STAP RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CIA R&D PLANS (Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00156R000200100011-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 17, 2003
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: August 14, 1979
• Content Type: MF

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14 August 1979
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MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
FROM . Leslie C. Dirks
Deputy Director for Science and Technology
SUBJECT STAP Recommendations for CIA R&D Plans
REFERENCE . Your memo subj. same as above
dtd 16 Jul 79 (ER-79-1632/1)
1. We have taken a long and careful look at the six.
STAP recommendations offered in the reference; attached are
our detailed comments on each of these. There are a few
points I would like to make here, howe er, about both the
Recommendations and our comments.
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2. More effective long-range planning appears to be
a thread running through most of the STAP recommendations.
You and I, along with the other members of the Executive
Committee, have had a number of discussions on long-range
Agency planning. A number of the STAP recommendations are
intimately connected with the Executive Committee's concern
about the Agency's ability to do meaniitglui long-range planning.
It is entirely appropriate that the NFAC take the lead in this
and your action assignment to John Hicks early this summer could
(should?) be the basis from which to proceed. I have felt
uncomfortable for some time now about this Directorate's long-
range planning and have recently taken. both organizational and
emphasis actions to enhance our posture in the planning area.
By nature of our work, however, we should be formulating our
long-range laps in consonance with the Agency's, if such plans
existed
3. For your information,. I began last spring several 25X1
activities which have now led to substantial changes in how
the S&T will manage R&D in the future. I will be Glad to
discuss these with you and in conjunction with
tentatively plan for an overview with the EC. 25X1
Unclassified when
removed from att.
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SUBJECT: STAP Recommendations for CIA RFD Plans
4. The STAP has made an effort to form a consensus
of various views about the CIA R&D program to which they
were exposed by an assortment of participants. It is
difficult for most of the contributors to the RFD planning
process to perceive the overall nature of the planning
effort in which they are involved. A number of points are
made in the attached comments that I believe resent a more
balanced view of the R&D planning process.
S. We will be happy to discuss these comments further
25X1 if you desire.
Attachment:
As stated
cc: Comptroller
DDStT-3694-79/l
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Recommendation 1: That an annual long-range RFD "posture
statement" be prepared by the DDSFT, to include a description
and rationale for the overall Agency program. Such a
posture statement, analogous to that now prepared by DoD,
should include a section on long-range intelligence problems
by NFAC, the RFD needs of the other user offices, and a
descriptive section on the purpose and status of major RFD
programs, including those aimed at satisfying major Agency
intelligence objectives, such as improved intelligence
production or secure agent communications. Some attempt
also should be made to provide a more integrated rationale
for the various support-related RFD programs (e.g., for
DDO, DDA, and NPIC) in terms of the Agency's overall
intelligence objectives.
Comment: The STAP recommendation is basically sound
but some background is helpful. As the STAP recognizes,
we are making progress to improve the management of
RFD. In addition to the RFD Notebook discussed by the
Panel a number of other items are used in the RFD
planning phase of RFD management. For the past several
years, this Directorate has received, at our request,
problem statements (on which RFD might be brought to
bear) from NFAC, the DDO, the DDA, I land 25
NPIC elements of the S&T Directorate. These are reviewed
by our RFD Offices and specific candidate proposals
prepared to attack most of those problems. The
proposals are then sent back to the organization
authoring the problem for review, comment, and rating.
Discussion sessions are held between the parties,
usually hosted by the S&T's Planning and Resources
Staff, to further clarify both problems and proposals.
The results of this activity are made available to
DDSFT, hi:, staff, and his Office Dircctors tc aid them
in putting together the RFD program for each budget
,year.
Although we have improved the mechanism for creating
the Agency RFD program over the past several years, we
have not tried to reduce to text our overall R&D
posture. This is perhaps an opportune time to do so
and we will. It must be noted, however, that when we
do so it is essential that it receive a valid hearing,
preferrably as a part of the annual budget preparation
process. For the posture statement to have real
meaning and be useful for Agency executives to consider,
it should not be a stand alone RFD Posture Statement
but rather an integral part of the Agency's Posture.
It will be without a context otherwise. The DDSFT
strongly recommends that each element of the CIAP
(production, technical collection, human source collection,
support), as well as RFD, generate a posture statement
and that a similar overall CIA Posture Statement be
prepared for the Agency.
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Recommen
dation 2: Within the NFAC, DDO, and DDS&T grouping,
NFAC should play a lead role in establishing long-range
functional intelligence needs that would require R&D support
rather than having developments in collection technology drive
the system. In fulfilling this role NFAC should establish a
small but dedicated effort to develop, on a continuing basis,
an intelligence "future" made up of the most important intel-
ligence problems and objectives that the CIA might be expected
to face over the next three to ten year period. _The primary
objective of this effort would be long-range Agency planning.
