ABSTRACT
Intelligence planning and budgeting is complex. The complexities grow out of the dispersed institutional architecture of the Intelligence Community (IC), the overlap in responsibilities among these institutions, and the dominant role played by the Department of Defense (DOD). There are 16 agencies and offices in the IC that collect, analyze, or disseminate intelligence. This includes agencies that manage intelligence collection and dissemination, as well as agencies that analyze their own intelligence along with that gathered by others.1 Some of the organizations engage in similar intelligence gathering activities, but for different clients.2 The missions and responsibilities of these organizations frequently overlap, leading to complex management, planning, and budgetary challenges.3 At the same time, the majority of intelligence programs and roughly 80 percent of the budgetary resources are concentrated in the DOD, giving that organization a dominant role in mission and resource planning. Over the decades since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the National Security Act of 1947 there have been numerous efforts to organize the IC institutions and budgeting in a more centralized and coordinated way. These efforts culminated in the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2004, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It remains unclear whether the new ODNI architecture will succeed in bringing more coherence to the structures and processes in the IC.4 Intelligence responsibilities and budgets are grouped into two major categories, relating to the focus of the agency’s intelligence activity and the customer being served: the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). The NIP supports national policy priorities and includes national-level collection and analysis of national security intelligence, whether the source of the intelligence is foreign or domestic. The customer is primarily the broad national security and foreign policy community in the government. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is the overall
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