From almost his first day as Director of the CIA, Porter Goss was in trouble with the intelligence establishment. Long time employees who had reached the zenith of their careers prior to 9/11 – especially in the clandestine services – and who were wedded to a culture that demanded very little and rewarded those playing it safe, were at first puzzled, then outraged at Goss’s reform measures. By all reports, those measures cost the agency dozens of senior managers whose expertise many of those left behind are saying will be sorely missed in the coming months and years as the United States is forced to deal with rogue states seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a continuing terrorist threat, and other challenges in Russia, China, and South America.
Indeed, Goss was not hired to “reform” the CIA as much as he was picked to grab it by the throat and shake it vigorously. But why? What kind of culture existed that needed shaking up in the first place?
The CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence retained some of its original character of a university gone to war. Its men and women tended to judge one another by the quantity and quality of their publications (in this case, classified publications). Apart from their own peers, they looked for approval and guidance to policymakers. During the 1990s and today, particular value is attached to having a contribution included in one of the classified daily “newspapers”- the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief-or, better still, selected for inclusion in the President’s Daily Brief.76The CIA had been created to wage the Cold War. Its steady focus on one or two primary adversaries, decade after decade, had at least one positive effect: it created an environment in which managers and analysts could safely invest time and resources in basic research, detailed and reflective. Payoffs might not be immediate. But when they wrote their estimates, even in brief papers, they could draw on a deep base of knowledge.
When the Cold War ended, those investments could not easily be reallocated to new enemies. The cultural effects ran even deeper. In a more fluid international environment with uncertain, changing goals and interests, intelligence managers no longer felt they could afford such a patient, strategic approach to long-term accumulation of intellectual capital. A university culture with its versions of books and articles was giving way to the culture of the newsroom.
Is it any wonder these guys missed 9/11? Or the India and Pakistan nuke tests of 1998? Or any one of a number of other intelligence flops, failures, and missteps along the road to war with Iraq?
The fact is, the CIA does not foster a results oriented culture. Again, the 9/11 Commission:
Yet at least for the CIA, part of the burden in tackling terrorism arose from the background we have described: an organization capable of attracting extraordinarily motivated people but institutionally averse to risk, with its capacity for covert action atrophied, predisposed to restrict the distribution of information, having difficulty assimilating new types of personnel, and accustomed to presenting descriptive reportage of the latest intelligence. The CIA, to put it another way, needed significant change in order to get maximum effect in counterterrorism. President Clinton appointed George Tenet as DCI in 1997, and by all accounts terrorism was a priority for him. But Tenet’s own assessment, when questioned by the Commission, was that in 2004, the CIA’s clandestine service was still at least five years away from being fully ready to play its counterterrorism role. And while Tenet was clearly the leader of the CIA, the intelligence community’s confederated structure left open the question of who really was in charge of the entire U.S. intelligence effort.
And while it is true that the end “product” of intelligence analysis is necessarily vague and full of qualifiers, the fact is that by all reports, the analyses on the terrorist threat, on al Qaeda, on Bin Laden, and now on Iran have been uniformly poor thanks to a watering down process that occurs between those whose job it is to analyze these threats and those whose job is preparing and presenting the intelligence product to policymakers.
The 9/11 Commission calls this effort “playing it safe.” In any large bureaucracy – in the public or private sector – one does not advance their career by going against the grain or thinking outside the box. What this means specifically for the Agency is that lower level analysts who work long hours consuming massive amounts of raw intelligence have their analyses picked over and shaped by more senior managers in order to have them conform to Agency thinking. Couple this with a shocking disdain held by many of these managers for the policymakers and elected officials who consume their end product and you have a recipe for failure.
This is the culture that Porter Goss was hired to shake up. According to many, he not only went about it the wrong way but demoralized the Agency in the process:
Porter J. Goss was brought into the CIA to quell what the White House viewed as a partisan insurgency against the administration and to re-energize a spy service that failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks or accurately assess Iraq’s weapons capability.But as he walked out the glass doors of Langley headquarters yesterday, Goss left behind an agency that current and former intelligence officials say is weaker operationally, with a workforce demoralized by an exodus of senior officers and by uncertainty over its role in fighting terrorism and other intelligence priorities, said current and former intelligence officials
[...]
