From Nightwatch, 9/15/09 commenting on US objectives released today:
Reader alert: Long commentary follows.
Special comment: Today intelligence was on parade. The Director of National Intelligence published the National Intelligence Strategy and the Brookings Institution published Lieberthal’s criticism of intelligence under the Bush 43 administration.
Both are praiseworthy documents to the extent that they advance the profession of intelligence. Sadly, that distance is small.
Readers might wonder about six mission objectives in the National Intelligence Strategy, none of which mention the words, “use intelligence to help keep the Republic safe from all dangers and help advance its prosperity.”
The order of the six objectives also is odd because strategic warning is third in this 2009 document, but it is the primary mission for the new CIA that is specified in the legislative history of the National Security Act of 1947. The DCI was the only intelligence officer who had a Congressional mandate to provide strategic warning. The Secretary of Defense is the only official who has a Congressional mandate to provide tactical military warning of threats against the national territory. Some one should tell Secretary Gates. In the 9/11 attack, both the national and the defense warning systems failed.
Apparently no one briefed Dennis Blair that this mandate fell to him, as the successor of the DCI. Nothing in subsequent legislation relieved the Director of National Intelligence of his primary responsibility to provide strategic warning, NOT to combat violent extremism. Poor staff support to a fine leader.
It is unclear what has happened since 1947 so that this mission has become third, behind countering WMD proliferation, despite the clear statement of Congressional intent. When did the civil service get so smart and autonomous that it could ignore with impunity the explicit direction of Congress … which pays the bills.
The “strategy” works as a tactical blueprint for today’s problems. It describes, however, no strategic architecture that is informed by more than 60 years of intelligence experience in strategic intelligence or by a vision of future strategic challenges. It is a document for the here and now. That temporal reach will not help protect the country in the future when the number of advanced weapons systems in multiple countries exceeds those of the US.
More to the point, when did helping protect American territory, persons, property and interests and those of our allies go out of fashion? The six mission objectives only have value to the extent they serve the fundamental task of keeping the Republic safe. It is not self evident that they do that because the new so-called strategy fails to make the connection.
As for the seven enterprise objectives, one would search in vain to find the words, “high accuracy in the exercise of professional judgment in applying intelligence to help solve national security problems.” Going back to basics, the fundamental task is to be right in time for executive action: to manage a threatening situation or take advantage of an opportunity.
The two sets of objectives in fact look as if they were put together by committees, which would support enterprise objectives 1, 2, 4 and maybe 6, but not accuracy nor national safety … because they are not mentioned, oddly.
In addition, none of the enterprise objectives since 2005 have responded to problems of analysis that have been identified over and over in the more than 60 years of crisis after action reports. These cover crises from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. In one way or another, all identified and described the primary problem with intelligence is that it is wrong too often, and invariably when it counted most to be correct, because of cognitive failures by the analysts. Every after action report concluded there was always enough information collected and available to justify dissemination of a prudent and reasonable warning. The analysts failed.
Where are the approaches in the national strategy for fixing the “thinking failures” of analysts? None are mentioned in work force development or any other enterprise objective. All Readers should understand and demand that getting it right is the ultimate professional intelligence objective and the standard for accountability to the taxpayers. Everything else is trivial or inconsequential.
NightWatch points out that the omission from a national intelligence strategy of any words about keeping the Republic safe from all enemies foreign and domestic proves once again that in 2009 the primary problem with intelligence officers is cognitive failure. The very well educated people who put the strategy document together failed to remember, or never learned, the fundamental task set by Congress. But they did well on everything else, mind.
Intelligence is not an enterprise; business models are inappropriate to public service activities that are governed by the law of trusts. Public service is a public trust, not a contract. By law, trustees are required to preserve the corpus, make it profitable and render accounts of their service to the owners of the trust, among other legal obligations.
Intelligence service is a public trust to use secret information and insights to help ensure national security. The safety of the nation is the corpus that is protected for the benefit of the citizens. Accurate intelligence is a product that is larger and much more important than knowledge. The trustees are supposed to accountable.
The aim is not to expand the knowledge of the world, but to keep America and Americans safe. In the post Pearl Harbor era, the founders of intelligence agencies never lost sight of that and left their dread of an attack on the national territory and patrimony as a legacy. That legacy has somehow gotten misplaced in 2009. At a minimum it is not restated anywhere in the national intelligence strategy.
As for the Brookings study, Lieberthal replows old furrows for the most part, and rather superficially. He resurrects timeless whines from analysts who credit their contribution more than results merit.
For example, criticisms of the customer or user of intelligence for not being more helpful are contained in multiple surveys of analysts, but are always laughable. What shop keeper gripes that his customers are not smart enough to buy his product, won’t help give him advice on how to market his product, but expects to stay in business … only in the mind of the people who talked to Lieberthal.
Moreover, the topic is intelligence, in other words, the profession that prides itself on the ability to learn secrets, even from our own government officials. Lieberthal writes intelligence needs help from the users of intelligence. Readers should note that intelligence analysts have making the same whine for more than 60 years. It seems the time is long past for growing up. Something in the training of intelligence officers is seriously wrong for this adolescent complaint to survive so many decades.
He posits several clever variations on old themes. First is that he criticizes President Bush 43 for spending too much time with his daily morning intelligence team and the PDB. Lieberthal breaks new ground here because he considers an hour a day with intelligence to be somehow not enough or flawed in other ways. The product written for the President, the PDB, had too much influence on the President, he says. This is a laughable criticism.
In 42 years of intelligence work, Lieberthal’s study is the first to criticize a President for his interest in intelligence. In all the crises since 1947, the common, consistent criticism of senior executives is that they failed to listen to intelligence or disregarded its warnings. Now we encounter Lieberthal criticizing a President for paying too much attention to the product written to get his attention!
Another novelty is the assertion that National Intelligence Estimates should not be declassified. Some one needs to remind Lieberthal that the people who pay for intelligence have a right to know what they are paying for, within the boundaries of good judgment and national security. Apparently, Lieberthal would disagree with the late Senator Moynihan who described the national security classification system as an unconstitutional form of censorship.
Declassification at least nods in the direction of accountability for flawed judgments. It remains a national shame that no intelligence people were held accountable for the cognitive failures that disarmed the Republic before 9/11.
In reading the legislative history of the National Security Act of 1947, the clear intent of Congress is that the United States must never be attacked again. For that sole purpose, it created the Defense Department and the CIA. Lieberthal and the National Intelligence Strategy contain no ideas that offer hope that the intent of Congress shall be fulfilled by this new generation of intelligence officers. Moreover, Lieberthal’s study is difficult to take seriously. The sources he consulted do not know their profession.