Such an of o.rt could be handled by a few project o ficers plus
analytical contributions from the various NFAC offices and the
other R&D consumers.
Comment: We could not agree more with statement of
need for "long-range Agency planning." It is broader
than R&D planning, of course. Two points should be
made about this recommendation. The first concerns
the suggested NFAC role. As discussed above, we have
taken what steps we can in conjunction with our Agency
R&D "customers" to better our R&D planning. Worth
noting is that we do have a formal effort underway in
which the intelligence problems we are soliciting from
the NFAC this year are specifically identified as those
on which Agency R&D might be brought to bear and are
specifically long-range problems. We have asked NFAC
to think in terms of five years as to when RFD might
produce intelligence elicited by the problem statements.
We have also asked NFAC for a separate list of near
term intelligence problems which might be amenable to
application of in-hand technology. NFAC has a section
of their Requirements and Evaluation Staff largely
dedicated to stating their intelligence problems to us.
Also earlier this year, the DD/NFAC has established a
study committee of NFAC Deputy OD's to review NFAC
requirements.
We try to work equally close with our other RFD customers,
especially the Operations Directorate. Although NFAC
is the ultimate Agency consumer of intelligence, they
are not the only immediate beneficiary of R&D. We have
found it much more workable over the years to decouple
the R&D for HUMINT (agent aids) from R&D to immediately
benefit the NFAC (technical collection systems). The R&D
support we give to HUMINT is dominated by the DDO's opera-
tional needs, not generally known by the NFAC and of little
direct interest to them, rather than dominated by the
content of the intelligence collected by T-ILIMMTNT mP-qnc
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Our second point concerns the relationship between
Agency and R&D planning. The long-range Agency
planning recommendation must look at total intelligence
problems and provide for the identification of all
areas in which progress should be made to fulfill the
Agency long-range plan. A number of other areas.
besides R&D could be identified by such an effort such
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a eren as king set up tor existing collectors, etc.
R&D is just one of the many organizational assets that
can be brought to bear on intelligence problems and it
makes, little sense to segregate R&D planning from the
necessary overall planning that should be accomplished.
As a result of S&T's participation in long-range
Agency planning, funds would be programmed for
a particular R&D effort as part of the attack on a
specific long-range intelligence problem.
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Recommendation 3: The Agency Comptroller should seek to
have OMB treat Agency RFD funds as a separate multi-year
appropriation or, if this is not possible, seek a formulation
by which Agency R&D funds for large, long-range R&D projects
can be budgeted on a multiple-year cycle along the same
line as that used by elements of DoD. This approach should
serve to both highlight important RFD commitments over the
long term and relieve internal pressures to further reduce
an already sparse R&D effort as the result of R&D planning
by residual allocation.
Comment: This recommendation addresses only a part of
a much larger management problem. That is, how do we
fund and provide the flexibility to manage large multi-
year programs within the CIAP. The DDSET could strongly
endorse some method whereby large multi-year projects
receive proper funding. By "proper" we mean funds
that have the necessary flexibility associated with
them to be judiciously used by the Program Manager
without undue constraints imposed by the calendar. One
option that should be considered would have the Agency
seek an amount of multi-year funds to pursue several
large (and not just R&D) projects each of which would
be high-visibility projects and specifically identified.
Projects that should be candidates for such funds
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s I tie ice o i
as pointed out, t e handling of multi-year funds may
require some accounting system changes for CIAP funds.
We believe the issue of multi-year funding for our
largest projects--in order to better manage them--should
not be decided on the basis of accounting problems or
the specter of acquainting a "Washington Community"
with this approach. It may very well be that the
required accounting changes are few when multi-year
funds are sought for only a few (although large)
projects.
The Department of Defense began using project-oriented
multi-year funding some time ago in the belief that proper
management of large R&D efforts required a funding structure
free of the rigid constraints of the calendar. With the
CIAP budget being formulated against a somewhat arbitrary
ceiling each year, we do not have the fiscal flexibility
to respond to large unforeseen development problems by
reprogramming within the CIAP without doing serious harm
to other projects and elements funded by that particular
year's budget. When smaller projects are considered, the
annual constraint is not a problem. As has been pointed out
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by both I land the STAP, the ris a welcome
flexibility in having a single appropriation for the
entire Agency budget but, unfortunately, that
flexibility is not there for large projects and
particularly for large R&D projects where unforeseen
development difficulties can create large financial
problems.
We recommend that a study be conducted to
constructively explore ways by which large CIA
multi-year projects can be funded. What is required
here is not only a) the mechanism for obtaining such
funds but also b) flexibility for both large and
small projects in managing their respective monies.
