Roger Z. George - Intelligence in the National Security Enterprise _ An Introduction-Georgetown University Press (2020)

Intelligence
in the
N at i o n a l
Security
Enterprise
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Intelligence
in the
National
Security
Enterprise
An I ntro d u cti o n
Roger Z. George
Georgetown University Press / Washington, DC

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do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency or any other
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at time of publication.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: George, Roger Z., 1949- author.

Title: Intelligence in the National Security Enterprise : An Introduction / Roger Z. George.
Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009528 (print) | LCCN 2019016763 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626167445
(ebook) | ISBN 9781626167421 (hardcover : qalk. paper) | ISBN 9781626167438 (pbk.: qalk.
paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Intelligence service—United States. | Military intelligence—United States. |
National security—United States.
Classification: LCC JK468.I6 (ebook) | LCC JK468.I6 G47 2020 (print) | DDC 327.1273—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009528
c This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
21 20 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America.
Cover design by Jeff Miller, Faceout Studio.

To Cindy—my life partner and best friend—for her patience,
understanding, and love
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 How to Use This Book 1
2 What Is Intelligence? 7
3 What Is the National Security Enterprise? 25
4 What Is the Intelligence Community? 52
5 From Intelligence Cycle to Policy Support 84
6 Strategic Intelligence 111
7 The Challenges of Warning 145
8 Intelligence Support as Policy Enabler 174
9 Covert Action as Policy Support 205
10 The Challenges of the Intelligence-Policy Relationship 234
11 Intelligence and American Democracy 265
Glossary: Intelligence Terms 295
Index 313
About the Author 328
vii
Illustrations
BOXES
2.1 Sherman Kent on Intelligence 9

2.2 Intelligence Disciplines: Their Uses 11
2.3 Counterintelligence Explained 18
3.1 The National Security Act of 1947 (Excerpts from Original
and Amended Act) 28
3.2 Typical PDB for George H. W. Bush 46
4.1 National Intelligence Program: Members and Missions 53
4.2 Excerpts from Executive Order 12333 71
6.1 Soviet Forces for Intercontinental Attack (Key Findings) 125
6.2 Excerpts from January 2007 NIE Prospects for Iraq’s Stability:
A Challenging Road Ahead126
6.3 2017 Global Trends and Key Implications through 2035 131
7.1 April 1991 CIA Analysis: The Soviet Cauldron (Excerpts) 161
7.2 NIE 15–90: Yugoslavia Transformed, October 1990 (Key Points) 162
7.3 President’s Daily Brief, August 6, 2001, Regarding Bin Laden
(Excerpts)163
8.1 1954 Current Intelligence Bulletin (Excerpts on Korea) 178
8.2 1966 Defense Intelligence Summary (Excerpts on China) 180
8.3 1994 State Department Secretary’s Morning Summary
(Excerpt on DPRK) 181
8.4 National Technical Means 187
8.5 Targeting Analysis: Bin Laden Raid 191
8.6 Balkan Task Force Assessment, September 1995 (Excerpt) 195
9.1 Types of Covert Action 210
9.2 Typical Covert Action Authorization Process 220
10.1 The Gates Confirmation Hearings and Charges of Politicization 238
10.2 Rovner’s Taxonomy of Politicization Varieties 244
10.3 Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
(Excerpts from Key Judgments) 252
ix
xIllustrations
11.1 House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees 273

11.2 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act 274
11.3 Congressional Budget Justification Book 275
11.4 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 280
11.5 USA Freedom Act 286
11.6 Principles of Intelligence Transparency 288
FIGURES
3.1 The NSC Committee Structure 31

3.2 The Interagency Process for Decision-Making 32
3.3 A Typical NSC Week 33
5.1 The Intelligence Cycle 86
5.2 Analyst-centric Intelligence Process 101
5.3 Intelligence as “Enabler of National Security Strategy” 102
6.1 Types of Intelligence 112
6.2 Determinants of Foreign Actors National Security Policy 114
9.1 CIA and DOD Covert Operations Compared 226
TABLES
5.1 Collection Disciplines: Their Contributions and Constraints 92

8.1 Intelligence as Policy-Support “Enabler”: Examples for North Korea 176
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of many years of learning from my mentors, supervisors, and
peers about intelligence practices and principles. In this regard I want to thank a long
list of former colleagues who read chapters or parts of chapters to ensure I got my
facts right. In particular, I want to express special appreciation to Thomas Fingar at
Stanford University, Gregory Treverton at the University of Southern California, and
Peter Clement at Columbia University for reviewing various chapters from their van-
tage point of being former intelligence practitioners and now teachers themselves.
Also I need to acknowledge the indispensable advice I received from former policy
and intelligence officials at the National Security Council, such as Gregory Schulte,
Steven Simon, Stephen Flanagan, and Steven Slick. Along the way, I also consulted
with a wide range of former colleagues regarding particular events, processes, or
facts: Brad Knopp, James Carson, Tim Kilbourn, Craig Chellis, John Lauder, Mathew
Burrows, Aris Pappas, Daniel Wagner, and Cindy Storer. Of course, if I have commit-
ted any errors of fact or reached ill-conceived conclusions, those rest solely on my
shoulders.
Special thanks is also reserved for three individuals who have shaped my academic
and professional career and offered assistance in this book project. First, my earliest
and longest mentor, Larry Caldwell, is responsible for encouraging me to pursue a
career in international affairs but also for providing a model for someone who had
one foot in academia and another in the intelligence world. Second, my closest intel-
ligence colleague, James Bruce, and I have collaborated on several writing projects
over the past decade. He encouraged me in this textbook project as part of a career-
long conversation. Last, Harvey Rishikof has been a close writing partner during and
after a decade teaching with him at the National War College. Like Larry and James,
Harvey has been both friend and colleague and one who brings both insight and
integrity to the study and teaching of national security decision-making. He has deep-
ened my own understanding of the labyrinth within which the national security and
intelligence enterprises operate.
Last, I wish to thank Georgetown University Press for encouraging me to write this
book. For the past decade, we have collaborated on several edited volumes examin-
ing the national security decision-making process as well as intelligence analysis. In
particular, I want to express my gratitude to Donald Jacobs, who has been a wise and
xi
xiiAcknowledgments
gentle editor and overseer of several book projects before this one. Don has been a
trusted partner on my intelligence publications as well as those of many other prac-
titioners and scholars, which has made Georgetown University Press one of the fore-
most publishers of intelligence scholarship.
Abbreviations
ABM antiballistic missile

ACH analysis of competing hypotheses
ACIS Arms Control Intelligence Staff
BNE Board of National Estimates
BTF Balkan Task Force
BW biological weapons
C3 command, control, and communications
C4 command, control, communications, and computer
CBJB congressional budget justification book
CFE conventional forces in Europe
CI counterintelligence
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIB Current Intelligence Bulletin
CIG Central Intelligence Group
CJCS chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
COI coordinator of information
COMINT communications intelligence
COMIREX Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation
CTC Counterterrorism Center
CW chemical weapons
CYBERCOM United States Cyber Command
D&D deception and denial
DA Directorate of Analysis
DC Deputies Committee
DCI director of central intelligence
DEA Drug Enforcement Administration
DHS Department of Homeland Security
DI Directorate of Intelligence
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency
DINSUM Defense Intelligence Summary
DIRNSA director of the NSA
DMA Defense Mapping Agency
DNI director of national intelligence
xiii
xivAbbreviations
DO Directorate of Operations
DOD Department of Defense
DOJ Department of Justice
E-O electro-optical
EPIC El Paso Intelligence Center
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
FISC Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
FISINT foreign instrumentation intelligence
FOIA Freedom of Information Act
G-2 Army intelligence
GEOINT geospatial intelligence
HPSCI House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
HSC Homeland Security Council
HUMINT human intelligence
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
I&A Office of Intelligence and Analysis
I&W indications and warning
IC intelligence community
ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile
ICD Intelligence Community Directive
IG inspector general
IMINT imagery intelligence
INF intermediate nuclear forces
INFOSEC information security
INR Bureau of Intelligence and Research
INT intelligence-collection discipline
IOB Intelligence Oversight Board
IPC interagency policy committee
IRTPA Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004
ISG Iraq Survey Group
ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
J-2 JCS intelligence section
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
JSOC Joint Special Operations Command
JTTF joint terrorism task force
LEGAT legal attaché
LG NSC Lawyers Group
Abbreviationsxv
MASINT measurement and signature intelligence

MIB Military Intelligence Board
MID Military Intelligence Digest
MIP Military Intelligence Program
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCPC National Counterproliferation Center
NCSC National Counterintelligence and Security Center
NCTC National Counterterrorism Center
NEC National Economic Council
NGA National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
NIB National Intelligence Board
NIC National Intelligence Council
NID National Intelligence Daily
NIE National Intelligence Estimate
NIM national intelligence manager
NIMA National Imagery and Mapping Agency
NIO national intelligence officer
NIO/W national intelligence officer for warning
NIP National Intelligence Program
NIPF National Intelligence Priorities Framework
NPIC National Photographic Interpretation Center
NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty
NRO National Reconnaissance Office
NSA National Security Agency
NSB National Security Branch
NSC National Security Council
NSE national security enterprise
NSPD national security presidential decision
NTM national technical means
OCI Office of Current Intelligence
ODNI Office of the Director of National Intelligence
OFAC Office of Foreign Assets Control
OTFI Office for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
OIA Office of Intelligence and Analysis
ONE Office of National Estimates
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence
OOB order of battle
OPC Office of Policy Coordination
OSD Office of the Secretary of Defense
xviAbbreviations
OSINT open-source intelligence

OSR Office of Strategic Research
OSS Office of Strategic Services
PC Principals Committee
PCLOB Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
PDB President’s Daily Brief
PIAB President’s Intelligence Advisory Board
POTUS president of the United States
PSP President’s Surveillance Program
R&A Research and Analysis branch (OSS)
RFE Radio Free Europe
RL Radio Liberty
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
SAS Senior Analytical Service
SEIB Senior Executive Intelligence Brief
SIGINT signals intelligence
SME subject-matter expert
SSCI Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
TECHINT technical intelligence
UAV unmanned aerial vehicle
UN United Nations
UNVIE UN Mission to International Organizations in Vienna
USAF/IN Air Force Intelligence
USCG US Coast Guard
USDI undersecretary of defense for intelligence
USMC/IN Marine Corps Intelligence
USTR US special trade representative
VTC video teleconference
WINPAC Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center
WIRe Worldwide Intelligence Report
WMD weapon of mass destruction
1
How to Use This Book
Keep giving me things that make me think.

—Henry Kissinger to CIA director Richard Helms
Intelligence is often an invisible player in presidential formulation and execution of

national security policy. New occupants of the Oval Office often are perplexed as well
as amazed about how intelligence works and contributes to their policy processes. It
is no less challenging to explain the business of intelligence to students just learning
about American foreign policymaking. When I joined the intelligence community
(IC) in the late 1970s after studying international relations as an undergraduate and
in graduate school, I knew virtually nothing myself. For many students of my era,
intelligence was simply too secret and arcane to be understood. But with the benefit
of working in the IC and interacting with many policy agencies and officials, I believe
that the relationship between intelligence and policy can and should be more trans-
parent. Having taught courses on intelligence at both the graduate and undergradu-
ate levels, however, I realize that intelligence is still scarcely and often simplistically
presented in most books and courses about the conduct of American foreign and
security policy. There are plenty of critiques, memoirs, and studies on specific aspects
of intelligence but far fewer that survey the multifaceted role intelligence plays in US
statecraft in a more systemic way.
Accordingly, this textbook is intended to inform students about the ways in which
intelligence supports the national security decision-making process. It quite con-
sciously does not survey all the wide range of internal intelligence processes that
are common in other intelligence textbooks. Many intelligence books and studies
concentrate much more attention on the operational side of intelligence collection.
For example, they describe how technical collection systems such as satellites and
listening stations vacuum up massive amounts of data, or they recount how former
spies conducted their espionage against key adversaries. These are, indeed, impor-
tant topics for understanding the internal organizational cultures, methods, and
1
2 Chapter 1
challenges of the intelligence business. However, such a focus on the inside of the
IC can detract from a student’s understanding of what the actual output and value of
such collection is and how the finished analysis produced from such exotic, expen-
sive, and risky efforts actually is used in national-level decision-making.
This book captures my understanding of how the IC and the policy community
attempt to work together. It is a symbiotic relationship. When it is working well, pol-
icy decisions are usually more systematic and better informed; when it is not, poli-
cies are often poorly shaped, either because the intelligence was incorrect or simply
ignored. Granted, even with a good relationship, there is no guarantee that policies
will succeed, but in the author’s view the odds are surely better.
The book takes the approach of illustrating with practical examples how intelli-
gence has played a significant part in national security policymaking. The author’s own
experiences as a political-military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
including serving in policy rotations at the State Department and Defense Depart-
ment in the late 1980s and early 1990s, have shaped the way this book addresses the
intersection of policy and intelligence. Most intelligence practitioners have had some
good experiences when intelligence was useful as well as bad ones when intelligence
was flawed, dismissed, or misused. Indeed, my own opinions are on display in this
book, which I might summarize as being convinced that intelligence is a necessary, if
never perfect, part of the national security enterprise.
USE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
This book deepens a student’s understanding of how American national security pol-
icy is conducted with a more detailed description of how intelligence contributes to
the development of such policies. Most textbooks about American foreign policy or
national security provide scant attention to the intelligence contribution, but that is
a gap that should be filled. This book thus can complement textbooks on American
foreign policy by providing concrete examples of how intelligence informs and influ-
ences national security deliberations.
For students taking general courses in intelligence, this book can provide two
important additions to what is often left out of other intelligence textbooks. First, this
volume provides a clear explanation of the expanding US national security enterprise
(NSE), in which intelligence operates.1 The term itself suggests a set of agencies and
operations that conduct US national security policies. As the definition of national
security has broadened well beyond traditional military and diplomatic concerns to
include more transnational and socioeconomic issues, the enterprise and the agen-
cies it comprises has continued to expand. It is often assumed that the student is
already familiar with the NSE and its interagency process. In this author’s experience,
How to Use This Book3
students taking an introductory intelligence course often are not aware of the details
of that decision-making process, so it is hard for them to put the intelligence contribu-
tion into proper context.
A second feature of this book is its focus on distinguishing among a range of intel-
ligence functions that contribute to the NSE. Other intelligence textbooks will typi-
cally address intelligence support to policy in a single chapter, perhaps accompanied
by a chapter on analysis. Instead, this volume examines the varied forms of intel-
ligence support to policymakers, ranging from strategic intelligence and warning
analysis to more actionable daily intelligence support and covert action.
Accordingly, this book’s chapters are organized around the kinds of decisions
that policymakers often confront. At times their intelligence questions revolve more
around mysteries than secrets—to use Joseph Nye’s characterization of the different
sets of problems facing a senior policymaker or commander.2 Will C hina’s economic
model collapse? This is a mystery about which the IC can speculate and develop
alternative scenarios to help national decision-makers prepare strategies and options
for dealing with different circumstances. However, other questions might be how
potent China’s military modernization effort is likely to become and how it might
impact the South China Sea maritime rivalry. Here there are specific facts and trends
that the IC can bring into the discussion in order for policymakers to assess the risks
the United States and its allies face in challenging Chinese territorial claims. Some-
times policymakers are simply asking how to “think about” a problem—whether it
is the geopolitics of climate change or how Vladimir Putin views the world—while
others might be seeking specific facts about the size and location of Syria’s chemical
weapons stocks or the nature of Russia’s new “hybrid warfare.”
The wide range of questions posed to the IC lends itself to characterizing a range
of functions that are being performed constantly. The book’s chapters are organized
around those key functions. Chapter 2 first defines what intelligence is and its vari-
ous dimensions in general terms. Students will learn about intelligence-collection
methods, including technical, human, and open sources, and the contributions they
make to analysis. This foundation will then enable students to focus more on intel-
ligence “outputs” than “inputs” in order to highlight the value of intelligence to the
policymaking process.
Chapter 3 will outline the current structure and decision-making processes of the
NSE. It highlights the policy agencies and interagency mechanisms that are used
to develop and implement national security strategies. Students can then appreci-
ate the complexity of the decision-making process and the role that particular senior
policymakers play in running the process or shaping its outcomes. Importantly, the
chapter also will illustrate how intelligence fits into the formal interagency process
for national security decision-making.
4 Chapter 1
Chapter 4 will outline the current structure of the IC and identify some of the key
agencies that participate regularly in the NSE. Attention will be focused principally
on the national and departmental intelligence provided to National Security Council
(NSC) members as well as senior departmental decision-makers, who are principal
customers for the IC. This chapter will also introduce students to some of the continu-
ing challenges leaders face in managing this huge intelligence enterprise.
Chapter 5 lays out a framework for how to think about the distinct and diverse roles
that intelligence plays in the national security process. It describes the “intelligence
cycle” concept and moves to the practical discussion of more-specific missions that
support the decision-making process. Thereafter, chapters 6 through 10 will examine
each of those missions in more detail, providing examples of how intelligence has
contributed to major policy decisions.
To start, chapter 6 will describe “strategic intelligence” and its use for develop-
ing long-term strategies and policies. Students will gain an understanding of what
kinds of strategic intelligence, as opposed to tactical intelligence, are available to
policymakers. This discussion will explore the role of National Intelligence Esti-
mates (NIEs) and how they are produced. It will identify the actors and processes that
produce NIEs, using recent examples such as the deeply flawed 2002 NIE on Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) as well as the rising importance of the Global
Trends documents aimed at each incoming president.
Chapter 7 will describe the IC’s enduring responsibility to provide warning of
threats to the United States and its interests abroad. Students will be introduced to
the concept of warning, including how it is conducted and organized. A brief examina-
tion of some of the famous warning events—beginning with Pearl Harbor and includ-
ing the 9/11 attacks—will help students to identify lessons to be learned from past
warning cases. The chapter will conclude with an examination of how the warning
function has been organized in the past and how recent practices are shifting the
burden of warning from specialized warning staffs to every analyst.
Chapter 8 will shine a light on the usually invisible mission of direct policy sup-
port provided to virtually every major national security agency in the US government.
Students as well as scholars sometimes misunderstand the term to imply that the IC
openly supports an administration’s policy agenda. That is not the meaning or intent
of this term. Rather, the chapter will illustrate how intelligence supports policymakers
with information and analysis relevant to their decisions, without intending to favor
or oppose them. Students will gain an understanding of the President’s Daily Brief
(PDB) and the process behind it. It also describes other unique forms of intelligence
support to policymakers engaged in ongoing international negotiations, crisis man-
agement, and counterterrorism efforts.
How to Use This Book5
Chapter 9 focuses on the special and controversial intelligence mission of “covert

action.” Students will gain an appreciation for how covert actions are authorized and
monitored by both the executive and legislative branches. It will review some suc-
cesses and failures of covert action, using historical as well as more recent (acknowl-
edged) operations to illustrate the benefits, costs, and risks of such activities. Students
will be able to appreciate how national security policy and intelligence are even more
intertwined and less distinct than usual, which raises additional ethical and analytical
challenges.
Chapter 10 is designed to bring the discussion back to the critical and often frac-
tious relationship between intelligence and the policymaking process. Students will
learn how the IC is sometimes placed in a position of evaluating the effectiveness of
US policies. If the intelligence judgments are largely pessimistic, an administration’s
opponents—in Congress or in other political arenas—can attack those policies. Hence,
this chapter will expose students to the risks of “politicization” of intelligence. Classic
cases can be found in analysis conducted during the Vietnam War as well as during
the run-up to the invasion of Iraq during the presidency of George W. Bush, even
though the forms of politicization in these two cases were very different. Students
can then analyze various forms of politicization and also consider how it can be mini-
mized if not entirely eliminated.
Chapter 11 concludes with an examination of how intelligence can best operate
within American democracy while safeguarding both civil liberties and national secu-
rity. It highlights the ethical and legal challenges to conducting secret intelligence
gathering and covert action while remaining within the bounds of the US Constitu-
tion and accountable to senior policymakers, Congress, and ultimately the American
public. Students will become familiar with the mix of executive branch and congres-
sional oversight mechanisms that are in place to guarantee accountability. It raises
the question of whether those oversight mechanisms have been sufficient to deal with
the kinds of complex and intrusive intelligence operations conducted in a post-9/11
environment. The chapter concludes with a recommendation that American intelli-
gence become as transparent as possible so that it is not only more easily understood
by students and scholars but also finds more public support for its essential role in
the policymaking process.
As students work their way through this introduction to intelligence, they will be
confronted with a variety of terms involving intelligence processes, organizations,
and concepts. This arcane vocabulary is often difficult to comprehend. Therefore, to
provide a study aid, the author has set in boldface these terms that have a special
meaning or significance. Short definitions of these highlighted items are located in
the extensive glossary found at the back of the book. For instructors and students
6 Chapter 1
interested in going further into any of the topics covered in each chapter, there is
also a short list of key readings at the end of each chapter, which the author considers
excellent sources on a wide range of intelligence and national security topics. Last, at
the end of the chapters where relevant there are sections variously titled Useful Doc-
uments, Useful Websites, and Further Reading with links to additional intelligence
studies, declassified intelligence products, and related materials. With these addi-
tional aids, the author hopes to make a student’s introduction to intelligence more
accessible and comprehensive.
NOTES
Epigraph: As cited in Charles Lathrop, The Literary Spy: The Ultimate Source of Quotations on
Espionage and Intelligence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 10.
1. See Roger George and Harvey Rishikof, eds., The National Security Enterprise: Navi-
gating the Labyrinth, 2nd ed. (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2017). This book
outlines the many government agencies involved in national security decision-making along
with descriptions of other key actors, such as Congress, the courts, think tanks, and the media.
It provides students with an overview of the interagency processes and challenges that the
NSE faces and is likely to face for the foreseeable future.
2. Joseph Nye, “Peering into the Future,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 1994, 82–93.
2
What Is Intelligence?
It is not enough, of course, to simply collect information. Thoughtful

