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intelligence community. His successor, Mike McConnell (2007- ), has put more emphasis on the problem areas that he sees as being the main inhibitors to a more collaborative and integrated intelligence community. His 100 Day Plan and 500 Day Plan also emphasize how little time he thought he had to get these changes made. Finally, several of the points in the two plans still depend on the DNI having sufficient authority to force compliance or to mete out consequences for obstruction. As DCI Richard Helms (1966-1973) observed about the DCI’s position, much of the DNI’s authority stems from both the real and the perceived support the DCI has from the president. The initial signals from President George W. Bush were ambiguous: granting authority to the DNI, as in the case of the morning briefing, but assuring CIA that its role was not diminished. As was the case when the secretary of defense position was created in 1947, the legislation may have to be revised after a few years, once the flaws have been revealed. The DNI will be under great pressure and scrutiny from the public and from Congress to improve information sharing and the overall coherence of the intelligence community. Whether the legislation provides the levers necessary to do these jobs is not clear. The DNI will also come under tremendous political pressure should another major terrorist attack occur in the United States. Supporters of the new law argue that the creation of a DNI freed from any agency and the emphasis on information sharing will lessen the likelihood of an attack. Many intelligence officers and some outside observers fail to see any connection between the new structures and what is needed to prevent a terrorist attack, as the law seems largely to have created another layer without making any marked changes in how terrorism is addressed.

How will we know if the DNI is working? This is one of the great uncertainties in the role of the DNI, any agreed set of hallmarks that will help determine whether or not the new structure is working, and whether it is making a positive contribution to the management of U.S. intelligence. Most of the “doing” functions of intelligence—collection, analysis and operations—take place within the agencies and not at the DNI level. It will likely be very difficult to prove that improvements in any of these functions can be tied directly to initiatives from the DNI. Some of DNI McConnell’s initiatives—such as improving the security clearance process, improving first generation and immigrant recruitment, improving foreign language capabilities—can be tracked and assessed and would make valuable contributions to the functioning of intelligence. But these are still management functions that would likely fall short of the somewhat hyperbolic aims set for the DNI in the debates over the 2004 legislation. Thus, we are left with either few useful hallmarks by which to judge the DNI function or one very stark hallmark—another terrorist attack—which most observers judge to be likely regardless of which structure is chosen.

STOVEPIPES. As discussed in earlier chapters, the term “stovepipes” refers to agencies in similar or analogous lines of work (collection or analysis) that tend to compete with one another, sometimes to a wasteful and perhaps harmful extent.

The stovepipe issue is most often discussed in reference to the big three collection disciplines (INTs)—signals intelligence (SIGINT), geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), and human intelligence (HUMINT)—and particularly the technical INTs (especially SIGINT and GEOINT). Some have proposed putting at least the technical INTs (SIGINT, GEOINT, and measures and signatures intelligence or MASINT) under a single agency with the authority to decide which INTs should respond to which requirements, thus limiting some collection that may not be optimal or necessary. This solution raises questions of its own.

• Who would run such an agency? Would it matter if that person were civilian or military?

• Would this new agency be manageable?

• Given that DOD currently controls all