Q&A: General Michael V. Hayden
Intelligence Strategist
Guiding the Intelligence Community and Protecting America
General Michael V. Hayden
Principal Deputy Director
of National Intelligence
United States Air Force General Michael V. Hayden was appointed principal deputy director of national intelligence (PDDNI) by President George W. Bush on April 21, 2005. He is the first person to ever serve in this position.
As the PDDNI, Hayden is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day activities of the national intelligence program. With this appointment, Hayden received his fourth star, making him the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the Armed Forces.
General Hayden entered active duty in 1969 after earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1967 and a master’s degree in modern American history in 1969, both from Duquesne University. He is a distinguished graduate of the Reserve Officer Training Corps program.
Hayden has served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center, both headquartered at Kelly Air Force Base, Texas. He has also served in senior staff positions in the Pentagon; Headquarters U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany; the National Security Council, Washington, D.C.; and the U.S. Embassy in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, and deputy chief of staff for United Nations Command and U.S. Forces Korea, Yongsan Army Garrison.
Prior to his current assignment, he served as director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service at Fort George G. Meade, Md.
General Hayden was interviewed by MDI Editor Jordan Fuhr.
Q: General, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. As this is a new office, could you first provide our readers with a sense of where the ODNI sits in the intelligence community and what the office has been tasked to do?
A: When you think of how we should manage a disparate community of 15 organizations, you might want to think of concentric circles. In the innermost circle are NGA, NSA, NRO, CIA and the National Security Branch within the FBI. The DNI needs to have direct relationships with these agencies. Some of these agencies have more than one boss—I’ve been in that situation and sympathize, and I think it’s one reason a hierarchical model, a pyramid, won’t work.
In the middle circle are four agencies I’d call inherently departmental, but each has an important national function that no one else is filling. I’d include here the intelligence bureaus within Treasury, State, Energy and Homeland Security. DIA is sort of the exception; it spans several circles, in that it has a huge customer base within DoD but also has important and extensive national functions it fills. In the outer circle are five more agencies I’d also call inherently departmental—we provide broad direction, the national mission is more limited, and the departments they serve provide more day-to-day management. I include in this group the military service intelligence organizations and the Coast Guard.
In all cases we do provide overall direction and guidance. As for our charter, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and the 70-plus WMD Commission recommendations guide our work each and every day.
Q: So, within this realm, what is your role and what are your responsibilities as the principal deputy director of national intelligence?
A: If you look at the dozen pages in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 that sets forth Director [John D.] Negroponte’s responsibilities, they are quite succinct on my duties. Basically it says that the PDDNI “shall assist the DNI in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the director.” So in a practical sense, I support the DNI. I may represent the director at the president’s morning briefing when he is traveling or unavailable.
I think it’s important to note that the ODNI is a cabinet-level government organization with numerous interagency requirements in addition to its intelligence community [IC] leadership responsibilities. What I hope to bring to the table are my intelligence career experiences to complement the ambassador’s experience and background. Now that we have all the deputy DNI and major ADDNI positions filled, I’m also engaged with doing day-to-day management, so there’s plenty of work to go around for everyone.
Q: After the ODNI was stood up and Ambassador Negroponte confirmed, he said we must make sure the implementation of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is “value-added, not zerosum.” What does that mean exactly, and how do you accomplish this?
A: Our focus is integration. Inherent in that word is that you have the right pieces, but you’re not putting them together in the best way. For a long time the working assumption where the intelligence community was concerned was that if we let the individual agencies and organizations optimize themselves, it would optimize the IC as a whole.
Now we’re optimized for a different model. The intelligence reform legislation and the WMD Commission recommendations the president accepted said we would optimize the whole, not the parts. You do that by creating new structures—take the National Counterproliferation Center for example—to rationalize work that’s already going forward.
Q: Was drafting “The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America” also a way to make the implementation value-added?
A: Yes. The National Intelligence Strategy explains how the intelligence community works together in support of broader national goals and how the ODNI will help it to do so. The strategy assigns responsibilities to the ODNI leadership to plan how to draw together the IC’s efforts, and thus marks an important first step in providing clear accountability for making this new vision a success. The idea is to make the IC function as a coherent whole, and not simply let the agencies do on their own what they can do and hope that everything works together for the best. This adds value—not burden—in the same way a coach’s game plan helps a team know what it has to do and how to approach the contest.
Q: Not to be brash, but did the U.S. not have a strategy prior to this document? Why is the National Intelligence Strategy so important?
A: The closest approximation to our current strategy was Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s 1999 “Strategic Intent,” which was updated in 2002. There are several differences between previous documents and the “National Intelligence Strategy.” First, the earlier ones were classified documents, while the NIS is available to the public. Second, the earlier documents did not specify who would meet the goals and objectives, or how. Finally, a detailed strategic planning process did not follow the earlier documents, while just such a process is already underway for the “National Intelligence Strategy.” This reflects the fact that this new office, the ODNI, has for its sole responsibility the smooth functioning of the intelligence community.
Q: The document focuses on two types of strategic objectives: mission and enterprise. Could you please elaborate on these?
A: The mission objectives for the intelligence community are derived from the "National Security Strategy". Enterprise objectives describe what we must do to improve our performance. The various agencies will design performance plans that align their resources and activities to the ODNI strategic plan, and they will be held accountable for their performance.
