Q&A: James R. Clapper Jr.
Intelligence Adviser
Furthering GEOINT as a Military Force Multiplier
James R. Clapper Jr.
Under Secretary of Defense
for Intelligence
James R. Clapper Jr. was confirmed by the Senate as the under secretary of defense for intelligence on April 11, 2007. He is the principal staff assistant and adviser to the secretary and deputy secretary of defense regarding intelligence, counterintelligence and security matters. He is also dual-hatted as the director of defense intelligence, reporting directly to the director of national intelligence as his principal adviser regarding defense intelligence matters.
Clapper previously served as the chief operating officer for Detica DFI. Prior to his position at DFI International, he served as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director from September 2001 to June 2006; he was the first civilian director of the NGA. He retired as a lieutenant general from the Air Force in 1995, after a 32-year career.
Prior to his appointment as director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in September 2001, he worked in industry for six years as an executive in three successive companies. His business focus was on the intelligence community.
Clapper’s last military assignment was as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. His earlier assignments included a variety of intelligence-related positions such as assistant chief of staff, intelligence, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, during Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and as director of intelligence for three warfighting commands: U.S. Forces, Korea; Pacific Command; and Strategic Air Command.
Clapper has served as a consultant and adviser to Congress and the departments of Defense and Energy, and as a member of a wide variety of government panels, boards, commissions and advisory groups. He was a member of the Downing Assessment Task Force that investigated the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, and was vice chairman of a commission chaired by former Governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia on the subject of homeland security.
Clapper earned a bachelor’s degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in political science from St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas.
Clapper was interviewed by MGT Editor Harrison Donnelly.
Q: What is your role as under secretary of defense for intelligence?
A: I serve as the principal staff assistant and adviser to the secretary and deputy secretary of defense regarding intelligence, counterintelligence, security, sensitive activities and other intelligence- related matters [hereafter referred to as “intelligence, counterintelligence and security” matters]. In this capacity, I exercise the secretary of defense’s authority, direction and control over the defense agencies and DoD field activities that are defense intelligence, counterintelligence or security components, and exercise planning, policy and strategic oversight over all DoD intelligence, counterintelligence, and security policy, plans and programs.
Q: Your position was recently “dual hatted” as director of defense intelligence within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI]. What was the reason for this, and how has it worked since it was announced last spring?
A: The secretary and the director of national intelligence made this agreement in recognition of the crucial importance of coordinated intelligence efforts to the national security of the United States. The defense intelligence components provide a full range of intelligence products and analysis to a broad spectrum of consumers from military forces in the field to senior policy makers across the federal government. These efforts are intertwined with the national intelligence efforts overseen by the DNI. Currently an appendix to the Director of Defense Intelligence [DDI] memorandum of agreement is being coordinated through the ODNI and OSD staff. This will further define the DDI roles and responsibilities one level down. After the appendix is signed, since it is technically a DNI position, any additional authority and roles will come from ODNI policy issuances. However, the DDI roles are also being included in DoD issuances as appropriate.
Q: Your office recently drafted a new policy directive for military intelligence that mandates information sharing. How does the policy work, and what are you trying to accomplish with it?
A: You must be referring to DoD Directive 5240.1, DoD Intelligence Activities. In reference to the information-sharing provisions, this is a reflection of the desire of both the DNI and the USDI to share intelligence wherever reasonably and appropriately possible, given that we must always protect sources and methods. The default position in the past was the responsibility of the other party to demonstrate their need to know. That has changed and now the burden is on the person or agency with the information to share it. “Responsibility to provide” is the new principle.
Q: Turning to geospatial issues, how do you see GEOINT technology fitting into the broader spectrum of military intelligence programs?
A: Military intelligence relies heavily on GEOINT products and services to accomplish their mission. I see the furthering of GEOINT technology as a force multiplier for the overall military intelligence mission. The need to share information and provide for real-time collaboration between intelligence centers and commanders is essential in carrying out military actions.
Q: What is your role in governance of DoD GEOINT programs, and what is the relationship between your office and agencies such as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency [NGA] and National Reconnaissance Office [NRO]?
A: The formal relationship is my authority to exercise the secretary of defense’s authority, direction and control over the defense agencies that are intelligence components. The means by which I perform that function are varied, and include:
• In accordance with the law, the USD(I) chairsthe Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance [ISR] Integration Council, comprising the DoD’s senior intelligence leaders, which validates the ISR Roadmap.
