Remaking U.S. Intelligence - Part IV: The Computers
Perhaps the most transformational work the DNI staff is doing involves the effort to retool the creaky electronic infrastructure of the intelligence community. The effort is aimed at essentially rewiring all the community's separate and unique computerized networks, so that systems can talk to systems and analysts to analysts. The task is huge: Roughly a third of the intelligence community's 100,000-strong workforce is involved in providing information technology support of some kind, officials say; that workforce is bigger than the it departments of even the nation's largest corporations. All the computer systems must be secure, handling everything from the CIA's most sensitive overseas cables to the masses of digital imagery and electronic intercepts from satellites. There are literally thousands of individual systems, most of them developed largely for specific tasks over the past 30 years. The result is a dysfunctional web of unwieldy, often duplicative networks, with different rules for access to files, databases, E-mail, and the Internet.
Rewiring the system is the job of the DNI's chief information officer, retired Air Force Gen. Dale Meyerrose. A 30-year intelligence veteran, Meyerrose ran it for NORAD–the North American Aerospace Defense Command–where he earned a reputation for bucking the bureaucracy to get things done. At the DNI office, Meyerrose has focused his efforts on revamping the community's security protocols—the bedrock standards that, while protecting sensitive data, are also among the biggest obstacles to communication and sharing intelligence. To find the best way forward, Meyerrose took a novel tack: He opened up discussion of the nation's most sensitive computer networks to outsiders. Over the objections of some, Meyerrose brought together 700 experts from across the government, industry, and academia to a conference on how to put together a state-of-the-art security infrastructure that could be built upon for years. "We don't have the corner on the market on technology and technology brains," says Meyerrose, who argues that the DNI is merely looking for the best ideas, not giving away secrets. "Even today, I have people within the government who say, 'You're treading on thin ice here.' OK, so I'm treading on thin ice. But we're pressing ahead. We're going to completely take a new approach." A new plan is expected by early next year.
Meyerrose's office was the prime mover in the effort to open up the Pentagon's SIPRNET to U.S. allies. He has also helped pry open Intelink, a closed Internet system that contains millions of intelligence documents and hundreds of databases, ranging from top secret to unclassified. In the past five months, Intelink users have grown from 40,000 to over a million, and it can now link to some 4 million computers around the globe.
Still, there are growing pains. In the spring, Meyerrose was asked by officials to set up an electronic network to plan for an avian flu pandemic, to run at both the classified and unclassified level. Within a week, Meyerrose's people had put up the classified system on Intelink, but it took eight weeks to launch the unclassified one. The problem: When intelligence agencies have unclassified information, they tend to reflexively stamp it ORCON–Originator Controlled–meaning that no other agency can access it without explicit permission. It's the kind of information hoarding that drives intelligence reformers up the wall. Because of ORCON, says Meyerrose, "95 percent of the information put on the unclassified portal was inaccessible by any other organization." Once the DNI insisted the information be released, the avian flu network grew 10-fold in just four weeks, to 38,000 users. "It had nothing to do with technology," says Meyerrose. "Setting up the portals only took a few hours."
Eradicating orcon remains a top priority for the DNI's reformers. "In my home agency, ORCON is somewhere between Genesis and Revelation–dutiful religious dogma," says Chief of Staff Shedd. "ORCON is slapped on virtually everything." But tackling ORCON is just part of the DNI's information-sharing effort. Within weeks, the White House is expected to approve over 30 DNI recommendations on how to improve the flow of intelligence. Many of the measures are designed to speed terrorism data to local and state authorities. Key to the effort is welding the nation's 42 regional intelligence hubs—called "fusion" centers—into a national network. The proposals also are intended to end a running feud between the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security over who has the lead role in sharing intelligence information on terrorism with local officials.
None of this will be easy. For years, security concerns have been among the biggest impediments to change. But some security concerns border on paranoia, reformers say, and have complicated one of the DNI's most far-reaching reform efforts–a requirement that intelligence officials serve outside their home agencies before they can be promoted. One of the biggest obstacles to this "joint duty" is security clearances, which are regulated by individual agencies. In practice, this has meant that even a 20-year veteran of the National Security Agency with the highest clearances might have to wait as long as a year for new clearances after being transferred to the CIA.
Early on, the DNI required spy agencies to accept each other's clearances. But problems remain. CIA Director Hayden recalls the effort to create a 24-hour DNI watch center last year, where he brought in several senior analysts from around the community. They had the highest-level clearances, but CIA security officials said it would still take four months to clear them to use the CIA's classified network. Hayden was told that even a high-ranking CIA official he'd tapped for the center needed a new clearance–because the analyst would be using a different computer server. ("I had to excuse people from the room so I could unscrew the general from the ceiling," recalls one of Hayden's aides.) After Hayden raised questions, the analysts were cleared in 24 hours.
NEXT:Part V: The Analysts