Remaking U.S. Intelligence - Part I: Introduction
Its backers dubbed it the "big idea." CIA Director Michael Hayden says it was "pass/fail" for the nation's espionage agencies. For years, America's allies had complained about the one-way flow of information with U.S. intelligence. Now, things were going to be different, according to the nation's first director of national intelligence. Founded in April 2005, the DNI was to be the change agent in the Washington intelligence game, the outfit that would fix the spy agencies caught flat-footed by the 9/11 attacks and embarrassed by their failure to accurately diagnose the weapons threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Change had to start somewhere, and in the DNI's view, there was no better place than SIPRNET. The Pentagon's workhorse computer network is jam-packed with real-time operational information from the CIA and other spy agencies. U.S. allies had long coveted SIPRNET access, but past efforts to share the information with them had foundered on the usual intelligence bugbear: "security concerns." Not this time, vowed DNI officials. They had a key assist: Hayden, a four-star Air Force general, had just arrived at the CIA after a brief stint as the deputy DNI. As the agency's new boss, he could have sought to curry favor with its espionage mandarins and balked at sharing SIPRNET's secrets. But his time at the DNI and, before that, as the head of the global eavesdropping National Security Agency allowed him a broader view. "If that didn't happen," Hayden says, referring to the opening up of siprnet, "then I think everyone would have doubted our seriousness about information sharing."
Hayden made the call: The CIA would play ball. As a result, in a bloody summer that saw sectarian death squads wreaking havoc in Iraq and terrorists in Britain plotting to hijack nearly a dozen airplanes, America's closest allies suddenly had a powerful new tool to use against terrorists. For the first time, Australian, British, and Canadian officials had immediate access to video feeds from unmanned Predator drones over Afghanistan and other real-time intelligence that allowed them to better coordinate search-and-rescue operations in Iraq. The allies were ecstatic; on a DNI executive's recent visit to Australia, espionage officials there practically fell over each other trying to thank the man.
Today, even with the SIPRNET chapter and other early successes, the DNI's effort to transform the nation's sprawling intelligence community is still in its early days. Veteran diplomat John Negroponte moved into the DNI's office with a sweeping reform mandate from Congress but missing some key tools he might need to accomplish the task. In the legislation that created the DNI, lawmakers failed to give the office full authority over the 16 agencies that make up the whole comprises its parts, always. we can say the 16 agencies that the intel community comprises if you prefer—the intelligence community.
Front lines. Despite some criticism that Negroponte and his staff have moved too slowly, U.S. News found that the DNI has embarked on an impressive array of reform efforts. Some, like pushing through a first-ever communitywide security badge, have had an immediate impact. Others, more ambitious, will take years to succeed—or fail. If they succeed, however, they will result in nothing less than the most sweeping reform of the intelligence community since its creation nearly 60 years ago.
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