analysis is vital to sound decision-making.
—President Ronald Reagan, 1981
Our country’s safety and prosperity depend on the quality of the

intelligence we collect and the analysis we produce, our ability to
evaluate and share this information in a timely manner and our abil-
ity to counter intelligence threats.
—2010 US National Security Strategy
The Intelligence Community exists to provide political and military

leaders with the greatest possible decision advantage. We under-
stand, now more than ever, that the best possible way to accomplish
our goal is through integration of all national intelligence capabilities.
—James Clapper, director of national intelligence, 2014
US national security decision-making relies on intelligence. Although the relation-

ship between policy action and information seems so obvious, the actual uses of
intelligence for making decisions on war and peace are seldom well understood by
scholars and students of international affairs. This chapter will explore what intelli-
gence is and introduce students to some of the basic terminology surrounding intel-
ligence collection and analysis.
The organization and operation of American intelligence agencies is itself a com-
plicated subject that is hard for students to grasp. Intelligence involves the use of
specialized methods and processes for collecting information and then processing
it (if it must be converted into more usable forms or translated). That information
is then analyzed by regional or technical experts to determine what significance it
holds for US national security interests. Once the information is analyzed and fully
7
8 Chapter 2
evaluated for its credibility and accuracy, it is compiled into finished analysis (i.e.,
fully evaluated information) reports and disseminated to government officials for
their use in shaping national security policies. Policymakers then may provide feed-
back and levy new intelligence requirements for additional information and analysis
on those topics. This sequence of steps has become known as the intelligence cycle.
All of these phases are important, but they reveal little about how intelligence informs
policy or how policymakers use intelligence. Moreover, the alphabet soup of more
than a dozen intelligence agencies is bewildering. They are not all equally important
to national-level decision-making. Knowing where, when, and how intelligence has
been critical to a national security decision is far more critical to understanding how
US national security policies are formulated and implemented.
The intelligence-policy relationship is fundamentally one of a support function
involving a wide range of intelligence agencies, activities, and assessments. Iden-
tifying the roles and responsibilities of both sides of this relationship is critical to
understanding why sometimes it can become a very contentious one. Policymakers
expect and depend on intelligence to provide more clarity if not total comprehension
of complex international issues; however, they consider intelligence only one input
and not always the decisive one. Intelligence officers do not wish to make policy, but
they must often provide information and analysis that complicates or raises ques-
tions about an administration’s decisions or actions. This symbiotic relationship, as
we shall see in subsequent chapters, is not always evident or easy to manage. The
intelligence-policy relationship often suffers from distrust on both sides, partly owing
to poor understanding of the different cultures that drive them.
INTELLIGENCE: AN ENABLER OF STRATEGY
When the Cold War broke out, the United States began developing a national secu-
rity strategy as well as a national security system (see chapter 3 for more discussion).
US containment strategy was soon in place along with seminal legislation titled the
National Security Act of 1947, which set up the now well-known National Security
Council and its various components. At that time, there was no set idea of how intel-
ligence would support a growing US international role. However, an early participant
in US wartime intelligence, Professor Sherman Kent, wrote perhaps the most influ-
ential book on intelligence. In it, he argued that intelligence should “raise the level
of discussion” around the policymaking table.1 At the same time, intelligence should
not advocate any specific policy option but rather should provide information that is
tailored to those policies being considered by decision-makers. Kent was aware of the
dangers of being too close or too far from the policy process. Being too close ran the
risk of intelligence becoming skewed to suit policymakers’ preferences; being too far
What Is Intelligence?9
Box 2.1 Sherman Kent on Intelligence
“I suppose if we in intelligence were one day given three wishes, they would be to know
everything, to be believed when we spoke, and in such a way to exercise an influence to the
good in the matter of policy.”
—Sherman Kent, former director, Board of National Estimates
removed from policy discussions risked being irrelevant to or uninformed about the
policies being debated and the options being considered (see box. 2.1).
An important by-product of the 1947 National Security Act was the institutional-
ization of intelligence support to senior policymakers. According to the legislation,
the NSC would be expanded beyond just the president’s diplomatic and military
advisers to include the director of central intelligence (DCI) as its key intelligence
adviser. This usually placed intelligence at or near the policy table when presidents
and secretaries of state and defense were making momentous decisions. That intel-
ligence advisory role took the form of providing the president with his own daily
intelligence reports, which later came to be known as the President’s Daily Brief, as
well as preparation of more comprehensive intelligence reports such as National
Intelligence Estimates on which major policies were often based. In addition, the
Cold War and the threat of nuclear war obliged the United States to find methods
short of a “hot” conflict for combating Soviet subversion around the world. In short
order, President Harry Truman and virtually every president thereafter authorized
the CIA to conduct other “special activities”—later known as covert action. This
became an important secret tool of presidents and also placed the CIA in a unique
position to both formulate policy initiatives and implement them. In the post-9/11
era, this covert action tool has become even more important and ironically more
visible than the original shapers of the US national security system could have
imagined.
Today the United States maintains the largest and most elaborate and capable set
of intelligence agencies in the world. This intelligence system employs more than
one hundred thousand people and spends over $70 billion annually on its activities.
It supports the national security enterprise by providing tailored intelligence to virtu-
ally every national security body, from the White House to the Department of State
and Department of Defense to the economic and law enforcement agencies. Impor-
tant intelligence subjects go far beyond the politico-military realm, and the concept
of national security now encompasses such broad topics as infectious disease, climate
change, and the cyberspace domain. Since 9/11, national security has also required
significant domestic intelligence functions. Simply stated, intelligence is a significant
10 Chapter 2
player in forming and conducting all aspects of US foreign policy but also aspects of
domestic public safety.
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?
The term intelligence has a variety of meanings and uses. The most common usage
is to encompass just information (both classified and unclassified) provided to pol-
icy officials, in order to distinguish it from a broader body of information available
to those inside and outside the US government. So the term is often applied to the
collection of raw (i.e., unevaluated) information that the intelligence agencies collect
and distribute to a select group of civilian and military decision-makers. A second
usage is when intelligence refers to the analysis that is produced when regional and
technical experts evaluate the raw information and then prepare “finished” intelli-
gence reports of various kinds. The word finished denotes that all the information
included in those reports has been reviewed and evaluated for its accuracy and
significance.
Intelligence Is Collection
Intelligence is most often but not always focused on the collection of secret informa-
tion. That is to say, intelligence organizations are especially interested in gathering
information that a foreign actor wishes to conceal from the US government. In this
sense, clandestinely acquired intelligence is doubly secret—it concerns the secrets of
foreign actors that US intelligence can gather secretly. The acquisition of the infor-
mation is done so that the collection operation as well as the source and identity of
the collector are concealed. This allows the US IC the ability to know things that a
foreign government or actor does not want to be shared, but it also keeps that tar-
get in the dark regarding what the US government has learned about its plans and
capabilities. This is the essence of secret intelligence—giving the United States a
decision-advantage in dealing with a foreign threat.
The two most well-known categories of intelligence are technical intelligence
(TECHINT) and human intelligence (HUMINT). First, intelligence can be gathered
by technical (i.e., TECHINT) systems involving ground-based electronic systems and
aerial platforms or satellites in earth orbit that gather electronic signals or images
using different technologies. These systems produce the bulk of the raw intelligence
used by the IC. Alternatively, raw information can be collected through clandestine
(i.e., conducted in order to assure the secrecy of the activity) or overt means involv-
ing people (i.e., HUMINT). Here, the goal is to understand the activities but also
the intentions of foreign government officials or other nonstate actors. A third but
entirely unclassified form of intelligence collection has been the widespread use of
Box 2.2 Intelligence Disciplines: Their Uses
Human intelligence (HUMINT) is gained overtly by diplomats and military attachés or

secretly from foreign agents who have access to the plans, intentions, and capabilities of
foreign adversaries. Examples:
• Diplomatic reporting on foreign government policies and actions
• Attaché reporting on the readiness and capabilities of foreign militaries
• Clandestine reports on internal foreign government plans and intentions
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the technical interception and exploitation of an adversary’s
communication and other electronic systems. Examples:
• Communications between a hostile government’s ministries or offices
• Electronic test results from an adversary’s missile firing
• Air-defense radar capabilities of a hostile power’s defense installations
Imagery intelligence (IMINT) is collected from ground, aerial, and space-based imaging sys-
tems (often satellites) using visual photography, electro-optics, radar, or infrared sensors.
Examples:
• Images of battlefield preparations and combat operations
• Measurement and assessment of an adversary’s air-defense systems
• Location and assessment of airfields for emergency evacuations of US nationals
Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) is derived from imagery and other geospatial informa-
tion that describe the physical features and geographically referenced activities on Earth.
Examples:
• Geolocation of hidden defense installations
• Targeting data for unmanned airborne vehicles
• Physical geographic and environmental changes following natural disasters
Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) is information derived from a diverse set
of technical sensors that collect acoustic, radiological, chemical, biological, and other signa-
tures from fixed or moving targets. Examples:
• Presence of chemical or biological toxins in soil samples near factories
• Air samples containing radioactive isotopes from nuclear tests
• Electromagnetic analysis that can distinguish foliage from camouflage
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is unclassified, publicly available information on key for-
eign developments found in foreign broadcasts, news media, or Internet sites. Examples:
• Public speeches by foreign officials on national security policies
• Online terrorist propaganda and recruitment efforts
• Technology reports of foreign scientific and technical research institutes
open-source intelligence (OSINT) (see box 2.2). Collectively, these intelligence-

collection disciplines (often referred to as “INTs”) make up the body of classified
and unclassified information from which analysts will try to identify significant inter
national developments. Each of these approaches is worth exploring in greater detail
because they provide the foundation for later exploration of the role intelligence plays
in informing the policymaking process.
12 Chapter 2
Within the TECHINT category, signals intelligence (SIGINT) collects the wide
array of electronic signals and communications produced by foreign actors. It is col-
lected via ground stations as well as aircraft and satellites that suck up all the sig-
nals emanating from multiple sources and locations. SIGINT is further broken down
into other more distinct categories of collection techniques and targets. For example,
communications intelligence (COMINT) comprises all the signals produced by tele-
communication systems such as telephones, fax machines, radios, and Internet data
streams. COMINT is particularly useful in providing insights into the conversations
among foreign actors and any activities that might be revealed in the collected phone,
fax, or Internet activity. In addition, there is electronic intelligence (ELINT), which is
produced by the signals emanating from foreign radars and other electronic military
systems; it is especially useful for observing and assessing military capabilities and
operations. Finally, the SIGINT family is rounded out by foreign instrumentation
signals intelligence (FISINT), the electronic signals produced by a foreign govern-
ment’s military, commercial, and scientific testing. When a foreign government sends
performance data from a rocket test, for example, these signals can sometimes be
intercepted by US collectors.
Also within the TECHINT category is imagery intelligence (IMINT). The United
States led the way in developing overhead imagery systems such as the U-2 and
SR-71 aircraft, which carried cameras (as well as SIGINT sensors) to observe foreign
military activities. These have been dramatically augmented by large satellite sys-
tems, which today are mostly electro-optical (E-O) systems capable of returning vast
numbers of images of selected targets in near-real time.2 These satellites have the
advantage of being well above enemy air defenses and can loiter in long-duration
earth orbits to give them ability to reaccess important target locations on a regular
basis. Technology has advanced to the point that these systems can pick up targets
that are far less than a square meter in size.3 Other technical sensors on such sat-
ellites can also capture infrared images of ground and even underground targets
that E-O systems would not detect. Managed from the ground, satellites can be pro-
grammed to take images at precise times and places based on the priorities estab-
lished by the imagery analysts.
Satellites are typically operated for many years and are expensive to replace. While
they can produce many images, they are in great demand, so they are used only on
high-priority targets. The advent of commercial imagery satellites now permits the
US IC to purchase images of lower-priority targets, which otherwise might not be
covered. Most recently, imagery has been supplemented as well by the appearance of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which can also provide real-time imagery on spe-
cific locations, installations, or operations being conducted by foreign governments
or nonstate actors.
As technology has advanced in the development of sensors as well as computer

software applications, the technical collection of raw information has led to the
development of a new category of intelligence. Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT)
is the use of these advanced technologies along with imagery that has even more
applications than simply producing high-resolution pictures. To give a simple
example, IMINT might produce pictures of a terrorist camp or refugee center some-
where in Africa; however, GEOINT would overlay those images with other social
media and signals intelligence geolocated there to describe who might be in those
structures and what their plans or activities are.
A final element of the TECHINT discipline is measurement and signature intel-
ligence (MASINT). This discipline is an even more arcane set of sensors and collec-
tion methods on the technical side of intelligence. MASINT aims to detect, identify,
and describe significant features of the earth or other fixed or dynamic targets. Often
mentioned are radar signatures that can capture activities hidden from normal imag-
ery, seismic detectors of nuclear and natural events, or air-sampling sensors that can
identify the presence of nuclear, chemical, or biological materials.4 In many cases,
some combination of these technical collection systems is used to give the most com-
plete picture of an important target.5
HUMINT, or human-source collection, is the oldest and most common method of
collecting secret (as well as overt) information. Called “spying” or “espionage,” clan-
destine HUMINT involves the use of trained intelligence officers (called “case offi-
cers”) who recruit agents (termed “sources” and sometimes “assets”). These agents
are foreign nationals who for a variety of reasons—such as greed, ego, disgruntlement
or trouble with their superiors or governments, or ideology—are prepared to commit
treason. That is, they will pass a foreign government’s or other organization’s secrets
to the IC at the risk of incarceration and possibly execution. Compared to TECHINT,
HUMINT is relatively cheap in terms of resources. However, it requires substan-
tial training in espionage methods (termed “tradecraft”) that enables the case offi-
cer to evade detection, evaluate and run the source, and protect those sources and
methods. These HUMINT operations can lead to a case officer’s arrest, expulsion,
lengthy imprisonment, or death; often it is far worse for a source that is uncovered.
Hence, human-source collection is reserved for some of the most important intelli-
gence missions and justifies keeping the information about such sources limited to
only those who “need to know.”6 That principle aims to keep detailed knowledge of
a source’s identity, activities, and location to an absolute minimum and to compart-
mentalize these details so as to reduce the risk of exposure. Few if any intelligence
analysts need that kind of information, and policymakers almost never see it.
A key advantage of HUMINT is that it can reveal the plans and intentions of for-
eign officials and other human targets who have shared their information with others,
14 Chapter 2
including an intelligence source. This kind of direct knowledge of a foreign govern-

ment’s thinking and plans is hard to develop. It can take years for a HUMINT asset
to be identified, recruited, developed, and managed as a reliable source of a foreign
government’s or terrorist organization’s innermost secrets. American HUMINT pro-
grams are run overseas by placing officers “under cover” (i.e., provide a false identity)
in order for them to work clandestinely. This status allows them to operate clandes-
tinely without a foreign government’s or nonstate actor’s knowledge. Such operations
are termed “unilateral” since the host government is unwitting of their existence.
HUMINT need not be clandestinely collected. Many HUMINT reports come from
the normal diplomatic interactions between US diplomats and their foreign counter-
parts. Military attachés serving in US embassies also meet with foreign military offi-
cials or observe military exercises, which result in HUMINT reports. US intelligence
officers may also use formal liaison relationships with foreign intelligence agencies
to share information on targets they both view as a threat. In these cases, American
case officers may work jointly (termed a “joint or bilateral operation”) with a host
government’s intelligence service to gather intelligence on that target. These forms
of HUMINT are declared to a foreign government and are considered acceptable, so
they do not carry the risk that clandestinely acquired HUMINT normally involves.
Nonetheless, since these reports reflect confidential information or views that a for-
eign government has shared with US diplomats, military officers, or case officers, they
are also classified.
There has been a long-standing debate over whether the United States relies too
much on TECHINT and has failed to develop sufficient HUMINT capability. US
technological sophistication gives it a natural advantage in building technical col-
lection systems capable of gathering huge volumes of electronic data, images, and
other information. However, it is costly to process and sift through that mountain of
data to find the nuggets of unique and compelling information. This raw informa-
tion can be degraded or misleading as well as denied to the United States through a
variety of concealment, deception, and operational security measures. Interpreting
images requires special understanding of the telltale signatures of complex targets,
which can be hidden if the foreign intelligence target understands how US technical
systems operate.
HUMINT—if it provides unique access to a government’s or another target’s plans
and intentions—can be indispensable to alerting intelligence analysts and policy
makers to an emerging threat. Yet HUMINT also has disadvantages and weaknesses.
First, as mentioned earlier, it takes time and good tradecraft skills to recruit and pro-
tect reliable sources with real access. Reviewing and validating a human source’s
information also takes time, and it is not always easy to develop high confidence
about a source. Second, those sources can often be fabricators, who tell a case officer
what they believe the US government expects to hear. Third, a human source might
actually be part of a foreign counterintelligence (CI) operation. In this case, the
source is a foreign intelligence officer working to penetrate US intelligence. Such CI
operations are designed to provide misinformation, collect against US intelligence
agencies, and disrupt American intelligence programs.
Having surveyed the main sources of largely secret intelligence collection, it is
important not to minimize the value of open-source intelligence. OSINT includes the
vast array of publicly available news reporting, government documents, academic and
scientific scholarship, and social media that are carried in publications, on television
or radio, or over the Internet. In fact, open-source materials had been used through-
out the Cold War, when translations of Soviet newspapers and television and radio
broadcasts provided insight into internal Kremlin politics, domestic economic condi-
tions, and foreign policy positions. In the post–Cold War period, with the decline in
so-called denied areas (i.e., authoritarian states where information is closely guarded)
and the growth of the Internet and social media, the volume of open-source material
has grown exponentially. While these sources are easily accessible, they still require
systems and processes to retrieve, store, and evaluate their significance to American
national security. Translation services, data mining, and other technical processes are
often used to put those information sources into a form that is useful for analysts and
ultimately for policymakers.
Open sources are in many ways ubiquitous, and they provide a useful starting
point for understanding a foreign government’s or nonstate actor’s behavior. Intel-
ligence analysts often use open sources to assist them in pointing TECHINT and
HUMINT collectors to targets where their unique access might provide more insight
and details about an emerging problem. In some cases, where a target is considered a
low priority for expensive TECHINT or risky HUMINT operations, OSINT might be
the most likely source of information.
Intelligence comprises all these sources, which are collected to produce the best
understanding of complex issues. A good example of the combination of intelligence
disciplines was the successful targeting of Osama bin Laden. Human intelligence
derived from agents and interrogation of terrorist detainees was used to ascertain the
possible location of the al-Qaeda leader in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. Imag-
ery provided details of the compound in which he was living, while communication
intercepts were used to determine who was in touch with Bin Laden and how alert
Pakistani officials were to the activities inside that compound. No single intelligence
source was sufficient to locate and identify Bin Laden. Even so, as participants said
after the fact, they were never 100 percent sure Bin Laden was there. But the combi-
nation of all the sources helped to raise confidence that this was the location. Typi-
cally, good intelligence relies on a combination of clandestine, technical, and even
16 Chapter 2
open-source intelligence to give analysts and policymakers a more complete picture

of an important topic or target.
Intelligence Is Analysis
Intelligence, as President Reagan’s comment at the beginning of this chapter notes, is
more than the collection of raw information. That information must be assembled into
a consolidated picture of what international developments might affect US national
security interests. Many of the book’s later chapters will delve deeply into the nature
of intelligence analysis, but understanding the contribution that analysis makes to
collection of raw information is important to understand. The old adage that “the
facts speak for themselves” is almost never true. In an intelligence context, arraying
all the facts is not enough, for many reasons. First, all the facts may not address the
question policymakers are asking. Experts need to determine which facts are relevant.
Second, not all the information may be accurate or reliable. The data must be exam-
ined and compared with other information known to be accurate to see if this new
information can be validated. Third, the relevant and validated information must be
developed into a narrative or story that explains why this development is significant
for US policy. Last, when policymakers react to these finished reports and pose further
questions, analysts must determine what new information needs to be collected to fill
gaps in their understanding and to continue monitoring those intelligence issues. In
sum, analysts must guide the collection for new information so that they can address
policymakers’ critical intelligence needs.
Analysis can take a number of forms, depending on where it occurs in the intel-
ligence cycle. Within each INT, there are single-source analysts who examine and
evaluate the collected raw information. They assemble a picture of the intelligence
target or topic based on their understanding of the imagery, signals, or human sources
that their collection system produces. Although single-source analysts have access to
information from other INTs and their work is often informed by other collection
disciplines (usually termed “collateral information”), they are not authorized to pro-
duce “all-source analysis,” or “finished” intelligence. Instead, sole-source reports go
to other all-source analysts, where they will collate all relevant information that sole-
source analysis has on a specific topic.
For example, take the case of Saddam Hussein’s efforts to develop weapons of
mass destruction in the late 1990s and early 2000. Single-source imagery analysts
would evaluate many photos taken of suspected WMD research or production sites to
determine if there might be proof of renewed activities. SIGINT analysts would cull
through many intercepted phone conversations of senior Iraqi officials to determine
if they were talking about the development or transfer of “special weapons” (e.g., what
analysts believed was the euphemism for WMDs) among suspect sites. HUMINT
reports officers (now called “collection management officers”) would evaluate the
accuracy and reliability of human assets (a combination of agents or defectors or for-
eign liaison reporting) and disseminate any credible reports on the supposed plans
of senior Iraqi officials regarding their WMD programs or on reactions to US poli-
cies to restrict Baghdad’s weapons research. These single-source reports across all
INTs would be available to all-source analysts in other agencies. All-source analysts
would then be responsible for assessing whether Saddam had plans to restart WMD
programs and whether he could develop a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons
capability over the next several years. Their “finished” intelligence assessments were
then provided to the president and his senior civilian and military advisers. In this
particular case, George W. Bush administration officials were convinced that Saddam
had restarted his programs. Their feedback tended to criticize analysts for not pro-
viding more conclusive evidence of Saddam’s WMD programs. Later chapters will
examine how this kind of policymaker bias and feedback can distort analysis and
sometimes misdirect collection priorities toward confirming a policy bias rather than
searching as well for disconfirming information.
Intelligence Is Risky Business

