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The next level down, the director of the al Qaeda unit in CIA at the time
recalled that he did not think it was his job to direct what should or should
not be done. He did not pay attention when the individuals dispersed and
things fell apart. There was no conscious decision to stop the operation after
the trail was temporarily lost in Bangkok. He acknowledged, however, that per-
haps there had been a letdown for his overworked staff after the extreme ten-
sion and long hours in the period of the millennium alert.
37
The details of this case illuminate real management challenges, past and
future.The U.S. government must find a way of pooling intelligence and using
it to guide the planning of and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations
involving organizations as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department,
the military, and the agencies involved in homeland security.
Institutional Management
Beyond those day-to-day tasks of bridging the foreign-domestic divide and
matching intelligence with plans, the challenges include broader management
issues pertaining to how the top leaders of the government set priorities and
allocate resources. Once again it is useful to illustrate the problem by examin-
ing the CIA, since before 9/11 this agency's role was so central in the govern-
ment's counterterrorism efforts.
On December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials
and his deputy for community management, stating:"We are at war. I want no
resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community."
38
The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intel-
ligence community.
39
The memo was addressed only to CIA officials and the deputy for commu-
nity management, Joan Dempsey. She faxed the memo to the heads of the
major intelligence agencies after removing covert action sections. Only a hand-
ful of people received it. The NSA director at the time, Lieutenant General
Kenneth Minihan, believed the memo applied only to the CIA and not the
NSA, because no one had informed him of any NSA shortcomings. For their
part, CIA officials thought the memorandum was intended for the rest of the
intelligence community, given that they were already doing all they could and
believed that the rest of the community needed to pull its weight.
40
The episode indicates some of the limitations of the DCI's authority over
the direction and priorities of the intelligence community, especially its ele-
ments within the Department of Defense.The DCI has to direct agencies with-
out controlling them. He does not receive an appropriation for their activities,
and therefore does not control their purse strings. He has little insight into how
they spend their resources. Congress attempted to strengthen the DCI's
authority in 1996 by creating the positions of deputy DCI for community
management and assistant DCIs for collection, analysis and production, and
administration. But the authority of these positions is limited, and the vision
of central management clearly has not been realized.
FORESIGHT--AND HINDSIGHT
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