According to Presidential Decision Directives, the Director of Central Intelligence, the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and others, illegal drug-trafficking is a threat to U.S. national security. The National Drug Control Strategy, issued annually by ONDCP, identifies the reduction of illegal drug use as its overall goal. The strategy links the success of this effort, in part, to the U.S. counterdrug intelligence program and makes intelligence one of the strategy’s key drug functions. As part of the national strategy, ONDCP established five goals to reduce illegal drug use: 1. Educate and enable America’s youth to reject illegal drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco. 2. Increase the safety of America’s citizens by substantially reducing drug-related crime and violence. 3. Reduce health and social costs to the public of illegal drug use. 4. Shield America’s air, land, and sea frontiers from the drug threat. 5. Break foreign and domestic drug sources of supply. Counterdrug intelligence plays an important role in the execution of the strategy and supports three of the strategy’s five goals—goals 2, 4, and 5. Appendix II identifies which goal each counterdrug intelligence organization supports. In drug-trafficking investigations, interdiction activities, and efforts to dismantle major drug-trafficking organizations, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies need intelligence to understand and effectively combat the illegal drug trade. Intelligence can be used, for example, to learn about the structure, membership, finances, communications, and activities of drug-trafficking organizations as well as specific operational details of particular illegal drug-smuggling or money-laundering activities. Numerous federal, state, and local organizations collect and/or produce counterdrug intelligence. Their specific activities depend on the nature of the drug-monitoring, law enforcement, intelligence, or other counterdrug mission assigned to them. This report focuses on the federal or federally funded organizations we identified as having a principal role in collecting and/or producing counterdrug intelligence. We do, however, briefly discuss the roles of other federal organizations that contribute counterdrug intelligence information as by-products of their missions. Organizations such as the National Security Council and the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Forces Program, which are primarily consumers of counterdrug intelligence information, were excluded from this report. Drug-related intelligence information is gathered by two principal communities: the national foreign intelligence (including the Department of Defense (DOD)) and federal law enforcement communities. Within these 2 communities, we identified at least 22 federal or federally funded organizations spread across 5 cabinet-level departments (Justice, Treasury, Transportation, Defense, and State) and 2 cabinet-level organizations (ONDCP and the Director of Central Intelligence) whose roles include collecting and/or producing counterdrug intelligence information. The organizations having a principal role in collecting and/or producing counterdrug intelligence are as follows: Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) Justice-funded Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) Program Department of the Treasury U.S. Customs Service Customs’ Domestic Air Interdiction Coordination Center (DAICC) Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Joint Interagency Task Force-East (JIATF-East) Joint Interagency Task Force-West (JIATF-West) Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-South) Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6) Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) National Security Agency (NSA) National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Tactical Analysis Teams (TAT) Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) Executive Office of the President/ONDCP ONDCP-funded High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) Program Director of Central Intelligence Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Crime and Narcotics Center (CNC) Figure 1 provides a graphic representation of federal organizations with a principal role in counterdrug intelligence. A number of federal organizations provide counterdrug intelligence as by-products of their principal missions. For example, the Border Patrol’s principal mission is to prevent the illegal entry of aliens between U.S. ports of entry. In the course of this effort, the Border Patrol arrests illegal border crossers who may also be transporting drugs. While the quantity of drugs the Border Patrol seizes each year is significant, those seizures result from the Border Patrol’s principal mission to interdict illegal aliens—not drugs. Information about Border Patrol arrests and drug seizures is used to produce tactical and operational intelligence for the Border Patrol’s own use and dissemination to other federal organizations, such as DEA, EPIC, and the Customs Service, for investigative and intelligence purposes. Other federal organizations that contribute counterdrug intelligence as by-products of their principal missions include the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Federal Aviation Administration; and the Bureau of Land Management. The role of counterdrug intelligence is to support both the individual organizations’ drug-monitoring, law enforcement, intelligence, or other counterdrug mission in support of the national drug control strategy. According to the strategy, the goal of the U.S. supply reduction effort is to reduce the supply of available drugs in the belief that the less available drugs are, the fewer people will use them. To help reduce the supply of drugs, efforts must be focused on acquiring intelligence concerning every link in the drug chain—from drug cultivation to production and trafficking, both domestically and abroad. Many of the organizations we identified as having a principal role in counterdrug intelligence are intelligence collectors who operate either domestically or abroad or, in the case of some organizations, both. Counterdrug intelligence organizations employ human, electronic, photographic, and/or other technical means to collect intelligence information. Under existing federal statutes and executive orders, U.S. counterdrug intelligence organizations collectively are authorized to gather information regarding suspected illegal drug activities of (1) U.S. and foreign persons and organizations within the United States (domestic intelligence) and (2) foreign powers, organizations, or persons outside the United States (foreign intelligence). Generally, law enforcement organizations such as the DEA and FBI collect both domestic and foreign counterdrug intelligence information, whereas national foreign intelligence organizations such as the CIA, NSA, and DIA collect only foreign intelligence information. Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities, places limits on agencies such as the CIA, NSA, and DIA from collecting information concerning the domestic activities of U.S. persons. Table 1 depicts the domestic and foreign collection counterdrug intelligence organizations are authorized to conduct. The table does not include those organizations that do not collect counterdrug intelligence. There are three basic means counterdrug intelligence organizations use to collect intelligence information: Human includes confidential informants, cooperating witnesses, and other human sources. Electronic and/or signals includes intercepted conversations through telephone, radio, or other communication devices and noncommunication electronic emissions produced by devices such as radars. Photographic or imagery includes imagery of objects or persons using devices as simple as a hand-held camera to more sophisticated imaging systems. The counterdrug intelligence organizations identified in table 1 use each of these basic intelligence collection means. Most of the organizations we identified as having a principal role in counterdrug intelligence are producers rather than collectors of information. For example, NDIC, EPIC, and the JIATFs rely on information collected by other organizations to produce their intelligence products and are not collectors themselves. Organizations produce strategic, operational, and/or tactical intelligence. There is no universally agreed upon definition among counterdrug intelligence organizations as to what constitutes strategic, operational/investigative, and tactical intelligence. For the purposes of this report, the following definitions and examples characterize the various types: Strategic intelligence is information concerning broad drug-trafficking patterns and trends that can be used by U.S. policymakers, including department and agency heads, for strategic planning and programming purposes. Examples include information on coca leaf crop estimates; foreign country or regional drug threat assessments; broad patterns or trends in cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or other drug production and trafficking; and information on the financial, transportation, structure, and other workings of major drug-trafficking organizations and their leadership hierarchy. Operational/investigative intelligence is information that can be used to provide analytic support to an ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution or can be useful in resource planning, such as where to station agents to obtain evidence over a period of time. Examples include information about specific persons, organizations, facilities, or routes being investigated and/or prosecuted for illegal drug-trafficking. Tactical intelligence is information that is of immediate use in supporting an ongoing drug investigation; positioning federal assets to monitor the activities of suspected drug traffickers; or positioning federal, state, or local law enforcement assets to interdict, seize, and/or apprehend a vehicle or other conveyance and/or person suspected of trafficking in drugs. This can include information such as the current or imminent location or mode of transportation of specific drug shipments. Table 2 identifies the types of intelligence produced by counterdrug intelligence organizations. The ONDCP Director of Intelligence said that how consumers use the intelligence ultimately determines whether the intelligence is strategic, tactical, or operational. The products that the organizations included in our review produce include the following. Reports that consolidate all known information about a specific topic in order to describe the current drug situation and, in some cases, to indicate what may occur in the future.