Whether intelligence is looked at as a collection effort or as an analytical one, it
carries risks of imperfection, if seldom complete failure. First, it is impossible to col-
lect perfect information or to have total confidence in what intelligence reporting
means for US national security. Each intelligence-collection discipline has its limits
and flaws. Hostile foreign actors have worked hard to hide their plans and capa-
bilities; many of America’s foremost rivals, such as Russia, China, and Iran, have
formidable intelligence services that are conducting espionage and disinformation
campaigns against the United States. Also, as a former mentor of many intelligence
analysts put it, analysis is not “fortune telling.”7 Such assessments can, as another
practitioner has phrased it, “reduce uncertainty,” but they cannot entirely remove
it.8 Necessarily, some intelligence will prove to be wrong or off base. Making “pre-
dictions” in the sense of forecasting precise outcomes is a fool’s errand. Few policy
makers seriously expect the IC to have crystal balls, and the IC attempts not to
give that impression. However, policymakers do expect intelligence to bound that
uncertainty, so they have a clear sense of the “knowns” and “unknowns” in the deci-
sions they make.
A second risk is that the intelligence sources and methods often carry political,
financial, and personal costs if they are exposed or lost. US intelligence officers over-
seas run the risk of exposure, expulsion, and possible imprisonment if they are discov-
ered by foreign governments. Many intelligence operations are fragile, so they must
be protected through good operational security practices. This, too, is intelligence.
18 Chapter 2
Box 2.3 Counterintelligence Explained
As defined in the Executive Order 12333, which governs US intelligence activities, counter-
intelligence is “information gathered and activities conducted to identify, deceive, exploit,
disrupt or protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassina-
tions conducted for or on behalf of foreign power, organizations or persons, or their agents,
or international terrorist organizations or activities.”
US intelligence agencies conduct counterintelligence analysis and operations to ensure
that they understand which specific threats hostile foreign intelligence agencies may pres-
ent to the United States. US CI activities also include careful screening of US government
employees, requiring a security clearance to ensure they are not under the control of a
foreign intelligence service. Travel restrictions as well as reporting of any contact with for-
eign nationals are required of all employees; moreover, periodic reinvestigation and often
polygraph exams are used to verify their adherence to strict rules about the handling and
sharing of classified information.
Formal responsibility for counterintelligence is shared by several US intelligence agen-
cies. The CIA is principally responsible for monitoring and combating foreign counterintel-
ligence overseas, while the FBI is responsible for investigating foreign counterintelligence
activities within the United States.
Protecting US sources and methods (via counterintelligence) often involves having

to penetrate foreign intelligence services (counterespionage) in order to know if US
intelligence operations have been compromised (see box 2.3). Recent exposure of
large amounts of classified intelligence by Edward Snowden, including sensitive col-
lection operations, has compromised or ended some of the most productive sources
of counterterrorism information. Many are probably irreplaceable and have now
been exploited by other hostile actors. Moreover, it has damaged the United States’
reputation with allies and in some cases made their intelligence services less will-
ing to cooperate with Washington. Conducting counterintelligence and counteres-
pionage can also carry risks. When US efforts to recruit foreign intelligence officers
are revealed, it inevitably has negative effects on those intelligence relationships. An
alleged CIA effort to recruit a German intelligence officer in 2014, according to vari-
ous news sources, led to official German complaints and demands that the senior US
intelligence official in Germany leave the country.9
Third, intelligence operations can raise serious ethical concerns about their
acceptability in democratic societies. “Spying” and secrecy more generally are seen
by some as antithetical to the openness of democratic societies, yet the protection
of American democracy may require compromises in how far the United States is
prepared to let its intelligence agencies operate. Excessive domestic surveillance at
the expense of Americans’ civil liberties—as occurred during the Vietnam War—cost
the IC credibility with Congress and the public. Similar operations against foreign
targets tend to be less controversial. Covert actions to influence foreign governments

or to weaken hostile nonstate actors often rely on activities that would be reprehen-
sible within our own society and constitutional system. Since the early 1980s, those
operations have required presidential findings and congressional notifications
(discussed in later chapters). Today measures to collect intelligence, whether they
are enhanced interrogation techniques or technical surveillance of private citizens,
raise serious human rights and civil liberties questions that our legislative and judi-
cial institutions must protect. Providing as much transparency and accountability
as possible will remain important if intelligence agencies are to be able to operate
with the support of the American public. These challenges will be examined in more
detail in chapter 11.
WHY INTELLIGENCE MATTERS
Good strategy is dependent on understanding the nature of the international sys-

tem, key actors in that system, and major challenges facing US national interests.
Inherently, then, a national security strategy must be based on good intelligence. His-
torically, leaders have depended on good intelligence. Moses sent spies into Canaan,
Napoleon’s diplomats were operating as spies in the royal courts of Europe, and Paul
Revere provided the first intelligence warning of the British advance on the colonists.
Indeed, Gen. George Washington became America’s first spymaster, directing the
Committee of Correspondence and dispensing funds to agents working against the
Redcoats. In both world wars, American intelligence operations were established to
support the military campaigns, only to be eliminated in peacetime.
After 1947, however, intelligence became a permanent feature of America’s national
security system. However, it was little discussed or understood outside of the govern-
ment. As mentioned above, the 1947 National Security Act set up a new decision-
making process, with the president at the center. Most important for our purposes,
that legislation established the need for a peacetime intelligence function, making it
a central player in the national security decision-making process. The NSC not only
would contain the president’s closest foreign policy advisers from the Department of
State and Department of Defense but also the DCI as its key intelligence adviser—a
body most recently revised to reflect the creation of the director of national intelli-
gence (DNI). This was a realization that classified and specialized information would
be useful in determining what kinds of threats and opportunities the United States
faced and which tools—diplomatic, economic, and military as well as intelligence—
might be brought to bear.
The 1947 act says very little about the internal organization and operation of US
intelligence. That would evolve over the next sixty or more years into an elaborate set
20 Chapter 2
of agencies. Proof of the connection between intelligence and national security can be
seen in the simultaneous expansion of American global influence and military pres-
ence abroad and the comparable growth of American intelligence. As America became
a superpower, so too the US IC went “global,” covering virtually any topic that might
be discussed in the Oval Office, by the NSC, or by military officials in the Pentagon.
This growth also reflected more sophistication in intelligence techniques—both for
collection of information as well as its analysis. As the US national security policy
structure grew into a major enterprise, it created an ever-larger and more diverse set of
civilian and military users of intelligence. Important legislation and presidential exec-
utive orders—sometimes secret—authorized the creation of new intelligence agencies.
The position of DCI was established in 1947. After some debate over whether analysis
and espionage should be run separately by the State Department and the CIA, respec-
tively, the CIA began its slow evolution into the multimission organization that it is
today.10 President Truman secretly authorized the establishment of the National Secu-
rity Agency (NSA) in 1952, unifying previously separate signals intelligence agen-
cies of the military services. In the early 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and
John F. Kennedy pushed for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to monitor
Soviet military activities and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to strengthen
military analysis. Other elements of the IC came into being as each major department
became a player in international diplomatic, economic, or legal affairs and needed tai-
lored intelligence in order to conduct its business.
Another expansion occurred in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. President
George W. Bush introduced the most far-reaching intelligence reforms to defend the
homeland against terrorist attacks and to better coordinate the vast IC. He established
the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to oversee the sixteen indi-
vidual intelligence agencies, gave the CIA new authorities to conduct covert action
against global terrorist organizations, and created a National Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC) to better orchestrate the development of counterterrorism policies.
Separately, he created the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has
intelligence functions as well as domestic policy authorities. All of these measures
highlight just how interrelated intelligence and policy are.
Today intelligence is central to defeating terrorism, preventing proliferation of
WMDs, and deterring the actions of resurgent or rising powers such as Russia and
China. Indeed, the 2019 National Intelligence Strategy lists countering cyber threats,
terrorism, and WMD proliferation as key missions as well as conducting broad stra-
tegic intelligence analysis of enduring security issues and anticipating emerging
threats.11
Each president has recognized the crucial role of intelligence in formulating
national security decision-making. Most presidents have been dissatisfied with the
IC’s performance at various points in their tenures, while praising the community at
other times. Failures receive the lion’s share of attention in the form of presidential
criticisms, congressional inquiries, and media attention. Most successes must remain
secret or are of such little interest that they seldom garner attention. Many are simply
getting good information in a timely way to senior policymakers that helps to shape
policies; some are early warnings that lead to decisions that avert or at least reduce
the risks or impact of damaging trends. Still others are invisible covert actions that
reinforce diplomacy or military operations. However, dramatic failures are often seen
as particularly damning and cause for major investigations and additional reforms.
There can be double standards. For example, the successful tracking and elimina-
tion of Bin Laden has been generally applauded, but the “targeted killings” by drone
operations and enhanced interrogation techniques have been strongly questioned
by the media. Consider how few people will recall or appreciate the IC’s successful
discovery of secret Syrian or North Korean nuclear weapons facilities during George
W. Bush’s presidency, whereas everyone is aware of the intelligence failures leading
to 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Intelligence has also become a much more visible feature of America’s national
security policy debates. Intelligence agencies during the early Cold War years largely
operated under the cloak of secrecy, having less oversight and arguably less influence
over the direction of foreign policy. Today intelligence judgments or operations are
now widely reported in major news media. Whereas one seldom heard from or saw
the CIA director in public during the 1950s and 1960s, today the DNI or CIA direc-
tor regularly presents major public addresses or open congressional testimonies. For
example, the DNI’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment to congressional oversight
committees is now a standard presentation of the IC’s assessment of major threats.
Of course, intelligence reports are periodically and unofficially “leaked” to the media.
Sometimes they are part of the government’s efforts to highlight important issues to
the public or to warn adversaries that Washington is aware of their activities. Other
times leaks are the result of internal policy debates over controversial m ethods or
actions, in which disgruntled government employees or others with access to classi-
fied information want to disclose secrets to start a public discussion. Official declas-
sification of significant intelligence assessments has also become the subject of
congressional and public debates over not only those intelligence judgments but also
the national security policies they support. Again, we see that the two are intertwined
more and more.
Intelligence is also a force multiplier for the United States in terms of providing
critical information or methods that can reduce the costs of conducting effective US
national security policies. To cite just one historical example, a former Soviet spy for the
United States provided critical information regarding Soviet radar developments that
22 Chapter 2
the US Air Force credited with saving at least $1 billion in research-and-development

funds.12 Assessments of major adversaries’ weapon systems today are equally impor-
tant in ensuring that US armaments are well designed and effective. The use of drones
is another example of a cost-effective way to disrupt and destroy terrorist targets
without placing US forces on the ground. The counterterrorism policies of the Barack
Obama administration often were favored over more expensive and risky counter
insurgency policies because they could rely more heavily on intelligence operations.
Finally, as mentioned above, intelligence remains a controversial ethical issue in
American foreign policy. Democratic governments are wary of creating strong orga-
nizations that operate in secret and by definition are breaking the laws of other gov-
ernments. US intelligence agencies have been involved in many scandals since their
creation and will continue to operate by “playing to the edge” of what is permissible,
as one former CIA director put it.13 Some critics often dismiss the utility of intelli-
gence when it fails in some of its operations or analysis. Others question the ethics
of intelligence operations conducted around the world or even domestically. The rev-
elations of NSA collection operations, the secret detention of alleged terrorists, and
the use of enhanced interrogation techniques are only the latest examples of what
will demand a tricky balance between safeguarding national security and preserv-
ing Americans’ civil liberties. Many security specialists believe that intelligence is
more important than ever given the threats the United States faces in the twenty-first
century. In turn, this era has ushered in more complexity as the world has become
more connected, nonstate actors have risen in importance, great power rivalry has
returned, and the concept of national security has further blurred the line between
foreign and domestic policies. For all these reasons, understanding how intelligence
contributes to national security decision-making is now even more essential for the
study of American foreign policy.
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
ODNI, A Consumer’s Guide to National Intelligence, 2009, https://www.dni.gov/files

/documents/IC_Consumers_Guide_2009.pdf
ODNI, US National Intelligence: An Overview, 2013, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents
/USNI%202013%20Overview_web.pdf
ODNI, National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, January 2019, https://www.dni.gov
/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/item/1943–2019-national-intelligence-strategy
FURTHER READING
Richard Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Offers a recapitulation of the author’s many excellent articles on intelligence that takes a
balanced view between many critics and the few apologists for US intelligence.
Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence and National Security (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 2011).
Gives an insider’s view of the challenges of post-9/11 intelligence, with special attention
to the intelligence-policy relationship and how intelligence weathered the controversies
surrounding the 2002 Iraq WMD NIE.
Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).
An excellent postmortem by a recognized intelligence scholar on the sources of cogni-
tive and bureaucratic bias in intelligence analysis.
Mark Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, 6th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2015).
The best-known treatment of the intelligence process and cycle.
Mark Lowenthal and Robert Clark, The Five Disciplines of Intelligence Collection (Washington,
DC: CQ Press, 2015).
An excellent survey of the technical, human, and open-source collection systems, written
by individual scholars and practitioners.
Paul Pillar, Intelligence and US Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2011).
Provides a practitioner’s view of the 9/11 and Iraq War intelligence controversies and
criticizes both the politicization of intelligence as well as recent intelligence reforms.
Amy Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (Stanford, CA: Stan-
Provides a controversial description of how the national security and intelligence enter-
prises came about largely because of bureaucratic and legislative rivalries.
NOTES
First epigraph: White House, National Security Strategy, May 2010, 15.
Second epigraph: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, The National Intelligence
Strategy of the United States, 2014, 21.
1. Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for an American World Policy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1966).
2. “Near-real time” refers to the speed with which electro-optical images can be transmit-
ted from overhead satellites to ground stations and then processed so that they can be viewed
by imagery analysts within a very short period of time.
3. Imaging resolution of small targets far less than a square meter in size are now possible
by classified satellite systems, but commercial satellites are prohibited from exploiting the full
capability, for national security reasons.
4. A “signature” is commonly understood as a unique characteristic of a target that is
observable or measurable. In imagery it might be the design of a particular kind of weapons
facility; in ELINT it might be a particular radio frequency or radar band used by a foreign mili-
tary’s radar or air-defense systems; in MASINT a signature might be a chemical compound
24 Chapter 2
or nuclear isotope that is characteristic of a WMD or an acoustic signal typical of a nuclear-

powered submarine.
5. For an excellent survey of technical intelligence, see Robert M. Clark, Technical Col-
lection of Intelligence (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2014); and Mark Lowenthal and Robert M.
Clark, The Five Disciplines of Intelligence Collection (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2015).
6. Two excellent memoirs of how case officers are trained and how they operate are to
be found in Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on
Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2002); and Henry A. Crumpton, The Art of Intelligence:
Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service (New York: Penguin, 2012).
7. See Jack Davis, “Facts, Findings, Forecasts, and Fortune-Telling,” Studies in Intelligence
39, no. 3 (1995): 25–30.
8. Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
9. Alison Smale, Mark Mazzetti, and David E. Sanger, “Germany Demands Top U.S. Intel-
ligence Official Be Expelled,” New York Times, July 10, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014
/07/11/world/europe/germany-expels-top-us-intelligence-officer.html?_r=0.
10. Secretary of State George C. Marshall wanted his own intelligence bureau, which meant
that the functions of the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services that
were assigned to the State Department became the beginnings of a much smaller Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, while the CIA’s analytical side grew much larger throughout the
1950s and 1960s.
11. DNI, National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, September 2014, www.http://
www.dni.gov/files/documents/2014_NIS_Publication.pdf.
12. David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and
Betrayal (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015).
13. Michael V. Hayden, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror: Playing to the Edge (New
York: Penguin, 2016).
3
What Is the National
Security Enterprise?
The buck stops here.

—President Harry Truman
A particular virtue of the National Security Act is its flexibility.

—McGeorge Bundy, John F. Kennedy’s national security adviser
The US national security system has evolved over the past half century into an elabo-
rate set of organizations and processes. As vast as this national security enterprise
has become, it still rests on some fundamental concepts that make it responsive to
American leaders and the US Constitution. Key to understanding what American
national security officials do is the role of the president as commander in chief and
his reliance on key advisers and institutions to support his decisions. This chapter
will describe the way national security policy is made and how intelligence fits into
that decision-making process. It will also highlight some of the ongoing issues facing
a president’s organization of his national security team.
Article 2 of the Constitution bestows on the president the authority as commander
in chief of US military forces and as chief diplomat over US foreign relations. The
president’s authority to appoint ambassadors, negotiate treaties, and implement all
laws and policies through his direction of the huge executive branch agencies gives
him unparalleled control over national security decisions. To be sure, Article 1 of the
Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse to set budgets for military, dip-
lomatic, and intelligence activities and to confirm his appointments of cabinet offi-
cers, diplomats, and military leaders. The president must often act in concert with
Congress, but in many circumstances he or she can take the initiative and announce
a policy or commence a military operation, knowing that Congress is hesitant to chal-
lenge presidential authority abroad. Given the far-flung US national interests around
25
26 Chapter 3
the globe, presidents have relied on an increasingly complex set of national security
agencies and processes to conduct American statecraft. That decision-making sys-
tem has been orchestrated through the National Security Council and its so-called
interagency process. The intelligence community plays a key role in both, as this
chapter will make clear.
WHAT IS THE NATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEM?
The US national security system has grown larger and more complicated since it was
established in 1947. At that time, the intent was both to reorganize the postwar mili-
tary establishment and to centralize the national-level decision-making process. It
created a secretary of defense as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), a body that
would organize and direct the previously more independent military services. The
intent was to give the president the ability to seek the advice of his closest politi-
cal and military advisers on how to use all instruments of national power—political,
military, economic, and informational—to protect and advance US national interests.
In fact, President Truman tended not to rely on it heavily until confronted with the
Korean War, when he was obliged to fashion a more robust “containment strategy” to
halt the spread of communism.
Even so, it was a bare-bones operation. The newly established Office of the Sec-
retary of Defense had only a few assistants and was easily overpowered by the well-
established secretaries of the army and navy. The State Department was the true
center of foreign policy authority. President Truman, like President Franklin D. Roos-
evelt, relied heavily on the wisdom of his secretaries of state, George C. Marshall and
Dean Acheson. He made most foreign policy decisions on his own, based on their
advice and counsel, but generally shied away from allowing the NSC to become a
decision-making body. That began to change as America’s world involvement deep-
ened into a bipolar conflict. Indeed, one of the major contributions of the early NSC
system was the now famous NSC 68 policy document, which laid out a containment
strategy that continued for more than forty years.
Subsequent presidents have altered what began as occasional meetings of key
advisers into a complicated set of national security–related committees and staffs
that meet virtually nonstop to consider a myriad of international crises and decisions.
By the 1960s, the national security adviser—not specifically mentioned in the 1947
act—had become a key advisory position, comparable to the secretary of state in influ-
ence if not formal status. Dr. Henry Kissinger, who assumed this job for President
Richard Nixon in 1968, single-handedly created the NSC staff as we know it today,
although it comprised a mere dozen or so experts. As will be discussed later, the NSC
staff has become its own powerful organization, with several hundred professional
What Is the National Security Enterprise? 27
staff members. For many observers, this trend has made the NSC the most power-
ful “agency” of the US government, which was not the original intent of the 1947
National Security Act.1 “Staffing the president” has come to mean ensuring that the
president is fully informed on every aspect of US national security policy. As we will
see, the NSC staff has become one of the key consumers of intelligence, especially as
it has grown in size over the past seventy years.
An important by-product of the 1947 National Security Act was the further institu-
tionalization of intelligence support to senior policymakers. According to the legisla-
tion, the NSC would be expanded beyond just the president’s diplomatic and military
advisers to include the director of central intelligence as its key intelligence adviser.
This usually placed intelligence at or near the policy table when presidents and sec-
retaries of state and defense were making momentous decisions. That intelligence
advisory role took the form of providing the president with his own daily intelligence
reports, which later came to be known as the President’s Daily Brief, as well as prepa-
ration of more comprehensive intelligence reports such as National Intelligence Esti-
mates, on which major policies were often based.
In addition, the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war obliged the United States
to find methods short of a “hot” conflict for combating Soviet subversion around the
world. In short order, President Truman and virtually every president thereafter autho-
rized the CIA to conduct other “special activities”—later known as covert action. This
became an important secret tool of presidents and also placed the CIA in a unique
position to influence policy as well as implement it. In the post-9/11 era, this covert
action tool has become even more important and ironically more visible than the
original shapers of the US national security system could have imagined.
Most importantly, the 1947 legislation also established the NSC as part of the Exec-
utive Office of the President in order to provide him or her with advice on foreign
and security issues. By statute, the president, the vice president, and the secretar-
ies of state and defense are members; in addition, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
and the director of central (now national) intelligence are advisers from the military
and intelligence communities (see box 3.1).2 Since that act first established the NSC,
presidents have felt free to modify the structure as well as add other agency heads to
the list of attendees of NSC-sponsored meetings. For example, when nuclear matters
are discussed, it has been routine for the secretary of energy to be included in NSC
meetings, as this department oversees the operations of America’s nuclear weapons
laboratories.
Another example of a major structural change occurred when President Bill Clin-
ton entered office wanting to highlight the importance of economics. In this case, he
created the National Economic Council (NEC), somewhat modeled after the NSC but
attended by key economic departments, agencies, and advisers.3 Accordingly, when
28 Chapter 3
Box 3.1 The National Security Act of 1947

