Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [44]
In both Panel A and Panel B of Figure 4-1, the issues that fall closer to the upper right reflect more important intelligence requirements. However, there may not be startling clarity as to likelihood or there may be a debate as to issues’ relative importance.
The hidden factor that drives priorities is resources. It is impossible to cover everything. The United States, for example, has long had interests in every part of the globe, although some are more significant and more central than others. For decades, the U.S. intelligence community has used a variety of processes to set priorities. The most recent example is the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF), which supports a national security policy directive (NSPD) signed by President George W. Bush in February 2003.
According to congressional testimony by director of central intelligence (DCI) George J. Tenet, the NIPF provides for semiannual reviews of intelligence priorities by the president and the NSC. Tenet described it as being more flexible and more precise than any previous intelligence priority system. The NIPF is connected directly to analytic and collection resources to ensure that the most urgent needs are being covered and that gaps can be identified quickly. The system is also used for planning in the five-year budget cycle. Other testimony revealed that each topic in the NIPF has an intelligence topic manager who helps determine collection requirements. The NIPF appears to be a more pervasive system in terms of overall intelligence community functions and a more flexible system than has been used in the past.
All priority systems must address the issue of priority creep. Issues can and do move up and down in a priority system. This is actually a positive occurrence as it shows that the priority system is dynamic and responsive to changes in the international situation. The problem is that issues cannot receive significant attention until after they have begun moving up to the higher priority tiers, at which point they must compete with the issues already in that bracket. Priority creep can become a problem as analysts or policy makers seek higher priority for certain issues. Priority creep is further exacerbated by the difficulty encountered in returning issues to lower priority status once they have become less urgent. Neither the intelligence analysts working on that issue nor the policy makers whom they support are eager to admit that the issue is no longer as important. After all, it is their issue. This underscores the problem with any intelligence requirements system. Such a system is, of necessity, static between reviews. Even if the requirements are reviewed and re-ranked periodically, such as the six-month review in the NIPF, they remain snapshots in time. Policy makers or intelligence officials must decide on the requirements and resources to be applied to them. However, the nature of international relations is such that unexpected issues inevitably crop up with little or no warning. These are sometimes referred to as ad hoes. When an issue like this arises, some policy makers and intelligence officers exert pressure to give the new issue a priority high enough to compete with other high-priority issues. Some resistance is felt, usually from those whose access to intelligence resources is threatened. Not every ad hoc merits higher priorities. (Some intelligence analysts speak of the tyranny of the ad hoes.) Moreover, a system that constantly responds to each ad hoc soon has little control over priorities and quickly breaks down. Thus, the system that preserves a modicum of flexibility or a modest reserve capability is more responsive to the realities of intelligence requirements. Policy makers often have little time or inclination to conduct periodic reviews of intelligence priorities, even as often as annually. As a result, static, potentially outdated requirements and the necessity to make requirements decisions can be problems for the intelligence community. This was apparently the problem with the priority tier system used