Director Of Central Intelligence Research Articles

The National Security Act, SIGINT, and the Origins of an Intelligence Diarchy

This article examines the impact of the National Security Act of 1947 on signals intelligence (SIGINT)’s organization and activities in the early Cold War. Although mostly a blind spot, the study of how the legislation relates to SIGINT serves to underscore the influence that the armed services exerted on the design and operation of the Intelligence Community (IC). SIGINT activities were impeded by the flaws of the legislation, which failed to unify the armed forces and created instead a decentralized national security apparatus. Although SIGINT was eventually centralized within the Department of Defense, it was to remain outside the Central Intelligence Agency’s purview, thus turning the nascent IC into a diarchy led by both the director of central intelligence and the secretary of defense.

The Image of the Issue of Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) in the Memoirs of American Decision-Makers

تناقش الورقة مذكرات عدد من صناع القرار الأمريكان وصورة بيت المقدس في مذكراتهم، وذلك في ضوء ما تتيحه من المعلومات السياسية، وفي ضوء ما تتيحه من خلفيات صناع القرار وانحيازاتهم الفكرية وتكوُّناتهم النفسية وأسلوبهم في معالجة القضايا. من جهة أخرى يُلاحظ في البيئة العلمية والأكاديمية العربية غياب التحليل للقضايا الإسلامية المعاصرة من خلال هذه المذكرات. لذا تحاول هذه الورقة سبر أغوار قضية بيت المقدس وما يحيط بها من ملابسات وأطراف كما تبدو في مذكرات ثلاثة من صناع القرار الأمريكان، وهم: كونداليزا رايس وهيلاري كلينتون وروبرت جيتس. وقد اعتمد هذا الاختيار تنوعا في التوجه والمنصب، فالأولى عملت كمستشار للأمن القومي ثم وزيرة للخارجية فجمعت بهذا بين منصبين أمني ودبلوماسي، والثانية عملت وزيرة للخارجية وهو منصب دبلوماسي، والثالث عمل وزيرا للدفاع وهو منصب عسكري فضلا عن أنه عمل سابقا كمدير للاستخبارات الأمريكية فجمع بين المنصب الأمني والعسكري. وفي العادة يحصل نزاع على النفوذ وعلى الصلاحيات والتي تؤدي إلى علاقات سيئة، ولكن الجديد أن مذكرات الثلاثة الذين نتناولهم في هذه الورقة تفيد بأنه ورغم اختلاف توجهاتهم إلا أنه كان بينهم قدر عالٍ من الانسجام والقدرة على العمل المشترك دون نزاعات قوية أو أجواء مسمومة. تعتمد الورقة المنهج التاريخي والتحليلي والمقارن، في رسم أطراف صورة القضية وزوايا معالجتها لدي الشخصيات الثلاثة لتحليل موضع الثوابت والمتغيرات في النظر إلى قضية بيت المقدس.

Demonstrating Near-Carbon-Free Electricity Generation from Renewables and Storage

Download : Download high-res image (47KB) Download : Download full-size image Dr. Marco Ferrara, co-founder of Form Energy (Somerville, MA), is a developer of commercial hardware and software for energy technologies. He holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of L’Aquila, Italy. At Form Energy, he supervises market analysis, product and service development, and business development. Previously, he led research and development of electrical storage optimal configurations and control software at IHI, Inc., created the energy storage modeling software ESWare at 24M Technologies, Inc., and was a lead developer of portfolio valuation software at Edison Mission Marketing and Trading. Download : Download high-res image (66KB) Download : Download full-size image Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has published extensively in the areas of materials science, electrochemistry, and energy storage. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Ceramic Society, and the National Academy of Inventors. He is a recipient of the Economist’s Innovation Award (Energy and Environment Category), the Electrochemical Society’s Battery Technology Award, the Materials Research Society’s Plenary Lectureship, and the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneer Award. Download : Download high-res image (98KB) Download : Download full-size image Dr. John M. Deutch, Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has published extensively on physical chemistry, technology, energy, international security, and public policy. He served as Director of Energy Research (1977–1979), Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology (1979), and Undersecretary (1979–1980) in the United States Department of Energy. He has also served as Director of Central Intelligence (1995–1996), as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1994–1995), as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (1993–1994), on the White House Science Council (1985–1989), on the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (1997–2001), and as Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (2012–2017).

