NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00153R000300020001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 19, 2008
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 7, 1982
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Release 2008/05/19: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300020001-6
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Approved For Release 2008/05/19: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300020001-6
 Approved For Release 2008/05/19: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300020001-6
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1- L-82-13361
MEMORANDUM FOR: Chairman, National Intelligence Council
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: National Intelligence Products
1. Pursuant to our discussion on Friday, this will provide you with
some specifics on how the NIC process needs to be improved. There is a
growing perception that we have been losing ground after accomplishing
significant improvement in the national estimates and the process by which
they are produced.
2. On leaving for Europe in early November, I asked Herb Meyer to
evaluate this perception and when I returned he gave me the seven-page
memorandum of 15 November which is attached.
- Closer management and more careful and frequent review of the
projects on which the NIOs are working.
- Greater effort on the part of the NIC leadership to use the NIC
as a collegial body to critique important estimates.
- Stronger intervention in the drafting and coordination process
to (a) bring out divergent views, and (b) reduce the wordsmithing.
- Greater effort to engage the interests and bring out the views
of NFIB principals at an earlier stage.
- Closer editing to make the estimates briefer and more crisp, and
- More involvement by the Chairman and the NIOs in each estimate
to provide quality control, get more vigorous use of evidence and
more far-ranging perception and evaluation of alternative possibilities
and outcomes and achieve greater policy relevance.
4. Finally, the Chairman and the Vice Chairman should know more quickly
when an estimate is floundering and accelerate and step in to keep it on target
and on schedule.
5. The recruitment of new blood into the NIC has also been disappointing.
William J. Casey
Approved For Release 2008/05/19: CIA-RDP85TO0153R000300020001-6