Question

Thanks for your main discussion post answer on the IC organization. There are many different ways to group or categorize the agencies within the IC and I would now like to point out that one way to do that is to ask what is the primary focus of those agencies or what functions were they created to perform. For example, one of the many differences between organizations in the IC is that some organizations are 'pure' intelligence agencies so to speak (like the CIA, DIA, NSA, NGA) while others are primarily from the Law Enforcement Community (LEC) such as FBI, DEA, and DHS -- which is the nation's largest law enforcement agency).  It is also important that you understand the organizational cultural differences between these types of agencies.

For a parallel comparison, there are variances in perspectives by branches of the military (the services) with different cultures between the armed forces with the Air Force being very technology focused, while the Marines very expeditionary and focused on Combatatives as examples. Of course there are similarities too (military culture is generally common overall across all the services when you compare us to diplomats in the State Department for example). There are also military subcultures as many of you are aware of like aviators and special operator sharing similarities with each other regardless of the branch they serve in. As an example, in Special Operations Forces (SOF) where I work "...because of these similarities that the word 'operator' is now conversationally used to apply to any SOF member in a combat arms position. It’s not uncommon for (Army) Special Forces members, (Navy) SEALs, (Army) Rangers, or U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen to relate more to each other than they do their own branch’s conventional forces" (Ryan, 2019, para 6.). There are also similarities between the ground branches of the Armed Forces; see my P.S.S. below for more on that.

My point bringing all this up is to set you up to understand that intelligence agencies have their own cultures, which vary from the organizational cultures of law enforcement agencies (similar to what I mentioned about the military branches). So if you did not already know, you should be aware of these differences when looking at Intelligence and law enforcement organizations. These are not the case 100% of the time as I have worked with many intelligence analysts and HUMINT focused agents in the FBI that are more like their CIA counterparts than they are with their own fellow FBI employees who focus on white collar criminals or organized crime.  So having said this, I would like you to take a look at the article from Gorman and tell me what do you think the organizational cultural differences are between the IC and LEC?