Reforming the ODNI and the National Intelligence Community (IC) is a strategic imperative for the 21st century.
Part 1 introduced the idea of reforming the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Intelligence Community (IC) and offered a top-level plan. Part 2 was somewhat of a review of world and US events over the years that led to somewhat of a culminating event that greatly influenced the later ODNI establishment.
Part 3 detailed that event-a 1995 CIA Ballistic Missile National Intelligence Estimate and a subsequent battle over the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) nominee and identified an ever-increasing schism between the news media and government intelligence being used to shape political opinions, that led to the events setting the stage for the establishment of the ODNI.
Maybe the constant scrum and ruckus on the hill has always been a thing over the years that folks like me in the military never heard or paid much attention to or bothered with. It was later impossible not to notice as a senior executive program manager in federal government civilian service.
The Clinton presidency was characterized by the republicans taking control of congress that seemed to elevate strife between the parties to a whole new level.
Particularly when in the wake of the NIE scrum that was still ongoing, it was revealed that President Clinton had soiled his reputation and office with his sexual abuse and sordid affair with a subordinate that confirmed all the rumors, innuendo and testimony of other such incidents that had dogged his political career.
Clinton was impeached for lying under oath to the Independent Counsel. Not for having sex with a subordinate in a federal government office space, which has been the downfall of many a federal supervisor over the years.
With the near full rally of swampy democrats behind him and the LSMBTGA picking up the narrative and singing the “doowaps,” which included doing a Ju Jitsu-like 180 from defending on the basis of denial to recasting it as a “personal matter” when the Blue Dress evidence returned, Clinton remarkably left office with nearly a 60% approval rating.
To digress just a smidge, this callous political “Houdini-like act” of casting his infidelity as a “personal matter” would later be revived as the DOJ and FBI colluded to salvage a presidential campaign from a national security scandal by casting Hillary Clinton’s illegal server and so-called “email problem” as a “matter.”
But the enduring effect on the political landscape in the swamp was vitriol and animosity that dominated the news for several years as this timeline of events documents. The swamp had not seen such a row since Nixon and Watergate.
The above timeline is interesting in light of current democrat Trump Derangement Syndrome and the propaganda being pushed by the LSMBTGA of “chaos” and a “constitutional crisis.” In Clinton’s case it was his own making, as he played four corner defense and hide the potato denying it for nearly three years, including testifying under oath to that lie.
By the time he publicly acknowledged on 17 August 1998 of having had an “inappropriate relationship,” the swamp was a divided and divisive, abject mess. Clinton started his relationship in November 1995. Among the exhibits presented at his impeachment was a weasel worded defense of his actions that indicated he “was not an active participant in the act and therefore, it was not an affair, nor inappropriate on his part as the recipient.”
I would like to report that politics returned to normal levels of partisan vitriol after this Clinton focused mess, but this was followed in short order by the raucous 2000 election.
An election where a candidate-Al Gore-who in the final analysis never led, was inexplicably prematurely declared the winner in Florida at one point by the same “doowapping” LSMBTGA seemingly ignorant of the “panhandle effect” in Florida elections. Gore would later concede and then withdraw his concession, before eventually losing to George W. Bush after a near 5-week delay in a very close race in Florida by some 537 votes.
And we were off and running in a timeframe that can be touted as somewhat of a revenge of the politicians. Many of whom were inclined to seek some manner of revenge after the treatment of Clinton, who they attempted to frame as being impeached over a personal matter, despite his paying a fine and losing his law license over lying to the Special Counsel.
The LSMBTGA propagated myth of the “stolen election” of Al Gore that many believed had been “ripped out of his hands” by the Supreme Court, set a precedent that would echo in the swamp for nearly two decades, as democrats would later dust off those canards and reform the band after the 2004 and 2016 election-a story for another day.
A perfect storm was brewing as “W” shaped his presidency with many of the major combatants from the aforementioned swamp battle over the 1995 CIA NIE, including now Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in his second stint as Secretary of Defense.
You might be asking yourself-once again-what does this have to do with reforming the ODNI?
With all the vitriol, hate and discontent ongoing on the hill and in the swamp, the tragic events and terrorist actions of 9-11 occurred and all seemingly rallied to the cause to seek out and punish those terrorists who perpetrated this act.
There was a consensus on standing up a Commission-the 9-11 Congressional Committee-to ensure this never happened again (The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.)
The Commission started its work through legislation that was signed out by President Bush in late 2002. One of the emerging themes representing a near mandatory action coming out of these deliberations was the need to reconsider the 1955 idea of separating out the CIA and the Director of Central intelligence (DCI.) From the Executive Summary:
We call for unity of effort in five areas, beginning with unity of effort on the challenge of counterterrorism itself:
- unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism Center;
- unifying the intelligence community with a new National Intelligence Director;
- unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries;
- unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to improve quality and accountability; and
- strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders.
