Overhauling Intelligence

Mike McConnell

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Summary:  Sixty years ago, the National Security Act created a U.S. intelligence infrastructure that would help win the Cold War. But on 9/11, the need to reform that system became painfully clear. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is now spearheading efforts to enable the intelligence community to better shield the United States from the new threats it faces.

Mike McConnell is Director of National Intelligence of the United States.

Coordinating domestic and foreign intelligence continues to be a challenge. The intelligence community has an obligation to better identify and counter threats to Americans while still safeguarding their privacy. But the task is inherently a difficult one. New technology being developed by the O/ce of the DNI's chief information officer and chief technology officer to access and process vast amounts of digital data to find terrorist-related information is being overseen by the DNI's Privacy and Civil Liberties O/ce. Another challenge is determining how and when it is appropriate to conduct surveillance of a group of Americans who are, say, influenced by al Qaeda's jihadist philosophy. On one level, they are U.S. citizens engaging in free speech and associating freely with one another. On another, they could be plotting terrorist attacks that could kill hundreds of people.

COME TOGETHER

The dni also needs to transform the culture of the intelligence community, which is presently characterized by a professional but narrow focus on individual agency missions. Each of the 16 organizations within the intelligence community has unique mandates and competencies. They also have their own cultures and mythologies, but no one agency can be effective on its own. To capture the benefits of collaboration, a new culture must be created for the entire intelligence community without destroying unique perspectives and capabilities.

The way to do so would be to follow the model provided by the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the military in the late 1980s. The Goldwater-Nichols Act created a unified military establishment and, among other things, laid the foundations for a "joint" military. It created incentives for interservice collaboration (such as requiring joint service to achieve flag rank) and promoted joint training and development. What Goldwater-Nichols did for the military, IRTPA should provide the means to do for the U.S. intelligence community.

Greater collaboration is vital because no single agency has the capacity to survey all the available information. The U.S. intelligence community collects more than one billion pieces of information every day. Intelligence can only help inform and shape decisions if it is processed through the mind of an analyst who resolves any conflicts and ambiguities. For example, a piece of paper with a list found on a suspected terrorist -- known in the field as "pocket litter" -- could turn out to be a grocery list or a coded roster of associates. It takes an analyst trained in what to look for to tell the difference. U.S. intelligence agencies will never have enough analysts to fully examine all the data they collect, but the ones they do have can do their job better by developing new ways of thinking about analysis and information distribution in a more integrated community.

As the intelligence community grew during the Cold War, it sometimes acted like anything but a collaborative community. Analysts often did not know their counterparts at other agencies unless they reached out to them on their own. There were few processes in place to collaborate, share lessons learned and best practices, and exchange viewpoints. This approach may have worked during the Cold War, when strategic threats evolved slowly and various streams of analysis could proceed independently before being combined, but it cannot succeed today, when events evolve quickly and require rapid action.

Consider a recent example. In the spring of 2005, the CIA and the military's Northern Command received information about two passengers aboard a plane flying from the Middle East to Mexico that would shortly cross U.S. airspace. Because the flight was not operated by a U.S. carrier and was not scheduled to land in the United States, there was no requirement for the passenger list to be reviewed prior to takeoff. Although the airline's ticket agent thought the two passengers appeared suspicious, the flight departed before their names could be checked. The airline passed on the names and the flight information to U.S. authorities, however, and this information was funneled to the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. government's hub for all counterterrorism intelligence, where analysts can access more than 30 separate government computer networks carrying more than 80 unique data sources. Within hours, the NCTC found information indicating that the two passengers had been placed on a "no-fly list" immediately after 9/11 because they had lived in the United States in the 1990s, had connections to two of the 9/11 hijackers, and possessed pilot's licenses. Based on this information, the plane was denied entry into U.S. airspace, and the pilot decided to return to Europe. The intelligence community's real-time coordination and rapid-response capabilities were essential.

Interagency collaboration needs to be established at two levels: intelligence collection and intelligence analysis. To this end, the O/ce of the DNI is in the process of developing virtual communities of analysts who can securely exchange ideas and expertise across organizational boundaries and harness cutting-edge technology to find, access, and share information and analytic judgments. Analysts are increasingly using interactive online journals, such as classified blogs and wikis, to this end. Such tools enable experts adept at different disciplines to pool their knowledge, form virtual teams, and quickly make complete intelligence assessments. Interagency joint-duty programs are also being implemented so that personnel from any agency can benefit from the knowledge of the entire intelligence community. An example of progress thus far is the newly created Rapid Analytic Support and Expeditionary Response, or RASER, team, a group of relatively new analysts drawn from all the intelligence agencies who undertake special training so that they can react rapidly to crises, drive intelligence-collection efforts, and work as catalysts for increased integration. Starting this summer, this elite "special forces" analytic team will be ready to be deployed against some of the United States' hardest intelligence targets.

The U.S. intelligence community also needs to know where collection gaps exist, where it needs greater specific intelligence, and on what areas it is overly focused. Some gains have been made with the creation of mission managers -- a recommendation of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission -- who oversee and manage high-interest topics, such as North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence, for appropriate collection and analysis. The intelligence community is also investing in more in-depth and long-range analysis so that analysts can dig deeper into issues of concern for the future, such as the changing character of warfare and energy security, unencumbered by the demands of producing current intelligence. Furthermore, addressing a critical need emphasized by the 9/11 Commission and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, the intelligence community has formed "devil's advocate" and alternative analyses, examining, for example, whether avian influenza can be weaponized and how webcams could aid in terrorist planning. Beyond these efforts, the intelligence community can still learn a lot from commercial best practices and best-in-class analytic technologies to help its analysts sift through data and more rapidly identify key insights.

CULTURE SHOCK