In remembrance: Admiral Stansfield Turner, Naval officer as DCI

Admiral Stansfield Turner, a former chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community (formally, the Director of Central Intelligence or DCI), died in early 2018. He served as DCI during the Carter Administration, where he was known to be an advocate of stronger intelligence accountability. This previously unpublished interview with him from 1991 discloses his views on a range of intelligence topics, as he reflected back on his experiences a decade after his tenure as DCI.

Explaining the First Contested Senate Confirmation of a Director of Central Intelligence: John McCone, the Kennedy White House, the CIA and the Senate, 1962

This article explores the first nomination for Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) that was seriously contested in the US Senate. Unlike three previous DCIs who headed the Central Intelligence Agency, John A. McCone faced harsh criticism from some in the news media and 12 negative votes in the US Senate after he was nominated for the position by President John F. Kennedy. The article considers factors, including McCone's personal attributes and recent years' controversies about the CIA, as reasons that provoked some opposition to his confirmation as DCI.

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. By Robert M.Gates. Alfred A.Knopf, 2014. 618 pp.

Duty: Memoirs of Secretary at War. By Robert M. Gates. Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 618 pp. Memoirs from public officials typically are most instructive in presenting one person's perspective on key events during time of service and less helpful in appreciating preexisting policy constraints as well as restrictions of electoral cycle. Because he served two consecutive presidents as secretary of defense, and is only defense secretary to serve two commanders in chief from different political parties, Robert M. Gates has an unusual opportunity to present that broader perspective. His insightful assessment of defense policy making under George W. Bush and Barack Obama informs scholarly understanding of key national security debates and policy choices in twenty-first century. The book title, Duty, captures overarching theme well: Gates was not keen to serve as defense secretary or to stay in office for four-and-a-half years (late 2006 to mid-2011), but he so because he wanted to work for who sacrifice so much for United States. The pressures of job often became overwhelming, especially in Washington--Gates writes that he did not enjoy being secretary of defense (p. 465), and he refers to his tenure as deployment to Washington combat zone (p. 468). During his daily, predawn run, each time Gates would pass Lincoln Memorial, he would ask, How you do it? (p. 220). For Gates, the only thing that kept [him] going was getting out of Pentagon and being around troops (p. 465). With United States at war throughout his tenure, Gates was an integral advisor to key decisions about sending increased to Iraq for Bush and to Afghanistan for Obama. Under Bush, Gates participated in and implemented key decisions about 2007 troop surge in Iraq, conflicts with Russia, Syria, and Iran, increasing support from North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Afghanistan, and managing Pentagon battles over hardware, intelligence, support for wounded soldiers, and more. Gates worked well with president professionally, but he writes that they were not close personally (p. 95), perhaps in part because of Gates's close ties with former President George H. W. Bush, whom he had served as director of Central Intelligence. Gates describes second President Bush as intellectually curious (p. 94) and a man of character, man of convictions, and man of action (p. 96). In Bush White House, he is critical mostly of communications staff, who he says focused on tactical, often partisan, public relations, but says he was able to rebuff requests and make decisions with president's support. Given ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, rumors that Gates might be asked to continue in new administration, whether Republican or Democrat, started in early 2008. Consistent with theme of his memoir, Gates writes that he not seek to stay but believed he had responsibility to do so, if asked. …

Terrorism’s Evolution: Yesterday, Today, and Forever

In confronting the challenge of international terrorism, the fi rst step is to call things by their proper names, to see clearly and say plainly who the terrorists are, what goals they seek, and which governments support them. What the terrorist does is kill, maim, kidnap, and torture. His or her victims may be children in the schoolroom, innocent travelers on airplanes, businessmen returning home from work, political leaders. . . . The terrorist’s victims may have no particular political identity, or they may be political symbols, like Aldo Moro or, perhaps, Pope John Paul II. They may be kidnapped and held for ransom, maimed, or simply blown to bits. One defi ning characteristic of the terrorist is his choice of method; the terrorist chooses violence as the instrument of fi rst resort. William Joseph Casey, US Director of Central Intelligence

