Leadership for Intelligence Professionals   

Inter-organizational Teams for National Security

(March 2011)

Introduction

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) and the former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), now replaced by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI),

…are statutorily designated advisors to the National Security Council, responsible for offering professional, objective advice to civilian policymakers.  Both lack direct command authority over their respective “communities” within the federal structure, but have important roles in shaping overall budgets and the “requirements” against which their respective communities are supposedly sized and organized.  One notable difference is that the chairman eventually acquired a sizeable staff to support his role that has been much larger than the DCI’s community affairs staff [but that staff grew in subsequent years as the “Community Management Staff” and has grown substantially with the creation of the DNI].

Military Inter-Organizational Teams

The CJCS fills the position as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense and the President. The CJCS has no command authority and is not in a chain of command or hierarchy over anyone except his own staff.  Yet, JCS Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces says, “Joint Warfare is Team Warfare.”

To assure the existence and capabilities of this inter-organizational team, the CJCS is responsible for insuring that the support activities of the Armed Services and the strategic and operational planning and activities of the Combatant Commanders and are coordinated.  He must persuade the Chiefs of the Military Services to recruit, train and provide personnel and develop and provide equipment that match the requirements of the Combatant Commanders le for joint warfare. He must convince the Combatant Commanders to develop doctrine, conduct exercises and operate their forces in a way that furthers joint warfare. loped equipment match the planned warfare. And, he must do so without any command authority and very little bureaucratic directive power.

Thus, to support joint warfighting, the activities of the Armed Forces, top to bottom, are coordinated, face to face in a variety of fora, all of which are inter-organizational teams. At the most senior level to coordinate Combatant Commander requirements and the acquisition and procurement of systems, including military intelligence systems, groups such as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (PA&E) 3-star board have been formed.  To coordinate strategic and operational matters since 1988, by the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the role and influence of the Chairman and Joint Staff has been increased and continues to increase. to insure coordinated efforts between the joint planning staffs of the Combatant Commands developing the strategies, plans and operations and the Military Service staffs charged providing the capabilities and intelligence to support those strategies, plans and operations. To do so, frequent planning conferences are held, and regular inter-organizational staff coordination by collaboration in inter-organizational working sessions and meetings is constantly occurring. Yet,

By law, the Joint Staff may not address global concerns….So while the staff can plan, it has no authority to act on or implement anything that it plans, muting the efforts of its efforts.

Instead, each combatant command responds directly to the Secretary of Defense and President in the operational chain of command with no global chain of command to order or organize actions between them.

At the level of the Combatant Commanders and their service Component Commanders, operational plans, tactical employment, logistic support, intelligence support and other matters are also coordinated as representatives of various organizations collaborate in a variety of conferences, meetings, working groups, etc.  “Joint force commanders choose the capabilities they need from the air, land, sea, [service component commands] space and special operations forces at their disposal.”  

Thus, joint warfighting is conducted by a myriad of inter-organizational teams.  Additional refinements are continually suggested to increase collaboration, for example “ converting the Joint Staff into a national command element with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) as its head.” Others have recommended changes in how joint military staffs are organized at lower levels “to insure coordination at the functional levels below Service and Command.” 

But today’s wars not only demand the creation of inter-service military teams but teams that include other departments and organizations.  As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force, General Richard B. Myers and Dr. Albert C. Pierce, the Director of the Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership at the National Defense University point out:

Government operations on the strategic level require teamwork.  First strategic leaders must build a team within the agency that includes both civilian and military officials and political appointees.  The former are nonpartisan experts, and the latter make administration policy.  Second, strategic leaders must build a strong interagency team to integrate and apply the various instruments the given problem demands.  Third, and increasingly in the 21^st century, strategic leaders must build teams with coalition and alliance partners whose cultural backgrounds and modes of operation frequently will differ greatly from their own.

Relationships are critical in building teamwork on all three levels.  Organizations do not cooperate or integrate—people do.

The key to strong and productive relationships is trust.  It must be built and earned; cannot simply be declared. 

Even below the strategic level, military and organizational Leaders will be required to build wider inter-agency teams.  As the U. S. begins to implement the “complex operations and interagency operational art” prescribed by the recently published Government Interagency Counterinsurgency Guide junior to mid-level military Leaders on the ground will have to create teams including other government agencies and, even, non-governmental organizations.

