WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) announced today that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the Fiscal Year 2016 Intelligence Authorization Act yesterday with a provision authored by him that would ensure the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) remains impartial in its intelligence analyses as the agency undergoes a reorganization.

“The CIA has a vital role in providing intelligence information that supports some of our most important national security missions, but for that information to be useful, it must be unprejudiced and fact-based. Anything other than that undermines the fundamental goals of the agency and could lead to flawed decisions with substantial implications,” Senator King said. “My provision will require an independent review of the CIA’s intelligence analysis in the wake of the agency’s reorganization to help ensure that CIA analysts maintain their objectivity and are not influenced by the force of preference for a particular policy. This provision is critical to the functioning of our intelligence apparatus, and I intend to see that it becomes law.”

Senator King’s provision, which was included in the bill prior to the Committee’s markup, would require the Director of National Intelligence to assign the Chief of the Analytic Integrity and Standards Group to conduct a review of finished intelligence products produced by the Central Intelligence Agency to assess whether the reorganization of the Agency, announced publically on March 6, 2015, has resulted in any loss of analytic objectivity. The review is required to be submitted to the Committee no later than March 6, 2017 and would consider finished intelligence products, anonymous surveys, and other evaluation tools to measure the effect that the reorganization has had on CIA’s intelligence analysts.

Senator King’s provision passed as part of the Fiscal Year 2016 Intelligence Authorization Act, which passed the Senate Intelligence Committee by a vote of 15-0.

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