Teaching Bayesian Statistics To Intelligence Analysts: Lessons Learned

Teaching Bayesian Statistics To Intelligence Analysts: Lessons Learned

Introduction

Introduction John McLaughlin (bio) This issue of The SAIS Review appears at a moment when America's intelligence community is dealing with some of the toughest challenges in its history, while facing unprecedented public scrutiny of its activities. It is therefore the ideal time to present this issue, in which our contributors tackle topics such as the ethical questions involved in intelligence work, the relationship between intelligence officers and their policy counterparts, and the nature of intelligence success and failure. The challenges facing intelligence today flow from the dramatically altered state of the world since the end of the Cod War and the attacks of September 11. These twin watersheds changed the world in ways that present intelligence with both secrets to discover and mysteries to unravel. The intelligence community must work to ascertain the capabilities and locations of terrorist cells, the plans of adversaries, and the status of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons proliferation around the globe. Furthermore, intelligence analysts must also look beyond this to unravel the mysteries that are inherently unknowable yet susceptible to predictive analysis. These include the future of rising powers and the downstream impact of global trends ranging from the population explosion in the developing world to the soaring demand for energy and revolutionary changes in technology. The intelligence plate is overflowing. All of this comes at time when the Intelligence Community itself is in the midst of a dramatic transformation. After dramatic resource cuts during the 'peace dividend' era of the 1990s, money and people have begun flowing back into the community. Intelligence agencies have in the last two years been hiring at a record clip. While this has the decided benefit of bringing in fresh perspectives and vital new energy, it also means that many agencies now have staffs with a majority of people who have been in the business [End Page 3] fewer than five years. Many intelligence professionals are thus climbing a very steep learning curve while wrestling with the above challenges. Another part of this transformation involves the restructuring of the intelligence community under the Director of National Intelligence. The Director—whose position was created in December 2004—is now the nation's principal intelligence official charged with overseeing and coordinating the work of the community's 16 diverse agencies. As with most major reorganizations in their early years, all of this remains a 'work in progress.' The new Director differs from his/her predecessor—the Director of Central Intelligence—in not having simultaneously to manage the CIA on a daily basis. In theory, this means that the new leader has the potential to devote more time and energy to integrating the work of the community's diverse agencies and achieving progress on long-standing issues, such as information sharing, common standards for hiring and training, and uniform practices for recruiting and vetting secret agents. A good start has been made on many of these issues, but it is widely believed that Congress did not give the new Director sufficient authority to achieve the stated goals. Various proposals are on the table for strengthening the new Director's authority, but important decisions have yet to be made. In short, much is at stake for the United States as the Intelligence Community copes with the twin challenges of understanding a more complex world and transforming the way it does business. Although espionage is a secret business, American intelligence must function in a free and open society, operate in a way consistent with our values, and earn the public's trust. The challenges that our intelligence agencies now face—running the gamut from substantive to managerial—call for an unprecedented degree of public debate and understanding. With this issue of The SAIS Review, we hope to contribute substantially to that discussion. John McLaughlin John McLaughlin is a Senior Research Fellow at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Prior to coming to SAIS, he worked on a broad range of issues during a three decades-long career at the Central Intelligence Agency, where, between 2000-2004, he served as Deputy Director and Acting Director. He is a frequent commentator on international issues for CNN and...

A conversation with former DCI William E. Colby: Spymaster during the ‘Year of the Intelligence Wars’

In this previously unpublished interview, William Colby, former US Director of Central Intelligence, discusses the Intelligence Community's relationships with Congress and the White House, the value and conditions for effective human intelligence, the challenges of managing the Central Intelligence Agency, and his experience leading the Agency during the domestic spying scandals of the 1970s. Colby argues that the attentiveness of congressional intelligence committees waxes and wanes, just as it does for any other oversight committee. He states that Congress and the press, along with the integrity and initiative of individual citizens working in the intelligence community, provide the strongest guards against abuse. The interview was conducted in 1991, the last year of the Cold War.

