With today’s every-growing national debt, there is a way to decrease spending to save the United States a great deal of money: Combine all the intelligence agencies into one. Although it may be more convenient to have many different intelligence assets in the form of organizations, there is really no need for more than one government intelligence agency. The Central Intelligence Agency is the heart of all-source fusion from the different intelligence disciplines and should remain. With the CIA as the only budgeted intelligence organization, the United States could afford to have faster intelligence while using better assets.
Executive departments now demanding intelligence on new subjects (other than the cold war) might have to look elsewhere or develop their own capability. Much long-term research may be better provided by the private sector with fewer limitations on how the organization is to spend it’s capital. It is important to preserve the CIA’s central function of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating in one place utilizing all information from all intelligence sources, however and wherever it was collected. One of the problems with today’s intelligence operations is the expense and the fact that if something does go wrong, the taxpayer still has to pick up the bill. With commercial intelligence, there is no payment if there is no report.
The next problem area is with the military intelligence. With the Clinton administration cutbacks, the military has suffered sev...
Since, as he establishes, leadership’s political priorities were critical to the ultimate decision in the CIA’s actions, the degree to which the CIA actually concentrated on this mission of collection and analysis depended on the perceived threats from the top. Consequently, the actual level of reliable analysis deteriorated as demonstrated by the example of ORE analysists who were “normatively risk averse” and trying to “get it right,” and provide analysis that fit into the view of their leadership. Lacking trust in their analysists’ conclusions, the CIA proved unable to supply reliable intelligence and forge “collaboration and integration.” Rather than addressing institutional problems the CIA developed a pattern that continued throughout its entire history. Even though it refers to the Reagan era, Immerman’s conclusion that in a time of crisis the CIA deemed that they “required a change in leadership more than an institutional adjustment,” could easily apply to any other period. This application of psychology to history while enlightening does detract from the reader’s understanding of a formation of a CIA “culture” that limited its intelligence analysis efficiency. Without this fundamental comprehension of a CIA “culture,” some of Immerman’s later
“President Bush has stated that about a hundred detainees were held under the Central Intelligence Agency secret detention program, about a third of whom were questioned using “enhanced interrogation techniques. The CIA has a way of very publicly blowing their cover seeming to pop up wherever turmoil, and political problems arise. The CIA exists to prevent threats, its operations involve covert actions or spying through various means to gather critical intelligence data. The CIA dates back to 1947. The qualifications and skills are above average. The job of the CIA is to anticipate and quickly assess rapidly evolving international developments and their impact, both positive and negative, on US policy concerns. When researching the career of
After World War II American intelligence had the need to be transformed. The inexperience along with bureaucracy and poor coordination among American intelligence officers obligated the United States intelligence community to change dramatically in order to confront the new challenges that emerged after the end of WWII. From Early America through WWI the intelligence system of the United States of America was involved in operations in which they had to construct intelligence systems virtually from scratch (Andrew 1995). Human intelligence was already developed, but with certain limitations and other intelligence disciplines were underdeveloped and very seldom sophisticated. After WWI America recessed and settled in a period of peace. The United States faced no threat to its security from its neighbors, from powers outside of the Western Hemisphere (Lowenthal 2006). That caused a visible absence of intelligence activities, leaving America out of sight for any international conflicts; the United States of America focused and limited its activities beyond its own borders. In later years the Japanese attack to Pearl Harbor, America rushed to reactivate their military forces, moving from a passive country to full participation into a another international conflict; WWII. As a consequence, the United States engaged in activities that improved its intelligence system increasing its capabilities needed to address seriously the future threats of the Cold War.
As technology continues to advance at lightning speed, the world as we used to know it is beginning to disappear. Publically available data has replaced much of the espionage tactics that the CIA depended on after WWII and into the Cold War. Information that used to take years to obtain through covert missions is now readily available on social media, commercial databases, or through Signals intelligence (SIGINT). As the world becomes more technologically advanced and intelligence sources display new opportunities, the Intelligence Community (IC) has been there to exploit the data to gain the upper hand on the enemy, and support decision makers. Advancements in technology have made the IC what it is today, however, the path of learning the correct methods of exploitation is littered with abuses. In the 1950’s and 60’s, the CIA’s newest technology was a proposed mind control drug, and project MK-ULTRA was born. The Central intelligence Agency (CIA) performed rogue tests on an unknowing public without their knowledge and severely tainted the image of the agency. In 2013, the public found out about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Top Secret PRISM program that obtained the phone and internet records of the public without their consent. These two programs were separated by decades, yet the similarities are undeniable. Both MK-ULTRA and PRISM resulted in intelligence oversight reforms aimed at managing these types of operations before they occur. While the government does not always have the ability to foresee how advancements in technology will affect the public, intelligence oversight mechanisms over the past 20 years provide the necessary safeguards that are needed to protect each American’s privacy, provide for th...
