Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi\u2019s administration approved a bill Friday to upgrade the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO) to strengthen Japan\u2019s intelligence-gathering and analysis capabilities.<\/p>\n
The bill will be submitted in the ongoing session of parliament, which is expected to run through July 17.<\/p>\n
The CIRO calls itself a central player in Japan\u2019s intelligence community.<\/p>\n
The director of cabinet intelligence, who heads the CIRO, submits reports directly to the prime minister. The current director, Kazuya Hara, met with Takaichi six times in February.<\/p>\n
The CIRO takes directives from the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and the National Security Council (NSC), and assigns intelligence-gathering tasks to agencies within the intelligence community.<\/p>\n
These include four core agencies \u2014 the Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, National Police Agency and Public Security Intelligence Agency \u2014 and four additional entities \u2014 the Finance Ministry, Financial Services Agency, Japan Coast Guard, and the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry.<\/p>\n
The Immigration Services Agency coordinates with the CIRO on occasion but is not part of the intelligence community.<\/p>\n
Within the CIRO is also the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, which analyzes satellite imagery to support national security, disaster response and other key Cabinet policies.<\/p>\n
Using intelligence gathered by these agencies, the CIRO produces all-source analysis and delivers it to the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and the NSC.<\/p>\n
Unlike the U.S. president, who receives the President\u2019s Daily Brief, Japan\u2019s prime minister does not receive a daily intelligence briefing.<\/p>\n
Instead, in the Prime Minister\u2019s Office, the chief cabinet secretary calls top chiefs from intelligence agencies for a Cabinet Intelligence Committee meeting every six months and the deputy chief cabinet secretary calls the agencies\u2019 executives for a monthly Joint Intelligence Committee meeting.<\/p>\n
The director of cabinet intelligence, the vice ministers for foreign affairs and defense, and the chief of staff of the Self-Defense Forces also brief senior government officials when necessary.<\/p>\n
The CIRO will be upgraded to kokka j\u014dh\u014d-kyoku. Its official English translation has yet to be decided, but one source within the CIRO told The Japan Times that calling it the \u201cNational Intelligence Agency,\u201d or \u201cNIA,\u201d could cause confusion because several countries already use the name. Alternatives under consideration include \u201cNational Intelligence Bureau\u201d and \u201cNational Intelligence Directorate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The national intelligence bureau will be given the same level of authority as the Cabinet to comprehensively coordinate intelligence gathering.<\/p>\n
Under the Cabinet Law, the CIRO is only authorized to liaise on matters related to intelligence on the Cabinet\u2019s key policies.<\/p>\n
The sole area in which the director of cabinet intelligence is able to exercise comprehensive coordination is the implementation of the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which is aimed at preventing leaks of classified information.<\/p>\n
With the upgrade, the director of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi\u2019s administration approved a bill Friday to upgrade the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[295,1467,360,10120,177,179,180,178],"class_list":["post-46224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-cabinet","tag-ciro","tag-defense","tag-espionage","tag-japans-politics","tag-japanese-politics","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}