Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [26]
As noted previously, Porter Goss served as the last DCI (2004-2005) and the first director of the CIA (2005-2006). His tenure proved to be tumultuous, and the press reported numerous stories about friction between the staff that Goss brought with him from Congress and senior CIA officials, many of whom—especially in the Directorate of Operations—ultimately resigned. Goss’s short tenure indicated that the CIA remained central despite its director’s loss of responsibility across the intelligence community. DNI Negroponte found that he could not be effective in his role if the CIA was riven by internal bickering.
The secretary of defense continues to control much more of the intelligence community on a day-to-day basis than does the DNI. The panoply of agencies that are part of DOD—National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NIMA), airborne reconnaissance programs, the service intelligence units, and the intelligence components in each of the ten unified combatant commands—vastly outnumbers the CIA and the components under the DNI, in terms of both people and dollars. As a rule of thumb, the secretary of defense controls some 75 to 80 percent of the intelligence community. At the same time, the secretary of defense is unlikely to have the same level of interest in intelligence as the DNI does. In fact, much of the responsibility for intelligence within DOD is delegated to the USDI, a relatively new office that was created in 2002.
Control of the intelligence budget was one of the most controversial parts of the debate over the new intelligence structure. Those who advocated less sweeping change had argued that giving the DCI budget execution authority over the NIP (that is, the ability to determine the actual spending of dollars) would have solved the authority problems across the community as well as significantly increased the leverage of this position. However, such a minimalist solution was not politically palatable as it was not seen as sweeping enough. It also was opposed by DOD and its supporters in Congress.
In the debate over the creation of the DNI, DOD and its supporters argued successfully that the department needed to maintain control over the budgets of some national intelligence components: NSA, NGA, and the NRO. This devolved into an odd and factually off-base debate about the military chain of command and control of specific reconnaissance assets. The real concern was the ability of military commanders to call on intelligence support when they need it. This has been an area of growing controversy as many senior military commanders have increasingly come to treat national intelligence assets as their own.
The DNI develops and determines the NIP, based on the submissions made by the various intelligence agencies. The DNI can provide the agencies with budget guidance. The DNI can transfer or reprogram up to $150 million or no more than 5 percent of any NIP funds for an agency. Certain criteria were set out for such transfers, such as a higher priority or emergent need. Such transfers cannot be used to terminate an acquisition program.
Figure 3-1 is somewhat deficient in that it does not describe the varied functions of the agencies, which are central to their relationships. Several different ways of looking at