The Director ol Central Intelligence Wuhington,
6
The Honorable Richard Shelby Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate-
Dear Mr. Chairman:
At your request, we are providing recently declassified documents associated with Admiral Jeremiah's assessment of the Community's performance on India's nuclear test.
I haveummary of Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations for improving the Community's performance,ersion of my testimony before your committee. It is our hope that together, these documents willealthy discussion among members of Congress and the public at large.
Wo had undertaken an effort to declassify the entire Jeremiah report but soon realized that the final product would not accurately reflect the full range of Admiral Jeremiah's conclusions. We could not, for example, declassify discussion of our collection successes and shortfalls in the region. ocument thatartial view would skew the public debate.
The Intelligence Community has taken Admiral Jeremiah's criticisms to heartave accepted all of his recommendations. tated in my testimony before your committee, we are taking actions designed to remedy our shortcomings. m especially enthusiastic about the team under my new Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, Joan Dempsey. Our Assistant DCI for Collection, Charlie Allen, and our Assistant DCI for nalysis and Production, John Gannon, will add rigor to the management of collection and analysis and have been specifically tasked with developing plans which respond to each of Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations.
The Intelligence Community owes Admiralebt of gratitude for his service and we take seriously his recommendations. irmly believe that when we do not get it right, we have to say so and take the necessary steps to improve performance. The delivery of these documents and
The Honorable Richard Shelby
the management changes now underway demonstrate this commitment and support our mutual goal oftronger Intelligence Community.
Enclosures
Th* Director or" Central Intelligence
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The Honorable J. Robert Kerrey Vice Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate.
Dear Mr. Vice Chairman:
At your request, we are providing recently declassified documents associated with Admiral Jeremiah's assessment of the Community's performance on India's nuclear test.
I haveummary of Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations for improving the Community's performance,ersion of my testimony before your committee. It is our hope that together, these documents willealthy discussion among members of Congress and the public at large.
We had undertaken an effort to declassify the entire Jeremiah report but soon realized that the final product would not accurately reflect the full range of Admiral Jeremiah's conclusions. We could not, for example, declassify discussion of our collection successes and shortfalls in the region. ocument thatartial view would skew the public debat*.
The Intelligence Community has taken Admiral Jeremiah's criticisms to heartave accepted all of his recommendations. tated in my testimony before your committee, we are taking actions designed to remedy our shortcomings. m especially enthusiastic about the team under my new Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, Joan Dempsey. Our Assistant DCI for Collection, Charlie Allen, and our Assistant DCI for nalysis and Production, John Gannon, will add rigor to the management of collection and analysis and have been specifically tasked with developing plans which respond to each of Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations.
The Intelligence community owes Admiralebt of gratitude for his service and we take seriously his recommendations. irmly believe that when we do not get it right, we have to say so and take the necessary steps to improve performance. The delivery of these documents and
UNCLASSIFIED
Recommendations of Tho Jeremiah Report
The problems collecting against and analyzing the India, targetumber of questions about how the IC has evolved in the broadest terms. Few of these recommendations, therefore, are India-specific. They are listed within the broad categories addressed in the report. The DCI can fix some of these problems using his existing authorities, but others would require that he be assigned greater authority than he now has.
Analytic Assumptions and Tradecraft
rigor to analysts' thinking when major Two mechanisms would help:
in outside substantive experts in afashion.
in experts in the process of analysisICransitionajor intelligenceanalytic thinkers would serve, togetherspecialists, as "Red Teams" on majorand work with analysts to studyand complex analytic processes.
Reexamine the effectiveness of the formal warning process with an eye to altering it fundamentally.
Establish effective mechanisms to guarantee stronger integration of regional and technical analysis and greater collaboration and coordination of intelligence agencies and disciplines.
Collection Management and Tasking
a. Realign collection priorities so that high-priority issues within individual countries, such as Indo-Pakistani WMD programs, compete more evenly with rogue states. Better optimize collection or. high-priority targets when theater military assets can meet requirements.