Q: You mentioned at GEOINT 2005 that the “sharing” portion of this document was one of the more contested pieces. The ability to share intelligence across the intelligence community has been cited as vital to winning the war on terrorism abroad and also preventing future attacks on U.S. soil. How is the DNI addressing the information sharing issues?
A: A number of steps have been taken to advance the nation’s ability to share terrorism information. Executive orders 13311 and 13356 established a foundation for improving information sharing. In October 2005, President Bush built upon this foundation with Executive Order 13388, “Further Strengthening the Sharing of Terrorism Information to Protect Americans.” This order clarifies the president’s intent to ensure that the heads of all federal departments and agencies who “possess or acquire terrorism information shall promptly give access to the terrorism information to the head of each other agency that has counterterrorism functions.” Moreover, Congress enacted three laws enhancing the sharing of terrorist information: the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the IRTPA [Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act] of 2004. In April 2005, the president appointed a program manager, who in June 2005 was assigned to the ODNI. The program manager submitted to Congress the “Preliminary Report on the Creation of the Information Sharing Environment” in June 2005. This report identified key issues relevant to the creation of the information sharing environment [ISE] and noted the complex cultural, policy, legal, privacy and technology challenges that the PM, along with all the ISE partners, would need to address.
A number of critical steps have been taken to put in place an adequate support structure that provides the necessary foundation for the PM to address these challenges and move ahead. Without question, there is a lot of heavy lifting to be done in this arena that will take copious amounts of time, persistence and collaboration, as well as firm leadership. The ODNI is postured to take on this tremendous challenge, and I’m optimistic that we can make a real and lasting impact in this critical area.
Q: Before intelligence can even be shared it has to be collected, right? With the great push to increase the number of two-legged collectors, do you think someone needs to stand up for technologies that are collecting intelligence as well?
A: I think we recognize the important role technical means play in intelligence collection. We’ve established the position of assistant deputy director of national intelligence for technical means [ADDNI/ TM] to advise the DNI and the deputy DNI for collection on technical collection methods. The assistant DDNI for technical means facilitates cross-discipline, cross-agency coordination by establishing processes for coordination of intelligence collection, and is responsible for overseeing and managing innovative technologies.
working to develop an integrated collection architecture that will guide future investment in collection technology to make the best use of our finite national resources. The associate director for national intelligence for science and technology advises the DNI on promising new technologies and develops investment strategies for those of greatest importance to the intelligence community. Working closely with national labs and research facilities, he oversees and manages the research of cutting edge technologies that may hold promise for advancing our capabilities in collection.
Q: The Office of DNI wasted no time scaling back the classified Future Imagery Architecture program. In terms of other geospatial intelligence programs, are any being reviewed for possible cancellation? Are there any geospatial programs that your office will recommend for an increase in funding?
A: The upcoming Integrated Collection Architecture will assess the intelligence requirements across the community and across all disciplines to develop a plan for investment in intelligence collection capabilities. Some programs may be found to be deficient while others may be found to be of greater value and significance than we first thought. Until the rigorous comparison of requirements and capabilities is completed, I would be ill advised to comment on specific programs.
Q: In November, the ODNI announced the creation of the Open Source Center? What is the center, and what does the ODNI hope the center to become?
A: The WMD Commission and Congress in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, articulated what many of us understood explicitly—namely that openly available information has been undervalued. Ensuring broader and more effective exploitation of this open source information is vital to improving intelligence provided to policymakers and our ability to protect the nation.
With this in mind, we defined a process to integrate openly available information into the intelligence cycle more effectively throughout the community. We brought in Eliot Jardines from the private sector as the assistant deputy DNI for open source. Using a community open source steering committee, Eliot will foster collaboration, drive strategy and policy development and enhance our ability to leverage capabilities that exist outside the community.
We also worked closely with CIA to establish the DNI Open Source Center. This center will continue to serve as the centerpiece of our implementation effort and will help coordinate the collection, analysis, production and dissemination of open source information. Our intent is that the ADDNI/Open Source and the DNI Open Source Center will nurture a “distributed” open source architecture across the intelligence community.
Our vision is that open source will be a highly valued contributor to all source intelligence, strategic and tactical, and that it will do so in a cost-effective way, utilizing the best capabilities available in the intelligence community and the private sector. If we are successful in achieving this goal, we will also significantly benefit other forms of collection by allowing them to focus more sharply on what they do best.
Q: Any final thoughts?
A: From my perspective, the past eight months have been exceptionally challenging for the intelligence community as it reorients and refocuses under the ODNI’s leadership and guidance. While not everyone may fully embrace every adjustment, everyone knew that change in how the community was led and functioned was an absolute imperative.
Yet looking forward, our work has just begun. Our challenges will be to turn multiple initiatives and plans into concrete improvements. We’re seeing results already with the establishment of the National Clandestine Service, the DNI’s Open Source Center, the National Counterproliferation Center and mission managers for key regions of the world. We’ve appointed a civil liberties protection officer and have a chief information officer for the intelligence community. Budgets have begun to take shape under the ODNI’s authorities and new ODNI personnel policies encourage our talented professionals to serve outside their home agencies as they assume greater leadership responsibilities.
We will need to confront other, thorny issues, like streamlining security clearance processes, improving our language capabilities and supporting long-term, over-the-horizon analysis. And we will need to do all this while continuing to collect, analyze and disseminate the information needed to keep America safe and strong.
In short, much of this work will require many years of diligent effort. I’m absolutely confident that we will succeed in this critically important mission. ♦
