Financial crisis and changing paradigms of warning intelligence

The continually interesting competitive intelligence forum at Ning has surfaced a discussion which has been much on the minds of a variety of intelligence professionals in both the government and private sector given the cascading collapse of a number of major financial institutions: Was this financial crisis a warning failure? And if so, the natural corollary inquires into the cause and origin of the failure.

In our view, these recent events very much represent intelligence surprise. If nothing else, the unexamined higher order effects of complex financial relationships involving vast sums of cross-border capital flows is far outside the traditional realm of political and economic intelligence, at least as it is usually practiced in the government world. And the rapid contagion dynamics within the financial markets prove that the events are likewise beyond the traditional scope of competitive intelligence, where it is rare that analysis takes into account such sweeping changes across the landscape and its players. Whether this surprise truly rates elevation as a Black Swan, as some commentators have suggested, is itself also open to debate.

There is ample evidence that early indicators were visible, and even that many commentators had previously weighed in on the mounting risks and dangerous uncertainties inherent to the increasingly complex layers of traded instruments, derivatives, and debt that lurk at the center of the current crisis. However, warning is a process – not an event. It matters little that in hindsight one can call out the prescient among the punditry and politicians, and cast blame on those that assumed business would continue as normal against the backdrop of ever increasing housing prices. If warning did not reach, or impact, the right decision-makers – as there is mounting evidence that it clearly did not – then the process of warning failed.

But let us examine this more closely for a moment. Who exactly were the right decision-makers in this crisis? The primary lending institutions? The traders and market makers that were the primary players in moving these instruments? The investors, fund managers, and sovereign wealth entities which funneled so much capital into fundamentally unstable market positions? The risk managers at any of these firms, responsible for anticipating the potential downside of complex financial positions? The world’s various central bankers? The regulatory bodies or their political masters in the parliamentary and executive branches?

These are not questions easily answered. There will be anecdotes aplenty regarding the lack of warning communicated to a wide range of these decision-makers. The first that comes to mind is the ill-fated CEO of Washington Mutual, who was allegedly incommunicado aboard a flight while the most significant transactions in the firm’s collapse were being finalized. This mirrors the earlier circumstances of the CEO of Bear Stearns. While a certain level of plausible deniability may be key to these positions, one wonders what kind of intelligence support these executives enjoyed.

Likewise, if warning was to be issued to an identified group of executives, who would have been responsible for giving such warning? Only a scant handful of the firms involved in the recent waves of disruption could be considered to have a dedicated intelligence function. Of these, few were likely oriented towards a warning posture, as opposed to the many other intelligence functions that constitute the duties of privatized shops within modern enterprises. Among the commercial consulting intelligence providers, the problem can easily have been defined by the lack of articulated customer requirements, and the lack of access and expertise that clearly prevented a more sophisticated appreciation of ongoing events. And one can question whether a warning account focused on what was largely a domestic financial market – despite the dramatic international implications – is at all a proper role for the intelligence community (at least in the United States). Certainly, as it is currently structured, it is nearly impossible to address – and no homeland security function has ever envisioned market shocks as a component of critical infrastructure protection. More damningly, the insights which would have unlocked these mysteries were not secrets to be stolen, but lay in perspectives which were never cultivated.

Again, there are likely case studies to be found in the after action reviews of the wreckage. Lehman Brothers, among the first to fall, most famously hired a former Deputy Director for Intelligence out of CIA to head its Sovereign Risk shop. But the structure and focus that geopolitically focused shop appears not to have been relevant to the manner in which the current crisis developed. Given that Bear Stearns itself allegedly was a leader in providing analytical research and other intelligence products to its investors and clients, the dissemination of these products to the executive level is worth exploring from more than an academic perspective. One can likewise point to other intelligence functions on the Street and elsewhere, stovepiped for threat analysis or market research or technology investment.

What few warning shops which may have existed to cover the sector likely followed the dominant paradigm of competitive early warning, focused on their competitors’ actions, positions, technologies and blind spots rather than the wider political and financial situation. The required optic was simply too large for most shops, whose production is typically serialized in daily or weekly form, no matter how strategic they might otherwise claim to be.

