Intelligence Reform: Answers to Anthony Cordesman S Questions

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19 September 2004 Version 1.2

INTELLIGENCE REFORM: ANSWERS TO ANTHONY CORDESMAN’S QUESTIONS Dear Dr. Cordesman, Your publication on 16 September 2004 of “Intelligence Reform as a Self-Inflicted Wound: Asking the Right Questions” has come to my attention. While I have published extensively in this area, I like your questions, disagree with many of your answers, and consider what you have done to be meritorious as the basis for a dialog. I therefore take this opportunity to ask each of your questions, and to provide my own brief answers in juxtaposition to your largely negative but still very provocative views. Question 1: Is Intelligence really the problem? One cannot have smart spies (or smart policymakers) in the context of a dumb nation. You are correct to observe that intelligence is not, in and of itself, “the problem,” but I believe that intelligence reform—and especially the creation of an Open Source Agency that serves as “the people’s intelligence agency” (a benchmark for competitive analysis, global coverage, and the reduction of secrecy)—is a vital first step in the internationalization of education, the engagement of all Americans in our understanding of global foreign policy and attendant threats to national security & prosperity. Intelligence is broken—over fifteen practioner-authors have documented this ably, and the findings of the Aspin-Brown Commision, most not yet implemented, demand attention. Intelligence is part of the problem, and it must be fixed immediately. Question 2: Are many of the problems really solvable? We really differ on this one. It has been my privilege to serve across all of the intelligence disciplines less Measurements and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT), and I can tell you with confidence that most of the problems of intelligence are indeed solvable. Here are a few of the larger ones: 1. Redirect NRO to create a technical collection agency that ably mixes remote, air-breather, and close-in technical collection, including new nano-technology options (dust that integrates radios and living tissues), while also ensuring that processing (Tasking, Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination—TPED) are fully funded at every stage, as the NIMA Commission Report of December 1999 recommends. 2. Create a separate clandestine service that is truly non-official cover, but also does not rely exclusively on young puppies who need to learn everything from scratch. See my press release on the five streams of clandestine manpower attached to the end of this document. 3. Create an Open Source Agency as recommended by the 9-11 Commission and also strongly advocated by the Aspin-Brown Commission, which found our access to open sources to be “severely deficient” and said it should be a “top priority” for both funding and DCI attention, neither of which was forthcoming. As an integrated part of this, create both 50 state intelligence centers, and the Intelink “mirror” for all those not eligible for clearances, the Open Source Information System-External (OSIS-X). 4. Redirect NSA as well as NGA and portions of the NRO to create a National Processing Agency that is capable of securely integrating and exploiting all available open and secret sources as well as all available

