The $75B Intelligence Budget

Talking to reporters yesterday about the new National Intelligence Strategy, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said the strategy would serve as a blueprint for a 200,000 person strong, $75 billion national intelligence enterprise.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists pointed out that this estimate was $30 billion above the $45 billion intelligence budget Blair disclosed at a media roundtable.

But, Aftergood said the $75 billion budget disclosed by Blair yesterday included both funding for the National Intelligence Program run by outfits such as the CIA and the NSA, which supports high-level policy folks and military intelligence programs.

Blair took pains in his talk with reporters to emphasize that the lines which separated various intelligence programs should no longer exist.

"This old distinction between military and non-military intelligence is no longer relevant," Blair said. "The problems that we face in the world have strong military, diplomatic, economic and other aspects that all work together and need to be supported by an interlocked and interweaving set of intelligence activities," he added.

In practical terms, Blair said the new national intelligence strategy will result in a mission-oriented system which pools the talents of a wide range of analysts working towards a common goal, and he gave this example:

"I have one picture in my mind: a darkened room with a flickering computer screen. That computer screen is tied into the server a half-a-world away, in a part of the world that is thinking not good things about the United States.

There is a young female Army sergeant who is at the keys; there is a kid with a New York Yankees baseball cap sideways on his head who was whispering in one ear; there is an old grayhaired, bearded guy who has been working on this target for 40 years in the other ear; and in back is a group of officers from different agencies.

And they are in real time both extracting intelligence from and making life difficult for one of our adversaries using the computer around the world.

That kind of magnificent work is what we mean by mission management."

This kind of teamwork, Blair said, occurs today in the field where analysts "don't spend their time sitting around arguing who is in charge; they get the job done and that's what we're really striving for and that's what we're seeing."

Asked why such co-operation is hard to come by in Washington, Blair ducked and replied, "The closer you are to the fire, the more you focus on the mission."

Maybe he should organize some field trips for some Washington-based intelligence bureaucrats so they can hone their focus closer to the fire.