Office of the Director of National Intelligence

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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was created in 2005 on recommendation of the 9/11 Commission Report. It is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

The ODNI oversees intelligence gathering and analysis from the 16 intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies spread throughout the federal Executive Branch. The 16 agencies are informally referred to as the Intelligence Community (IC).

The competition, and often confusion, between the various members of the IC exists on two levels. First the traditional and institutional difference between proactive covert intelligence operations, and reactive defensive counter-intelligence measures. Both are independently specialized fields and are often unaware of each other's activities. A central clearinghouse is needed to coordinate the two fields, exchange information, produce consensus analyized data, and avoid conflict.

Secondly, inter-agency tasking, analysis, and redundancy needs oversight and coordination. Agencies are often reluctant to share sources for fear of leaks and compromising efforts They can often be critical of each other's work. The ODNI's job is to smooth over squabbling and keep people focused on a specific task. And finally, to produce a consensus analysis of data for recommendations to policymakers in both the Executive and Legislative branches.

The Central Intelligence Agency as its name implies, was originally intended to serve as a central collection point from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and Office of Naval Intelligence; the Department of Justice's FBI involved in counter-intelligence; the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; the independent outside agencies of the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and a few others in the Treasury Department and elsewhere. CIA now is simply the largest of all member agencies of the IC, and their tasks are not supposed to spread above or into the activities of the other members.

When the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act was signed into law in 2004, the responsibility for the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) was transferred to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a newly created entity responsible for oversight and coordination of the entire Intelligence Community. The PDB is considered to be an IC product, the production of which is coordinated by ODNI's PDB staff in partnership with the CIA Directorate of Intelligence (DI)’s President's Analytic Support Staff.