In sum, can one then consider this a failure of warning? There are no simple answers, and we certainly believe that this question will be revisited for years to come in future studies of intelligence surprise. The underlying causes are complex, but are clearly rooted – at least in part – in the lack of systematic warning intelligence coverage of the issues. Whether it was the role of warning intelligence shops to cover these issues is open to debate. However, this may be as much the result of the failure of a warning paradigm developed for a time and place now forever changed. One may liken this change to the decreasing relevance of the traditional state based indications and warning model, now replaced by the emerging strategic reconnaissance paradigm being explored at the cutting edge of the tradecraft.

There are also signs that this is far from over, as we move from the weekend into another turbulent week on the Street (and in financial centres around the globe.) While we may arguably have seen a strategic warning failure (or not), there is still ample need for operational and tactical level warning as the crisis continues. This need creates new opportunities for both the rare successes and failures that will make or break firms and fortunes. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult to surge warning assets to these kind of non-traditional accounts in short order – particularly given the scope of the political, regulatory, and other uncertainties which plague the markets. This is a unique time – and a unique problem set – that will task the professionalism of involved intelligence practitioners beyond measure, given the excessively politicized atmosphere surrounding the issues. There are many intelligence professionals now treading virgin ground, far past the last signpost reading “HC SVNT DRACONES”.

We are reminded of Joseph Nye’s comments about that terrible day seven years ago: “September 11, 2001, was like a flash of lightning on a summer evening that displayed an altered landscape, leaving U.S. policymakers and analysts still groping in the dark, still wondering how to understand and respond.” Lightning has struck once again in New York, and again without effective warning. We expect the impact to the intelligence community – particularly the community beyond the traditional wheel of the major agencies – will be in its own way as profound.

Requirements management for the new generation

We frequently revisit the question of how the generation after next will change the activity of intelligence. It is ground that others have also slowly begun to come around to as the realities of the J-shaped workforce dawn across the community. As in many other areas of the workplace, generational changes tend to manifest themselves most visibly through technology. Thus it is the wiki and the blog which has more readily captured the imagination, while the less visible growth new models of ongoing production through informal networking brought about by the lists or the subtle changes in dissemination models driven by the Wire go largely un-remarked.

However, occasionally some changes are entirely striking not merely because of the realized technologies which have crept into the business of doing intelligence, but due to the aspirations of how a consumer would wish to see the activity done better (or at least, in a manner that better serves their particular cognitive and working style). These often frustrated desires for change are quite often poorly expressed, and rarely conveyed to the intelligence producers in any event.

Despite this, every once in a while there is something that a consumer may bring to the table from another life experience – typically outside of the intelligence domain entirely – that convincingly encapsulates both the shortcomings of the current approach and a possible model for examination of a new innovation. We enjoyed such a conversation the other day, the result of a highly technology savvy consumer’s attempt to grapple with a restricting “classic” intelligence structure that simply did not conform to the manner in which they had come to rely upon to satisfy other content needs.

We speak of course of the now standard approach to requirements management wherein a new consumer is asked to define collaboratively their Key Intelligence Topics (popularized in the private sector by the notable work of Jan Herring, having been drawn from the gentleman’s experiences as a National Intelligence Officer at a time when similar approaches drove national intelligence priorities). This is a valuable exercise, both for its role in drawing out a consumer’s concerns, pre-existing baseline knowledge, and assumptions as well as in helping set expectations regarding capabilities and deliverables. (There is a reason it first came into use and subsequently thrived after all).

The consumer in this particular case simply did not wish for the exercise to be a one time affair, or even something periodically revisited in accordance with some calendar schedule. Rather, having been taught by other information delivery environments that such a thing was possible, this decision-maker asked for a queue to which he could add, delete, and re-prioritize his own requirements as he chose. The model he cited for this was the Netflix video rental service, which offered this kind of flexibility.

This model is actually quite insightful. While one must overlook the key difference that good intelligence is not simply a pre-packaged mass market product sitting in some warehouse waiting to be sent out upon demand, and that intelligence questions should always be accompanied by scoping discussions, it is actually quite easy to modify and present such an interface for validated requirements that have been accepted by the intel staff (and to capture the additional conversations regarding objectives and terms of reference). The model also provided an unexpected benefit, in that the consumer already was willing to take into account the delay between request and production, having been trained to expect a few days turn around time for the postal mail delivery of the familiar red envelope. (For our British friends, the parallel to the equally classic red box presented to senior ministers is inescapable.)

