Embassy of the United States

Foreign Relations

Intelligence Archive

THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY AND FOREIGN POLICY: GETTING ANALYSIS RIGHT.
Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution, September 2009
Executive Summary [HTML format]

“The Intelligence Community (IC) of the United States has been undergoing major reforms since 2005 when President George W. Bush signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. Under the new Director of National Intelligence, the shortcomings in intelligence analysis that came to light in the wake of the 9/11 and Iraq WMD intelligence failures are being addressed through revamped analytic standards, increased resources for the IC, and numerous organizational and procedural changes.”

2009 NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: A CONSUMER’S GUIDE.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. May 29, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 114 pages]

The guide shows the functions of the intelligence community.

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY WORKERS GIVE THEIR EMPLOYERS HIGH MARKS FOR JOB SATISFACTION AND INDENTIFY REMAINING CHALLENGES, 2008 SURVEY SHOWS.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. April 9, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 2 pages]

Employees in the Intelligence Community (IC) continue to rate their agencies more favorably than other federal workers assess the government on the whole in overall job satisfaction, the general quality of managers and senior leaders, and the development of top talent, according to results from the 2008 IC Employee Climate Survey.

[Note: contains copyright material.]

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Champion, Brian SPIES (LOOK) LIKE US: THE EARLY USE OF BUSINESS AND CIVILIAN COVERS IN COVERT OPERATIONS (International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 21, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 530-559)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Business has proven to be an effective cover for spies since ancient times, since merchants are not only privy to trade conditions, mannerisms and customs, but also are more identified in society by their trade rather than their national origin, notes Champion, Librarian in the Department of Social Sciences and Education at the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The Greeks and Carthaginians were skillful in exploiting these intelligence sources while the Romans largely abandoned it in favor of receiving covert information from allied tribes. Later on, Muslim merchants were prized for their information gained by their control of commercial traffic between the Mongol empire and the West. The English also became adept at using their merchants, based largely in Paris, to inform the monarchy on intelligence from the Continent and identifying supporters of English Catholicism. Lloyd’s Coffee House in London became an unrivalled source of shipping intelligence during the 18th century. The American colonies also used “front” firms to buy European arms during the Revolution, and merchant cover was used to collect intelligence from the Confederacy during the Civil War. The author continues to document similar uses in 19th century European rivalries, the spread of Communism and World War II, but concludes it was not until the Cold War years that “front company” usage actually became a staple in intelligence gathering.

INTELLIGENCE REFORM AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY: POLICY ISSUES AND ORGANIZATIONAL ALTERNATIVES.
Congressional Research Service, RL34595, Library of Congress. Alfred Cumming. August 12, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 28 pages]

In 2006, Congress temporarily consolidated separate counterintelligence (CI) offices at the Department of Energy and the National Security Administration (NNSA) into a single CI office under DOE control. DOE had complained that the dual office structure was ineffective. At the same time, in 2006, DOE combined its separate Offices of Intelligence, and Counterintelligence into a new DOE office called the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. The report analyzes both consolidations; the first authorized by Congress at DOE’s request and the second initiated by DOE, and examines the impact of each on the effectiveness of the Department’s CI program.

UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY INFORMATION SHARING STRATEGY.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Web posted April 7, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 24 pages]

Each intelligence agency has its own networks and data repositories that make it very difficult to piece together facts and suppositions that, in the aggregate, could provide warning of the intentions of our adversaries. The inability or unwillingness to share information was recognized as an Intelligence Community weakness by both the 9/11 Commission and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Commission. The President and the Congress have mandated that the Intelligence Community create a more integrated enterprise where information is routinely shared. Since these mandates were issued, progress has been made in information sharing through the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the Information Sharing Environment (ISE), and related partnership efforts. Recognizing the very real and profound necessity to improve information sharing, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has made accelerating and improving Intelligence Community information sharing one of his top priorities.

