Reference: National Intelligence Program (NIP)
Does not include the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) that is between $30 and $50 billion a year.
Phi Beta Iota: Intelligence is defined by outputs not inputs. Intelligence is defined by decision-support delivered, ingested, and acted upon in such a manner as to reduce risks and/or increase prosperity. Counter-intelligence, and open source intelligence, both of which should have their own program but do not, should also be measured by their outcomes rather than inputs.
Questions Not Asked:
01 Name seven instances when any policy, acquisition, or operational decision has been substantively influenced by classified intelligence reporting.
02 Other than the President and Cabinet Secretaries, name seven recipients of classified intelligence at the Assistant Secretary level or below who can testify as the value of classified intelligence in their specific case.
03 In light of General Mike Flynn's public indictment of classified intelligence in relation to Afghanistan, provide seven specific instances of classified intelligence in the past two years making any kind of difference in Afghanistan.
04 In light of the frequent theft of credit card information and the continued openness of most Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) via the Internet, precisely what gains have been made in cyber-security across the Federal government, in support of US industry engaged in foreign trade or subject to foreign espionage, and across the SCADA systems for energy, communications, and finance?
05 Given that 2012 is the peak retirement year from the most experienced intelligence community personnel across all mission area functions, how does freezing new hires contribute to what is already a very shallow bench? What happens when the annuitants start dying off?
06 With specific reference to the CIA drone program, how exactly does this make America safer and how exactly is the cost per alleged terrorist and the cost per alleged innocent bystander justified?
07 With respect to integration, there are still 80 unintegrated databases being accessed by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Where exactly in the integration taking place? How many different system accounts and passwords must each all-source analyst maintain to do their respective jobs, and how much time do they spend on system connectiveity versus reading and doing analysis? How are we measuring the opportunity cost of analysts giving up on numerous databases and not actually doing all-source discovery?
08 Benghazi is a useful case study. What is Plan B now that the CIA base has been destroyed and the FBI has been refused access to all relevant witnesses? Is it true that multiple military response teams were told to stand down when calls for help went out? In the absence of a CIA base, how many language-qualified non-official cover officers are in Benghazi right now? What are the multinational clandestine operational options? Are the French still not speaking to us?
09 How is national intelligence support for the planned intervention in Mali going? Recognizing that the National Geospatial Agency and the National Security Agency are within the Military Intelligence Program, how are we doing on 1:50,000 combat charts for Mali? How are we doing on both tuned in signals collection for those two countries, and language qualified analysts dedicated to what has always been a non-target of very low priority? [ Ethnologue counts 50 languages. Of these, French is the official language and Bambara is the most widely spoken. Altogether 13 of the indigenous languages of Mali have the legal status of national language] and Niger [French plus eight national languages]. Please produce the qualification records for your top three SIGINT specialists for Songhay and Hausa and then produce them physically for independent testing and validation.
10 What percentage of all technical collection is processed? Differentiate among the top 25 targets. What percentage of human intelligence comes from foreign liaison hand-outs? What percentage of human intelligence comes from legal traveler debriefings? Produce the last survey of gaps according to all interviewed analysts within CIA and from the military, within DIA and the theater and service intelligence centers. What has been done to address each of the gaps, distinguishing among collection, processing, and analysis time and money?
11 What percentage of the NIP is earmarked for counterintelligence? How many full time counterintelligence personnel are there, and what are the top 10 targets they are working on at this time? Is anyone in the US IC directly responsible for religious counterintelligence?
12 What percentage of the NIP is earmarked for open sources and methods? How many full time open source collectors are there? How many full time open source analysts are there? What percentage of the open source “take” coming over the 100 T-1 links into CIA OSC is processed to the point that the collection reaches an analyst? Does anyone poll all possible consumers for open source requirements? If so, what percentage of those stated requirements are satisfied, at what cost within what timeframe?
13 Prior investigations have documented that Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) can meet 40% of the global Special Operations Forces requirements for all-source intelligence, and 80% of the all-source intelligence requirements of a full range of consumers across all of the agencies and departments of government that are not part of the national security community. Where is the IC leadership on the funding of an Open Souorce Agency as proposed by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) and twice approved by OMB, and why does such an agency not exist already,close to 50 years after it was first called for in an article in CIA's Studies in Intelligence? Who, exactly, is responsible for OSINT advocacy at the national level, and what percentage of the NIP is earmarked for OSINT?
See Also:
2002 FAILURE of 20th Century Intelligence
21st Century Intelligence Core References 2007-2013
