Several recent Intelligence Community Directives (ICDs) were released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on January 22 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists.
Though mostly dry and uninformative, they are nevertheless important as expressions of bureaucratic definition and control.
The newly released directives include (all pdf):
ICD 105, “Acquisition,” August 15, 2006
ICD 300, “Management, Integration, and Oversight of Intelligence Collection and Covert Action,” October 3, 2006
ICD 602, “Human Capital — Intelligence Community Critical Pay Positions,” August 16, 2006
ICD 900, “Mission Management,”December 21, 2006
These and other publicly disclosed Intelligence Community Directives are available here.
The human cost is measured in deaths. The financial cost is measured in the $52 billion taxpayers pay annually end stage renal disease – double NASA’s budget.
Gilman Louie, Longest Serving Board Chair of the Federation of American Scientists, Named Chair Emeritus
The proposed Office will resurrect the long-closed Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), the archive of which has been maintained by FAS for decades at https://ota.fas.org/.
If Congress needs help understanding the risks and rewards of a piece of technology, they shouldn’t have to rely solely on the sparknotes from a salesman. The rub is much simpler: Congress needs nerds.