Lecture
Seminar
"A strong nation requires a strong intelligence organization...."
President George Bush 12 November 1991
"Intelligence remains a critical element of our national power and influence."
President William J. Clinton
4 July 1995
Intelligence is a key element driving the national security process, providing early warning, information, analysis, and policy recommendations on foreign political, military, and economic developments that bear on U.S. national security interests. The role of intelligence in the national security process is perhaps best captured by President Bush, the only President to have also served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI): "intelligence remains our basic national instrument for anticipating danger-military, political, economic. Intelligence is and always will be our first line of defense...."
Since the creation of the U.S. Intelligence Community by the National Security Act of 1947, the DCI has been a statutory advisor to the NSC. Some presidents have even given cabinet rank to their CIA directors. As evident in PDD 2, members of the intelligence community are fully engaged players in the interagency system, where they provide both analysis and recommendations.
From 1947 to about 1980, the Intelligence Community's activities and the classified information and analysis it produced were the exclusive commodity of the Executive Branch. The principal consumers were the President and the members of the National Security Council. Today, Congress is also a major consumer, and intelligence information plays a role in shaping the dialogue between the legislative and executive branches.
Topic Objective
- To understand the role of the Intelligence Community in the national security process.
Questions for Consideration
- Does intelligence play a critical or a support role in the national security process? Will the need for accurate intelligence increase or decrease over the next ten years as the information revolution expands?
- Has the intelligence process become politicized? Is this a positive or negative development?
- Does the current structure of the Intelligence Community give policy-makers what they need? How should it be changed?
- Should the Intelligence Community get out of the estimating role altogether, report only the facts, and let the policy-makers come to their own conclusions?
- What role should intelligence play in executive-legislative branch interaction? Should the Executive Branch ever withhold sensitive information from Congress or from the people?
Required Readings
* "A Consumer's Guide to Intelligence," National Technical Information Service, CIA, Government Publication, October 1999. (Student Issue)
* James A. Barry, Jack Davis D. Gries, and Joseph Sullivan, "Bridging the Intelligence-Policy Divide," Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 37, No. 5 (1994), pp. 1-8. (Reprint)
* Robert M. Gates, "An Opportunity Unfulfilled: The Uses and Perceptions of Intelligence at the White House," The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 35-44. (Reprint)
* L. Britt Snider, "Sharing Secrets with Lawmakers: Congress as a User of Intelligence," An Intelligence Monograph, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CSI 97-10001 (February 1997), pp.29-36, 48-52. (Reprint)
* Jack Davis, "Paul Wolfowitz on Intelligence Policy-Relations," Studies in Intelligence, Vol.39, No. 5 (1996), pp. 35-42. (Reprint)
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