Along the way, the CIA and the DNI spend a good deal of time explaining the intelligence field to newcomers in the group and laying out what they can expect intelligence to do and not do. An enduring aspect of this entails making sure that fledgling officials understand that intelligence is there to inform policy, and not to make it. Not all countries operate that way, but the U.S. system assumes that staying out of policymaking is one way to ensure that intelligence remains as objective as possible.
So this role inevitably casts intelligence, and most often the CIA, in the role of what might be called the “fact witness” in foreign policy deliberations. It is supposed to look at the issues dispassionately, almost clinically, and enumerate what is actually known, what is not, and offer assessments — combinations of evidence and inference — on where things might be headed. I once heard Gen. Brent Scowcroft, former national security advisor for President George H.W. Bush, sum it up as follows: “The role of intelligence is to narrow the range of uncertainty when difficult decisions must be made.”
This may be simultaneously the most important and the most challenging role for the CIA in the Trump administration. The CIA contributes heavily to daily intelligence publications such as the President’s Daily Brief. Of equal importance, the agency director or his designee, along with or in place of the DNI, traditionally begins foreign policy deliberations in the White House Situation Room with a briefing on “The Situation” — that is, the basic facts from which the discussion then proceeds among policymakers such as the national security advisor, the secretaries of state, defense, homeland security, and treasury, and the chairman of the joint chiefs.
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