Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (44 page)

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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

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Some policy makers also want to keep their options open for as long as possible. They may resist making important decisions. Intelligence can occasionally serve to limit options by indicating that some options are either insupportable or may have dangerous consequences. The imposition of such limitations serves as yet another area of friction.
Intelligence often deals in ambiguities and uncertainties. If a situation were known with certainty, intelligence would not be needed.
(Soe
box,
“Intelligence Uncertainties and Policy.
”) Honestly reported intelligence highlights uncertainties and ambiguities, which may prove to be discomforting to policy makers for several reasons. First, if their goal is intelligence that helps them make decisions, anything that is uncertain and ambiguous is going to be less helpful or perhaps even a hindrance. Second, some policy makers cannot appreciate why the multibillion-dollar intelligence community cannot resolve issues. Many of them assume that important issues are ultimately “knowable,” when in fact many are not. This attitude on the part of policy makers can serve as an impetus for intelligence analysts to reach internal agreements or to try to play down disagreements.
Policy makers may also be suspicious of intelligence that supports their rivals in the interagency policy process. They may suspect that rivals have consorted with the intelligence community to produce intelligence that undercuts their position. Again, the increasing political use of NIEs is a case in point. Finally, policy makers are free to ignore, disagree with, or even rebut intelligence and offer their own analyses. Such actions are inherent to a system that is dominated by the policy makers.
(See box: “The Limits of Intelligence and Policy: Hurricane Katrina. ”)
This behavior on the part of policy makers can become controversial. Although policy makers are free to disagree with or to ignore intelligence, it is not seen as legitimate for them to set up what appears to be intelligence offices of their own and separate from the intelligence community. In the period before the onset of the war in Iraq (2003- ), Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith (2001-2005) set up an office that he claimed was a permissible analytic cell. Critics argued that it was charged with coming up with intelligence analysis that was more supportive of preferred policies than was being written by the intelligence community. Without admitting any fault, the office ultimately was disbanded. In February 2007, DOD’s inspector general (IG) released a report on the role played by this DOD policy office, an investigation requested by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The IG found that the office had developed and disseminated “alternative intelligence assessments” on al Qaeda’s relationship with Iraq that disagreed with the assessments of the intelligence community. The IG found this to be inappropriate (although not illegal) because DOD-PRODUCED assessments were intelligence assessments but they failed to highlight for policy makers the disagreements with the intelligence community. In some cases, DOD-produced papers were presented as intelligence products. According to the IG, a version of the assessment shown to DCI Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby also purposely omitted material that was used when the briefing was given to senior officials in the White House. Feith took issue with the findings.
THE LIMITS OF INTELLIGENCE AND POLICY: HURRICANE KATRINA
 
Intelligence officers are fond of using Hurricane Katrina as an example of the limits of intelligence and the role of policy makers, even though it was not a foreign intelligence issue The intelligence on Katrina was nearly perfect the size and strength of the storm, the likely track of the storm and the unique nature of the threat that it posed to New Orleans in particular because of that city’s topography were all known In fact, these were known for days before the storm hit New Orleans However, policy makers in New Orleans and at the state level in Louisiana reacted much too late, thereby increasing the effect of the storm on an unprepared population. The lesson is that even perfect intelligence is useless unless someone acts on it.
 
A similar issue arose during the Senate hearings over John Bolton’s nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations (UN). Critics, including the former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, charged that Bolton took issue with intelligence analyses that ran counter to his policy preferences and that he substituted intelligence analysis with views of his own without making clear what he had done. During his confirmation hearings, Bolton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that a policy maker should be allowed “to state his own reading of the intelligence,” but agreed that policy makers should not purport that their views are those of the intelligence community.
The intelligence community tries to maintain its objectivity. Some policy makers raise questions that can undermine the ability of the intelligence community to fulfill Kent’s wishes to be listened to and to influence policy for the good as well as to be objective. Some conflicts or disconnects can be avoided or ameliorated if the intelligence community makes an effort to convey to policy makers as early as possible the limits of intelligence analysis. The goal should be to establish realistic expectations and rules of engagement.
(See box, “Setting the Right Expectations.”)
SETTING THE RIGHT EXPECTATIONS
 
During the briefings that each new administration receives, an incoming undersecretary of state was meeting with one of his senior intelligence officers on the issue of narcotics. The intelligence officer laid out in detail all the intelligence that could be known about narcotics: amounts grown, shipping routes, street prices, and so forth “That said,” the intelligence officer concluded, “there is very little you will be able to do with this intelligence”
The undersecretary asked why the briefing had ended in that manner.
“Because,” the intelligence officer replied, “this is an issue where the intelligence outruns policy’s ability to come up with solutions You are likely to grow frustrated by all of this intelligence while you have no policy levers with which to react. I want to prepare you for this at the outset of our relationship so as to avoid problems later on.”
The undersecretary understood.
 