“Now there’s a decline in morale, its capability has not been optimized and there’s a hemorrhaging of very good officers,” Brennan said. “Turf battles continue” with other parts of the recently reorganized U.S. intelligence community “because there’s a lack of clarity and he had no vision or strategy about the CIA’s future.” Brennan added: “Porter’s a dedicated public servant. He was ill-suited for the job.”
The above is quoted from Dana Priest’s largely one sided article in today’s Post. But even friendly Republicans on the Intelligence Committees echo the criticism that Goss didn’t appear to have an overall strategic goal for the Agency, that he delegated too much to his aides. In this respect, it could be that Goss was not tasked with long term planning as much as he was put in place to rock the boat and see who fell off. In the proudly independent operations directorate, he appears to have had the most “success” at least from the standpoint of fulfilling his goal of turning the culture inside out. Estimates of early retirees from the ranks of overseas postings are between 30 and 90 Station Chiefs as well as other top level operations employees.
Of course, it was no secret that one of the major reason Goss was hired was to ferret out leakers and, as much as possible, put a stop to efforts by active duty personnel to undermine Administration policy on the Iraq War:
Goss’s counterinsurgency campaign was so crudely executed by his top lieutenants, some of them former congressional staffers, that they drove out senior and mid-level civil servants who were unwilling to accept the accusation that their actions were politically motivated, some intelligence officers and outside experts said.“The agency was never at war with the White House,” contended Gary Berntsen, a former operations officer and self-described Republican and Bush supporter who retired in June 2005. “Eighty-five percent of them are Republicans. The CIA was a convenient scapegoat.”
Perhaps a couple of different perspectives on the idea that “The agency was never at war with the White House” would be in order:
The Daily Telegraph 10/10/04:
A powerful “old guard” faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.
Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such “viciousness and vindictiveness” in a battle between the White House and the agency.
John Roberts, a conservative security analyst, commented bluntly: “When the President cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences.”
The Wall Street Journal 9/29/04:
Then there’s the book by “Anonymous,” a current CIA employee who has been appearing everywhere to trash U.S. policy, with the approval of agency higher-ups. And now we have one Paul R. Pillar, who has broken his own cover as the author of a classified National Intelligence Estimate this summer outlining pessimistic possibilities for the future of Iraq.That document was also leaked to the New York Times earlier this month, and on Monday columnist Robert Novak reported that it had been prepared at the direction of Mr. Pillar, the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Mr. Novak reported that Mr. Pillar identified himself as such during an off-the-record gathering last week and, while denying he leaked the document, accused the Bush Administration of ignoring the CIA’s prewar speculation about the consequences of war with Iraq. Others have since confirmed the thrust of the Novak report.
Keep in mind that none of these CIA officials were ever elected to anything, and that they are employed to provide accurate information to officials who present their policy choices for voter judgment. Yet what the CIA insurgents are essentially doing here, with their leaks and insubordination, is engaging in a policy debate. Given the timing of the latest leaks so close to an election, they are now clearly trying to defeat President Bush and elect John Kerry. Yet somehow the White House stands accused of “politicizing” intelligence?
Former NSA Chief Admiral Bobby Inman:
I was utterly appalled during the 2004 election cycle at the number of clearly politically motivated leaks from intelligence organizations — mostly if not all from CIA — that appeared to me to be the most crass thing I had ever seen to influence the outcome of an election. I never saw it quite as harsh as it was. And clearing books to be published anonymously — there was no precedent for it. I started getting telephone calls from CIA retirees when Bush appointed Negroponte, talking about how vindictive the administration was in trying to punish CIA, and I was again sort of dismayed by the effort to play politics including with information that was classified. What is the impact on younger workers who see the higher-ups engaged in this kind of leaking
Clearly, Priest and other reporters are downplaying the idea today that there ever was a conflict between the CIA and the White House and if there was, it was the fault of the White House. This idea is not supported by the facts. The tensions between the two factions were real and leaking done immediately prior to the 2004 election was unprecedented from a supposedly non-partisan Agency. One might argue that opposition to the Iraq War may not have been a partisan issue within the Agency. But leaking a classified pre-war analysis two days before the first Presidential debate that showed the Administration had been “warned” about the unstable post-war environment in Iraq could have one purpose and one purpose only; to hurt the President politically. If there is another definition of partisanship, I’d like to hear it.
