I&W STUDY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81B00401R002400200034-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2004
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: June 21, 1978
• Content Type: MF

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21 June 1978
MEMORANDUM FOR:
FROM
SUBJECT : I&W Study
Attached is a second cut at an executive summary.
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Attachment
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The prime function for the DCI always has to been provide warning
and especially Strategic Warning. Many intelligence elements contribute
to this, but the jointly manned Strategic Warning Staff (SWS) and the
now vacant Special Assistant to the DCI for Strategic Warning are the
only national elements clearly responsible for warning. The DCI also
has been responsible for supporting the President and NSC in crises, and
arrangements have evolved in CIA to do this.
This is the initial report of a joint NFAC/NITC working group that
has reexamined warning and crisis. management in light of the Intelligence
Community' reorganization. The group also directed its work toward
responding to the HPSCI?'on Community organization for warning. This
report sets a conceptual framework and then makes specific recommen-
dations.
Current intelligence is-the reporting of events, explaining their
background and significance, and projecting events in the short term.
Warning (small-w) is the most important mission of current intelligence
and has some specialized features. Strategic Warning (big-W) is more
specialized and focuses on the possibility of conflict with a major
adversary.
Warning presents two major management problems. First, while it is
the overriding responsibility of all line intelligence organizations., it
actually takes little of their time. Thus it is hard to translate a
number one priority into isolable systems. One cannot anticipate before-
hand all the information needed for warning or policy making in all the
situations that might take the US rapidly to crisis. For some Strategic
Warning cases one can create scenarios of what the other side will
likely do prior to hostilities. For the most important scenarios one
then can devise and carry out collection plans against Warning indicators.
However, if one tried to do so for all warning the sheer number of
scenarios would become an unmanageable burden. Where and how to strike
the right balances are major management problems that must he addressed
often as the world changes.
Second, Strategic Warning responsibilities are shared by the DCI
who is charged to give warning and by the SECDEF who is charged to
defend the country implying a responsibility not to be taken by surprise.
A management problem arises because the likely sequence is warning of
minor war somewhere, followed by a perception that serious US interests,
are at stake, leading to strategic warning. As the probability rises
that US forces will fight SECDEF's responsibilities demand that he focus
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more narrowly on intelligence needed to fight and win. The DCI must
continue to assess the overall situation for the President and NSC.
Supporting military plans and operations and supporting broader national
policies and actions will compete increasingly for intelligence resources.
Especially because the National Command Authority which directs military
preparations includes the President and SECD'EF, but not the Secretary of
State and DCI, there is a danger that military considerations may dominate
Presidential decisions to the exclusion of broader alternatives and that
the DCI will not be aware of contemplated and ongoing US military and
diplomatic actions so he can assess reactions. A critical decision in
balancing these conflicting demands will come when the President is
asked to shift tasking authority to SECDEF..
Although most of the elements for a warning system now exist, there
are critical gaps. The one seen by the HPSCI is lack of a clear focus
with lines of accountability to those existing elements. Another is
that the function of.regularly challenging the Community's conventional
wisdom is moribund. A third is that Community line organizations are
not disciplined to perform their warning function. Most of the working
group's detailed recommendations seek to fill these. gaps.
Broadly the group recommends designating the DDCI, who is at the
point where all warning organizational threads converge, as the Community
overseer of warning. It further recommends a substructure under him
consisting of a permanent Community warning management committee whose
executive secretary will be the Community's Senior Warning Officer.
This officer will also oversee the SWS and a Warning Referent Network to
provide communications channels stretching out and down to the, analyst
level. throughout the Community.
Apart from these organizational modifications the working. gaup
recommends reaffirming that the Community line organizations bear primary
responsibility for all warning. In particular, while the referent
network will provide channels for warning based on an analyst's or
collector's first look, the NIOs will have explicit responsibility for
second look warning in their areas; they will execute this partly by
conducting a Community warning review of potential trouble spots in
their areas at least monthly. Further, the NIOs SP, CF and USSR-EE
(with occasional NIO China & EAP help) will constitute an advisory board
for the SWS to advise on its work program and to participate in the sws'
findings when required.
..As a third line of defense the working group proposes that the new
management mechanisms intrude into substance to the extent that the
committee will serve ad hoc as a court of appeal for an agency that
feels a critical situation is being neglected and the Senior Warning
Officer will be the Community ombudsman for warning, open to maverick
views, thinking ominously and, generally promoting a "second look" philosophy.
