Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [39]
The House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees oversee State Department activities, but the relationship with their respective Intelligence Committee tends to be less fractious than the relationship between the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees. Finally, the two Judiciary Committees oversee the FBI.
The two Intelligence Committees themselves have an important relationship. The House committee’s jurisdiction is broader than the Senate’s. However, the Senate Intelligence Committee has the exclusive and important authority to confirm the nominations of the DNI, the DNI’s principal deputy, a few other subordinates, and the DCIA. The two committees often choose to work on different issues during the course of a session of Congress, apart from their work on the intelligence authorization bills. Despite differences of style and emphasis, hostility or rancor has rarely intruded, even in the face of divergent viewpoints.
THE INTELLIGENCE BUDGET PROCESS
The love of money is not only the root of all evil; money is also the root of all government. How much gets spent and who decides are fundamental powers. The intelligence budget is somewhat complex, although it has been simplified. The budget now has two components: the NIP and the MIP, which combines the Joint Military Intelligence Program and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities.
The NIP comprises programs that either transcend the bounds of an agency or are nondefense in nature. The DNI is responsible for the NIP. The MIP consists of defense and service intelligence programs. The secretary of defense is responsible for the MIP. The NIP is not quite three times as large as the MIP. This would seem to suggest that the DNI has a great deal of power with respect to NIP responsibility. However, given that the DNI does not have budget execution authority over NIP agencies, DNI power is again limited.
The following programs make up the NIP:Civilian Programs
CIA (CIAP)
CIA Retirement and Disability System (CIARDS)
Counterintelligence (FBI)
Department of Homeland Security Program
INR (State Department)
National Counterterrorism Program
Office of Intelligence Support (Treasury Department)
Defense Programs
Consolidated Cryptographic Program (CCP)
DOD Foreign Counterintelligence Program (FCIP)
General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP)
National Geospatial-Intelligence Program
National Reconnaissance Program (NRP)
Community-wide Program
ODNI Community Management Account (CMA)
MIP is composed of intelligence programs that support DOD or its components that are not confined to any one military service. As the titles of some MIP programs indicate, many parallel NIP categories: Air Force intelligence
Army intelligence
Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Program (DARP)
Defense Cryptologic Program (DCP)
Defense General Intelligence Applications Program (DGIAP)
Defense Geospatial-Intelligence Program
Defense Intelligence Counterdrug Program (DICP)
Defense Intelligence Special Technologies Program (DISTP)
Defense Intelligence Tactical Program (DITP)
Defense Space Reconnaissance Program (DSRP)
Marine intelligence
Navy intelligence
Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
Figure 3-4 arranges the components of the intelligence community by budget sectors. Not all of the agencies within a budget sector are controlled by the same authority. The solid lines denote direct control. The two double vertical lines show which part of the budget and agencies are national and which are DOD. There is an overlap, as some agencies are both national and defense, even if they fall into NIP or MIP. DIA straddles the line, containing both NIP and several of the MIP programs. Figure 3-4 also indicates the secretary of defense’s preponderant control over intelligence community resources.
The intelligence budget is shaped by a process that is lengthy and complex (see Figure 3-5). The budget-building process within the executive