• We manage resource allocations to the agencies through a portfolio-based resource management process for the Military Intelligence Program and through a robust interaction with the ODNI for the National Intelligence Program.
• The USD(I) participates in a variety of functional management forums such as the NGA-led National System for Geospatial Intelligence Senior Management Council, where guidance and direction for strategic management of the disciplines are developed and implemented.
Q: At the recent groundbreaking on the new NGA facility, you said the event was a milestone emblematic of “the synthesis and melding of mapping, charting and geodesy on the one hand, and imagery, imagery analysis and intelligence on the other.” Can you elaborate?
A: The establishment of a new facility for NGA is a major milestone in the establishment and maturation of geospatial intelligence as a discipline. We started 11 years ago when we created a new organization that basically married two very disparate cultures—imagery intelligence and mapping, charting and geodesy [MC&G]. At the time there were many who felt the idea of merging them was pretty radical. The vision of the agency’s founders was that we needed to integrate these two disparate disciplines into a single discipline, that would ultimately prove to be more powerful than either alone.
We’ve since taken many steps in actualizing that original vision. Consolidating NGA’s Washington area activities into a single physical location, beyond the symbolic value, will significantly improve the agency’s ability to continue the integration and the melding of what were once upon a time imagery, imagery intelligence, and MC&G stovepipes, into a far more powerful, integrated and synthesized capability known as GEOINT.
Q: How do you see the relationship between government and supporting contractors changing, both in intelligence programs generally and GEOINT in particular, and what changes would you like to see for the future?
A: I see changes in resources levels that are being executed in a constrained environment. Downsizing in agency contractor support is occurring, based on DoD and DNI guidance. As for the future, I also see the need for agencies to have a diverse and extremely qualified contractor pool from which to draw support. GEOINT processes and challenges are expanding, as the GEOINT role in supporting the intelligence community and warfighters has also expanded. I feel that NGA needs greater access to the top level of scientific minds to bring new expertise into solving outstanding GEOINT challenges to deliver services to the intelligence community and our warfighters.
Q: A recent RAND Corp. report assesses the effects of using and sharing installation and environment geospatial data assets within and across the business, warfighting and intelligence mission areas of DoD. How are you working to take greater use of the DoD’s installation spatial data infrastructure?
A: NGA has incorporated into its holdings several years now digits from installation spatial data sets. Additionally, NGA has incorporated a version of the Defense Installation Spatial Data Infrastructure [DISDI] data into the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program [HSIP] Gold Version 2.0 Database. HSIP is the federal government’s flagship GIS product for homeland security and homeland defense. This provides the entire federal homeland security and homeland defense community access to the data. Building off these efforts, NGA is also working to incorporate DISDI data standards into the National System for Geospatial Intelligence. This NGA-led effort will result in data standardization and facilitate data interoperability across an ever broader community of users.
Q: What are some of the most important and exciting uses of GEOINT technology by DoD of late that you can share with us?
A: The first thing that comes to mind is not really a GEOINT technology, per se, but rather an application of GEOINT collection— the availability of high-resolution, unclassified commercial imagery to the soldier in the field. Because it is so readily usable, and can be shared with coalition partners and with state and local governments, it continues to grow as the preferred source in many operational environments. The launch of World- View-1, the pending launch of GeoEye-1, and NGA’s strong partnership with commercial data providers will continue to help ensure we provide the right information, to the right people, at the right time, and in the format and at the classification level that best enables mission success.
Persistent GEOINT is another realm in which we’ve seen great advances in support to warfighters. UAVs with full-motion video capabilities, airborne broad-area surveillance for both realtime and forensic analysis, airborne moving-target indicator collection, and more importantly, development of TTP for the fusion and analysis of these multiple streams of data, in concert with more “conventional” GEOINT, has resulted in dramatic improvements to our ability to support all phases of “find, fix, finish” operations.
Q: Looking down the road, what developing GEOINT technologies do you see as significant for military intelligence in the future?
A: Visualization tools will be key force multipliers for most military missions. Also further development of computing power and storage technologies will aid the warfighter, by allowing them to access, store and exploit large data sets of either classified or unclassified imagery, or other GEOINT products. ♦