If some senior and mid-level civil servants were “unwilling to accept the accusation that their actions were politically motivated,” are they saying that Goss didn’t even have the right to ask that question? This would be ridiculous given the circumstances. Perhaps it says more about the egos of these men and women than it does about Goss himself that they resigned.
Porter Goss will not be remembered kindly by those in the CIA who are left behind. But if he was able to shake the agency up so that the next Director can actually build what the American people deserve – the best intelligence agency in the world – then he would have fulfilled a valuable purpose.
9:02 am
CIA director Goss resigns
CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, leaving behind a spy agency still battling to
9:31 am
[...] Moran weighs in this morning too with more “Republican spin,” which he annoyingly peppers with facts and quotes so as to create a clever veneer of truth. Andrew Sullivan reports feeling shocked, appalled, concerned, and filled with heart-ache as Rick responds to Gary Berntsen: Clearly, Priest and other reporters are downplaying the idea today that there ever was a conflict between the CIA and the White House and if there was, it was the fault of the White House. This idea is not supported by the facts. The tensions between the two factions were real and leaking done immediately prior to the 2004 election was unprecedented from a supposedly non-partisan Agency. One might argue that opposition to the Iraq War may not have been a partisan issue within the Agency. But leaking a classified pre-war analysis two days before the first Presidential debate that showed the Administration had been “warned†about the unstable post-war environment in Iraq could have one purpose and one purpose only; to hurt the President politically. If there is another definition of partisanship, I’d like to hear it. [...]
11:18 am
This from a Time piece quoted over at Belmont Club,
“In a speech in San Antonio last week, Negroponte’s top deputy, Michael Hayden, declared that an office largely under Negroponte’s control — the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC — was now in charge of dictating the role other agencies will play in terror analysis.”,
Makes me suspect that fantasy and fact may soon blend.
If the NCTC ever takes control of the operational side of the terrorism war along with the terror analysis it will be what the fictional CTU is in 24.
12:08 pm
[...] Addendum: Make sure to check out Rick Moran’s post and The Retired Spook’s thoughts as well (here and here) [...]
12:15 pm
Nice, thoughtful post. When thinking about the dysfunctional CIA it is tempting to compare it with the Catholic Church in the US. Infiltrated by homosexuals (pedophiles) the Church was damaged forever by a criminal group who had little boys not salvation on their mind.
The CIA was likewise infiltrated by a group of PC liberals (Carter, Bush 41, Clinton appointies who in turn recruited more liberals). This criminal group had left wing politics not public service on their mind and so leaking to damage Bush, regardless of the damage to America or how many people were murdered, was acceptable. Thus, the CIA is a house divided between patriots and political left-wing partisanship. Too Bad that President Bush didn’t pick a more capable Director to clean house.
12:18 pm
K Street Project Goes to Langley
“But leaking a classified pre-war analysis two days before the first Presidential debate that showed the Administration had been “warned†about the unstable post-war environment in Iraq could have one purpose and one purpose only; to hurt the President politically. If there is another definition of partisanship, I’d like to hear it.”
Sounds like a pretty good definition of partisanship to me. Your argument is flawed, however, by the “Fallacy of Exclusion.” That is, if and only if a leaker is a partisan, in this case a Democrat, could the leak be called partisan. On the other hand, if the leaker was a Republican (cia 85% Republican) or independent partisanship would not apply. The other motivation that comes to mind is patriotism.
1:17 pm
The CIA was created in the wake of WWII to fight the Cold War. The main enemy was the USSR. Because of the overwhelming threat posed by nuclear war with the USSR we accepted as allies many governments that were thugs but were “our thugs”. People in our government (CIA, State Dept., Defense Dept.) who worked for many years with leaders of these thug governments could come to like them, and in turf wars would push the interests of those leaders as being in the best interest of the USA. This is only natural. With the fall of the USSR in 1989 the whole mission of the CIA collapsed. The only mission left would be defending the interests of the foreign leaders that had become personal friends to factions within the agencies. 9/11 and the WOT changed things but the agencies didn’t change. This new main enemy (radical islamic terrorism) means a new alignment of nations. A new alignment of allies and enemy supporters. As with the end of WWII and the start of the Cold War there will have to be a change in the agencies that are tasked with fighting this war. Rumsfeld is doing this at Defense. It is Rice’s “Job One” at State. Those being long standing departments, they will have to be changed internally. The CIA having been a creation of the Cold War will be dissolved and it’s usable parts will be made part of an organization designed to fight this new long war. The DNI looks to be where that new organization will be founded.
