COMMENTS ON PRM-11 PAPER OF 21 APRIL 1977

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79M00095A000200020015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 27, 2005
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: April 21, 1977
• Content Type: MF

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7,1,a-e K 2
21 April 1977
Director of Performance Evaluation
and Improvement
SUBJECT Comments on PRM-11 Paper of
21 April 1977
1. General Comments: The paper is a very Defense-
oriented dialogue and excludes a lot of other users and
producers. The entire paper is slanted to a national command
authority or DOD/DCI dichotomy to the exclusion of other
Executive Branch departments. These problems relate equally
to other departments with which the DCI must interact,
although the size of programs in DOD does make the DOD/DCI
interface the most critical. The problem first appears in
the first three paragraphs in which the tone of the paper
and its logical outcomes are somewhat preordained. These
paragraphs (and the rest of the paper) need to broaden the
terms of reference to embrace other non-military users
(especially at lower echelons).
2. In the same way, the paper concentrates too much
on "national security policy." This should be opened up
to include foreign policy, international economic policy,
etc.
3. Specific Comments: The following specific comments
are keyed to numbered paragraphs and lettered brackets in
the text (attached).
3A Departmental activities such as force structure planning
and weapon systems analysis are sub-sets of National
Security Policy and, hence, are national in character.
3B Although timeliness and greater level of detail are
characteristic of operational or tactical intelligence,
force structure planning and weapon systems analysis
are no more demanding than other national activities
such as SALT negotiations and verification.
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5A Note: In 11,47 it is more likely that the departments
being mentioned were the military departments.
Probably not worth changing in the paper, however.
12/ These paragraphs do not accurately describe what really
13 happened last year at the CFI, understate CFI accom-
plishments, and do not describe DCI role accurately;
for example, the DCI is not an advisor to the Secretary
of Defense.
14 This section should be entitled "Collection System
Guidance, Priorities, Requirements, and Tasking."
Present discussion excessively focused on tasking.
16A DCI Committees provide clearing-house function for
tasking from all sources including tactical commanders.
Issue of disseminating product is both national to
tactical and tactical to national.
16B A central mechanism (DCI Committees with departmental
representation) already exists and is working effectively.
17. This section should be entitled "Line Authority."
18A Seems to be a false issue. It does not seem conceivabi
that NSA would drastically change its military focus.
In any case, this is a tasking question for which
mechanisms already exist and are working effectively.
18B SIGINT direct support is under military services and
under Program 2, which would continue to be the case
under any line authority arrangement.
19A Secretary of Defense does not control requirements,
even now.
22 As stated, does not represent current procedure. Should
read:
"Decisions on resource allocations are collegially
arrived at by the PRC with neither the DCI or Secretary
of Defense having unilateral decision authority.
Appeals of PRC decisions are resolved by the NSC."
23 Would inhibit the DCI's ability to stimulate improvements
in intelligence systems and would, in effect, make the
DCI a mini-OMB.
25 Military commanders have to go through some mechanismY
in any case.
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33 False assuml_tion that resource management and line
authority (o?erational control?) must go together.
Again, look at distinction in Services and Unified
and Specified Commands. Therefore, no combination
of resource management authority and line authority
is precluded.
25X1
Attachment:
As stated
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INTELLIGENCE STRUCTURE AND MISSION
Response to Part 2 of PI-till-11
81
In addressing the question of the most effective organizational
arrangements for meeting the nation's intelligence needs , it is
important to underscore that good intelligence is a prime requirement
at every level of government concerned with national security from
the President and members of the National Security Council to the
military field commander.
At the national level the purpose of the U.S. Intelligence community
is to produce high quality, relevant, and objective intelligence for
the President, the NSC principals and, increasingly, for the Congress.
These national needs range from information and analysis supporting
the formulation of major policy decisions to providing strategic and
tactical warning. Such intelligence is drawn from technologically
advanced collection systems as well as the traditional forms of collectjo,r.
Intelligence must also serve the particular needs of the various
components el the Department of Defense, including the military services.
At the Departmental level intelligence is used in making decisions as
A to what weapons systems to develop and their necessary characteristics
' as well as in force structure planning. At another level, intelligence
provides essential information for crisis response and support for the
planning and conduct of military operation, including time urgent data
on military force movement and activi,tt . A greater degree of timeliness
ffii
and specificity tends to distinguish DoD's needsrom those o civlan
ancie The means and manner of collecting, processing, and producing
such intelligence are as diverse as are the needs.
