Reforming the ODNI and the National Intelligence Community (IC) is a strategic imperative for the 21st century.
The bottom line up front (BLUF) in what is going to be a multi-part article to provide the rationale on the “why” is that we need a Presidential Executive Order to stand up a congressionally led Blue Ribbon Panel (or whatever color is preferred) to produce a report and a plan of action and milestones (POAM) on Intelligence 2050: Reshaping the Intelligence Community For the 21st Century to Eliminate Failures.
Such a panel has six simple but critically important directives that will interact throughout to inform outcomes.
One is to look at causality on recent intelligence failures (the who, what, where, when, why and how, many of which I will list later in this article) with a focus on lessons learned and recommendations.
Two is to review the statutory missions of the IC from top to bottom and the resources and funding provided to accomplish them (in terms of capability, overlap, synergy and potential changes.)
Three is to develop a threat projection in terms of nation states, near nation states and other bad actors, in consideration of the influences that shape aspirations, the development of technology, weapons trends, cyber, sources of income, drug trafficking, etc.
Four is to assess and project necessary IC resources and capabilities in consideration of meeting the projected threat landscape given known deficiencies and projected challenges out to 2050 and beyond.
Five is to do an emerging Red Team effort of potential solutions against unconventional tactics and potential Black Swan events to inform risk assessments for emerging solutions.
Six is to prepare the plan of actions and milestones (POA&M) and necessary program directions to implement the vision.
There will need to be a companion and parallel effort conducted by the Pentagon as part of the annual mission review to identify and leverage changing dynamics in the combatant command areas of responsibility to both inform the above threat assessments and to address potential implications for supporting IC elements and relationships-dependencies-contributions-burden sharing-funding.
This will optimistically take a minimum of a year. The goal should be to revise the fiscal year 2027 budget submission that takes us out to 2031. Emerging insights or critical solutions-particularly deltas or lack of capability or sufficiency that intersects with a critical threat domain-think cyber or artificial intelligence, WMD/chem biohazard detection-should be issued as critical panel directives to execution agents to energize the system.
Many of the solutions are going to require the full range of resources, from government, academia, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, contractors, etc. They should obviously provide subject matter expertise to government-led panels, if not lead some of them.
It is critical that personnel selected to put together the work products-particularly when looking out beyond the Five-Year Defense Program (FYDP) are thought leaders and visionaries who will not get bogged down in “yesterday think” and the way things have been done, are done today, and will therefore be done that way tomorrow…
One of the big issues with the IC in 2025 is what brought it about in consideration of the unchecked injection of 9-11 Defense Emergency Response Funds (one example of abuse of so-called colorless money) that resulted in a large plus-up of the IC prior to the framing of ODNI, most of which morphed into IC program submissions and have never come out.
Briefly the ODNI-and the IC for that matter-largely resulted from a “taffy-pull” between congress, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Executive branch. Influenced by the establishment of the Under Secretary of Defense-Intelligence in FY2003 as VP Cheney and SECDEF Rumsfeld attempted to establish a “DNI-like” executive in DoD to undermine the influence of the CIA, while the ongoing politics vis a vis Afghanistan, Iraq and the Global War On Terror cast somewhat of a pall over the discussions and negotiations for the office (ODNI) in congress.
Causing a near total disconnect in many of the “belligerent’s views” which resulted in a somewhat shocking manpower total four times that of the Community Management Staff it was in theory replacing. A workforce described on the ODNI website today as “less than 2000 government personnel.”
That is a separate and longer story, but the germane point here is that the negotiations necessary to establish the ODNI in the first place resulted in myriad compromises that likely need to be revisited in the context of any study effort conducted. Perhaps best represented by the nomination of the first DNI, Ambassador Negroponte who as a member of the State Department was somewhat of a surprising pick as first ODNI head…
Why do we need to do this at all: and why now??? The short answer is that we have suffered-in fairly short order recently-and in perspective these past 20 years, nation state level intelligence failures that are simply inexcusable. Including three in particular that embarrassed our nation on a global scale: 7 Oct 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, and the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
The president can’t make the best decisions on these global problems if he is not being presented the best course of actions and recommendations available based on the best information the system can provide. It is not always a product of the IC. However, it is somewhat of a blinding flash of the obvious that international challenges often unfold with little to no warning: that is a challenge and a problem for our current ODNI led enterprise.
If we don’t have strategic resources in place in target countries working intelligence via all available sources, methods and techniques, we will have to depend on mechanical or standoff resources which-while very capable-can never replace or supplant human intelligence gathered “coffee breath” close. Many diplomatic, political, scientific and technology and economic targets are best cultivated via human sources.
Far worse is when we have resources who get too close to targets-so close that they become reticent to share information and intelligence because it might cause problems or issues for the target they are being paid to assess.
Which sounds a little whack a doodle but consider that analysts in the CIA China Branch were reticent to share-and therefore didn’t-intelligence with President Trump because they did not want him to use it to advantage in negotiations. Analytic Ombudsman Barry Zulauf is quoted in this Washington Examiner story that highlights the issue (from the piece):
“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf concluded, saying this behavior violated analytic standards requiring independence from political considerations.
Now if the goal is to provide timely, relevant information and intelligence, objective fact-based judgements that inform available courses of action and provide the basis for recommendations, with sufficient time available to maintain freedom of action for decision-makers to select the best available course of action, we can’t have things like the above happening.