2:19 pm
I’m not going to pretend to know what the situation is inside CIA nor am I going to give much weight to anything Priest writes on the issue as she is clearly biased and has an agenda to push. What I find highly disturbing, though, is that there seems to be a small rotten bunch of apples in there that are very vocal and have direct access to media giving the appearance that their views are more widespread than they really are.
As was stated in the article, I didn’t elect any CIA analyst to shape policy to their world view. I don’t want some analyst spinning information to the leadership and I certainly don’t want people in there that let their egos get in the way of their professionalism. We apparently still have some people in there that have a world view that they would want to help bring about through their work. That isn’t what they get paid to do. It isn’t patriotism.
They are paid to present honest analysis. If they get upset of their analysis isn’t accepted in policy decisions and would want to take that policy debate pubic or exact revenge for not having been listened to, then they are not emotionally fit to serve in that position. They have let their opinion of themselves grow larger than life and given themselves power they are not entitled to. That we are still having this debate tells me there is still some dead wood to cut out of the agency.
Another thing I find disturbing is that Dana Priest is still “reporting” for the Washington Post. She is obviously a propagandist and not a journalist. She has an agenda. She would like to see a certain vision of the world come to be and is trying to act as a tool in the realization of that vision. While that is fine in many professions, it isn’t when it comes to reporting. Journalists are the intelligence analysts for the American public and when we get fed distorted analysis, it distorts our decision making process. At least it does until we recongize that we have been fed propaganda and stop listening. Priest isn’t doing the Post any favors. While the chior might love her preaching, the congregation is headed for the doors.
I believe that all of this fuss is over a very small number of individuals, maybe no more than a dozen or two, and their direct access to journalists who are sympathetic to their crusade and share their world view. The saddest part to all of this is the the vast majority of professionals at that agency are never going to say anything in public. We are never going to hear the other side of the story aired in the press. They are too dedicated to their profession to do that. The net result is that we hear only from the rotten ones and through people like Dana Priest, get the impression that the problem is more widespread than it really is.
It isn’t patriotism, it’s closer to narcissistic personality disorder in my opinion.
4:09 pm
The CIA has became so corrupt (if you live with and support filth you become filthy) in it desire to serve the dim-wits and the enemy instead of the nation there is only one cure. The leaks of late show for a fact it is overrun with traitors. Tear it completely down, fire everyone above the field agents (some of them also), and hire a totally new group of Americans. Get rid of the Civil Service protections, if you screw up, you are fired. McDonalds is looking for a few good people.
4:27 pm
Goss and the CIA
Rick Moran has the best take on Goss and the CIA I have seen. It is long, but worth it.Right Wing Nut House � JUST HOW DYSFUNCTIONAL ARE OUR INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES?
4:37 pm
A Sound Sentiment
“Papa likes to know what a man is going to say to him before he starts to talk,†Cathy told Christopher. “If there’s no horse in the first sentence, he knows he’s in the wrong company.â€
–Charles McCarry, The Secret Lovers, 1977, p. 65…
5:27 pm
The Cia has to be totally revamped or disbanded. An intelligence agency or network must have an agenda that (1) reflects American interests and (2) loyal to the agenda of Presidential Administration elected to the Presidency. There must be a military form of discipline involved by their employees with the complete understanding the President is the Chief Executive. There must be a check and balance reflecting the Pattern of the Costitution to avoid misuse politically. Maybe some sort of Oversight Commission appointed to terms of finite time periods. The Commission would be a watch dog to the Intelligence Community and Presidential Administration directives. That Commission should then alert a pre-determined body (i.e. Congress, Law enforcement, etc) for potential hazards or breaches of protocols.
5:38 pm
“The Cia has to be totally revamped or disbanded.”
It looks as if a revamp is certainly in the works but I would caution that it is possible that what we are experiancing is an exaggeration of the reality. Yes, there obviously are leaks and some problems but it is possible that it is a smaller number of people doing more leaking and getting a LOT of press exposure for it. This would make the problem appear much larger than it really is and cause people to get emotional and react without thinking things through. Actually, that is one of the goals of the “narcissistic force” is to cause an emotional response while they remain calm and calculated.
