Politicization of intelligence: Costs and benefits

Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 57-76

  Belts, Richard K ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

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EID: 84908919302     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203508640     Document Type: Chapter

References (68)

1. 'The term "politicization" is nearly always applied to actions of which one disapproves.' David A.Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 209n.
2. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1986), P. 1755.
3. For other definitions see Harry Howe Ransom, 'The Politicization of Intelligence', in Stephen J.Cimbala, ed., Intelligence and Intelligence Policy in a Democratic Society (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational, 1987), P. 26.
4. See the discussion of these approaches, and the various other terms used to characterize them, in H.Bradford Westerfield, 'Inside Ivory Bunkers: CIA Analysts Resist Managers' "Pandering"-Part I', International Journal of Intelligence and Counter intelligence, vol. 9, no. 4 (Winter 1996/97), p. 409 and passim.
5. Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 195-201.
6. Robert Jervis, 'What's Wrong with the Intelligence Process?', International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 1, no. 1 (1986), P. 39.
7. See, for example, L.Keith Gardiner, 'Dealing with Intelligence-Policy Disconnects', Studies in Intelligence, vol. 33, no. 2 (Summer 1989)
8. David D.Gries, 'New Links Between Intelligence and Policy', Studies in Intelligence, vol. 34, no. 2 (Summer 1990), both reprinted in H.Bradford Westerfield, ed.
9. Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955- 1992 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 346-7.
10. See also Richard K.Betts, 'Policy-Makers and Intelligence Analysts: Love, Hate or Indifference?', Intelligenceand National Security, vol. 3, no. 1 (January 1988).
11. For a detailed account of the shift, and the organizational changes that facilitated it, from the perspective of the aggrieved, see John A.Gentry, 'Intelligence Analyst/Manager Relations at the CIA, in David A.Charters, Stuart Farson, and Glenn P.Hastedt, eds, Intelligence Analysis and Assessment (London: Frank Cass, 1996).
12. As academics often forget, models are more distinct in theory than in practice. For example, while Kent warned of the danger of corruption from too close a relationship between intelligence and policy, he also warned, 'of the two dangers-that of intelligence being too far from the users and that of being too close-the greatest danger is the one of being too far'. Kent, Strategic Intelligence, P. 195.
13. Uri Bar Joseph uses the terms 'professional' and 'realist' for what I call the Kent and Gates models. He identifies Michael Handel as one of the main proponents of the 'professional approach', and cites me as a member of the realist school (Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States: The United States, Israel, and Britain (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 25-8). The fact that Handel and I were close friends and agreed more than we disagreed is a reminder that the models are only indications of tendency and emphasis.
14. Bruce D.Berkowitz and Allan E.Goodman, Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), P. 97.
15. Bar-Joseph, Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States, P. 28.
16. Arthur S.Hulnick, 'The Intelligence Producer-Policy Consumer Linkage: A Theoretical Approach', Intelligence and National Security, vol. 1, no. 2 (May 1986), p. 227 (emphasis in original).
17. Quoted in Sam Adams, War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 1994), P. 80.
18. See Yehoshafat Harkabi, 'The Intelligence-Policymaker Tangle', Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 30 (Winter 1984), pp. 126, 128.
19. Harold P.Ford, Estimative Intelligence, revised edn (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), P. 177.
20. Loch K.Johnson, 'Decision Costs in the Intelligence Cycle', in Alfred C.Maurer, Marion D.Tunstall, and James M.Keagle, eds, Intelligence: Policy and Process (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), P. 186.
21. Kent, Strategic Intelligence, P. 205.
22. Kay Oliver testimony in Gates hearings, quoted in Westerfield, 'Inside Ivory Bunkers: CIA Analysts Resist Managers' "Pandering"-Part II', International ]ournal of Intelligence and Counter intelligence, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 1997), P. 19.
23. Douglas MacEachin's testimony in Gates hearings, quoted in Westerfield, 'Part II', P. 24.
24. 'A Message to Analysts on "Politicization" by Robert M.Gates', 16 March 1992 (manuscript), P. 7.
25. See the many examples cited in George W.Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (Chicago, IL: Ivan Dee, 2001), especially the charge against Walt Rostow on pp. 236-7.
26. Lt Gen. Phillip B.Davidson, USA (Ret.), Secrets of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1990), pp. 64-5;
27. Harold P.Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers:Three Episodes, 1962-1968 (n.p.: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998), p. 100;
28. James J.Wirtz, The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failurein War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 158-62;
29. T.L.Cubbage II, 'Westmoreland vs. CBS: Was Intelligence Corrupted by Policy Demands?', in Michael I.Handel, ed., Leaders and Intelligence (London: Frank Cass, 1989), p. 133;
30. See also Renata Adler, Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v.CBS et al; Sharon v. Time (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1986).
31. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, P. 102.
32. Adams, War of Numbers, pp. 105, 114-15. This is the lengthiest account of the dispute by the CIA analyst most involved in challenging MACV estimates. For the main points behind his position see especially chs 4-5.
33. Colonel Gains Hawkins, George Allen, and George Carver cited in Ford, CIA andthe Vietnam Policymakers, pp. 91, 93-4.
34. Cable quoted by Samuel Adams in testimony in US House of Representatives, Select Committee on Intelligence (the Pike Committee), Hearings: USIntelligence Agencies and Activities: The Performance of the Intelligence Community, Part 2, 94th Cong., 1st sess., September-October 1975, pp. 684-5.
35. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, P. 94.
36. Cable from Saigon, and Allen, quoted in Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, pp. 92, 97.
37. Davidson, Secrets of the Vietnam War, pp. 34, 44, 66-7. Davidson's is the only published insider's account I have found that defends MACV's performance on the O/B estimate.
38. Adams testimony in Pike Committee Hearings, Part 2, pp. 685-6.
39. Glenn P.Hastedt, 'The New Context of Intelligence Estimating', in Cimbala, ed., Intelligence and Intelligence Policy in a Democratic Society, pp. 49-50, 56, 59-60, 64.
40. 'We frequently fall into what I call the institutional view syndrome. For a long time in my career, we did not in actual practice foster a tradition of careful treatment of alternatives... Rather than trying to lay out the threatening situation to the reader... we routinely got bogged down in an internal contest as to whose views would win the institutional place.' Douglas MacEachin testimony, in US Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Hearings: Nomination of Robert M.Gates, 102d Cong., 1st sess., September-October 1991 (hereafter cited as 'Gates Hearings'), vol. II, P. 271.
41. US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on Collection, Production, and Quality, Staff Report: The National Intelligence Estimates A-BTeam Episode Concerning Soviet Strategic Capability and Objectives, February 1978; Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), passim.
42. Richard Pipes, 'Team B: The Reality Behind the Myth', Commentary (October 1986), P. 40.
43. Cahn, Killing Detente, P. 127.
44. Pipes, 'Team B', P. 29.
45. Although Pipes' application of this insight was in many respects questionable, he is right in principle. Intelligence officers sometimes fail 'to realize that facts and theory are not separable'. Captain Robert Bovey, USN, 'The Quality of Intelligence Analysis', American Intelligence Journal, vol. 3, no. 3 (Winter 1980-81), p. 4 of repaginated Pentagon 'Current News' reprint. Or, as E.H. Carr made the point: 'The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides which facts to give the floor, and in what context...
46. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar's crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all.' What Is History? (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), P. 9.
47. Howard Stoertz, cited in Cahn, Killing Detente, P. 174.
48. The report itself is Intelligence Community Experiment in Competitive Analysis: Soviet Strategic Objectives, an Alternate View: Report of Team B, December 1976 (sanitized declassified copy from the National Security Archive); see especially pp. 9-16,41-8.
49. Richard Pipes, 'Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War', Commentary, vol. 64, no. 1 (July 1977).
50. Raymond L.Garthoff, 'Mutual Deterrence and Strategic Arms Limitation in Soviet Policy', International Security, vol. 3, no. 1 (Summer 1978). For the later and definitive version of Garthoffs research and interpretation see his Deterrence andthe Revolution in Soviet Military Doctrine (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990).
51. Quoted in Pipes, 'Team B', p. 40n.
52. Melvin Goodman, testimony in Gates Hearings, vol. II, P. 143. See also testimony against Gates by Jennifer Glaudemans and Harold Ford.
53. Bar-Joseph, Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States, P. 33.
54. Mark M.Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2000), P. 91.
55. Graham Fuller, testimony in Gates Hearings, vol. II, P. 161.
56. See also testimony in support of Gates by Charles Allen, Douglas MacEachin, Lawrence Gershwin, and Kay Oliver. Earlier, Jimmy Carter's DCI, Admiral Turner, recounted instances of analysts who considered his editorial revisions of their work to be politicization, while he believed he was simply correcting misleading methods in comparison on a subject about which he was more expert than the analysts-naval capabilities. Turner also dealt with the case of David Sullivan, an analyst who leaked his own work to anti-Soviet Senate staff because he feared that it would be suppressed by detentist leadership at CIA. Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), pp. 122-3.
57. Memorandum by Carolyn Ekedahl, reprinted in Gates Hearings, vol. III, P. 84.
58. Ekedahl memorandum, in Gates Hearings, Part III, P. 186. This study has been the subject of another story about policy contamination of intelligence, via blow-back from covert action. The story I have heard verbally several times is that Casey was energized to prove that the Soviets supported terrorism because of claims to that effect in Claire Sterling's book, The Terror Network: The Secret Warof International Terrorism (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1981), and that he discovered only later that Sterling's information had come from a disinformation operation by the CIA's own Directorate of Operations. The only account of this that I have seen in print says that according to Lincoln Gordon 'a small part' of the Sterling information had come from such blowback.
59. Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 1249.
60. Richard K.Betts, 'The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror', Political Science Quarterly, vol. 117, no. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 19-20.
61. Quoted in David C.Morrison, 'Tilting With Intelligence', National Journal, 9 May, 1987, P. 1115.
62. See also John Horton, 'Mexico, the Way of Iran?', International Journal of Intelligence and Counter intelligence, vol. 1, no. 2 (1986)
63. Horton, 'The Real Intelligence Failure', Foreign Service Journal, vol. 62, no. 2 (February 1985).
64. For example, see Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future of US Intelligence, Report of an Independent Task Force (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), pp. 18-19
65. In From the Cold: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of US Intelligence (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1996), pp. 10-12.
66. Hans Heymann, 'Intelligence/Policy Relationships', in Maurer, Tunstall, and Keagle, eds, Intelligence: Policy and Process, P. 63.
67. Lawrence Freedman, US Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 2nd edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. xi-xii.
68. 'A Message to Analysts on "Politicization"', pp. 9, 13.