From Afghanistan to Trump: 2014–2017

Abstract

Abstract A friend who had been deputy national intelligence officer when Gregory Treverton was vice-chairman under Joseph Nye cautioned him that “this is not your father’s National Intelligence Council”. And indeed it wasn’t. Substantively, the biggest change was in mission—the enormous addition of current intelligence support to the government’s policy committees. That meant the NIC was in the thick of things, but it also meant than finding time for more strategic work was a constant frustration—all in the context of an administration trying to cope with crises from Ukraine to ISIS, from Afghanistan to Ebola. Procedurally, the biggest change was the creation, first of the director of national intelligence, and later of the national intelligence managers. The latter, especially, will remain a work in progress: it does let the NIC focus on what it does best, analysis, but at some cost in prestige and time spent in bureaucratic jockeying—the “black Suburban” issue: who goes to White House policy meetings.