One thing I found encouraging in one of the articles was the idea that some CIA functions weren’t going to be move wholesale, that the people were going to be dispersed among the various intelligence agencies. Or rather, the FUNCTION might move but the people won’t move with it. That might be a good move, or it might cause a bunch more leaky buckets at other agencies. Time will tell.
2:53 am
It’s funny how the actions of a few, or few dozen, employees of the CIA - an agency with thousands of employees, makes the whole institution “partisan” in the eyes of some. What a crock of s**t. Instead of fixing the problem, Goss fixed the blame and conducted a Stalinist purge of officials which caught both guilty and innocent. As a result, the CIA is weak, discredited and demoralized, and worst of all, ineffective. Our security is weaker thanks to Porter Goss and his so-called war against CIA “insurrection.†His clumsy attempt to root out a small partisan cancer might end up killing the agency altogether. It looks like the worst of all worlds to me – the partisans are probably not gone (chances are they are smarter than Goss), and many good and valuable people who’ve dedicated their lives to securing this country have been pushed out of the agency into retirement or intel contracting (You’d be surprised at the brain drain going on in the IC in general as the best and brightest quit the government bulls**t they have to deal with to be analysts for corporations who sell their services right back to the government.).
Is it any wonder these guys missed 9/11? Or the India and Pakistan nuke tests of 1998? Or any one of a number of other intelligence flops, failures, and missteps along the road to war with Iraq?
Rick, I love you, your writing and your blog, but you don’t have a clue about the Intelligence Community. The CIA for decades has had it’s power, prestige (within the IC), and funding comparatively reduced to other intelligence agencies in the US Government. The CIA is supposedly the “Central” agency that coordinates all intelligence activities and is the top of the intel food chain. Well, it isn’t, and it hasn’t been since at least the 1970’s. Let’s examine why. The vast majority of IC money goes to the DoD. The CIA has zero say in how this is spent. Programs started under the CIA umbrella are no longer under it’s direct control. Take NRO for example. The only areas the CIA have expertise in that other agencies don’t is clandestine HUMINT, economic intel, some political intel, and covert action. Even those are being nibbled away at by DoD agencies and others in the IC. The only thing CIA had left going for it was that it was the gateway to getting intel on the President’s desk, which is now gone with the stupid reorganization and the DHS. Beyond it’s niche specialties and the publicity it receives by virtue of a being so close to the President, the CIA in the IC is largely a figurehead that provides some great intelligence in certain niche areas. So please stop limiting criticism or praise for the IC to the CIA. The IC is obviously much more complex than you realize.
The fact is, the CIA does not foster a results oriented culture.
What do you consider “results oriented†intelligence? Please define that for me, I’d really like to know. I’ve been in the IC for many years and that kind of comment tells me you don’t know what the f**k you are talking about. The vast majority of intelligence has zero or minimal “results†at all, but that doesn’t make it unnecessary or invaluable to the security of the United States. The very nature of the intelligence business dictates that we often don’t know ahead of time if intelligence will produce “results†or not. You need to put away your Tom Clancy DVD’s and really learn what you’re talking about.
Despite the huge amount of money we spend on intel in this country, we simply do not have the assets, analysts, time, expertise, and foreknowledge to watch everything. We have the resources to look behind 50 out of 100 possible doors, and which doors we choose to look behind are largely shaped by policy-makers, not intelligence professionals. Oh, and we won’t have the capability to look behind 30 of those doors until 5 years from now, and that’s only if the funding and authorizations come through on time from those same policymakers. And guess who gets to appoint and approve our leadership? Bingo! Those same political policy-makers. And people still wonder why intelligence and intelligence professionals get politicized. Intelligence can’t be divorce from politics, plain and simple. The IC obviously provides guidance to policy-makers, but that doesn’t mean that advice is taken. If the IC ultimately opens the wrong doors, then who’s fault is it?
Let me give you a concrete example. Most people on the right put the blame for the rise of radical islam into the terrorist threat we face today on the feet of Bill Clinton. He surely deserves blame, but the root of the problem goes back to Reagan and even earlier. We all know that many of the leading Jihadi’s got their start in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. We were pouring money and weapons into Pakistani intelligence which turned it around and give it to who they wanted – mainly the radical Jihadists. At several times during the 1980’s the CIA would relay back up the chain of command that many of these groups hated America just as much as the Russians and if it weren’t for the Russians, they’d probably be killing Americans instead. At the time, the POLICY decision was made that defeating the Soviet Union took priority over all else, and future risks were ignored or downplayed, despite warnings from the agents in the field. This was Reagan’s one great strength and one great failure. He was so focused on defeating Communism that he didn’t much care who the US supported as long as they hated Commies. Even policy-makers toward the end of the Soviet intervention worried about where the Pakistan ISI was putting all the money and weapons we and the Saudi’s were sending them. Near the end we covertly (from the Pakistani’s) developed our own networks among more moderate Afghan elements to try to influence Afghanistan in the post-soviet era.
