US INTELLIGENCE AND ORGANITF, D CRIME

Overview President Clinton's Decision Directive 42 makes organized crime more than a law enforcement issue: it is now a national security threat to the United States. The October 1995 Directive, which was reproduced in Volume 1, Issue 3 of Trends in Organized Crime, brought national attention and the commitment of government resources. The documents included in this section come from the executive branch and the Republican-dominated Congress. They reveal a grow- ing consensus and a bi-partisan commitment to fight organized crime.

These developments are now stimulating some bureaucratic struggles among United States government agencies as they compete for jurisdiction and oversight of this new government objective. The conflict between the foreign policy community and the law enforcement communities is evident in the Presidential Commission report Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of US Intelligence. Jurisdictional, legal and constitutional issues arise in the discussions about integrating the intelligence community into what had previously been seen as a law enforcement issue. This debate is also taking place in other democracies. In the United States, CIA and NSA can only collect intelligence for "foreign intelligence" purposes, whereas the FBI complains that the intelligence agencies do not share needed informa- tion. The Commission Report recommends an Executive Order to "clarify that intelligence agencies with collection capabilities may collect informa- tion about non-US persons outside the United States at the request of a US law enforcement agency. It further recommends "sharing of relevant informa- tion between law enforcement and intelligence communities."

IC21: Intelligence Community in the 21st Century, a major study from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, states that the increas- ing problems of international organized crime and money laundering are forc- ing further coordination and information management between the two communities. The presidential commission believes that improved coordina- tion can be achieved without a change in legislation.

Roy Godson, who has written about both organized crime and intelligence matters, calls for government-private sector cooperation to combat organized crime, and provides examples of where such strategies have been effective.

Setting the Course: A National Drug Strategy, prepared by the Republican congressional leadership, focuses primarily on domestic measures to attack the drug problem, but also recommends a number of international initiatives to counter organized crime.

126 Ta~ms m O R c ~ CRIME ! SUMS~a 1996