I think the far worse part of the above is this followed a period where the CIA reportedly had much of their indigenous China networks rolled up which resulted in greater reliance on open source and non-China based reporting.
This was-albeit-some several years later-and may seem peripheral and a tiny spec on the long list of problems in the IC. But the larger point in the scheme of things where ODNI has delegated primacy reporting on China political activity and issues to the CIA-or whichever agency-means that POTUS did not get the best available information in this area to direct government policy: from the analyst’s taxpayers fund to provide it…
The preferable way to do such reporting-a best practice that the ODNI is in charge of-is having somewhat of a “gang tackle approach” on these issues with best placed and most engaged entities such as State Intelligence, Pacific Command, US Chinese Embassy, US Forces Korea, etc. on the case.
Or how about a case where the president directs an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) be accomplished on something like Russian Election Interference: which is what happened in the aftermath of the 2016 election. We should have some set number of ODNI coordinated IC elements that have primacy and participated in election activities, so we would expect to see a product of their labor with an ODNI cover. We were told for months that the report was the consensus of “all 17 IC AGENCIES” he shouted to the winds.
Which was absolutely made-up hasty nonsense. There were only three IC agencies involved-FBI, NSA, CIA (the driver of the action) plus the DNI. The ICA was completed in less time than it normally takes to staff the “terms of reference” for such a study. This unclassified copy of it was noteworthy for what it says as much as what it doesn’t say.
Which I don’t want to get into in a discussion about why such a Blue Panel Commission is necessary, soonest.
But I would point out that based on a briefing from CIA Director John Brennan to President Obama and his National Security Team that took place in late July 2016, the president directed-presumably DNI Clapper-to prepare an IC Investigative Referral to the FBI to look into the Russian charge that Hillary Clinton approved 28 July 2016 a Jake Sullivan recommended smear campaign strategy against candidate Trump to distract from her email problems by alleging that Russia was advocating for him over Clinton.
The IC Investigative Referral signed out 7 September 2016-all deliberate speed in the midst of a contentious campaign-was a Freedom of Information Act available item that strangely merits no attention or mention in the John Brennan led ICA…Did I mention this was the same John Brennan who was lobbying the Hillary Clinton campaign to be her DNI nominee?
Which highlights another aspect of such a panel, which is to ensure that government agencies do a better job enforcing their statutory missions and their duty to and fealty to their oaths of office.
An oath that says nothing about politics, allegiance to party, or person, causes or belief systems.
The US government must fix this problem of intelligence failures and also the issue that seems to find intelligence agencies-led by the ODNI-pursuing all manner of social justice, DEI/CRT/ESG letter people and Unconscious Bias nonsense that is distracting from needed mission training time and polluting the ranks with-as my former intel agency director told our work force at one point in a town hall-and no, not the need to learn to code-that was earlier-no this beauty was that “future intelligence problems may require us to hire more poets!”
Which is as bizarre as it sounds and calls into question the criteria being used to select agency heads in the 21st century: perhaps another potential Blue-Ribbon topic in light of some recent ODNI and agency heads having less time in the IC than I have in the proverbial chow line (as they say (who is they?))
6 February 2025
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I look forward to this series. No question, the “intelligence community“ needs a reformation, something that would make the Church Hearings look like an amendment to the budget request. One of the many failures of the Bush administration was adding the DNI on top of the CIA. All it did was put another level of bureaucracy over the agencies, Instead of the DCI briefing the president every day, it was the DNI. We have 17 intelligence agencies, they serve different masters, we have to get them better coordinated. Something along an MI6 in Britain. I know that will definitely step on some toes, I read Cheney‘s biography ages ago. When they wanted to take the NRO out of the Air Force and he said “ I fund them, they work for me.“ Shut that down rather quick. But we definitely need to change what we got. And one thing we do not need is a blue ribbon commission to establish how many left-handed cross eyed transgender non-binary spies we need in the third world.
Thanks for reading.
I agree with your last point whole heartedly! We need a serious revamp of the IC-it needs to constitute and create a blueprint moving forward that fundamentally rebaselines the mission and how best to accomplish it. Call it whatever…
It will take years-perhaps decades-to rebuild the culture to return to a focus on tradecraft and to build a cadre of analysts in a near “back to the future” effort.
Where analysts are valued for analytical skill vice management-where the system isn’t weighted on promotions for supervisory skills vice analysis, or writing ability and political savvy. Where moving around the community-being a so-called Joint IC citizen-is not prioritized and valued over deep tradecraft expertise for promotion, often undermining the very basis of development of deep expertise in analysts.
We need to rebuild and foster spycraft/tradecraft that we don’t talk about and not advertise in USA Today to tell the world which target countries, languages and skillsets we seek.
And we need to look to combine the Human Resource, financial services, Inspector Generals and general staff that have gutted the analyst bench strength and made the admin to analyst tooth-to-tail out of whack like so many other profession-like education….like in my former agency that was once nearly 65% analysts and has morphed to less than 50%…
Oh, and cut manpower, property, redundancy and woke social programs to the bone-after a mission review that realigns a focus on “muckling” issues using a best athlete approach.
We also have to address the boogeyman of DNI thumb on the scale political intelligence that is failing this country….which we will likely find has caused this spate of intelligence failures this century (from Oct 2004 on.)
Thanks again! MD