Once Bush the elder came into office, Afghanistan was largely abandoned and many of those hard-won, invaluable human contacts were either lost in the ongoing civil war, or turned against us for dumping them. The abandoning of Afghanistan was a POLICY decision driven by policy objectives – not by intelligence analysis, or the many warnings previously sent. People were too busy celebrating the end of the USSR. How might the war on terror be different if we still had that network built in the early 80’s? Probably a lot different.
So, you say, Rick, “Is it any wonder these guys missed 9/11?†Well, if the Reagan, Bush, and even Clinton Administrations hadn’t f**ked us out of our humint sources and other influence in Afghanistan, we probably wouldn’t have missed 9/11. Piss poor policy decisions and lack of vision by Presidents and Congress got us into this mess in the first place, but I don’t hear a word from you or anyone else about it. The simple fact is, the CIA had it right through the 80’s and early 90’s – they sounded the first warnings, and no one listened. So you feel free to criticize them now. Unsound policy trumps good intelligence, yet when things go wrong, it’s the IC to blame.
Ok, I’m f**king done now.
5:09 am
PO’d Spook:
This will necessarily be a short response since 1) I don’t usually feel the need to defend my expertise in certain areas and 2) some of your post is contradictory.
Suffice it to say I’ve been writing about US intelligence for many years and while much of what you say is true, the organic evolution of the CIA from intel aggregator to intel backwater is a little overstated in your post (although the ridiculous addition of Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence – whatever the hell that means- probably sounds the death knell of the CIA as we knew it; one more reason for Goss to bail).
And your criticism about me singling out the CIA when responsibilities are shared is also valid in that I was speaking more from an historical standpoint (as was the 9/11 Commission) and should have made clearer the distinction.
Also, “results oriented” was a poor choice of words although speaking about “the product” of intelligence – the PDB or an NIE for example – one can make a good case that consensus politics and bureaucratic myopia make those “products” as close to useless at times as can be imagined by us lay people.
As for a general criticism of the CIA’s partisanship, I agree that there is only a small number of people who have taken it upon themselves for reasons of partisanship or patriotism to try and affect our policies. The number isn’t important. And I think I point out in the post that Goss probably went about ferreting them out in the wrong way. What is important is that their interference in the 2004 election was not only unprecedented, it was frightening. And their continuing efforts in this regard cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.
Are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Are we weakening ourselves in this “partisan witch hunt?” Probably. But when people are arrogant enough to believe that it is they and not our elected leaders who are in charge of the direction of the country – even if they think that leader is taking us into disaster – the whole concept of democratic government suffers. I am not sure that revelations about renditions (a bi-partisan stupidity), or especially contrary analyses regarding war issues were necessary to save the Republic from dictatorship. They were necessary for some, however, in a partisan context and that is the point I have been trying to make for more than a year.
9:19 am
If someone is willing to accept “More of the same”, well, hell, that’s just what they’ll get. If Americans are so lame to think that bureaucracies are just going to change without a multi-booted kick in the ass, they’ll wind up with so many 9/11’s that they’ll be reported on page 6, right after the traffic accidents.