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operational traffic from all federal, state, and local consumers desiring to participate, such that we finally have an inter-agency “pit” where no dots are dropped. Mike Hayden & Keith Alexander get it. 5. Redirect CIA to become the National Analysis Agency, focusing exclusively on all-source analysis, with restored offices for the analysis of each of the disciplines, and new multinational networks and centers for producing multi-cultural all-source intelligence, in full partnership with what I call “the seven tribes” of intelligence. 6. Establish 50 state intelligence networks and centers such that a two-way street is finally available for both the federal provision to state and local authorities of international open source and secret information relevant to homeland security, and for state/local authorities to properly process all the locally-generated “dots” for both self-protection, and contribution to the larger homeland security network. 7. Take counterintelligence seriously, to include a much greater focus on operations security, with all ranks, and especially flag officers, being held accountable. Question 3: Will the proposed reform do more good than harm? You are, I regret to say, well-intentioned but completely off the cliff here. We all knew what was broken well before 9-11, and it was opinions like yours—mirroring those of the U.S. Intelligence Community leadership and their White House patrons—that prevented reforms from being achieved in time to prevent 9-11. Anyone who suggests that the U.S. Intelligence Community is not broken (the success of some elements not-withstanding) has simply not gotten into the details. As recently as three months ago, both CIA and NSA were still withholding the names of U.S. citizens known to be consorting with terrorists, from messages being delivered to the FBI. The FBI has been obliged to beg for each name, one name at a time, one message at a time. Our Senators—from Graham to Roberts to Rockefeller to Collins and McCain to Lieberman—are on target, and there are in my view three goods that will come of the 9-11 intelligence reform legislation now envisioned by Congress: 1. The dollars, manpower, and capabilities of the NRO, NSA, and NGA will finally be available for proper integration into a national intelligence system that—as Mike Hayden has envisioned it—will make all of the “dots” available for examination and integration at every level from raw information at point of entry to partially processed within the discipline, to finally processed as finished all-source intelligence. 2. The Open Source Agency, ideally led by a Democratic leader able to work well with Porter Goss, whose nomination I support, will provide innumerable benefits, not only within the IC as a competitive intelligence baseline, but to the White House, as a tool for educating the public, and to the public, as a means of becoming an informed democracy. 3. Yet to be addressed, but under consideration, is funding for the 50 state and local intelligence networks and centers to create the two-way street that Tom Ridge needs. If we do that, not only does Colin Powell have an outlet for channeling real-world open source intelligence to all seven tribes in every state, but each state has a channel for self-defense and contribution to the national homeland defense—in my view, 50% or more of the intelligence and counterintelligence that will help prevent another 9-11 is going to be “bottom-up” intelligence from alert citizens, rather than “top-down” secret intelligence from the federal level. Let me stress that again: 50% of the collection needed to prevent another 9-11 is going to come from local domestic sources, and it is those dots that we are certain to drop as things now stand. Question 4: Why will any given type of reform make the quality of US intelligence better? 3

You are correct in considering most of the propositions for intelligence reform to be a form of lip service, or in your words, “the emperor’s new clothes.” However, both the Senate Governmental Operations Committee, and the House Armed Services Committee-and shortly, the House Government Reform Committee and the House International Affairs Committee as well as the House committees concerned with Homeland Security—have taken the necessary steps to provide for qualitative reform. On the Senate side, the move of the three national agencies now buried within the Department of Defense, and largely unresponsive to DCI direction, is a necessary first step in effecting budgetary, cultural, priority, and mind- set reforms, including massive changes in security and training practices that are pathological. On the House side, the Open Source Agency and related state intelligence centers proposed by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), are nothing less than revolutionary, and will provide for a qualitative improvement in inteligence support to every American. Public intelligence for public policy—now there’s a fundamental and transformative improvement! Question 5: Why do new lines of authority fix anything? Amy Zegart, and many Congressional and Presidential commissions, have answered this. CIA, JCS, and the NSC have been “flawed by design,” and on 9-11 it became clear that we can no longer afford the cost in American lives—in American widows and orphans—that is attendant to the bureaucratic bullshit that has been perpetuated on the public by self-serving federal organizations and their Congressional overseers. There are two lines of authority that matter in the reform legislation: the first gives the DCI the budgetary authority to be serious, and the second gives the Director of the Open Source Agency the power to be the “people’s intelligence service,” a means of both empowering the public (and their elected representatives in Congress), and of keeping secret intelligence—and secret policies—honest. I do not think we need a National Intelligence Director—the DCI is that person, and should be elevated, restored to F Street, while the CIA is converted to the National Analysis Agency with its own Director, double- hatted as the ADDCI for Analysis & Production. The ADDCI for Collection should have line management authority over the NRO, Clandestine Service Agency, NSA, and NGA. The Open Source Agency, outside the IC and independent as is the Broadcasting Board of Governnors, would be responsive to all elements of the IC, and directly responsive to all consumers of intelligence, including the many consumers such as Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Interior, that have never been able to get adequate support from classified intelligence. Question 6: Does creating more centralization produce better intelligence? The stovepipes are the worst form of centralization. The new constellation of agencies is actually capable of being functionally centralized, but fully distributed in its provision of services of common concern. Analysis of all sources is fully integrated, but contributing analysts are fully distributed, to include foreign experts with no clearances. Similarly, collection becomes multi-natiional and distributed, retaining unilateral capabilities for those matters where cooperation from other nations is not forthcoming. Senator Roberts understands better than most that what is destructive in our existing intelligence community is old mind-sets with too much money. We need to churn the base, churn the people, and devise new forms of inter-agency, multi-national, and multi-level (federal, state, local on one end, regional and global on the other) collaboration that are not possible under the existing sytem. Question 7: How much of the US intelligence effort should be focused on serving the President? This is, quite naturally, both a political question, and a trick question. You are absolutely correct to point out that the President should not be the sole consumer of intelligence. Britt Snider has done a fine job of explaining why Congress must be a co-equal consumer of intelligence, and I believe that Senators Boren 4

