Intelligence failures: Forecasting and the lessons of epistemology

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

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 77-96

  Kuhns, Woodrow J ^a  

^a CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence   (United States)

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EID: 84909286482     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203508640     Document Type: Chapter

References (54)

1. Michael Handel, 'Intelligence and Crisis Forecasting', Orbis (Winter 1983), P. 819.
2. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962).
3. See, for example, Michael Handel, 'The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise', International Studies Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3 (September 1977), pp. 461-502;
4. Richard Betts, 'Analysis, War and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable', World Politics, vol. 31 (Spring 1978), pp. 61-89.
5. Christopher Brady, 'Intelligence Failures: Plus ça Change...', Intelligence and National Security, vol. 4, no. 8 (October 1993), P. 86.
6. Richard Betts, 'Surprise, Scholasticism, and Strategy: A Review of Ariel Levite's. Intelligence and Strategic Surprises (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)', International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33 (1989), P. 330.
7. Levite's work is one of the few that challenge the conventional wisdom. He argues that the fault lies with poor collection. David Kahn takes the same tack in Ernest May's Knowing One's Enemy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), P. 500.
8. Kahn, in his chapter, 'United States Views of Germany and Japan in 1941's, puts it directly: 'Not one intercept, not one datum of intelligence ever said anything about an attack on Pearl Harbor or on any other possession.' Abraham Ben-Zvi has put his own twist on the problem of strategic surprise, arguing that the surprise is not the enemy's intention to attack, but rather his capabilities once the attack has been launched. See, for example, 'The Dynamics of Surprise: The Defender's Perspective', Intelligence and National Security, vol. 12, no. 4 (October 1997), pp. 113-44;
9. 'Between Warning and Response, The Case of the Yom Kippur War', International Journal of Intelligence and Counter intelligence, vol. 4, no. 2 (Summer 1990), pp. 227-42.
10. Isaac Ben-Israel has made a start in this direction by making a case for the adoption of a modified Popperian approach to the production of intelligence estimates in order to reduce the likelihood of failure. Isaac Ben-Israel, 'Philosophy and Methodology of Intelligence: The Logic of Estimate Process', Intelligence and National Security, vol. 4, no. 4 (October 1989), pp. 660-718.
11. Abbot E. Smith, 'On the Accuracy of National Intelligence Estimates', Studies in Intelligence, vol. 13, no. 3 (Fall 1969), P. 25.
12. Richard W.Shryock, 'The Intelligence Community Post-Mortem Program, 1973-1975', Studies in Intelligence (Fall 1977), pp. 15-28.
13. Willis C.Armstrong, William Leonhart, William J.McCaffrey, and Herbert C. Rothenberg, 'The Hazards of Single-Outcome Forecasting', in H.Bradford Westerfield, ed., Inside CIA's Private World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), P. 241.
14. Steve Chan, 'The Intelligence of Stupidity: Understanding Failures in Strategic Warning', American Political Science Review, vol. 73, no. 1 (March 1979), P. 174.
15. See Shryock, 'The Intelligence Community Post-Mortem Program', pp. 16-17.
16. See Sherman Kent, 'A Crucial Estimate Relived', Studies in Intelligence, vol. 35, no. 4 (Winter 1991), P. 65.
17. This article was originally published in Studies in Intelligence, vol. 8, no. 2 (Spring 1964), pp. 1-18.
18. See Handel, 'The Yom Kippur War', P. 464.
19. James R.Schlesinger, 'A Review of the Intelligence Community', March 10, 1971, pp. 10A-12.
20. The difference between explanation and prediction is outlined by Carl Hempel, a leading theorist of scientific explanation: 'In the case of an explanation, the final event is known to have happened, and its determining conditions have to be sought; the situation is reversed in the case of a prediction: here, the initial conditions are given, and their "effect"-which, in the typical case, has not yet taken place-is to be determined.' See Carl G.Hempel, 'The Function of General Laws in History', in Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellers, eds, Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), p. 462.
21. Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern Science (New York: Dover Publications, 1979), P. 248.
22. Karl R.Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), P. 33.
23. David Papineau, 'Philosophy of Science', in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P.Tsui-James, eds, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), P. 304.
24. Nicholas Rescher, 'Prediction', in T.Hondereich, ed., The Oxford Companionto Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=553248&secid=.-,1995.
25. See Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, P. 35.
26. Leon Pompa, 'Philosophy of History', in Bunnin and Tsui-James, eds, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, P. 422.
27. David Hume, 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding', Section VIII, 'Of Liberty and Necessity, Part I', in D.C.Yalden-Thomson, ed., Hume: Theory of Knowledge (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1953), P. 85.
28. See Kent, 'A Crucial Estimate Relived', P. 70.
29. See Bunge, Causality and Modern Science, P. 268.
30. See Rescher, 'Prediction'.
31. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, P. 57. Emphasis in original.
32. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), P. 543.
33. Hume, Section IV, 'Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of Understanding, Part I', in Hume: Theory of Knowledge, P. 24.
34. Hume, Section V, 'Sceptical Solution of These Doubts, Part I', pp. 43-5.
35. The example above is taken from William H.Halverson, A Concise Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1967), P. 291.
36. See Armstrong, Leonhart, McCaffrey, and Rothenberg, 'The Hazards of Single Outcome Forecasting', P. 241. Emphasis added.
37. See Kent, 'A Crucial Estimate Relived', P. 67. Emphasis added.
38. A quick summary of Popper's method is found in Chris Horner and Emrys Westacott, Thinking through Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), P. 106.
39. See Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, P. 199.
40. Rescher, 'Prediction'.
41. See Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, pp. 196, 199.
42. A number of authors have pointed to this problem with Popper's approach, including Horner and Westacott, Thinking through Philosophy, P. 112.
43. Papineau, 'Philosophy of Science', P. 293.
44. Cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, revised 4th edn), P. 202.
45. Hume, Section IV, 'Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of Understanding, Part IF, in Hume: Theory of Knowledge, P. 35.
46. Max Black, Problems of Analysis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954), P. 188.
47. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), P. 63.
48. Black, Problems of Analysis, P. 7.
49. Shirley Robin Letwin, 'Certainty Since the Seventeenth Century', in Philip P. Wiener, ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. I (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), P. 318.
50. Kenneth McLeish, 'Scientific Method', in idem, ed., The Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought, www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=344724&secid=.
51. Roger Hilsman, Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions (Glenco, IL: The Free Press, 1956), P. 46.
52. Harry S.Truman, Memoirs, vol. II, Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), P. 56.
53. Harry S.Truman, 'Limit CIA Role to Intelligence', The Washington Post, 22 December 1963, p. All.
54. Smith, 'On the Accuracy of National Intelligence Estimates', pp. 29-30.