General Michael V. Hayden Before House Permanent Select
Committee
Subcommittee on Oversight
July 28, 2005
Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member, Honorable Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me
to appear before you today in open session. I look forward to giving you
as full a picture as I can in an unclassified session of the important
strides forward we have made in setting up the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence and in continuing to reform the Intelligence
Community (IC). Under the leadership of Director Negroponte, I believe
we have made a great deal of progress in a short period of time.
As you know, our
Office emerged from the landmark Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention
Act of 2004 (IRTPA), and IRTPA is therefore both the impetus and a guiding
light for our efforts. We have also drawn inspiration from the recommendations
of the important commission reports released in recent years, including
but not limited to the WMD and 9/11 Commissions. More broadly, we are
well aware of the abiding and intense interest in effective intelligence
reform of the President and of Congress-and particularly the intelligence
committees-not to mention of the public at large. I will discuss shortly
some of the more significant steps we are taking to implement the WMD
Commission's recommendations for reform of the Intelligence Community.
Allow me, first,
to sketch for you a progress report on where we are in terms of setting
up the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A major reason
for creating the position of the DNI was to make the IC function as a
Community, so we have spent a large portion of our time starting to fulfill
this role. In doing so, one of our guiding mantras is that we need to
infuse "Community" into everything we do. In a number of areas,
we have glided quite easily into our new role. In his capacity as principal
intelligence advisor to the President, for instance, Director Negroponte
has quickly assumed the reins. He oversees, coordinates, and formulates
the morning President's briefing, ensuring the product represents the
best analysis from around the Intelligence Community. The DNI is the President's
chief referent for intelligence issues. He or his delegate now participates
as the Intelligence Community's representative at National Security Council
Principals' Committee meetings, while I, as Principal Deputy Director,
or my delegate functions as the Intelligence Community representative
at NSC Deputies' meetings. With the assistance of the National Intelligence
Council (NIC), a key component of the Office of the DNI, this transition
has been almost seamless.
We have been sensitive
to the recommendations of the Congress and the interests of the President
in reshaping the content of the President's briefing, to ensure that it
reflects the diversity of strengths within the Intelligence Community.
When Director Negroponte was sworn in as DNI, editorial oversight of the
PDB was transferred from CIA to the DNI and we broadened the range of
contributions. The new process enables us to tap the insights of the Community's
foremost experts and to call attention to alternative analyses.
The National Intelligence
Council, meanwhile, has been given primary responsibility for preparing
Director Negroponte and me for Principals and Deputies Committee meetings-a
responsibility formerly assigned to CIA. Under the NIC, the process of
preparing the DNI and the PDDNI has become an unquestionably Community
activity. Using its broad network of contacts, the NIC identifies the
most experienced intelligence analysts from across the IC to assist in
preparing the briefing books. Often, in the course of this activity, substantive
differences are examined, helping to clarify and illuminate the discussions.
In addition, managers and senior analysts from around the Community now
have opportunities to share their expertise as additional attendees accompanying
Director Negroponte or me to for these meetings. This has the added value
of enabling them to feed insights from policy deliberations into the preparation
of subsequent analytic products.
The other aspect
of the Intelligence Community's new leadership structure is designed to
manage the Intelligence Community itself, and here we have also been moving
forward smartly. Director Negroponte and, where appropriate, I have assumed
the chairmanship of a number of committees designed to help us oversee
the Community. Director Negroponte will chair the Joint Intelligence Community
Council, currently established as a twice-yearly meeting of the key Cabinet-level
consumers and producers of intelligence at which important overarching
budgetary, acquisition, and requirements decisions are discussed. I, meanwhile,
chair three separate committees. First, the Deputy-level version of the
Joint Intelligence Community Council, is designed to prepare the ground
for its Cabinet-level variant. Second, once every two months I sit down
with all fifteen heads of the intelligence agencies and components at
an Intelligence Community Leadership Committee meeting. This gives the
Office of the DNI the chance to give guidance to and hear input from the
full spectrum of intelligence organizations. Finally, I chair a weekly
session of the main Program Managers-CIA, FBI, NSA, NGA, NRO, and DIA.
This is a nuts and bolts meeting that serves to keep the major Intelligence
Community players singing from the same sheet of music. We have been particularly
encouraged by the vigorous participation of the FBI-a new player in this
forum.
We are also aggressively
implementing the DNI's enhanced budget authorities. We worked closely
with OMB to ensure that the recent supplemental appropriations for Iraq
and counterterrorism operations were apportioned as recommended by the
DNI. We are now finalizing the procedures we will use for the FY 2007
budget review so that we can exercise fully the DNI's authority to "determine"
the budget for the National Intelligence Program for approval by the President
as part of his annual budget submission.
