-1St- NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR 12 April 1971

MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

SUBJECT: Modifications of Intelligence Organization

The following thoughts are preliminary and make no claim

to be otherwise. I expect over a period of time to pursue the

topic further when I can devote more time to it.

With the creation of Bob Froehlke's office a year and a half

ago, we began in DoD to have a Way of looking at overall intelligence resources of the DoD in a coherent way. Because of its

limited charter, the office has so far not done much substantive

work in analyzing the real needs and comparing these needs with

resources allocated. It has been mainly a fact-gathering activity,

listing in various ways the money spent, and through development

of CIRIS has been attempting to show just what it costs to collect

against various intelligence targets. The data collected in CIRIS

has not yet been very useful.

The limited charter of the office, the fact that the office

is new and that its arrival on the scene was not greeted with much

enthusiasm in the DoD may account for this situation. Bob Froehlke

personal lack of background in and lack of any career objectives

in intelligence matters may also help explain it. However, Bob ha.

done a great deal to open up and improve the communications among

the top DoD intelligence people. The Friday morning breakfasts

have proved to be very beneficial in getting better working relationships going. Certainly this atmosphere is a prerequisite

to making added improvements.

Ultimately, there is no reason why such an office should not

be in a position to

price out the cost of colleCting and processing

various kinds of intelligence.

do the same for intelligence on certain targets.

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c. - compare alternative ways of accomplishing

our intelligence objectives.

draw up a. set of priority/cost allocations

for various systems/targets/objectives.

reallocate responsibilities among DIA, NSA,.

and Services (and to some extent NRO) to

achieve these objectives in a near-optimal

way.

To do this kind of thing, the office chief and its key

people must be people of broad intelligence background and good

technical understanding of What the principal collection and

processing techniques are and-bow they work. We need in the top

two jobs men of good management background also. I stipulate

the last point because I think it would be a mistake to bring in

some brilliant experts who know very much about technology but

who are not well enough organized to' do a good job of management.

Assuming the office can be headed by the right kind of people

I believe it can make great progress, dealing with such questions

as clarification of requirements, overlap of collection methods,

deciding which old systems to keep alive after newer ones are doin

the job, etc.

Recruiting for the top job will be easier if the job is

called ASD(I). This title implies that the authority of the sec

retary has been delegated to ASD(I), hence getting better response

from the various offices of OSD and the military departments and

other agencies. The charter for the office must clearly spell out

the scope of duties and clarify whether the office deals only with

policy or whether it includes program formulation and direction.

The Secretary of Defense has recently asked for an additional

Deputy Secretary of Defense and two ASDs. (He is apparently

thiUking of setting up an ASD(I) and has'the President's backing

to go to Congress for another deputy plus two ASDs.)

An ASD(I), if he does his job properly, would have considerat

impact on the job of the DNRO. This is not necessarily bad. I

think--assuming that the proposed ASD(I) and the DNRO are

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• IV-SELIETsimpatico -that the ASD(I) could develop plans involving all

DoD intelligence resources which would be developed jointly with

the DNRO. To an increasing extent, we in NRO are now tackling

the problem of overlap between the capabilities of our own

systems. This will be expanded within a year and will eventually

lead to our specifying a number of systems for the future which

will meet those requirements in near optimal fashion. The ASD(I)

needs to extend this kind of look to all DoD systems/requirements

and thus could extrapolate from our staff studies.

If the new DepSecDef is intelligence oriented, then we could

get by temporarily with the present structure. However, I believe

it would be better all around to have an ASD(I) because a DepSecDef must deal on an hourly basis with a wide range of problems

which will tend to monopolize his time and preclude the thoughtful

analysis of the intelligence business which is needed.

It is impossible to treat DoD intelligence problems without

getting into our relations with the CIA. The NRO enjoys the

reputation, together with our Executive Committee, for having

evolved a good working relationship between DoD and CIA. To

achieve a better overall working relationship between CIA and DoD,

I believe we need a counterpart to DCI. He does not need to be on

the same level, but needs to work closely with DCI. We have the

DCI working closely with DepSecDef and quite effectively. But only

a few key problems get addressed by these men working together. .

There are of course other interfaces which work well or poorly,

depending on the subject matter and the prerogatives of the respective agencies. For example, DDRAIE and DD CIA(S&T) work well

together on some aspects of missile intelligence gathering, but I

believe that no coherent overall analysis of DoD/CIA resources

devoted to this topic (or any other topic) has been made.

The CIA now overlaps DoD in many ways. Since the head of

CIA is also the DCI, it would be "symmetrical" to have the ASD(I)

also serve as DDI. This has the advantage of reducing problems

of coordination which would arise if Director, CIA and DCI and

ASD(I) and DDI were four people instead of two. People frequently

point out that there is a serious disadvantage in having the DCI

run the CIA, in that he tends to support a lot of their work which

he should view with a more critical eye. However, I believe

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• -TOP-SEC-RETDick Helms does an outstanding job of dealing with the various

constituencies with which he must work.

