FOIA
INTELLIGENCE
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP88-01315R000200160002-7
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
10
Document Creation Date:
December 16, 2016
Document Release Date:
September 8, 2004
Sequence Number:
2
Case Number:
Content Type:
SUMMARY
File:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 CIA-RDP88-01315R000200160002-7.pdf | 426.38 KB |
Body:
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INTELLIGENCE
General Sun Tzu, who was a supreme military strategist in
China long before Christ was born, wrote, "To win 100 victories
in 100 battles is not the acme of skill. To find security without
fighting is the acme of skill,."
It is the goal of intelligence to help America achieve
security without fighting. The mission of intelligence is to
see that America's leaders know what is happening abroad and to
alert them to what might happen tomorrow. This combination of
informing and alerting is what intelligence is really all about.
The United States has conducted foreign intelligence activities
since the days of George Washington, who wrote to Colonel Elias
Dayton on July 26, 1777: "The necessity of procuring good
intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged..."
Funds for foreign intelligence, including a so-called secret
service fund, were sought by President Washington in his first
inaugural address. The legality of keeping such funds secret has
been upheld in the Congress ever since. Both the notion that
foreign intelligence is the responsibility of the Chief Executive
and that there should be Congressional oversight can also be
traced to the early days of the Government.
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The Intelligence Structure
But the need for an American Central Intelligence apparatus
grew out of Pearl Harbor and the experiences of the Second World
War. The Congress wanted to make certain that the US would not
be caught short again because of a lack of good intelligence
information. Thus the National Security Act of 1947 gave birth
to a Central Intelligence Agency under the guidance and direction
of the National Security Council --- composed of the President,
Vice President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense.
The Act established a Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI) to be the Director of CIA and the coordinator of the
intelligence activities of the Intelligence Community -- that
is, the units of other federal departments (Department of
Defense, State, etc.) that have foreign intelligence respons-
ibilities. As part of his responsibility as Director of CIA,
the DCI is designated the President's chief intelligence advisor.
As the coordinator of the activities of the Intelligence Community,
the DCI subsequently has been given the responsibility of being
the President's advisor on intelligence concerns.
The charge by the 1947 Act to be coordinator of Intelligence.
activities did not carry with it the authority for the DCI to
discharge the responsibility intended by Congress, and in 1971
the President instructed him by letter to take a more active
role in coordinating resources and activities of the entire
Intelligence Community. Still dissatisfied that the DCI was
not exercising the authority desirable, President Ford issued
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Executive Order 11905 in February 1976, and President Carter
reaffirmed it in Executive Order 11985 in May 1977, to strengthen
further the DCI's management of all foreign intelligence functions.
Especially meaningful for the collection and production of intelli-
gence is the new Policy Review Committee (PRC), which is chaired
by the current DCI, Admiral Stansfield Turner, whenever intelli-
gence matters are discussed. This Committee establishes policy
priorities for collecting and producing national intelligence and
oversees budget preparation and resource allocation for the
intelligence activities of the entire Intelligence Community.
There is also established the Special Coordination
Committee to make recommendations to the President concerning
special intelligence activities that support foreign policy
objectives--so-called covert action. This group also reviews
and approves sensitive intelligence collection operations.
President Carter has also created an Intelligence Oversight
Board of three prominent private citizens to ensure that the
Attorney General and the President are properly advised concerning
any activities of questionable legality and propriety. (The organi-
zation of the Intelligence Community is shown in the accompanying
chart.) Finally, strong congressional oversight mechanisms have
been established to assure that intelligence activities are
properly guided and controlled.
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Congressional Oversight
Traditionally the Intelligence Community reports to and
receives guidance from seven Congressional Committees; four are
in the Senate and three in the House. The Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, created in May 1976, has assumed major responsi-
bility for overseeing such national intelligence activities as
covert action, all funding requests, counter-intelligence, the.
analytic process and collection activities. Oversight for
departmental intelligence, that is intelligence for use by a
specific agency, remains largely the responsibility of the
Senate Committees with traditional oversight responsibilities---
Armed Services, Appropriations and Foreign Relations.
The House of Representatives established its own committee
to oversee intelligence activities on July 14, 1977. When
operative, this new Committee will assume exclusive responsi-
bility for all activities of the CIA and will share responsibility
for the activities of the individual agencies of the Intelligence
Community with those House committees that traditionally have
exercised oversight responsibility--Appropriations, International
Relations, and Armed Services. The addition, of this new come itte&
will bring the number of Congressional committees to which the
DCI reports to eight.
