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DNI Pushes Spy Sat Shakeup

By Colin Clark Thursday, May 14th, 2009 8:35 pm
Posted in Intelligence, Policy, Space

Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, has drafted a panel of trusted intelligence experts to revamp the troubled National Reconnaissance Office, builder of America’s multi-billion dollar spy satellites.

The panel, led by Trey Obering, former director of the Missile Defense Agency, includes several people who also advised Blair on the electro-optical spy satellite program recently approved by President Obama.

The panel, some of whose members Blair met with Thursday, includes: Marty Faga, a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and a former NRO director; Joanne Isham, head of Washington operations for L-1 Identity Solutions and former deputy director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; Paul Kaminski, former undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics who recently penned a study recommending acquisition changes for the NRO; Tom Moorman, a VP at Booz Allen who was named by Space News as one of the 10 most influential space leaders; and Vincent Vitto former president and CEO of the Draper Lab, a private research and development company and vice chairman of the Defense Science Board.

The panel will examine every facet of the NRO — its mission, charter, staffing, requirements, organization, funding and relationship to other organizations. It should report its findings by mid-June, according to a former government official familiar with the effort.

One source who is following the panel’s work was highly skeptical of its work, reflecting widespread disillusionment in some intelligence circles with an organization that once was so secret its existence was classified.

“The panel is just another look at a terminally ill patient for whom last rites and pulling the plug is required,” said this source.

The former government official said the NRO’s death is not one of the options being considered by the Obering panel. Its members believe the organization still offers the country crucial capabilities no other entity could produce. However, the former official said that the NRO is being crippled by interference and conflicting demands from the many groups with which it interacts. Blair, this source said, understands the damage these conflicting needs and desires are causing the NRO.

A former senior intelligence official agreed that the NRO has far too many masters. “The DNRO [NRO director] now has a lot of bosses: JCS, USD(ATL), USD(I), ODNI, CIA (manning), AF (manning), and of course, four to six committees in Congress. These groups are all taking active roles, pulling the NRO in different directions, and the DNRO doesn’t have the ability now to lead properly,” this official said.

One of the key jobs the Obering panel will have is drafting a new charter for the NRO. The current charter was drafted 44 years ago, noted the former government official, and refers to jobs that no longer exist. A quick reading of the charter also reveals that many of the jobs once done by the NRO are now done by other agencies such as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, whose creation was driven by technology changes that the charter’s drafters could not have foreseen, such as digital mapping. The charter also endows the Secretary of Defense with final budget authority for the NRO, something that Defense Secretary Robert Gates himself overturned in a memo two years ago. That memo granted the DNI budget authority over any program funded with 51 percent or more of money from the National Intelligence Program.

In an exchange with Gates at Wednesday’s House Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota asked how the rewriting of the charter was faring. Kline, a Republican, is also a member of the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence.

“Director Blair and I are in full agreement on the need for a new charter for NRO. The only thing holding it up is the appointment of a new director,” Gates said, putting his best intelligence community spin on things. The last director, Scott Large, resigned one day after Obama approved a massive new satellite system to be built by the NRO.

But the charter may be the last thing the Obering panel works on. The former government official said Blair was told by a panel member to hold off on writing the charter until the NRO’s new missions and authorities have been determined. “You write the charter after you decide what you want to do,” this source said.

Also, the chase for a new NRO director faces rough ground. Three sources told us that numerous candidates have been approached and have turned the job down. The former intelligence official said the new charter may have to be written before they can get a new director, which might complicate Gates’ life. “I’m guessing that they are having a hard time getting a great leader to fill the position, and a clarifying charter might very well be a condition to get someone great,” the former intelligence official said.

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	Chief Houston May 15th, 2009 at 9:30 am KISS Doctrine should prevail. Information flow patterns should be the backbone. If the situational leadership can handle the group interface objections and begin to lead through the maze, then this may be viable. The first thing is to untie the knot, then figure out what the objective of the line is, before you begin to secure it properly. Finally, oversight can be a review of the resultant data if the systems flows properly.
	DensityDuck May 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm It seems that this may well be part of the result of declassification. Once people know that there’s pie, they’re all gonna want a slice. Back when you couldn’t distribute IMINT because it would blow “fact-of IMINT”, it was a lot easier to define a narrow mission and optimize for it!
	The58thMIND May 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm SERIOUSLY? Are we really going to get the same folks together (again and again and again) and go through this? What’s it going to take for everyone to realize that we’re just rehashing the same old song and dance? We must start looking at other avenues and fresh points of view to get truly unique and NEW approaches to these community requirements.
	DensityDuck May 19th, 2009 at 12:48 pm 58thMIND: Part of the issue is that there really is no “community”. ‘Strategic Intel’ and ‘Tactical Intel’ are totally different requirements. Indeed, it seems to me that a lot of the recent confusion comes from DoD trying to steal NRO money to buy DoD missions…another end-run around the acquisitions process, similar to “hosted payload”.
	David Rahfeldt May 20th, 2009 at 10:01 pm Want a world class NRO ? Give them back their own budgetary control, give them back their own right to mission determination and prioritization of taskings, give them back research money to fund technology development that is real and significant. Give them 12 boses, no control over mission or taskings, make them share funding randomly with whoever can get on their coat-tails to suck up their time and budget … and you are lucky if they can produce 1980’s quality results still , at all … The point made about strategic and tactical intel is a critial one … it takes different assets, different analysis, different deployment methodologies, simply put, it is a different mission and different skill set using different technologies. Technology is not magic, neither are craftsman … gotta have the right men and tools if you want the mission to succeed. Failure is not only an option, it is probable if they dont get the tools, technology, funds, and autonomy they need.
	Do the right thing May 21st, 2009 at 2:32 am Seems like they need to restructure more than just the NRO. Do we have too many intel groups and too many layers of oversight? Wasn’t that problem in masking the 911 perpetrators? Why don’t we have more vertical integration and less horizontal disintegration???