4:57 pm
Rick,
Thank you for clarifying some of your points. If some of what I wrote wasn’t quite cogent then chalk it up to me writing it at 3am during a long working weekend. I want to clarify that I don’t intend to defend these leakers – especially the blatantly partisan leaks – from any criticism. In some cases I can see their point of view but abhor their tactics. Even so, it’s not clear all those leaks came from the CIA since the leaked intel was so widely available in the community for the most part. I have no problem with people who disagree and choose to retire or leave the intelligence field and then criticize the Administration. They have that fundamental right. While I don’t agree with everything Paul Pillar says, he’s a respected analyst and at least he left the agency before discussing problems with the pre-war Intel. Finally, I must admit that I personally don’t like the CIA very much. I hate their haughty attitude and tendency to overclassify, among other things, but when I need some specific byzantine piece of information, some brainy geek there will have it for me if I can spend a day justifying my “need.â€
In large part I feel the Bush administration brought this upon itself. I don’t think they’ve ever fully understood the way the intel-policy relationship is supposed to work, which is really surprising considering the experienced team he had assembled. The Administration believed, and still believes, that Intel is there to absolutely support policy in every respect. In fact, only in certain cases should intel directly support a policy position, and the way that support is given is important to prevent both intentional and unintentional bias from occurring in analysis. Bias is more than people’s personal prejudices too – they include such things like bias introduced by intelligence collection. For example, let’s say the IC decides to point the spotlight of intelligence collection assets toward a specific area. Reporting on that area naturally increases because of the augmented collection coverage. The increased frequency of reporting can begin to look like that area is more important than it really is if the amount of collection relative to other areas is not taken into account. Analysts are taught to make these adjustments, but often policy-makers look at the “raw†intelligence and make erroneous judgments based on their ignorance and inexperience. This is precisely one factor that lead to the wild claims by Administration policy-makers on Iraq’s nuclear program before the war. That is the one area where I think the Administration lightly dipped it’s foot into the ugly cesspool of intel cherry-picking. They got their toes wet, but didn’t jump in as the lefties claim.
This brings me to the crux of the problem in this situation. Unlike most wars, this war in Iraq was started and justified and sold to the American people (and the world) almost solely with intelligence. There wasn’t a cataclysmic event, like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, or Tonkin. It all came down to what the Intel said. The foundation and a justification for war were already laid from decades of reporting prior to 2002, but more was needed for solid public, and, hopefully, UN approval. After 2002, the task given to the intelligence community was no longer to report the fundamental questions on the existence of WMD’s, which is a traditional intel mission, but to produce additional intelligence on WMD’s that would be used to buttress the case for invasion.
How is it possible to limit bias in that kind of environment? Obviously it’s not. The Administration NEEDED convincing intelligence evidence because the public and world were not easily sold. That is simply a fact. My personal feeling is that for the most part, the Administration did not purposely intend to inject bias into the process, but the fact of the matter is, bias from that kind of pressure will get through whether intended or not. The mistake they made was not one of bad policy; in fact the intelligence and evidence we had was generally supportive of a some kind of war policy. The mistake came when they turned around and used the intelligence to sell the policy. After 2002, every analyst, and, more importantly, the political appointees administering and overseeing those analysts, knew that their analysis was no longer shaping policy, but was selling it. That’s not a position any honest intelligence analyst wants to be placed in, because that’s a position of advocating policy.
At the time, like many in the IC, I wasn’t as troubled by this as I should have been. I didn’t see the conflicts of interest that are obvious to me now. This is why I tend to give the Administration and most of the IC the benefit of the doubt in this regard. What did trouble me at the time was the most obvious and legal cause for war – the 1991 ceasefire. Iraq violated every provision of it, not just the WMD disclosure, yet the administration hardly touched on this. Why? Violating a cease-fire means the cease-fire is off and we commence to re-kicking their asses forthwith – at least in my book. Also comparatively downplayed were the near-constant threats to our forces in the area, especially aircraft in the no-fly zones. They tried to shoot them down virtually every single day we flew. My only guess is that the Administration did not feel these valid reasons were saleable enough to put more emphasis on. I sometimes wish the Administration had deliberately provoked a casus belli response from Iraq that would have avoided the situation altogether, but such gambits are dark, scheming, and un-American. I give the Bush team credit for not taking that obviously tempting route.
Finally, the saddest thing is, I see the administration starting down that same road with Iran, on this time the IC is in turmoil and its credibility weakened. Our decision on if we go to war with Iran will likely rest on what intelligence is presented to the public and how it is presented. Analysts cannot do their job in that kind of environment! Which estimate for Iranian nuclear capability will the Administration use to win public support if it decides force is necessary? Is that a political policy decision or an intelligence decision? The whole enterprise is fraught with danger.
Anyway, thanks again for another long comment.
4:58 am
Because the media and the rest of the world kept asking for “a smoking gun,” like it was a detective show.
The plan should be to improve the HUMINT and covert action parts of the CIA (like not closing stations in dangerous countries, etc.) while eliminating leakers.