10 U.S.C. § 441 — Establishment

(a) Establishment. This section creates the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). NGA is a combat support agency of the Department of Defense, and it has significant national missions. (b) Director. The Director of NGA is the head of the agency. Whenever the Director position becomes vacant, the Secretary of Defense must recommend someone to the President for appointment. If the person appointed Director is an active-duty officer of the armed forces, the job is automatically treated as a position of "importance and responsibility" under section 601 of this title, meaning it carries the rank of lieutenant general — or, for a Navy officer, vice admiral. (c) Director of National Intelligence Collection Tasking Authority. Unless the President directs otherwise, the Director of National Intelligence has authority — except where the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense have agreed otherwise — to: (1) approve the requirements for what gets collected using national imagery collection assets; (2) decide the priority order of those requirements; and (3) resolve any conflicts between those priorities. (d) Availability and Continued Improvement of Imagery Intelligence Support to All-Source Analysis and Production Function. The Secretary of Defense, working with the Director of National Intelligence, must take all steps necessary to make sure imagery intelligence support for "all-source" analysis and production (intelligence work that combines many kinds of sources) stays fully available and keeps improving.