The FAS Project on Intelligence Reform combines the resources and energies of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, and the FAS Space Policy Project. Through our work on these projects, we have emerged as a leading public interest voice on intelligence reform.
This project continues the pattern we have successfully established with the conclusion and implementation of current secrecy reform initiatives. It also complements our ongoing work on space policy and military spending, and capitalizes on our pathfinder internet implementations.
Through research, advocacy, and public education, the Project on Intelligence Reform promotes public awareness and discussion of the various Executive and Legislative intelligence reform initiatives and their successful implementation. The Project challenges excessive government secrecy which obscures public participation in this debate, and promotes public oversight of the intelligence reform process. The Project supports journalists and fosters enhanced public awareness of secrecy issues through publication of the Secrecy & Government Bulletin, other studies and articles disseminated in both hardcopy and electronic form, as well as through the implementation of the Project on Intelligence Reform homepage on the World Wide Web.
By virtue of our past work on secrecy and intelligence policy issues, FAS is uniquely positioned to contribute an independent perspective and to articulate a public interest viewpoint.
Despite the end of the Cold War the United States continues to spend vast amounts on the intelligence community, with an overall foreign intelligence budget of approximately $29 billion. This includes agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office - NRO (over $6.5 billion), the National Security Agency - NSA ($3.5 billion), and the Central Intelligence Agency ($3 billion).
Far too much of our intelligence budget remains devoted to expensive satellites rendered obsolete by the demise of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's closed society required extraordinary efforts to penetrate, which focused on counting and describing military hardware and industrial facilities -- uniquely opportune targets for intelligence satellites.
But today's priorities have shifted to peacekeeping, terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and economic competitiveness -- questions for which spy satellites provide few answers. Our imposing armada of spy satellites is silent on the pressing issues of the day, whether they concern Bosnia, Somalia, or Haiti. The communications satellites broadcasting CNN provide the vital information upon which decision-making is increasingly based. Current needs could be met with a smaller number of less expensive satellites, costing about half today's budget (returning to the level of spending when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan).
And CIA covert operations remain a central CIA function, even after the downfall of the Soviet Union -- at spending levels much higher than commonly recognized. The American intelligence community continues to support a wide range of covert political and paramilitary activities around the world. Such activities were justified during the Cold War as a regrettable expediency to counter an implacably hostile adversary committed to world conquest. And abuses of these activities were explained as the unfortunate price of countering the Evil Empire.
But with the end of the Cold War, it is increasingly difficult to identify covert action missions which would advance American national interests.
Establish a Compelling Set of Expectations
A climate must be created to define certain expectations that the official intelligence reform process must fulfill. The proposals previously articulated mainly by activists must become the conventional wisdom that will set the minimum criteria for success -- or failure -- of the intelligence reform effort.
The basic outlines of a reformed intelligence community must reflect the dramatic changes in the post-Cold War world, particularly the new availability of information in previously denied areas and the shifting meaning of national security. The scope of secret intelligence should be reduced drastically to focus on remaining denied areas such as North Korea and Iraq, while other intelligence resources are made available to broader use or else transferred out of the intelligence community.
The specific ingredients of a reformed intelligence community must include a dramatic reduction in the annual budget (particularly in the area of satellites), substantial declassification of budgetary and organizational information, and the substantial curtailment or complete elimination of Cold War covert action programs and institutions, and greater reliance on the collection and dissemination of open source intelligence. The intelligence community also needs to be reorganized to reflect these new priorities.
Our efforts to create the expectation of greater openness can be accomplished in large part through the mainstream media. FAS is the most frequently cited non-governmental source of public information on current levels of government spending on intelligence, as well as ongoing developments in technical collection systems. In particular, the majority of press coverage on secrecy reform and related issues has utilized background information provided by our project, forming the basis for our ongoing contributions to the public debate on intelligence reform.
Work with Public Interest Groups, Congress, and the Public
To achieve optimum effect, it is of course necessary to coordinate efforts with other interested groups and individuals. Intelligence community reform has been adopted as one of the Dirty Dozen priority items of the Military Spending Working Group, which includes over two dozen national peace and security organizations. This Working Group will be our primary means of coordinating our activities with the Washington-based community. In addition, we will interface with other public interest and civil liberties groups whose work encompasses intelligence policy issues.
Outside of Washington, we support numerous local groups and individuals around the country, including some who are taking locally-oriented initiatives.
Without engaging in lobbying, we routinely respond to Congressional inquiries on secrecy, stimulated in part by the Secrecy Bulletin. In 1994, for example, the March 1994 issue of our Bulletin offered the idea of a "declassification tax," by which some fraction of all security expenditures would be directed to declassification efforts. A version of this proposal was adopted by Rep. David Skaggs and passed in the 1995 Intelligence Authorization Act.
Work to Establish a Culture of Openness
Even a well-crafted declaration of new intelligence policies will only be a first step. Monitoring and assuring their implementation will require an ongoing effort. Already, FAS provides unique and often exclusive public access to intelligence and secrecy policy documents and other related information.
For example:
Such disclosures are regularly reported in our Secrecy & Government Bulletin, and the underlying documentation is made available upon request.
The Project on Intelligence Reform has also established an internet homepage on the World Wide Web that will be used to disseminate official documents as they become available. In addition, to further encourage a culture of openness, we are establishing "model" internet homepages for all the various agencies in the intelligence community. At present, the official implementations are woefully inadequate.
We are implementing "model" homepages for over a dozen intelligence agencies, providing for the public the sort of basic information concerning organization, history, activities, products, facilities and budget that we believe constitute the minimum standard of open disclosure neccessary for an informed public debate on the future of the intelligence community. Based both on official publications as well as on our informed research, these implementations will be both a valuable resource for the public, as well as a challenge to the intelligence community to meet minimum standards of public accountability.