and Roberts, among others including Congressman Rob Simmons and Congressman Tom Davis, understand that in the age of information, intelligence is a form of power that can be corrupt if kept too secret and limited to a narrow circle of elites, or empowering, if shared broadly. My bottom line: 20% for the President, 50% for national security, 30% for diplomatic and commercial equities, and most of this shared with Congress and the public. National intelligence today is inside out and upside down. The Open Source Agency, for just $3B a year, will augment, support, and enhance secret intelligence, allowing us to increase by a factor of 5 to 10, the amount of intelligence that can be produced, and the number of consumers of intelligence—now including authorities in the 50 states and their thousands of countires—who can be satisifed by this taxpayer-funded endeavor. Question 8: What form of stronger “budget authority” would really improve the situation? I share your view that the Community Management Staff is largely incompetent and unlikely to rise to the challenges of a new distributed national security enterprise with much greater responsibilities than could be executed under the old system. I share your view that a new inter-agency intelligence requirements system is needed—one that fully embraces unclassified information requirements that can be satisfied by the Open Source Agency under Department of State auspices and Department of Defense management— and that we need a new inter-agency strategic planning and crisis response capability. Both of these are in my first book. The bottom line, clearly understood by Brent Scowcroft, among others, is that budgetary authority over the NRO, NSA, and NGA are the non-negotiable first step toward being serious about national intelligence. Question 9: What changes in the current personnel system will really help improve intelligence? Having served in three of the four Directorates at the CIA, having been a military intelligence officer and also the senior civilian responsible for creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, and having spent the last 16 years fighting nay-sayers in the classified world while training over 7,500 officers from across 40 countries, I have to tell you, mobility is not the issue. Sourcing is the issue. We cannot have smart spies (or smart end-users in the policy world) in the context of a dumb nation, and we cannot be effective if we insist on white boys from Iowa, all under 35, most never having lived overseas nor learned to speak a foreign language, as the primary source of manpower. We must dramatically alter our approach to manpower (addressed in my second book), and I will summarize three tenets here: 1. Reduce lifetime employees to a fraction, dramatically increase both mid-career hires and 1-179 day hires. Reconfigure to rapidly create and then disband multi-national teams of collectors and analysts. 2. Dramatically increase the use of partially integrated foreign intelligence professionals, from all seven tribes, all nations, in both collection and analysis. 3. Reverse the current assumption that clearances are more important than knowledge—the intelligence community that I want to build would demand that the best of the best prove themselves in the private sector first. Simple example: you don’t get to be the China all-source analysis branch manager unless you first demonstrate that you are one of the top ten Americans on China based on citation analysis, and also eligible for clearances. If you do that, I will overlook misdemeanors that now disqualify such a talented person from getting clearances. We need to totally overhaul security as part of this approach. Question 10: Does the proposal do anything realistic to improve the sharing of information, coordination, and dissemination? You are absolutely correct to be skeptical on this point. I am also concerned that the original bill does not include the Open Source Agency or the Open Source Information System-External (OSIS-X), but I have 5

