National intelligence chief: Scope of intel activities continues to expand

The breadth and reach of activities undertaken by the U.S. intelligence community has grown significantly in recent years and shows no sign of abating under the Obama administration, causing at least two key GOP lawmakers to sound alarm bells that the community is being overtaxed.

Far from reducing the role of the U.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration has expanded the scope of its work by requiring a daily intelligence briefing on the global economic crisis. Administration officials are discussing putting the National Security Agency in charge of the nation's cybersecurity efforts, a move civil-liberties advocates said was ill- advised.

"It is becoming overextended," House Intelligence Committee ranking member Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said of the intelligence agencies. "It is doing things that are inherently already being done by lots of other organizations in government."

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., called it a mistake for intelligence agencies to focus on issues such as climate change and the economy. "Not only can we not afford to divert scarce resources away from the fight against terrorism but the intelligence community lacks expertise in these areas," he said.

Civil liberties advocates argue there needs to be more controls on the intelligence community to protect the rights and privacy of U.S. citizens. "Once an agency has power, it's very difficult to ratchet that back," said Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, speaking Thursday at his first news conference, described what he called the "enormous complexity" the intelligence community faces.

"As you've seen, this administration has widened the scope of national security," he said. "It's gone way beyond just worrying about nation-states that can oppose the United States.

"We have to scan and understand a much wider set of challenges, a complex range of issues from nation-states that are challenging us to nation-states that are failing us to issues that cut across that such as cybersecurity, global climate change, Muslim extremist groups using violence [and] proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

Blair added that responsibilities also include "merging intelligence activities in the United States" undertaken by the FBI and Homeland Security Department "with what we do overseas to keep the country safe at home."

The intelligence community has developed a color-coded national intelligence priority framework to track threats and priorities, Blair said.

"It's about a 70-by-70 [cell] matrix with countries and issues down one side and then specific things that we need to know about that issue on the other side," he said, referring to an Excel spreadsheet he uses. "If you showed a time-lapse picture of that national intelligence priority framework you'd see colors shifting over time as things come up in terms of the threat or in terms of opportunity."

Blair gave no indication the nation's intelligence agencies were overtaxed.

Bond and Hoekstra said the intelligence community should have cybersecurity responsibilities. Bond said agencies also cannot ignore threats to the nation's energy security.

But they said climate change and economic assessments can be done by other agencies.

"We're in the mode right now where we're rebuilding the intelligence community," Hoekstra said. "We just need for them to be very, very good at what they do and you can't water down their effort by spreading them so thin."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she agrees with Blair's assessments on emerging threats, but did not comment on whether the agencies are overextended. She specifically said Blair is correct that climate change "could well become a national security issue."