The Next-Generation DNI

Posted: February 26th, 2017

By Ronald Marks

Ron is currently President of Intelligence Enterprises, a national security-consulting firm composed of a network of former senior national security officials. Ron spent 16 years with the Central Intelligence Agency. During that time, he occupied a number of increasingly senior positions ranging from clandestine spy to Senate Liaison for five Directors. These positions include Special Assistant to the ADCI for Military Support, U.S. State Department Program Director for Law Enforcement Issues in Russia and Eastern Europe and a senior budget director at the National Reconnaissance Office. Since leaving government, Ron has been a senior defense contractor and a software executive. In 2011, Ron was selected as Director of Battelle Memorial Institute's Cyber Doctrine Program where he is working to delineate a United States Government Cyber Doctrine that frames the uses and limits of America's cyber activities both domestically and internationally. Ron is a Standing Committee Member of the CSIS Transnational Threats Project. He is also a member of: the Atlantic Council, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and The Cosmos Club and teaches as an adjunct professor on national security at GWU and the National Defense University. Marks has appeared on NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and numerous radio news and talk shows. In addition, he has written editorials for the Washington Times on intelligence matters, and the Christian Science Monitor on homeland security issues. He has also commented on C-Span's Washington Journal, NPR and Public Radio International. Ron has been quoted on national and homeland security matters in U.S. News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, The National Journal, Government Executive, various Newhouse Newspapers, and Insight Magazine. Ron is author of the book: Spying in America in the Post 9/11 World: Domestic Threat and the Need for Change—a book that focuses on the challenges and legalities of U.S. Domestic Intelligence collection in the Internet age. Ron received his Bachelors in Business Administration and Economics from Lewis and Clark in 1978. Ron went on to the study at the Northwestern School of Law and took his Masters in Economics at the University of Oregon in 1982.

Saying you are in favor of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is like suggesting you are a Republican in D.C. – the odds against are 20-1 and you are considered either peculiar, dense, or deviant. But, there is a purpose for the DNI. It is needed still. And the sooner former Senator Dan Coats can be cleared for the job, the sooner the Next Generation of DNI can begin.

It is lost in the antiquities now, but the DNI was set up because of two successive, structural intelligence failures on the part of the Intelligence Community – the 9/11 attacks and the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The Congress, the Bush Administration, and a sizable portion of the public decided the Director of Central Intelligence running both the CIA and the Intelligence Community (IC) was simply not working any more. The Director had enough to do without worrying about budget and program for the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. And they were right.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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