This past November, the Fairfax, Virginia-based National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) released a detailed 124-page analysis that was entitled "Modernizing Intelligence: Structure and Change for the 21st Century." The study showed the US intelligence community's shortcomings and made recommendations for its reform. The report concentrated on the major "structural and organizational dysfunctions" afflicting the US intelligence community.

The chairman of the study was U.S. Army Lt. General Willaim Odom (ret.), the former director of the National Security Agency. Odom was assisted by a senior advisory group that included retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper and retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry Soyster, both former directors of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. Although admittedly a military view of the issue, the military intelligence veterans pulled no punches in calling for a sweeping structural overhaul and realignment of organizational responsibilities throughout the US intelligence community.

The study emphasized the necessity of coming to grips with the most basic issue impeding efforts at intelligence reform -- "the lack of a commonly understood set of concepts and principles applicable universally within the intelligence community. Today, each agency within the IC has its own doctrine or none at all. Until there is an approved and accepted set of doctrinal concepts, principles, and terms for the IC as a whole, clarity about reform issues will remain elusive."

In other words, the intelligence community doesn't speak a common language. Its various organizations will have no trouble interpreting the study's far-reaching recommendations. The proposed functional and operational realignments in signals intelligence (SIGINT), HUMINT, Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), electronics intelligence (ELINT), and counterintelligence (CI) target many of the intelligence community's most sacred cows.

Among the panel's recommended changes:

-- Make the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) the national manager for IMINT;

-- Make the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) the national manager for SIGINT and for operational control and management of the entire SIGINT system;

-- Create a National Counterintelligence Service using the FBI's CI department as its core, augmented with small elements from the CIA's CI organization;

-- Abolish the National Reconnaissance Office, and transfer its program offices to the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA);

-- Restructure the CIA, giving it two major components, the national clandestine service and a component for handling overt HUMINT.