WILLING TO GET OUR HANDS? (SAIS Review of International Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter-Spring 2008, pp. 37-46)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Olsen, who served in the Directorate of Operations in the Central Intelligence Agency, wonders whether Americans are prepared to stretch ethical limits for U.S. spies and relinquish some individual rights in the interest of U.S. security. He asks what the costs of victory might be if the war on terror leads the U.S. side to fight back in the unprincipled way of terrorists. U.S. spies should not set the rules for themselves; Congress and the president need to act, Olsen said, “but few politicians have been willing to put their names on any document, law, or order that could later be construed ... as stretching moral limits.” They can no longer wait; they must craft in a nonpartisan way the unambiguous guidelines urgently need to confront terrorism.

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Tucker, Nancy B. THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN INTELLIGENCE: INTERIM REPORT (Washington Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2, Spring 2008, pp. 47-61)
Full Text

The author, a recent intelligence official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and now a professor at Georgetown University, believes that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran reflects initial intelligence reform, but warns that a fundamental and thorough transformation of the intelligence community culture, with seven steps to achieve it, is urgently needed. For example, the relationship between intelligence agencies and Congress needs to be rectified, since ODNI would not exist with Congressional actions to meet popular demands for radical repair of the community. Another step requires an evidence-based approach for productive research and frequent scientific testing of intelligence community practices. Declassification of records needs to be a priority to facilitate access to both historical and current information. This is the time for transformation of the intelligence community, to replace a “need-to-know” culture with the “responsibility to provide.” Carrying out a cultural revolution requires big changes that will not come quickly.

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Tidd, John FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM: A BRIEF HISTORY OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE (SAIS Review, vol. 28, no. 1, Winter/Spring 2008, pp. 5-24)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author, lecturer at the School of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Arizona, notes that a network of large, permanent intelligence-gathering organizations has been a feature of U.S. government only since World War II. During the Revolutionary War and into the first half of the nineteenth century, intelligence activity was very limited; Tidd charts the uneven growth of U.S. intelligence organizations from the Civil War until World War I. It was the Second World War, followed by the Cold War, that saw an explosive growth in intelligence-gathering. This is one of a series of articles in SPIES, an issue of the SAIS Review devoted to the role of intelligence in U.S. policymaking and the unprecedented challenges the U.S. intelligence community is facing today.

ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. J. Michael McConnell. February 5, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 47 pages]

Globalization has broadened the number of threats and challenges facing the United States. For example, as government, private sector, and personal activities continue to move to networked operations and our digital systems add ever more capabilities, our vulnerability to penetration and other hostile cyber actions grows. The nation requires more from our Intelligence Community than ever before and consequently we need to do our business better, both internally, through greater collaboration across disciplines and externally, by engaging more of the expertise available outside the Intelligence Community.

OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE (OSINT): ISSUES FOR CONGRESS.
Richard A. Best, Jr. and Alfred Cumming. Congressional Research Service (CRS), Library of Congress. December 5, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 27 pages]

“Open source information (OSINT) is derived from newspapers, journals, radio and television, and the Internet.” Intelligence analysts have used this type of information to supplement classified data, but it is not considered a priority of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). However, responding to legislative direction, the IC established the position of Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Open Source and created the National Open Source Center. This report provides background information and some recent developments on the use of OSINT.

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Pillar, Paul R. THE RIGHT STUFF (National Interest, no. 91, September/October 2007, pp. 53-59)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author, a former National Intelligence officer, points out that there has been much publicity about the often-criticized intelligence report on Iraqi unconventional weapons, but there were two other assessments that he initiated to help policymakers understand the aftermath of a war with Iraq. These reports indicated that 1) the greatest difficulty would be “building a stable and representative political system; 2) there would most likely be sectarian violence; 3) economic reconstruction would be difficult; 4) major outside assistance would be required to meet humanitarian needs, including a refugee problem; and 5) feeling threatened could revive Iraq’s interest in WMD. The regional assessment concluded that a war would boost political Islam, including its extremist variants.” The accuracy of these reports suggests that “comprehensive analysis should be applied before any other contemplated exercise of U.S. power, regardless of how frightening or condemnable the target of that exercise may be.”

