- Domestic Intelligence Coordination Office (DICO): Responsible for planning, coordinating and tasking for all domestic covert operations, reconnaissance, and espionage activities requested by the DFI in support of foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, and counter-terrorism activities, including assignment of intelligence operations to specific agencies based on their capabilities and competencies; assesses the performance and effectiveness of the various domestic reconnaissance, espionage, and operations agencies for the DDI. The DICO is the domestic equivalent to the FIOO/FRO/FEO, but restricted to activities in support of foreign intelligence operations. All domestic covert ops, reconnaissance, and espionage are controlled, as now, under the various law-enforcement and judicial agencies, and their law-enforcement activities are completely independent of the DICO — although any intelligence gathered in conjunction with those activities will be reported and analyzed for foreign intelligence applicability as appropriate. This position is provided to ensure tight and accountable coordination of domestic intelligence activities in support of foreign policy, and to ensure that they are not unnecessarily entangled with purely domestic law-enforcement activities. The DICO also manages the collection and collation of domestic intelligence information provided by the various law-enforcement agencies for law-enforcement purposes, although except in the case of specific tasking for foreign intelligence operations the DICO does not task or coordinate domestic intelligence collection. Reports to the DDI.
- Domestic Intelligence Analysis Office (DIAO): Responsible for planning, coordinating and tasking for all domestic intelligence analysis activities, including assignment of intelligence operations to specific agencies based on their capabilities and competencies; assesses performance and effectiveness of the various domestic analysis agencies for the DDI. The DIAO is the domestic equivalent to the FIAO. Aside from coordinating various intelligence analysis operations and integrating their analyses, the DIAO also has primary responsibility for Data Fusion and Data Mining to extract hidden correlations and patterns from the integrated intelligence data. Primary focus is on law-enforcement (the FIAO is responsible for foreign intelligence analysis), but operation is highly coordinated with the FIAO to support domestic counter-intelligence and counter-terror activities. Reports to the DDI.
- Executive Intelligence Analysis Office (EIAO): Small, independent intelligence analysis group that operates as part of the President’s executive staff. Provides “second-look” intelligence assessments from raw data for critical intelligence issues, capabilities for focused intelligence analysis (pet projects) and devil’s advocate analysis on specific issues designated by the president, and an independent data fusion/data mining operation geared toward what-if and far-out scenarios. The EIAO receives the same raw intelligence as the FIAO and DIAO (but does not plan or request intelligence operations) and provides “second opinions” and “outside the box” looks at intelligence information.The EIAO is part of the executive staff both for operational purposes — to make it easily accessible for special projects by the President and the Cabinet — and to allow it, as a source of second opinions, to be as independent as possible from the rest of the intelligence community. However it should also, to the extent possible, be insulated from political pressure. For this reason the director of this agency should be appointed by the President for an eight year term, approved by 60 votes in the Senate, and removable during a President’s tenure only by the reverse process — a request from the president and concurrence by 60 votes from the Senate; however, the director’s term will also end with the inauguration of a new President. In short, the President gets to choose his director (with Senate concurrence) but, once chosen, he is difficult to fire. In addition, the budget of the EIAO should be independent of the DFI/DDI, should be planned and approved four years out, and the budget rules should allow for a decrease in the budget from the plan only by a supermajority vote in the Congress (eg. by 2/3 in both houses). In other words, four year budgets are approved as part of the standard budgeting process; to reduce the budget from that projection in any given year (for instance because the President is politically unhappy with the second opinions he has been getting) is difficult — although a budget increase may be done through the standard budgeting process. To prevent discontinuities, the four-year budget projection should be updated every year, so one year at a time is added to the four-year plan. The intent here is to insulate the budget, staffing, and operations of the EIAO from short-term political pressures while still making it responsive — and relevant — to policy needs.
© Copyright 2004, 2005, Augustus P. Lowell