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| Office of the Director of National Intelligence |
Click here for referenced story [The Hill, Katie Bo Williams 11/18/16]
Not long ago, Presidential Candidate Trump was condemned by the Media when he announced that he did not trust the Intelligence briefings of the US Intelligence Community.
"...Trump said he does not trust information coming out of US intelligence agencies and indicated he would cease relying on the bulk of the intelligence community's massive workforce."
[I've added italics, underlining, and color to emphasize the nuance of Trump's statement]
Trump's more complete statement:
"Very easy to use them, but I won't use them because they've made such bad decisions"
The Vietnam war/ 9/11, and subsequent crises highlighted the routine intelligence failures, costing $Trillions and the massive loss of life.
Trump referred to such intelligence failures as leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on the Intelligence Briefing Bush received which declared Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction!
Notably, those WMDs never materialized, and Bush came under constant criticism from all sides, to include our allies.
Financially, the Iraq War(s) will have an estimated tab of nearly $4 Trillion, plus an expected $490 billion in benefits owed to the war veterans, a death toll of up to 189,000 security forces, insurgents, contractors, and humanitarian workers, and of course, close to 5,000 US Military casualties.
Other failures included the incompetence in Middle East operations and the disasterous exit from Afghanistan. Other issues included the massive number of Illegals (from Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, as well as Intelligence operatives from Cuba and China posing as "refugees" to establish hostile insurgent operations among Somali Illegals.
All of the above omits the Treasonous activities of Intelligence officials who conspired to either Impeach President Trump, or force him out of office using doctored or fake Intelligence assessments. [That investigation is, as yet, incomplete].
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| Intelligence Community Seal |
[My knowledge of the US Intelligence Community [IC] includes experience in Military Intelligence (MI) tactical and strategic analytical positions (authoring NIEs and as Editor of the Black Book at the Pentagon);
[In my 23 year Intelligence career, I was operational in both covert combat and clandestine espionage roles for MI, CIA, and DIA.
1970-73: Conducted clandestine operations in Thailand, guerrilla operations in Laos, and counter-insuurgency operations in NE Thailand
1975-78: Formed the ForsCom Intelligence Training Detachment, training more than 1000 US Military units (100,000+ Military personnel in Tactical/Strategic Intelligence. (As an MI Special Agent (CounterIntelligence, trained Active Duty and Reserve Counter-Intelligence special agents )
1976: TASCOM C2 for NATO Exercise ABLE ARCHER, directing NATO Intelligence resources;
1981: Received the Director of Central Intelligence "Exceptional Intelligence Analyst Award"
1981-83: Strategic analyst at the State Department Bureau of Research & Intelligence [INR].
1982-83: Special Assistant to former CIA Director/Reagon Ambassador at Large
1983: US SouthCom J2 for [global] Exercise ABLE ARCHER 83, directing All-Source Intelligence collection and reporting - including NSA and NRO.
1984-90: Formed and directed operations of the Defense Clandestine Service.
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[Since I had previously served as the Pentagon's top Soviet analyst and was appointed SouthCom's Exercise J2 where I tracked Soviet movements 24/7 and noted sudden movement of the Soviet Command Train - activated only in time of WAR!
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| STU-II Secure Phone |
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| Lennie Peroots |
He took full credit for my assessment and ignored me when he was promoted to LT General and selected as Director of DIA.
In 1981-83, I served as"Special Assistant" to Vernon Walters (former Director of Central Intelligence and President Reagan's Ambassador at Large - and operational manager of the defection of the Soviet "Red October" submarine captain in 1982-83 - the basis of the Tom Clancy novel/movie. [I served as the clandestine intermediary between Walters and the NYT/WaPo journalists (Walters was the "White House Source") for intelligence documents declassified by President Reagan].
In 1983-84, my operational role as Special Intelligence Advisor to the Commander of the US Southern Command included restructuring both Military Intelligence operations as well CIA Human Intelligence operations (but I had no role in the Iran-Contra fiasco); one aspect of that role involved monitoring/penetrating the Colombian cartel narcotic operations and our Special Operations to destroy that linkage to Manuel Noriega in Panama. I also advised on monitoring and interdiction of the insurgencies in Central America using the high tech electronics we had used against insurgents in Thailand. Among those sophisticated tools were IR/FLIR/UGS and special equipment aboard the AC-130 gunship [although these were mothballed after the Vietnam War, I persuaded the Assistant Secretary of Defense to release a squadron of those gunships (still in excellent condition) to the USAF command at SouthCom - an impossible requisition according to the USAF commander)]
In another instance, I persuaded the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Installations to move the SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS from Panama to Fort Benning (the school had been the espionage Latin American Military officers recruiting target for the KGB; the school was relocated within two weeks, frustrating Noriega who wasn on the KGB payroll)
In 1990, I was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal for creating the Defense Clandestine Service.
