Creation
On September 5, 1989 President George H.W. Bush with his Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) William Bennett, unveiled his National Drug Control Strategy which outlined the President’s strategy for coordinating the combined efforts of various federal programs to reduce drug use and drug trafficking in the United States. The inaugural strategy was to announce that ONDCP would develop an intelligence center that would unite U.S. drug-related analytical capabilities and to improve intelligence capabilities. In January 1990, ONDCP announced its plans to create a National Drug Intelligence Center to “consolidate and coordinate all relevant drug intelligence information gathered by law enforcement agencies and analyze it to produce a more complete picture of drug trafficking organizations.” What distinguished the intelligence to be developed by NDIC from that of other agencies was the focus on strategic intelligence.
In the FY1993 Department of Defense Appropriation (PL 102-396), Congress provided statutory backing to the President’s vision for NDIC. In that law, the mission of NDIC was “to coordinate and consolidate.” Initially being staffed with intelligence analysts and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and administered by the FBI, NDIC opened its doors officially in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in August 1993. The Center’s early work often involved providing operational support to other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. NDIC also prepared assessments of drug intelligence from all national security and law enforcement agencies, and produced information regarding the structure, membership, finances, communications, and activities of drug trafficking from intelligence provided by a requesting agency specifically for an assigned tasking. In February 1998 NDIC became an independent component of the U.S. Department of Justice and now employs more than 340 federal employees and contract personnel. As a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, NDIC is headed by a Director, who is appointed by the U.S. Attorney General. The final Director of NDIC was Michael Walther.
Read more about this topic: National Drug Intelligence Center
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a more refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is peaceful as a dream.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)