Intelligence Budget

Only a small part of the intelligence budget is made public; the bulk of the overall intelligence spending is contained within the DoD budget. Spending for most intelligence programs is described in classified annexes to intelligence and national defense authorization and appropriations legislation. Members of Congress all have access to these annexes, but must make special arrangements to read them.

Jurisdiction over intelligence programs is somewhat different in the House and the Senate. The Senate Intelligence Committee has jurisdiction only over the NIP but not JMIP and TIARA, whereas the House Intelligence Committee has jurisdiction over all three sets of programs. The preponderance of intelligence spending is accomplished by intelligence agencies within DoD and thus in both chambers the armed services committees are involved in the oversight process.

Other oversight committees are responsible for intelligence agencies that are part of departments other than DoD. Most appropriations for intelligence activities are included in national defense appropriations acts, including funds for the CIA, DIA, NSA, the NRO, and NGA. Other appropriations measures include funds for the intelligence offices of the State Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. In the past, defense appropriations subcommittees have funded the intelligence activities of CIA and the DoD agencies (although funds for CIA have been included in defense appropriations acts, these monies are transferred directly).

Intelligence budgeting issues were at the center of the debate on intelligence reform legislation in 2004. On one hand, there was determination to make the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) responsible for developing and determining the annual National Intelligence Program budget (which is separate from the JMIP and TIARA budgets that are prepared by the Secretary of Defense). The goal was to ensure a unity of effort that arguably has not previously existed and that may have complicated efforts to monitor terrorist activities. On the other hand, the intelligence efforts within the National Intelligence Program include those of major components of the Defense Department, including NSA, the NRO, and NGA, that are closely related to other military activities.

Some Members thus argued that even the National Intelligence Program should not be considered apart from the Defense budget. After considerable debate, the final version of the Intelligence Reform Act provides broad budgetary authorities to the DNI, but requires the President to issue guidelines to ensure that the DNI exercises the authorities provided by the statute "in a manner that respects and does not abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the heads of the Office of Management and Budget and Cabinet departments."

Constructing the Intelligence Budget

During the late 1990s the Intelligence Community instituted fundamental changes in the way it managed its budget resources, and more changes are on the way. During the 1995-1999 Intelligence Program budget reviews, the Deputy Secretary of Defense (DepSecDef) and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) decided that the current intelligence budget structure should be modified to reflect changes in US intelligence since the end of the Cold War and to institute management efficiencies in a reduced fiscal environment. A new focus on the customer being served was clearly needed.

Concurrently, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) in its FY 1994/1995 Defense Authorization report, directed the Secretary of Defense to consider a new set of funding categories for intelligence in the Defense budget. It specifically requested a report that identified intelligence programs and activities which supported:

• Primarily national purposes.
• Primarily defense-wide, theater activities and the Unified commands.
• Primarily a single Service or Agency.

As a result of the above direction, a general review was conducted of intelligence activities. Subsequently, the DepSecDef, with the concurrence of the DCI, approved establishment of the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP) on June 1, 1994.

With this change, resources for US intelligence activities are now set forth in the:

• National Intelligence Program (NIP) [formerly the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP)].
• Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP)
• Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA) funding aggregation.

The NIP was established by several Presidential executive orders (EO 11905 in 1976, EO 12036 in 1978, and EO 12333 in 1981), and subsequently codified in the Intelligence Organization Act of 1992. The DNI is responsible for developing and presenting to the President an annual NIP budget for national intelligence activities.

JMIP provides a more structured approach to the management of intelligence activities in order to:

• Focus on joint, Defense-wide initiatives, activities, and programs that predominantly provide intelligence information and support to multiple Defense consumers.
• Bridge existing programmatic divisions across Service/departmental and national intelligence lines to provide more effective and coherent intelligence programmatic decisionmaking.
• Support military intelligence consumers, i.e., warfighters, policymakers, and force modernization planners.

TIARA was constituted more than a decade ago and defined to be an aggregation of Defense intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition programs that are outside the NIP and that:

• Respond to operational commanders' tasking for time-sensitive information on foreign entities.
• Respond to national Intelligence Community tasking of systems whose primary mission is to support operating forces.
• Train personnel for intelligence duties.
• Provide an intelligence reserve.
• Are devoted to research and development of intelligence or related capabilities.