A recent study by Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing of the Institute of National Security Studies at the National Defense University documents “unprecedented collaboration between diverse departments and agencies and between SOF and conventional forces which set the stage for the dramatic reversal of the security situation in Iraq in 2007.”   They describe how the use of interagency teams reached their apex of effectiveness in Iraq between 2005 and 2007 with “collaborative warfare” in the city of Mosul and in the smaller towns of Tal Afar and Ramadi.   Commanders built organizations and tactics that were based on collaboration between diverse departments and agencies and between special operations forces and conventional forces capable of conducting classic counterinsurgency warfare and demonstrated the insurgency could be beaten.

To access that study, go here____.

Intelligence Community Inter-Organizational Teams

Similarly, it might be said that “Intelligence Work requires Team Work”.  Originally, the DCI was created by President Truman in presidential memo simply as “a singular focal point” for:

…providing information to the nations’ policymakers.

The president’s memorandum, however, did not state or imply that the DCI would play a significant role in guiding or directing the activities conducted in various foreign intelligence parts of the executive branch outside the unit he himself headed.  This remained the case when the DCI position was re-established on a statutory basis in the National Security Act of 1947. Nothing was stated about any “leadership” or “management” role for him with respect to non-CIA activities and organizations.  On the contrary, intelligence elements other than CIA were explicitly envisioned in the charters establishing the DCI and the CIA as continuing to collect, evaluate, and disseminate “departmental intelligence”.  Their activities and chain of command to their department heads remained unchanged.

Although the DCI was not expected to be in charge of the national level activities of US intelligence agencies other than CIA, he was expected to coordinate them.

Over the years this “coordination” role was expanded by presidential direction.

President Truman’s original memorandum called for the DCI to “plan for the coordination” of the activities of various intelligence organizations.  In the 1947 law, the coordination charge is to “make recommendations to the President through the National Security Council”.  Thus, in the basic charter documents, the DCI is not charged with accomplishing coordination himself, only planning and recommending what should be done…..

It would not be until President Eisenhower’s second term that language directing the DCI to coordinate federal intelligence activities would…bolster the DCI’s authority.

Subsequently the coordination role was gradually expanded, especially in the area of resource management and budget authority, by Executive Order of almost every president.  Several DCIs increased coordination in other areas with the acquiescence of the other community organizations by adding personnel to their staff who were “detailed” from the other agencies.

Thus, in the Intelligence Community,  a wide range of policy, planning, budgetary matters and finished national intelligence products have long been the result of inter-organizational efforts across Services, Commands and intelligence Agencies, Bureaus and Offices.  To carry on those efforts, DCIs have created and maintained a number of top level groups—the Executive Committee (EXCOM) to coordinate Community policy and finalize the Community budget; the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB) to approve National Intelligence Estimates (NIE);  the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to coordinate substantive intelligence positions; and standing committees, such as the DCI Weapons Systems Intelligence Committee (WSIC),  Science and Technical Intelligence Committee (STIC) or the Nuclear Weapons Committee to coordinate community-wide interests; and, at the defense level, the Military Intelligence Board (MIB), to coordinate defense intelligence issues and activities.  Those leadership and top level groups have met as required and have spawned a wide range of conferences, committees, working groups, projects and meetings.

Most recently, the creation of the position of DNI and its designation as “Chief Executive Officer” of the Intelligence Community separate from the DCI as head of CIA, the DNI has acquired additional powers. In terms of resource management, the DNI will now “develop and determine” the National Intelligence Program budget and, while not having “execution authority” over the portions of that allotted to other agencies, will “ensure effective execution”.  In addition the DNI will set the objectives and priorities for the Intelligence Community which he does by publishing a set of Intelligence Mission Objectives and by coordinating the development of an Intelligence Community Vision.  The DNI has the authority to approve requirements and direct tasking of collection, analysis and production among agencies.  The authority to participate in the selection and appointment of other agency heads provides some bureaucratic leverage. 

Nevertheless, despite the appearance of the word “management” in the Law, the DNI remains the Leader, not the manager of the Intelligence Community.  As Director Mike McConnell has said: “I am referred to as the Director of National Intelligence.  A more apt term today would be coordinator of National Intelligence because I don’t have the authority to be directive…”

Hence, the DNI has established the Joint Intelligence Community Committee (JICC) as a leadership team, and, given the re-creation of the post of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (DUSD/I) and the expanding intelligence interests of the Department of Homeland Security, there will be an even greater need for the establishment of top-level inter-organizational groups to coordinate their requirements and activities and resolve their sometimes conflicting interests.  Those top level groups will likely spawn an even greater number of inter-organizational conferences, committees, working groups, projects and meetings. 

