In my opinion, the office of the National Intelligence Director is a viable alternative for consolidation of intelligence agencies under one government roof, as originally proposed in the early days following the 9/11 attacks.

A few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the then President George W. Bush commenced a complete revamping of the intelligence community by creating a new department called the Office of Homeland Security. While it was originally an office within the White House, he reluctantly proposed a Cabinet Level Department of Homeland Security with the focus being to unify the agencies that held responsibility for homeland security. Lawmakers also supported these efforts as they wanted to prevent the failure that had happened prior to the 9/11 attacks between the intelligence agencies that did not allow a complete picture of the pending attacks from being understood (Bullock, Haddow and Coppola, 2018).

Having intelligence is one thing but being able to analyze the parts that make up the whole picture or story is another, and by taking all of the bits of intelligence and piecing them together so that it creates a complete picture, is where having a National Intelligence Director that serves as the head of the other agencies that make up the IC is absolutely critical to the security of the United States and her allies. The primary goal of this position as noted by Bullock, Haddow and Coppola, 2018, is to ensure cooperation among all the intelligence communities and also has authority to perform task such as:

1. Transferring resources (people and funds) to ensure that the IC will be flexible thereby allowing them to respond to threats.

2. Having control of the budget and distribution to the different agencies

3. Creating the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board for the protection of privacy and civil liberties concerns.

To further solidify my opinion, in Bob Butterworth’s online article titled – “911: Do We Need A Director of National Intelligence?”, he provides some further rationale of the importance of the DNI and having one focal point for concerns about intelligence matters. He also mentions that how the work done in the DNI’s office encourages interagency collaboration and provide words that sixteen different intelligence agencies can use to show consensus and cooperation. He also said that the DNI has done little harm carrying out its duties. One of the most important statements form the article is where he said that:

“Eliminating the position might encourage excessive independence by various agencies, destructively competitive actions that could reduce national capabilities and complicate cooperation with foreign governments”.

While this is only his opinion, Bob Butterworth was a deputy executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and also sat in positions of intelligence during his career and because of this experience is somewhat of an authority and subject matter expert.

Reference:

Bullock, J., Haddow, G. & Coppola, D. (2018). Homeland Security: the essentials.
Butterworth-Heinemann

911: Do We Need A Director of National Intelligence?
Bob Butterworth (2016)
https://breakingdefense.com/2016/09/911-do-we-need…
Edited on 01/31/2018 at 07:04:AM EST

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