09/16/09 02:24 pm ET
Talking to reporters yesterday about the new National Intelligence Strategy, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said the strategy would serve as a blueprint for a 200,000 person strong, $75 billion national intelligence enterprise.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists pointed out that this estimate was $30 billion above the $45 billion intelligence budget Blair disclosed at a media roundtable.
But, Aftergood said the $75 billion budget disclosed by Blair yesterday included both funding for the National Intelligence Program run by outfits such as the CIA and the NSA, which supports high-level policy folks and military intelligence programs.
Blair took pains in his talk with reporters to emphasize that the lines which separated various intelligence programs should no longer exist.
"This old distinction between military and non-military intelligence is no longer relevant," Blair said. "The problems that we face in the world have strong military, diplomatic, economic and other aspects that all work together and need to be supported by an interlocked and interweaving set of intelligence activities," he added.
In practical terms, Blair said the new national intelligence strategy will result in a mission-oriented system which pools the talents of a wide range of analysts working towards a common goal, and he gave this example:
"I have one picture in my mind: a darkened room with a flickering computer screen. That computer screen is tied into the server a half-a-world away, in a part of the world that is thinking not good things about the United States.There is a young female Army sergeant who is at the keys; there is a kid with a New York Yankees baseball cap sideways on his head who was whispering in one ear; there is an old grayhaired, bearded guy who has been working on this target for 40 years in the other ear; and in back is a group of officers from different agencies.
And they are in real time both extracting intelligence from and making life difficult for one of our adversaries using the computer around the world.
That kind of magnificent work is what we mean by mission management."
This kind of teamwork, Blair said, occurs today in the field where analysts "don't spend their time sitting around arguing who is in charge; they get the job done and that's what we're really striving for and that's what we're seeing."
Asked why such co-operation is hard to come by in Washington, Blair ducked and replied, "The closer you are to the fire, the more you focus on the mission."
Maybe he should organize some field trips for some Washington-based intelligence bureaucrats so they can hone their focus closer to the fire.
COMMENTS
Field trips to the real world of national priorities for the government as a whole, including fiscal restraint, actually would be a splended wall-breaker, as the community, despite progress, remains excessively sheltered from agency management, budget, and contract management concerns and imperatives. Just as many DoD programs are now being defended strongly as jobs programs, that is also the case in the IC. A large fraction of employment -- and contractor jobs -- exist in order to make do with gross inefficiencies, e.g., in collection and distribution of product. Collaboration and cost-effectiveness still lack the compelling imperatives, compared with mission, that are found widely outside the IC.. Mismanaged systems, in development and operation, are another IC fixture--often left as opaque money-pits until the rare brave action to terminate a program. The slack due to mis-applied human resources in the IC is already being taken up there, with "staff augmentation," or butts-in-seats contractors more easily shed than government personnel. Even leading IC contractors are scrambling to maintain, if not grow, revenue. They are energetically working to stave off more competition from new entrants, WH desire for fewer "no-bid" contracts, and the wholesale poaching and conversion of contractor staff.
Michael Lent 09/17/09 06:26 am ET