PUBLIC LAW 105-85—NOV. 18, 1997 111 STAT. 1865 SEC. 932. REPORT ON COORDINATION OF ACCESS OF COMMANDERS AND DEPLOYED UNITS TO INTELLIGENCE COLLECTED AND ANALYZED BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY. (a) FINDINGS. —Congress makes the following findings: (1) Coordination of operational intelligence support for the commanders of the combatant commands and deployed units of the Armed Forces has proven to be inadequate. (2) Procedures used to reconcile information among various intelligence community and Department of Defense data bases have proven to be inadequate and, being inadequate, have diminished the usefulness of that information and have precluded commanders and planners within the Armed Forces from fully benefiting from key information that should have been available to them. (3) Excessive compartmentalization of responsibilities and information within the Department of Defense and the other elements of the intelligence community has resulted in inaccurate analysis of important intelligence material. (4) Excessive restrictions on the distribution of information within the executive branch have disadvantaged units of the Armed Forces that would have benefited most from the information. (5) Procedures used in the Department of Defense to ensure that critical intelligence information is provided to the right combat units in a timely manner failed during the Persian Gulf War and, as a result, information about potential chemical weapons storage locations did not reach the units that eventually destroyed those storage areas. (6) A recent, detailed review of the events leading to sind following the destruction of chemical weapons by members of the Armed Forces at Khamisiyah, Iraq, during the Persian Gulf War has revealed a number of inadequacies in the way the Department of Defense and the other elements of the intelligence community handled, distributed, recorded, and stored intelligence information about the threat of exposure of United States forces to chemical weapons and the toxic agents in those weapons. (7) The inadequacy of procedures for recording the receipt of, and reaction to, intelligence reports provided by the intelligence community to combat units of the Armed Forces during the Persian Gulf War has caused it to be impossible to analyze the failures in transmission of intelligence-related information on the location of chemical weapons at Khamisiyah, Iraq, that resulted in the demolition of chemical weapons by members of the Armed Forces unaware of the hazards to which they were exposed. (b) REPORT REQUIREMENT.— Not later than March 1, 1998, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to Congress a report that identifies the specific actions that have been taken or are being taken to ensure that there is adequate coordination of access of commanders of the combatant commands and deployed units of the Armed Forces to intelligence collected and analyzed by the intelligence community.
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