ARLINGTON, VA: In an effort to promote dialogue between national security professionals and the outside world, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) has intensified its outreach through media relations, events, and a revamped Web site, www.insaonline.org.
The Web site is intended to offer intelligence news to the public and its members, who run the gamut from students to members of the business community.
The nonprofit group also held a series of forums with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which ended on November 1.
INSA is working with the Adfero Group, which is providing strategic communications advice and has a homeland-security practice with ties to Capitol Hill.
Pressing security issues such as warrantless wiretapping have increased the association's importance among security professionals.
"INSA is a forum where people in the government, industry, and academia can be brought together to come up with better ways to do intelligence," said Jason Kello, INSA's PR director. "In the past six months, [we've] gone from a gathering of intelligence people to a place where reporters can seek comment [and] students can seek guidance for better understanding and, hopefully, a blueprint for the future of national security."
"We're looking [to create] the intelligence agency of the 21st century," he added.
INSA board members include chairman John Brennan, the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, former National Security Agency deputy director Barbara McNamara, and Dr. Robert Gallucci, the dean at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
"Having access to an organization with the institutional knowledge to help them understand these debates has been very positive for them," says Chris Battle, director of the Homeland Security practice area at Adfero.
In conjunction with the DNI and the National Press Club, the INSA celebrated the 60-year anniversary of the National Security Act by hosting six events over five days in September.