Al issue is what organizational arrangements will most
effectively serve the wide variety of intelligence needs of national,
part mental and tactical users.
needed by the NSC and that needed by departmental and agency lie adtg
between military and non-military but rather between that intellil.,en'ee
and 1950's was between the CIA, which was to support the National
Security Council, and the "departments and other agencies of the
Government," which were to "continue to collect, evaluate, correlate,
and disseminate departmental intelligence." The distinction was not
The division of responsibilities set forth in the 1947 National
Security Act and National Security Council Directives of the late 1940's
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In the charge to the Director of Central Intelligence under the 1947
act. to advise the NSC on "coordination of the intelligence activities of the
several Government departments," President Truman sought to prevent
repetition of the intelligence confusion and delays that occurred prior
to Pearl Harbor. The problem addressed under, the act was how to collect,
collate, process, and especially disseminate intelligence reports and estimates
that would best serve the national leadership--the President and the NSC.
Since 1947 intelligence collection has become far more technically
sophisticated and complex. The old distinctions between national and
departmental intelligence have blurred, but not disappeared.
The blurring of the traditional distinctions between "kinds" of
intelligence has added an important element of complexity to two of the most
basic aspects of intelligence organizations: The allocation of resources
for intelligence collection and analysis; and the operational tasking of
targeting of intelligence assets designed for purposes of collection.
Resource Allocation
The rapid growth of sophisticated Soviet weapons systems and
communications technology, coupled with the advent of advanced U.S.
collection systems over the last 15 years, has driven up the total cost
f of operating the government's intelligence p ,ograms . Since 1971, there
has been pressure from the White House and from Congress to impose
fiscal constraints on the total amount spent on intelligence and to ensure
that there is no wasteful duplication of effort.
/0#
Accordingly, considerable attention has been paid to resource alloca-
tior. In 1971, President Nixon directed the DCI to plan and review all
intelligence activities including tactical military intelligence and to rationalize
intelligence priorities within budgetary constraints. The main thrust of this
Directive was that major dollar savings could be achieved by making the DCI
responsible for preparing for the President a consolidated intelligence program
budget. The plan failed, in large part because Directors Helms and Colby were
reluctant to intrude in the internal Defense programming and budgeting system.
In February 1976, President Ford made another effort to expand the
role of the DCI in the allocation of intelligence resources. In his Executive
Order he established a Committee on Foreign Intelligence (CFI) chaired by the
lit DCI with responsibility to "control budget preparation and resource allocation
for a National Foreign Intelligence Program, to establish policy priorities for
the collection and production of national intelligence, and to provide guidance
on the relationship between tactical and national intelligence.
"*
* Executive Order 11905. The CFI reports directly to the NSC and includes
as members the' Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs,
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This new system has completed one full intelligence program and
budget cycle and the results are mixed. The language of the Executive
1-'l responsihiIity foe controlling
Order was ambiguous in giving the C'
budget preparation but. then asking the CFI to "ireview and amend" the
budget prior to submission to 0MB. (In-fact the CF1 over the past year
has taken the inputs from the various intelligcrice agencies and aggregated
them with small changes into whet is then called a national intelligence
program budget. Instead of trying to establish policy priorities across
the various collection and production programs, the CFI focused primarily
on the largest components of the intelligence budget, the overhead 11, 1
reconnaissance activities. Efforts by the CFI to develop definitions of
tactical military intelligence in terms relevant to the budget process proved
fruitless.
In summary, the DCI's role in the overall intelligence budget process
even as chairman of the CFI is that of an adviser to the Secretary of Defense
except for those resources under his control as Director of CIA. Neither
the DCI nor the CFI (now Policy Review Committee (intelligence)) provide
an independent assessment of the various intelligence programs in the
Defense budget. The DCI does not present the President with broad al-
ternative options for the allocation of resources. He does not trade-ofj '
among the different programs or reconcile differences over priorities.
Tasking
Operational tasking at present reflects the traditional primacy of the
DCI in this area. The DCI controls CIA, clandestine services, and the
principal interagency committees which prioritize SIGINT and imagery
tasking report to the DCI.
Tasking has been complicated because intelligence data-collection
systems have grown increasingly capable of serving both the broad interests
of the policy makers and defense planners- and the more specific technical
interests of weapons developers and the combat intelligence needs of field
commanders. Communications intelligence provides political and economic
data, as well as information on military capabilities and operations. Agents
are asked to collect information on Soviet weapon technology, political
intentions, grain harvests, etc. Satellites produce pictures which are
critical both to the SALT policy maker and the Army Commander on the East
German border.