Likewise in recent years and especially since 9/11, DCIs have established the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) which eventually became the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the National Counter Proliferation Center (NCPC) and the Underground Facilities Center, well as the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) and others. These Centers were conceived as organizations with the standard hierarchy of a Director, staff and sub-organizational entities of directorates, branches, etc. But, they have been staffed with permanent employees drawn from throughout the Community and other sources and with rotational personnel assigned from other community agencies.  Those personnel from are expected to be able to work together collaboratively by understanding the contributions which the various community agencies can make to the counterterrorism efforts and to be able to “reach back” into their home organizations to get the information needed.  But, while being structured as an organization, because of the personnel composition, each of the sub-organizational entities has, in effect, become, by definition, a “team”.  Such structures bring a set of unique problems.

For example, the NCTC.  As recommended by the 9/11 Commission the NCTC is responsible for “joint operational planning and joint intelligence,” designed to break “the old mold of national government organization.” Soon after the Commission released its report, Public Law 108-458, the National Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, established the nation’s first dedicated interagency counterterrorism planning cell within the NCTC, mandating it to “conduct strategic operational planning for counterterrorism,” “integrating all instruments of national power.” This planning cell was the Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning (DSOP) staffed by both permanent, rotational and contract personnel.  It represents a team approach to planning the inter-organizational efforts required to combat terrorism. But, a recent study by the Project on National Security Reform shows that much work remains before this vision can be fully achieved.

Overall, DSOP has made progress in fulfilling its mission to provide the “connective tissue” between national counterterrorism policy and strategy, established by the president and the National Security Council system, and counterterrorism operations, conducted by the departments and agencies.…Notwithstanding this progress, numerous obstacles persist and prevent DSOP from becoming a more efficient and effective interagency entity. Many of these impediments are systemic, ranging from issues of authorities and resources to government-wide human capital constraints. Others are more specific to the inner workings of the Directorate itself….

-DSOP faces traditional issues associated with attracting detailees from other agencies….individuals have relatively few incentives to join interagency teams, and departments and agencies have not been provided sufficient incentives to share personnel

-While some agencies such as the Department of Defense have generally been strong supporters, other agencies’ support—in terms of providing sufficient numbers and quality of detailees to DSOP— has been uneven. In addition to the lack of availability of DSOP mission critical competencies in other agencies, DSOP also faces the traditional challenges of attracting employees of other agencies on detail assignments. These challenges include but are not limited to:

• Inconsistent legal requirements governing detailees.

• Reluctance of contributing agency to provide resources from its limited supply.

• Lack of contributing agency buy-in regarding value of DSOP and value of the detail.

-…not only does DSOP face considerable challenges in obtaining employees with the needed competencies, but the Directorate also faces high leadership turnover and an overall employee turnover rate approximately three times greater than other federal departments and agencies.

….a turnover rate in fiscal year 2008 of approximately thirty percent. This diverges from federal department turnover rates during the same period of between five percent (Justice) and eleven percent (Treasury) with a USG-wide average of eight percent.

-The majority of federal departments and agencies within the USG do not have parallel planning and assessment capabilities from which DSOP can draw….The significant exception is the military, which over many years, has built a highly skilled planning workforce. This is evident in the workforce composition within DSOP, which is largely made up of current military on assignment or former military who have joined the cadre ranks.

-…as a result of conflicting mandates, authorities, and cultures, the study found selective but critical situations where departments and agencies have stronger incentive to not cooperate with DSOP than to cooperate.

There are a host of consequences to this reality. Most significantly, this dynamic affects the quantity and quality of department and agency participation at senior-level meetings and within DSOP-led functional working groups. It also impacts the quality and number of detailees and assignees that departments and agencies are willing to send to DSOP….

As a result, there is evidence that DSOP has been forced to develop national plans without the expertise of some of the most important players. In one classified example, a plan was criticized because it did not incorporate CIA actions. In reality, the CIA had not participated in the planning process, so it was no surprise that its perspectives were not fully considered. In another classified example, DSOP lacked the regional expertise to develop a region-specific plan tasked to DSOP by the NSC because of a lack of State Department participation.

