Working Group on Intelligence Reform

The Working Group is a project of the National Strategy Information Center's Consortium for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). It is the only ongoing, unclassified forum in which leading government and nongovernment intelligence experts regularly exchange ideas about the future of US intelligence and discuss proposals for its reform. Members of the Working Group include current and former senior intelligence officials, current and former senior officials in the Departments of State and Defense, Democratic and Republican staff members of the congressional oversight committees, and academic specialists.

The Working Group was established in 1992, well before the wave of criticism of the performance of US intelligence that led to the creation of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community. Dissatisfied with the substance and limited character of the intelligence reform debate as it emerged in the early 1990s, CSI established the Working Group to stimulate and expand that debate.

Paul Wolfowitz

Jack Davis was present at a meeting sponsored by the Working Group on Intelligence Reform which Paul Wolfowitz attended on 7 February 1994.

The Future of U.S. Intelligence

In 1996, the National Strategy Information Center published The Future of U.S. Intelligence, a report prepared for the Working Group on Intelligence Reform by Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt.

the report argued that the intelligence community should adopt a new methodology aimed at "obtaining information others try to keep secret and penetrating below the 'surface' impression created by publicly available information to determine whether an adversary is deceiving us or denying us key information". The document recommended the establishment of "competing analytic centers" with "different points of view" that could "provide policymakers better protection against new 'Pearl Harbors', ie, against being surprised". Rather than a narrow focus on information collection, "intelligence analysis must ... make it more relevant to policymakers by emphasizing the forces that shape a given situation", the authors contend.

The study's overall conclusion was that the "future of intelligence" depended on building a new model that would offer "greater flexibility in the collection process" and produce the "big picture" of security threats. Ultimately, Shulsky and Schmitt concluded, the purpose of analysis is to help the policymaker shape the future, not predict it. Intelligence analysis should go beyond simply identifying security threats and assessing the military capabilities of a present or future enemy or a competitor nation; it should be "opportunity analysis" that anticipates chances to advance US interests.

People

Co-Chairs

• Roy Godson
• Ernest R. May

Members

• R Adm. Thomas Brooks, USN (Ret.) Vice President of Government Markets, AT&T
• Dr. Eliot Cohen Director of Strategic Studies, School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
• Brian Dailey Vice President,Business Development and Washington Operations, Lockheed Corporation
• Dr. Jack Davis Former Senior Official, Central Intelligence Agency
• Captain Fred Demech, Jr., USN Former Executive Director, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
• Randall Fort Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Functional Analysis and Research, US Department of State
• Dr. John Foster, Jr. Chairman, Technology Strategies and Alliances
• Dr. Roy Godson, Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, Georgetown University
• Mr. W. Douglas Gow Former Associate Deputy Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Mr. David Gries Former Director, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA
• Brig. Gen. Walter Jajko, USAF (Ret.) Assistant to the Secretary for Intelligence Oversight, Office of the Secretary of Defense
• Dr. John Keliher Former Director, Office of Nonproliferation and National Security, US Department of Energy
• Mr. Richard Kerr Former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
• Dr. Brian Latell Director, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA
• Dr. Carnes Lord Former National Security Advisor to the Vice President
• Mr. Douglas MacEachin Former Deputy Director for Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency
• Mr. John MacGaffin
• Dr. Stephen Rosen Former Senior Official, Central Intelligence Agency
• Mr. David Major Former Special Assistant to the Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Mr. Andrew Marshall Director, Net Assessment, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
• Dr. Ernest R. May Harvard University
• Dr. John Millis House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
• Amb. James Nolan Former Director, Office of Foreign Missions, US Department of State
• Dr. William J. Olson Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of International Narcotics
• Mr. George Pickett Director, Northrop Grumman Analysis Center
• Ms. Diane Roark House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
• DR Stephen Rosen Associate Director, John M. Olin Center for International Studies, Harvard University
• Dr. Gary Schmitt Former Executive Director, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
• Dr. Abram N. Shulsky Senior Fellow, National Strategy Information Center
• Mr. Thomas Smeeton Former Administrator/Chief Investigator, House Committee on the Judiciary
• Ms. Nina Stewart Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
• Mr. Robert F. Turner Associate Director, Center for Law and National Security, University of Virginia School of Law
• Lt. Gen. C. Norman Wood, USAF (Ret.) Former Director, Intelligence Community Staff;

President, Armed Forces Communication and Electronic Association