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Allen, Craig THE LIMITS OF INTELLIGENCE IN MARITIME COUNTERPROLIFERATION OPERATIONS (Naval War College Review, Vol. 60, no. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 35-52)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author writes that naval forces have long been at the vanguard of global counter-proliferation efforts. They have also been at the heart of several recent maritime interceptions carried out as part of the Proliferation Security Initiative. Allen, professor of law at the University of Washington, says the legitimacy of PSI operations must be grounded in accurate intelligence. He examines the intelligence requirements of maritime counter-proliferation efforts as well as the degrees of risk management associated with operational decision making, and points to President Bush’s assertion that maritime interdiction should be carried out in a way that doesn’t “unnecessarily interfere with maritime commerce or the freedom of navigation.” The multilateral aspect of PSI operations and intelligence sharing is another factor for consideration. Allen says some PSI nations are on record as saying they will never reveal some successful interdiction activities to prevent illicit proliferators from taking advantage of such information to probe for weaknesses. The downside to this, he writes, is that the public and non-participating PSI states may never fully learn of the initiative’s accomplishments. He concludes that national security decision makers should not accept less than the best intelligence when dealing with weapons of mass destruction, but “they must also be prepared to make timely decisions when that intelligence falls short of certainty.”

COVERT ACTION: LEGISLATIVE BACKGROUND AND POSSIBLE POLICY QUESTIONS.
Alfred Cumming. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service. November 2, 2006.
Full report [pdf format, 11 pages]

Some observers assert that since 9/11 the Pentagon has begun to conduct certain types of counterterrorism intelligence activities that may meet the statutory definition of a covert action. The Pentagon, while stating that it has attempted to improve the quality of its intelligence program following 9/11, contends that it does not conduct covert actions.

Congress in 1990 toughened procedures governing intelligence covert actions in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair, after it was discovered that the Reagan Administration had secretly sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance, also referred to by some as “Contras.” In response, Congress adopted several statutory changes, including enacting restrictions on the conduct of covert actions and establishing new procedures by which Congress is notified of covert action programs. But in its most important change, Congress for the first time statutorily defined covert action to mean “an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” The statutory changes enacted in 1991 remain in effect today. This report examines the legislative background surrounding covert action and poses several related policy questions.

REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE: POSTWAR FINDINGS ABOUT IRAQ'S WMD PROGRAMS AND LINKS TO TERRORISM AND HOW THEY COMPARE WITH PREWAR ASSESSMENTS TOGETHER WITH ADDITIONAL VIEWS.
United States Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence. September 8, 2006.
Download [pdf format, 151 pages]

[Note: This unclassified version of the report contains some redactions.]

This report is based largely on documents recovered from Iraqi facilities in the aftermath of March 2003, and on interrogations of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials captured by coalition forces. Much of the information was unavailable to U.S. intelligence agencies and policymakers before the war.

The report finds that U.S. intelligence agencies "accurately characterized" Osama bin Laden's intermittent interest in pursuing assistance from Iraq, but were largely wrong about Hussein's attitudes. The committee determined that Hussein was wary of al-Qaida, repeatedly rebuffed requests from bin Laden for assistance, and sought to capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when he turned up in Baghdad. Another section of the report focuses on the erroneous prewar estimates by the CIA and other agencies, that Baghdad had stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions and was pursuing the development of nuclear arms.

Senators Peters, Hatch and Chambliss, present additional and dissenting views, as do Senators Bond and Lott.

REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE: THE USE BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY OF INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS TOGETHER WITH ADDITIONAL VIEWS.
United States Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence. September 8, 2006.
Download [pdf format, 211 pages]

[Note: This unclassified version of the report contains some redactions.]

This Senate Committee report finds that there is little evidence to determine whether one of the most notorious of the intelligence sources used by the United States before the Iraq war was tied to the Iraqi National Congress (INC). This intelligence source, an Iraqi code-named "Curveball," was a critical source for the U.S. view that Mr. Hussein had a mobile biological weapons program. This source and the information he provided have been entirely discredited.