The lack of full interagency participation in the strategic operational planning process has other consequences as well. When national plans lack full interagency buy-in, and when departments and agencies don’t feel invested in the plan, implementation of those plans suffers.

Given the need for increased cooperation and collaboration demanded by the WMD Commission and required by Presidential Executive Order 13388-Further Strengthening of the Sharing of Terrorism Information, one recent DNI initiative has been that “virtual cyber-space teams” are being encouraged between agencies.

To this end, the Office of the DNI is in the process of developing virtual communities of analysts who can securely exchange ideas and expertise across organizational boundaries and harness cutting edge technology to find, access, and share information and analytic judgments.  Analysts are increasingly using interactive online journals, such as classified blogs and wikis, to this end.  Such tools enable experts adept at different disciplines to pool their knowledge, form virtual teams, and quickly make intelligence assessments....

At the level of intelligence support to joint warfighting a similar problem exists.  The Combat Support Agencies—the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National GeoSpatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)—all report separately and directly to the Secretary of Defense.  In that situation several initiatives to achieve the advantages of coordination of their efforts have been attempted, with varying degrees of success.  One:

The Defense Joint Intelligence Operations Center, which was later renamed the Defense Intelligence Operations Coordination Center (DIOCC) was established in 2006 in response to a perceived need for global coordination of the DOD intelligence enterprise.  The DIOCC is a well-intended response to a global problem set, in which shared high-value but low-density intelligence assets [such as human intelligence (HUMINT) resources, signals intelligence (SIGINT) coverage, imagery satellite (IMINT) response] are employed to address the disparate and usually competing intelligence requirements of 10 combatant commands.

This center is within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which is a CSA.

While the DIOCC has the backing of a DOD Directive (DODD), combatant commanders have no requirement under existing Federal law to abide by or recognize the authority of the DIOCC prioritization of their competing intelligence requirements, and they have no uniformed senior [such as a CJCS  with command authority] to mitigate the occasional disagreement. 

Further,

…there is no backing in Federal law for the DIOCC to perform prioritization or tasking to other CSAs and little in the way of formal structure with which to do so, such as a Joint Staff tasking system.

Despite such obstacles at the interagency bureaucratic level, successful interagency teams can be created at the intelligence operational level. Several Washington Post  articles have described:

 a seamlessly coordinated effort involving multiple government agencies in which the CIA  provides intelligence analysts and spycraft with sensors and cameras that can track targets, vehicles or equipment for up to 14hours. FBI forensic experts dissect data, from cellphone information to the “pocket litter” found on extremists. Treasury officials track funds flowing among extremists and from governments. National Security Agency staffers intercept conversations or computer data, and members of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency use high-tech equipment to pinpoint where suspected extremists are using phones or computers.

National Security Inter-Organizational Teams

Certainly, recent U.S. operations and experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that, as the Secretary of State has observed:

More and more, solutions to the challenges we face lie not in the narrow expertise of one agency acting in one country, but in partnerships among multiple agencies working creatively together to solve common problems across entire regions.

Such operations have required that military, intelligence professionals and other government professionals come together as an inter-organizational team under common Leadership at the Washington level and in the field.   At the Washington level:

The need to improve collaboration among national security organizations is a common refrain in national security literature and one echoed by senior leaders. The current administration, like the previous two, acknowledges that the “United States must integrate its ability to employ all elements of national power in a cohesive manner” to succeed in the 21st century. Virtually every major national security study over the past decade or so agrees and has identified inadequate interagency cooperation as a glaring systemic deficiency. Yet little progress has been made toward correcting this shortcoming. The attacks on September 11, 2001, spurred some structural and procedural innovations to facilitate interagency collaboration, but as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently observed, “Despite improvements in recent years, America’s interagency toolkit is a hodgepodge of jerry-rigged arrangements constrained by a dated and complex patchwork of authorities, persistent shortfalls in resources, and unwieldy processes.”