(Excerpts from Original and Amended Act)
Sec. 101 (original):

(a) There is hereby established a council to be known as the National Security Council (here-
inafter in this section referred to as the “Council”).
The President of the United States shall preside over meetings of the Council.
The function of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration of
domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the
military services and the other departments and agencies of the Government to cooperate
more effectively in matters involving the national security.
Sec. 102 (original):

(a) There is hereby established under the National Security Council a Central Intelligence
Agency with a Director of Central Intelligence, who shall be the head thereof. The Director
shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, from
among the commissioned officers of the armed services or from among individuals in civil-
ian life.
Section 102 (amended in 2004*):

1.a. There is a Director of National Intelligence who shall be appointed by the President and
with the consent of the Senate. . . .
1.b. The DNI shall:
(1) Serve as head of the Intelligence Community.
(2) Act as the principal adviser to the President, the National Security Council, and the
Homeland Security Council for matters related to national security.
* Section 102 was amended with the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (Public
Law 108–458) on December 17, 2004.
the NSC meets to discuss international economic issues, it has been usual to include
the NEC adviser as well as the secretaries of the treasury and commerce. A more
recent addition has been the creation of the Homeland Security Council (HSC), which
President George W. Bush established after the 9/11 attacks. The HSC includes key
foreign policy advisers as well as law enforcement and counterterrorism officials for
examining issues such as terrorism, WMDs, and natural disasters.4 During the Bush
administration, the HSC operated somewhat separately from the NSC; however, the
Barack Obama administration later integrated the two staffs under the NSC, resulting
in a dramatic enlargement of the size of the professional staff.
Two factors serve to restrict the role of the NSC. First, the NSC serves only
to “advise” the president and is not a decision-making body. Secretary Marshall
worried that the new National Security Act would undermine the constitutional
authority of the president as well as the prerogatives of the secretary of state.5 How-
ever, in practice, the president, as George W. Bush famously said, has remained the
“decider.” Second, each president can alter the composition of the NSC to suit his or
her preferences. Early in the Donald Trump presidency, there was controversy sur-
rounding the appointment of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s onetime strategic adviser,
to the NSC’s Principals Committee (PC) while neglecting to retain the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) and the DNI.6 While it is not unheard of for
presidents to include personal advisers in NSC meetings, it was unusual to include
them in all aspects of NSC official business. This decision was shortly reversed. Like
his predecessors, President Trump altered the composition to suit his own desires
and like them ultimately decided to include both the DNI and the CJCS in NSC
deliberations.
Expanding Role of the NSC and Its Staff

Historically, different presidents have used the NSC differently. Harry Truman initially
ignored it—fearing it would become more of a decision-making than advisory body—
until the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 demanded that there be better
integration of America’s diplomatic and military efforts to bring the war to an end.7
Dwight Eisenhower institutionalized an “NSC system” of policy reviews and commit-
tees, much as he had used his military staffs during World War II. Eisenhower pre-
ferred to have plans developed at lower government levels and then be reviewed by
more senior officials before they were presented to him for a decision. A young John F.
Kennedy chose to operate more informally and dismantled the extensive military staff
system he inherited from Eisenhower. However, he created the role of a “national secu-
rity adviser,” who acts as the president’s eyes and ears in monitoring the NSC system.
He selected his former Harvard professor McGeorge Bundy to keep him informed
regarding international events and ensure that other agencies responded to presiden-
tial directives and requests for information.8
President Nixon, through his selection of Henry Kissinger as his national security
adviser, had the most profound impact on the NSC’s role. First, Kissinger established
the position as de facto equal with those of the secretaries of state and defense and
was able to put himself in the position of setting the national security agenda. Second,
he built up the first real NSC staff of regional and functional experts, who could pro-
vide himself and the president more independent views on issues, which previously
had been largely the domain of the State and Defense Department officials. Those
senior experts carried the title of “senior director” for their respective region or issue
and were also named “special assistants to the president”—titles that tended to carry
real clout. These two actions dramatically centralized power over foreign affairs in the
30 Chapter 3
hands of the president and his national security adviser, weakening the influence of
the other presidential advisers.
Subsequent presidents from the 1960s to the present day have largely continued
to use the NSC staff as a way to keep decision-making within the Oval Office. The size
of the NSC staff has grown tenfold since Kissinger first built the staff, from roughly a
dozen professionals to several hundred. Moreover, its control over the foreign policy
agenda—if the president so chooses—is unparalleled. Each president has shaped the
NSC system by issuing presidential directives that describe its structure, participants,
and review process in order to prioritize the issues that matter most to him and direct
how the interagency process will operate for that particular administration.
The Interagency Process: How It Works

As noted in box 3.1, a key function of the NSC and of the NSC staff is to ensure the
smooth integration of all national elements of power—that is, diplomatic, military,
economic, and intelligence. Hence, the NSC and subsidiary committees established
by each president are key to providing presidential guidance and the development
of comprehensive policy reviews, directives, and decisions. Given the growth in the
size of the NSE, the national security adviser and his or her staff must work hard to
orchestrate the operations of hundreds of diplomats, military officers, law enforce-
ment officials, and intelligence officers so that they are working smoothly together.
Fashioning national-level policies that are also supported and implemented by those
same agencies requires substantial coordination.
To do this, the NSC cannot simply have the secretaries of state and defense meet
with the national security adviser. Such high-level interactions do occur, both for-
mally and informally. However, much more elaborate sets of meetings must be held
at lower levels of the bureaucracy to ensure that all agencies have contributed to the
development of sound foreign and security policies and to achieve some consensus
on how policies should be formulated as well as executed. Hence, each president has
constructed subcommittees of the NSC that focus on specific regions, countries, or
issues, on which all the relevant agencies are represented.
Since the early 1990s, the NSC committee structure has been set up to have four
operational levels. At the highest level is the NSC itself. In this forum, the president
presides, and the cabinet-level officers (e.g., the secretaries of state and defense, the
national security adviser, the CJCS, and the DNI) attend. These meetings are fairly
rare and largely used to announce major presidential decisions. Much more frequent
are the PC meetings, which the national security adviser chairs and cabinet-level
officers attend to finalize policy reviews in which options will be presented to the
president. These PC meetings are usually preceded by Deputies Committee (DC)
meetings, where subcabinet officials (deputy- or undersecretary-level officials or their
Figure 3.1. The NSC Committee Structure
equivalent) will discuss, debate, and complete policy reviews and recommendations
that would then go to the PC. The DC is also used extensively for “crisis manage-
ment,” meaning the deputies will monitor those situations and implement any emer-
gency measures. Below the DC, there will typically be a long list of country, regional,
or issue-specific interagency policy committees (IPCs), which the appropriate assis-
tant secretaries from departments (or their equivalent) will attend (see fig. 3.1).
To give one hypothetical example of the interagency process, imagine if the presi-
dent were interested in promulgating a new policy on China. In this case, his national
security adviser might issue an NSC directive to all departments and agencies call-
ing for an IPC meeting to review possible policy options. The senior director of the
NSC for East Asia would chair this meeting; in attendance would be representatives
from the national security agencies (see fig. 3.2). The assistant secretary of state for
East Asia would attend and might cochair the meeting, along with counterparts from
the Defense Department—the assistant secretary for international security affairs
and the chairman’s senior representative from the Joint Staff, who represents the
views of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Economic and law enforcement agen-
cies also would send their equivalent representatives on the presumption that policy
options might touch on commercial or financial relations as well as counterterrorism
or copyright laws.
Senior analysts from both the DNI and the CIA would also participate in this
IPC. Most likely, the national intelligence officer for East Asia would represent the
IC, while the CIA might send a senior substantive analyst on China. Together these
intelligence officials might provide a briefing as well as an intelligence assessment
32 Chapter 3
Figure 3.2. The Interagency Process for Decision-Making
on any key questions raised by the national security adviser’s directive calling for a
policy review. The briefing and intelligence assessment may have been coordinated
across major intelligence agencies if there was a White House desire to have a more
authoritative IC assessment of the issues. If military intelligence issues are to be dis-
cussed—such as China’s defense programs or the “militarization” of the South China
Sea—the DIA might also send a representative to this IPC in order to support Depart-
ment of Defense (DOD) policy counterparts.
Once the IPC has reviewed the intelligence and the key issues to be addressed, the
NSC senior director would assign an agency, most likely the Department of State, to
prepare a policy options paper. This paper would later be circulated and reviewed by
the agencies attending the IPC, and additional IPC meetings might be necessary to
finalize the policy options. That policy review document would then go to the DC for
review, where the deputies would either approve it or remand it for changes if there
are disagreements about the policy options. Once approved by the DC, the PC would
meet to discuss the options and agree on recommendations to be made to the presi-
dent. At each of these PC and DC meetings, the DNI and CIA representatives might
provide an updated intelligence brief as a foundation for the discussion of the policy
options.
At the PC, chaired by the national security adviser, there would be a full and candid
discussion of the intelligence surrounding the various policy options. The DNI and
the CIA director might be asked to assess the Chinese military threats to US interests
in the region; alternatively, if the policy review was focusing more on the US-Chinese
trade issues or on a possible American diplomatic initiative, the intelligence brief
might concentrate on the state of the Chinese economy or on the current Chinese
leadership’s views of the United States. At the end, the national security adviser would
transmit the final policy review with the PC’s recommendations to the president for
his approval or disapproval. All through this process, intelligence will have been a
key input to understanding the pros and cons of various policy options as well as key
uncertainties regarding Chinese intentions, plans, operations, or responses to US deci-
sions. The interagency participants would also be responsible for monitoring agen-
cies’ progress in implementing presidential decisions.
Because this interagency review process can extend over several weeks or even
months, constant intelligence updates might be required as new events occur in the
Far East. In some crisis situations, of course, the process can be extremely compressed,
with a series of nonstop meetings of the PC and DC over a period of hours or a few
days. In place of face-to-face meetings, some interagency sessions would be held
via secure video-teleconference (VTC) facilities. This is especially useful for quickly
emerging issues or crisis management. The White House Situation Room is connected
to all major national security agencies’ operations centers via such VTC systems, so
classified discussions can be conducted without leaving one’s office.9 This has greatly
increased the US government’s ability to operate in crisis mode, with the capability of
including military commands and overseas embassies in the VTC discussions.
Figure 3.3. A Typical NSC Week

34 Chapter 3
Typically, the IPC convenes most frequently, with the DC overseeing its work and the
PC meeting only to validate the work of lower-level committees or to iron out disagree-
ments. One hypothetical but fairly typical week in the life of the interagency process
is provided in figure 3.3. As is represented there, not only is China on the agenda but
there are also a number of other pressing international issues that compete for senior
officials’ time and attention. There might be an ongoing crisis—such as has occurred
in Syria or Venezuela—that demands frequent meetings at various committee levels;
in general, however, issues are placed on the NSC agenda as events demand. Likewise,
senior substantive experts from the IC participate and support multiple interagency
meetings at any given time.
THE EXPANDING NATIONAL SECURITY ENTERPRISE
The set of institutional players within the NSE has vastly grown since the 1947
National Security Act. That original system was largely focused on the president,
his secretaries of state and defense, and his military and intelligence advisers. But
now “national security” issues are spread virtually across every department. When
the NSC meets to discuss critical international issues, it will often have to include
not only foreign and security policy agencies but also economic and law enforce-
ment agencies. To capture this complex web of agencies and processes, the term
national security enterprise has often been used. Embedded in the word enterprise
is the realization that a set of agencies and institutions must work together in a
“whole-of-government” fashion to achieve a common vision or purpose. In a sense,
the NSE suggests a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts as it strives to cre-
ate better synergies among the various departments’ and agencies’ activities and
capabilities.10
State Department
As the oldest federal department with the longest tradition of conducting foreign rela-
tions for the United States, this department carries the largest share of the diplomatic
mission. The State Department maintains over 190 diplomatic missions overseas and
employs slightly more than eight thousand Foreign Service officers (diplomats) and
eleven thousand civil servants. In FY 2017, it had a budget of $50.1 billion, far less
than the DOD budget of nearly $600 billion and smaller even than the IC’s budget.11
As the US global role has grown, so too has the size of US embassy operations. Today
a US embassy has become a platform for the programs of many other departments
of government, to the point that often the State Department’s complement of Foreign
Service officers amounts to far less than half of the American officials present in their
diplomatic mission.
By tradition and statute, America’s ambassadors are the personal representatives of

the president, making them the senior-most US official in any foreign capital. Accord-
ingly, senior officials from other agencies, such as the DOD and the IC, must report to
the ambassador and serve there at the ambassador’s pleasure. The CIA station chief
is also seen as the senior IC representative who has responsibility to interact with the
host government’s intelligence services and keep the ambassador informed of the IC
activities in that country.12
When the National Security Act of 1947 was promulgated, the State Department
was by far the most influential agency in shaping US foreign policy. Secretaries of
state were typically seen as the president’s senior-most foreign policy adviser. Early
on, a much less complex interagency process was often driven by the State Depart-
ment because the secretary was often in charge of major policy reviews or diplomatic
initiatives. The appropriate assistant secretary of state—for East Asia, for example, if
the review or initiative was on China or for international security affairs if it was on
security assistance or arms control—would chair an interagency policy review meet-
ing. However, over time, as the stature of the national security adviser grew and as the
NSC staff expanded to oversee more of the nation’s security policies, the influence of
the secretary of state and his subordinates has generally declined.
There have been obvious exceptions, such as James Baker, who was a close per-
sonal friend and confidant of George H. W. Bush. However, in today’s NSE, the sec-
retary of state must compete with powerful defense secretaries who control far more
resources and people and with a national security adviser who spends far more time
with the president and has an able and energetic NSC staff monitoring, as well as
often initiating, policy decisions. In the interagency process, it is often observed that
that the State Department has an organizational culture that encourages cautious and
incremental moves. First, it has trouble developing new policy initiatives because it is
made up of a large number of competing regional and functional bureaus. Headed by
strong-minded assistant secretaries, bureaus often propose competing ideas or initia-
tives, leading to internal compromises. Second, Foreign Service officers seek continu-
ity in American relations with key foreign partners, so they are often wary of White
House initiatives that might be seen as rocking the boat. The State Department is,
thus, eager to minimize American policy shifts and soften harsh presidential rhetoric
toward partners and even adversaries.
Department of Defense
Created by the promulgation of the 1947 National Security Act and subsequent legisla-
tion in 1949, the DOD has become what some call the “eight-hundred-pound gorilla”
in the interagency process. By virtue of commanding so many resources—roughly 1.1
million men and women under arms, with a budget of over $600 billion annually—the
36 Chapter 3
secretary of defense has enormous power to exert. The secretary also now has a con-
siderable professional staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and his
undersecretary for policy has become a key player in the interagency process. This
undersecretary and his subordinate assistant secretary for international security affairs
are active participants in the NSE. If they are team players, then much can be accom-
plished. However, if they choose to oppose actions by the NSC or the State Department,
the DOD can be a major hurdle to effective policy formation or implementation.13
This clout is not simply due to the personality of the secretary of defense or his
closeness to the president, although that can be a factor. Rather, the resources that
the DOD commands—to support military, peacekeeping, or humanitarian relief opera-
tions or to provide military hardware, training, or technical advice to foreign govern-
ments—gives the department huge advantages over the relatively tiny NSC staff or the
resource-poor State Department. By virtue of its military mission, the DOD’s organi-
zational culture is dominated by long-term planning (e.g., in developing and fielding
weapons, positioning forces around the world, and designing elaborate war plans) that
is not found in any other national security department. The DOD resists the ad hoc
approaches sometimes proposed by the State Department if they do not fit into a more
cohesive, long-term strategy.
The DOD is also unique in that it is both a producer and user of the largest por-
tion of US intelligence. Given its mandate to fight and win the nation’s wars, it needs
vast amounts of highly sensitive intelligence information on foreign military adver-
saries. Since its creation, the department has established a number of designated
combat-support agencies, which make up the bulk of the US intelligence community.
Although they are discussed in more detail in the next chapter, it is worth mention-
ing that these combat-support agencies—including the DIA, the NSA, the NRO, and
the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)—account for roughly 70 percent
of the budgets of the National Intelligence Program (NIP). Hence, the secretary of
defense controls most of the US intelligence program, and it is important that the
DNI be able to work closely with him and his undersecretary of defense for intel-
ligence (USDI).14 As will be discussed later, cooperation among the sixteen national
intelligence agencies is not always easy, especially when the DOD controls so much
of the IC’s budget, technology, and personnel.
The Pentagon also is unique in that it will have two representatives on the NSC
and its subcommittees. That is because the CJCS is the senior military adviser to the
president and the NSC. As such, he represents the chiefs of the individual military
services (army, navy, air force, and Marine Corps). While it is desirable to have the
secretary of defense and the chairman take the same position on a military policy
issue, the chairman has the responsibility to give his best military advice, even if he
disagrees with the defense secretary.
In the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, the CJCS was given more independence and an
enhanced policy role. Moreover, his Joint Staff has grown to more than fifteen hundred
military officers from all the services, which are among the best and brightest in the
Pentagon. Arranged into sections ranging from intelligence (J-2) to operations (J-3)
to strategy, plans, and policy (J-5), these professional military officers will attend key
NSC meetings relevant to their responsibilities. Often the director of J-5 will represent
the chairman at the IPC level and be the plus one at PC and DC meetings. The director
of J-2 works closely with the director of the DIA in order to maximize the combined
resources of the Joint Staff’s intelligence section as well as the entire DIA in support
of the intelligence requirements of the secretary of defense, the chairman, the overseas
military commands, and the vast array of military intelligence consumers.
NEWER NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCIES
The customary membership of the NSE includes the NSC, the State Department, the
Defense Department, the Joint Staff, and the IC. However, the definition of “national
security” and the NSE itself has now broadened to include a much larger array of
agencies and departments that have responsibilities for protecting the nation from
foreign and domestic threats. National security now not only includes traditional
military and economic threats but also covers more unconventional but increasingly
dangerous ones from terrorism, proliferation, cyber operations, and even climate
change.
Accordingly, this expanded notion of national security has drawn agencies nor-
mally seen as more domestically oriented into discussion of international security.
Leading the list of those agencies and departments are the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation (FBI) and DHS for domestic law enforcement and counterterrorism purposes,
but also included are the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department for
dealing with illicit financial and commercial crimes that touch on the sale of prohib-
ited weapons-related technologies as well as funding of terrorist organizations. More-
over, US actions to impose economic, trade, and financial sanctions make economic
departments central national security players in using hard economic power to deter
potential proliferators and their state sponsors or to disrupt financial operations that
would support terrorist plots.
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Historically, the FBI—commonly referred to as “the bureau”—has been involved in
national security cases primarily through its responsibilities for countering foreign
espionage and organized criminal activities conducted in the United States. How-
ever, since the 9/11 attacks, the bureau has assumed major new responsibilities for
38 Chapter 3
uncovering, preventing, and prosecuting international terrorist plots aimed at the

American homeland. The FBI has developed an elaborate set of offices both domesti-
cally and overseas to coordinate the federal, state, and municipal law enforcement
assets to assess, identify, and prevent possible terrorist plots. Currently the FBI has
fifty-six field offices around the country, which consider one of their major missions
the investigation of terrorist plots and prosecution of terrorists. In this regard, it also
operates over one hundred joint terrorism task forces (JTTFs) in major cities, which
are made up of over four thousand representatives from fifty federal agencies as well
as hundreds of state and municipal law enforcement organizations.
As many such plots originate overseas, the FBI also maintains over sixty legal atta-
ché (LEGAT) offices in major US embassies in major foreign capitals. The LEGAT
works closely with other counterterrorism officials—including the CIA’s chief of sta-
tion and the defense attaché—in order to share information as well as coordinate their
interactions with the local host security services. Since 9/11, the FBI has also reorga-
nized its headquarters operations to make counterterrorism and counterproliferation
high priorities. Its national security branch now encompasses units covering terror-
ism and WMDs as well as counterintelligence. To support these priority missions, the
FBI also has developed its own major intelligence analysis operation, employing over
three thousand analysts.15
Department of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security is the newest member of the NSE. Created
by the 2004 intelligence and counterterrorism reform efforts, it was given the impor-
tant mission of preventing terrorist attacks at home. However, much of that respon-
sibility was also shared with the CIA and FBI. As a result, DHS has largely become
the agency responsible for managing the domestic preventive measures at borders,
airports, and ports as well as for assessing vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure
to terrorism and cyber threats. An important additional responsibility of DHS is to
develop information-sharing relationships with state and municipal law enforcement
agencies who are the “first responders” to many domestic terrorist operations.
DHS is one of the largest federal departments, having an annual budget of nearly
$70 billion (FY 2018) and employing more than 240,000 people.16 Its size reflects
the fact that it combines the previous missions and operations of twenty-two sepa-
rate agencies, including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement—just to
name some of the largest. DHS’s major challenge has been to balance its impor-
tant counterterrorism responsibilities against its other public safety missions, which
range from protecting US presidents and other VIPs to responding to natural disas-
ters to rescuing American sailors at sea or interdicting maritime narcotics transfers
to apprehending undocumented foreign nationals and smugglers attempting to

enter the United States illegally. With such a broad set of responsibilities, it has not
yet been able to develop the same level of expertise, competence, and organizational
cohesion that the more established agencies such as the CIA and FBI have built up
over many decades.17
Economic Agencies
While America’s diplomatic and military instruments of power are concentrated in
the Department of State and the Department of Defense, its economic instruments
are spread across a number of departments and special offices. This reflects the fact
that the American economy has a range of sectors—financial, commercial, agricul-
tural, and technological, to name only the most obvious—over which the federal gov-
ernment has only partial control. Depending on the actions a president might desire,
one or another department will be the key executor of policy. So, if the president
wishes to begin trade negotiations, he will instruct the US special trade representa-
tive (USTR) to lead those talks. However, if he wants to impose financial or commer-
cial sanctions, he will have to instruct the secretary of treasury and/or commerce to
work with Congress to legislate new restrictions on international financial or com-
mercial transactions vis-à-vis specific countries or individuals. Other economic tools
include foreign sales of weapons, food, and technology, which again can involve a
number of different agencies as well as the State Department and Defense Depart-
ment, which together are responsible for much of the foreign economic and military
assistance programs.18
Without going into detail about each economic office or agency, it is useful to
examine the expanding role of the Department of the Treasury. Since 9/11, it has
become an increasingly active participant in national security policymaking regard-
ing counterterrorism and other illicit international activities. As a former deputy sec-
retary noted, there is now a strong argument for including the Treasury Department
as a statutory member of the NSC because its financial tools for punishing state spon-
sors of proliferation and terrorism and for squeezing off the financial support for such
operations have become so powerful.19 Its Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
has the authority to name and shame individuals who are breaking US laws, making
major international banks and other financial institutions wary of doing business with
them. Likewise, Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA) and Office for
Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) have become powerful tools for monitor-
ing rogue foreign governments, criminals, and terrorists. Its ability to design effec-
tive sanctions has worked tremendously in bringing pressure on Iran to negotiate a
nuclear arrangement with the United States and the other permanent members of the
UN Security Council.20
40 Chapter 3
Other Players in the NSE