The weakest link strategic management of human capital

Performance ImprovementVolume 43, Issue 8 p. 25-29 Article The weakest link strategic management of human capital Lenora Peters Gant PhD, Lenora Peters Gant PhD Lenora Peters Gant, PhD, is a member of the Senior Executive Intelligence Service. Since August 2002, she has been on a sabbatical at Trinity College (DC), a premier university for women, as a visiting professor/officer in residence in the Programs in International Affairs. From November 1998 to August 2002, Dr. Gant directed Intelligence Community Work Force Issues. She performed oversight for human resources, training and education, and diversity management for 14 national-level intelligence agencies and components. She served as the Special Assistant for Diversity Management to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the Deputy DCI for Community Management (DDCI/CM). She represented the DCI and DDCI/CM as a member of the Private Sector Council. Her experiences and assignments with the Department of Defense Military Services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense include Okinawa, Japan; Oxfordshire, England; and NATO in Brussels, Belgium. Based on her broad range of experiences, Dr. Gant brings a unique understanding and appreciation about the importance of strategically managing human capital issues. Dr. Gant received her BS from Florida A&M University, School of Business and Industry, her MA from George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from Virginia Polytechnic University and State University. She is a graduate of several executive and management programs, including the DOD Executive Leadership Development Program, The JFK School of Government, Harvard University, George Washington University and the Brookings Institute. She may be reached at PetersgantL@trinitydc.edu.Search for more papers by this author Lenora Peters Gant PhD, Lenora Peters Gant PhD Lenora Peters Gant, PhD, is a member of the Senior Executive Intelligence Service. Since August 2002, she has been on a sabbatical at Trinity College (DC), a premier university for women, as a visiting professor/officer in residence in the Programs in International Affairs. From November 1998 to August 2002, Dr. Gant directed Intelligence Community Work Force Issues. She performed oversight for human resources, training and education, and diversity management for 14 national-level intelligence agencies and components. She served as the Special Assistant for Diversity Management to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the Deputy DCI for Community Management (DDCI/CM). She represented the DCI and DDCI/CM as a member of the Private Sector Council. Her experiences and assignments with the Department of Defense Military Services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense include Okinawa, Japan; Oxfordshire, England; and NATO in Brussels, Belgium. Based on her broad range of experiences, Dr. Gant brings a unique understanding and appreciation about the importance of strategically managing human capital issues. Dr. Gant received her BS from Florida A&M University, School of Business and Industry, her MA from George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from Virginia Polytechnic University and State University. She is a graduate of several executive and management programs, including the DOD Executive Leadership Development Program, The JFK School of Government, Harvard University, George Washington University and the Brookings Institute. She may be reached at PetersgantL@trinitydc.edu.Search for more papers by this author First published: 09 February 2007 https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.4140430808 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume43, Issue8September 2004Pages 25-29 RelatedInformation

An Early “Year of Intelligence” CIA and Congress, 1958

The phrase “Year of Intelligence” gained currency during and after 1975, when, as the late Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William Colby once recalled, “the CIA came under the closest and ha...

Hunters not Gatherers: Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century

Because of its origins in a sort of anti-Elizabethan paranoia against centralised government, the United States is poorly set up institutionally to cope with the major danger to itself in the twenty-first century: the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. The Director of Central Intelligence is neither central nor fully directing. A large part of the intelligence community, especially in terms of budgets and supervision, is outside his direct control. There is a 'waters edge' separation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA. Essentially the CIA collects foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence overseas. The FBI, primarily a crime-oriented organisation, has had only a secondary function of domestic counter-intelligence. It is a case-oriented agency focused on establishing past facts in order to bring suspects to justice. It is psychologically ill-adapted to conceptualising threats that lie upstream, that is, in the future. In this context, September 11 can be most properly described as a failure of imagination. Remedies being proposed range from creating an internal security service à la Britain's MI5 to establishing a semi-autonomous domestic counter-intelligence agency within the FBI. In the field of covert action, intelligence in the twenty-first century likely will be characterised by what could be termed an offensive hunt strategy. Put in another way, intelligence operatives in the twenty-first century will become hunters, not gatherers. They will not simply sit back and gather information that comes in, analyse it, and then decide what to do about it. Rather they will have to go and hunt out intelligence that will enable them to track down or kill terrorists. This will involve sending operatives into countries with which we are not at war, indeed in some cases countries with which we have correct relations. In many circumstances, however, terrorist leaders will be hunted down with the help of host country elements. The likelihood is that this new strategy will be implemented primarily in terms of Special Forces operations aided by CIA elements. Modalities will have to be worked out between the Department of Defense and the CIA as to how such offensive hunt operations are to be carried out and how congressional oversight will be exercised.