The National Security Council would seem the most likely organ to direct and improve national security integration, but it has only the power to advise the President.18 The President has to forge interagency cooperation by convening coordination committees, designating a particular agency to lead an interagency effort, or utilizing “czars” who rely on prestige and the aura of delegated Presidential authority to accomplish interagency coordination. These approaches regularly fail, and when they succeed it is often because of extraordinary leadership and good

fortune—factors to be welcomed but not relied upon  ….These approaches regularly fail, and when they succeed it is often because of extraordinary leadership and good fortune—factors to be welcomed but not relied upon…

But they also find that

Although infrequently used within the government, teams are not unknown to the national security system. Experiments with teams have produced promising results, but these successes have been neither pursued nor institutionalized.  

In the field, the concept that all personnel assigned to an Embassy or a Mission, regardless of their government department, constitute a “Country Team” under the Leadership of the U.S. Ambassador was created by an inter-departmental Memorandum of Understanding in 1951. This is a concept that has been long understood and generally ignored.  

Despite long-standing policy to the contrary, the Ambassador often is regarded not as the President’s representative but as the State Department’s envoy.  Thus, personnel from other U.S. agencies tend to pursue their own lines of communication and operation, with inadequate coordination among them.

…Country Teams are ideally positioned as the first line of engagement to face challenges to U.S. national interests.  Yet effective interagency collaboration is often a hit-or-miss proposition…

Given the critical challenges, it is time to reinvigorate the County Team’s role in achieving U.S. national security objectives.  The team must be reconfigured as a cross-functional entity with an empowered and recognized single leader for all agencies. 

Given that military personnel and intelligence professionals, including some from the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security and others, form a significant portion of an embassy staff, by example, you can take the Lead in establishing  and demonstrating the full coordination required for defending and furthering U.S. national security interests abroad.

Sources

Introduction

Douglas F. Garthoff Directors of Cental Intelligence as Leaders of the Intelligence Community 1946-2005.  Published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence.  See pg 23, fn 34.

Military Inter-Organizational Teams

JCS Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces.

G. John David and Paul S. Reinhart “A Joint Staff to Believe In” in Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 56, 1^st quarter 2010.

For example, see David and Reinhart “A Joint Staff to Believe In” and also “Changing the Way Staffs are Organized: A proposal for cross-functional working groups" to insure collaboration at the functional levels below Service and Command in  Joint Force Quarterly, issue thirty-nine.

Richard B. Myers and Albert C. Pierce “On Strategic Leadership” in Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 54, 3^rd quarter 2009.

Christopher M. Schnaubelt “Complex Operations and Interagency Operational Art” in Prism Vol. 1, No. 1, 12/2009.

Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing "Secret Weapon: High-value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation." in Strategic Perspectives 4  published by the Center for Strategic Research of the Institute for National Security Studies of the National Defense University.

Intelligence Community Inter-Organizational Teans

Garthoff, Chapter 1.

Based on Peter Oleson Intelligence Resource Management in a Time of Change presentation prepared for the Joint Military Intelligence College 2007.

Director of National Intelligence, Vice ADM D. M. McConnell USN (Ret), speaking at Furman University, 28 March 2008.

Program for National Security Reform Toward Integrating Complex National Missions: Lessons Learned from the National Counterterrorism Center Directorate for Strategic Operational Planning, February 2010.

David and Reinhart.

Lamb and Munsing citing Bob Woodward, “Why Did the Violence Plummet? It Wasn’t Just the Surge,” in The Washington Post, September 8, 2008 and  Joby Warrick and Robin Wright, “U.S. Teams Weaken Insurgency in Iraq,” The Washington Post, September 6, 2008.

National Security Inter-Organizational Teams

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice quoted by Robert B. Oakley and Michael Casey Jr. ; “The Country Team: Restructuring America’s First Line of Engagement” in Strategic Forum of the Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University, No. 227, September 2007.

Lamb and Munsing.  Their views draw on:  James Jones, “The 21st Century Interagency Process,” quoted in Laura Rozen, “New NSC Memo: Jones on the 21st Century Interagency Process,” Foreign Policy Web site, April 6, 2009, available at http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/06/new_nsc_memo_jones_on_the_21st_century_interagency_process; Christopher Lamb, “Three Pillars of Reform,” in Global Strategic Assessment 2009: America’s Security Role in a Changing World, ed. Hans Binnendijk and Patrick M. Cronin (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2009) and  Robert M. Gates, remarks at The Nixon Center, February 24, 2010, available at www.nixoncenter.org/index.cfm?action=showpage&page=2009-Robert-Gates-Transcript  respectively.

Oakley and Casey, “The Country Team”.