Recommendation 4: The Agency (DDS&T) must consciously
develop a new technology acquisition strategy, one
recognizing the contemporary capabilities and limitations of
CIA. Some form of a technology transfer strategy seems most
appropriate (as opposed to past practices of seeding, Agency
innovation, and outright funding). The establishment
of a dedicated Agency effort to identify other government
and private sector technology that can be applied to
identified needs would be a first step. The Agency should
actively follow such R&D efforts by other government
organizations through the IR&DC. The use of high-level
Agency access to the private sector as a means of main-
taining currency in areas of technological interests should
be systematically pursued. In addition, Agency management
should seek to designate certain of its R&D projects as
Community efforts (e.g., analytical techniques and collection
efforts that satisfy DIA and Service needs as well as
CIA's). In those cases provision should be made to pool all
relevant IC R8D funds under the management of a designated
lead agency.
Comment: The Agency does utilize the IR#tDC mechanism
as one means of sharing technology. Further, many of
our technical and managerial personnel maintain good,
although informal, technical contacts with colleagues
elsewhere in government and in industry. We also
employ capabilities briefings by industry for our R&D
offices. By way of a concerted effort to enhance
technology transfer we have been moving to realign
a portion of our capabilities to provide the means of
doing this for both the hard and soft sciences and
their applications. It is one of our objectives to
develop in-house technologists having a variety of
specialization areas. There is significant change in
the personnel area required to achieve this. The
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technologists we are seeking must be those types of
people willing to spend their time maintaining expertise
on their subjects and not have their attentions drawn
off in pursuit of one or two glamourous application
projects, ORD/DDS&T has a specific charge in this
regard. This entails quite a different personality
from our typical very-project-oriented technical
personnel. The organization of this Directorate may
have to be changed to foster the establishment and best
use of these technologists. The technologists will
need to develop contacts both inside and outside CIA
to function well. Until we can set up this group we
are bound by ongoing commitments to continue our present
approach. As in any highly people-oriented endeavor,
these types of changes take time to be effective and
we are taking steps toward accomplishing them.
With regard to the community implications of our R&D
we-have recently made an offer to the Human Resources
Committee of the Collection Tasking Staff to have
CIA/DDSF,T be the Community Focal Point for R&D in
support of 'HU`fINT activities.
Recommendation 5: In order to optimize allocation of limited
R&D funds, the Agency's upper management should selectively
identify and support development of any major new multidisci-
plinary intelligence processes, particularly, those requiring
simultaneous R&D in collection, analysis, and production means.
The CIA Executive Committee should look closely at such needs
and related R&D projects, with the participation of appropriate
CIA offices and R&D groups.
Comment: We have difficulty supporting the recommendation
as offered. The idea of supporting "any major new
multidisciplinary intelligence process" with caveats
as stated could only be done in the competitive environ-
ment of our budget and unfunded requirements activities.
The potential value of any new undertaking to the Agency's
mission must be weighed against the values of all of the
rest of the candidates for support.
We hope that the identification of these potentially
attractive multidisciplinary items will be a feature of
long-range Agency planning which we.support. This
planning must be multidirectorate in nature and present
a natural avenue for these new processes to be developed
and/or receive a proper consideration. Regardless of
the outcome of the long-range planning recommendation
(discussed under item 2 above) this Directorate will
remain alert for such ideas and support them insofar as
we are able.
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Recommendation 6: NFAC should prepare a short list of major
policy-issue consumer needs operative 5-15 years in the
future which are not likely to be met adequately by current
analytical and production approaches. If prepared properly,
the list would identify upcoming production problems,
particularly those which cut across or fall between the
division of labor among analytical offices. Production R4D
itself should concentrate on a small number of such problems.
through projects of 3 to 5 years duration. The choice of
production R&D projects, data access determination, and
project continuity should rest outside the jurisdiction of
offices with strong commitments to current production
approaches and divisions of analytic effort. The
relationship between the future needs list and the small
group of production-related RFD projects would be analogous
to that of long-range corporate planning and a corporation's
operating plan. A yearly review of both would be required
to insure their currency and relevance to the Agency's
intelligence objectives; a function that the Executive
Committee might perform..
Comment: Here again we see good planning for
Production R,D to be another facet of.good long-range
planning at the Agency level. We do support the
methodology recommended for NFAC to pursue. It is
worth stating here that we have a commitment from
NFAC to provide a top level (DD/NFAC level) review and
ranking of the long and short range intelligence
problems (both collection and production). Our
proposed solutions to those problems will be
similarly ranked. We will use this information
heavily in the formulation of our R&D program for
r~ 1982 and the degree of pop level support for
production R&D projects hopefully will be made clear.
S.fw .J i .a .
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