THE ROLE OF THE DCI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91M00696R000700130012-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 15, 2004
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: August 7, 1975
• Content Type: PAPER

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MT
R.Lehman
7 August 1975
The Role of the DCI
1. In any discussion of the organization, and
management of the Community, the DCI--what he is,
what he does, what he is supposed to do--is the central
issue. This paper focusses on the DCI's general
responsibilities and powers as an introduction to
the more detailed papers that follow.
Statutory Background
2. The National Security Act in essence sets
up the DCI primarily to produce national intelligence
and secondarily to conduct covert action. It implicitly
makes him the leader of something that has come to be
called the "Intelligence Community". It does not,
however, specify his functions (beyond "correlate and
evaluate") nor does it provide him with specific
authorities over the agencies that make up the Community.
3. The President's letter of November 1971 made
explicit some of the responsibilities that were only
implicit in the Act. In so doing it increased the
DCI's responsibilities without increasing his powers.
He was directed to:
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--Prepare and advise the President on
a consolidated intelligence budget, and advise
on the allocation of intelligence resources;
--Produce "national intelligence";
--Chair and staff all Community boards and com-
mittees, which were now only to be advisory to him.
Definitions
4. On the rather frail skeleton provided by
these two documents* there has grown by accretion
a congeries of bureaucratic mechanisms, doctrines,
and the equivalent of common law that centers on and
depends on the institution that we call the DCI. To
understand it, one must first define some terms. First,
what is the national intelligence that the DCI is
supposed to produce? Second, what are the functions
he must carry out to produce it? Third, what is the
Community he is supposed to lead? Fourth, what management
tools are available to him as leader?
* Much of the following discussion is in terms of formal
responsibilities and authorities. It should be
recognized, however, that the effectiveness of each
DCI has been directly proportional to the confidence
placed in him by the President and Congress and the
belief of his colleagues in the Community that he
had that confidence.
kHCR` i-
04.) L_ 0
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a. National Intelligence is here defined
simply as that foreign intelligence needed by
the senior levels of government, including the
economic, to do their job in making and implementing
policy. (NSCID #1 defines it as intelligence that
transcends the concern of any single department
or agency and that is fully coordinated among all
of them; while this remains on the books for
bureaucratic reasons, it is no longer a particularly
useful concept).
b. For the purpose of this paper five
functions related to the production of national
intelligence are postulated: collection, processing,
analysis,* R&D, and support. Of these collection
and analysis are primary, and the appropriate
slices of processing, R&D, and support can be
allocated between them. Action is a function
assigned to the DCI that cannot be directly
related to the production of national intelligence,
although it is thoroughly tangled up with the
collection aspect.
* By "analysis" here is meant the process of transforming
raw data into the finished intelligence that is delivered
to the consumer. This process is often called "production",
and it is in this narrower sense that the word "production"
is used elsewhere in these papers.
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c. "The Community" is usually thought of as
the membership of USIB, but we have suggested
above that this question is more complicated.
There could be said to be four communities, each
with a few primary members and several peripheral
ones. These are the communities of collectors,
of producers, of consumers, and of resource managers.
The membership and structure--if any--of each community
is different. (While the membership of the 40 Committee
could be considered a fifth, or "action" community,
it would be more accurate to describe the DCI's
action function as one carried out through a chain
of command from the President to the Assistant for
National Security Affairs to the DCI.)
d. Management tools or controls can be direct
or indirect. Direct control of course means line
authority. For intelligence, we have identified
four possible instruments by which authority can
be exercised indirectly: the management of
resources, including manpower, money, and--peculiar
to intelligence--cover; collection management, by
which we mean the allocation of collection resources
to substantive problems, tasking and requirements,
Ot-
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Collectors
Feedback
Loop_ --
Great Responsibilities
5. It is apparent that the DCI
sense of all the communities. It is
DCI as
DCI as I
Product i
r Reviewer,
Consumers
is a member in some
also apparent that
three hats--as Presidential adviser, as head
of "the Community" (Chairman of USIB, IRAC, and EXCOM),
The continuing review and assessment of collection
results; and the establishment of requirements for
new systems; product review, which includes both
the final shaping of the intelligence product to
match the needs of the national consumer and a
continuing evaluation of the product against those
needs; and inspection. Note that all of these
except inspection are interdependent and operate
at the interfaces between the various communities.
Thus:
Resource
L._ Manage
DCI as
Collection'
er
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and as Director of CIA--but his hats by no means
correspond fully with the four functional communities.