Manning and Training-
ddress the imbalance resulting from the decline in analytic depth and the investment in collection systems that are expanding the amount of exploitable data.
I
UNCLASSIFIED
6. Plan now to staff imagery analysis, and support analysts with adequate tools and training, to accommodate the greater technical capabilities envisioned for future imagery systems and the increased data those systems will collect.
Organ!sing and InteffraCiner the Xntellic/onco Community
ommunity manager with the authority to demand accountability from across tha IC for carrying out DCI decisions, directives, and priorities. The IC lacks an accountability process for follow-through on senior-level decisions, and too often the DCI and DDCI are the arbiters for decisions that should be reached and acted on at lower levels.
Install an overarching management structure to integrate collection systems and ensure better interagency allocation of resources. ross-INT collection mechanism is needed, including modeling, to address this need to task collectionsystem of systems."
Empower an interagency group to offer specific recommendations on how to improve collection and analysis on the South Asia WMD problem, including both technical aspects and leadership decisionmaking. Ifroup is established, the DCI should consider personallyhairperson who has the DCI's authority.
Ensure that these types of collaborative, interagency groups are not hamstrung by compartmentation.
the current organizational plan toclarity of the structure, fixredundancies, resource the staff withand analytical tools, and balance workload. inform the organization.
CONCLUSION
Reviews such as this always spotlight and make more egregious problems that in retrospect might appear obvious. In fact, these events took placeilieu of other events, all clamoring for attention and for increased resources and collection.
At the end of the day, there are issues here that should have commanded senior-level attention earlier in the
f
UNCLASSIFIED
process, This cannot all be done by the DCI andddressing IC problems requires leadership participation by senior officers in the entire IC, and their participation should be focused on identifying and discussing critical intelligence requirements facing the nation, even at the expense of resource allocation and regulatory issues that unfortunately today dominate their attention.
To some degree, this means delegating and empowering senior levels within IC organizations to speak for the organization but also to free up senior leaders to focus on the needs of the nation. In order to accomplish this, ther must be more risk-taking on the part of the IC's senior leadership in pursuing what needs to be done, whether specifically directed or otherwise.
UNCLASSIFIED
Testimony on the Jeremiah Report By DCI Tenet To the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Tuesday,8
Mr.ccept all of Admiral Jeremiah's recommendationsave asked the recently confirmed Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management to oversee development of action plans for each of them.
Admiral Jeremiah's report stresses the organizational, training, manning, analysis, and collection problems that reduce our effectiveness in tackling the South Asia weapons of mass destruction challenge. We must do better in these areas, and not only on South Asia issues. The resource constraints and organizational issues that affect our South Asia efforts also are felt in other areas, and have been expressed by groups looking at other "hard targets" of equal or higher priority.
At the same time, we must recognize that improvements in these areas -howeveray not have assured that we could catch every nuclear test before it occurs. Foreign entities bent on developing nuclear, biological, chemical and missile capabilities are taking steps to more effectively conceal their activities.
But in my mind, and as Admiral Jeremiah points out, there are steps we could have taken in both collection and analysis. We could have shifted collection assets onto these targets earlier and, even in the absence of robust collection, we should have questioned harder the potential impact the change in the Indian government would have on India's desire to advance its nuclear program and assert itselforld power. Had we done these things, we might have had better indicators of India's plans or given additional emphasis to the slim indicators mat did exist. That said, it is very difficult to argue in the world of competing collection assets that we should raise priorities based on speculation absent hard intelligence data.elieve Admiral Jeremiah's conclusions and my own convictions point us toward doing that more frequently in thend ensuring that we haveystem of subjecting our analysis to contrary views.