Director Negroponte,
the Deputy Directors, and I have also been assuming leadership of a large
number of other boards crucial for overseeing various aspects of Community
management, ranging from oversight of sensitive collection programs through
acquisition to analysis tradecraft. One of Director Negroponte's key emphasis
areas is that "Community" must be incorporated into all ODNI
efforts. We are bringing this attitude to our stewardship of all these
committees.
Some of this work
is low hanging-fruit, easily plucked. Others of it will take more time.
Working out just precisely where the delineation of responsibilities lies
between ODNI and the agencies as well as among the agencies themselves
is one of those thornier problems. Here too, however, we are setting up
good structures and starting off on the right foot. We have had strong
support from the Department of Defense, including by its generous supplying
of us with, inter alia, personnel and space, among other contributions.
We have also been working closely with both the CIA and the FBI. And other
agencies have also stepped forward to provide personnel and other assistance.
We have meanwhile begun the work of incorporating as integral parts of
the ODNI the offices so designated for inclusion by IRTPA, including the
chiefs of the National Counterterrorism Center, the National Intelligence
Council, the National Counterintelligence Executive, as well as other
ODNI elements. We are also building up our own in-house offices, including
a Watch Office, a Public Affairs group, and so forth, with the intention
of leveraging rather than replicating the capabilities that already exist
around the Community. And we have established an Inspector General so
that we can benefit from the many useful inputs that such an office can
provide.
We are also staffing
up the Office with high quality personnel from a variety of backgrounds.
Director Negroponte and I are very excited about the people coming on
board at all levels. We are largely filled in at the most senior level
of ODNI, with three of four DDNIs on duty-the Deputy for Customer Outcomes
will arrive shortly. We also have nominees for the positions of Director
of the NCTC and General Counsel awaiting consideration by the Senate.
At the Associate and Assistant DDNI level we are assembling a first-rate
team, including leaders both from within and outside of the Intelligence
Community.
The DNI and I have
been pressing our staffs to think hard about how to articulate a strategy
for the whole of the Intelligence Community. This is a topic that has
been discussed in the past, but the DCI had more limited authority to
devise and impose guidance to agencies such that they would all work in
mutually complementary ways toward national objectives. Under our Management
directorate we now have an office to write and oversee Strategy, Plans,
and Policy, and earlier this month convened a conference of our senior
leadership team to discuss the Community's mission, principles, and strategic
objectives. I was very pleased with the frank and wide-ranging discussions
that day, and I look forward to continuing them with the heads of the
Community agencies when we host a follow-on session with them in early
August.
In general, our overall
strategy is to harness, not submerge, the different perspectives of each
Intelligence organization-by doing a better job of sharing and integrating
information within our community, by communicating more effectively with
our consumers, and by providing more opportunity for our people. Already,
we are better leveraging the strengths of the entire Intelligence Community,
and this is reflected not least in our early success in preparing the
DNI for his key responsibility as the President's principal Intelligence
advisor.
Allow me to shift
gears here and give you a picture now of how we are doing at a level closer
to the ground. As you well know, Director Negroponte and I were not appointed
only to make changes at the fifty thousand foot level-as important as
this reorganization is. Much of our value added is found in helping to
ensure that reform goes through at the agency level, and we are working
hard to follow through on this responsibility.
On analysis, Director
Negroponte and I count as one of our highest priorities ensuring that
our finished intelligence products are timely, objective, accurate, actionable,
and based on all sources of available information. Using the National
Intelligence Officers as the senior analytic experts within the Community,
we are working to coordinate better the efforts of all of the analytic
components to meet our customers' needs. We are creating a Strategic Analytic
Unit in the National Intelligence Council to foster long-term research
and coordinate strategic research agendas. Our DDNI for Analysis, Dr.
Thomas Fingar, is committed to ensuring the integrity and credibility
of our analytic products by rebuilding the in-depth expertise of our intelligence
analysts and fostering centers of excellence that facilitate alternative
analysis. Under his direction, we are implementing new procedures to review
and evaluate the analytic tradecraft and soundness of finished intelligence
products, both before they go out the door as well as retroactively to
identify best practices and lessons learned.
