Directed Intelligence

From Reuters:

…”I think it ought to be a stand-alone group to better coordinate, particularly between foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence matters,” Bush said in a White House Rose Garden announcement, surrounded by top national security aides.

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From: Tom Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security
To: All Agencies
Re: The new look for fall

Guys,

Okay, there’s been a lot of apprehension regarding the new re-org, and how that affects the structures put in place during our last re-org, back in ‘02. Believe me, it’s not as tough as it sounds. It might even be fun!

As you know, the previous re-org placed all of Homeland Security into four main components: Border and Transportation Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Science and Technology, and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. As you also know, the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection wing processes information from the CIA, FBI, DIA and NSA. And that the FBI itself is actually now part of said IAIP, or at least their new National Infrastructure Preparedness Center is. This sort of overlap is a natural thing, and it shouldn’t cause any confusion as long as everybody pulls together in not thinking about it too much. All the details, once again, are here: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/index.jsp

Easy so far, right?

Okay, so now we’re going to be creating a new post - that of National Intelligence Director. How does that affect us? Will it be a cabinet level post? Who’s in charge? How does this help us become more prepared?

Whoa, slow down, it’s not so bad. All right. Look: the DHS actually provides Homeland Security. That’s what we do. The new NID will head a yet-to-be-named office that coordinates intelligence efforts between such agencies as the CIA, FBI, DIA and NSA. So the segments of the DHS that previously received certain intelligences from those aforementioned agencies will either continue to do so or have their intelligence pre-vetted by the office of the NID. This might also apply to segments of the DHS that gather intelligence; that is, for example, the FBI’s National Infrastructure Preparedness Center will both provide intelligence to the DHS (as it already does!) and submit said information both to the FBI at large and the NID, who will coordinate said information with work from other intelligence agencies in order to submit a clearer picture of said intelligence to the DHS.

Not so hard, is it?

So here’s how it’ll work in the real world. Let’s say the CIA picks up a piece of international “chatter” that indicates that a terrorist plot to blow up Mount Rushmore is underway. Said intelligence will be sent directly to the office of the NID and coordinated with other bits and pieces assembled there - anything Rushmore-y going on? Something Dakota-esque? They’ll look into all the stuff. The NIPC will then be tasked with further investigation to determine if any cross-referenced threat assessments from NID match up to the existing internal assessments. Information sharing, both between departments and coordinated by the NID will begin to flow. Within literally weeks, we will have a dynamic, composite view of the threat, an assessment of its potential truth-value, and a DHS-generated plan of defense, which will then (after approval stages are met) be submitted to the appropriate DHS agencies and put into action. After this point the variously deployed field agents will have complete freedom to act on the threat (within operational boundaries determined by the Threat Level And Reliability Matrix, of course) and large dossiers containing possibly vital information, color coded by the new NID’s system of Threat Confidence (note, there isn’t an NID yet, but I intend to suggest a color-coded system for simplicity’s sake. So as not to confuse it with pre-existing chromatic systems, how does everyone feel about a family of pastels?).

Remember - the development of the office of the National Intelligence Director is still embryonic, and much of this might change. But those are the broad strokes, so please begin teal-level preplanning so that we can ratchet this procedural change up to operating speed as soon as possible.

Yours in Security,

Tom