Finally, Mr.ant to tell you what I've put in place to allow the Intelligence Community to respond to Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations. The DDCI for Community Management will report back to me inays and will provide theeport inays on the specific details of how we will implement the following steps:
ommittedould fill the ADCI positions with the very best intelligencem designating John Gannon, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, with the dual responsibility as the ADCI for Analysis and Production, and Charlie Allen, Chairman of the National Intelligence Collection Board, as the ADCI for Collection. Between them, John and Charlie haveears experience in the intelligence business and have held every positionelieve critical to their success in these new assignments.
In cooperation with the National Intelligence Production Board, John will develop an appropriate action plan to respond to Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations on Analytic Assumptions and Tradecraft That plan will:
Include concrete and measurable steps to increase the direct engagement of outside experts in our analytic work, especially on issues of highest priority.
Contain explicit provisions for Community-wide application of state-of-the-art red teaming, gaming, and other analytic methodologies that will challenge our thinking.
etailed strategy to overhaul the Intelligence Community's formal warning system to make it more relevant and challenging to experts whose perceptions often need stretching.
Layrogram to enhance the integration of regional and technical analysis and to foster closer collaboration in this effort across the Intelligence Community.
the ADO for Collection, and in cooperation with the National Intelligence Collection Board, Charlie will respond to Admiral Jeremiah's specific Collection Management and Taskingave directed the following initial steps:
That the Intelligence Community Collection Committee Chairmen will report to the DDCI for Community Management through the ADCI for Collection, to facilitate the integration of collection activities across the Community.
That the National Intelligence Collection Board will identify measures to significantly improve now the way we task across our collectors and across the collection agencies.
hat the ADO for Collection, and the ADCI for Analysis and Production, will develop processes to enable all-source Community analysts to
understand and use fully all collection capabilities not sufficiently understood today.
hat the ADO for Collection willommon understanding among collection managers of the priority assigned to targets withinnd will ensure that collection resources are allocated accordingly.
Both ADCIs willlan for how we will implement Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations on Manning and Training.
Finally, the DDCI/CM will oversee this process and will deal with the final set of recommendations to demand accountability from across the Intelligence Community for carrying out DO decisions, directives, and priorities. She also will install an overarching management structure to ensure better interagency allocation of resources, greater clarity of responsibilities, elimination of redundancies,ore balanced workload within the Community. She will be aided in these efforts by her Senate-confirmed deputyope to have the President's approval of my nominee for that position very soon.
Admiral Jeremiah has rendered an importantm verye all are veryerson of his stature and judgment so thoroughly examined the Intelligence Community's performance on this issue.
As the Director of Centralm committed to leading CIA and the Intelligence Community. When we do not get it right, we have to say so and take the necessary aggressive measures to improve our performance. This is our responsibility as professionals to the President to you, and to the Americanake seriously the need to implement Admiral Jeremiah's recommendationsill work hard with my community management team and the Intelligence Community leadership and the members of this Committee to do exactly that.
That concludes my statement, Mr.m available now to take your questions.
. iO*l
mom
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The Honorable George J. Tenet Director of Central Intelligence Central Intelligence Agency
Dear Director Tenet
As you know, the Committee is pleased with Admiral David Jeremiah's independent assessment of the Intelligence Community's performance on assessing the likelihood of an Indian nuclear test We know you agree that bis forthright analysis willaluable tool for continuing the reform of the Intelligence Community.
We believe Admiral Jeremiah's report is of such importancearge fraction of it should be declassified, consistent with the protection of sources and methods. Therereat deal of misiriformarion about the events leading up to India's nuclear testsesult of inaccurate public speculation. The report corrects many of the inaccuracies. It, therefore, will be an important education tool derting the American people to the growing crisis in the availability of intelligence assets and the need to continue to adjust the Intelligence Community to an evolving mternatiorial security environment We feel that most of the issues dealing with process and management can be made public.eclassified version of the Jeremiah Report should be made available as soon aspossible.
P. 1
The Honorable George J. Tenet June8 Page Two
We understand that some ofthe report's sections discuss sensitive intelligence sources and methods. We look forward to working with you to ensure sources and methods are protected while, at the same time, the American people better. intelligence.
Original document.
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