Some members of the Committee disagreed with the report's findings. There is an additional dissenting opinion, signed by Committee Chair Senator Pat Roberts and four other members of the Committee, which minimizes the role played by the INC. It states: "Information from the INC and INC-affiliated defectors was not widely used in intelligence community products and played little role in the intelligence community's judgments about Iraq's W.M.D. programs."

AMENDMENTS TO THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT (FISA), 1994-2006.
Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service. July 19, 2006.
Download [pdf format, 29 pages]

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), signed into law in 1978, provides the statutory basis for the surveillance of foreign intelligence targets within the United States. [FISA is codified at 50 USC Sec. 1801 and seq.] This CRS legislative history neatly lays out the sections of subsequent laws that have amended FISA. The evolution of the legal bases for physical searches, criminal penalties, civil liabilities, use of pen register or trap and trace devices, is explained. For each section, the role and extent of Congressional oversight is explained. This legislative history is extremely valuable for setting the record straight as to the scope of FISA and subsequent legislation related to it.

A REVIEW OF THE FBI'S HANDLING OF INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION RELATED TO THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS (NOVEMBER 2004).
United States Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. Released Publicly June 2006.
Download [pdf format, 449 pages]

[Note from the Department of Justice: "This report is an unclassified version of the full report that the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) completed in 2004 and provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice, the Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The OIG's full report is classified at the Top Secret/SCI level."]

This version of the report includes a newly released chapter on the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. In a previously released version of the report, the entire chapter 4 on Moussaoui had been withheld by court order because of Moussaoui's ongoing trial. With the conclusion of that trial last month, the suppressed chapter was approved for release.

One main focus of the newly released chapter is the role played by Coleen Rowley, the former FBI agent who exposed the FBI's failings in its pre-Sept. 11 investigation of al-Qaida. The OIG report applauds Rowley for blowing the whistle on mistakes at the FBI, specifically her claim that FBI headquarters failed to aggressively investigate Moussaoui in August 2001. On the other hand, the report also faults Rowley for failing to pursue other investigative avenues in the Moussaoui case. The OIG alleges that she was too single-minded in her desire to obtain a search warrant from a special intelligence court that operates in secret, rather than to seek a traditional criminal search warrant.

INTELLIGENCE ISSUES FOR CONGRESS. Richard A. Best, Jr. Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. April 10, 2006.
Report [pdf format, 19 pages]

P.L. 108-458 was designed to address the findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, known as the 9/11 Commission, that there has been inadequate coordination of the national intelligence effort and that the Intelligence Community, as then-organized, could not serve as an agile information gathering network in the struggle against international terrorists. The Commission released its report in late July 2004 and Congress debated its recommendations through the following months. A key issue was the extent of the authorities of the DNI, especially with regard to budgeting for technical collection systems managed by Defense Department agencies. In the end, many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission regarding intelligence organization were adopted after a compromise provision was included that called for implementing the act "in a manner that respects and does not abrogate" the statutory authorities of department heads.

On April 6, the House Intelligence Committee reported its version of the FY2007 intelligence authorization bill (H.R. 5020). Although spending levels and many details are described only in the classified annex to the accompanying report (H.Rept. 109-411), the committee noted that "this year's budget request was the first that was fully determined by the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], and that effort by the DNI to create an Intelligence Community that is greater than the sum of its parts is beginning to bear fruit." A key concern of the committee is overhead imagery capabilities, and the bill reportedly provides for fundamental change in this area that is expected to cause "some discomfort within the Intelligence Community." Furthermore, the committee would direct DOD not to begin the process of terminating the U-2 aircraft program until it can certify that there will be no loss in surveillance capabilities while transitioning to the Global Hawk UAV.

