Free Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy by Mark M. Lowenthal

Foreign Intelligence Program, renamed to recognize the inclusion of homeland security and domestic intelligence); the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), made up of two former military intelligence budget programs; the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP); and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA).
    The NSC has authority over the director of national intelligence, who in turn oversees, but does not direct, the CIA. The CIA, unlike the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at the Department of State or the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at DOD, has no cabinet-level patron but reports to the DNI, although the DNI does not have operational control over the CIA. The CIA’s main clients continue to be the president and the NSC. This relationship has both benefits and problems. The CIA has access to the ultimate decision maker, but it can no longer count on this access through its own director given that much of this role now comes under the DNI. The DNI and the new DCIA could become rivals for access to the president. The CIA as a whole could find itself in a weaker position compared with other intelligence agencies. A disparity always existed in that agencies other than the CIA had cabinet-level supporters. However, the DCI had authority across the intelligence community. With this lever gone, the CIA may find itself in a less enviable position. Signs were evident, both before and after passage of the new law, that other agencies sought to enlarge the areas in which they worked, usually at the expense of the CIA. The most prominent of these were the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DOD.
    As noted previously, Porter Goss served as the last DCI (2004-2005) and the first director of the CIA (2005-2006). His tenure proved to be tumultuous, and the press reported numerous stories about friction between the staff that Goss brought with him from Congress and senior CIA officials, many of whom—especially in the Directorate of Operations—ultimately resigned. Goss’s short tenure indicated that the CIA remained central despite its director’s loss of responsibility across the intelligence community. DNI Negroponte found that he could not be effective in his role if the CIA was riven by internal bickering.
    The secretary of defense continues to control much more of the intelligence community on a day-to-day basis than does the DNI. The panoply of agencies that are part of DOD—National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NIMA), airborne reconnaissance programs, the service intelligence units, and the intelligence components in each of the ten unified combatant commands—vastly outnumbers the CIA and the components under the DNI, in terms of both people and dollars. As a rule of thumb, the secretary of defense controls some 75 to 80 percent of the intelligence community. At the same time, the secretary of defense is unlikely to have the same level of interest in intelligence as the DNI does. In fact, much of the responsibility for intelligence within DOD is delegated to the USDI, a relatively new office that was created in 2002.
    Control of the intelligence budget was one of the most controversial parts of the debate over the new intelligence structure. Those who advocated less sweeping change had argued that giving the DCI budget execution authority over the NIP (that is, the ability to determine the actual spending of dollars) would have solved the authority problems across the community as well as significantly increased the leverage of this position. However, such a minimalist solution was not politically palatable as it was not seen as sweeping enough. It also was opposed by DOD and its supporters in Congress.
    In the debate over the creation of the DNI, DOD and its supporters argued successfully that the department needed to maintain control over the budgets of some national