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The working group also recommends reviving the Alert Memorandum, a
mechanism which has fallen into disuse, as the means the DCI uses to
galvanize both the Community and policymakers. It also recommends that
the SWS charter and membership be broadened somewhat, and that its
utility be reexamined after a test period under a new modus operandi.
There is a continuum stretching from routine current intelligence
to urgent strategic warning with increasingly close collection-analysis
links as one moves along the scale. Somewhere along it, surely no later
than issuing strategic warning, national authorities will see themselves
as in a crisis. Although the Administration has not confronted a crisis
experience suggests that, at whatever point it sees the US as threatened,
it will expect the DCI to participate and advise in frequent NSC and SCC
meetings, to direct or coordinate Community actions in preparing situation
reports, providing data and assessments, and adjusting collection, and
to conduct paramilitary or political action operations. These will be
the DCI's crisis management tasks.
Adjusting collection and conducting covert actions, however important,
will be ad hoc and sporadic demands on the DCI's time. On the other
hand, providing reports, data and assessments, and participating in
meetings (both to advise and to learn what policymakers are thinking and
doing) will be continuous every hour of every day.
The working group's recommendations for DCI crisis management
arrangements are exemplified by the Horn of Africa Working Group arrange-
ments: More generally they are based on the fact that in crisis the DCI
needs:
-Immediate access to the President and White House Situation
Room
-Close and continuous contact with his analytic task force
-Close contact with NITC
-Ability to draw on the SWS in the NMIC
-Operational information originating in State and the NMCC
teleprinter and facsimile, 2 5X1
s
rom 9
communications and conference facilities, including at least voice,
The D I s ay will be built around attending
meetings ere, preparing or them and on tasks arising out of them.
The DCI's need to be readily available to the President and NSC must be
balanced against his need to keep close contact with his analysts and,,
to a lesser extent, with his collection tasking officers. Following
basic recommendation the group recommends provision of secure
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In addition the working group recommends that in a crisis the DCI
designate the NIO (with the NITO's assistance) as his principal task
officer. He should also establish at Langley a NFAC task force to
support himself and use it to issue DCI Situation Reports. The DCI's
major substantive support must be from this task force made up of people
who will be familiar with his style. This task force must be at Langley
because it is only the tip of an iceberg which may well include hundreds
of professional and clerical people. DIA analysts will betoottotorn
DCI's
among OSD, JCS and U&S Commanders military demands to support
broader responsibilities. The task force should have liaison officers
from State and Defense, with secure communications, to link the task
force with their departments and to provide Community consultation and
contributions (but not full coordination)."
With respect to crisis collection tasking the working group recommends
designation of the NITO.as the DCI's and NIO's focal point for collection
tasking during a crisis. He will:
-Ensure that national foreign intelligence requirements are
translated into specific collection tasks.
-Provide tasking to collection organizations and systems.
-Resolve conflicts in tasking.
-Prepare daily reports on the status of collection systems
for the DCI and for inclusion in the DCI's Situation Report
if needed.
-Develop tasking on non-NFIC departments and agencies which
have information collection capabilities through existing
instrumentalities.
-Provide timely support to the task force concerning the
status, capabilities, tasking, and yield of collection
resources durina the crisis
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The working group believes that the proposed system for warning and
crisis management will meet several requirements. It will be flexible
as it must be because there is no way to predict how warning will come
or a crisis will develop. It will have a well understood structure and
explicit statements of responsibility to provide a clear focus and lines
of accountability for the elements that already exist. The system'will
be comprehensive allowing the DCI to oversee the full range of analysis
and collection. Economy requires that the system rely on existing
organizations performing in a dual mode; the proposed system does this.
The system must accommodate the needs of SECDEF and his military commanders;
the permanent committee provides the forum in which DCI and DoD equities
can be balanced, the balance remains to be struck. Finally the system
provides the DCI a support apparatus, largely analytic, that is fully
responsive to him.
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Once the DCI has set up the recommended management arrangements, he
is in position to inform the HPSCI that he has accepted its suggestions,
and he should do so. He should then charge DDCI and the committee with
the other recommendations.
There are several crisis and warning topics not treated here that
have gone too long unexamined. The new management machinery should take
them on. They are:
-Means tor making the Ni's sitrep more comprehensive and
more "national" without sacrificing timeliness.
-Integration of the efforts of NIO/SP, NIO/CF, and NIO/USSR
with SWS.
-The long-.term future of SWS.
-The DCI's`responsibilities to the U&S Commands.
-The DCI role in wartime.
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