Acone issue is how to provide the tactical commander in the'field not
only the appropriate product from nationally controlled intelligence assets,
but how to permit that commander to task those assets which can be,directly
responsive to his needss1There is also an issue in the opposite scnse, mainly
(3)
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Resource Management: Subject to appeal to the President acting with the
advice of the NSC..,
2,1
1. Either the DCI or Secretary of Defense could have responsibility and
authority for establishing national intelligence requirements , preparing and
issuing the national intelligence budget, and-providing guidance for U.S.
national intelligence program operations. In this capacity, the DCl or the
Secretary of Defense could be involved early in the budget cycle in preparing
the budgets of the respective intelligence community agencies; could issue
fiscal guidance for the allocation of all national intelligence resources; could
have responsibility for choosing among the programs of the different'cbllection
and production agencies and departments to insure against waste and un-
necessary duplication. The governing statutes and E. O. 11905 would require
substantial modification
2. Decisions could be negotiated collegially, with neither the DCI
nor the Secretary of Defense having final decision authority in the absence
of negotiated agreement. This is approximately today's situation.
3. The DCI could have the power (either with or without a. collegial
.
forum) to veto, but not to add, with respect to the NFIP elements in the
budgets of a Department as determined from time to time by the Department.
E .O. 11905 would need to be modestly modified, but not the governing statutes.
4. Resource decisions on collection and analysis systems and organizations
could be made on a collegial basis in a negotiating forum for resource management
matters : The Director of Central Intelligence or the Secretary of Defense could
be the chairman, but neither would have final decision authority. Differences
would be referred to the National Security Council or the President for decision.
E.O. 11905 would need to be modified.
Operational Tasking
1. Continue present arrangements, based'on separate collegial
mechanisms, under which the DCI has final. tasking authority during peace,
crisis, and war. Under this system military commanders must go through
these DCI mechanisms to task national systems not only in peacetime, but
in time of crisis or war as well.
2. Substitute the Secretary of Defense for the DCI as the final tasking
authority during peace, crisis, and war.
3. Modify present arrangements to:
a. establish a single centralized iron-collegial mechanism'for .
tasking. The principal purpose would be to improve responsiveness in crisis
and war.
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b. provid, for shift of final t~nsking authority from the DCI
to SECDEF during c1. is or war. Modification of E' .0. 11905 would be
required for a. and a . Statutory changes would probably be required
forb.
3. The President could designate the DCI or the Secretary of
Defense as the control authority for a particular type of system under
specific circumstances. depending primarily on the balance of importance
between national and military requirements.
Day-To-Day Authority
1. Retain existing distribution of day-to-day authority over national.
systems.
The governing status and E.O. 11905 would require substantial
modifications.
The above variations in authority over resource allocation, operational
tasking, and day-to-day management authority can clearly be combined into
a -number of basic management techniques. They range from a Secretary
of Defense maintaining existing day-to-day control over national systems
such as NSA while gaining final authority over resource allocation and
operational tasking, to a DCI maintaining and/or assuming the same authorities
and responsibilities..
Whatever the variations in basic management techniques, the basic
issue is-one of deciding what degree of centralized authority will best serve
the intelligence needs of the country. Vesting final resource allocation,
operational tasking, and clay-to-day management authority over national
systems with either the DCI or the Secretary of.Defense is one approach to
the management of intelligence activities with all the potential risks of not
serving the diverse needs of the wide variety of intellignence consumers.
Another basic approach would be to divide responsibility for
resource allocation and substantive intelligence collection and production--
a separation between resource allocation and day-to-clay management. But
there are questions here as well:
---lf the DCI assumes the responsibility for allocation national resources,
would the military requirements be adequately served'? Would resource
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responsibility for r source allocation while the Secretary of Defense
managed intelligenm ~ activities? Could procedures be devised to
provide continuing ~.vailabihty of sufficient intelligence resources
for the military commanders and to insure thb Secretary of Defense
would be able to task intelligence systems during a time of crisis or
war? On the other side of the ledger, if a Secretary of Defense retains
his present responsibilities for resource, can he insure that all to needs
of intelligence consumers are met--Treasury, The Department of State;,,
NSC? Does he have time to rationalize intelligence resources given all
the other demands on his time?
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