Questions of overlap have become more serious recently

as budgets have begun to receive more scrutiny. Adding to this

problem is the fact that we are now devel ticated

space systems which are extremely costly per

copy). The newest systems are designed f lives

in orbit and can be given more than one job, at least in the SIGINI

area. However, these types of systems lead to fewer launches,

more competition for limited funds, greater external visibility

of fewer activities (launches), etc. More importantly, we must

make sure that these newer and more expensive spacecraft do not

overlap each other excessively; also, we must avoid unnecessary

duplication with older systems. Attempts have been made to measure

utility of intelligence by many methods, but seldom have we had

the benefit of the judgment of a knowledgeable, experienced human

being with a pragmatic, questioning attitude. We suspect, but

cannot prove, there are much more intelligence collection efforts

than we need or can use. Under present ground rules neither DoD

nor CIA is charged with eliminating this overlap.. I believe that

some action outside of DoD and CIA may be necessary to spur us on

to control this overlap. An outside agency may be the only way of

dealing with this question because it is almost impossible.for

DoD-CIA to resolve an issue which will likely involve one or the

other (perhaps both) giving up jurisdiction of things which each

wants to control. I do not know if any outside group will be

brought into play. In the meantime, the NIRB (National Intelligent

Resources Board) is at least a beginning here.

One of the current problems is that stated intelligence requirements tend to be a mechanism for "system advocates" to justi•

their particular pet projects. Too often the requirements are

established by intelligence proponents, not by the eventual consumer--a difficult person to find. A careful "separation of power

of the various functions and the people involved in each is

essential; i.e., advocates, analysts and users whose needs must

finally be met. However, it is equally important that the outputs

of these groups be brought together in an office such as the ASD(I

for evaluation and eventual resolution, in concert with the DCI.

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In the"NRO, as technology has advanced, we have seen an

attempt made to balance workloads between Air Force and CIA, with

only very broad guidelines to help us. Both agencies have dealt

with photo systems, SIGINT systems, research and technology related to new systems, improvements to old'systems and with field

operations. Both have placed huge contracts with industry for

system development and procurement. Systems have been developed

where the Agency was responsible for the sensor package only and

others where complete systems were done by the Agency, including

ground station, data processing, etc. So we can find a precedent

for everything--with the exception that the Agency is not in the

booster business and does not operate'an integrated satellite

tracking network. The CIA doesn't supervise the actual launch of

any spacecraft, but has assumed responsibility in one case for

orbit injection, and if we go to the EOI photo system, CIA would

very likely be in control ("on-line") of the tasking of the system

The Agency from its early days has been less hidebound than

the military departments. Agency people have been imaginative and

fast on their feet, less tied to the bureaucratic paper mill.

Further, by being a civilian agency there is more continuity of

personnel which can be a definite asset. I think that we need to

find a way to reduce the overlap of responsibility between the

Agency and Air Force, but do it in such a way as to preserve the

best qualities of each.

There are any number of possible approaches to do this. For

example, the CIA role might be limited to developing and demonstrating new technology. In the area of production, one possible

way to cut the duplication might be to have one agency do all the

contracting for d ct e-based systems where the costs

are likely to b Airborne and ground based.

systems producti ly small by comparison and may

not need to be included in any possible Consolidation, especially

since there appears to be less overlap of mission here.

Of course, there is the charter (attached)which specifies

that only the Air Force will do complete space systems with CIA

doing only the sensor portions and then only for certain assigned

pro rule has been broken in ti

cas resumably because it wasiTIMMIllit

gra p as preferable to the charter approach. However

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craft (and booster) by Air Force.

are following the

by CIA and the spaceBoth agencies have experienced overruns, although it appears

that in recent years CIA has been even more optimistic in predicting system development (and production) costs than the Air

Force. A brief summary of some of our worst cases for both agenci

is attached. Pure overruns as such have been relatively

the last four fiscal years, the NRP has lived within fund

elow the President's Budgets for those four year

, the examples cited do allow comparison between CIA and

Air Force (SAFSP) current costs vs. initial estimates.

Based on our experience in the last five years, there are a

number of points one can make.

Unless we have learned our lesson from the examples

cited, actual costs will exceed initial estimates, especially

for complex systems for many reasons. The CIA cost growth is

likely to exceed. AF increases by a factor of 2 to 3.

New complex systems will t ntly longer

than la ned to irst launc date. lipped by

an s

The most important question of course is whether our government gets the intelligence it needs and whether it is organized sc

as to take proper advantage of the information it gets. I think

we can give ourselves only a barely passing score on collection

and a below passing score on rising what we know. Our lack of detailed knowledge on the loss of the Pueblo, the location of COSVN,

the flow of supplies throUgh Karin Pong Sam are a few recent example

of our poor performance.

The second most important question is whether we have good

collection. techniques and systems (human and technological)

organized to do the collection job. I give us a passing score.

The third most important question (from my viewpoint) is

whether space-based intelligence systems work. The answer is

va•

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average. While we are depressed' because of apparent duplication

between Air Force and CIA, we would be even more unhappy if it

were shown that systems developed by either AF or the Agency

did not do what they started out to do. In other words, things

could be worse.

The next most important question relates to how efficiently

the intelligence community operates. I rate us all barely

passing, while I would of course argue that the NRO is doing

much better than most other agencies.

NRO should be concerned about increasing overlap of

systems developed by Air Force and CIA as all of our space

systems become more capable. The ASD(I) should worry about

overlap of ground, air and space systems. The creation of an

ASD(I) can be of considerable significance, I believe, in

managing our resources better as we try to meet our overall

intelligence needs. But some help from outside DoD/CIA could

be useful in clarifying the roles of the two agencies to avoid

both duplication and wasted management energy spent in keeping

things going on an ad hoc basis.

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Attachments:

Charter (NRO)

Cost Examples

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