FBI, the CIA, the DIA, have integral parts in these series of events from the information collection to the information flow. In a time where it was realized that Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism have a similar need, as well as information sharing across agencies, have led to the CI and IC we see today.

We deploy globally alongside war fighters and interagency partners to defend America’s national security interests.” [4] The Defense Intelligence Agency is always represented no matter where the military presence is located. They work side by side with military soldiers ensuring assisting with analysis and helping soldiers out in any way they are able to help out. The agency is often confused with law enforcement agencies, but they are not the only agencies this occurs too. Other foreign intelligence organizations have the same issue as well. The Department of Defense (DoD) who is over the Defense Intelligence Agency is in the public eye. Now that the public has much more awareness of their existence, the friction between the organizations is more prominently. “Defense Intelligence Agency is an all-source defense agency designed to prevent strategic surprise and deliver a decision advantage to war fighters, defense planners, and policymakers.” [5] The agency has multiple roles they are responsible for. Some of those roles include collection and analysis of defense-related foreign political, economic, industrial, geographic and medical and health intelligence. [6] Being able to be aggressive during the collection process and being analytically precise, it provides an advantage when making tough decisions for war fighters and the policymakers. This will allow the counter intelligence to be aggressive as well. By counter intelligence being aggressive policymakers along with the war fighters will be confident that the right decisions are being made on time and producing results. This is a critical part for the soldiers on the ground having to conduct these missions the Defense Intelligence Agency come up with and believe

This led to a lack of communication between these agencies as the federal government followed their intelligence sharing policies leaving everyone else on the outside looking in. On top of this, the different federal agencies never developed appropriate methods of sharing intelligence information amongst themselves. This provision of the Patriot Act has helped to change this problem, and has now opened lines of communication within the entire law enforcement community. This should result in better intelligence gathering as different law enforcement agencies may develop different pieces of the same puzzle and now can put them all

Dating back to the 1930’s and following the Great Depression, Americans witnessed exponential growth of Federal Government Agencies. Implementation of many of these agencies by President Roosevelt came as a sort of relief to citizens, seemingly. While a growing federal government stifles civil liberties, the constitutional responsibility of the government to provide national defense remains paramount. Governmental expenditures and advancements regarding our military are imperative in maintaining superiority internationally. With this in mind, we have the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Intelligence deals with the process in which specific types of information has been collected, analyzed, refined and provided to the policy makers, so that it will be useful to them in decisions making about potential threats to national security and homeland security (Lowenthal, 2014, p. 10). U.S Government has been benefiting from Intelligence information since the beginning of the country, despite the fact that many people thought that U.S intelligence emanated as a result of cold war (Federation of American Scientists, 1996). For instance, the Office of Naval Intelligence was created in March 1882 followed by the formation of the Military Intelligence Division three years later, charged to collect foreign and domestic military data (Federation of American Scientists, 1996). Other intelligence units in the early republic include the first U.S. Army signals intelligence ("MI-8) formed in 1917; the Justice Department 's Bureau of Investigation created in 1908.

Throughout the years, the intelligence community in the United States have worked diligently to provide a sense of security for the millions of Americans living in our great nation today. From the FBI to the CIA, these government agencies work around the clock to find and eliminate threats that maybe detrimental to our country. However, one event that took place 14 years ago reshaped not only the way Americans think of the intelligence community, it also reshaped the policies and procedures of institutions such as the CIA, FBI, DOD, etc. The event that caused the remodeling of our government agencies was the event that took place on September 11, 2001 or known throughout the U.S. as “9/11.” A total of 2,977 Americans lost their lives to a

After the horrific attacks of 9/11, the U.S. Government created the Department of Homeland Security, which then created over 220 different organizations and agencies to combat terrorism and collect intelligence. These agencies and organizations receive orders and directions from the National Intelligence Agency, and employees over 850,000 government employees with an approximate annual budget of $100 million. With a large annual budget and multiple employees working domestically and with foreign policy, the intelligence function has changed dramatically over the last decade and a half. Foreign governments have scrutinized the National Intelligence (NI) community for monitoring foreign militaries, and their government’s intentions

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); U.S. Secret Service (USSS); U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS); U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS); U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Inspector General (DOL-OIG); and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Criminal Division (Office of Public Affairs, 2009). The FBI and their partner agencies joined together in a task force setting to combine data gathered, and produce actionable intelligence leads for the end consumers to execute their mission objectives nationwide to combat international organized crime. Within the collaboration the coordination of the IOC-2 results in prosecutions and further multi-jurisdictional investigations. All in all the utilization of resources and intelligence gathered by the nine U.S. law enforcement agencies, as well as federal prosecutors, to collectively combat the threats posed by international criminal organizations to domestic safety and

A great emphasis has been placed on transforming the Intelligence Community (IC) since the catastrophic events of September 2001, as the tragedy highlighted the requirement for the collective organizations to transform in the face of emerging threats and to support new security agencies. A range of instruments such as the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA), the 9/11 Commission Report and multiple Executive Orders, directed the IC to become more collaborative. However, any organizational change has issues and the IC is no different in this respect. Two specific factors are key to successful intelligence collaboration. Firstly, the method in which information is shared across the community is of vital importance because each organization relies on discoverable and accessible information to complete their roles in national security. Secondly, relationships between agencies need to be nurtured to foster a cooperative rather than competitive environment because the information flow is promoted within an organization that is not restricted by vertical integration—that is, information can flow across departments at various levels rather than be