[I provide these credentials, not to brag, but to quiet those armchair intel pseudo-experts who would condemn me for my supposed lack of expertise, and accuse me of wearing a tin foil hat -- an item of apparel I now wear with dignity having had all my blog posts now validated.]
One of my initiatives in 2012 was to rate the CIA vs the DIA, when LTG Mike Flynn was running it. You might want to review that before reading this post further.
The point of this discussion is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was officially created via the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which directs the activities of ALL the components of the US Intelligence Community [see the chart above].
Selection of the DNI Director was to be based on the candidate's background which should include "... experience as an Active Duty Armed Forces commissioned officer and/or have training or experience in Military Intelligence and requirements".
President G.W. Bush strengthened this office by upgrading President Reagan's Executive Order 12333.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence was designed to replace the office of the Director of Central Intelligence, which was also the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- which, under Director George Tenet managed to (virtually every National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) he produced -- leading to incredibly WRONG assessments of threats to the United States, and to the lack of forewarning of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.
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| Ed Meese |
Back in 2002, I met with Ed Meese (President Reagan's Chief of Staff and his Attorney General), to review the intelligence failures leading to 9/11, and preceding debacles.
Our chief criticism of the Intelligence Community was that the Director of CIA -- one of many intelligence agencies, was also Director of Central Intelligence, i.e., controlling the output of ALL the agencies within the Intelligence Community [IC] via the dreaded DCIDs (Director of Central Intelligence DIRECTIVE).
Most importantly, the DCI could, and did override all other threat assessments of the IC, often with politicized arguments completely at odds with much more accurate assessments by DIA, Treasury, or State Department analysts.
The DCI published the President's Daily Brief which was officially the consensus version of the entire IC! But, in fact, it was the version created from the IC input, edited to match the DCI's political agenda,
[I gained White House recognition when Pentagon and State Department leaders provided the President with copies of the Pentagon Black Book content, which addressed specific military and technology threats, complete with references to input from relevant agencies (to include CIA analysts).]
[As the editor of the Black Book, I periodically accepted clandestine submissions from analysts at other IC agencies whose analyses and assessments were spiked by their directors for political reasons; once their material appeared in the Black Book and gained White House attention, those directors were forced to have those same analysts present full assessments to both the White House and the entire IC.
[I took great delight in this publishing process]
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| Former Editor SpookdBlog |
In that era, the DCI could, and did override and suborn clandestine and covert operations developed and funded by Military Intelligence agencies, frequently converting highly effective operations into blunders which made international headlines.
When these catastrophes occurred, CIA would immediately label these blunders as Military Intelligence failures to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [SSCI] and demand more control of Intelligence operations -- and diminish the capabilities of Military Intelligence operations.
Thus, there was only one Intelligence Agency in Washington which had the attention of the President since the DCI also prepared the President's Daily Brief [PDB] and the National Intelligence Daily [NID] -- both of which spoke for the ENTIRE IC -- omitting dissenting assessments.
[In 1983, with my direct access to the Chairman of the JCS (John Vessey) and senior DOD officials, I gathered Intelligence officers from all the Military Services to secretly lobby the JCS and Congress to form the Defense Clandestine Service [DCS], the official authorization for which was based on a HUMINT strategy I developed at the US Southern Command in 1983 called Plan Green -- which had been blessed by the CJCS and the SSCI.
I formed the DCS in 1984 as DIA's first operational element (previously DIA was only an analysis center with no operational charter)- with the blessing of the SSCI and Chairman Vessey of the JCS; it became an equal of the CIA and targeted potential military adversaries of the US, while the CIA focused almost solely on targeting the KGB and GRU - and was itself penetrated by those agencies. {I met Vessey in Laos in 1972 when he was a colonel, assigned to manage covert operations in Laos}
Once I had laid out the issues to Meese, citing dozens of catastrophic CIA failures, he challenged me with creating a "cure" for the problem. My response was the need to separate and remove the linkage of the Director of Central Intelligence [DCI] from the CIA, thus depoliticizing the IC as a whole.
