The National Intelligence Council: Issues and Options for Congress

The Report: The National Intelligence Council: Issues and Options for Congress

Location: R40505

What do you learn:
Ever wonder how the National Intelligence Estimate is made? It is made at request of Congress, civilian and military policy makers from the National Intelligence Council (NIC) are 15 National Intelligence Officers (NIO's) that fall under geographic and policy areas and they serve at the pleasure of the Director of National Intelligence and by law they can be inside of another agency connected with the Intelligence community. The NIO are individuals who generally come from academia, foreign service, and retired military. They are not to provide public relations for the intelligence community but they can deliver policy addresses at Associations involved in foreign affairs .

The goal of forming the fore-runner of today's NIC (the Board of National Estimates within the CIA) was to avoid another Pearl Harbor. They published about 1500 NIE's but they missed the factors leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later in the Clinton years the NIE was politicized to note the affects of Environmental Change on Security Policy and 9-11 was also missed by the board.

So what can Congress do? The report believes that Congress benefits from hearing from the council whether in closed or open session. The question has been raised should the NIO's be Senate confirmed? Critics worry that by doing that Congress would be making what should be non-partisan analysts very political in their judgment but it would provide valuable congressional oversight in the process. However, the report concludes by saying "all intelligence is an intellectual activity that inevitably carries with it some degree of uncertainty."