ABSTRACT
The design of a national program for collecting intelligence obviously must ensure that emphasis be placed on the most critically needed information. Since the creation of the Intelligence Community following World War II, experience and administrative evolution have produced a combination of system, procedure, and practice that has acquired a character of its own. Prior to 1963 the Director of Central Intelligence had limited influence over the collection programs of the Intelligence Community members. The Intelligence Community has made a continuing effort to define and refine the statements of requirements for intelligence collection and setting of collection priorities. A major increase in the information gathered by technical collection systems created stronger pressure for more central management and control of the collection programs operated by the various intelligence organizations. Director of Central Intelligence Turner devised a system for stating priority intelligence questions, which constituted something of a lineal descendant of the earlier Priority National Intelligence Objectives and Key Intelligence Question approaches.