Moreover, he has responsibilities to the Congress that
represent another complicating factor. (While the DCI's
Congressional responsibilities are discussed elsewhere,
they are introduced here because they are closely related
to his Executive roles).
a. The DCI as Presidential adviser. In this
capacity he is the primary source of national
intelligence for the President and the NSC. He
personally advises the President and the NSC on
all intelligence matters, including budget, and
serves on the various NSC sub-Committees. (it
is on his access to the President in these capacities
that his ability to carry out his other functions
in practice depends.) If the President wishes, the
DCI can also advise on broader foreign policy
matters. He has no Congressional responsibilities.
b. The DCI as head of the Community. This
DCI is the primary source of national intelligence
for the federal government and is its senior
intelligence adviser. He coordinates to varying
degrees administrative and operational matters
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that concern more than one agency. He advises
OMB on the Community budget. For the Congress,
he provides intelligence, defends the Community
budget, and advises on all foreign intelligence
matters.
c. The DCI as Director of CIA. As DCIA, the
DCI is a line officer administering a large inde-
pendent agency under the NSC. He is a producer
of intelligence for the mechanisms over which
he presides wearing his other two hats. Quite
distinct from these roles, he has a specialized
line function as the agent of the President, or
the NSC, in the conduct of foreign policy through
covert action and confidential communication with
foreign governments. For the Congress, this DCI
too is a source of foreign intelligence. It
expects him to present and defend CIA's budget,
and to account for its performance. He is
required to inform the Congress of covert action
programs; whether he will have to defend them
is not yet established.
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6. Schematically, the DCI's various
functions can be illustrated as follows:
Executive Congressional
Presidential
Adviser
h-Advises on intell
,Can advise on foreign
policy
As leader of -Produces national
Community intelligence-----------pntelligence
budget----------------- Defends ommunity budget
Coordinates Community----Advises on intelligence
As Director of .Produces intelligence--- Provides intelligence
CIA
.Defends Agency Budget
d-Runs Agency-------------- Accounts for its
;-Carries out covert
action programs --------- fnforms on (and defends?
-Acts as Presidential
agent to foreign
governments.
overt action programs
-------------------- L------------------------- L-----------------------?
It should be noted that in several ways his Executive and Con-
gressional roles do not match up.
Weak Authorities
7. The point has been made elsewhere that the
Act of 1947 is inadequate for the management of national
intelligence operations so complex and so expensive, and
will be even less adequate for controlling the inter-
action of these systems in near-real time. Moreover,
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existing machinery is so encrusted with the scars of
old bureaucratic wars as to make it inflexible in
meeting new challenges, and the DCI lacks the power
to rationalize it. In terms of the management tools
we have identified, he has direct or line authority
only over those elements of the collection and production
communities which are parts of CIA. His ability to use
indirect management devices is at best limited.
a. In the resource field his nominal authority
to advise, weak at best, is further weakened by
DOD's control of 80 percent of the intelligence
budget and by the DCI's inability to acquire infor-
mation. (Even a DCI who is "the President's man"
cannot stand up to a Secretary of Defense who enjoys
the same status.)
b. In collection management, the DCI has
no single mechanism cutting across systems. As
head of the "the Community" he has a set of USIB
Committees, developed ad hoc and operating indepen-
dently, to administer individual systems. They
range from COMIREX, which is elaborately developed
and in which he has strong influence, to Human
Sources, which is rudimentary and through which
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his influence over Foreign Service reporting
is almost nil. It should be noted also that
important collection management decisions are
often made outside even this structure, in IRAC,
in EXCOM, between individual producers and collectors,
or by individual system managers acting on their
own.
c. The DCI's authority in product review
is more fully established than in any other
field, probably because it was so clearly the
intent of the 1947 Act to give him this power.
He exercises it through USIB's consideration of
National Estimates, through the less formal pro-
cedures of current intelligence, and through his
contribution to the NSC and its sub-Committees.
On the other hand, there exist channels by which
departmental views regularly bypass the national
system, and he lacks the power to regulate this
practice. Mechanisms for the evaluatory, or
consumer response, aspect of product review are
less structured and much less effective.
OLkji~
7` ET
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d. The DCI has never asserted, much less
exercised, the right to inspect intelligence
agencies other than CIA, although such a right
is implicit to varying degrees in the basic
statutes and directives.
e. While resource management, collection
management, product review, and evaluation should
be an integrated system, they are in fact fragmented.