To clarify our substantive
priorities for the IC, on 8 July the DNI affirmed the National Intelligence
Priorities Framework (NIPF) as his guidance to the Community on national
intelligence priorities. The NIPF will be a central feature in helping
the Office of the DNI to plan, allocate, manage, and evaluate resources
across the IC. Intelligence components will use these priorities to guide
their level of effort of analytic and collection activities, taking into
consideration their organizational capability, capacity, charter, and
departmental responsibilities.
Another key component
of our efforts is the follow-through on the recommendations of the WMD
Commission, the vast majority of which-70 out of 74-were endorsed in principle
for implementation. As you know, we in the Intelligence Community are
vigorously working to implement these recommendations for change. I will
briefly sketch our progress on several of the most prominent.
On the critical domestic
intelligence front, the Commission recommended a reorganization of the
national security elements of the FBI, which the President implemented
by his memorandum of June 29, 2005 entitled "Strengthening the Ability
of the Department of Justice to Meet Challenges to the Security of the
Nation." The DNI and the Attorney General are working together to
implement the organizational structure and arrangements to implement the
President's decision.
The Commission also
endorsed the creation of a National Counter Proliferation Center (NCPC).
We are now in the early stages of setting up this crucial entity, and
Director Negroponte is considering candidates for the position of director.
As we have stated, this organization will be relatively small and will
leverage existing IC capabilities by providing general coordination and
direction to the Community's counterproliferation efforts.
Enabling our human
intelligence collectors to obtain more information on the plans and intentions
of our adversaries is among our top priorities. CIA has begun clarifying
its management chain to adapt to its newly designated role as National
HUMINT Manager. We are looking forward to this rationalization of the
Community's organization for coordinating human intelligence collection.
This official will set Community-wide policies, guidelines, and tradecraft
standards, ensuring that our human intelligence collectors are well-trained
and effective. A lesson of the intelligence effort on Iraq's biological
weapons program demonstrates the importance of being certain that our
human intelligence reporting is validated and reliable. We note that both
the FBI and DOD have signed MOUs with CIA that will advance efforts to
manage HUMINT operations across the Community more coherently.
Another promising
development is our progress towards standing up a DNI-managed Open Source
Center, building upon the established expertise of the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service (FBIS). As the WMD Commission as well as the IC's
Open Source Panel have amply demonstrated, open source holds vast reservoirs
of valuable data for our analysts and policymakers. Setting up an organization
focused on developing the tools, processes, and expertise to access the
useful information out there, while observing and protecting the civil
liberties of Americans, is a top priority for Director Negroponte and
me. Our Office is now in the midst of a search for a top-flight individual
to take the reins of the open source effort for the DNI.
Our new Associate
Director for Science and Technology, Dr. Eric Haseltine, is leading our
effort to marshal the Intelligence Community's science and technology
capabilities. A recruit with extensive expertise outside the Community,
Dr. Haseltine is pushing forward to integrate our science and technology
programs and to tie them to mission needs. It is critical that our developmental
efforts match up with our objectives and that we reestablish in the IC
the kind of scientific expertise we have historically enjoyed.
On the critical topic
of information access, John Russack, the new Information Sharing Environment
Program Manager, began work earlier this summer. On June 2, 2005, in response
to a recommendation by the Silberman-Robb WMD Commission, the President
directed that the Program Manager be part of the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence under the authority, direction, and control of
the DNI. Recognizing that this statutory mandate of the Program Manager
under section 1016 of the IRTPA is broad, covering access to terrorism
information across Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and the
private sector, this is an area in which the DNI has a government-wide,
National-level responsibility. In this regard, the ODNI will actively
support the PM's information sharing efforts with federal, state, local,
and tribal entities, and we will ensure that all major Program Manager
initiatives will be thoroughly reviewed by, and approved through, the
traditional National Security Council interagency process. We are striving
to have the Program Manager's key leadership positions filled and the
PM staff housed together in permanent spaces by mid-August.
While often a cliché,
it is no less true that people are our most important asset. This is certainly
the case in the Intelligence Community-literally everything we do depends
on a workforce that is highly qualified and committed to our mission-and
the DNI is paying particular attention to this vital area. In this regard,
we are moving forward aggressively to ensure a far more strategic approach
to managing the IC's human capital. We have appointed Ron Sanders as the
IC Chief Human Capital Officer to head up this important effort, and he
has already begun developing a comprehensive, IC-wide human capital plan
that fully implements the mandates of the IRPTA, as well as the recommendations
of the WMD Commission. That plan will ensure that we take full advantage
of the personnel flexibilities provided by the Congress-to the DNI, as
well as to other members of the Community.
