From Ellen Nakashima, the Washington Post: Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said Tuesday that he has won a "conceptual agreement" to remove the $53 billion national intelligence budget from Pentagon control and place it under his purview by 2013 , as part of an effort to enhance his authority over the U.S. intelligence community.
"To me, it’s a win-win," he told an audience at the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation conference here. Clapper’s deal with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would take "$50 billion off the top line" of the Pentagon budget and give the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) "more authority and oversight" of the budget. The $27 billion military intelligence budget would remain under the Defense Department, Clapper said. …
Clapper, in an interview after his remarks, said the move would not change anything "in the oversight" relationships with Congress but would give him administrative control over the national intelligence budget, which includes money for the CIA and the National Security Agency. …
The move would mean "we don’t have to go through the [military] services to find someplace on the DOD tree to hang money in order to give it to an intelligence agency," Clapper said. The change would bring more internal "transparency" to the budget so he can more easily see where money is, he said. …
Clapper said he is collapsing the roles of national intelligence officers and mission managers under "a single template" to eliminate duplication. There will be 14 or 20 intelligence managers who will be responsible for regional or subject areas, including a new national intelligence manager for cyber-security to "clarify" the intelligence community’s role. "I do not believe that the intelligence community is responsible for cyber-security of all the country," Clapper said. (photo: Reuters)
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