WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- A new Pentagon policy directive for U.S. military intelligence mandates information-sharing with U.S. domestic agencies and foreign partners and recognizes the leading role of the new director of national intelligence.
Although both have been longstanding priorities for the Bush administration, the new directive, drafted in the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, retired Gen. James Clapper, and quietly published last month, is the first time they have been promulgated in such a high-level policy document inside the Pentagon.
“In some way it is (radical),” Deborah Barger, Clapper’s head of policy, told United Press International in a recent interview. “In other ways there is continuity.”
The directive, the product of two years of work by the policy team, says defense intelligence agencies “have an affirmative responsibility to share collected and stored information, data, and resulting analysis with … other relevant federal agencies, and civilian law enforcement officials, as appropriate.”
Barger said the wording reflected a new outlook.
“The default (position) in the past was the responsibility of the other party to demonstrate their need to know. That has changed,” she said, adding the burden was now on the person or agency with the information to share it.
“Responsibility to provide” was the new principle replacing need-to-know, she said.
The directive also says sharing with foreign coalition partners should be “the broadest possible,” and to accomplish this, “Original classifiers shall draft intelligence products with a presumption of release, and in such a manner as to allow the widest dissemination to allies, coalitions and international organizations.”
“That is a reflection of the desire of both the (director of national intelligence) and (Clapper) to share intelligence wherever reasonably and appropriately possible,” she said, given that “we must always protect sources and methods.”
Steven Aftergood, a secrecy watchdog with the Federation of American Scientists, said the new directive “somewhat belatedly acknowledges the imperative for improved information-sharing.”
But he called the “presumption of release” principle “remarkable.”
“It’s certainly not been the policy (at the Pentagon) to this point to say the least,” he said.
The directive, which replaces one more than 20 years old, also explicitly recognizes the role of the director of national intelligence, stating that all defense intelligence and counter-intelligence activities “shall conform to U.S. law and presidential guidance concerning the authorities and responsibilities” of the new post.
Barger said Clapper “wanted to establish a much closer relationship with the (new director’s office), especially on policy and strategy.”
She said her staff had shared earlier drafts of the directive with the policy shop there. “They proposed a number of changes,” she said, “which we accepted.”
“We’re very proud of the way that relationship is improving,” she said, adding that “the fact that this (policy directive) came to closure as well as it did” was a reflection of that improvement.
The new directive is one of a number that are being drafted in the Pentagon. The Defense Department “is in the process of updating nearly all of our policy directives,” said Barger.
She called the process “very deliberative and thorough.”
“It takes a long time especially when (like the intelligence directive) they are very broad.”
Former senior defense intelligence official retired Col. Pat Lang reviewed the document for UPI. He said the new direction came all the way from the top.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates “is a big boy about this intelligence stuff. He wants the system to work and he knows that means military intelligence has to be coordinated with, and to some extent subordinate to, the (director of national intelligence).”
Lang said that though tension and mutual suspicion had often characterized the relationship between military and civilian agencies, “people in the Department of Defense are accustomed to obeying orders” and he expected the change to filter down quickly.
Several officials UPI spoke with about this story emphasized the importance of personal relationships. Hayden, Clapper, Gates and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell all know and get along with one another.
Clapper “is trying to be a Boy Scout and do the right thing” with this and other initiatives, said one senior congressional staffer who works on intelligence oversight.
The staffer advised a “wait and see” attitude as the directive was implemented. “If they don’t live up to the spirit of this, we have a good lever in Congress.”
But the staffer played down the overall significance of the new directive, describing it as “a codification of some things that are already going on.”
“Isn’t this what they were supposed to have been doing all along?”
Indeed. This would be what journalists call a “dog bites man” story -- nothing out of the ordinary, in other words -- except that, in this story, the man has been biting the dog for the past six years.
The staffer and other officials said that Clapper’s predecessor, Steven Cambone, had a very different attitude.
“Things started to improve about the nanosecond he left,” the staffer said.