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Pillar, Paul INTELLIGENCE, POLICY, AND THE WAR IN IRAQ (Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 2, March/April 2006, pp. 15-27)
View on publisher's web site

The author, former Deputy Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorist Center and now Visiting Professor at the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, notes that the most serious problem with U.S. intelligence today is that its relationship with the policymaking process is broken. Pillar points out that in the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making some of the most significant national security decisions and that it was misused to publicly justify decisions already made. Pillar also mentions the politicization that occurs, specifically due to inconsistent review of analysis, stating that reports that conform to policy preferences have an easier time making it through the gauntlet of coordination and approval. The other area of politicization concerned the specific questions to which the intelligence community devoted its energies. This happens when intelligence officers are not able to search for information based on past patterns and their own judgment, but instead when being pushed in a given direction by policymakers. Pillar suggests that the intelligence community should have greater independence and reposition itself to communicate effectively with more constituents then just the Oval Office alone.

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Pillar, Paul. GREAT EXPECTATIONS
(Harvard International Review, Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter 2006, pp. 16-21)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

The author, former Deputy Chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and Visiting Professor at the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, notes that in a poll conducted in June 2005, 65 percent of US citizens said that reforming the intelligence services is the best way to strengthen US security significantly. The author suggests that the public is using the intelligence community as a scapegoat, and that more often than not the intelligence reports are not promoting decisions that Capitol Hill and the administration are making, citing the Iraq War as an example. Pillar believes that the real problem with the intelligence community is the "politicized intelligence," the "cherry-picking" of intelligence reports or the pressure for analysts to devote disproportionate time to politically important topics and derive explanations that policymakers want to hear. Pillar believes that the solution lies in the hands of the American people, stating that changes can only occur when the public realizes that there are limits to the intelligence community; "intelligence is a service, not a savior."

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Vest, Jason. THIN RANKS
(Government Executive, Vol. 38, No. 1, January 2006, pp. 33-34)
View article on publisher's website

The author writes that the United States' ability to collect intelligence on terrorists is "startlingly weak" -- the U.S. intelligence community has too few spies in the right places, and post-Sept. 11 reforms intended to beef up human intelligence have not done the job. Vest notes that a recent trend within the CIA is the creation of specialized centers and task forces focusing on specific topics -- but many intelligence veterans worry that they are not staffed with knowledgeable people, are focused on the quantity, not the quality of the intelligence, and add extra bureaucratic layers between the case officers and policymakers. Although there has been the creation of a new National Counterterrorism Center under the director of national intelligence, the CIA still uses its own counterterrorism center. Many long-time intelligence officers have left as a result of the low morale and turf battles. All that has happened is a renaming and theoretical reorientation of the CIA's Operations Directorate, Vest notes, not the fundamental philosophical change within the intelligence community that many feel is required.

THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: TRANSFORMATION THROUGH INTEGRATION AND INNOVATION.
October 2005.
Download the document [pdf format, 32 pages]

In the foreword of this publicly available document, the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, writes that this National Intelligence Strategy capitalizes on the talents and patriotism of America's diverse intelligence professionals and relies on the U.S. tradition of teamwork and technological innovation. A strategy, he observes, is a statement of fundamental values, highest priorities, and orientation toward the future, but it is an action document as well.

The Strategy sets forth two kinds of strategic objectives - mission and enterprise. Key mission objectives are:

• Defeating terrorists at home and abroad by disarming their operational capabilities, while seizing the initiative by promoting the growth of freedom and democracy.
• Preventing and countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
• Bolstering the growth of democracy and sustaining peaceful democratic states.
• Developing methods to infiltrate and analyze tough intelligence targets.
• Anticipating threats and identifying opportunities and vulnerabilities for decision makers.

Enterprise objectives for the intelligence community include:

• Building an integrated intelligence infrastructure that will address threats to the American homeland, consistent with U.S. laws and the protection of privacy and civil liberties;
• Strengthening analytic expertise and exploring alternative analytic views; and
• Attracting, engaging, and unifying an innovative, results-focused Intelligence Community workforce.