Unfortunately such requests are infrequently captured by those in a position to implement the requisite changes even when a consumer does at last find a way to articulate what they are seeking. And while national requirements management exercises are far more involved things under the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, the back and forth of production on a smaller and more situated scale is entirely within the realm of the possible. Answering the inevitable next demand of delivering such an interface over their Blackberry – classified or otherwise – may however be entirely harder, at least in government service (commercial intelligence counterparts will likely be less constrained).

For those consumers that do not wish to actually use such an interface themselves, a periodic copy of the queue can be provided for discussion, and changes made by a briefer, unit manager, or other consumer outcomes oriented professional. In this it is little different than the classic requirements model, but it does offer additional opportunities for more dynamic engagement with the ongoing concerns of the policymaker. And we strongly believe that as the generational shifts also take hold within the ranks of key intelligence consumers, so too will the willingness to embrace already familiar processes in new contexts.

Intelligence and the 300 at 3 a.m.

Much has been made of the extended cadres of foreign policy advisors employed by the Obama campaign – purported to exceed some 300 subject matter experts and other assorted wonks, organized into a virtual think tank of sorts.

From a professional (and entirely apolitical) perspective of intelligence theory, the existence of the 300 is enough to give pause, especially since such innovations in political campaigns tend to be rapidly adopted in future election cycles. Shadow policy structures directly advising future candidates – perhaps even semi-permanently organized, as in the British model – may well become a recurring feature of the US party system. It is not our place to comment on the appropriateness of such a structure. However, these individuals are more or less entirely disconnected from the US intelligence system, and are relying on unknown information source of uncertain validity (presumably much if not all derived from the open source domain) to advise future leaders on matters in which there likely exists a substantial body of classified reporting. This classified view likely presents a far different picture than the open source would on a number of key issues. (One can look to the Mitrokin Archive’s revelations, for example, as but one hint of the re-evaluation that must necessarily occur in foreign policy relations when intelligence information is taken into account.)

This time around, it appears that the McCain campaign’s advisors are fewer in number, and being loosely organized likely play a lesser role in determining the candidate’s stance on any given issue. And the sitting Senator has long had access to classified intelligence (as does his opponent by virtue of the same office, albeit for a far shorter time period). This decision advantage is likely somewhat akin to that enjoyed by incumbent Presidents against outside challengers in previous elections. And while there are those who have been named as part of the 300 that were previously consumers of classified intelligence products, in most cases these individuals have been out of access for at least a decade. Again, from an apolitical intelligence theory perspective, this is quite sobering. To paraphrase CIA’s former Balkan Task Force - whose original comments came against the backdrop of the dispute between different factions arguing over the conflict in that troubled region - each campaign is entitled to its own policy, but not its own version of history.

The question of what intelligence support a campaign ought to receive, and how far that support should extend (beyond the traditional briefings provided to the candidate himself), are not easy to objectively address – particularly in a hyper-politicized election season. It is perhaps among the thorniest of aspects of intelligence – policy relations that have yet arisen in the new millennium. But it is nonetheless a critical consideration, and especially so in cases of crisis situations. For while intelligence theory recognizes that the community is not the only voice advising decisionmakers, most theoretical discussions assume that intelligence is part of the process – something that is not assured in the campaign stage. Among the questions which should be examined include how such intelligence support can be delivered, how to avoid politicization of that intelligence in the atmosphere of a hotly contested campaign, and how arrangements can be constructed to prevent leaks in a temporary and highly transient environment of moving facilities, rotating staff, and constant media attention.
The manner in which these questions are answered may well set the pattern for a subsequent administration’s use of intelligence, and shape key relationships between decisionmakers and the community. And more importantly, the international impact of any candidate’s actions during the early stages of a crisis event – such as the now infamous 3 a.m. call - is magnified by the instant global media environment moreso now than at any time in previous history.

