THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ACT
[Page: E527]
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HON. LARRY COMBEST
in the House of Representatives
MONDAY, APRIL 15, 1996
- Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Speaker, I have introduced today the Intelligence Community Act. This bill represents an important stage in our committee's major project, IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century.
- The Intelligence Community Act makes comprehensive changes in how we manage intelligence . I would like to outline for my colleagues the principles that have led to this legislation.
- First and foremost, the United States continues to need a strong, highly capable and increasingly flexible intelligence community. Our national security concerns are more varied and in many ways more complex than they were during the cold war.
- The United States needs an intelligence community that is more corporate, i.e., one that works better together as a more coherent enterprise aiming toward a single goal the delivery of time intelligence to policy makers at various levels.
- A key issue is opportunity, not reform. In the aftermath of our cold war victory we are more secure than we have been since 1940. This is a good time to update and modernize intelligence .
- IC21 is not a budget or staffing exercise. It is an effort to ascertain the type of intelligence community we will need as we enter the next century. Issues of cost and size should be debated during the regular legislative budget deliberations.
- Finally, the focus must be on where the intelligence community needs to be in the next 10 to 15 years, not a snapshot of where we are today.
- With these principles--flexibility, `corporateness,' opportunity, future vision--in mind, the Intelligence Community Act proposes several changes. Among them are:
- A more clearly defined central role for the Director of Central Intelligence [DCI] as head of the intelligence community, including expanded authority over resources and personnel. The DCI would also continue to be directly responsible for the CIA, clandestine services and the community management staff.
- Re-establishing the Committee on Foreign Intelligence within the National Security Council, to provide regular guidance and feed back to the DCI.
- Creating a second Deputy DCI. One Deputy DCI would run CIA, the other would run the community management staff, thus giving the DCI greater back-up and support for this two major responsibilities--the CIA and the intelligence community.
- The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] would be designated as the Director of Military Intelligence, the senior uniformed military intelligence officer.
- CIA would be confirmed as the premier all-source analytical agency. DIA continues to be the focal point for managing Defense all-source analysis.
- The Clandestine Service, comprising current CIA and Defense clandestine human collectors, would be combined into a single entity and separated from CIA.
- A new Technical Collection Agency [TCA] would manage the technical collection activities of signals, imagery and measurement, and signatures intelligence .
- A new Technology Development Office [TDO] would manage intelligence community research and development.
- The current National Intelligence Council would become the National Intelligence Evaluation Council, with the key responsibility of making sure that intelligence means and ends are correlated, and that every effort is made to provide the best intelligence to policy makers.
- IC21 also comprises a number of nonlegislative proposals that will be found in the unclassified staff studies, which would be available later this week.
- I want to thank the staff members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who have devoted much of the last year to this effort. The bill I have introduced today is a testament to their hard work and to their vision.
- I urge my colleagues to look over this bill carefully, and the staff studies as well. The staff of the intelligence committee is always available for questions and consultation.
- This is a daunting agenda and an important one. Informal discussions among the staff of interested congressional committees in the House and Senate and with the executive indicate agreement on many of the principles I have outlined. I optimistically look forward to working with my colleagues over the next few months to pass a bill that will give us the intelligence community we will need as we enter the 21st century.