COVERT ACTION. Covert action can be attractive to policy makers, because it increases available options and theoretically decreases direct political costs. Policy makers may assume that an extensive on-the-shelf operational capability exists and that the intelligence community can mount an operation on fairly short notice. The assumptions are, in effect, the operational counterpart to the assumption that all areas of the world are receiving some minimal level of collection and analytical coverage.
Policy makers of course want covert actions that are successful. Success is easier to define for short-term operations, but it may be elusive for those of longer duration. As a result, tension may arise between the intelligence and policy-making communities. The most senior policy makers tend to think in blocks of time no longer than four years—the tenure of a single administration. The intelligence community, as part of the permanent bureaucracy, can afford to think in longer stretches. It does not face the deadline that elections impose on an administration.
The intelligence community harbors a certain ambivalence about covert action. A covert action gives the intelligence community an opportunity to display its capabilities in an area that is of extreme importance to policy makers. Covert action is also an area in which the intelligence community’s skills are unique and are less subject to rebuttal or alternatives than is the community’s analysis. However, disagreement over covert action is highly probable if policy makers request an operation that intelligence officials believe to be unlikely to succeed or inappropriate. Once the intelligence community is committed to an operation, it does not want to be left in the lurch by the policy makers. For example, in paramilitary operations, the intelligence community likely feels a greater obligation to the forces it has enlisted, trained, and armed than the policy makers do. The two communities do not view in similar ways a decision to end the operation.
 
POLICY MAKER BEHAVIORS, Just as certain analyst behaviors matter, so do certain policymaker behaviors. Not every policy maker consumes intelligence in the same way. Some like to read, for example, while others prefer being briefed. Policy makers are better served if they convey their preferences early on instead of leaving them to guesswork.
Policy makers do not always appreciate the limits of what can be collected and known with certainty, the reasons behind ambiguity, and, occasionally, the propriety of intelligence. They sometimes confuse the lack of a firm estimate with pusillanimity when that may not be the case. Intelligence officers sometimes liken this problem to the difference between puzzles and mysteries. Puzzles have solutions; these may be difficult but they can be found. Mysteries, on the other hand, may not have a knowable solution. This distinction may be lost on policy makers but it is very real in the minds of intelligence officers. They expect to be asked to solve puzzles; they know they may not be able to solve mysteries.
Given the range of issues on which they must work, senior policy makers probably are not fully conversant with every issue. The best policy makers know what they do not know and take steps to learn more. Some are less self-aware and either learn as they go along or fake it.
The most dreaded reaction to bad news is killing the messenger, referring to the practice of kings who would kill the herald who brought bad news. Messengers—including intelligence officers—are no longer killed for bringing bad news, but bureaucratic deaths do occur. An intelligence official can lose access to a policy maker or be cut out of important meetings.
Policy makers can also be a source of politicization in a variety of ways (see chap. 6): overtly—by telling intelligence officers the outcome the policy maker prefers or expects; covertly—by giving strong signals that have the same result; or inadvertently—by not understanding that questions are being interpreted as a request for a certain outcome. Again, the repeated briefings requested by Vice President Dick Cheney in the period before the start of the war in Iraq were seen by some, mostly outside the intelligence community, as a covert pressure on the intelligence community for a certain outcome—agreement that Iraq was a threat based on its possession of weapons of mass destruction. Even though this was the analytic conclusion, an investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that was highly critical of the analytic process found no evidence of politicization.
 
THE USES OF INTELLIGENCE. One of the divides between policy makers and intelligence officers is the use to which the intelligence is put. Policy makers want to take action; intelligence officers, although sympathetic and sometimes supportive, are concerned about safeguarding sources and methods and maintaining the community’s ability to collect intelligence.
For example, suppose intelligence suggests that officials in a ministry in Country A have decided to arrange a clandestine sale of high-technology components to Country B, whose activities are a proliferation concern. The intelligence community has intelligence strongly indicating that the sale is going forward, although it is not clear whether Country A’s leadership is fully aware of the sale. The State Department, or other executive agencies, believes that the situation is important to U.S. national interests and wants to issue a démarche to Country A to stop the sale. The intelligence community, however, argues that this will alert Country A—and perhaps Country B as well—to the fact that the United States has some good intelligence sources. At a minimum, the intelligence community insists on having a hand in drafting the démarche so as to obscure its basis. This can result in a new bureaucratic tug of war, because the State Department wants the démarche to be as strong as possible to get the preferred response—cessation of the sale.
This type of situation arises so frequently that it is accepted by both sides—policy and intettigence—as one of the normal aspects of national security. The struggle is analogous to the divide between intelligence officers and law enforcement officials: Intelligence officers want to collect more intelligence, whereas law enforcement officials seek to prosecute malefactors and may need to use the intelligence to support an indictment and prosecution. On occasion, policy officials cite a piece of open-source intelligence that makes the same case that the classified intelligence does, and they then argue that it can be used as the basis of a specific course of action. However, the intelligence officers may not agree, contending that the open-source intelligence is validated only because the same information is known via classified sources. Thus, the intelligence officers may argue that even using open-source intelligence can serve to reveal classified intelligence sources and methods. In the case of imagery, at least, the greater availability of high-quality commercial imagery may obviate the entire debate.
There is no correct answer to this debate. On the one hand, the intelligence exists solely to support policy. If it cannot be used, it begins to lose its purpose. On the other hand, officials must balance the gain to be made by a specific course of action versus the gains that may be available by not revealing intelligence sources and methods, thus allowing continued collection. Usable intelligence is a constant general goal, but which intelligence gets used when and how is open to debate.

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