Establishment of the National Maritime Intelligence Center : understanding the foundations of trust to support a collaborative environment in homeland security

Abstract

On January 14, 2009, the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Admiral Mike McConnell (ret.), established The National Maritime Intelligence Center (NMIC). The NMIC was created to serve as the national focal point for maritime intelligence, ensuring a unified national effort to execute the Maritime Strategy and the National Strategy for Maritime Security (NSMS) at all levels of government. The establishment of the NMIC is part of the Navy's response to an Intelligence Community Directive through which the DNI challenged all intelligence community (IC) elements to establish an "analytic outreach" initiative to "engage with individuals outside the intelligence community to explore ideas and alternate perspectives, gain new insights, generate new knowledge, or obtain new information." That directive had been a response to recommendations from the 2005 Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction Report, which recommended that "IC analysts broaden their information horizons by collaborating with... expertise wherever it resides..." This thesis will examine the question: can the NMIC design and create a culture of trust and collaboration that collectively draws input from analyst, collector, and customer to effectively support maritime domain awareness intelligence support regarding homeland security?