The human capital
initiatives that we already have underway include: developing and implementing
a coordinated, Community-wide college recruiting campaign that maximizes
our ability to meet mission-critical skills requirements (including our
need for more intelligence analysts and linguists), as well as and to
implement a comprehensive strategy for ensuring that, to help advance
our effectiveness in our vital work, we reach out to recruit people of
all backgrounds and experiences and provide equal opportunity hiring and
advancement in our workplaces; establishing methods, mechanisms, and incentives
to ensure more "joint" assignments across the Community, at
senior levels and as part of a Community-wide leadership development "pipeline;"
extending pay flexibilities afforded some members of the IC (like the
FBI's authority to offer higher pay to attract and retain senior intelligence
professionals) to the entire community; and ensuring a consistent and
equitable approach to enhancing and modernizing the IC's various civilian
compensation systems that takes past and present efforts in DHS, DoD,
and CIA into account-including their lessons learned. We will pay close
attention to recruiting personnel with the foreign language skills and
abilities to work with people of varying ethnicities, religions, and social
backgrounds in order to allow the Intelligence Community to penetrate
and analyze the cultures of critical intelligence targets. Of course,
we will welcome from Congress ideas and support in pursuing all of these
strategic human capital objectives.
On the training and
education front, we have created a National Intelligence University (NIU)
System to integrate training, education, and related research efforts
across the Community. In addition to coordinating the work of training
and education elements across the IC, we will build a network of partnerships
beyond the Community, with federal education institutions and the broader
academic world. The University will also lead the development of a Community
"lessons learned" process, a key recommendation of the WMD Commission
adopted by the Administration, and an unprecedented development for the
IC.
I hope these snapshots
of where we are give the Committee a sense of the progress we have made
since the creation of the Office of the DNI in April. As you can see,
we have wasted no time in pressing forward on the reform efforts directed
by law and by the President, including those implementing recommendations
from the 9/11 and WMD Commissions. Not all of these efforts are new initiatives,
as some of the concepts originated and came to fruition before the establishment
of the ODNI. The new law, however, gave the DNI both the authority and
the time to effect real change. We are still, however, in the early stages
of a long, hard push to restructure and reinvigorate our Intelligence
Community. And to sustain this effort we will need the continued attention
and support of the Congress and particularly our key committees, such
as this one. While the committees' attention will surely be engaged across
the spectrum of Intelligence Community issues, ODNI will need sustained
congressional support in a few key areas if we are to succeed in implementing
our reform agenda.
In parallel with
implementing the new budget authorities, we are moving aggressively to
implement the new acquisition authorities. The first action under the
DNI's Milestone Decision Authority (MDA) was taken jointly with the Department
of Defense last week with regard to an NSA program in accordance with
the IRTPA of 2004. Also, to further the acquisition efforts, we are creating
an IC Systems Engineering and Architecture Office to engineer system-of-systems
solutions across the IC.
Similarly, our efforts
to integrate the foreign and domestic spheres of intelligence will require
abiding congressional attention. The ambitious restructuring of the FBI's
national security elements ordered by the President will be a long project,
as it will not only look to remodel an organization, but to change a culture.
Another major effort
lying ahead is the modernization and upgrade of our overhead architecture,
as well as working with the intelligence program managers and the Department
of Defense to improve the requirements, system, and architectural development
process for all of our technical collection systems, and their integration.
An integral part of this effort involves rationalizing MASINT management
at a senior, Community level. While I cannot, in this open session, discuss
in any detail the specifics of this problem, which is well known to the
Members, I can say that its successful resolution will require close Congressional
support and attention.
These are only a
selection of the daunting challenges we face in pushing forward the reform
agenda for the Intelligence Community. Despite the difficulties, I am
confident that, with the support of the Congress and especially the intelligence
committees, we can build a Community that is effective, cost-efficient,
and in line with American principles. The dangers we face today will allow
no less than the very best from the American people's Intelligence Community.
Rest assured that Director Negroponte and I are doing and will do everything
in our power to make sure that the Intelligence Community meets this high
standard.
As I indicated at
the outset of these remarks, we have made a great deal of progress in
a short period of time. We are executing a major restructuring of one
of Government's most important national security functions-and we are
doing it in the middle of a war on terror. The safety of the Nation depends
upon our getting it right, and getting it right fast. To carry out that
mission, we must continue to have the broad and flexible authority we
need and the appropriations from Congress we require. Just as you are
counting on us, so, too, we are counting on you. Together we will ensure
that the Government has the timely, accurate, and insightful intelligence
it needs to protect the American people.
I am happy to take
your questions.