Budgets and Secrecy
Review and authorization of proposed funding for intelligence
activities is an integral part of the government's control of
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intelligence activities. Budgets for the Intelligence agencies
are of course reviewed by the Intelligence Community Staff, by
the Office of Management and Budget and finally by the President,
who approves them. The Director of Central Intelligence then
presents and defends the overall budget for the Intelligence
Community, as well as the one for CIA, before appropriate
congressional committees. Thus, the process for budget
formation and review is the same as that for any government
agency, except that the budgets for the Intelligence agencies
are not publicly disclosed.
The reason budgets for intelligence are not made public
is that over a period of time and with careful study-, America's
adversaries could detect trends in intelligence spending. For
example, when an expensive new collection system is being
developed--such as the U-2 in the late 1950s--then the intelli-
gence budget increases. Such surges in the budget would easily
tip off others to new developments. This question of whether
budget figures for the Intelligence Community, and more particularly
the CIA, should he disclosed publicly has been debated for years.
Thus far Congress has upheld the need for contirrued secrecy.
However, the Senate Select Committee is reviewing the need
to continue this secrecy. Admiral Turner has testified before
the Senate Select Committee that he would not object to the dis--
closure of a single, all inclusive figure representing the entire
Intelligence Community's budget. But Admiral Turner stated strong
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objections to revealing detailed budgets, noting that in the
hands of enemies "they would be a powerful weapon with which
they could make our collection efforts more difficult, more
hazardous to life, and more costly."
Secrecy and Openness
Leaks of classified information to the press from many
sources pose one of the more serious threats to an: effective
intelligence service. Protection of the country's foreign
intelligence sources and methods--a responsibility assigned
the DCI by the National Security Act of 1947---is severely
weakened by such disclosures. First, disclosures of sources
and methods make it a simple matter for hostile forces to take
necessary precautions that terminate the flow of information.
Second, friendly intelligence services and individuals cannot
risk cooperating with the US when their activities stand a
chance of becoming publicized.
If divulging sources and methods is to be avoided at all
cost, so is "overclassification" and using secrecy as a way of
hiding from the public. Admiral Turner is attacking this
problem on two fronts. He has established the policy of re-
leasing to the public, in unclassified version, as much of the
CIA product as legitimately possible. Recently a complicated
analysis of world oil reserves that projected serious shortages
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by 1985, given the current usage trends, was released to the
public under this new policy. Admiral Turner has also made
information about the Central Intelligence Agency more easily
available to the press and to the public. For the first time
news camera's have appeared inside agency headquarters. CBS was
allowed to film a segment for their "Sixty Minutes" series there.
Through this and other such activities, Admiral Turner is attemp-
ting to lift some of the mystique from intelligence and to inform
the public on the continuing need for an effective intelligence
service.
The Intelligence Process
Intelligence as we know it today goes far beyond traditional
concepts and impressions. Today's concerns are with all aspects
of the capabilities, intentions, and activities of foreign powers
and organizations--and with the impact of political, economic,
sociological and technological developments. Consider a few of
the problems America faces: disarmament, nuclear proliferation,
terrorism, overpopulation, imbalances between rich and poor
countries, oil and reserves distribution, exploitation of the
sea and space. This country's leaders must have a systematic
knowledge of these and other complex subjects, a full awareness
of the U.S.'s capability to deal with them, and an understanding
of the intentions of other nations concerned with the same
problems.
To provide the accurate evaluations and estimates required,
information is gathered from a wide variety of sources. A large
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part of it is collected openly from publications, radio and
television broadcasts and from normal diplomatic exchanges.
It is also collected by technical means. Still other, smaller
amounts of information is collected clandestinely. This method
is only used when there is no other way to obtain necessary
information and when the information is judged to be sufficiently
important to justify the risks of secret operations..
While the sheer volumes of information dictate the use of
large computers and complex storage and retrieval systems,
intelligence is the product of the human mind--the work of
analysts who sift through the data and produce "finished"
intelligence for the policymakers.
There are various types of finished intelligence, each is
in the form that is most useful to the particular needs of the
users. Current intelligence takes the form of daily publications
that analyze current developments and evaluate their impact in the
near term. The most important of these,,,President's gaily Brief,
presents to President Carter each morning the critical events
on the foreign scene. Another form of finished intelligence,
the National Intelligence Estimate, is a more in-depth analysis
of international situations that judges new developments in terms
of what they imply for the future. A third form is the longer
research studies done, for example, on strategic weapons programs
of foreign countries and long range political developments.
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Admiral Turners fundamental goal as the director of Central
Intelligence remains the same as that of his predecessors: to
produce the highest quality intelligence possible to meet the
needs of the President, the Congress, and other decision-makers
in government. Rebuilding the confidence of the US public in
the Intelligence Community and the CIA by earning their trust
through fair mindedness and excellence is a primary tenant of
this fundamental goal.
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NAT16'NAL INTELLIGENCE CO" MUNITY,STRUCTURE '
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT
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INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES
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