Such 3 a.m. moments particularly highlight the need for (and the potential problems of) providing warning intelligence support. The first reaction of a surprised campaign has international impact, and may well be a significant factor in foreign responses during the early hours of a crisis depending on how those abroad view any particular candidate’s prospects for electoral success. (For a historical example of such an assessment by foreign decisionmakers, one need only recall the covert overtures made by the KGB’s Washington residentura to the Kennedy campaign at Kruschev’s request, which occurred against the crisis backdrop of negotiations over the fate of two RB-47 reconnaissance pilots downed in Soviet territory in July 1960). The Georgia / Russia incident provides a more contemporary example, and future analysis will by necessity have to consider the influence of both the official US reactions and the candidates’ responses on the Russian view of achievable conflict objectives in the first days of the fighting.

US Presidential candidates have not lacked for those former intelligence officials now willing to offer policy advice - and even their own visions of intelligence community reform. However, true professional intelligence support has been far less consistent. This merits greater attention.

Of lawyers and hammer fixation

We have condemned the too frequent intrusion of the lawyers into the realm of foreign intelligence on many previous occasions. From a perspective of policy and of practicality, it rarely results in good outcomes – especially when it comes hand in hand with the kind of toxic politicization that has so corrupted the contemporary environment. We can think of no better example than the continuing travesty which has been the leak plagued and talking point distorted scandal that is the attempt to apply unprecedented restrictions on foreign intelligence collection, brought about by a single un-reviewed FISA court decision and the political football that has resulted over corrective legislation. We need not revisit the matter here, as other commentators have spilled countless pixels on the topic, and we think the exceptionally candid statements by the community’s most senior leadership should have laid the matter to rest. That the debate continues is bitter testament to the folly of politicization too common in today’s national security decision-making abetted by ill starred over-lawyering.

It is against this backdrop we find yet another attempt to introduce the unelected judicial branch into matters which have long been properly held to be strictly questions for the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches who are themselves accountable to voters in questions of policy. In this case, the intrusion comes in the form of a paper which presents a "modest" proposal to hold the war-making powers of the elected branches hostage to an adversarial court process, in which the case to be presented will be composed from intelligence take. We initially would have thought this a jest in very poor taste indeed, but we unfortunately see it was seriously argued.

Presumably such intelligence would be inevitably demanded in its most raw form. This is a sure prescription for even more damaging leaks than have already cost significant investments in blood and treasure through the loss of the unique capabilities that such investments had purchased. It is also a sure prescription for intelligence failure, not merely due to the loss of those capabilities to leaks, but also due to failures of analysis. Prior to World War II, a good many legal minds attempted to act as their own analysts – and failed in ways which demonstrated just about every form of cognitive bias and logical fallacy that has ever been documented in analytic tradecraft. The parsing of law and the insight required of intelligence analysis are entirely different creatures, and do not mix well – especially under the conditions of great uncertainty and implacable time constraints which are found in international crisis situations.

Given the dysfunction which has so characterized what is among the most vital and timely of national needs in this Long War, to great and unfortunately continuing loss. Not every problem in the arena of national security and international relations is amenable to the lawyer’s hammer (or more appropriately, the judge’s gavel.) There are other instruments of national power, and making these subservient to a courtroom process is a certain path towards rendering them entirely impotent in a complex, dynamic and continually evolving threat environment.



h/t Volokh Conspiracy

Case studies with enduring legacy

There is much to be thankful this holiday season, and it is natural at such a time to reflect back on the conflicts past, and those lost in the course of these conflicts. It is also a time to reflect upon history within the intelligence community, as our first – and for nearly 60 years, our most severe – intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor falls within these months.

Recently, new allegations have surfaced regarding what some consider to be another greater intelligence failure – the Allied ignorance of the machinations of death that were the Holocaust. This has long been an area of immense historical controversy, and present a number of opportunity to examine intelligence / policy relationships, the effects of cognitive bias, the questions of imagination (in thinking about the unthinkable), and (due to the importance of ULTRA decrypts in the overall reporting stream) decision-making in the SIGINT environment.

In short, the new claims put forth in the Hebrew language book Pazner: The Man Who Knew, are centered around supposed HUMINT reporting containing explicit discussion of the construction of camps intended for extermination operations in German occupied Eastern European areas. The reporting, alleged to originate in July 1942 from an unidentified German officer source with what was claimed to be good access, was passed through a Swiss intermediary to a Jewish Agency official. This reporting was subsequently provided to Allied intelligence, and may have even made its way to the highest echelons of the British government.

