ABSTRACT
Office of the Director of National Intelligence . 8. To list the mission, policies, programs, and initiatives of the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) since 9/11 .
8.1 Introduction Much is expected of those entrusted with homeland protection . At a minimum, there is the expectation of basic security and safety-the notion that the homeland will be safe from attack from both domestic and foreign enemies . As already noted, exactly what the functionaries of homeland security should tackle is an evolutionary project . Today’s threat may be tomorrow’s less worrisome problem . However, there are certain core competencies that the professional class of employees in Homeland Security need to master . These are the nonnegotiable skill sets that the homeland system must demonstrate competence in . These are the essential underpinnings of what makes the homeland system work in any context . These competencies include:
• Intelligence • Border security • Immigration • Transportation security • Public health
8.2 Intelligence The task of intelligence gathering and analysis could be considered an overreaching competence, for just about everything in Homeland Security is guided by what we do, or should, or must know . Intelligence, in a sense, is the lifeblood of operations . Sometimes practitioners witness the mindlessness, the almost unintelligence that policymakers impose . In other words, the bureaucratic mindset, in some cases, simply acts without intelligence because it acts or has been acting in a particular way for so long . Intelligence is more than mindless motion .1 The idea of intelligence can be discerned in a host of contexts-domestic and international, military and covert, criminal and civil-as well as the intelligence of homeland security . Intelligence is, at its base, nothing more than information assessment . One way of describing it might be:
Intelligence activities largely reflect the agency mission and overall purpose of the task at hand . In some circles, intelligence is broken down into
various disciplines . “Three major intelligence disciplines or ‘INTs’—signals intelligence (sigint), imagery intelligence (imint), and human intelligence (humint)—provide the most important information for analysts and absorb the bulk of the intelligence budget .”3
