WikiLeaks, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel on Afghanistan: Special comment.
What has been published thus far is underwhelming.
The items published to date contain many factual details, but little-to-no analysis that would change views about Afghanistan. The analysis by the New York Times and the Guardian analysts is unimpressive.
A competent intelligence analyst could do much more with the information than these people have done, which is good news.
The news outlets have had the 92,201 reports for over a month, but The Guardian's people have managed to plot on a map and post 300.
Experienced Defense Department
analysts of Afghanistan regularly would read and analyze more than 2,000 such reports in every 12 hour shift and would plot the salient events on a map, connect the dots and make some inferences about the status of the insurgency by province or district … and do that every shift.
The sum of the parts is less than the whole. The number of leaked reports looks large to those not familiar with the enormity of the information flow. 92, 201 reports represent a tiny fraction of daily reporting between 2004 and 2009 and only at one classification level. There are more classification levels and
the 92, 201 reports, as summarized, apparently do not include the most useful, fortunately.
A glimpse into the intelligence analysis challenge. The information leaked thus far is valuable for people who do not work in intelligence because it gives them an insight into the challenge of coping with this huge flow of information. The task is to evaluate it in order to provide actionable intelligence to policy makers or combat forces about the status of the fighting in Afghanistan.
It is an enormous information problem for which intelligence analysts have few useful tools or automated assists, despite 30 years of Intelligence Community investment in automated and computerized analytical support systems. The New York Times published one of the reports, as an exemplar. It describes one meeting of one group of Taliban at which retired Pakistan intelligence chief, Lieutenant Hamid Gul, was reported as present.
The Times did a great service in providing the reading public an example of what a low level human-source field intelligence information report might actually look like.
For an Afghan desk officer it would be one of maybe 3,000 he needed to read that day.
The reports do not speak for themselves and cannot be taken at face value because honest people lie and dishonest people tell the truth.
Hamid Gul became an outspoken supporter of the Taliban and an enemy of the US after he retired.
On active duty at Pakistani intelligence he enjoyed the access and preferential treatment CIA and other agencies gave his predecessors and successors.
His conversion in retirement to fundamentalism had more to do with internal Pakistan Army politics than Afghanistan or fervent devotion to Islam, many would argue.
He might well have attended the reported meeting, but
the reported facts about other delegations are clearly exaggerated and not credible. Old hands will recognize the fraud in an instant.
NightWatch is gratified. The one service for which NightWatch thanks The Times is the confirmation that the Taliban are using heat-seeking man-portable anti-aircraft missiles (manpads) against US aircraft. In the 1980s, the Afghan mujahedin were proficient in using these systems against the Soviets, owing to excellent CIA training and the provision of front-line STINGER missiles. It has been inconceivable that no US and NATO aircraft losses to manpads have been confirmed in open sources since 2001.
At last this issue has been clarified. The Taliban are following the path of the US-backed mujahedin, and that should surprise no one. Honest admission of this fact would have sharpened independent assessments of the air campaign and its risks.
The US introduced manpads into the Pashtun warrior culture during the Soviet occupation. These are the systems that led to the defeat of the Soviet forces by neutralizing air superiority. Millions are available for purchase internationally, but US spokespersons have never admitted that the Taliban might actually have been clever enough to buy some, along with IED supplies, perhaps.
{Would cause a blowback due to fratricide?}
In today's reports the new outlets did not reach the obvious conclusion that the increased use of manpads against US helicopters might have contributed to McChrystal's decision to limit tactical air support because aircraft losses were mounting, mimicking the Soviet experience. In other words, the deaths of innocent Afghan civilians might have been less significant than the rising losses of US airframes. That possibility needs follow-up research.
92,201 reports are not the same as 92,201 facts.
In the NightWatch/KGS materials on Intelligence as Evidence the central theme is that every field report must be subjected to six foundation tests and two argument tests, after a filtering process that identifies it as having potential value. None of the news outlets did any of that difficult, tedious work.
Thus, it is only partially accurate to assert the reports provide new insights into how "grim" the war is. Some provide local insights that need to be matched to other reports. Some are fabrications. Many are time sensitive, with no enduring value except as time capsules.
Still others are local views of important but limited value. For example,
The Guardian has posted an interactive map of 300 reports. It has taken the first analytical step, at least, in locating field data geographically. However, it has not collated the reports by time, actor, nature of action, outcome, Allied response or matched any of this to some meaningful geographic framework, such as the 400 districts in Afghanistan.
The real harm. Separated from source information, all of the information published today could have been released into the public domain as unclassified, but for the huge expense involved in the review process for such a large number of reports. Today's "sensational" revelations contained no themes or strategic insights that have not been reported in past NightWatch special editions on Afghanistan, which are based exclusively on open source materials and more than 30 years of study of Afghanistan.
Experienced hands know that 92,200 documents represent a rather small data dump.
Moreover, whoever kept this so-called log had no apparent logic or sophisticated knowledge of Afghanistan in including data. It is a data dump similar to the Washington Post report on US intelligence and contractors. It is data without analysis, similar to other intelligence data repositories.
The mantra of experienced analysts is that more is not better.
Better is better.
The serious problem implied in the leak is the extent of demoralization it might manifest.
If serious people are so disheartened by the Afghanistan war that they would risk clearances, reputation and criminal prosecution to engage in what they think is a large volume leak as an act of opposition, then the leaks will get worse as the war drags on inconclusively.
Almost all of what was published today is already in the public domain, but the next set of leaks might do real damage to national security.
The real story is about what is prompting this hemorrhage of leaks.