The interagency process, of course, only describes how the president and the executive
branch shape national security policies. These are by no means simply implemented
without further deliberations. In fact, the decision-making process is complicated by
congressional involvement via the budget process, hearings and investigations, and
other legislative authorities. No president can ignore Congress when proposing new
funding for national security programs, announcing new strategies for dealing with
international problems, or negotiating new international agreements. Congress can
complicate a president’s policies by refusing to fund them, by interrogating his advis-
ers in public hearings, by publishing critical investigative reports, and by failing to
give its consent to a president’s appointments or negotiated treaties. Numerous exam-
ples can be cited from virtually every administration. Congressional disapproval of
President Obama’s negotiation of an Iranian nuclear deal and two separate investiga-
tions into the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election of President Trump
illustrate how active Congress can become in foreign policy. As the Russian “hacking”
scandal illustrates, congressional investigations conducted by both the House and
Senate intelligence committees can play a major role in surfacing intelligence issues
and in shaping intelligence policies (as discussed in more detail in later chapters).
At the same time, one must not dismiss the power of the media to throw a spotlight
on a president’s conduct of foreign policy. Often a president and his advisers want
to highlight a policy initiative by giving influential journalists or media outlets an
“exclusive” as news breaks, or an administration will announce its latest decisions
as part of a broader public diplomacy and communication strategy. There might be
an entire “roll-out” plan for announcing presidential actions and subsequent stories
provided by the State Department and Defense Department on what progress the
administration is making. Within the Obama NSC, for example, there was a deputy
national security adviser for “strategic communications and speechwriting,” who had
a very influential role with the president as well as the media. This more formal or
systematic media plan has now been altered by President Trump’s preference to make
policy by Twitter messages. In at least one case, DNI Dan Coats had to acknowledge
that he first learned about a presidential summit after the president tweeted about it
and the media reported it.
In addition, there are frequently unauthorized leaks from inside the executive or leg-
islative branches that can lead to major controversies surrounding presidential initia-
tives or actions. When there is an internal executive branch struggle over a policy, or
when there is a disagreement between the White House and Congress over a major pol-
icy, participants in the dispute are tempted to leak information favorable to their posi-
tions. The first indications that the George W. Bush administration had set up secret
“black sites” for enhanced interrogations reportedly came from a former NSC official
who disagreed with those actions.21 Leaks have been a nemesis to every president, and
few leakers are ever prosecuted successfully. Yet there are also times when a White
House may itself produce leaks to mislead or confuse congressional opponents or keep
the media off the scent of another story. The leak weapon is one that is available to a
variety of executive and legislative branch officials for lots of different reasons.
What is most significant about the media’s role for understanding the role of intel-
ligence, however, is its skill in bringing information to light that otherwise would have
remained secret. The media is very much in the forefront of revealing controversial
intelligence programs that become topics of debate in Congress and the executive
branch. For instance, stories in the Washington Post and New York Times revealed the
CIA’s rendition programs that placed Afghan detainees in secret prisons outside the
United States, where enhanced interrogation methods (considered torture by many)
were conducted. Later the then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intel-
ligence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, released a sanitized summary (more than six hundred
pages long) of an extensive staff report on torture; she did this prior to losing her
chairmanship, after which it was likely that the new Republican chairman would block
its release. In many cases, leaked intelligence judgments or findings can become part
of the public policy debate because they have appeared in the New York Times or the
Washington Post. In a few cases, such as the recent Russian hacking into the com
puters of the Democratic National Committee and efforts to penetrate American elec-
toral systems, the IC might even produce a declassified assessment to publicize the
seriousness of the issue and gain public and congressional support for more forceful
presidential actions.22
KEY ISSUES FOR THE NSE
Every president must make some major decisions on how to organize the national
security decision-making process. Sometimes presidents have wished to radically
alter the system used by their predecessors, while at other times they retained much
of the system they inherited. But inevitably there are issues that have to be addressed
or that will confront presidents in one way or another. Among the most enduring are
the role presidents see for their national security adviser, the extent to which they
wish to see national security decisions made in the White House, and the degree to
which they are comfortable relying on formal structures and the career bureaucrats.
Role of the National Security Adviser: Advocate versus Honest Broker

Looking back on the many national security advisers who have held that title, there
have been a variety of roles played, sometimes well and sometimes poorly. As many
42 Chapter 3
experts have noted, presidents have to feel comfortable with their national security
adviser, who will spend more time with them than their secretaries of state or defense.
The national security adviser has traditionally maintained a small office close to
the Oval Office, allowing the adviser to brief the president on fast-moving events,
participate in morning briefings and international phone calls to heads of state, and
generally control the flow of foreign affairs information reaching the president. None-
theless, presidents have to decide if they want to be more personally engaged in
foreign policy or devolve that to their national security adviser and cabinet officers.
Some scholars have described Bill Clinton as “indecisive” because he held lengthy
NSC meetings without decisions emerging, while George W. Bush relished being
“the decider” and wanted “actionable” intelligence so he could make swift decisions.
Barack Obama, as a constitutional lawyer, was more deliberative, and some criticized
him as “procrastinating” in how long he took to make important policy decisions.23
How a president answers those questions will dictate the type of national security
adviser with whom he is likely to feel most comfortable.
A useful way of thinking about the national security adviser’s role is to outline
what the position entails. First, the national security adviser must advise the presi-
dent, meaning provide him or her with information in the form of staff memoranda
or briefings on specific topics. Second, the adviser is responsible for running what
has become a large NSC staff of several hundred foreign policy experts. Third, but
not unimportant, the adviser must manage the interagency process by setting the
agendas for NSC, PC, DC, and IPC meetings. Embedded in these duties is also the
responsibility to present to the president the views of other cabinet officers and their
agencies so that the president has the widest possible set of perspectives and options.
Different national security advisers have prioritized those duties differently. In the
early days, those serving as quasi–national security advisers were primarily interested
in administering and scheduling the meetings of NSC principals with the president
and distributing policy papers for review. These were essentially “administrators” of
the national security process.24 Later, national security advisers became more personal
“counselors” to the president in terms of giving the president advice and information
privately to assist presidential decision-making. Other advisers have defined their role
as more the “honest broker” who would ensure that the interagency process fairly aired
all agencies’ views and options, which should be shared with the president. And finally,
there have been strong-minded national security advisers who have exercised their
own closeness to the president and strongly advocated their own positions as opposed
to simply presenting the views of the secretaries of state and defense.
Most scholars have concluded that the honest-broker role is the proper one, most
likely to succeed in generating the best decisions. President George H. W. Bush’s
national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, is often held up as the classic honest
broker who was able to maintain an even playing field for all cabinet officers and
agencies to get their views on the table and before the president, without any fear that
he would bias the president. Partly, this model works when there is a good teamwork
spirit among the NSC principals. President Bush is reputed to have insisted on this
early in his administration.
Other models have also been prevalent with other presidents. Henry Kissinger,
under President Nixon, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, under President Jimmy Carter,
are often described as advocates who held strong views and worked to have theirs
accepted by the president. President George W. Bush’s national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, often described her first responsibility as being a counselor to the
president rather than a manager of the interagency process; many have criticized
her weak control over a strong-minded defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice
President Dick Cheney for a dysfunctional NSC process. During the Obama era, the
NSC principals were sometimes described as a “team of rivals” as there were strong
personalities in the cabinet, such as Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and Robert
Gates as secretary of defense.
National security advisers also serve as key customers of intelligence and often
are the gatekeepers for intelligence reaching the president. As the adviser who
shapes the president’s daily agenda of foreign policy discussions, the national secu-
rity adviser can walk intelligence reporting into the Oval Office if it is deemed criti-
cally important or can simply dismiss it. Photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba were first
shown to McGeorge Bundy, who then escorted the briefers into the Oval Office to
brief President Kennedy. Both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski had the
PDB delivered directly to them, choosing which items to then discuss with their
presidents that morning. Other national security advisers have organized separate
PDB sessions for themselves prior to the president’s in order to be better prepared
to address the policy implications of the intelligence issues contained in the PDB.
In today’s environment, it would appear that President Trump’s national security
adviser, John Bolton, is the most likely reader of daily intelligence because the pres-
ident himself appears not to value intelligence highly and has repeatedly shown
indifference if not disdain for its contributions. (To be examined further in later
chapters.)
Centralize Foreign Policy or Not?

Part of the presidential decision on the type of national security adviser rests on
how much the occupant of the Oval Office wishes to be involved in foreign affairs.
Some presidents come with considerable foreign affairs experience or none at all. For
example, George H. W. Bush had been CIA director, ambassador to the UN, envoy to
China, and vice president. In contrast, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were former
44 Chapter 3
governors, with far less exposure to foreign affairs. If presidents wish to be involved,
then there is a natural tendency to pick strong national security advisers who will try
to control national security decisions from the White House. Such national security
advisers will build a strong NSC staff, take charge of meetings, and insist on the NSC
adviser being as much of a policymaker as any cabinet officer. That model prevailed
under President Nixon, where Kissinger was virtually single-handedly in charge of
American foreign policy.
Other presidents have preferred to have less to do with foreign affairs and have
devolved onto the secretaries of state and defense much of the responsibility for for-
mulating and implementing presidential decisions. President Ronald Reagan began
his eight years in office with such a view, selecting a national security adviser who
had little responsibility other than scheduling meetings, while relying on strong sec-
retaries of state, retired general Al Haig and later George Shultz, for big foreign pol-
icy ideas. This departmentally driven foreign policy might have worked, except that
a weak national security adviser was unable to moderate the bitter rivalry between
Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. Reagan’s model of weak presiden-
tial interest in the NSC also permitted the Iran-Contra scandal to occur and threaten
his presidency.
A more recent model of less centralized foreign policy occurred during George W.
Bush’s tenure, when he empowered Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to run the war in Iraq,
leaving the NSC and State Department relatively uninvolved or at least uninfluential
in shaping the president’s policies in his first term. Finally, the Obama presidency
tried to learn from the mistakes of the Bush years and again centralized foreign policy
in the hands of the NSC staff in the White House. This was perhaps an overcorrec-
tion. Several cabinet officials would later criticize President Obama for allowing rela-
tively inexperienced NSC staffers to shape policy and allow political considerations
to creep into national security discussions.25
Structured or Informal?
The preceding discussion described a range of approaches presidents have taken in
selecting and organizing their national security teams. Often, however, the description
of the formal process cannot capture the complexity and variety of decision-making
styles that presidents adopt. Truman shunned the NSC meetings and relied heavily
on his secretaries of states. Eisenhower participated in a huge number of NSC meet-
ings over which he presided, to the point his advisers thought they might exhaust
him. Kennedy preferred informal gatherings and violated bureaucratic hierarchy reg-
ularly—often calling junior desk officers himself. Nixon liked to make his decisions
on long walks or privately with his equally secretive national security adviser. So,
presidents are prone to make decisions outside the normal processes.
This informality is partly driven by a president’s confidence in a few close advis-

ers and a wish to keep big decisions within those circles of trust. Sometimes over
regularly scheduled lunch meetings, NSC principals will compare notes or reach
consensus on issues prior to formal meetings with the president.26 Presidents also
use informal mechanisms to surface more radical ideas that the bureaucratic process
might not support. Nixon and Kissinger famously concocted the opening to China
in 1972 outside of any NSC process, expecting agencies to oppose it or leak to the
press. George H. W. Bush also used an NSC “ungroup” to meet regarding sensitive
US-Soviet issues that were considered as the USSR was collapsing; the topics were
seen as so sensitive that no meetings were ever listed on the formal calendars of those
included. More recently, President Obama, after hearing all the arguments by his NSC
advisers for taking a forceful line against Syrian use of chemical weapons, changed
his mind after a walk in the Rose Garden with his chief of staff.
INTELLIGENCE AND THE NSC
As described above, the NSC system is a complex set of policy discussion and
options-generating processes that ultimately allow the president to make national
security decisions. Intelligence contributes in a number of ways to this process. First,
it informs the president and by extension his national security team with both cur-
rent and estimative intelligence. The daily intelligence publications, including the
PDB, contain valuable information and analysis that is purposely aimed at address-
ing issues that are of presidential interest (see box 3.2). One former CIA director
recalls the “rain of requests” for information from the national security adviser follow-
ing such briefings.27 Other publications are also designed to inform the president’s
national security staff as well as the staffs supporting other NSC members across the
government.
Second, intelligence provides direct input to the interagency discussions—at the
PC, DC, and IPC levels—in the form of oral briefings by IC representatives as well
as written assessments requested as part of the policy reviews. Longer-term assess-
ments in the form of NIEs often are tasked to support significant NSC deliberations.
Intelligence support to the almost continuous set of PC, DC, and IPC meetings has
become a major part of the DNI’s and the CIA’s responsibilities. Both CIA offices and
the ODNI’s national intelligence council spend much of their time preparing memos
and briefings for their respective directors who attend the PC meetings.
Third, the IC often has to put forth options for covert action, which is an additional
policy tool at the disposal of the president and his closest advisers. The CIA director
(as will be discussed in chapter 9) is responsible for developing covert means to sup-
port broader national security policies where the US role must be hidden. In this way,
46 Chapter 3
Box 3.2 Typical PDB for George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush:
“One important fixture was the 8:00 am national security meeting in the Oval Office, at
which the CIA briefed me on the latest developments around the world. It had two parts.
The first portion was the intelligence briefing, at which I was joined by Brent [NSC adviser
Scowcroft], Bob Gates [deputy NSC adviser], usually John Sununu [chief of staff], and, once
or twice a week, Bill Webster [CIA director]. A CIA officer would bring in the President’s
Daily Brief (PDB), which was a written rundown of important intelligence reports and analy-
sis put together during the night and small hours of the morning. I made it a point from day
one to read the PDB in the presence of a CIA briefer and either Brent or his deputy. This
way I could task the briefers to bring in more information on a certain matter or, when the
reading would bring to mind policy matters, ask Brent to follow up on an item of interest.
The CIA officers would write down my questions; in a day or so, I would get an answer or
an elaboration.
Knowing of my interest in the oft-berated but essential clandestine service, Webster would
occasionally ask to bring along some individual who had risked his or her life to gather criti-
cally important intelligence. I found those sessions fascinating, and I was always impressed
with the courage, the patriotism, and the professionalism of those who served in the Director-
ate of Operations.”
Brent Scowcroft:
“After the CIA briefing, the second part of the national security meeting would begin. The
Vice President, already briefed separately by a different CIA team, would arrive and I would
go over pertinent events of the day, items where the President’s guidance was needed, and
anything else requiring discussion.”
Source: George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 30.
the IC is put in more of a policymaking role than an intelligence-support one. This

has become especially important in the fight against terrorism and efforts to disrupt
the dangerous spread of WMD technologies.
Finally, the IC is often called on to evaluate the feasibility of the policy options
under consideration or assess their actual impact. In this role, it is often seen as an
unhelpful player if intelligence does not favor a policy agency’s preferred option or
judges a presidential initiative to have failed to achieve its objectives (discussed
further in chapter 10). As mentioned above, intelligence assessments can become
ammunition in the internal administration debates or in executive-legislative dis-
putes over appropriate foreign policies. As the IC is responsible for providing intel-
ligence to both branches of government, it can become especially tricky to provide
objective yet significant intelligence evaluations to a White House when those same
findings might become available to critics on Capitol Hill.
THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ENTERPRISE
This brief description of the national security decision-making process and the role
that intelligence plays cannot capture the full complexity of the huge NSE. One thing
is very clear. What began as a fairly simple structure has grown over seventy years into
an unwieldy and often unresponsive tangle of agencies, organizational cultures, and
competing authorities. Government practitioners as well as scholars have lamented this
development but have seemed unable to convince presidents and Congress to make
the needed improvements. Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld bemoaned
the reality of “incredible amounts of time that just kind of suck the life out of you at the
end of the day spending 4, 5, 6 hours in interagency meetings and the reason is, because
the organization of the government fit the last century instead of this century.”28 The
bureaucracies within the NSE have also been reluctant to modify the well-trodden paths
and processes with which they have become comfortable. At the heart of the problem
are the distinct organizational cultures resident in the different national security agen-
cies. Efforts to produce “jointness”—coordination of military, diplomatic, law enforce-
ment, and intelligence activities—remain elusive. Congress adds to the problem by its
refusal to reform its own committee structure, which tends to separate rather than inte-
grate the military, diplomatic, economic, law enforcement, and intelligence tools. Con-
gressional leaders’ personal status and clout over their committees’ jurisdiction have
often inclined them to resist organizational reforms that might somehow reduce their
own importance.29 The NSE today continues to suffer from a lack of sufficient coordina-
tion and development of capabilities that are needed for the twenty-first century.
Major reforms to the national security decision-making process usually result only
from a major crisis that can generate a temporary consensus on next steps. The 1947
National Security Act bubbled up from the many lessons learned in World War II,
particularly those regarding the need for better coordination of America’s military,
diplomatic, and intelligence activities. The post-9/11 reforms that created the ODNI
and DHS were also driven by a major shock to the nation. Most likely, the next set of
reforms will be similarly driven by a surprise or shock, perhaps one associated with the
new cyber domain or growing environmental threats posed by climate change. What-
ever those changes to the NSE amount to, intelligence is likely to be one of the major
areas where change will be needed.
USEFUL WEBSITES
Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/

A forum for former civilian and military officials, the center advocates for strong and prag-
matic national security policies.
48 Chapter 3
Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org