National Intelligence Program

The NIP is comprised of all programs, projects, and activities of the Intelligence Community designated jointly by the Director of Central Intelligence and the head of a United States department or agency, or by the President. Excluded are those portions of the Defense budget that are set aside for TIARA and JMIP.

Programmatically, the NIP incorporates all national-level intelligence, counterintelligence, and reconnaissance activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and all civilian federal agencies and departments, as well as the Intelligence Community management structure. The NIP is comprised of two major components: national level intelligence programs within the Defense Department and those in federal departments and agencies outside the DoD:

Defense programs

• General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP).
• Consolidated Cryptologic Program (CCP).
• DoD Foreign Counterintelligence Program (FCIP).
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Program [NGAP] [formerly National Imagery and Mapping Agency Program [NIMAP] and initially Central Imagery Office Program (CIOP).
• National Reconnaissance Program (NRP).
• Special Activities, Navy Program (SpN).

Civilian programs

• Central Intelligence Agency Program (CIAP).
• Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) Program.
• Department of Justice, FBI Foreign Counterintelligence Program (FBI FCIP).
• Department of Treasury, Office of Intelligence Support Program.
• Department of Energy, Foreign Intelligence Program.
• Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System (CIARDS).

Community-wide NIP program

• Community Management Account (CMA).

The programs above are not organizations, but structures that manage resources for intelligence operations and activities. Organizationally, the NIP provides funding for the Central Intelligence Agency, an independent agency; a number of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence elements attached to the Department of Defense; and foreign intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The component programs of the NIP are independently managed by officials known as program managers. They receive policy and fiscal guidance from the Director of National Intelligence and submit their individual budgets to the DCI through the Community Management Staff (CMS). Once they have been approved by the DNI, the ODNI consolidates them into a single NIP budget that is submitted to the Congress as a part of the President's budget. During execution, military and civilian organizations expend funds approved by the Congress, with the ODNI monitoring these expenditures and the DCI approving and managing requests for reprogramming of funds into, within, and out of the NIP.

Joint Military Intelligence Program

In light of the need for better integration of intelligence capabilities within a joint structure, the JMIP was established in Defense to:

• Provide efficiencies in management of programs and activities.
• Align decision authority with the customer served.
• Promote integration of NIP and Defense Intelligence by establishing single program managers wherever possible-across NIP and Defense Intelligence programs and activities.

JMIP was initially composed of four programs:

• Defense Cryptologic Program (DCP). Defense-wide cryptologic activities outside the NIP. Program manager: Director, NSA.
• Defense Imagery Program (DIP). Defense-wide imagery programs outside the NIP. Program manager: Director, CIO. [now under National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Program [NGAP]].
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• Defense Mapping, Charting, and Geodesy Program (DMC&GP). Defense-wide MC&G activities. Program manager: Director, DMA. [now under National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Program [NGAP]]
• Defense General Intelligence and Applications Program (DGIAP). For this program, the Director, DIA is the Program Coordinator for five Defense component programs. Each component focuses on a certain key area of joint support. The Program Coordinator works with each component to best integrate and utilize available resources. Further, the Program coordinator is the principal interface with the other JMIP, NIP, and TIARA program activities for the DGIAP. The component programs include:
  • Defense Intelligence Agency Tactical Program (DIATP); Program manager: Director, DIA
  • Defense Intelligence Special Technology Program (DISTP); Program manager: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Intelligence & Security)
  • Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Program (DARP); Program manager: Director, Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office [DARO was abolished in 2000, and it is not clear how this program is currently managed]
  • Defense Space Reconnaissance Program (DSRP); Program manager: Director, NRO
  • Defense Counterdrug Intelligence Program (DCIP); Program manager: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Drug Enforcement Policy and Support)

Each of the above programs currently consists of former TIARA or selected NIP programs (such as the U-2 and other airborne reconnaissance aircraft that were transferred to Defense due to realignment of general program responsibilities agreed to by the DepSecDef and the DNI) whose primary customer base was judged to be multiple Service, or Defense-wide.

Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities

TIARA is comprised primarily of many separate intelligence or intelligence-related capabilities that are essential for tactical operations conducted by the military forces of a single Service. Originally, the principal reason for aggregating these accounts was to identify those portions of the Defense budget to the Congress that specifically supported intelligence and intelligence-related activities outside the NIP. Today, it is more important to account for all intelligence capabilities on the battlefield in order to ensure that commanders at all levels can readily draw upon intelligence in times of crisis or conflict. Since many of the timely collection and exploitation capabilities are at the tactical level, it is essential that they be included in overall planning and programming which addresses national, theater/joint, and tactical support needs.