I proposed using the existing informal DCI structure in which all IC agencies were represented at the existing DCI [non-descript] office located near the White House. Members from all the IC agencies routinely met there to discuss operational proposals, and, on occasion, to share leads. These meetings were informal, and were usually called via simple phone conversation of a time and topic, with a single days notice (sometimes only a few hours. The system worked quite well, although the CIA rarely attended, but monitored lest it might miss out on a high-profile operation which it could purloin.
{CIA referred to this venue as similar to the TV Series "Get Smart", but the DCS was, in fact, quite effective to coordinate IC highly effective operations without CIA's interference - in one instance exposing CIA linkage to narcotics trafficking.}
I pressed my proposal on the basis that a functional organization, with a lean, efficient, staffing process already existed; it merely needed to be separated from the CIA and made apolitical. Meese acknowledged the sensibility of the concept, and proposed it to the 9/11 Commission, which recommended it to Congress - which in turn, implemented the concept with legislation, which was signed by President Bush in December, 2004.
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| Negroponte at Palmerola Air Base |
I grieved, however, at the appointment of Ambassador Negroponte as the first DNI, whose only positive, in our opinion, was that he and Kissinger hated each other.
I first met Negroponte, a humorless, self-absorbed intellectual who, as Reagan's ambassador to Honduras, where he escalated the Military presence and bumped up the US Military assistance budget from $4 Million to $77 Million -- creating a massive ground and air force to combat a negligible "insurgency", but realistically, to support the Contras in their [failed] campaign against the Sandinista communist regime. {US funded the Palmerola/Soto Cano (JTF Bravo)}
My meeting with him in Honduras was to propose a Military Intelligence clandestine infiltration of the insurgency to determine its structure, leadership, and weaknesses.
[Negroponte dismissed my concept outright, siding with his CIA Station Chief (a former US Air Force enlisted (Sergeant E-5) USAF Policeman who had neither clandestine training nor experience, sported a Castro style beard, and had never fired a weapon larger than a .38 revolver)].
Worse, my later vision of a lean, efficient DNI, coordinating office, staffed by no more than 100 officers with open effective communication channels among all the IC agencies, was shattered as the standard bureaucratic massive expansion process kicked in with hundreds of senior executives and staffs created, multiplying the original staff of 100 to 7,500, and, by 2010, had bloated to nearly 20,000 [we can only presume the ODNI staffing is closer to 30,000 today (2016)].
{My DCS would, nearing my retirement in 1990, be expanded by the DIA senior administration by a truckload of full colonels whose roles were ill-defined, but, they each procured private offices. I referred to them as ROAD WARRIORS (Retired On Active Duty), taking up space and creating a paper bureaucracy.
The Intelligence Community, by 2010, had grown to about 850,000 personnel -- roughly ten times the number in 2000.
As former DNI Dennis Blair noted,
"After 9/11, when we decided to attack violent extremism, we did as we often do
-- the attitude was, if it's worth doing, it's probably worth overdoing."
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| Lt Genereal Vines |
Notably, John Vines, a retired Army general with a distinguished combat career, in his review of the IC/DNI process in 2010, advised:
"I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility, or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities; the complexity of this system defies description."
The basic difficulties with the current (2016) structure of the ODNI are:
1) The mere size of the bloated organization "defies description" and is impossible to manage due to the size and number [16] of agencies [and far more sub-agencies] within the IC.
2) Merely becoming familiar with, and not necessarily knowledgeable of all the programs within the IC is a virtually impossible task, unless one has spent a career within the IC and understands not only the terminology and nuances, but the missions of each. Trying to grasp the IC content and its meaning is best described as "trying to drink from a fire hose at full blast".
a) Chairing the HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] does not qualify an individual to become the Director of National Intelligence as it would take him/her years just to learn all the acronyms -- which change frequently. George Tenet, a Pole Turtle, proved the idiocy of such leadership, leading to countless intelligence failures - and was led around by his nose by the politically savvy CIA executives.
b) Ultimately, the politicized DNI bureaucracy will undercut any leader not already fully experienced in the Intelligence Community.
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| Joe Maguire |
Maguire, with a distinguished Navy career, fell prey to the political machinations created within the National Security Council staffers and the DNI by previous directors (e.g., Clapper, McConnell, Dempsey, etc.) and the democrats anxious to exploit any apparent Trump vulnerability.
Maguire was fired by Trump for his inability to manage his staff; he had been completely blindsided by the political machinations of his DNI/NSC staff. The new DNI Director will need to guard against these backstabbing hacks, pretending to be Intelligence experts.