If true, it is an interesting addition to the historical case study of the Holocaust warning problem. One raw report does not warning make – particularly third-hand HUMINT from unevaluated sub-sources. However, a HUMINT source would have been encumbered by only a fraction of the difficulties of dissemination that the information provided by the ULTRA channel would have imposed. It is possible that such reporting could indeed have been the best “public case” material that could be used to support strategic communications and information operations pressure against the Nazi regime. Indeed, the source is alleged to have even proposed such a use of the information himself, recommending daily BBC broadcasts warning against the commission of war crimes. A later very similar reporting stream, which surfaced through the Riegner telegram, did become the basis of the US acknowledgement of the genocide in November 1942. Public diplomacy at the time had impact on the Nazi pogrom - and given modern experience in Bosnia, Darfur, and elsewhere - it is indeed questionable how effective even widespread public knowledge would have been in halting evil intent.

The handling of this information joins the already extant list of intelligence controversies from other collection disciplines – from the ULTRA COMINT to strategic air IMINT. The ultimate questions that are invoked, however, are ones of policy and operations – not merely intelligence. And these all continue to be well worth study – particularly in the face of the continued threat of genocide throughout the world.

Understanding intelligence consumers

One of the persistent myths that we find too often in intelligence shops – particularly among editorial and production management staff – is the idea that an intelligence consumer cannot internalize complex concepts and ideas, and thus requires extreme levels of simplification. Where exactly this myth first originated is lost to time, but that it continues to dominate the thinking of those who ought to know better is perplexing to say the least.

There is a vast difference between simplicity of expression and complexity of thought, and all too often the search for the former renders incomprehensible the latter. One sees this especially in products which emphasize the removal of common terms of art – despite the utility such short phrases bring to both consumers and producers when referencing a body of other works. The use of such terminology does not excuse the author from placing them into a relevant context, and using such context carefully within the structure of the products argument. However, all too often editors and others involved in coordination reject such expressions of brevity with blanket dismissal, citing perceived military origins of a phrase in many cases (as much of intelligence’s activities derive from war fighting origins, no matter what the current application), or as “excessively” technical. This is a grave disserve to the reader, who if they are not acquainted with a key concept associated with an intelligence issue, should be introduced to that background rather than left to assume understanding of a distorted turn of the phrase.

More and more, the results of this tired old trope become a primary reason why many consumers cite finished intelligence as irrelevant to their actual responsibilities – all the moreso when those consumers hail from segments of the community’s readership that may typically not have previously relied upon finished intelligence as part of their decision-making processes. Given the increasing levels of education demanded of even middle management, let alone the kind of experiences a typical senior might lay claim to, it is understandable that they would reject any attempt at intellectually coddling at the same time they are expected to be informed by a product. After all, it is not uncommon to be briefing or writing for a consumer with post-graduate education and longstanding experience grappling with difficult legal, business, and public policy issues. And given the number of lawyers that now make up the ranks of senior government and industry leaders – it is difficult to insist that an individual who might in another context be expected to rapidly skim and comprehend the most challenging of legal briefs must somehow never be troubled with a product written at a level higher than the typical newspaper’s 8th grade education standard.

This also contributes, in our view, to the reasons why consumers typically emphasize the value of many forms of “raw” and other internal intelligence reporting. These latter products tend to be authored for the primary readership of other intelligence professionals, and is therefore not “simplified” in the fashion one comes to expect from the editing and production process. It is no wonder then that many consumers – in some cases now more experienced than the analysts and other staff which serves them – prefer the “roughs”.

In the end, the manner in which a finished product is best crafted demands that the author understand the reader – and not simply rely on old maxims of some journalism editor’s style guide, applied without real consideration.

Virtual talking heads

The circulation of the survey instrument for Mercyhurst’s new research study on video format delivery of finished intelligence has occasioned no small measure of debate among participating professionals within the community. While we are glad to see the research being conducted to advance the understanding of the field, we have some serious questions about the wider implications of the use of video for product delivery. Its historical applications have occasionally resulted in unique value – particularly for certain high level consumers, such as its famous use as part of President Reagan’s daily briefing. However, for routine production it imposes burdens on development, editing and coordination, archival processes, and technology / connectivity requirements that create issues far beyond the initial considerations of communications efficacy.

