body-of-secrets-anatomy-of-the-ultra-secret-national-security-agency-2002

theory the CIA director is responsible for all U.S. spy agencies, Gates saidthat in practical terms this is no longer so. "We don't really have aDirector of Central Intelligence [DCI]," he said in a CIA publication."There is no such thing. The DCI at CIA controls only a very smallportion of the assets of the Intelligence Community, and there are somany entities you don't have any director."Nor does the DCI have any real power over the community's pursestrings. A commission on intelligence reform headed by former defensesecretary Harold Brown and former senator Warren B. Rudman of NewHampshire noted in 1996 that the director of central intelligence controlsonly 15 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget. Two years later even thatestimate had dropped. Speaking about the authority of the DCI, JohnMillis in late 1998 said, "It is very difficult to exercise authority over theNational Foreign Intelligence Program and all its agencies because ninetypercent of them are funded and owned and operated by the Departmentof Defense." That, in Millis's view, has led to another problem: "anabsolute and total fixation on near-term, tactical intelligence" at the costof strategic—political and diplomatic—intelligence. "Since DesertShield/Desert Storm," he said, "we have abandoned the strategic missionin large part to meet the pressing requirements the military has made fortactical intelligence."In an effort to rebuild the Clandestine Service, the CIA, in the late1990s, began the largest recruitment drive for new case officers in itshistory. From 1998 to 1999 the number of job offers jumped 52 percent.Director George Tenet also directed the rebuilding of the CIA's overseaspresence and the overhauling of the agency's clandestine trainingfacility—"the Farm"—at Camp Perry near Williamsburg, Virginia. Thenumber of clandestine and covert action specialists trained annually haddropped to less than a few dozen. But by 1999 the number of students,most of whom were between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-two, hadjumped to 120 and was expected to rise to 180 over the next few years.At an average cost of $450,000 to train a case officer, rebuilding theClandestine Service is a significant investment. To further beef up thehuman spy capability, Tenet has allowed the Defense Humint Service,the Pentagon's human intelligence agency, to send its students to CampPerry for training.Tenet made rebuilding the CIA into a significant intelligence agencyhis top priority. In a speech at Georgetown University in the fall of 1999,he clearly signaled that he preferred human spies over machines. "At theend of the day," he said, "the men and women of U.S. intelligence—notsatellites or sensors or high-speed computers—are our most preciousasset."407