THE BLUE RIBBON PANEL'S REPORT AND DASD/I'S ORGANIZATIONAL PROPOSALS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79M00097A000100030004-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 16, 2001
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: October 27, 1970
• Content Type: MF

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27 October 1970
MEMORANDUM FOR. D/DCI/NIPE
SUBJECT The Blue Ribbon Panel's Report and DASD/I's
Organizational Proposals
1. The thread which runs through the analysis of defense intelligence
by the Blue Ribbon Panel is that defense intelligence is made up of a number
of elements which, despite their obvious relationships, act in an uncoordinated
and less than responsive fashion. The Panel proposes a cure that would
reorganize defense intelligence, provide it with centralized leadership, and
give new emphasis to the basic functions of intelligence. In our view the key
proposal is the one which would give new emphasis to the basic functions.
Although the proposed organizational changes probably would facilitate:
the goals of better performance and greater efficiency (with respect to
the basic functions), and have a certain appeal in their simplicity when
compared to today's relatively unwieldly structure, we believe that the
actual form of the organization is less important than concentrating on the
job and providing the necessary impetus.
2. The major difficulty we have with the five alternative proposals
prepared in DASD/I is that they are not related to all of the basic functions
of intelligence, particularly those which we consider to be of key importance.
(They are, however, related to the Panel's recommendations for reorganization
and centralization. ) The Panel indicated six such functions which we have
redefined as five: 1) production requirements -- to determine the needs of
cons"r ors: 2) production (and dissemination) -- to fulfill production require-
ments; 3) collection requirements -- to task the collection and processing
resources for the information required to support production; 4) collection
and processing resources -- to fulfill collection requirements; and 5)
evaluation -- to determine whether or not each of the preceeding functions
is being done in optimum fashion and that the balance among them is
optimum.
3. Production requirements tend to be deficient because there is no
cohesive effort to elicit and organize consumer needs and their relative
importance or value. Production tends to be deficient because production
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require tuents are deficient and because too many units produce what
is osionsibly the same produce which, when a common product is
uecess.:rv, leads to watered-down compromises. Collection require-
ments tend to be deficient because they are incomplete and lack any
framework which shows their relationship to production requirements,
their part in the total picture, their relationship to each other, and
their relative importance or value. The development, procurement,
and exploitation of collection and processing resources tend to be
deficient because collection requirements are deficient and the several
programs are operated almost as if other programs were in no way
complementary or duplicatory. Evaluation tends to be deficient largely
because without adequate production and collection requirements there
are no adequate yardsticks by which to measure performance.
4. Clearly, each of these deficiencies relates intimately to the
others. Two of them, however -- inadequate production requirements
and inadequate collection requirements -- are key because they impede
fulfillment of all the basic functions. These two deficiencies have a
common bond in that 'both require some form of centralized direction
if they are to be overcome. Without centralized direction (responsibility)
it is difficult to see how single, useful (validated), lists of the respective
requirements and their relative values will ever be obtained, much less
(for evaluation) the relationships between the two lists.
5. With centralized direction to deal with these two critical
deficiencies, the other deficiencies (relating to production, resources,
and evaluation) might well take are of themselves -- even under the
present organization. But if centralization is undertaken for the critical
deficiencies, it should make the additional centralization recommended
by the Panel easier to accomplish.
6. The problems of defense intelligence lead quite naturally into
consideration of defense intelligence as a part of the overall intelligence
community and the need for community-wide solutions for some of the
same problems -- most particularly, the two critical deficiencies. With
or without strong, centralized, direction of defense intelligence (although
centralized direction should make it somewhat, easier to proceed), USIB
and NIRB are logical organizations to have responsibility for direction
of the basic functions on a community-wide basis. USIB could give the
necessary emphasis to production requirements and collection requirements
(the information to 'be collected, not the systems needed or to be used) and,
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of course, continue its responsibilities for the status of production
of national intelligence. Thus, USIB would have responsibility for the
functions which involve the two critical deficiencies. NIRB could have
comparable responsibility for resources and evaluation which should
entail, among other things, a national CIRIS and a national index of
resource capabilities.
7. Although the question of EXCOM first arose in our minds
as a result of the fourth organizational alternative proposed by DASD/I
(it would integrate NRO into a DIOA), we believe that its role warrants
reexamination irrespective of organizational alternatives or whether
the defense intelligence community or the overall community is being
considered. We suggest that under any of these circumstances it would
be desirable that EXCOM be elevated to do for all programs what it
now does for NRO and that the DCI, in his role of principal intelligence
advisor to the President, be its chairman. The rest of the membership,
in concept, probably should include only the Office of Management and
Budget and the President's Scientific Advisor, but as a practical matter
also should include Defense, State, and CIA. An ASD/I, as well as his
State and CIA counterparts, should have the same relationship to this
new EXCOM as the Director NRO now has to the present EXCOM.
DCI/NIPE/SAG
CONCUR:
ASA/D/DCI/NIPE
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