Intel reform

Ingatius: New CIA chief should continue organizational reforms

The CIA needs to be leaner, flatter and more able to operate secretly; some of Brennan’s reforms instead created a more complicated and confusing organization chart. Analysts and operations officers have different skills and career paths, and Brennan’s attempt to treat them all as “intelligence officers first” risked producing a homogenized culture with a duller edge.

To understand the CIA, it helps to think of it as a fancy high school. The cool kids on campus have always been the operators. The analysts were un-cool: brainy, fussy about their independence but socially introverted. It’s telling that two former senior operations officers both described Brennan’s effort as “the revenge of the nerds.” The CIA wasn’t exactly “Mean Girls,” but it was close.

Intel reform

In Spy-Agency Revamp, Michael Flynn Shows His Influence

In 2010, then-Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, at the time the top U.S. military intelligence official in Afghanistan, slammed the U.S. spy apparatus he helped to oversee as bloated and out of touch. Four years later, he was fired as the head of the military’s largest intelligence agency—in his view for speaking truth to power about the inadequacies of the nation’s national security preparedness.

Today, Gen. Flynn, who retired in 2014 as a lieutenant general, is in a position to again push his views of how America should protect itself, this time as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for national security adviser.

Intel reform

A Useful Trump Intelligence Shakeup

Donald Trump may or may not be planning to reorganize the 17 separate U.S. intelligence agencies, and the mere suggestion seems to be a breach of Beltway etiquette. But the intelligence services shouldn’t be immune from a bureaucratic shakeup, especially at the White House, and we have some suggestions.

The Journal reported this week that the Trump team believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has become “bloated and politicized,” though incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer called the story “100% false.” The transition also said that Mr. Trump will nominate Dan Coats, a former Indiana Senator and political grownup, as DNI, perhaps to calm the uproar.

Intel reform

Donald Trump Plans Revamp of Top U.S. Spy Agency

President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation’s top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said.

The move is prompted by his belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized, these people said.

The planning comes as Mr. Trump has leveled a series of social-media attacks in recent months and the past few days against U.S. intelligence agencies, dismissing and mocking their assessment that Russia stole emails from Democratic groups and individuals and then provided them to WikiLeaks for publication in an effort to help Mr. Trump win the White House.

Intel reform

General Flynn’s Proposals to Reform Intelligence

General Michael T. Flynn, the next US National Security adviser is in the process of organizing a radical overhaul of the Intelligence Services.

According to our sources, he is getting ready to challenge the big reforms that took place during the Bush and Obama years:
 placing all 16 Intelligence agencies under the exclusive authority of a Director of National Intelligence, supposed to supervise information sharing;
 abolishing the line between agents on the ground and analysts in favour of functional centres such as the ones we see in the TV series 24.

As we had highlighted at the time, and as General Flynn has also subsequently emphasized:
 the Director of National Intelligence clearly had the power to centralize intelligence which until then had been dispersed, but he lacked the power to interfere with how the different agencies were operating. So for example, he did not have the power to remove an incompetent officer.
 key point: the current functional centres excel in providing information instantly. They are able to pinpoint an individual anywhere in the world and, if need be, eliminate him. But this is not Intelligence. The correct term is crime. Even if the CIA miraculously topples the regimes that the White House disapproves of and sets up secret prisons, it is not by any measure more knowledgeable on anticipating political developments, and to a lesser extent still, military developments.

Intel reform

Germany reforms its main intelligence service

Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, has passed a comprehensive reform of the country's main intelligence service, the BND. The new legislation strengthens government monitoring of intelligence activities while explicitly allowing the BND to carry out certain types of surveillance activities. 

The reform comes in the wake of the 2013 revelations by American whistleblower Edward Snowden that a number of national intelligence services, including the BND, had spied on behalf of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and that the NSA had spied on its allies. That prompted the formation of a German parliamentary committee to draft intelligence agency reforms.

The new legislation subjects the BND to monitoring by an "independent panel" of two judges and a federal prosecutor and a "permanent commissioner" from the Interior Ministry. It stipulates that surveillance of international communications networks must be authorized by the Chancellor's Office rather than by the BND itself and explicitly prohibits economic and industrial espionage.

Intel reform

The Post-9/11 U.S. Intelligence Community

Fifteen years ago, 19 hijackers and four planes shattered American illusions of security. An outside attack seemed remote to most Americans, and there appeared to be no immediate threat to their daily lives. September 11th quickly dispelled that sense of safety, and as the dust settled and the death toll rose, the question soon became, how did we miss this?

Unsurprisingly, the onus of that question fell on the U.S. intelligence community (IC), which many blamed for the largest intelligence failure in U.S. history. Fair or not, this accusation began a series of inquiries and reforms which has changed the face of American intelligence. Today, 15 years later, how have these reforms changed the way our IC works, and are we safer?

The reform of the IC only truly began around three years after 9/11, with the landmark Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) of 2004. In response to both the 9/11 attacks and the faulty National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in 2002 concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, the IRTPA called for a number of key reforms. Most significantly, it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which replaced the Director of Central Intelligence’s previous role as both the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the coordinator of all national intelligence.

Intel reform

CHINA’S MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM IS CHANGING

As American families dined on turkey and stuffing, China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) was hard at work in Beijing hammering out military reforms. These reforms were then announced to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by President Xi Jinping, who also serves as the CMC chairman. The proposed organizational changes may make this round of reform the most significant since those of the 1950s, when the PLA transitioned from a revolutionary army to the arm of a party-state. First impressions of the proposals provide mostly descriptive analyses at what Xi Jinping proposed for the PLA, but what the PLA publicized does not tell the whole story. The proposed creation of a separate headquarters for PLA ground forces and reorganization of the military regions will reverberate throughout military intelligence — a subject omitted entirely in Beijing’s propaganda blitz. Once the PLA moves beyond the inevitable organizational growing pains, the Chinese military intelligence system will be better positioned to manage its responsibilities for informing policymakers and supporting military operations.