The Position Of Director Of National Intelligence

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one, centralized agency, securing the homeland involves the cooperation and collaboration of many, different agencies and organizations ranging from local law enforcement to national agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Each of these agencies contributes to the development of homeland security intelligence. By carefully analyzing and commenting on the objectives, tasks, strengths, weaknesses, and roles of each agency, a larger picture emerges regarding the capabilities and limitation of intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts.

In 1974 when President Truman signed the National Security Act, which recognized the intelligence community and required congress be “fully informed”. In 1956 President D. Eisenhower establishes the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to counsel the White House on the quality and adequacy of intelligence. 1976 President Ford establishes the Intelligence Oversight Board to advise the President of the legality of intelligence activities. 1977 The House of Representatives establishes the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was not intel 1991 that congress passed the Intelligence Authorization Act, requiring the President to inform congress in writing of all covert actions undertaken by the CIA. Then the attacks of 9/11 happened and in July 2004 the 9/11 Commission released a public report of approximately 40 suggested reforms, several of which were to improve Congressional oversight of intelligence activities. The committee also stated that congress was most responsible and their dysfunctional oversight of intelligence was always dependent on newspaper headlines. This leads to January 2007 when the House responds to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations by establishing the House Appropriations Select Intelligence Oversight

Question #1 – Describe two process differences between the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). Which budget funds the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP)? Briefly describe the DNI’s budget “hammer” over the IC.

The position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA). The position of DNI replaced the Director of the Central Intelligence (DCI) as the senior intelligence official, head of the intelligence community’s 16 agencies, and principal intelligence advisor to the President of the United States (POTUS) and the National Security Council (NSC). The IRTPA of 2004, also established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as an independent agency to assist the DNI. The ODNI 's goal is to effectively integrate foreign, military and domestic intelligence in defense of the homeland and of United States interests abroad.

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

national information power, that is to say today’s strategic intelligence is the foundation for strategic

Perhaps the most important change in how the federal government was reorganized after September 11th is the creation of both the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2004 with the passage of the same IRTPA that created TSA. This concept had been first suggested in 1955 after a study by Congress then and was recommended time and again but only became a reality after the September 11th attacks drove the need for major intelligence reform home and the 9/11 Commission continued the push for the creation of such a position (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-5). As one can see from the mission and vision of the ODNI, the importance cannot be overstated. The mission includes leading intelligence integration while having the IC produce the most insightful intelligence products possible and the vision is fully integrating the IC thus making the nation more secure (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-2).

Since 9/11, the intelligence community has improved greatly. It is not that they have been reconstructed from the ground up, or that their mission has completely changed, it is, in the community’s eye anyway, that they now all share information, no matter how important or how small. This information sharing now even includes all the way down to local and tribal authorities. The reasoning is that, even if it might be small or seem insignificant to you at your level, it may be the piece someone somewhere else in the country needs.

Upon analyzing 9/11 it was clear to focus on the limitations that the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency had faced. Security breaches and poor intelligence sharing were just some of the critical failures that were encountered. Moreover, the main focus is pointed towards the miscommunication between these two agencies. Evidently, the execution and tactical strategies went unnoticed despite the apparent red flags that presented themselves, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency failure to pursue threats and establish a baseline of security resulted in the disaster of 9/11. In conjunction to these mistakes, the restriction of shared information

The 9/11 commission clearly identified a problem with communication between the Intelligence Community and State and Local Law Enforcement which resulted in a new edict (from the IRTPA) of Information Sharing yet clearance levels and accesses quickly became an issue in disseminating information to those with a need to know. To help bridge this gap, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed to crate the DHS by bringing 22 under its umbrella with a primary mission of protecting the homeland from terrorism (Blum, 2010). To do so, DHS’s key mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate key/related information and share it with the IC and nontraditional partners (state/local governments as well as the private sector) (Blum, 2010). Likewise,

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 (ODNI), the DNI’s duties consist of establishing objectives and priorities for collection, analysis, production, and dissemination of national intelligence; Ensuring maximum availability of and access to intelligence information with the IC; Overseeing coordination of relationships with the intelligence and security services of foreign governments as well as international organizations; Ensuring the most accurate analysis of intelligence is derived from all sources to support national security needs; Developing personnel policies to enhance joint operations and to facilitate staffing of community management functions; Ensuring that timely and objective national intelligence is

6) What DNI organization serves as the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis? What are the most authoritative reports by which the DNI conveys to senior national security leaders the judgments of the IC on strategic national security issues called?

Intelligence is a dependable instrument of its own to generate information that establishes the base of National Security in the United States. Intelligence has been used since the beginning of history to provide information on enemy threats and how to prevent a mass disasters. It has been used for wars, national security, military tactics, etc. Intelligence has been available since the revolutionary war and our first president George Washington and other leaders of the world have used intelligence to protect their countries. Intelligence is the dominant and the backbone of homeland Security and it is ceaseless learning about it. National Intelligence agents train tirelessly to fight and create

intelligence, he briefs the President, has authority to develop the budget for the national intelligence effort and manage appropriations made by Congress, and, to some extent, can transfer personnel and funds from one agency to another.3 I believe that the creation of the DNI position had been on the table for a few years, but the intelligence failures of communication between the agencies and being able to connect the dots to see the events leading up to 9/11 was the last drop in the bucket. I do not think that this organization has worked out all there kinks along with the other organizations in the Intelligence Community completely being open with them, however, I do feel that their roles and placement in the chain is a much needed