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Gerecht, Reuel Marc AGAINST RENDITION (The Weekly Standard, vol. 10, no. 33, May 16, 2005, pp. 21-26)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

Gerecht considers the "muddle" the U.S. finds itself in with rendition, the arrest and transporting of terror suspects to other nations for interrogation that may involve the use of torture; he notes that it is a glaring contradiction with administration calls for democratization in the Arab world. He writes that the practice was inherited from the Clinton years, and is the byproduct of years of inability to recruit or plant agents within many Mid-Eastern countries. On the "slippery slope" that may have led to abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, he says rendition may have slowly "fueled a U.S. appetite" to try methods used by countries to which prisoners were rendered. But, he questions whether rendition is still wrong, given the potential for life-saving information. In the end, he concludes that rendition is not worth it, that it stands in violation of basic tenets of intelligence-gathering (i.e., controlling one's subject) and is an obstacle to developing more effective counterterrorism techniques. He posits that a bipartisan evaluation of information gained through rendered prisoners would clearly show that rendition has not resulted in more or better intelligence. Finally, he recommends repatriation as the most humane option for non-threatening detainees.

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May, Ernest R. WHEN GOVERNMENT WRITES HISTORY (New Republic, vol. 232, no. 4714, May 23, 2005, pp. 30-35)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

May, senior advisor to the 9/11 Commission, provides a compelling insider's account of the drafting of the Commission Report. Unlike traditional government reports, the authors strove to present an "enduring readable history" of the events leading to the attacks, instead of the "findings" so often found in official reports. The commission also chose an historical narrative approach in order to avoid partisan attacks. May reveals that the final report differed from the original outline in three ways, opening with a detailed description of the events on September 11, instead of background on al Qaeda; condensing six planned-for recommendation chapters into two, covering future counterterrorist strategies and organizational approaches; and finally, the addition of a chapter dealing with intelligence warnings from the summer of 2001. May delves into the logistics of drafting a report with a collective of authors, which, he says, resulted in weaknesses such as not addressing the question of whether U.S. policies may have fed the anger that led to 9/11. Most importantly, he feels that the report is actually "too balanced" -- a result of many of the contributing authors shying away from criticizing too harshly the very agencies they would be returning to.

THE NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER: IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES AND ISSUES FOR CONGRESS.
Todd M. Masse. Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. Updated March 24, 2005.
Download the document [pdf format, 19 pages]

On August 27, 2004, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order (EO) 13354

, which established the National Counterterrorism Center and stipulated roles for the NCTC and its leadership and reporting relationships between NCTC leadership and NCTC member agencies, as well as with the White House.

In December 2004, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, P.L. 108-458

. As with the Executive Order 13354, among many other reform initiatives, the act prescribes roles and responsibilities for the NCTC and its leadership.

The purpose of this report is to outline the commonalities and potential differences between EO 13354 and P.L. 108-458, as these conceptual differences could be meaningful in the implementation process of P.L. 108-458 if and when the issue of intelligence reform is re-visited by the 109th Congress. The report examines some aspects of the law related to the NCTC, including the relationship between the NCTC's Director and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which may have implications related to policy and implementation of an effective and efficient nationally-coordinated counterterrorism function. The report also examines several issues that may be of interest to Congress as the NCTC matures and evolves, including potential civil liberties implications of collocating operational elements of the traditional foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence entities of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

ESTIMATIVE PRODUCTS ON VIETNAM, 1948-1975. [NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES]
Office of the Director of Central Intelligence (ODCI), National Intelligence Council (NIC). Web-posted April 29, 2005.
Table of Contents page, original documents in pdf format, various pagings

Note: The entire collection of 174 declassified Vietnam-related intelligence estimates are available for searching or browsing at: http://www.foia.cia.gov/nic_vietnam_collection.asp

, but the collection of 38 documents at the site noted below may provide sufficient detail for most researchers.

The 38 documents on this site and the complete 174 documents in the entire collection show how the US intelligence Community viewed critical developments over a 27-year period, ranging from analysis of the implications of the post-World War II breakup of colonial empires to the Communist takeover of Saigon in 1975. A number of these documents were declassified and published in other circumstances, but many are being made public here for the first time. As such, they undoubtedly will be of immense interest and value to historians and scholars, academics and diplomats, and comprise in sum a unique historical record of a challenging and controversial chapter in U. S. foreign relations.