The oldest American think tank, the council publishes the leading international affairs jour-
nal, Foreign Affairs, where additional materials for educators and students are also available
online.
Federation for American Scientists, https://www.fas.org
An association of American scientists concerned about the control of nuclear weapons that main-
tains a website that hosts a variety of documents related to national security and intelligence.
Project on National Security Reform, https://www.thepresidency.org/programs/project-on
-national-security-reform
A nonpartisan, nonprofit organization mandated by Congress in 2009 to recommend major
improvements in the US national security system.
FURTHER READING
Cody M. Brown, The National Security Council: A Legal History of the President’s Most Power-
ful Advisers (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of the Presidency, 2008).
A concise legislative history of the evolution of the NSC across numerous presidencies.
Ivo Daadler and I. M. Destler, In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the National Security
Advisers and the Presidents They Served—from JFK to George W. Bush (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2009).
An excellent study of the personalities who held the position of national security adviser
and how they dealt with their presidents.
Roger Z. George and Harvey Rishikof, The National Security Enterprise: Navigating the Laby-
rinth, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017).
A compendium of practitioners’ assessments of the principal national security agencies,
Congress, the courts, think tanks, and the media.
Peter W. Rodman, Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of American For-
eign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush (New York: Knopf, 2009).
A leading political scientist’s assessment of presidential style in directing US foreign
policy.
David Rothkopf, Running the World: Inside the National Security Council and the Architects of
American Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005).
A recognized think tank expert’s analysis of the NSC’s evolution and his critique of US
foreign policy.
Charles A. Stevenson, America’s Foreign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes (Los
Angeles: SAGE, 2013).
A concise description of the major tools and agencies that direct US military, diplomatic,
economic, and intelligence missions.
NOTES
Second epigraph: Quote from McGeorge Bundy, “Letter to Jackson Subcommittee,” in Fateful
Decisions: Inside the National Security Council, ed. Karl E. Inderfurth and Loch K. Johnson
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 44.
1. For a good discussion of the expansion of the NSC, see David Rothkopf, National Inse-
curity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014), 206–8.
2. Typically the secretary of energy is also considered a statutory member, as the Depart-
ment of Energy oversees the operation of the national laboratories that research, develop, and
build America’s nuclear weapons.
3. Typical attendees include the assistant to the president for national economic pol-
icy, who directs the NEC, and the secretaries of commerce, treasury, agriculture, energy, and
transportation.
4. Spenser Hsu, “Obama Combines Security Councils,” Washington Post, May 27, 2009, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052603148.html.
5. See Cody M. Brown, The National Security Council: A Legal History of the President’s
Most Important Advisers (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of the Presidency, 2008), 3.
6. “Principals” refers to secretary-level or equivalent positions of the departments and
agencies attending NSC meetings. A principal often is allowed to bring a “backbencher” to
expanded meetings, who is termed “plus one.”
7. Truman attended very few NSC meetings prior to the Korean War, and the council’s
reviews and policy papers had far less impact than its workload would have suggested. See
Stanley Falk, “The NSC under Truman and Eisenhower,” in Fateful Decisions: Inside the
National Security Council, ed. Karl Inderfurth and Loch Johnson (London: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 38.
8. See Ivo Daalder and I. M. Destler, In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the
National Security Advisers and the Presidents They Served—from JFK to George W. Bush (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), for a comprehensive review of the changes that early presi-
dents made to the NSC system.
9. Operations centers are continuously manned to receive and send messages or con-
duct secure telephone- and/or video-conferencing among key agencies and foreign military
and diplomatic posts. The operations staffs at the White House Situation Room and at other
departments are responsible for alerting the president and key advisers to any rapidly emerg-
ing crisis or event requiring presidential or departmental attention.
10. In a similar fashion, the Department of Homeland Security has highlighted its “Home-
land Security Enterprise,” which strives to knit together the twenty-two DHS agencies and
their disparate missions into a single integrated approach to homeland security. Also, the
ODNI often discussed the “National Intelligence Enterprise” that aims to integrate the activi-
ties of the sixteen national intelligence organizations under a set of common missions.
11. For fuller treatment of the Department of State’s role, mission, and culture, see Marc
Grossman, “The State Department: Culture as Interagency Destiny,” in The National Security
Enterprise: Navigating the Labyrinth, 2nd ed., ed. Roger Z. George and Harvey Rishikof (Wash-
ington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 81–96.
12. “Chief of station” refers to the senior CIA official in a country who directs the intelli-
gence activities there. He or she is responsible for managing relationships with that country’s
security services and in this way has unique access to a foreign government’s thinking and
operations.
13. For discussion of how the secretaries of defense have treated the interagency process,
see Joseph McMillan and Frank C. Miller, “The Office of the Secretary of Defense,” in George
and Rishikof, National Security Enterprise, 120–41.
50 Chapter 3
14. The USDI is the senior-most intelligence official who reports to the secretary of defense.
In turn, the directors of the NSA, DIA, NRO, and NGA report to this official.
15. For a fuller discussion of the FBI’s evolving national security role, see Harvey Rishi-
kof and Brittany Albaugh, “The Evolving FBI: Becoming a New National Security Enterprise
Asset,” in George and Rishikof, National Security Enterprise, 223–45.
16. This budget figure includes more than $7 billion in disaster-relief funds used by FEMA.
17. For an analysis of DHS’s organizational challenges and missions, see Susan Ginsburg,
“The Department of Homeland Security: Civil Protection and Resilience,” in George and Rishi-
kof, National Security Enterprise, 247–78.
18. An excellent overview of the many economic instruments and agencies can be found
in Charles A. Stevenson, America’s Foreign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes (Los
Angeles: SAGE, 2013), 170–299.
19. Robert Kimmitt, “Give Treasury Its Proper Role on the National Security Council,” New
York Times, July 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/opinion/give-treasury-its
-proper-role-on-the-national-security-council.html?mcubz=1.
20. See Dina Temple-Raston and Harvey Rishikof, “The Department of Treasury: Brogues
on the Ground,” in George and Rishikof, National Security Enterprise, 162–82.
21. Dafna Linzer, “CIA Officer Fired for Leaking Classified Data,” Washington Post, April 25,
2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/04/24/DI2006
042401026.html.
22. Adam Entous, “Secret CIA Assessment Says Russia Was Trying to Help Trump Win the
White House,” Washington Post, December 9, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world
/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign
/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.6bcd00
fcdcfe.
23. Illustrative of Obama’s deliberative style, he took more than sixty days to review his
Afghan strategy before announcing a major increase in troops sent there in 2008.
24. See Alexander L. George, “The Case for Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy,”
American Political Science Review 66, no. 3 (September 1972): 751–85.
25. Former CIA director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates both criticized
President Obama for allowing relatively junior NSC staff to drive policy and marginalize more
senior cabinet officials. See “Hagel’s Predecessors Decry White House Micromanaging,” NBC
News, November 24, 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/hagels-predecessors
-decried-white-house-micromanaging-n255231; and Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoir of a Secre-
tary at War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 587.
26. Lyndon Johnson held his Tuesday lunches with his secretaries of state and defense,
while during the Clinton administration, Defense Secretary William Perry, Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake would have their “PCL”
(“pickle”) meetings. Likewise, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, National Security Adviser
Sandy Berger, and Defense Secretary William Cohen (“ABC”) would continue this habit. See
David Auerswald, “The Evolution of the NSC Process,” in George and Rishikof, National Secu-
rity Enterprise, 36.
27. Recalled by former DCIA Frank Carlucci in Inderfurth and Johnson, Fateful Deci-
sions, 175.
28. Quoted in Christopher J. Lamb and Joseph C. Bond, “National Security Reform and the
2016 Election,” Strategic Forum, no. 293 (March 2016): 2.
29. For a more complete discussion of these challenges, see Harvey Rishikof and Roger Z.
George, “Navigating the Labyrinth of the National Security Enterprise,” in George and Rishi-
kof, National Security Enterprise, 382–94.
4
What Is the Intelligence
Community?
Before Pearl Harbor the United States did not have an intelligence
service comparable to that of Great Britain or France or Russia or
Germany or Japan. We did not have one because the American
people would not accept it. It was felt that there was something un-
American about espionage and intelligence in general.
—Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, second DCI, 1947
The National Intelligence Program straddles six cabinet depart-

ments, an independent agency [the CIA], and an independent
staff [ODNI]. . . . It’s a challenge to manage—a challenge but not an
impossibility.
—DNI James Clapper, 2015
The US intelligence community exists to provide the best available information to

the nation’s senior civilian and military decision-makers. As the previous chapter
makes clear, that set of customers or users continued to grow throughout the Cold
War period and up to the present. The IC currently encompasses sixteen separate
national intelligence agencies, which employ—conservatively measured—at least one
hundred thousand people and spend more than $70 billion annually on the combined
national and military intelligence programs (see box 4.1).1 These funds are spread
across the agencies somewhat unevenly. Specific details regarding individual agency
budgets remain classified, and much of the National Intelligence Program remains
“hidden” in the DOD appropriations (see later discussion regarding budgets).
This is a significant amount of money and is often a source of criticism when
an intelligence failure occurs and policymakers ask whether they are getting their
money’s worth. This chapter will survey the changes and expansion of the IC to keep
52
What Is the Intelligence Community?53
Box 4.1 National Intelligence Program: Members and Missions
Office of Director of National Intelligence: integration, cooperation, and budgetary management
Department of Defense Intelligence Community Members

1. Defense Intelligence Agency: all-source analysis, defense HUMINT, MASINT
2. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency: geospatial intelligence
3. National Security Agency: SIGINT, information security
4. National Reconnaissance Office: IMINT and SIGINT satellite development and operation
5. Army Intelligence (G-2): land warfare intelligence
6. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI): maritime intelligence
7. Marine Corps Intelligence (USMC/IN): tactical intelligence
8. Air Force Intelligence (USAF/IN): air and space intelligence
Non-DOD Intelligence Community Members

9. Central Intelligence Agency: all-source analysis, HUMINT collection, covert action, for-
eign counterintelligence
10. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research: all-source analysis
11. Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence: nuclear and
energy intelligence
12. Department of Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis: financial intelligence
13. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis: homeland secu-
rity intelligence
14. Department of Homeland Security’s US Coast Guard Intelligence: maritime intelligence
15. Department of Justice’s FBI National Security Branch: homeland security, counter
terrorism, and domestic counterintelligence
16. Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Agency’s Office of National Security Intel-
ligence: narcotics intelligence
pace with the expanding set of users and their diverse intelligence requirements. It
will examine these agencies’ basic functions and their involvement in both collecting
and producing intelligence. It will also identify some continuing challenges that such
a large and diverse set of agencies face in coordinating their operations for support-
ing the policy community.
BRIEF HISTORY OF GROWTH
In 1947, America’s new national security system also brought into existence its first
peacetime civilian intelligence community. Prior to the outbreak of World War II,
having a permanent peacetime intelligence agency was deemed both unnecessary
and essentially undemocratic. After World War I, civilian involvement in the modest
US military intelligence effort was terminated. Much later, Secretary of State Henry
Stimson said, “Gentlemen do not read each others’ mail.” In spite of this, the American
54 Chapter 4
military retained modest intelligence functions: the army’s G-2 and the navy’s Office
of Naval Intelligence (ONI) focused on assessing foreign armies and navies in the
event of future conflicts. And the relatively young FBI did maintain some foreign
intelligence capabilities—including operations in Latin America—to monitor possible
foreign espionage and criminal activities. But the notion of having a large-scale for-
eign intelligence function in peacetime was entirely new for the United States.
As Europe went to war in 1939, President Roosevelt began to see the need for
information on Europe as he worried that the United States might be dragged into
the fighting. He first instructed a close confidant, William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan,
to make a fact-finding trip to Europe in order to assess whether Britain would be
willing and able to resist the Third Reich’s military onslaught. Donovan came back
reporting that the British would resist. Also, he was impressed with Britain’s intel-
ligence services, which openly expressed a willingness to help Washington build up
its own. Roosevelt thereafter assigned Donovan the role of “coordinator of informa-
tion” (COI) to carry out “supplementary activities” for information not available to
the US government.2
Following the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, President Roosevelt soon established
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and he put Donovan in charge. However, this
was to be largely a military-focused intelligence effort, with the OSS operating under
the authority of the military chiefs. In addition to running agents behind enemy lines
for conducting sabotage and collecting information on the Axis powers, the OSS also
established the first research-and-analysis function (its R&A branch), which would
later serve as a model for the CIA’s own analytical directorate.
At the end of World War II, President Truman disbanded the OSS. Donovan
argued, unsuccessfully, that the growing problems with the Soviet Union justified
maintaining and expanding the OSS; however, he faced bureaucratic resistance from
the military intelligence services, the State Department, and the FBI.3 But as the
Cold War deepened, the need for a peacetime intelligence community became over-
whelming. Truman gradually agreed to a modest national intelligence effort, led by
a newly named first director of central intelligence—Sidney Souers, who already had
been a presidential adviser. In 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act, which
gave the DCI a more formal role in advising the president and his NSC; in short
order, this led to the creation of the CIA. Nonetheless, Truman continued to have
serious reservations that it would create rivalries among the already existing intel-
ligence agencies and might create an American “Gestapo.”4
The CIA’s Central Role

The CIA’s origins emerged from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as well as the
wartime OSS experience. In 1941, the early morning attack on the US Navy’s Pacific
Fleet highlighted the inadequacy and disorganization of American intelligence. As

discussed in later chapters, this failure to warn was the result of poor information
gathering, failure to disseminate and share intelligence quickly, and a faulty mind-
set of what to expect from the Japanese military. Combined with the utility seen in
having an organization such as the OSS supporting the war effort, Truman accepted
the need for a single organization that could pull together all relevant information
collected and held by different government agencies. As Roosevelt’s initial 1942 man-
date to Donovan made clear, there needed to be a way for a president to get all the
information he or she needed to make national security decisions. Thus was born the
idea of a “central” agency that reported to the president rather than the military ser-
vices or the secretary of state.
Creating a CIA did not guarantee its successful operation. In the early years,
there was considerable friction between the new CIA and the already existing mili-
tary intelligence organizations and the FBI. The 1947 National Security Act was pur-
posely vague on exactly what the scope and missions of this new organization would
be. First, the act was primarily designed to unify the military services under a newly
created DOD; accordingly, the drafters of the legislation did not want to complicate
passage with controversial language regarding a new secret intelligence organiza-
tion. Second, the White House also did not wish to lay out the details of this new
organization, because it would reveal that the CIA would not only be correlating and
disseminating existing information found in the government but also collecting it
clandestinely as well as conducting “special activities” at the request of the president
(later known as covert action).
Given the vague mandate found in the 1947 act, the CIA’s success would depend
on the efforts and energy of its first directors to define and expand its missions and
capabilities. Prior to the 1947 creation of the CIA, its small predecessor operated as
the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), which was led by DCI Souers. He viewed his
appointment as temporary and thus was largely content to have the CIG correlate and
evaluate intelligence on national security. It had limited people and resources, which
were drawn from other agencies. Moreover, the CIG also faced competition from the
military services as well as the State Department, which continued to believe it had
the responsibility for providing the president with intelligence. With Lt. Gen. Hoyt
Vandenberg’s appointment as its new director in 1946, however, the organization
grew from fewer than a hundred staff members to more than eighteen hundred, with
emphasis on the collection of foreign intelligence in addition to evaluation.5 With
increased resources and a more ambitious leadership, the establishment of the CIA in
1947 promised to create an even more powerful institution. Very quickly the CIA was
able to grab control over the FBI’s Latin American human intelligence operations, as
it became the premier civilian HUMINT collection agency.6
56 Chapter 4
There also ensued an interagency debate and eventually decisions to distinguish

what CIA produced in the way of reports—“strategic analysis” and “interdepartmen-
tal intelligence assessments”—from State Department reporting that was essentially
“departmental intelligence.” Most importantly, Vandenberg won the right to have his
organization’s reporting transcend departmental assessments and be the linchpin of
the national security decision-making process.7
The CIA’s reputation, resources, and clout grew quickly in the 1950s and 1960s
as successive presidents came to rely on its responsiveness. The 9/11 Commission’s
report makes clear that the CIA remains unique among the sixteen intelligence agen-
cies: “The sole element of the IC independent from a cabinet agency is the CIA. As
an independent agency it collects, analyzes and disseminates intelligence from all
sources. The CIA’s number one customer is the president of the United States who
also has the authority to direct covert operations.”8
This quotation neatly captures three of the CIA’s four major missions:
1. It is the principal HUMINT collector run by the Directorate of Operations

(DO).
2. Its Directorate of Analysis (DA) also is the largest producer of all-source
intelligence.
3. The DO’s Special Activities Division conducts covert action at the direction
of the president.
4. The CIA also conducts foreign CI against foreign intelligence threats to the
United States that are located overseas.
These functions make it a truly central player in the national security decision-
making process. First, as the major collector of HUMINT, it recruits spies to provide
information on some of the most sensitive and important national security issues. DO
case officers (those who recruit agents) are asked to operate in highly risky foreign
environments, focused on stealing secrets that can be gotten no other way. Secrets
gained through daring operations naturally draw special attention from the White
House. Many presidents often wish to understand “how we know” certain secrets that
foreign adversaries hope to conceal from Washington.
Second, the CIA manages the largest number of all-source intelligence analysts,
who produce assessments on a global set of issues, including most of the material
finding its way into the important President’s Daily Brief. The DA not only has ana-
lysts focused on regional issues such as Russia, China, and Iran, but it also covers
special topics such as CI, counterterrorism, and counterproliferation and supports
a variety of national intelligence centers (operated by the DNI and discussed later).
Third, the DO and its Special Activities Division plan and conduct covert action at
the direction of the president. In this case, the CIA is actually implementing policy,
not just supporting other policy agencies with information (discussed in more detail
in chapter 9). The CIA’s unique direct reporting role to the president makes it the
obvious choice to be the agency that conducts covert operations because only the
president can authorize those activities.
Fourth, the CIA runs CI and counterespionage operations as well as produces CI
analysis to identify, monitor, exploit, and disrupt foreign intelligence services’ efforts
to penetrate US intelligence and national security agencies. Along with the FBI,
which is responsible for CI activities domestically, the CIA has uncovered numer-
ous instances of Russian, Chinese, and other hostile intelligence services’ efforts to
recruit agents; steal classified military, scientific, and economic information; and pen-
etrate critical American civilian and government information systems.
For much of its history, the CIA was considered the agency with the most clout,
given these critical missions. On top of that, the director of the CIA was also simul-
taneously the DCI, making him the president’s senior intelligence adviser as well as
giving him responsibility for overseeing other IC agencies. This clout, however, was
diminished with the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention
Act of 2004 (IRTPA). The act established the director of national intelligence, who
not only became the senior intelligence adviser to the NSC and the president but also
took over the role of managing the IC. In so doing, the CIA director now reports to the
DNI, which has caused the CIA to lose some status within the IC as well as the White
House. Some CIA careerists viewed this action as punitive, to reflect dissatisfaction
with the CIA’s failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and its flawed Iraq WMD analysis.
However, other commentaries stress that previous CIA directors were never able to
juggle the day-to-day management of the CIA with effective oversight of the huge IC.
That said, the relationship between the CIA director and the DNI continues to be an
evolving one.
Today the CIA remains the most visible IC member, whose analysis is often con-
sidered the unofficial record of intelligence performance, and thus often it is the one
agency that attracts the most criticism if those assessments prove to be off the mark.9 It
remains the agency most responsive to the president’s intelligence requirements and
is said to generate upward of 80 percent of the PDB articles for the president. More-
over, in this era of terrorism, insurgencies, and WMD proliferation, its covert action
programs have become all the more critical to presidential efforts to prevent future
attacks or other threats to the nation. Most recently, the CIA’s management of covert
detention and interrogation programs has also drawn attention and criticism, even
though these have been authorized by two presidents from both major political parties.
58 Chapter 4
EXPANSION OF DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE
Military intelligence is perhaps the oldest part of the intelligence discipline. As one
military analyst has argued, “Military intelligence is the basis of operations.”10 Military
strategists (such as Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz) as well as better-known Ameri-
can generals (from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower to David Petraeus) have
relied on spies, deception, and sabotage to gain military advantages over their oppo-
nents. Not surprisingly, America’s IC has long been dominated by the military. The
earliest American intelligence organizations were the ONI, established in 1882, and
the army’s military intelligence directorate, established in 1885. They gathered infor-
mation on the great European and Asian militaries prior to, during, and between the
two world wars through a system of military attachés assigned to American embassies.
World War II and the onset of the Cold War later demanded a large, diverse, and
permanent military intelligence community in its own right. The military intelligence
failure at Pearl Harbor led both the army and navy to reorganize and expand their
own use of HUMINT and SIGINT collection in an effort to give Allied forces the
intelligence needed to defeat the Axis powers. And as the Soviet Union loomed larger
as a military and nuclear threat in the 1950s, the newly created Defense Department
demanded more intelligence to conduct military analysis focused on key threats fac-
ing the US homeland and overseas commitments.
Defense intelligence today commands roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the
NIP’s budgets and includes some of the largest intelligence agencies in terms of
collection operations and personnel. In addition to the service intelligence orga-
nizations tied to the army, navy, air force, and Marine Corps, there are the large
combat-support agencies that include the DIA, the NSA, the NRO, and the NGA.
These big four are responsible for collecting, exploiting, and analyzing all national-
level military intelligence required by the president and the NSC but especially
by the secretary of defense, the JCS, and the senior generals and admirals spread
across the globe in nearly a dozen unified and specified commands. Among the
many intelligence requirements these agencies must satisfy are:
• Order-of-battle (OOB) data (location, size, readiness, and capability of enemy

forces)
• Scientific/technical assessments of foreign military weapon systems
• Strategic and theater-level targets for US forces
• Military and civilian infrastructure and lines of communication
• Defense economics and spending levels of foreign adversaries
• Environmental/cultural characteristics of foreign militaries
• Military CI threats
• Basic geographical, topographical, and weather conditions in foreign theaters

• Command, control, communications, and computer (C4) systems
• Assessments of foreign military strategies, plans, and intentions
• Foreign military leadership assessments11
Fulfilling such a wide array of intelligence requirements for such a long list of mili-
tary and civilian customers helps to explain the huge size and cost of defense intel-
ligence. With so many separate service and combat-support intelligence agencies
within a single department, the secretary of defense decided in 2003 to create an
undersecretary of defense for intelligence (USDI) to whom all defense intelligence
agencies would report. This change has put him in charge of a high percentage of the
NIP that comes through DOD appropriations. In terms of lines of authority, the direc-
tors of the DIA, the NSA, the NRO, and the NGA must now report both to the USDI
as defense “combat-support agencies” but also to the DNI as members of the national
intelligence community.
Defense Intelligence Agency

The DIA was established in 1961 following an extensive study of problems in coor-
dinating the separate military service intelligence agencies during the Korean War
(1950–53) and thereafter. As the DIA’s own official history describes the problem,
“Although the need for timely military intelligence was widely recognized, the Army,
Navy, and newly founded Air Force still separately collected, produced, and dissemi-
nated information. The system proved duplicative, costly, and ineffective, as services
provided separate, and at times, conflicting estimates.”12
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who in the 1960s was intent on making
the department more efficient as well as introducing civilian evaluation of defense
programs, was particularly eager to challenge service intelligence estimates of the
Soviet threat. He feared that parochial service interests in larger military budgets
might be driving up intelligence estimates of the Soviet military capabilities. There-
fore, he strongly endorsed a more independent DIA that reported to him through the
Joint Staff. Once fully staffed, he hoped that the DIA would provide him with a more
independent source of intelligence assessment. That said, the DIA’s creation did not
eliminate all service biases, but it probably did help to economize on some defense
intelligence resources. For example, the DIA was able to take over central management
of the military attaché program from the services. Still, the services retained their own
intelligence divisions and continue to this day to produce their own separate assess-
ments that are not always in line with the DIA’s estimates.
Over the years, the DIA has grown to take on major intelligence-collection and
analysis functions. Four critical missions include (1) producing all-source intelligence
60 Chapter 4
on defense-related and military issues; (2) managing defense HUMINT collection

