Director of National Intelligence

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is the United States government official – subject to the authority, direction, and control of the President – required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to:
 * Serve as principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council about intelligence matters related to national security;
 * Serve as head of the sixteen-member Intelligence Community; and
 * Direct and oversee the National Intelligence Program.

Under, either the Director or the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence ideally should be an active-duty commissioned officer in the armed forces or have training or experience in military intelligence activities and requirements. Only one of the two positions can be held by an officer at any given time. The statute does not specify what rank the commissioned officer will hold during his or her tenure in either position, but historically a four-star general or admiral has served. The penultimate DNI was retired Navy four-star admiral Dennis C. Blair, whose resignation became effective May 28, 2010. On July 20, 2010, President Obama nominated retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper for the position. Clapper was confirmed by the Senate on August 5, 2010, and replaced acting Director David C. Gompert.

On July 30, 2008, President Bush issued Executive Order 13470 amending Executive Order 12333 to strengthen the DNI's role.

History
Prior to establishment of the DNI, the head of the Intelligence Community was the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The DCI concurrently served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Establishment of the DNI position was one of the recommendations in the report by the 9/11 Commission investigating the September 11 attacks. The report, which was released on July 22, 2004, identified major intelligence failures that called into question how well the Intelligence Community protected US national and homeland security interests against attacks by foreign terrorists.

Soon thereafter Senators Dianne Feinstein, Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham introduced legislation to create a Director of National Intelligence, S. 2645, introduced on June 19, 2002. Other, similar, legislation soon followed. After considerable debate on the scope of the DNI's powers and authorities, the United States Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 by votes of 336-75 in the House of Representatives, and 89-2 in the Senate. President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on December 17, 2004. Among other things, the law established the DNI position as the designated leader of the United States Intelligence Community and prohibited the DNI from serving as the CIA Director or the head of any other Intelligence Community element at the same time. In addition, the law required the CIA Director to "report" his agency's activities to the DNI.

Critics say compromises during the bill's crafting led to the establishment of a DNI whose powers are too weak to adequately lead, manage and improve the performance of the US Intelligence Community. In particular, the law left the United States Department of Defense in charge of the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. (The limited DNI role in leading the US Intelligence Community is discussed in the Intelligence Community article.)

On February 17, 2005, President George W. Bush named U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte to the post, pending confirmation by the Senate. It was reported that President Bush's first choice for Director of National Intelligence was former Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Gates, who was serving as president of Texas A&M University; however, Gates declined the offer. Negroponte was confirmed by a Senate vote of 98 to 2 in favor of his appointment on April 21, 2005, and was sworn in by President Bush on that day.

On February 13, 2007, John Negroponte was sworn in as Deputy Secretary of State, and John Michael McConnell became the 2nd Director of National Intelligence.

Donald M. Kerr was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence on Thursday, October 4, 2007. He was sworn in on Tuesday, October 9, 2007. Kerr, from Virginia, was most recently the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and he was previously the Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Earlier in his career, he was the Assistant Director of the Justice Department's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Declan McCullagh at News.com wrote on August 24, 2007 that the DNI site apparently was configured to repel all search engines to index any page at DNI.gov. This effectively made the DNI web site invisible to all search engines and in turn, any search queries. Ross Feinstein, the Spokesman for the DNI said that the cloaking was removed as of Monday, September 3, "We're not even sure how (the robots.txt file) got there" – but it was again somehow hidden on September 4. Another blog entry by McCullagh on September 7, states that the DNI site should, again, now be open to search engines. This explanation is plausible because some software used for web development has been known to cause servers to automatically generate and re-generate robots.txt, and this behavior can be difficult to turn off. Therefore if the web developers working for the DNI had tried to solve the issue by simply removing robots.txt, this would have looked like it worked at first but then fail once the server had undergone a self-check for the robots.txt file. http://dni.gov/robots.txt has been configured to allow access to all directories for any agent.

In September, 2007, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released Intelligence Community 100 Day & 500 Day Plans for Integration & Collaboration. These plans include a series of initiatives designed to build the foundation for increased cooperation and reform of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as an independent agency to assist the DNI. The budget for the ODNI – and the Intelligence Community equal 43.5 billion. The ODNI has about 1,500 employees. The National Counterterrorism Center is a major organization within the ODNI.

On March 23, 2007, DNI Mike McConnell announced organizational changes, which include:
 * elevating acquisition to a new Deputy DNI position
 * creating a new Deputy DNI for Policy, Plans, and Requirements (replacing the Deputy DNI for Requirements position)
 * establishing an Executive Committee
 * designating the Chief of Staff position as the new Director of the Intelligence Staff. The chart below shows the ODNI's organization, as of November 2009.

The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive is also responsible to the DNI.



Director of the Intelligence Staff
The Office of the Director of the Intelligence Staff (DIS) is responsible for synchronizing and integrating efforts across the DNI staff and components. Offices that fall under the DIS include:


 * Executive Secretary, Office of the Executive Secretariat
 * Director, Office of Administration

DDNI for Collection
The Office of the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection was established to coordinate collection throughout the Intelligence Community under the authorities of the DNI and ensure that the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) priorities are appropriately reflected in future planning and systems acquisition decisions.

The Office of the DDNI for Collection looks across the entire collection business enterprise to develop corporate understanding of needs, requirements, and capabilities to ensure that a holistic view is taken on current and future collection systems. The Deputy Director for Collection brings together key IC stakeholders to get senior level insight into issues.

The DDNI for Collection is supported by four Assistant Deputies:
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Cyberspace Management
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Human Intelligence
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Technical Collection

DDNI for Analysis
Primary authority for analytic activities rests with the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, who is also the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. As of March 2007, there are six Assistant Deputy Directors for Analysis (ADDNI/A):
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for the National Intelligence Council (also Vice Chairman, NIC)
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for the President's Daily Brief
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analytic Mission Management
 * Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analytic Integrity and Standards (also the Analytic Ombudsman )
 * ADDNI/A for Analytic Transformation and Technology (also the Chief Technology Officer )
 * ADDNI/A for Community Support.