TIARA programs are designed, built, and/or operated by the Military Services and compete for funding with all other Service combat and combat support programs. As such, there is no resource "fence" placed around TIARA; rather they compete within the overall resource top line provided to the Service by the Department. It should be noted that the intelligence-related programs of the Advanced Research Projects Agency are also included in the TIARA aggregation due to the focus on Service tactical needs. Likewise, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is included in TIARA rather than JMIP.

There is no single program manager for TIARA. Each Service uses its own management structure in overseeing and implementing TIARA efforts. TIARA is thus highly decentralized as compared to the NIP and the JMIP. This allows the Services greater flexibility in meeting and balancing their needs and responsibilities for supporting tactical operations.

The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence monitors, oversees, and coordinates TIARA activities for the Department. In certain areas, such as inter-operability of systems or information exchange, implementing standards are issued so that critical support can be provided across Service/joint command boundaries. Further, the USD(I) is responsible for recommending programmatic changes as part of his overall responsibilities within the Department's Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) process. However, there is no single program manager or program executive specifically for TIARA capabilities.

In summary, the composition of TIARA has changed significantly. While still based on the definition created over a decade ago, its focus under the recent reorganization of intelligence programs is on integral capabilities of the tactical commander. Through this realignment, the Department of Defense believed that much greater effectiveness will be achieved, and the Services/Defense Agencies can better focus on specific customers to meet their needs.

Department of Homeland Security [DHS]

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] has further complicated the already complex challenge of understanding the intelligence budget. The DHS intelligence budget is probably in the range of $10 million, but if there was a desire to puff up the number, a number in the range of $1 billion could probably be aduced without breathing too hard.

Although the DHS budget is not classified, as is that of the rest of the intelligence community, it is a very dark shade of grey. For such a large agency, with a total budget of over $40 billion, the FY2005 budget request ran to only 64 pages, or about one and a half pages per billion dollars. In contrast, the FY2005 NASA budget request of $15 billion was supported by 378 pages of justification, or 25 pages per billion dollars.

There a total of 22 instances of the word "intelligence" in the sparse 64 pages of the DHS budget request, but it is far from self-evident whether these activities constitute part of the intelligence budget managed by the Director of Central Intelligence. Of the constituent agencies of DHS, only the Coast Guard intelligence budget would have been under the perview of the DCI prior to the formation of DHS. Many other agencies performed inteligence-like activities, but they were not part of the budget constructs under the DCI's supervision, nor is there any indication that they are now.

The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the five armed services of the United States and an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The FY2005 funding request increases intelligence capacity and provides Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Teams underwater detection capability.

DHS is composed of five Directorates, one of which (the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection, IAIP, Directorate) is a member of the Intelligence Community. IAIP's mission to disseminate information analyzed by the Department to State and local government agencies and authorities and private sector entities brings to the post 9/11 federal government a capability for the security and protection of the nation's domestic assets that did not previously exist.

The DHS Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) Directorate merges the capability to identify and assess a broad range of intelligence and information concerning threats to the homeland, to map threats against the nation's vulnerabilities, to issue timely warnings and advisories, and to recommend and take appropriate preventative and protective actions against any threats. IAIP has been generating information and intelligence requirements to support the DHS Intelligence and Warning and Threat Analysis functions. The Directorate is developing and maintaining DHS all-source information needs, as tasking or guidance to the intelligence community, law enforcement community and the private sector. The FY 2005 budget request was $865 Million, but it is difficult to imagine that this is all counted as part of the intelligence budget.

As the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brings a unified and coordinated focus to the enforcement of federal immigration laws, customs laws, and, as of November 2003, air security laws. Investigations is responsible for investigating a range of domestic and international activities arising from the movement of people and goods that violate immigration and custom laws and threaten national security. Responsibilities also include the collection, analysis, and dissemination of strategic and tactical intelligence data in support of ICE and DHS.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security focus is on identifying risks, prioritizing risks, managing risks to acceptable levels, and mitigating the impact of potential incidents. Sharing of information among agencies and stakeholders - including intelligence information - is a cornerstone of the risk management model. TSA continues to serve as the liaison for transportation security to the intelligence community and the intelligence sections of law enforcement agencies.