The Department of Homeland Security faces challenges of failure to coordinate and cooperate in the latest fight against computer crimes as well as more general intelligence-gathering operations. (...
...e community have had conflicting views and opposing agendas. Lack of cooperation and communication between intelligence agencies; such as the FBI and the CIA refusing to share information prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001, resulted in limited information and failure on the part of the intelligence community and policy decisions regarding US safeguards against terrorist.
The CIA is one of the U.S. foreign inteligency agencies, responsible for getting and analyzing information about foreign government, corporations, individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. The State Department's Bureau or inteligence and reserch and theDefense Department'sdefense inteligence agency comprise the other two. Its headquarters is inLangley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from D.C. The Agency, created in 1947 by President Harry S. Trueman, is a descendant of the Office of stratigic Services(OSS) of World War 2. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but William J. Jonavan, the creator of the OSS, had submitted a proposal to President Roosevelt in 1944. He called for a new organization having direct Presidential supervision, "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies." Despite strong opposition from the military, the State Department, and the FBI, Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946. Later under the National Security Act of 1947, the National Security council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established.
Additionally, the intelligence community, composed of 17 different organizations that differ in objective. But all have one thing in common, the safety of the United State National Security. Each component within the Intelligence community (IC) conducts their specific method of information collection, analysis, and dissemination. The other interest all components within the intelligence has in common is combating terrorism, by means of counter measures.
According to Donavan (1986) policy looks to intelligence for a logic of evidence, and analysis, looks for policy to serve. Despite the common goal of advancing national security interest, the relations between producers and consumers of intelligence assessments are not naturally harmonious. According to The Politicization of Intelligence History (2006), there are fewer accusations which carry more weight within the intelligence community than claims that the analysis and reporting of intelligence have been influenced by political considerations. The process and pressures by which political influence effected the Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) estimates, the Soviet Union military capabilities and the Vietnam military predictions will be discussed, in order to emphasis the safeguards needed to successfully manage the relationship between intelligence providers and consumers.
Congress’s role in strategic intelligence is oversight. “Congressional oversight refers to the review, monitoring, and supervision of federal agencies, programs, activities, and policy implementation.”[1] There is a congressional committee and a system in place in order for Congress to largely exercise this power. With that said oversight goes back to the early days of the republic which also includes activities and contexts of Congress. Some of the activities and contexts included are: investigative, appropriations, and legislative hearings; by committees, select committee’s special investigations, and reviews and studies by congressional support agencies and staff. The authority for congressional
The morality of secret operations has been questioned since intelligence first began. The President of the United States must decide at the highest level which secret operations should be conducted and which are not ethical. The problem that has happened in the past is that the President has looked at the Director of Central Intelligence as his “personal advisor” when it comes to advising on intelligence affairs (Johnson 292). President Kennedy looked to his brother Bobby when making decisions of national security, and President Reagan set up his personal friend, Walter Clark, as his National Security Advisor.
One of the main failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies identified by both the authors of “The Cell” and Senator Richard Shelby was that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. acted in competition with one another to produce results, as opposed to in centralized collaboration. Gladwell points out that the intelligence community was structured in this manner in response to the failures of the Bay of Pigs operation, which had been based on highly centralized intelligence gathering. In turn, the structure of intelligence agencies at the time of the Bay of Pigs was in response to the failure of decentralized intelligence to identify the threat of an attack on Pearl Harbor. The iterative cycle of intelligence failures and subsequent reform efforts ignores the premise that the failures do not represent evidence of the limitations of intelligence agencies, but rather the limitations of intelligence itself. As Gladwell states, “in our zeal to correct what we believe to be the problems of the past, we end up creating new problems for the
The United States has endured numerous security breaches and high security threats over the past two decades. After the attacks on 9/11, the office of Intelligence became a vital source in retrieving sensitive data and tracking down potential terrorists and their networks which could pose a threat to the American people and then forwarding that vital information to the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies. Intelligence became a key role in “assessing threats to critical American infrastructures, bio-and nuclear terrorism, pandemic diseases, threats to the borders to the nation, and radicalization within American society” (Randol, 2009, p. 7). The sharing of homeland security intelligence has become a precedence for Congress and the government. Our nation must be one step ahead of any potential terrorists that want to harm our turf. Within this text the capabilities and limitations of both domestic and foreign intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts will be explained;
According to one source, after September 11, 2001, intelligence budget grew more. But now we are in another cycle of budget cut again. It is said President Obama proposed the budget amount of $52.6 billion for fiscal year 2013 to fund the National Intelligence Program. This budget amount is said to be less than the $55 billion sought last year. The unstable budget is believed to be hampering U.S. intelligence missions. As the budget pressure mounted, the redundancy in US intelligence increased too, according to the same source. With the budget deficits, the DIA budget didn’t authorized to expand its payroll. It is said DI...
Tidd, J. M. (2008). From revolution to reform: A brief history of U.S. intelligence. The SAIS