Spymaster Richard Helms: an interview with the former US Director of Central Intelligence

In this previously unpublished interview with Richard Helms in 1990, the former US Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) offered his views on a wide range of intelligence issues. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he argued that members of Congress had maintained rigorous accountability over the secret agencies in the years before the major spy scandal of 1975, when the Central Intelligence Agency was found to have spied on American citizens. He emphasized, too, the vital importance of human (as opposed to technical) intelligence, and expressed cynicism about the effectiveness of large-scale covert actions. For Helms, the DCI's most important job was to bring the facts to the table at high policy meetings.

Making It Unpopular

Making It Unpopular

Second-Guessing the Experts: Citizens' Group Criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency's Estimates of Soviet Military Policy

aldrich ames spy case, first revealed to the public in 1994, has focused new attention on the quality of the US Central Intelligence Agency's information about the Soviet Union during the cold war. Three unusual aspects of the case have so far attracted the most attention: the magnitude of Ames's betrayal of Soviet agents working for the CIA; the KGB's use of double agents to pass on to the CIA deliberately false as well as accurate intelligence; and the fact that the CIA knowingly passed such misinformation to Congress to obtain congressional approval of the annual US military budgets. According to John Deutsch, then director of central intelligence, these CIA reports 'had a substantial role in framing the debate' over the appropriate response to Soviet military policy for nearly ten years after 1985 when Ames began working for the Russians. The 'net effect', he argued, Svas that we overestimated their capability'.1 Discussions of the Ames case tended to overlook the fact that US intel-

An assessment of general Hoyt S. Vandenberg's accomplishments as director of central intelligence

An assessment of general Hoyt S. Vandenberg's accomplishments as director of central intelligence

Securing access and privacy on the internet

Summary There are hundreds if not thousands of other flashpoints around the world that pit supporters of freedom of cyber-speech and universal access to Internet resources against mostly government interests that are seeking to control the Internet and restrict the content of information transmitted across it. The FBI has become a self-appointed jury and judge on the proper future uses of the international data highway. It is assisted on the technical surveillance side by the NSA, the world's largest collector of digital data. It is important, therefore, to quote Judge William Webster, the former head of both the FBI and NSA (the latter in his capacity as Director of Central Intelligence): “… The FBI does not need to be ‘unleashed’. It must not be seen as authorized to infiltrate organizations merely because they are regarded as suspicious or hostile to the policies of those in power. The tools can be improved, but the Constitutional requirements must be respected and observed. This is the best formula I know for the preservation of Ordered Liberty in America.” And to that one might add: “and everywhere else in the world”.

History Declassified: The Perils and Promise of CIA Documents

After a grueling confirmation hearing in late 1991, Robert Gates, the director of central intelligence, convened a CIA Task Force on Openness. It recommended that the agency begin to declassify documents that had previously been withheld from the public.1 Within the CIA, a Historical Review Board was instructed to “make significant historical information available to the public without damage to the national security interests of the United States.”2 In the fall of 1992, with great fanfare, the CIA released the first batch of the promised intelligence material–112 documents on the Cuban missile crisis. In the fall of 1993 many of the intelligence estimates on the former Soviet Union were declassified, and thousands of pages of material on the JFK assassination were sent to the National Archives in the wake of public pressure for disclosure generated by Oliver Stone's film JFK.

Ludwell Lee Montague. <italic>General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence, October 1950–February 1953</italic>. Foreword by Bruce D. Berkowitz and Allan E. Goodman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1992. Pp. xxviii, 308. Cloth $45.00, paper $14.95

Ludwell Lee Montague. General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence, October 1950–February 1953. Foreword by Bruce D. Berkowitz and Allan E. Goodman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1992. Pp. xxviii, 308. Cloth $45.00, paper $14.95 Get access Montague Ludwell Lee. General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence, October 1950–February 1953. Foreword by Berkowitz Bruce D. and Goodman Allan E.. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1992. Pp. xxviii, 308. $45.00, paper $14.95. Richard Gid Powers Richard Gid Powers College of Staten Island, City University of New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 99, Issue 2, April 1994, Pages 684–685, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/99.2.684 Published: 01 April 1994