PRELIMINARY VIEWS ON THE INTELLIGENCE IMPLICATIONS OF THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT BLUE RIBBON PANEL REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00269R001000030008-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 22, 2004
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: July 1, 1970
• Content Type: REPORT

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Preliminary Views on the Intelligence Implications
of the Defense Department Blue Ribbon Panel Report
1. It is obviously impossible to evaluate the implications
of this report on intelligence activities without reference to the
recommendations of the report relating to the organization of the
Defense Department as a. whole. To put it differently, if the
organizational recommendations of the report are adopted, some
rearrangement of intelligence relationships will be necessary
irrespective of the specific conclusions of the report relating to
intelligence.
2. The main thrust of the report is to recommend the
establishment of three Deputies--one for resources; one for evalu-
ation and one for operations.
3. The Deputy for Operations would be the senior as amongst
the three Deputies and would be in charge of all operational, intelli-
gence and related matters (including, as I remember it, communica-
tions). All military command authority would be consolidated in
(again as I remember it) three major commands which would report
to the Deputy for Operations through a senior deputy or commander.
The present Chairman of the Jotnt Chiefs might be this senior deputy
or commander who would report to the Deputy for Operations- -a
civilian.
4. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military departments and
services seem to vanish away, retaining little more than their uniforms.
What happens to them is not entirely clear to me but is presumably
spelled out in some of the back-up material to the report. What is
clear in the summary is that all operational authority, all intelligence
activities and (as I remember it) responsibility for personnel assign-
ments is removed from the service departments.
5. Against this background the chapter of the report dealing
with intelligence recommends the establishment of an Assistant
Secretary for Intelligence who would function under the Deputy for
Operations. This man would also serve as the Defense Director of
Intelligence in which capacity he would:
a. serve on USIB;
b. direct and control all intelligence activities
other than those inherent to a major command;
NRO review(s) completed.
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c. review programs;
d. review requirements;
e. review requirements for R&D;
f. be responsible for the protection of
intelligence methods and sources.
6. A Defense Security Command would be established under
the Assistant Secretary responsible for all collection activities
(other than tactical). The commander of this organization would
command all collection and associated processing and reporting
activities. He would "serve as the Director, NSA" and insure
dissemination of intelligence information.
7. A Defense Production Agency would be responsible for
all Defense intelligence production. It would provide current intelli-
gence, threat assessments and finished intelligence required by the
Defense Department. It would also be responsible for Defense
inputs to National Intelligence Estimates and manage intelligence
production information systems.
8. The report finally recommends expansion of responsibilities
of NSA to include processing. data base maintenance and reporting
of all intelligence information.
9. There is a curious redundancy in the report which calls
for the establishment of a command to supervise all collection
activities and states that the director of this command will also be
the Director of NSA. What the writers of the report appear to be
gunning for is the NRO which they don't like. NRO is not specifically
referred to in the report but is obviously included under the heading .
of a discussion of certain special arrangements designed to take care
of new systems. They seem to feel that the NRO is out of reach of
the normal review mechanisms and its activities not properly related
to the other intelligence activities of the Defense Department. I
suspect that they don't know very much about the NRO and the wording
of their report suggests that they were given somewhat of a run-around.
Quite obviously one of their objectives is to see that the NRO is
safely subordinated to the new review and control mechanism.
10. From their general introductory discussion, one gathers
the following:
a. They recognize the authority of the DCI over the
community as a whole and his responsibility as an over-all 25X1
coordinator; they also recognize the function of USIl3 of
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which they think the new Assistant Secretary should be a
member.
b. They seem to feel that the interests of the policy-
makers and consumers are not generally represented in the
requirements process. I don't know what the source of this
impression is as the problem has always seemed to us to be
that the interests of every conceivable consumer, from
those interested in wheat production in the Ukraine to those
interested in the number of rivets in a Soviet weapons
carrier are thoroughly reflected in the requirements. The
problem has always been to translate these requirements
for information about missiles or tanks into the kind of data
(FLINT, photographs, espionage reports) that are likely to
respond to the question.
c. They have accepted the conventional criticism
that Estimates are pretty well compromised and watered,
down as a result. of the coordinating process.
d. They criticize the CIRIS on the grounds that it
shows the resources allocated against targets but contains
no information about the nature of requirements for informa-
tion on the targets and no assessment of the value of intelli-
gence collected. (Obviously it is not intended to do either
of these things--it is simply intended as an inventory from
which value judgments can be developed. )
6. The report makes a number of other comments- -for .
example, on what it considers the excessive compartmentation of
information and the need to consolidate all mapping and charting
activity in a new agency.
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