Twenty Years Later, Does the DNI Work?

By Ronald Marks, NSI Faculty

It’s been nearly 20 years since Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act (IRTPA) of 2004.

With the disastrous twin intelligence failures of 9/11 and the botched Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco in mind, IRTPA stripped the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of its Intelligence Community (IC) oversight role and created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) fill this void.

Feelings run deep and long in the spy firmament. As a forty-year veteran of the national security community, I think IRTPA and its creation of the DNI was and remains a good idea. Others in the IC would argue strongly against my position. They would be wrong.

Where You Stand Is Where You Sit

During the 1990s, I had front row access to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), who was “dual hatted” and oversaw both the CIA and the IC. Practically, the DCI ran the CIA’s day-to-day operations — managing clandestine operation, analysis, and other practical intelligence gathering activities. In his other capacity, the DCI also oversaw the IC’s policy and budget issues, though 80% of the IC — agencies like National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — fell under the operational structure of the Secretary of Defense.

Alongside a small group called the Community Management, few DCI’s enjoyed “overseeing” the IC. As one senior DCI officer once told me: it was “all budget problems and no fun.” The poor Community Management Staff as even located in a warren of offices one floor down from the DCI.

Down the hallway from the DCI office were the heads of the spying and top-level analytical services. As my senior DCI acquaintance also asked me, guess where the DCI was more inclined to spend their time during the day?

The Second Hat Removed

With the creation of the DNI in 2004, there was push back within the CIA and some saw the creation of the office as a “downgrading of their position,” with others in the IC viewing it as another layer of unneeded bureaucracy. Among this dissatisfaction, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld negotiated strongly with Congress to block any new DNI’s powers, ultimately turning the position into more of a “coordinator” job.

What did immediately make sense to me (and work) was the idea of housing so-called Community Centers, such as the National Counterterrorism Center, Counterintelligence, Counter-proliferation, under the DNI office, where overall IC resources could be concentrated and coordinated without a potential or imagined CIA bias.

However, what was immediately resented by many of my colleagues in the IC was the initial DNI desire to direct programmatic activities. Though, this effort didn’t last long and ran into political brick wall.

He Who Has The Gold

In 2010, a savvy bureaucratic player, James Clapper, was brought into run the DNI office. He had helmed both the DIA and the newly created NGA — two agencies with sprawling bureaucracies that had access to large pots of program monies that could be spread throughout a fair portion of other IC agencies. Both agencies also required sophisticated oversight to see where money was going and in what programs it was being used, and both agencies lived in the DoD firmament.

Thus, Clapper applied the one unfailing bureaucratic rule — he who has the gold makes the rules.

With the support of the President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), DNI Clapper successfully moved to have all IC monies and programs pass through the DNI before they would be approved for the President’s budget.

And thus, the DNI now mattered to everyone — a great deal.

Does It Still Work?

Today, DNI Avril Haines oversees, coordinates, and guides budgets and programs amounting to $110 billion — the fourth largest part of the U.S. Government’s discretionary budget.

The complaints from 20 years ago are still there, of course. I hear some older types still grumble at their alumni and industry association meetings about the good old days before the creation of DNI and some DoD managers continue to complain about having two Intelligence bosses — the DNI and Secretary of Defense.

Still others complain they are “constrained” by DNI’s budget process and feel constantly bombarded with a slew of questions regarding policy, program, and budget. However, as I have learned in my private sector executive roles, that is a part of any large organization duties.

Bottom line: the creation of the DNI was an idea that worked.

Ronald A. Marks is a faculty member with the National Security Institute at George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School and is a former CIA officer who served five DCI’s as Senate liaison and was Intelligence counsel to two Senate Majority Leaders. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Visiting Professor at the George Mason University, Schar School.