The entire discussion also reminds us of the earlier attempts to re-create intelligence briefings into virtual formats through automated processes. First popularized in response to Web 1.0 start-ups such as the virtual news readers such as Anna Nova, the concept never moved beyond research and development phases precisely for some of the same reasons. The removal of the human briefing element also created a disconnect between attention and pacing, which alienated many consumers whose areas of interest diverged from the set piece delivery – but who may have been more productively engaged by a dynamic briefer. There is also the subtle but very real impact of the uncanny valley – the noticeable aspects of the artificial in “too human” like virtual entities. (We wish to note one of our close colleagues’ wise but whimsical suggestion to replace a human virtual briefer with an object of classic children’s theatre. If nothing else, we would love to have such a product on hand to inject a bit of levity into meetings in which the participants take themselves too seriously.)

Set piece delivery tends to work best in environments where the consumer can devote only partial attention to the product – such as audio delivery of briefing or lecture materials, designed for those who are looking for cognitive engagement during other routine tasks such as driving, physical exercise, or the like. We have not yet seen an environment in which video delivery could meet this same niche – particularly for products which demand a higher degree of attention than watching CNN with the sound turned down in the typical watch center fashion. Virtual talking heads suffered the same problem.

There also remains the serious question of the longer term impacts of removing one of the few opportunities for direct interaction between consumers and intelligence professionals, where the intangibles of human relationships are nowhere as easily quantified. Perhaps there are some aspects of intelligence that simply ought not be automated, to the ultimate benefit of consumer outcomes.

Nonetheless, we will be interested to see the results of the study, and happy to see the literature of intelligence advanced in this area. We can only hope other academic studies will continue to build understanding of the nature of intelligence communication.

The role of intelligence producers in national policy debates

A new chapter of intelligence – policy relations has been firmly cemented with the release of the latest UBL message (no matter to what degree it was staged and altered in AQ’s propaganda shops). The fact our of most hated enemy has taken to citing US authors and domestic political debate talking points in support of his (and his organization’s) cause has been a disturbing development dating back to at least 2004. However, when the enemy cites the work of a former intelligence analyst due to the level of unseemly publicity that individual has attracted, it is time to question the role of the “retired” community members that now speak so frequently in national media. (This is to say nothing of the entirely contemptible leaks by intelligence insiders that have so damaged the country’s capabilities across its most sensitive programs in favour of transient political advantage.)

Some speak from positions of substantive experience at pivotal moments in history, some attempt to leverage marginal roles from decades ago into a platform supported by their association with the entity rather than the value of their ideas. The number of these individuals, and the impact on public debate, is an unprecedented thing in the history of the US intelligence community, even given the typically difficult tensions between intelligence producers and their policy level consumers. The business of intelligence deals often with inherently political subjects and judgments, and it is a constant struggle for those serving on the line to defend against politicization (of their own bias, or of the temptations of external pressure). Yet those who no longer face the constraints of the line seem often to become very political creatures themselves.

In one sense, this may be legitimate, were they seeking policy positions as office holders or even appointees. However, the endless circuit of talking heads and pundits that have emerged, feeding from the trough of ratings created by scandal, is another matter entirely. There may even be legitimate roles for a former intelligence professional in the media – the help contextualize and inform regarding complex events and situations, for instance – the lack of which has been a defining feature of the failures of the media’s coverage of many recent cases. But there is a distinct difference between discussion and advocacy, which is as clear of a bright line as any found in between analytical judgments and policy proponency.

There is in journalism the old adage that a reporter of the news should not himself become the story. Perhaps there is also a corollary that should be penned as similar admonition to those that serve (or have served) in the intelligence field. Our honours come not from praise in the public forum, but from the quiet acknowledgment of our peers over a lifetime of silent service that yields good outcomes which only history shall chart - long after we have gone to our graves.

Revisionist politicization

We are most disturbed by some of the passages cited by advance reviewers of former DCI Tenent’s new book. The prospect of a senior official of that level authoring such a controversial piece so quickly after his tenure is a difficult enough thing to stomach, but it is frankly just another indicator of the unpleasant nature of senior level politics in this town these days – and an indicator of how far from the apolitical ideal the position itself has fallen.