confidence that in the next couple of weeks this will be addressed. Intelink standards need to be migrated out to all seven tribes, including all the state and local people that are not eligible for classified access (we also need to change the standards—too many people at the local level are being barred from access to secrets because of personal misbehavior that is irrelevant to their professionalism and need for the access). My bottom line: authority over the three agencies being brought out from defense, in combination with an independent Open Source Agency under Department of State auspices, and the 50 state intelligence centers, will dramatically alter what can be shared, coordinated, and disseminated. I seek your support and interest in Congressman Simmons’ “Smart Nation Act of 2004” which is intended to integrated into the Government Operations/Reform bill if it passed before recess, or to be offered as a stand-alone bi-partisan measure if the larger reform bill bogs down before recess. Question 11: Why Alter Covert Operations? I am a survivor of the covert operations in Central America, and I partially agree with you. Human Intelligence (HUMINT), done right (that is to say, under non-official cover and never from within an official installation that has gate guards reporting to the local counterintelligence service) and Covert Action have a natural affinity for one another. Having said that, I believe that the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), now that it is an operational command, is a better place for most covert actions to be based. The new Clandestine Service Agency, separated from CIA and reborn as a truly effective clandestine service, should have a covert action division that is both capable of independete small scale operations, and also dedicated to supporting USSOCOM. Covert operations today, including the acquisition of signal codebooks, are a joke. They are blown within an hour of the team leaving the official installation. They also lack a strong moral foundation—unethical immoral covert operations, which have been the norm going back to the 1950’s, end up costing America vastly more than they gain. Question 12: What is the best interface between the intelligence community and the user? I agree with your view that most end users create their own intelligence picture. I think you may be underestimating the degree to which end users will ignore—and often completely avoid—codeword and other highly classified matters because their value is not equal to the inconvenience of gaining access to the material. You are correct to formulate the team approach. Mike Hayden has articulated this ably— his video-teleconference presentation on this topic is brilliant. We need to get the end users integrated into the entire process, from requirements definition to collection management to preliminary raw information assessment to the shaping of the finished intelligence product. I would also commend Andy Shepard from CIA, who in 1992 came up with a superb concept for moving analysts out into the end users spaces to serve as both on site requirements managers, and as a means of ensuring that the IC was both seeing what the end user sees, a continuing deficiency, as well as earning trust and confidence on a daily basis. It’s a pity CIA does not listen to its innovators. Question 13: How does intelligence reform address military needs and “netcentric warfare?” Very important question. Military objectives, both Executive and Congressional, have consistently undermined intelligence reform efforts in the past. This is a vital question. At a minimum, we need to assure our military that they will have a claim on 50% of the capability (which the Open Source Agency will double in practical terms related to Global Coverage and the Global War on Terrorism—GWOT), and that only the President can say no to the Secretary of Defense—Brent Scowcroft’s idea. In my view, the biggest benefit to the military is in our dramatically improved capability to produce intelligence, both secret and open, on the lower tier countries and the sub-state tribal orders of battle that the national community has never been able to get a grip on. The multi-national open source intelligence centers to be 6

