He also wrote a paper envisaging counter-terrorism and intelligence gathering roles for the service, predictions that have since been realised.
The Pentagon's expanded intelligence-gathering role, in particular, has created occasional conflicts with other federal agencies.
Restricting drones strikes to the military, officials said, would allow the CIA to return to its more "traditional" intelligence-gathering role.
"If you're a shooter, go do that job," said the former intelligence official, who has opposed efforts by the Pentagon to expand its intelligence-gathering role.
Traditionally, the New York Fed president's intelligence-gathering role has involved routine consultation with financiers, though Mr. Geithner's recent predecessors generally did not meet with them unless senior aides were also present, according to the bank's former general counsel.
Ironically, GCHQ and its intelligence-gathering role was only "avowed" - officially confirmed to exist - after Geoffrey Prime, one of its former officers, was convicted in 1982 of spying for the Soviet Union.
As John Cook, writing at Gawker, put it, the video "shockingly documents the fact that at least one NPR executive who has absolutely no news-gathering role is a mainline liberal and refuses to accept money from shadowy Muslim organisations".
The NSA's information-gathering role was then obscured through a process called "parallel construction" when the drug agency brought criminal charges.
On the editorial page, the newspaper sets aside its objective news-gathering role to join its readers in a dialogue about important issues of the day — to exhort, explain, deplore, mourn, applaud or champion, as the case may be.