Attempts to Reconcile
8. Faced with such a bewildering array of functions
and organizations, each DCI has chosen to concentrate
on a part of his responsibilities. Dulles saw himself
primarily as the government's covert arm. McCone saw
himself as Presidential adviser*, and found CIA a useful
instrument for that purpose. Raborn never knew what he
was. Helms concentrated on the Agency; under Johnson
he functioned to some extent as adviser, but resisted
asserting his authority over the Community. Schlesinger
appeared in the short time he served to be putting the
Community role first. Colby has sought to give equal
weight to his Community and Agency responsibilities.
* Significantly, only McCone chose to do battle with
Defense on resource matters, and even he was not
notably successful.
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More broadly, he has sought to bind both these responsi-
bilities together, in their collection, production, and
resource management aspects, through the NIO's and the
KIQ-KEP system. Whether this device will be meaningful
in the absence of true authority is yet to be demonstrated.
9. The Schlesinger study of 1970-71 attempted to
redefine the role of the DCI with two stated objectives:
saving money and improving the product. It suggested
several altered structures for the Community, some quite
radical, and analyzed them in terms of the bureaucratic
equities involved. As noted above, the President's
letter of November 1971 ultimately selected the least
traumatic of these options, one that might be character-
ized as "status quo plus". The DCI was to go on wearing
all three hats, and was to receive limited additional
powers in the resource field. He was to have a larger
staff for managing the Community, and devices were to
be created by which the assessment of senior intelligence
consumers could be brought to bear on the product.
10. Whether under Helms*, who quietly sought and
received agreement from Stennis that he not tackle
* Helms clearly did not have the confidence of or
access to President Nixon that would have been
necessary to carry out the intent of the letter.
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the most difficult aspects of the President's letter,
or under Schlesinger, who set about to implement the
plan he helped to write in a manner that set his newly
formed Community staff in bitter opposition to his own
CIA, or under Colby, who has been too involved in dealing
with the external problems he inherited to confront the
problem, the letter changed no power relationships and
therefore solved nothing. And to the two objectives
pursued by Schlesinger recent events have added two more:
to build effective internal and external oversight and
to develop a public confidence in its effectiveness
that will permit intelligence to function.
Present Situation
11. If the DCI as manager of national intelligence
was seen in 1971 as too weak to accomplish these ob-
jectives, he is even weaker relative to his problems
of today:
--As Presidential adviser, he is physically
and organizationally removed from the
President he is supposed to advise. More-
over, the fact that he is head of a
clandestine organization under political
attack for "improprieties" forces the
President to keep him at a distance.
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The budgetary authority he has been given
is only advisory and stands up badly
against the weight of the DOD.
--His position as leader of the Community is
meaningless in the absence of the stronger
position that a closer Presidential relation-
ship would give him. It is effective only
within the USIB structure, where dissents
are institutionalized. The lines linking
him to, or defining his powers relative to,
the three functional communities are
tangled indeed.
--As Director of CIA he has line authority
but has too many responsibilities beyond
CIA to give it proper attention. (The
structure of CIA itself is such that no
DCI has yet found it possible to delegate
in any meaningful way to his Deputy.)
Moreover, the Schlesinger experience showed
the impossible situation created when a DCI
as head of the Community seeks to move in
a direction antagonistic to his interests
as DCIA.
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That it is a truism makes it no less true that the pre-
sent DCI has responsibility without commensurate authority.
12. If radical surgery could be at least contemplated
in 1971, it can be the more so now. This paper in its
subsequent sections will address particular organization
and management problems. It will be most effective, how-
ever, if it does so against some understanding of the
broader questions relating to the DCI as an institution
that underlie these problems.
--Is a stronger DCI to have direct authority
or indirect? In simplest terms, the former would
make him a DNI, in the line of command over the
collection and production communities. The latter
would have him exert his authority over mechanisms
linking the various communities.
--Can a DCI really manage national intelligence
and still wear all three hats? If not, which shall
he give up? The DNI would in effect combine all
three. The other possibilities to be considered
are a separate Presidential adviser and a separate
DCIA.
--If there is more than one DCI, how should
the present CIA be divided among them? Obviously
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an effective DCI who does not run CIA must have
a staff. What functions should it perform?
--Should the various communities be
institutionalized to replace the present USIB?
What role should the DCI or DCI's play here?
--Should there be an "action" capability?
If so, should the DCI be responsible for it,
and to whom should he report in that respect?
If a separate DCIA is responsible, then should
he report through a DCI responsible for national
intelligence?
--In general, how to reconcile the strong
DCI required for sensible management with a public
opinion increasingly sensitized to the idea of
powerful, secret intelligence organizations?
SECRET
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