(both overt through defense attachés and clandestine through espionage); (3) manag-
ing technical collection programs, including MASINT; and (4) conducting military-
related CI analysis.
Regarding analysis, the DIA maintains one of the largest cadres of both civilian and
military analysts in the US government. The majority of those analysts work in Wash-
ington, but increasingly analysts are deployed to military theaters to provide direct
support to combatant commanders. Running the defense attaché program for all the
military services involves placing army, navy, Marine Corps, and air force officers
in US embassies so they can represent the Defense Department to foreign military
officials. In addition, with close cooperation and joint training with the CIA, the DIA
operates a DOD HUMINT service that collects military information clandestinely.
Regarding technical collection, the DIA serves as the national manager of MASINT,
which involves operating a variety of technical sensors to collect environmental data
(e.g., acoustic, seismic, and radiological) that can reveal important military technolo-
gies. Finally, along with the CIA, the DIA collects and analyzes CI information related
to foreign intelligence service efforts to penetrate US military departments and to
recruit spies.
Like many combat-support elements, the DIA is headed by a serving three-star
general officer who is selected by the secretary of defense, approved by the DNI, and
confirmed by the Senate. Importantly, the director of the DIA chairs the Military Intel-
ligence Board (MIB), which the heads of the separate military intelligence services as
well as the directors of the NSA, the NGA, and the NRO use to reach decisions and
often consensus on defense intelligence-collection priorities, budgets, and programs.
In this capacity, the DIA director will often represent the combined military intelli-
gence views of all those combat agencies.
National Security Agency

The NSA is perhaps second only to the CIA in terms of the fascination that journalists
and scholars have regarding its activities. Much like the CIA, it operates in the dark,
given the highly classified nature of its SIGINT operations. Like the DIA, the NSA was
created to help centralize the separate and poorly coordinated SIGINT activities of the
military services. In 1949, the JCS were charged with creating an armed forces security
agency to better coordinate the separate army, navy, and air force programs. Those steps
proved inadequate, and after further study the NSC proposed, and President Truman
signed, a secret executive order establishing the NSA in 1952.13 Its creation remained
officially a secret until the mid-1970s, when the House and Senate conducted investi-
gations into the illegal activities of the NSA regarding domestic surveillance of Ameri-
can anti–Vietnam War protesters. To this day, the NSA’s powerful SIGINT-collection
capabilities provoke Americans’ civil liberties concerns. Most recently, the Edward
Snowden leaks of the NSA’s worldwide collection of communications—including some
reportedly directed at America’s allies—have caused Congress and the public to ques-
tion whether the NSA’s activities go well beyond what the law permits.
Today the NSA is the principal US cryptologic organization, with a dual mission.
First and foremost, it must protect US national security information by creating secure,
encrypted communication equipment and systems. The NSA produces what is com-
monly referred to as information security (INFOSEC) or information assurance—
encrypted codes and encryption gear (e.g., secure phones and other communication
devices) used throughout the US government. Second, it must collect, exploit, and
analyze foreign SIGINT, including missile telemetry systems; military command, con-
trol, and communications (C3 ) systems; commercial telephone and Internet networks;
and foreign information networks. In layperson’s terms, the NSA attempts to collect,
process, and then analyze virtually any significant form of foreign electronic signals.
For example, when a foreign military tests a new weapon system, the NSA will collect
FISINT; when foreign diplomats or military commanders talk to each other, the NSA
will collect COMINT; and when a foreign military is operating a variety of electronic
devices such as radars, the NSA will collect ELINT. To do all this, the NSA manages a
large workforce of both civilian and military professionals with skills in cryptoanalysis,
cryptography, mathematics, computer science, and foreign languages. It is sometimes
suggested that the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians and computer
“geeks” in the United States.
Like the DIA, the director of the NSA (often abbreviated DIRNSA) is a serving
three-star officer who reports to the USDI. The DIRNSA not only directs the activi-
ties of the NSA but also oversees the individual military service SIGINT activities,
which ensures their smooth cooperation with the NSA. At the time of this writing, the
DIRNSA also has the job of being the commander of the United States Cyber Com-
mand (CYBERCOM). This is a unified military command established in 2010 with
the mission to protect US defense information networks from foreign cyberattacks
and to conduct a full spectrum of cyber operations in support of US military opera-
tions. There continue to be discussions of whether the DIRNSA should be separated
from CYBERCOM in order to give this command its own dedicated senior military
commander.14
National Reconnaissance Office

As the saying goes, a “picture is worth a thousand words,” but only if it can be inter-
preted and understood correctly for what it signifies. The National Reconnaissance
Office is the agency charged with building and operating overhead satellites that col-
lect IMINT as well as SIGINT. The NRO came into existence as the Space Age began
62 Chapter 4
in the 1950s. Cold War intelligence requirements for Soviet nuclear and missile tests
posed great risks to pilots of “spyplanes” trying to overfly Soviet airspace. In 1958,
President Eisenhower directed his science and military advisers to begin a crash pro-
gram for developing space-based satellite systems that could photograph Soviet test
ranges and missile sites. By 1960, the first such system, designated Corona, produced
the reconnaissance photos that helped to dispel the myth of a “missile gap.”15
Early development of reconnaissance satellites was spurred on by the fact that the
US Air Force, the US Navy, and the CIA all wished to develop overhead collection
capabilities for their own organizational reasons. The air force was interested in tar-
geting information for bombing attacks, the CIA needed information on Soviet mis-
sile tests, and the navy wanted to monitor Soviet maritime operations. This resulted
in a hybrid organization, made up of military service personnel, CIA employees, and
civilian staff and contractors.
These three separate programs were brought under central management when,
in 1961, Secretary McNamara placed them all under the newly created NRO. As an
assistant secretary of the air force, the director of the NRO would report to both the
secretary of defense and the DCI (after 2005, the DNI). The organization’s existence
and even its name were secret and remained so until 1992, when Secretary of Defense
Dick Cheney declassified the name.
The NRO’s first decade was focused on revealing the military capabilities and inten-
tions of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Although considered
a temporary fix to satisfy American intelligence needs, the Corona program contin-
ued to operate through the early 1970s. However, the demand for higher volume and
higher-resolution imagery pressed the United States to introduce the KH-7 and KH-9
satellite systems, which were able to produce thousands of linear feet of film during
their more than one hundred missions. These film-return systems were replaced in
1976 by the first electro-optical KH-11 system, which transmitted electronically much
higher-resolution images in near real time to ground stations and then on to Wash-
ington for rapid processing and interpretation.16 Avoiding military surprises such as
the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the 1973 Arab attack on Israel were
strong drivers to develop such capabilities to give policymakers adequate warning
time to take appropriate action.
In the 1990s, as defense and intelligence budgets suffered through cuts (à la the
“peace dividend”), the NRO reorganized and integrated the three separate air force,
navy, and CIA programs and their personnel. The expense of large satellites also put
a premium on integrating the diverse IMINT- and SIGINT-collection capabilities
onto single satellite platforms to get the most “bang per launch.”
During the Cold War, the NRO systems were largely focused on collecting against
Soviet and Chinese strategic and tactical military targets, as those were seen as the
most direct military threats to the United States. However, even more diverse and
capable satellite programs are used for a variety of national security challenges:
• monitoring the proliferation of WMDs

• tracking international terrorists, drug traffickers, and criminal organizations
• developing highly accurate military targeting data and bomb-damage
assessment
• supporting international peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations
• assessing the impact of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis,
floods, and fires
As there are many applications for imagery, the NRO has found itself working
closely with the NGA, which combines satellite imagery and SIGINT with other
data to produce unique GEOINT. In addition, there are domestic agencies inter-
ested in exploiting the NRO’s considerable resources for disaster relief and envi-
ronmental monitoring, so there is now a Civil Applications Committee within the
Department of the Interior, where representatives from other domestic agencies
such as DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services can make their
requests for imagery.17
The NRO, like other combat-support agencies, has to operate with split loyalties
to both the secretary of defense and the DNI. The original charter for the NRO had it
reporting directly to the secretary of defense but allowed the then DCI to assign its
intelligence requirements. President Carter first established the NRO as a member of
the national foreign intelligence program, giving the then DCI authority over its bud-
get. For many years, a special Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation
(COMIREX) functioned to ensure that all IC agencies—not just military ones—rely-
ing on IMINT could jointly determine imagery priorities, including their urgency,
frequency, and resolution.18 A 2010 memorandum of agreement between the DNI and
the secretary of defense has stipulated that the NRO director is the senior adviser on
overhead systems to both; in practice, this means that both the DNI and the secretary
of defense must validate future intelligence requirements for satellite systems. As one
historian phrased it, “A certain amount of conflict between the Defense Department
and the Intelligence Community is an inherent part of the NRO’s history, and remains
a challenge for running the organization today.”19
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

The NGA is unique in its own way, as it relies on close relationships with other col-
lection agencies, such as the NSA (for SIGINT), the NRO (for IMINT), and the CIA
(for HUMINT) to produce a wide variety of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). Before
64 Chapter 4
briefly tracing its history, a working definition of GEOINT is required. The IC con-
siders GEOINT to be the exploitation and analysis of imagery and other geospatial
information that “describe, exploit and visually depict physical features and geo-
graphically referenced activities on the earth.”20 In layperson’s terms, GEOINT has to
take advantage of not just images but also combines them with data and information
from all the other INTs as well. Imagery information has been and remains the foun-
dation on which much geospatial information and analysis is based. But it must be
enhanced with other information—often referred to as “collateral collection”—to give
meaning or value to the imagery itself.
Two examples might help explain how GEOINT is more than just imagery. First,
when a tsunami hit the Philippines in 2004 and reshaped the landscape, the NGA
used digital mapping imagery to revise maritime maps used by rescue ships. It
exploited social media being used by the victims to update existing maps to highlight
new physical hazards, closed roads, and displaced populations.21 Second, the NGA
was a key contributor to locating Osama bin Laden and many other so-called high-
value targets. During the planning of Operation Neptune Spear, the NGA helped to
produce an exact replica of Bin Laden’s Abbottabad residence, using various forms
of imagery of the compound to measure it. This information reportedly helped show
US Navy SEALs where to land their helicopters and detailed the number, gender, and
even heights of the compound’s occupants.22
This new discipline is really not that new. Ancient and modern armies and navies
have always relied on topographical and maritime mapping to describe difficult ter-
rain features of the battlefield as well as favorable and dangerous maritime routes. In
1803, for example, President Thomas Jefferson sent the US Army’s Lewis and Clark
Expedition off to map significant features of the huge Louisiana Territory purchased
from the French. The US Navy also has been conducting defense-related mapping as
far back as the 1830s, so as not to rely on the British navy’s charts.23 Likewise, there
has long been the practice of aerial reconnaissance to assist in targeting an enemy
as well as assessing the damage done by strategic bombing campaigns. The world
wars saw the steady expansion and greater sophistication of such aerial reconnais-
sance for mapping battlefields, landings, and enemy targets. All of this was done by
the individual services that were primarily interested in their unique domains—land,
naval, and air battle spaces.
The CIA produced further early advancements in the use of the U-2 and the SR-71/
AR-12 spyplanes and eventually space-based imagery satellites. Increasing imagery
collection also required a dedicated set of analysts to interpret this growing vol-
ume of data. Thus began the gradual reorganization and centralization of GEOINT.
In 1961, President Eisenhower created the National Photographic Interpretation
Center (NPIC) by combining the imagery analysis found in the CIA with similar
activities in the army, navy, and air force. The NPIC made an early contribution in
its identification of the Soviet missiles secretly placed in Cuba in 1962. During the
Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, the need for better coordination of mapping
services led to a comparable consolidation of the separate military services’ map-
ping function into a single Defense Mapping Agency (DMA). But it was not until the
mid-1990s that Secretary of Defense William Perry and DCI John Deutch agreed to
combine all imaging and mapping services into a single National Imagery and Map-
ping Agency (NIMA).
Shortly after 9/11, James Clapper became the director of NIMA, and he quickly
determined that the agency was now producing more sophisticated products for
more and more customers. Increasingly, NIMA was producing geospatial informa-
tion well beyond military maps or finished imagery analysis. In fact, it was combining
imagery with a host of other data to support humanitarian relief efforts, support inter-
national negotiations, and plot the locations and movement of terrorists, criminals,
and pirates. With such a wide array of applications and government users, General
Clapper pushed to rename NIMA as the NGA to highlight this shift in focus.
The NGA is also unlike the NSA and the DIA, as it now has a senior civilian rather
than a general military officer as its director. This is understandable given that the
NGA has to work with a variety of nonmilitary departments and agencies that also
have geospatial missions and requirements. Any number of domestic agencies pro-
duce geospatial data that the NGA might need to access to develop actionable intel-
ligence for national security purposes. While the director of the NGA is the senior
manager of all GEOINT produced by the DOD, it must work with many of those
agencies outside the DOD. Some of those nontraditional and nonmilitary applica-
tions include environmental problems such as desertification and climate change,
geological and environmental challenges caused by natural disasters, human rights
and war crimes data, population movements, energy production and disruption, and
food security problems caused by weather and other natural causes.
STATE DEPARTMENT’S BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH
The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) provides all-source intelligence sup-
port to the secretary of state and other State Department policymakers, including
ambassadors, special negotiators, and other Foreign Service professionals through-
out the department. The assistant secretary for INR requires Senate confirmation,
reports directly to the secretary of state, and is his or her senior intelligence adviser.
In this capacity, INR is therefore responsible for producing its own departmental
intelligence analysis, crafting an intelligence policy for the department, and coordi-
nating national intelligence activities in support of American diplomacy.
66 Chapter 4
INR has claimed the distinction of being the direct descendent of the OSS. In
fact, its R&A branch was transferred to the State Department at the end of the war
and was huge at the time (sixteen hundred employees) compared to its size today
(slightly more than three hundred).24 It was the foundation for later all-source analy-
sis. At the same time, however, the OSS’s collection and special operations functions
were transferred to the CIA and the US military, respectively. Unlike the CIA, DIA,
or NSA, INR has no formal collection activities. That said, it has considerable insight
into the quality of the extensive diplomatic reporting that comes to the US govern-
ment from American embassies and consulates. Its analytical workforce comprises
civilian regional and functional experts, who tend to remain on their accounts far
longer than analysts at other agencies. Historically, roughly 30 percent have been
Foreign Service officers who have served overseas, know their regions and coun-
tries well, and have excellent connections with those embassies and their diplomatic
reporting. INR’s organization not surprisingly aligns well with the various regional
and functional bureaus, as these are key consumers of INR assessments.
Importantly, INR is close to the policymaking process at the department. Its analysts
are routinely included in each of the regional or functional bureaus’ daily and weekly
staff meetings. This puts INR in a unique position of being able to tailor its assessments
to current and longer-term issues on the agendas of assistant secretaries and higher-
level officials in the department. Until 2002, INR also produced its own daily intel-
ligence bulletin, called the Secretary’s Morning Summary, which was also sent to the
White House and other PDB consumers; it often received kudos for being better written
than the PDB, if not as highly classified. This daily and broadly circulated current intel-
ligence publication was eventually ended when INR and key consumers determined
the bureau could have more impact if State Department customers received specially
tailored memoranda with detailed analyses on issues of direct interest to them.
INR has a well-deserved reputation for being able to assert its independence
from policy, even as it reports to senior political appointees such as the secretary of
state. During the Vietnam War, INR famously dissented from Secretary McNama-
ra’s rosy assessments that the United States was “winning the hearts and minds.”25
During the early 1960s, it routinely dissented from National Intelligence Estimates
on South Vietnam it considered too optimistic, and later it also disputed the Penta-
gon’s numbers of North Vietnamese fighters. This reputation for independence was
more recently demonstrated in the well-publicized dissent INR took to the 2002 Iraq
WMD estimate (discussed in chapter 10) regarding the status of Saddam Hussein’s
nuclear program. INR has also stood by its analysts whenever political appointees
have pressed them to hew to a political line.26
INR also has the responsibility to advise the secretary of state on intelligence mat-
ters that could impact the conduct of US diplomacy and US foreign relations more
broadly. INR is responsible for managing the department’s relationship with the CIA.
In this capacity, INR acts on behalf of the department to ensure that CIA activities
are consistent with American diplomacy vis-à-vis foreign governments. Overall, INR
will represent Department of State interests to other intelligence agencies as well,
especially when intelligence sharing is involved. For example, if the secretary of state
wishes to share sensitive intelligence with a foreign official, INR would need to gain
approval from the intelligence agency producing that report, whether it is based on
NSA SIGINT or CIA HUMINT. Also, a senior INR official is responsible for coordi-
nating any proposed covert action or other special intelligence activities and assess-
ing whether they might have diplomatic repercussions or require that such plans be
shared with a foreign government.
THE FBI’S GROWING INTELLIGENCE ROLE
The FBI has been involved in intelligence-related activities almost from the begin-
ning of its existence in the early twentieth century. Prior to September 11, 2001,
however, it principal focus was on CI—on threats coming from hostile intelligence
services. Historically, terrorism was not treated as a core mission; instead, such cases
were handled individually out of single field offices without much interaction with
or input from the FBI’s Washington headquarters. The subsequent investigation of
the 9/11 plotters highlighted major flaws in the FBI’s handling of counterterrorism
cases, including the way FBI procedures “stove-piped” investigative information,
prevented effective FBI headquarters oversight, and assigned inconsistent priori-
ties to terrorism cases.27 Since 9/11 and the 2004 intelligence reforms, the FBI has
become America’s principal “domestic intelligence” organization.28 In this new era,
the bureau has had to modify its mission statements, which previously focused on
“law enforcement,” to something closer to “national security.” The fusing of these
two has required a new set of missions and forced a change in the law enforcement
culture at the FBI.
In recognition of the new era and its new missions, the FBI created its National
Security Branch (NSB), which is led by a senior FBI deputy director. This branch has
special agents and analysts who investigate crimes and threats to the United States
involving counterterrorism, CI, and WMDs. After 9/11, an Intelligence Directorate
was added to ensure careful management of intelligence resources across the bureau
and to establish its intelligence strategy and programs. As of 2014, the FBI went a
step further and created an entirely separate Intelligence Branch, whose mission
continues to be the integration of FBI intelligence activities but also ensuring that
analysis and information are shared across the government and with international
partners.
68 Chapter 4
Beyond the Washington Beltway, the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces, located in
major metropolitan areas, increased from a couple dozen prior to 9/11 to over a hun-
dred since then. These bring together FBI law enforcement and intelligence experts
from across the federal government as well as state and municipal law enforcement
organizations. Overseas, the FBI operates over sixty legal attaché offices that are part
of the law enforcement and IC presence in foreign countries. These LEGATs work
with other US intelligence agencies operating overseas as well as foreign law enforce-
ment and security services. It is the LEGAT who, in most cases, is responsible for pur-
suing extradition and most renditions of suspected terrorists and WMD proliferators
whom the United States wishes to bring to justice.
The FBI organizational culture of being simply America’s “top cop” has also
changed. In addition to being populated and run by FBI “special agents” (who carry
badges and guns and have arrest authorities), the FBI has developed a large cadre
(nearly three thousand) of intelligence analysts. These analysts work in the NSB
located at FBI headquarters in downtown Washington as well as in the fifty-six field
offices across the United States, which still take the lead on individual investigations.
Increasingly, especially since the Russian interference with the 2016 US elections, the
FBI has played a leading role in presenting intelligence findings and warnings to US
policymakers, Congress, and the American public.
Other Intelligence Agencies