Key items to note with the above list include the date the Commission started, and also the date the report was published-August 21, 2004-and thereby acted upon.
The Rumsfeld Pentagon was totally distrustful of the George Tenet-led CIA by this time, who was likely considered his nemesis. Tenet was the DD CIA when the NIE was released, with the somewhat tense relationship certainly exacerbated by the experience of the aforementioned Ballistic Missile dustup, as well as issues from IC support for Desert Storm.
Which included dust ups over force numbers, casualty estimates and Battle Damage Assessment disputes (between CIA, DIA and United States Central Command.)
One of the first major moves made by the Rumsfeld Pentagon in the wake of 9-11 as the swamp political winds/scuttle butt shifted back in favor of separating out the DCI position from the Dir CIA, was the establishment of the Under Secretary of Defense-Intelligence (USDI) in late 2002 (FY2003) as a power play intended to become a solution or option as the Defacto ODNI.
The Pentagon also stood up its own intelligence cell, the Counterintelligence Field Agency, a somewhat counter-intuitive move when you consider the mission of DIA as not only the Defense Human Intelligence manager, but also as one of the designated IC All Source Intelligence producers.
But particularly since one of the signaled recommendations from the 9-11 Commission recommendations (listed above) was to establish the National Counterterrorism Center.
Again, what does this have to do with reforming the ODNI?
Rather than repeat a story that has already been told, I refer dear reader to an earlier series that outlines this power play of establishing the USDI in advance of the 9-11 Commission Report in some level of detail.
I maintain my belief that most involved or on the periphery of these elephantine, reindeer games may have been clued into the Machiavellian orchestration behind the timing and establishment of the USDI position, but most I know in the business were unaware of the true reason for this move at this time, believing it to be a Pentagon response to 9-11 and nothing more.
The above referenced series covers a critical period of time when the USDI had a near two-year head start on the DNI/ODNI establishment that I submit greatly tainted the waters in advance of what was supposed to be somewhat of a unifying event for the IC, but instead played out as another swampy deep state power play between the IC and the Pentagon jousting over money and authority (power.)
Which is why I believe a rebaseline of the IC is best accomplished by starting pre-9-11, revisiting the missions, manpower, resources and structure that preceded these two major changes represented by the USDI and DNI/ODNI standup.
What would such an effort look like? A very well done rebaseline/mission review was done by LTG Ron Burgess when he took over the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2009. His review of his statutory mission was broken down into specified, implied/insinuated, assumed and other-or some similar category-and resulted in his stopping many agency efforts that he then discussed with other agency heads under the category of “DIA expectations.”
The article series referenced above is instructive for what the ODNI became, often cherry-picking winners and losers from a programmatic standpoint, while “lording” over programs that needed ODNI approval. That often resulted in likely illegal actions funding largely CIA projects by “skimming funds” or canceling outright ODNI and congressionally approved programs.
If that is not clear enough, the bottom-line is that the ODNI acquisition authority-PDDNI Stephanie O’Sullivan-often made cuts to approved programs (e.g., ODNI and congressionally approved and funded programs) to fund often CIA projects (e.g., wannabe programs that didn’t make the cut with ODNI and congress) that had no appropriated funding.
These examples are instructive from the standpoint of the ODNI leadership being distracted from what should be their core business-carrying the IC homework to POTUS/decision-makers, vice playing King Maker to fund projects the ODNI did not think worthy of being approved as programs: yet funding them anyway.
Like having your cake and eating it too. Or more like baking a terrible cake and taking yours to eat.
This article covers a lot of ground but in particular calls out programmatic IC problems and the ramifications of the above in terms of costing the IC a talented leader who voted with his feet, rather than continue to suffer the lies and mistruths of the ODNI collusion and program thievery.
I repeat my supposition from part 3.
The establishment of the USDI under the Pentagon was a political power play intended to further blunt or undermine the influence of the CIA and played a very large role in shaping the 9-11 commission efforts, as well as the negotiations ongoing in congress and within the IC that shaped the resulting structure of the ODNI: not necessarily for the better.
The later acquisition and program shenanigans on the part of the ODNI did more to fracture the IC than promote or achieve the perceived synergy and efficiency expected to result from the ODNI standup.
And-oh yes-there is more.
20 February 2025
LSMBTGA: Lamestream media echo chamber (LMEC-L) social media (SM) big tech tyrants (BT,) government (G) and academia (A)
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA