CRITIQUE OF THE 'PROPOSED OPERATING PLAN FOR CALANDER YEAR 1973' DATED 27 FEBRUARY 1973

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82M00531R000400230016-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 17, 2005
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: March 5, 1973
• Content Type: MF

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7-5 March 1973
SUBJECT Critique of the "Proposed Operating Plan for Calander Year
1973" dated 27 February 1973
Purpose
The purpose of this memorandum is to provide the DDCI/IC and other
interested IC Staff personnel with a critique of the referenced proposal.
My primary reason for preparing this paper is to assist those responsible
for establishing the new IC operating plan in these areas.
Discussion
The proposed IC operating plan affords a beginning to the problems of
establishing what amounts to new procedures and policies in support of the
DCI's community program. The validity of certain points and the realism
of specific proposals will be questioned in this critique. However, the
primary critical discussion will relate to the lack of treatment in the
proposal of the impact and consequences of specific proposed actions upon
programs, and current review practices over which the DCI currently has no
direct control. I suggest that it is of the utmost importance that such
consequences receive explicit treatment so that alternatives and other options
may receive consideration in instances where the DDCI/IC or the DCI, does
not wish, for whatever reasons, to engage the problems which result from the
proposed actions.
What follows is a detailed discussion of the proposal referenced to
the items as sequenced in Section II and III of the proposal.
Section II (p.3 ff)
A. Planning Guidance (p.3)
The Planning Guidance and the NIPM are scheduled concurrently, with
the Guidance appearing before the NIPM. The proposal suggests that it "should
be thought of as an annex to the NIPM" which carries forward DCI evaluations
and conclusions (i.e., those in the NIPM).
If the NIPM is the DCI's intelligence posture report to the President,
one assumes it will tell the President where the program is going and why.
A separate guidance to program managers seems gratuitous, especially when
it results from the same process and analysis which produces the NIPM.
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The proposal states the Guidance may also "suggest" areas for study by
the Departments and Agencies. This is a weak rod and one can question how
it relates to the generation of "issues" for the new cycle. (See below)
B. Fiscal Guidance (p.3 and 4)
The problem of arriving at numbers for fiscal guidance assumes that
the IC Staff will develop a fairly explicit criteria for resource distribution
changes from year to year and program to program. Defense (ASD/I) has never
bothered to publish the rational for their own fiscal guidance. As a result
neither the DCI (nor even Defense program managers) have ever been able to
determine how the fiscal guidance was arrived at for the total, or for the
individual programs.
C. Special Studies (pgs. L+,5, and 6)
The proposal notes at the outset that "the staffing out of issues
provides the essential substantive basis for resource decisions."
If we assume the validity of this, the process of generating issues
would appear to be of exceptional importance along with the implementation
of the analytical program which is to deal with those issues. The question
is one of identifying the mechanisms to make issues visible.
In the division of the issue analysis program into Ad Hoc Studies
(described somewhat ambiguously) and Target Oriented Task Teams, it is obvious
that the main analytical thrust is to lie in the latter area. The "intelligence
problem areas" (one for each task team) are another name for broad issue areas.
One assumes that the prototype model for these task team studies
would be the "Sorrel's Report" which would make them cross program/functional
studies covering collection, processing, and production resources.
D. DCI Participation in Community Program Review and Resource Allocation
Processes.
The proposal notes that "A comparison of the program review and budget
cycles of the Defense Department intelligence activities, CIA and State Depart-
ment reveals that each agency has its own system for program and budget devel-
opment but the basic concepts are the same and the schedules are remarkably
similar." p. 7, underscoring not in original text)
The first part of the statement is all too true, but the portion
underscored is not true and is the beginning of many of the problem areas in
the proposal.
For example, the NRO programming procedures differ both in concept
and scheduling when compared with the GDIP and CCP programming and budgeting
procedures and scheduling, which is part of the so-called "normal" DOD pro-
gramming and budgeting procedure.
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q; ff-I
The fact that the budgeting process begins and ends at the same point
has little to do with what goes on in between.
Both Mr. Flax and later Mr. McLucas have been most unhappy with the
trend to "normalize" NRO programming procedures because they knew full well
that theirs were more efficient and effective and dealt with the realities of
scheduling their programs.
What would be of optimum use to the DCI and the community is the
"EXCOMization" of the CIA, CCP, GDIP, and INR programs in a final combined
cross program/functional review. And I suggest that this is what we should
work towards as a matter of policy.
One wonders, for example, what the impact of Dr. Hall and the CDIP
review requirements will be upon NRO, now that Dr. Hall is the Defense member
of EXCOM. Even the people in Dr. Hall's resource allocation shop have long
known that the CDIP review input requirements were contrary to the NRO pro-
cedures (i.e., for the July and November EXCOM meetings).
The proposal states that "there appear to be no insurmountable pro-
cedural and scheduling conflicts among the different review and decision pro-
cesses of the several agencies." Insurmountable they may not be, but the
conflicts are serious and of great importance to the DCI. They require far
greater articulation.
E. Program Manager's Review (p.8)
The discussion in this section applies primarily to the CCP and GDIP.
It has not applied to the EXCOM programs in any de facto manner despite appear-
ances to the contrary.
The question is not one of the role of the DCI in the program manager's
reviews. Explicitly, it is the role of IC Staff participation and perhaps
of even greater importance, the availability of review documentation and results
to the DCI Staff.
F. ASD/I CDIP Review
The proposal notes that decisions on the PDM's and reclamas form
the basis for the preparation of budget estimates by the services/defense
intelligence agencies which are submitted to ASD/C in October. This is great
theory however, in practice, it just is not so. For starters, one has only
to look at the correlation of the PDM and Budget statistics for these two
exercises. More important, and again turning to NRO, the timing of program
actions makes program statistics prepared this early in the cycle most un-
realistic (i.e., the prior budget is still operating under a continuing resol-
ution.)
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The proposal suggests that the DCI's role in the CDIP review should
be that of an active participant, providing substantive input on intelligence
needs, trade offs, and relative resource priorities. This sounds good, but
each of these points need to be looked at hard. For example, how is the DCI
staff going to provide "trade offs" within the context of a Defense review,
even assuming that someday the CDIP will actually arrive at a workable cross
program/functional review procedure?
G. Joint OMB-OSD Budget Hearings (p.8)
This section as written is only true for the CCP/GDIP program group
which includes other programs such as drones.
The question of DCI staff participation in these hearings may not
be the important one for DCI consideration. The real problem in my experience
is that the actual decisions which result from these hearings (and the reclamas
following the hearings) cannot be tracked back to the programs and the program
elements (not even by ASD/I). The main reason for this is that the review is
conducted in terms of the program elements and cost categories and the decisions
are published in omnibus Defense budget categories.
I suggest that what is important to the DCI under these conditions is
that he receive a copy of the program budget requests. Then, it appears import-
ant that he request the Secretary of Defense to have the ASD/C prepare for
his use a copy of the Secretary of Defense's decisions related to these requests
in the same data variables as in the original program budget requests.
H. National Intelligence Program Memorandum (NIPM)
The 0MB concept paper referred to contains many problems, ambiguities,
and scheduling contradictions. It has no authority as a directive and was
never explicityly analyzed in terms of its validity with a proposed feedback.
Be that as it may, the very real problem of the NIPM is one of having
the inputs come together on time, and having the basic budget data available
from all of the programs. There is a tendency here to say, "well, those are
details, and we will work them out later." This view can only lead to trouble.
For example, the fact that the prior year budget appropriation act takes place
at about the same time as the budget decision for the next year, is a reality
that must be dealt with explicitly in any DCI PPB operating plan.
Section III (Data Needs, pp. 12 ff)
As a general statement of the data needs, the proposal does a good job
in outlining the requirements. However, as in the earlier instance, it pro-
vides no information as to the impact upon current review structures and pro-
gramming practices and current documentation, and the ability to obtain such
data.
In addition, past experience in community data collection leads me to
question seriously some of the assumptions which tend to suggest that the data
acquisition problem is a mechanical one. For example, it is suggested that
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some of the data required will be obtained as a natural consequence of partic-
ipating in the program and budget review and decision processes of the depart-
ments and agencies. This is true, but to a far lesser extent than one might
suppose. More important, it is not a source that can be depended upon to
fulfill specific requirements as outlined in the proposals "Characteristics
of Data Requirements" (p.13).
The most important point to be made here is that current program and budget
documentation does not currently provide the data needed as outlined in the
proposal. Second, and perhaps of equal importance, the need itself requires
far more explicit definition in specific terms of its usage in the operating
plan. For example, organization, program, element, and function are each
composed of hierarchies; the selection of the data need at any given level
in any one of the hierarchies is a function of its relationship to other
variables and its usage in the IC operating plan documentation and/or analysis.
The last paragraph on page 15 illustrates what can only be considered as
naivete. Of course the D0I would like to use data systems established for
use by the program managers themselves. And, it would be equally nice if they
all defined each of the variables in the same manner in comparable formats
relative to our need. CIRIS was devised to do this very thing, and we have
come a long way; and we still have a long way to go. An information system
which requires standard definitions and cross-walk capabilities cannot be
built without some central authority to impose the definitions and standards.
It may be politic to say otherwise, but let us not feed ourselves politic myths.
Summary and Conclusions
There is one overriding problem with the proposed operating plan which
in one sense leads to most of its other problems. It fails at the outset to
understand that the basic concepts and schedules of each of the programs in-
volved are not "remarkably similar." (p.3 above)
Second, and related to the above, the proposal does not deal in the
consequences of its specific proposed elements, in terms of what is different
and what does not exist in the system today.
The result is that the proposal does not offer the DCI and the DDCI/IC a
basis for alternatives and options. Perhaps of even more importance, it fails
to alert them to the consequences of the actions proposed.
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