Tenent is by no means the first former DCI to write an autobiography. Indeed, former DCI Gate’s older work has enjoyed re-issue after his appointment to SecDef. The existence of the book is not entirely the core of our objection, however much we might otherwise wish to see those who served in silence remain so upon their retirement, at least until the matters of controversy had been relegated to the status of history.

Our primary objection comes from the characterization of discussions of intelligence briefings and key judgments during Operation Iraqi Freedom pre-planning. There is much room for the interpretations of history, and the inevitable second guessing by the principals involved in those debates. This is also regrettably politics as usual in this town, for what is perceived a defeat (even in the narrow temporal sense of the media’s momentum) will always be an orphan.

The statements personally attacking specific DIA analysts, especially given the issues surrounding the factual accuracy of the criticism, is another matter entirely. While it is now a given in some circles that the creation of new functional and organizational structures for mission specific analytical efforts was somehow at the root of all problems with pre-war intelligence, this still remains in an unproven assertion whose core allegations of “cherry-picked” conclusions have never been validated – and which hopefully will be the subject of proper and rigorous academic study in coming years. No matter what the outcome of that study might be, it would be a far better treatment of a difficult historical discussion than the current media and political scrimmage that has so badly tainted the matter with controversy.

One can argue the motivations and effectiveness of specific units such as Undersecretary Feith’s shop (and many no doubt will for years to come), but the creation of dedicated mission centers, functional groups, or task forces is hardly a new phenomena driven by any specific agency management. In fact, one noted commentator (speaking under the Chatham House Rule in an unclassified public forum) recently focused attention on the issues surrounding the growing number of account-specific centers, not due to fears of politicization, but out of the very real concerns that the effective conduct of intelligence on a wide range of targets is now apparently best accomplished through exception (in the form of these small units) than through the normal but increasingly ineffective bureaucracies of the community - with damning implications for the larger entities.

Attacking individual analysts assigned to serve in any of these shops is beyond the pale. Analysts given the privilege and responsibility of briefing at the DCI’s level are not speaking from individual opinion but rather coordinated agency (if not community) assessments. One can question the accuracy of those assessments, or the analytic rigor of the process by which they were produced, but somehow alleging that the briefing lacked validity due to the (inaccurately alleged) reserve employment status of the individual analyst is the worst form of libel - and ill-befits a former senior. And at the end of the day, what a DCI chooses to convey to a sitting President is the responsibility of that DCI, who must judge his advisors and their statements from his own experience, analytical tradecraft, and substantive target knowledge. Once he has spoken, he must own his statements – for history will always attribute them first and foremost to him.

It is further appalling to note the attempted attribution of new statements, which failed to fully characterize the nature of the underlying information regarding Iraqi WMD programs upon which the assessments were based, to specific analysts but described in language which would be exceptionally unusual, to say the least. Any analyst’s tendency to caveat even to excess is well known within the community, especially given the widespread recognition of hard target challenges and the impact of adversary denial and deception efforts. Analysts are drilled in the precision of well-parsed language, and the calibration of judgment usually conveyed using some variant on words of estimative probability. One can argue whether specific caveats were well crafted, or given conclusions communicated effectively, but it is nearly unthinkable that statements claiming almost bravado levels of confidence would have propagated through multiple layers of analysis, coordination, and presentation. Nothing so offends the well-tuned ear of those in the analytical communities – and this would have certainly provoked reactions.

We are also frankly amazed that a former DCI should express outrage at being judged based on his own statements, or that such judgments might have career impact – even if they were simply others’ words repeated. Intelligence officers and analysts live and die based on the accuracy of their assessments, whether errors were based in their own mistakes or inherited from others in the community involved in the product’s lifecycle. They are even judged, rightly or wrongly, based on policymaker interpretation and use of that intelligence – as any warning analyst or watchstander knows all too well. This accountability, even if applied wrongly in specific cases – is a critical and needed weight upon every individual in the national security community to get it right above all other considerations. Because when intelligence is wrong, consequences follow far beyond individual careers.

The focus of estimative efforts has to be on the substance and the tradecraft, not on personal advancement or any other careerist interests – and that focus has to start and end with the very pinnacle of the organization, and the intelligence community as a whole.

h/t Captains Quarters, Haft of the Spear