Intelligence in the United States (U.S.) security context can be said to any bit of information gathered within or outside the nation that poses a threat to the United States, its citizen, properties and interests. This information is used to make important decisions by the military commanders, policy makers and security agencies. Intelligence information passes through six steps that include; planning and direction that entails what is required, collection that involves collecting raw data of a given area of interest, processing, analysis, dissemination and evaluation (DNI, 2013).
In U.S. intelligence information is handled by the intelligence community. These are groups involved in intelligence activities, either independently or collectively, with an aim of shaping foreign relations and protecting the U.S. The United States intelligence community is led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The office of DNI was established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) following the investigation of what was amiss during 9/11 attack. The office of DNI main goal is to facilitate information sharing and integration across the U.S. intelligence ecosystem (DNI, 2013).
The U.S. intelligence community have enough resources to carry out their activities. For example, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have the best minds in all fields. These intelligence agencies engage fresh graduates, hackers and seasoned employees. For instance, the FBI, the CIA and National Security Agency are known to have the best cybersecurity professionals (Utica University, 2019). The intelligence community in the U.S. has been in existence for decades. This has made these agencies to accumulate a wealth of skills and expertise.
The number one challenge of interagency cooperation is bureaucracy. When each agency has its own line of command it becomes difficult to integrate with another agency. Take an example of the FBI, the bureaucracy of reporting can be quite different from NSA. This makes integration to be a big deal. The bureaucracy comes with another challenge of agencies thinking they are superior (turf battles). This makes these agencies to act independently. For instance, the FBI may decide to collect intelligence and act on it using its Special Weapons and Tactics Teams (SWAT) without involving other security agencies. This is risky as American enemies can carry out an attack while the concerned agency is still having the unshared intelligence on its domain. This was the case with 9/11 terror attack (Kaiser, 2011).
Civil liberties and the American way of life is another challenge that hampers interagency cooperation. Interagency cooperation involves sharing individuals’ information. Some of these information can infringe individual privacy. This makes information sharing a big deal. This is because the FBI, the CIA, or any other intelligence community may collect intelligence and use it properly but sharing it with another agency can make the same information land on a rogue officer. This can make that information to be used against the person it relates to (DHS, 2020).
Markle Report emphasized the need of information sharing within the intelligence community. The report recommended presence of technology based domain where information from different IC could be availed to users. The systems had to have some metrics of accountability. It also had to be accessible by State, Local and Tribal governments security agencies. The report also pointed on the issue of removing bureaucracy, as well as ensuring privacy issues are addressed relating to shared information (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2004).
