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CIA's Directorates ... Understanding More About Them

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DYNAMIC PAGE -- HIGHEST POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION IS TOP SECRET // SI / TK // REL TO USA AUS CAN GBR NZL (U) CIA's Directorates ... Understanding More About Them FROM: Customer Account Manager for CIA (S112) Run Date: 08/06/2004 (C) The CIA-NSA relationship is certainly complex and multi-faceted. Some of the complexity stems from the diverse missions and resulting unique cultures in each of CIA's three main directorates -- the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), the Directorate of Operations (DO), and the Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T). Understanding the differences in these organizations and their cultures may help when dealing with individuals or requests from each directorate. (S) The Directorate of Intelligence (DI) is the analytical arm of the CIA, charged with providing timely, accurate, and objective analysis on the full range of national security threats and foreign policy issues facing the United States. Functions of this directorate include providing US policymakers with the information and analysis needed to carry out their mission of formulating and implementing US national security policy and providing daily current intelligence briefings to senior White House (Presidential Daily Briefing - PDB) and designated Cabinet-level officials (Senior Executive Information Briefing - SEIB). Although there is certainly collaboration between CIA/DI's analytic community and NSA's SIGINT analysts, the CIA/DI is mostly a SIGINT customer using finished NSA/SID product as one of their most valuable sources in producing allsource intelligence products. Of the three CIA directorates, the analytic nature of CIA/DI's culture makes it most like that of NSA/SID. (S) The Directorate of Operations (DO) is the HUMINT-collection arm of the CIA. Even though this directorate and SID both perform collection, the nature of the HUMINT business creates a culture with some dramatic differences to SID's but also with some similarities. A priority for both the DO and SID is protecting collection sources and methods. For the DO, this means protecting people (assets) while SID protects technical sources of intelligence. As a result of these differences and similarities, the DO and SID have very different relationships with foreign partners. There are many examples of DO and SID partnerships with HUMINT and SIGINT enabling each other -- almost essential to obtain the most valuable accesses in today's world. In an effort to better understand and relate to a HUMINT organization, SID has detailed many representatives or referents into the DO to handle specific issues related to each target area. (S) The Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T) is the technical arm of the CIA. Its mission is to access, collect, and exploit critical intelligence by applying innovative scientific, engineering, and technical solutions. Some of the technical services provided by the DS&T, such as technical collection in support of HUMINT operations, require a very technical workforce -somewhat similar to NSA's technical workforce (electronics, signals, etc). As a result of these similarities, there are some excellent examples of SID-DS&T partnering in some areas and other examples of "turf wars" due to real or perceived mission overlap. The DS&T also possesses some very different technical skills/disciplines (disguises, document replication, and audio collection devices, etc.) which can complement SID operations. As in the case with the DO, SID has placed several NSA representatives or referents in the DS&T to facilitate the relationship in specific mission areas. (S//SI) Some joint CIA-NSA efforts , which actually include people from across CIA directorates and SID organizations, offer the best examples of how these two agencies can work well together. The Special Collection Service (SCS) is a joint NSA-CIA organization whose mission is the covert collection of SIGINT from official U.S. establishments abroad. The Clandestine SIGINT Program (ClanSIG), run by the jointly staffed Technology Management Office (TMO) at CIA, provides numerous excellent examples of HUMINT enabling SIGINT and vice versa. In addition to these long standing programs, a more recent example includes the SIGINT proliferation cell -- physically located in the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in CIA/DO but

jointly staffed with NSA/SID, CIA/DO and CIA/DI analysts. This cell has official SIGINT reporting ability. (C) Understanding the differences between CIA's directorates can improve NSA/SID employees' ability to interact effectively with CIA employees. For further information on the NSA-CIA relationship, we suggest contacting the NSA/F5 organization (NSA's representatives located at CIA) or the CIA Customer Account Management folks in SID/Customer Relationships Directorate. "(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)." DYNAMIC PAGE -- HIGHEST POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION IS TOP SECRET // SI / TK // REL TO USA AUS CAN GBR NZL DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108

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