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Intelligence for the President—and Everyone Else
How Barack Obama Can Create a Smart Nation and a Prosperous World at Peace

By Robert David STEELE Vivas

Today’s secret intelligence community costs the U.S. taxpayer over $60 billion a year, and yet, according to General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret), provides less than 4% of the decision support needed by a major government executive. The appointment of a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is a turning point for the President-elect, but cannot as yet be said to be a constructive one. Absent firm direction, the incoming DNI is likely to continue the status quo ante, making changes on the margin. Absent a more open mind and respectful attention to what the iconoclasts—including General Al Gray, USMC (Ret), then Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps—have been saying since 1988, here are three things the incoming DNI is NOT expected to do:
1) Create the Open Source Agency as recommended by the 9-11 Commission on page 413
2) Create the Multinational Decision Support Center to replace the Coalition Coordination Center (logisticians) with intelligence managers and analysts from up to 90 countries.
3) Fund the office of the Assistant Secretary General for Decision Support at the United Nations, with a US Ambassador as the Deputy and also Director of the U.S. Department of State Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements.
In other words, we carry on with secrets for the President at grotesque expense with marginal result, and ignore both the needs of the President for truly multinational insight (using sources in 183 languages we do not speak) and also the needs of Congress, Cabinet officers, commanders, and action officers at every level of government.
In 2000, after a decade of articles and chapters on the subject of reinventing intelligence, I published ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, with a Foreword from President David Boren of the University of Oklahoma, past Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). In 2002 I published THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political, with a Foreword from then Chairman of the SSCI, Pat Roberts (R-KS). Other books followed, on peacekeeping intelligence, on information operations, on creating a Smart Nation, and most recently, with 55 contributors, COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. Impact? ZERO.
Why? Easy. The current Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and past leaders operate on the Washington paradigm: maximizing budget share and managing inputs. They do not manage to achieve outcomes, and past Presidents have been content to let them be. Presidents, Cabinet officers, and Members of both the Senate and the House are abysmally ignorant of global reality and they are also ignorant of how national intelligence need not be federal, secret, nor expensive. We can fix that.
President-elect Barack Obama has an opportunity, within a week of inauguration, to create a Smart Nation virtually overnight, and in the next eight years, to lead all other nation-states, corporations, non-profit organizations, and publics at large, in creating a prosperous world at peace. Here’s how.
1) Sponsor the Smart Nation Act (now the Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act) as developed by myself in partnership with Representative Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), one of America’s most faithful legislators and retired military officers with an appreciation for intelligence. Here is a snap-shot of the differences between what we have now (20th Century intelligence, 1950’s mind-sets with 1970’s technology) and what we could have.
20th Century Intelligence (TIRED) 21st Century Intelligence (WIRED)
Secrets for the President Decision-Support for every official and citizen
Obsession with Seven “Hard Targets” Global Coverage—all information in all languages
Management of Inputs or Budget Share Management of Public Interest Outcomes
Reliance on centralized secret analysts Reliance on distributed public intelligence
Support to military plans for armed actions Support to President in building the right military
Ignore Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Provide decision support to every element of OMB
Ineffective in support to state & local government Create 50 community intelligence networks
Excessive expense on secret technical collection Focus on public processing & multinational sharing
With this one Act submitted and passed the first week in office, President-elect Obama will reinvent America and position America to lead and empower all others in creating a Prosperous World at Peace.
2) Direct the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to support all of the provisions of that Act from the very large secret intelligence budget. The three most important provisions are those calling for the creation of the Open Source Agency (OSA) a badly-needed capability recommended by the 9-11 Commission on page 413; and within the OSA network, the creation of a Multinational Decision Support Center relying only on unclassified information and providing decision support to the United Nations and all parties engaged in peace and stabilization operations; and the creation of a diplomatic Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements whose Director, an Ambassador, also serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations for Decision Support, an office to be funded by the OSA. With this one enterprise, completely open, transparent, and accountable, the President can bring to life the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison:
A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry Thomas Jefferson
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. James Madison
National Intelligence in this era cannot be about “secrets for the President.” It must be about empowering the President—and everyone else—with the extraordinary personal and organizational power that comes from information that has been discovered, discriminated, distilled, and converted into actionable intelligence—decision-support.
Operating under this new paradigm, the DNI would be the President’s chief aide in harnessing the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth, and in creating a “Smart Nation” that will be secure as well as competitive in what is clearly the age of intelligence.
A truly inspired DNI would ask that the OSA, while funded by the DNI and totally responsive to the DNI’s severely deficient access to global multilingual open sources of information, be a completely independent agency, a virtual “fourth estate” willing and able to ensure that every citizen has access to real-world, real-time intelligence, arming America with the power unique to an informed citizenry.
The author is a 30-year veteran of government service across intelligence, information technology, military, and policy support functionalities. He is the founding CEO of OSS.Net, and of the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity devoted to creating public intelligence in the public interest.