At DNI, a Mission Manager to Track North Korea
When North Korea tested a nuclear device for the first time last month, one man was at the center of the response by U.S. intelligence. Joseph DeTrani, a veteran CIA official, is the intelligence community's first "mission manager" for North Korea, working under the director of national intelligence.
In the days surrounding the nuclear test, DeTrani was issuing twice-daily summaries compiling all the latest intelligence from throughout the community. Acting like a "traffic cop," he helped determine which analysts would work on which aspects of the situation–everything from determining whether or not it was a nuclear blast to North Korea's food shortages and China's private diplomacy with Pyongyang. DeTrani also regularly briefed the White House and the Pentagon, and helped task spies on what to target.
"When you have a near-crisis situation, you've got to have someone in charge," says a senior intelligence official. "It's one-stop shopping. There is one person who is immediately accountable for everything going on there."
DeTrani is one of a half-dozen mission managers, playing a new role inside the intelligence community. Assigned to some of the hardest targets (including Iran, terrorism, and Cuba/Venezuela), mission managers are supposed to make sure that different intelligence agencies work together, help plug gaps in the U.S. government's knowledge, and eliminate excessive overlaps. The exact role is still developing, and the mission manager is also becoming something of a crisis manager.
The July 4-5 missile trials were DeTrani's first test.
"That's the first time we've ever had sort of a single focal point," says Mary Margaret Graham, the deputy DNI for collection. Previously, the Central Intelligence Agency would have played more of a lead role in reacting to such a crisis. But CIA officials insist that the mission manager does not challenge their primacy when it comes to collection and analyzing intelligence. During the July tests, "we looked to the mission manager for guidance," CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden tells U.S. News. "That really isn't a threatening aspect for us here." Hayden added that, if anything, the mission manager could have applied "even a stronger hand" in directing the energy of the various intelligence agencies.
DNI officials conducted a lessons-learned study after the July missile test with intelligence agencies and policymakers. The conclusions were largely positive, although officials found that there was a demand for even more active coordination.
"We had different analytical judgments coming out that were not helpful," says Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, the acting deputy DNI. "We don't want groupthink, but they should get a product saying the best judgment of the intelligence community is X."
Instead, busy policymakers were still getting different reports from individual agencies–sometimes half a dozen a day or more. "Nowhere were all these reports being pulled in a timely manner into one product," Burgess adds.
By the time of the nuclear test last month, officials had decided that the mission manager would produce regular summaries of the intelligence during a crisis. When intelligence agencies finally confirmed that the North Korean blast was a nuclear one, it was the DNI's office that put out the official public statement.
Today, the community's judgment remains that the test was probably a fizzle.
"Normally, with a first test, you don't want a subkiloton event," says a senior intelligence official. "You have to assume maybe this is not exactly what was expected." Officials are now watching closely for the possibility of a second nuclear test, as well as what effect Beijing's pressure on North Korea to refrain from further tests is having.
The lessons-learned inquiry on the role of the mission manager also raised some longer-term gaps in the intelligence community's coverage of North Korea. While officials declined to discuss most of the findings, one area that DNI officials want to improve is what they call "open source" reporting. In other words, they want to do a better job of collecting and analyzing information available in foreign newspapers and broadcasts, on websites, and from other public sources.
"The community doesn't do it enough, yet, by any means. Culturally, we have never valued open source," says Graham. "If we do it right, we will better know where to spend our clandestine resources."
Inside the intelligence community, there is still some confusion over the role of the mission manager. For one thing, the DNI's office also includes a set of national intelligence officers, who are charged with producing National Intelligence Estimates, formal documents that reflect the consensus view of the entire community on key strategic concerns.
"Even NIOs privately are not clear where the boundaries are between the responsibilities of the mission manager and the NIO," says a recently retired intelligence analyst. But DNI officials insist that NIOs tend to work on longer-term issues and that those kinds of boundaries are becoming clearer as the mission manager posts continue to evolve.