THE ROLE OF THE DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP76-00183R000500100045-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 18, 2000
• Sequence Number: 45
• Content Type: REPORT

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The Deputy Director for Intelligence is charged with
the evaluation, analysis, and dissemination of finished
intelligence at the national level.
The DDI takes over from the intelligence collectors,
weighs and processes the information they have obtained,
checks it out against all other available information,
and then sees to it that as much of the finished product
as bears on our national security gets to the appropriate
customers--the policy-making officers of our Government.
Our main job is to provide to the Director of Central
Intelligence--and through him to the President and the top
policy-making officers of the Government--an accurate,
up-to-date, and thoroughly objective analysis of foreign
developments and situations relating to US national security,
drawing on all sources of information available to any part
of the US Government.
The finished product of the Directorate of Intelligence
takes a wide variety of forms. It may be a regular
publication, a detailed research study, a spot memorandum,
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or even an oral briefing, according to the circumstances
and the intended end use. It may be a specialized piece
of military, or economic, or scientific intelligence.
It could be the unilateral product of one office, or the
considered and agreed judgment of the entire intelligence
community. It might be a broadside addressed to the
whole national security segment of the executive branch,
or it may be specifically and personally tailored to the
requirements and preferences of the President himself.
In other words, the scope of the intelligence which
we produce is determined by the situation throughout the
world and by the range of our national security interests.
The form in which it is processed is determined by the
requirements of the consumers.
Let me stress my reference a minute ago to the
personal requirements and preferences of the President.
The individuals occupying the Presidency change, Directors
of the Central Intelligence Agency change, and with them
the emphasis, the procedures, and even the functions of
intelligence change too.
Under the Truman and Eisenhower regimes, policy
papers moved methodically upward through the departments
and working groups to planning boards and formal NSC
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presentation. In the Kennedy and Johnson administrations,
the White House has generally preferred to deal with a
crisis by calling together the top policy makers, putting
all the available information on the table, and then taking
up the possible courses of US policy and action.
These changes have put a premium on crash reporting,
and in effect have made the Office of Current Intelligence,
under the DDI, a principal agent for the Director in
keeping the White House informed.
Under the present requirements, there are four key
words that apply to the finished intelligence:
It is national intelligence.
It is all-source intelligence.
It is tactical intelligence.
It is "net" intelligence.
National intelligence is formally defined as
coordinated, agreed intelligence on matters with a direct
bearing on national security interests which "transcend
the exclusive competence" of any one Government department
or agency.
The Agency produces three types of national intelligence
documents. The first, National Intelligence Estimates,
primarily deal with assessments of the outlook and future
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trends of various foreign governments of particular
interest to US policy. All resources of the DDI are
available to support the preparation of NIEs. The second,
National Intelligence Surveys, are descriptions and data
on the historical background and more permanent character-
istics of foreign countries. They form an encyclopedic
compendium of information on each country, which includes
economic, geographic, and military basic information.
The NISs are produced by the Office of Basic and Geographic
Intelligence from contributions from elements of CIA and
other departments of Government. The third, National
Current Intelligence, is primarily the Central Intelligence
Bulletin which is published daily. Now, there is also a
definition for current intelligence--"spot information of
immediate interest and value"--but there is no definition
for the combined concept of national current intelligence,
probably because our interpretation of the word "current"
in many cases leaves little time for any formal type of
coordination.
Nevertheless, the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board recommended in 1957 that the Central
Intelligence Bulletin should be the principal all-source
current intelligence publication of the intelligence
community.
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Accordingly, and because of the special responsibilities
for alerting the policy makers, OCI has developed a procedure
for coordinating and producing agreed evaluations on a day-
to-day basis. These draft items for the CIB are circulated
to the community each day by secure communications channels.
They are reviewed by the competent desk officers at each
department or agency. Each afternoon a CIB panel meets in
OCI to coordinate. The panel includes representatives from
the DDP, the Department of State, the Pentagon and, when
appropriate, the AEC and FBI. These representatives bring
with them such changes, additions, or deletions as their
working desks may have suggested, and we try to reach an
agreed version largely by matching the drafts with the
source and background material. I want to emphasize that
the purpose of these changes is to make the language more
precise, rather than by watering down or waffling the
wording. At any rate, about six o'clock each evening the
draft of the CIB constitutes agreed national current
intelligence.
Before it reaches its readers at the opening of
business the next morning, however, changes frequently
have to be made to update it, and these changes are clearly
marked as the product of unilateral OCI action.
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The second key word is all-source. Production of
finished intelligence is based on all sources of information
available to the US Government regardless of the classification
of the finished product. In publications at the SECRET or
CONFIDENTIAL level, it is not necessary or even possible to
discuss all the sensitive sources of intelligence, but the
principle is that at a minimum such publications will not
include information at a low level of classification which
is known to be inconsistent with information from more
sensitive sources. I know of only one publication which
actually discusses all sensitive information as appropriate--
the President's Daily Brief. The principle is that nothing
is so sensitive that the President and a very few top
advisors should not know about. This publication is
disseminated in less than a dozen copies--to the President
and a few other top-level officials, like the Secretary of
State and the Secretary of Defense.
My third key word was tactical intelligence, for it
has become a fact of life that the very highest policy
makers are now deeply concerned with the tactical details
of any crisis situation as it develops.
Starting with the Dominican crisis we have become
accustomed to printing situation reports as often as every
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hour on the hour, around the clock, on any major
international situation. Typically, when critical
situations "go tactical," an analytical task force is
established in the CIA Operations Center to receive,
evaluate, and disseminate information from every
available source and to respond to White House and
NSC-level requirements.
The Situation Room in the White House is manned by
seven OCI officers, under the direction of the Operations
Center. The Center is linked to the White House Situation
Room by just about every secure means of communication
devised by man--the latest addition is Long Distance
Xerography with on-line scrambler--and when all of these
break down, the Watch Officers in OCI and the White House
have worked side by side long enough to double-talk on
regular telephones in emergencies. The result is that the
White House Situation Room, minute-by-minute, can reflect
the same situation information on a crisis which we display
in the Operations Center.
The fourth and final key word was "net" intelligence.
It was our practice in the past not to reflect the policies,
actions, and reactions of the US Government in finished
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intelligence reporting; this is still true for the National
Intelligence Estimates. Methods and requirements change
with administrations, however, and we have found, from
the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 to the present
situation in Vietnam, that our top customers today regularly
expect a full picture of the crisis in one paper--not just
what the Communists are doing, but what we are doing to
counter them. For example, our daily Vietnam report
includes a rundown on US-allied action in Vietnam as well
as enemy activities.
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