THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE STAFF AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY PLANNING SYSTEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91M00696R000500140014-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 3, 2004
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: February 14, 1977
• Content Type: MF

CONFIDENTIAL y
Approved For-lease 2004/05/13: CIA-RDP91 M006 00500140014-2
I HE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
National Intelligence Officers
14 February 1977
Director, Office of Policy and Planning/IC
FROM . Richard Lehman
Deputy to the DCI for National Intelligence
SUBJECT . The National Intelligence Staff and the
Intelligence Community Planning System
1. This memorandum is to confirm my understanding of
our conversation last week about specifications of the
proposed Intelligence Community Planning System and the role
the National Intelligence staff would play in its implementation.
2. kb agreed that the proposed system is thorough and
orderly. It would, no doubt, be well received by such
Executive managerial organizations as 0MB and by such oversight
bodies as the House Appropriations Committee. The system,
nevertheless, presents the NI staff with a dilemma. On the
one hand, the principle that substance governs requirements
and priorities is a good one and should be observed. For
the NI staff, on the other hand, to monitor and contribute
to the planning system would tax its limited resources and
threaten to divert its limited energies from its other,
probably more important, missions. There exists, at the same
time, no national-level organization other than the NI staff
to provide the substantive contribution and supervision
that the proposed planning system requires. The NI staff,
therefore, regards the proposed system as a worthy undertaking
that must be held down to essential, manageable proportions.
25X1
25X1
Approved For Release 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696R000500140014-2
 CONFIDENTIAL
Approved For Reease 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696QO00500140014-2
3. The National Intelligence staff understands that
the Current Outlook section in the current element of the
proposed planning system is to be an explanatory preface to
the KIQs, which are to be renamed Salient Questions. The
NI staff will draft the Outlook section, which will explain
the changes in the international or operational environment
that have made these particular questions worthy of singling
out for special attention by program managers. At the same
time, the NI staff holds that it would be improper to include
in this section an inventory of the principal concerns of
the National Security Council and its staff, useful though
such an inventory would be. The NI staff further does not
believe this section would be a state-of-the-world roundup
of the sort that is already prepared annually by other
Executive branch organizations.
4. The NI staff agrees that Requirements Categories and
Associated Priorities can be useful.; the staff will provide
substantive guidance to the ad hoc DCID 1/2 working group and
otherwise assist this and subsequent like groups in their work.
5. The NI staff further agrees to produce Priority
Requirements for Regional and Topical Areas, particularly
when changed circumstances make a statement of refined needs
especially useful to intelligence program managers.
6. Salient Questions (and SQ strategy reports) will
continue to be produced by the NI staff.
7. The NI staff rather likes the new mid-range element
of the planning system. The staff would continue to contribute
Perspectives for Planning and Programming. The staff also
likes the idea of an Intelligence Strategy if this Strategy
is to focus on the likely operating environment of intelligence
collectors, processors, and analysts in the years ahead
and on drawing the resource implications from the anticipated
changed environment. The NI staff would be happy to assist
the IC Staff in validating the quality of the Strategy, but
believes the Strategy itself should be written by the collection
and production managers who would implement it, after these
2
CONFIDENTIAL
Approved For Release 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696R000500140014-2
 CONFIDENTIAL
Approved For lease 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696WO0500140014-2
managers have had Perspectives available to them. Experience
with strategic planning systems in private industry has
demonstrated convincingly that systems such as these are useful
only if line managers do the planning with the assistance
of staff elements, rather than if the planning is done by
staff elements themselves; the process itself is more valuable
than the particular strategy finally produced.
8. The NI staff continues to have deep-seated
reservations about the long-range element of the planning
system. These reservations stem from the experience of those
who have, over the years, attempted to produce estimates looking
out 15 years or more. If the staff remains doubtful that
useful results can be produced, it does not, on the other
hand, believe that it should veto an investigation of the work
being done in futurology in the private academic world to
see if that world is producing anything that might be of use
to us.
9. The NI staff remains unconvinced of the need for
a DCI Committee for Intelligence Community Planning. Its
fear is. that planning would become unnecessarily
bureaucratized; the IC Staff, itself, is already in effect
a DCI planning committee. We further see a considerable
overlap between the work of such a committee and that of the
extant DCI production and collection committees. If,
nevertheless, the committee does come into being, the NI
staff must insist that this committee confine itself to the
broadest issues, such as tradeoffs in priorities between
competing requirements. The staff must also insist that the
committee have no responsibility for requirements and priority
matters that have already been handled in an inter-agency
forum. The staff has in mind, for example, regional and
functional requirements that are prepared by an inter-agency
group under the direction of a National Intelligence Officer.
25X1
Richard Lehman
Approved For Release 2064 MMN -RDP91 M00696R000500140014-2
 Approved For R,pplease 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696WO0500140014-2
SUBJECT: The National Intelligence Staff and the Intelligence
Community Planning System
I
Distribution:
Original - Addressee
1 - D/DCI/NI Chrono
1 EO/DCI/ N I
i - A/EO/DCI/NI
6)- File: IC Staff
1 - RI
Approved For Releas&(0 f1 ~ CIA-RDP91 M00696R000500140014-2
am (14 Feb 77)
 Approved For Release 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696R000500140014-2
Approved For Release 2004/05/13 : CIA-RDP91 M00696R000500140014-2