the executive branch and so reflect the bureaucratic imperatives of their
cabinet secretaries. The CIA, on the other hand, is an independent U.S.
government agency, much like the Federal Reserve Bank, the Interstate
Commerce Commission, and hundreds of others, now reporting to the
president through the DNI and the NSC. Each IC agency contributes to
the broader intelligence mission in discrete and specialized ways, while
simultaneously participating in the larger effort of providing policy
leaders with the comprehensive and collective judgment of the intelli-
gence community—neither an easy nor an inexpensive task.
Between 1946 and 2004, the DCIs performed three functions. First,
the DCI was authorized to put together, submit, and control the National
Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) budget (one of three intelligence
budgets, the other two controlled by the secretary of defense), which is
the intelligence community budget, integrating intelligence require-
ments that policymakers feel are necessary during any given budgetary
cycle. Second, the DCI managed the country’s counterintelligence pro-
grams, a responsibility shared by some IC agencies. Third, the DCI as
IC chief was responsible for protecting sources and methods. Most of
what is secret about the intelligence process is the way it is done—the
sources from which information is obtained and the methods used to ob-
tain it. This secrecy is mainly for the protection of these sources and
methods; otherwise, U.S. intelligence would be unable to gather and an-
alyze the information necessary to understanding adversaries and issues
relevant to U.S. security. “Protecting sources and methods” forms the
basis for all classification and compartmentation schemes in the gov-
ernment, an area over which the DCI retains complete control.
These three responsibilities—submitting a community budget, con-
ducting counterintelligence, and protecting sources and methods—were
the only ones the DCI exercised in his statutory role as head of the in-
telligence community. Even in this capacity, however, the DCI was
more a coordinator, only able to exercise soft power techniques like per-
suasion and influence. To overcome this deficiency, the typical DCI
needed to bring to his office attributes that enabled him better to man-
age the community—a personal relationship and access to the president,
the skills of an excellent negotiator, and the patience of a mediator.
Some DCIs were very successful in doing this, but most lacked these
qualities and therefore were less successful in their community respon-
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