provided to each theater by the Open Source Agency, with a DoD Open Source Information Program (DOSIP) as the executive agency for implementing this national program ($125M at IOC, $1.5B at FOC, with matching amounts for state intelligence centers and networks to be managed by the National Guard) dramatically improves open source intelligence support to Information Operations, to contingency planning, to humanitarian assistance, and to covert operations against specified bad boys and girls at the sub-state level. The National Guard, because it can receive law enforcement commissions under state sovereignty, and military or national foreign intelligence access through the Department of Defense, has a very special role to play in the years ahead. Question 14: How does intelligence reform address Homeland Defense, civil rights, and counterterrorist activity in the US? I completely agree with your concerns. National counter-terrorism centers do not give Tom Ridge what he needs most—a two-way street for sharing information with every county and every state in the USA, and, to make matters even worse, the laws as well as the information technology standards and practices are 20 years or more out of date. At the risk of belaboring what is admittedly my pet rock, the Open Source Agency will go a long way toward devising generic intelligence capabilities, networks, and practices that optimize information while protecting civil rights. I really want to stress that the 50 intelligence networks and centers envisioned for the 50 states, which are in language but not yet accepted by any Senate bill, are a vital part of the overall picture, and you are absolutely correct to note that there is little in the current 9-11 legslation that really makes a difference at the state and local level. Indeed, we are finding that DHS and Justice spending at the state level are often counter-productive, because DHS and Justice/FBI are not coordinating with one another properly. Some form of legislative mandate to create federal level primacy for intelligence and counterintelligence support to the state and local authorities, in combination with federal funding for state intelligence and counterintelligence networks and centers where each governor can be satisfied that all federal support is being integrated with new state and local intelligence and counterintelligence, are part of the answer. You have asked some tremendous questions. Others will have differing views, but in the aggregate, I believe that what you have offered is a very useful opportunity for reflection. I hope that your answers, and mine, and those of others inspired to answer your questions, might ultimately be helpful to the Senate Governmental Operations Committee, and other elements of Congress, as they finalize the bill to be passed before recess. Should the “omnibus” bill not be settled in time for passage before recess, the “Smart Nation Act of 2004” as put forward by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), would allow every Member to return home able to show bi-partisan progress on three fundamentals: global open source collection; OSIS-X, and 50 state intelligence centers with their corresponding networks. God Bless America! Sincerely yours,

Robert David STEELE Vivas Chief Executive Officer 7

FORMER SPY RESPECTFULLY OFFERS FIVE-TRACK APPROACH TO FIXING THE U.S. CLANDESTINE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

Washington, D.C., May 5/PRNEWSWIRE/ -- Robert David Steele, former clandestine service officer and one of the first to be assigned to the terrorist target full-time, today respectfully offers the following five-track approach (20% each) to fixing the U.S. clandestine intelligence service.

First, limit the puppies—the new hires less than 35 years of age, which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) persists in demanding as an age limit. Inform all of them that they must either speak the target language at the 4 or 5 levels within 3 years of hiring, including a year overseas with no other responsibility, or they will be fired.

Second, go after the long-ball hitters—the mature 40-60 year olds that are U.S. citizens but have spent a career unwittingly building their cover, who have native language fluency, regional rolodexes of their own, and are able to step immediately into mature roles as non-official cover officers—dump the light cover retirees, elderly students, and aged male “spouses” we use now, all of whom were blown the first time they served under official cover.

Third, resurrect the tested proven concept of “career agents”—the third country nationals who have proven themselves as first class assets, or are newly hired via indirect recruitment—who can be case officers overseas without having to serve at CIA Headquarters or handle all-source secrets.

Fourth, fund regional multi-national clandestine stations that receive full technical collection, processing, and all-source analytic support, but have clandestine case officer cadres drawn from Russia, China, Viet-Nam, India, South Africa, and other nations that cannot be trusted to necessarily share their best intelligence with us, but who can provide a few of their “best and brightest” for “independent assignments”. Use them to go after targets such as terrorism and crime and piracy where there is no question of mutual interests, and substantial question as to American competence on the mean streets.

Fifth, and finally, introduce the idea that wiser Deputy Directors of Operations (DDO) have sought to get approved in the past without success: the “its just business” one-time pass where European and Asian businessmen with unique access are given million-dollar incentives for one-time assistance, and are not treated as recruited assets nor subject to further future contact.

Think!

SOURCE: OSS.NET -0- 05/04/2002 /CONTACT: Robert David Steele Vivas 703-242-1700, or [email protected]/ /Web sites: www.oss.net