Other than Clapper, all the DNI Directors had little or no operational or management experience in Intelligence. Clapper's experience was as a USAF technician near the Udorn Air Base in Thailand and claimed to have flown aboard a C-47 Signals Intelligence aircraft. He would later be appointed director of DIA and claim credit for creating my HUMINT program - a topic over which we had a rather heated. discussion. My challenges with Clapper dated back many years, during which he [as USPACOM G2) blocked our (DCS) operations in Southeast Asia to locate, identify, and present approaches to rescuing US POWs still in Vietnam].
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| Qadafi No longer our asset |
c) HUMINT [Human Intelligence] needs to be revived; it has been undercut and essentially eliminated as an operational option -- substituting instead Covert operations relying on door-kicking SpecOps troops in the place of long-term, quiet infiltration of military and political targets via sophisticated clandestine operations.
Hillary's use of NATO in the displacement [assassination] of Qadafi destroyed our greatest recruited HUMINT asset since Qadafi's spies had penetrated (and were reporting on) every known terrorist organization, and provided superb reporting to us on terrorist organization leadership, structure, location of cells, and communications. The loss of Qadafi as a critical asset allowed the emergence and growth of a well-equipped and agile enemy, ISIS, which we cannot hope to penetrate.
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c) JimmyBob Clapper, an NSA techie, demonstrated his sole focus on technical collection means at the expense of HUMINT overt and clandestine [spy] operations, ignoring the value of actually penetrating enemy organizations. Clapper essentially destroyed the HUMINT role in Intelligence collection; he did claim, however, to have created DIA's HUMINT program (which was, in fact, my product, for which I was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal).
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| ADM Mike Rogers |
d) The DNI needs a broad management background in all the -INTs of Intelligence, both technical and human.
Admiral Mike Rogers, though well qualified in technical areas, could use a broader understanding of all the INTs in the IC.
Rogers, a techie and head of NSA and the Cyber Command, as reportedly Trump's (2016) choice as the new DNI -- and is under fire for recently meeting with Trump privately; officially, however, criticism of Rogers is that Ed Snowden blew the whistle on NSA -- long before Rogers arrived].
3) The bloating process in the Intelligence Community removed any possibility of effective internal coordination within the different IC elements, much less among the myriad IC organizations.
4) The bureaucratic growth meant the creation of new subsets of bureaucracies, each with its own bloating process as managers seek to expand their roles, power, and budgets, based on the size of their organizations -- diminishing any level of efficiency in processing intelligence into a useable form which can be integrated into a National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] for use by the Cabinet and the President in an effective decision-making process.
[In my role as editor of the Black Book, and later as DirOps of the DCS, I could assemble key representatives of the entire IC and convene a meeting within a few hours notice with the objective of assessing any given critical situation in the world and coordinate multiple operations.]
Meeting recently with a senior Pentagon official, I was advised that such impromptu meetings could never take place in today's IC environment since the bureaucratic coordination would take weeks, at a minimum.
Getting an "appointment" with any senior official in DOD or elsewhere in the IC would take months.
Creating an objective, salient NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) is almost impossible these days since there are endless meetings of bureaucrats over and above the analysts and operatives, all of whom are hesitant to put their names on a document with which the President, or senior officials might not like.
In essence, the Intelligence products which float to the top as "Estimates" or formal briefs lack substance and are so vague and politicized as to be worthless.
Trump's view of these products is quite accurate
"Very easy to use them, but I won't use them because they've made such bad decisions"
1) Reduce the size of the DNI to a workable operating staff, perhaps from 2,500 to 200 - or to the original recommended100.
2) Define the roles of each key staff member as a "coordinator" to bring together key staffers from each agency to maximize the efficiency of each collection or operational task.
3) Shrink the Intelligence Community to manageable levels and cut 75 per cent of the senior officials -- they serve no purpose and get in the way of the people who do the work.
There are plenty of additional solutions, but these are the ones I'd recommend to start with. It will take the majority of Mr Trump's first term to transform the IC into a relatively efficient and effective organization, but it's do-able.
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Ed Note 12/10/2025:
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| DNI Director Gabbard |
"Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard announced a long-overdue transformation of the ODNI to refocus on executing its core national security mission with integrity in the most agile, effective, and efficient way.
This will reduce ODNI by over 40% by the end of fiscal year 2025 and save taxpayers over $700 million per year and better enable ODNI to focus on fulfilling its critical role of serving as the central hub for intelligence integration, strategic guidance, and oversight over the Intelligence Community."
{She will need to be on guard lest the back-room IC conspirators try to undermine her and destroy her tenure; a chat with Porter Goss (W's DCI), himself a CIA career officer, might educate how the conspirators destroyed his tenure}
