Turbocharge the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board to take control of the intelligence community

POLICY RECOMMENDATION: Appoint transformational, action-oriented people to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), a strategic planning and oversight mechanism for the president to take control of the intelligence community. Hybridize PIAB along the lines of DOGE, so that board members, as private citizens, can work PIAB full-time. Include lesser-known specialists in addition to well-known figures.

REASON: As part of the Executive Office of the President (EOP), PIAB is the only element of the intelligence community under 100 percent presidential control. Part of PIAB’s purpose is to serve as a presidential tool to ensure that the IC faithfully executes the president’s orders and intentions, and to advise the president on intelligence policies and strategies. PIAB is also a presidential troubleshooting tool.

The IC is as inefficient and wasteful as the rest of government. It needs the DOGE treatment by presidential loyalists who know intelligence and counterintelligence but are not part of the machine; who have a future-oriented vision of the IC and what it can, should, and should not do; and who report directly and only to the president.

The DNI, CIA director, FBI director, other agency chiefs, and NSC staff will be bogged down with daily decisions and crisis management. This fact makes a turbocharged PIAB an imperative to ensure that the president’s orders, policies, and intentions are faithfully executed.

BACKGROUND: PIAB’s board members, currently capped at 16, are direct presidential appointees in the EOP. They are not subject to Senate confirmation. They are not federal employees and receive no compensation. They are volunteers. They may use their own resources. They are beholden to no one except the president. Through its chairman, PIAB reports directly and only to the president.

PIAB staff are federal employees on the White House EOP staff.

PIAB contains a standing committee called the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), comprised of five PIAB members to conduct presidential oversight. IOB is a feedback loop to let the president know who is and who is not doing their job in the IC.

President Eisenhower in 1956 established what today is PIAB to ensure presidential control over, and to protect the presidency from, the IC. The board went through many iterations over the years. In 2008, President George W. Bush turned it into today’s PIAB.

PIAB has been seen as a dumping ground for campaign donors and former officials who want prestigious-sounding presidential appointments without doing much work. Turbocharged with transformational visionaries and a DOGE outlook, PIAB can become a full-time powerhouse.

PIAB has the standing authority, or shall be directed by the president, to assess all aspects of the intelligence community, including collection, analysis, and estimates; to evaluate intelligence policy execution; to evaluate management, personnel, and bureaucratic organization; and to propose solutions.

In other words, PIAB has authority to inspect, troubleshoot, and assess any and all aspects of the intelligence community and to recommend actions and policies to the president. See appendix for the operative text of the governing executive order.

Additionally, the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) within PIAB serves as a separate presidential oversight feedback mechanism to assess the ODNI and each intelligence department. It also has authority to “inform the President of intelligence activities that the IOB believes … are not being adequately addressed by the Attorney General, the DNI, or the head of the department concerned.” See appendix for the operative text of the governing executive order.

PUSHBACK: A DOGE-oriented, MAGA PIAB with full presidential authority will create major pushback from the IC and its acolytes. This is good. That pushback will expose problems in need of solutions, and perpetrators in need of removal. Pushback will expose incompetence, fraud, and corruption. It will also assist the president’s IC department appointees in doing their jobs. As with the rest of the EOP, Congress has no authority to limit PIAB, or to confirm or not confirm its members.

GOVERNING LAWS & REGULATIONS: PIAB is governed by Executive Order 13462, signed by President George W. Bush on February 29, 2008. Its predecessors were governed by executive orders dating to 1956.

THE BOTTOM LINE: PIAB is an established, but underestimated, presidential tool to take control of the intelligence community. The President should turbocharge the PIAB to serve as his intelligence-specific DOGE tool under his personal control within the Executive Office of the President, with the all the creativity and resources that PIAB’s individual members have at their disposal, including members with the personal means or the employment flexibility to devote their work to PIAB full-time.

Appendix

Authorities and duties of PIAB, according to the operative text of the governing executive order:[1]

“assess the quality, quantity, and adequacy of intelligence collection, of analysis and estimates, and of counterintelligence and other intelligence activities, assess the adequacy of management, personnel and organization in the intelligence community, and review the performance of all agencies of the Federal Government that are engaged in the collection, evaluation, or production of intelligence or the execution of intelligence policy and report the results of such assessments or reviews:

“(i) to the President, as necessary but not less than twice each year; and

(ii) to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the heads of departments concerned when the PIAB determines appropriate; and

(b) consider and make appropriate recommendations to the President, the DNI, or the head of the department concerned with respect to matters identified to the PIAB by the DNI or the head of a department concerned.”

Authorities and duties of PIAB’s Intelligence Oversight Board, according to the operative text of the governing executive order:

IOB shall:

“(a) issue criteria on the thresholds for reporting matters to the IOB…;

(b) inform the President of intelligence activities that the IOB believes:

(i)(A) may be unlawful or contrary to Executive Order or presidential directive; and

(B) are not being adequately addressed by the Attorney General, the DNI, or the head of the department concerned; or

(ii) should be immediately reported to the President.

(c) review and assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and sufficiency of the processes by which the DNI and the heads of departments concerned perform their respective functions under this order and report thereon as necessary, together with any recommendations, to the President and, as appropriate, the DNI and the head of the department concerned;

(d) receive and review information submitted by the DNI under … this order and make recommendations thereon, including for any needed corrective action, with respect to such information, and the intelligence activities to which the information relates, as necessary, but not less than twice each year, to the President, the DNI, and the head of the department concerned; and

(e) conduct, or request that the DNI or the head of the department concerned, as appropriate, carry out and report to the IOB the results of, investigations of intelligence activities that the IOB determines are necessary to enable the IOB to carry out its functions under this order.”

[1] Executive Order 13462 – President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board, signed by President George W. Bush, February 29, 2008.