The remainder of the sixteen intelligence agencies all reside in their own depart-
ments and probably make up far less than 10 percent of the IC’s budget and man-
power. Nonetheless, they each play key roles in providing critical intelligence to their
departments and in some cases to the president and his senior advisers. Not much
has been written about the intelligence-related activities conducted by the small intel-
ligence units of the Treasury Department and Energy Department that are focused on
international financial crimes, illicit WMD technology transfers, and nuclear-related
proliferation problems. The Treasury Department’s OIA has received more notoriety
recently because of its ability to monitor and disrupt financial transactions of terrorist
cells, narcotic traffickers, and weapon proliferators as well as enforce effective sanc-
tions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also is now considered an intel-
ligence agency as well as law enforcement agency focused on collecting and acting
on intelligence related to narcotic trafficking. As part of the Department of Justice
(DOJ), it has a significant presence overseas as DEA special agents deployed to
American embassies are collecting drug-related intelligence and cooperating with
and conducting counterdrug operations with the host governments’ services. The
DEA also runs the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a multiagency center that is
focused on illicit drug trafficking and smuggling on the southwestern US border.29
And, finally, DHS contains two separate intelligence functions. The first is its
Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). When the department was first being cre-
ated, there was some support for giving DHS a more expansive counterterrorism
intelligence role, but this was quickly batted down by proponents of leaving the FBI
and CIA largely responsible for collecting and analyzing domestic and foreign CT
intelligence, respectively. Instead, the I&A was restricted to taking the intelligence
collected by other intelligence agencies and using it to inform other DHS leaders of
major threats to the homeland. In addition, the office is responsible for communicat-
ing threat information to state, municipal, tribal, and private sector partners. That
said, DHS does play a major role in cyber issues. As recently reported, DHS joined
the FBI in producing the first public reports on Russian government sponsorship of
cyberattacks on US election systems and the Hillary Clinton campaign.30 This was
partly designed to alert local officials of cyber threats and to encourage closer coop-
eration among all levels of government to enhance their cyber security.
The second DHS intelligence agency is the US Coast Guard (USCG). The USCG
is a hybrid organization as well, operating as a military service in its own right but
with substantial law enforcement and intelligence functions. It always had a military
intelligence mission but joined the IC only when it was transferred to DHS in 2005.
The USCG’s most visible intelligence mission focuses on drug interdiction through
maritime routes.31 But it has many additional roles, perhaps most importantly assess-
ing and combating maritime and port security threats to the homeland.32
THE GROWING ROLE OF THE DNI
The preceding description of the many agencies and missions within the IC under-
lines the challenge of organizing and directing their activities in a way that can sup-
port the president and the national security enterprise. For more than half a century,
the CIA director carried the burden of overseeing the IC as his “second hat” as director
of central intelligence. Numerous studies over that period had argued for reforms that
would strengthen the DCI’s budgetary and programmatic authority versus the power-
ful secretaries of defense, who controlled most of the resources. The most radical call
for strengthening central management came from former national security adviser
Brent Scowcroft, who in 2001 reportedly recommended to President George W. Bush
that the three largest defense intelligence organizations—the NSA, the NRO, and
NIMA (precursor to NGA)—be placed under the budgetary authority of the DCI, leav-
ing the secretary of defense with day-to-day management of only the military service
70 Chapter 4
intelligence programs.33 That plan, never made public officially, was strongly resisted
by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the time. And like previous efforts, any notion of
creating a “national intelligence czar” was met with strong congressional reluctance
to give up control over large parts of the defense budget to the intelligence oversight
committees.34
All of that changed with the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pen-
tagon. Analysis of this surprise attack pointed to weaknesses in information sharing
across the IC, divided management responsibilities, and the DCI’s inability to direct
other agencies to take the Bin Laden threat more seriously. The flawed 2002 NIE on
Iraq’s WMD program only added fuel for congressional pressure to pass new legisla-
tion that would reorganize the IC to improve both collection and analysis.35
Accordingly, the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act created
the position of DNI, who became the new head of the IC and now shoulders all the
responsibility once held by the DCI for developing the IC’s budgets, setting intelli-
gence priorities, protecting classified information, and overseeing the production of
NIEs. Most importantly, the DNI replaces the DCI as the senior intelligence adviser
to the president and the NSC. In particular, the DNI now represents the IC at NSC
meetings and at Principals Committee meetings; members of his staff also represent
the DNI at the Deputies Committee and IPC-level meetings. The DNI’s responsibili-
ties are laid out in Executive Order 12333, which has been modified since the IRTPA
was promulgated (see box 4.2).
As similar as it sounds to that of the former DCI, the DNI’s job is very differ-
ent, for a number of reasons. First, unlike the former DCIs, the new DNI does not
simultaneously run the CIA or any other intelligence agency. Rather, his sole job
is to represent the broader IC, advise the president and the NSC, and oversee and
implement the NIP. This has mixed effects. On the one hand, the DNI can concen-
trate on his responsibilities to advise the president, oversee the broader IC, and pre-
pare a consolidated intelligence program and budget. In this way, he is a far better
adjudicator of budget disputes because he does not have any personal control or
investment in the CIA’s budget or programs as former DCIs did. On the other hand,
the DNI lacks the backing of a large organization like the CIA to support his efforts.
Congress directed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence not become
another agency and not become too large or bureaucratic and create another layer of
management. In fact, the ODNI currently has roughly eighteen hundred employees,
many of whom are on rotational assignments from other intelligence agencies or are
contractors.
Second, the pre-9/11 walls between domestic and foreign intelligence as well as
between law enforcement and intelligence have been broken down. Now the DNI has
Box 4.2 Excerpts from Executive Order 12333

(1981, as Amended in 2003)
1.2 The National Security Council.
(a) Purpose. The National Security Council (NSC) shall act as the highest ranking executive
branch entity that provides support to the President for review of, guidance for, and direc-
tion to the conduct of all foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and covert action, and
attendant policies and programs. . . .
1.3 Director of National Intelligence. Subject to the authority, direction, and control of
the President, the Director of National Intelligence (Director) shall serve as the head of the
Intelligence Community, act as the principal adviser to the President, to the NSC, and to the
Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security, and shall
oversee and direct the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and execution
of the National Intelligence Program budget. The Director will lead a unified, coordinated,
and effective intelligence effort. In addition, the Director shall, in carrying out the duties and
responsibilities under this section, take into account the views of the heads of departments
containing an element of the Intelligence Community and of the Director of the Central Intel-
ligence Agency. . . .
(b) In addition to fulfilling the obligations and responsibilities prescribed by the Act, the
Director:
(1) Shall establish objectives, priorities, and guidance for the Intelligence Community to
ensure timely and effective collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of intelli-
gence, of whatever nature and from whatever source derived. . . .
(7) Shall ensure that appropriate departments and agencies have access to intelligence and
receive the support needed to perform independent analysis;
(8) Shall protect, and ensure that programs are developed to protect, intelligence sources,
methods, and activities from unauthorized disclosure. . . .
(14) Shall have ultimate responsibility for production and dissemination of intelligence pro-
duced by the Intelligence Community and authority to levy analytic tasks on intelligence
production organizations within the Intelligence Community, in consultation with the heads
of the Intelligence Community elements concerned. . . .
(17) Shall determine requirements and priorities for, and manage and direct the tasking,
collection, analysis, production, and dissemination of, national intelligence by elements of
the Intelligence Community, including approving requirements for collection and analysis
and resolving conflicts in collection requirements and in the tasking of national collection
assets of Intelligence Community elements (except when otherwise directed by the Presi-
dent or when the Secretary of Defense exercises collection tasking authority under plans
and arrangements approved by the Secretary of Defense and the Director).
Source: Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities. As amended by Executive Orders 13284
(2003), 13355 (2004), and 13470 (2008), https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12333–2008.pdf.
72 Chapter 4
not only foreign intelligence duties but also duties overseeing intelligence aspects of
domestic and homeland security. It is important to remember he or she is the senior
intelligence adviser to the Homeland Security Council as well as the NSC. Thus, the
DNI has to coordinate not just the large defense intelligence agencies, the powerful
CIA, and the smaller departmental intelligence units, but now he or she must also
oversee the intelligence-related activities of a growing FBI’s national security respon-
sibilities and DHS’s intelligence and analysis functions.
Third, the legislation modestly strengthened the DNI’s authorities compared to
the former DCIs regarding the control over financial resources and people. But it fell
far short of a new “Department of Intelligence” or of bringing all DOD intelligence-
related activities under the DNI. The secretary of defense and the powerful armed
services committees were aligned against such a move, and they insisted on legisla-
tive language that essentially prohibited the DNI from undermining the “statutory
responsibilities of the heads of the departments.”36 For example, the DNI can repro-
gram (move funds from one part of the intelligence budget to another) a few million
dollars and transfer a few dozen personnel from one program to another; however,
in both cases these numbers are small, and anything larger has to be done with the
concurrence of the department in which the action was to be taken.
Fourth, the DNI has the responsibility for overseeing a number of national intelli-
gence centers, which are designed to centralize management of critical functions and
improve information sharing across the community. These centers help account for
the considerable size of the ODNI and wield considerable influence:
• The National Intelligence Council (NIC) predated the IRTPA and has the
responsibility for preparing long-term, strategic intelligence analysis that
represents the collective judgments of the IC. The NIC prepares NIEs that
are approved by the DNI. The council is composed of a dozen national intel-
ligence officers (NIOs) with regional and functional responsibilities, who
oversee the production of NIEs and other community-based assessments for
senior policymakers. NIOs are usually the senior IC representatives to the
interagency policy committees and often support the DNI at NSC and PC
meetings as a backbencher (termed the “plus one”) participant.
• The National Counterterrorism Center has primary responsibility for conduct-
ing CT analysis as well as counterterrorism strategic planning. It uniquely
bridges the foreign and domestic intelligence agencies responsible for counter
terrorism, as it oversees all activities for accessing, integrating, and analyzing
all intelligence related to terrorism. Likewise, it is responsible for ensuring that
other agencies with CT missions have access to this information. Perhaps its
most unique role is that it must conduct strategic operational planning for the
entire US government and ensure the effective use of all military, diplomatic,
law enforcement, and intelligence disciplines. Therefore, the director of NCTC
reports both to the DNI and to the president in his capacity as senior adviser
on counterterrorism operations.
• The National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC) facilitates the counter
proliferation activities of IC agencies and conducts strategic planning
designed to prevent the spread of WMD technologies and systems. Unlike the
NCTC, the NCPC does not produce WMD-related intelligence analysis but
rather identifies intelligence gaps, promotes new techniques and technologies,
and fosters cooperation among intelligence agencies, other federal agencies,
and American industry and academia. In this manner, its smaller workforce is a
management function rather than an intelligence-production element.
• The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) serves as
the focus of the national CI effort, which aims at integrating the CI activities
of the CIA, FBI, and other agencies as well as coordinating their budgets and
evaluating their effectiveness. Importantly, NCSC is responsible for inves-
tigating CI cases to assess their damage and also for establishing common
security practices across the US government.
Finally, the DNI has taken over responsibility—as the president’s senior intel-
ligence adviser—for the preparation of the PDB. Under the prior DCIs, the PDB was
almost exclusively a CIA publication, written and briefed by CIA analysts. Under
the DNI, the PDB has become an IC document that includes assessments prepared
by CIA but also DIA and INR analysts. This ensures that a range of analytical views
are available to the president and senior advisers; it also allows the DNI to give
feedback to agencies beyond the CIA as to the president’s agenda and intelligence
priorities. New procedures introduced by the DNI include PDB editorial and brief-
ing teams that include non-CIA analysts (primarily from the DIA and INR). CIA
offices still produce the vast majority of PDB articles, but many also contain input
from other contributing agencies. But the principle of DNI control of the most sen-
sitive information reaching the Oval Office has given the DNI greater influence,
even if he does not control a large bureaucracy like the CIA.
In sum, the DNI has become a key participant in the national security decision-
making process. The DNI or his deputy has usually chosen to join the PDB briefings
in the Oval Office, and they are regular participants at the many NSC, PC, and DC
meetings. The DNI has to approve the content of the PDB and NIEs reaching senior
officials. Moreover, the DNI prepares and defends the IC programs and budgets on
Capitol Hill and often has to take the heat for intelligence activities gone wrong or
judged to be controversial. Last, he gives an annual Worldwide Threat Assessment to
74 Chapter 4
the armed services and intelligence oversight committees in early spring that often
generates great media attention and reveals the latest IC assessments regarding
cyber and terrorism threats as well as Russian, Iranian, or North Korean military chal-
lenges. The 2019 presentation by DNI Dan Coats produced its own media attention
as it was widely reported that the IC’s views on Russia, North Korea, and Iran were
judged widely at odds with President Trump’s own assessments.37
KEY ISSUES FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
The intelligence reforms contained in the 2004 IRTPA have now been in existence
for more than a decade along with the DNI and other new intelligence organizations
and processes. The question remains as to whether these reforms have been sufficient
to improve the IC’s performance. Perennial issues still remain on how best to manage,
resources coordinate, and oversee the IC.
Managing the IC’s Budgets

The size and growth of the IC’s budgets have reflected the expanding set of intel-
ligence challenges as well as the growing list of intelligence users. In talking about
intelligence activities, senior IC leaders have also adopted the language of an “intel-
ligence enterprise” that reflects the reality of a diverse set of agencies and functions
that must increasingly coordinate and integrate their operations to maximize its effec-
tiveness. Understanding this enterprise is difficult because of the classified nature of
the IC’s business and budgets. As these programs and budgets remain largely classi-
fied, it is difficult to shed light on how money is spent and which intelligence priori-
ties have been chosen. Historically, however, the IC’s budgets have been driven by
large and multiyear investments in expensive technical-collection infrastructure and
equipment—such as ground sites, computer-processing systems, and satellites—for
SIGINT and IMINT.
These take years to design, build, and deploy. For example, during the 1970s and
1980s, when the United States was building much of its space-based satellite recon-
naissance systems, more than half of the NIP was most likely devoted to the NRO and
NSA satellite programs. Such systems were instrumental in permitting the United
States to negotiate nuclear arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. Without
them, monitoring Soviet compliance with the terms of the strategic arms reduction
and other major agreements would have been impossible. These so-called legacy sys-
tems continue to provide useful intelligence, but more agile and multisensor satel-
lites have become available to deal with post-Soviet intelligence threats.
Some in Congress have argued that satellites are less useful in tracking down and
monitoring terrorists than plain old spies. The question is often posed whether too
much attention and spending on technical systems comes at the expense of HUMINT
collection. After 9/11, for example, President Bush authorized a 50 percent increase
in CIA operations officers in order to strengthen human-source reporting. Those
increases cannot immediately guarantee results because human-source recruitment
can take years to come to fruition. It is generally believed that budget increases are
aimed at greatly expanded efforts directed against terrorism, proliferation, and insur-
gencies in the Middle East but may also reflect growing concern about cyber issues
and the need for an active information-operation capability. In 2013, James Clap-
per noted that even though today’s environment is so fluid, the IC is spending far
less than 1 percent of the gross national product on intelligence: “The United States
has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror
attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats
in such areas as cyber-warfare.”38
As in the past, more than half of the NIP was consumed by the big defense intel-
ligence agencies—the NSA, the NRO, and the NGA. As reported in 2010, these three
agencies were consuming a large portion of the $60 billion intelligence budget. It was
pointed out earlier in this chapter that the intelligence reforms did not go so far as to
give the newly created DNI sole control over the NIP’s budgets. While the DNI can
set priorities, most of the money is found in the defense appropriations bills. In addi-
tion, the military services control their own tactical military intelligence programs—
termed the Military Intelligence Program (MIP)—which are separate from the NIP.
This MIP totals roughly $20 billion annually and is submitted to the USDI first and
is approved by the secretary of defense. Thus, in reality, the secretary of defense has
huge influence over both the NIP and the MIP. Specifically, he must concur in any
DNI changes to defense-related budgets of any magnitude. Moreover, the Senate and
House intelligence and armed services committees all get a chance to review, cri-
tique, and approve the intelligence agencies’ programs and budgets that come under
their jurisdiction, so, the DNI’s budgetary authority is far from supreme.
Integration versus Centralization

Ever since the 1947 National Security Act was signed, there has been a debate regard-
ing the extent to which intelligence should be coordinated rather than centralized.
The many intelligence agencies, most of which report to separate department secre-
taries, value their autonomy and ability to be responsive to their immediate bosses.
However, the president and Congress are also eager to streamline, economize, and
rationalize the expensive IC. Hence, there is the common complaint that too much of
what it does is duplicative or redundant. Critics argue there is no reason why multiple
agencies should be producing finished intelligence on the same topics. For example,
76 Chapter 4
the CIA produces analyses on Russia, China, Iran, WMDs, and other national security
issues, just as the DIA and INR do for their departmental customers. Policy agen-
cies, however, have particular and often different types of questions regarding foreign
policies, military capabilities, or economic and financial practices of China, Iran, and
so forth, and thus their departmental intelligence units produce uniquely tailored
assessments on the same countries or topics. In addition, proponents of rigorous
analytical tradecraft argue that multiple perspectives are needed to guard against
groupthink. As a former DNI put it, “Competitive analysis avoids single points of
failure and unchallenged analytic judgments.”39
The creation of the DNI has once again raised the question of how much integra-
tion is enough without losing the autonomy that the IC agencies clearly desire. While
praising the value of orchestrating the operations of a large intelligence enterprise for
efficiency and effectiveness, few senior intelligence leaders support centralization if
that means the DNI can direct individual agencies’ daily activities and order them to
stop producing intelligence for their departmental policymakers. During the debate
of the DNI’s role, many in the CIA believed the authorities of the then DCI could have
been modestly strengthened without creating an entirely new organization and more
bureaucracy. Congress, in particular, has been adamant that the ODNI not grow into
a new agency of its own or presume to take on the roles of other agencies. Hence, it
has placed limits on the number of personnel the ODNI can hire.
At the same time, nearly every senior intelligence official recognizes the need
for better coordination of the collection-exploitation-analysis process in order to
ensure that all available information is examined and evaluated properly. Close
cooperation between the NSA and the NGA has enabled the US military to tar-
get key terrorists operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. Former NGA director Rob-
ert B. Murrett described this as “horizontal integration” that could have a multiplier
effect on military operations.40 Moreover, when covert joint operations are planned,
it requires close coordination between the CIA and the DOD’s Joint Special Opera-
tions Command (JSOC) for managing paramilitary activities in Iraq and Afghan-
istan. As one participant described it, the Abbottabad operation amounted to “a
complete integration of special forces into a CIA operation.”41
NSC Oversight of the Intelligence Community

There has been almost constant if not always sufficient oversight of the CIA and the
IC by the president and the NSC. Even as early as 1946, when the tiny CIG amounted
to fewer than one hundred people, representatives from secretaries of state, war (i.e.,
army), and navy, along with a presidential representative, oversaw its activities.42
As the IC grew through the 1950s and 1960s, oversight continued to be conducted
by a special subcommittee of the NSC. As Henry Kissinger noted in his memoirs,
President Gerald Ford was the first president to acknowledge “the existence of a
committee of the NSC—then known as the 40 Committee—which had for over two
decades reviewed covert programs before they were submitted to the President for
approval.”43
The NSC interagency groups overseeing intelligence activities have been given
a variety of names over the years, reflecting each president’s preferences for how to
handle sensitive intelligence matters. But as the 1981 Executive Order 12333 makes
clear, the NSC should play a central role in intelligence:
1.2 The National Security Council.

(a) Purpose. The National Security Council (NSC) shall act as the highest
ranking executive branch entity that provides support to the President for
review of, guidance for, and direction to the conduct of all foreign intel-
ligence, counterintelligence, and covert action, and attendant policies and
programs.
(b) Covert Action and Other Sensitive Intelligence Operations. The NSC
shall consider and submit to the President a policy recommendation,
including all dissents, on each proposed covert action and conduct a peri-
odic review of ongoing covert action activities, including an evaluation
of the effectiveness and consistency with current national policy of such
activities and consistency with applicable legal requirements. The NSC
shall perform such other functions related to covert action as the President
may direct, but shall not undertake the conduct of covert actions. The NSC
shall also review proposals for other sensitive intelligence operations.44
This authority, combined with the 1947 National Security Act, placed special
responsibility on the NSC and indirectly the national security adviser to supervise
and evaluate intelligence activities. Within the NSC staff, there is a senior director
for intelligence programs, who is customarily charged with supporting the president,
the national security adviser, and the NSC and Homeland Security Council on intel-
ligence matters. Thus, this directorate participates with the ODNI and OMB in deter-
mining the IC’s budget, helps set up the administration’s priorities on collection and
analysis (see below), and oversees ongoing covert actions as well as proposed sensi-
tive collection operations. The senior director for intelligence programs also chairs
an interagency committee that reviews intelligence policy questions—including sen-
sitive operations—and makes recommendations to the Deputies Committee and the
Principals Committee.
As with other senior appointments, the senior director’s influence depends on his
relationships to the president, the national security adviser, and senior intelligence
78 Chapter 4
officials, especially the DNI and DCIA. In some cases, this officer has been largely
invisible to the policy process and little known. In others, he can become a key player.
For example, George Tenet was the senior director for intelligence policy for Bill Clin-
ton and from that position rose to become deputy director of CIA and finally direc-
tor. Likewise, President Barack Obama selected former CIA careerist John Brennan,
who oversaw the NSC’s Directorate of Intelligence, to become deputy national secu-
rity adviser for terrorism and homeland security. Brennan later became CIA director
when Leon Panetta left that position to become secretary of defense.
Since 2003, there has been a greater emphasis placed on having the NSC “drive”
the intelligence process. This has meant having senior interdepartmental officials
review current and longer-term intelligence-collection and analysis priorities, which
are used to allocate IC funds to various programs. This review takes the form of a
National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF), which arrays key intelligence
targets and topics on separate axes in a matrix format. This then allows senior offi-
cials to rank the target and topic cells by a 1-to-5 numbering system. For example,
hypothetically North Korea (country target) and “nuclear program” (intelligence
topic) might receive the highest ranking of a “1,” while Argentina (country target)
and “political unrest” (intelligence topic) might only rank a “4.” The ranking method
allows intelligence agencies then to prioritize—as well as justify—their collection and
analysis efforts.
In reality, most NSC principals have little time or patience to review the elaborate
NIPF priorities. The list of intelligence issues is almost endless, and the matrix of
topics and targets has grown to have over nine thousand individual entries.45 Thus,
the NSC is likely to review the NIPF no more than twice annually. However, the IC
leadership led by the DNI will examine it regularly to ensure it is consistent with pres-
idential and other official actions and directives. Naturally, policymakers are inclined
to attach high importance to many intelligence problems without realistically weigh-
ing the opportunity costs that the IC must incur with its finite resources. Many prac-
titioners have lamented that too many topics are assigned higher priorities than can
possibly be serviced. Moreover, any set priorities list can be upset by a quickly break-
ing crisis that will shoot an issue or a country to the top priority. Most likely, political
conditions in Tunisia prior to the outbreak of the Arab Spring had a low ranking, but
undoubtedly this was given much more attention as the crisis spread across North
Africa and eventually to Syria.
Presidents and their advisers are seldom proponents for major intelligence
reforms because they often are focused more on their own policy challenges and
less on the effectiveness and efficiency of the IC. Sadly, major reforms are usu-
ally the result of major intelligence failures, which generate pressure for reforms.
Even more than a decade since the tragedy of 9/11, there continue to be questions
regarding the necessity and wisdom of the DNI’s creation and its associated moves
to integrate the huge IC. As of 2019, however, the necessity for having a senior offi-
cial responsible for the overall operation of such a massive intelligence enterprise
remains unquestionable, even if the job is nearly impossible to perform without
periodic clashes within the IC or with senior policy consumers.
USEFUL WEBSITES
Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov

Offers a huge library of declassified intelligence documents as well as many speeches, tes-
timonies, and reports of CIA officials on major intelligence issues.
Defense Intelligence Agency, www.dia/mil
Offers the DIA’s Latest News reports, which include various unclassified military assess-
ments on Russia and other military adversaries.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, www.odni.gov
Hosts the ODNI’s Worldwide Threat Assessment testimonies to Congress, special reports
issued by the ODNI, a large number of declassified NIEs, and the series of NIC Global
Trends reports.
FURTHER READING
James Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence (New York: Penguin
Press, 2018).
The first memoir by a DNI and relates the challenges of orchestrating such a diverse set
of agencies.
Michael E. DeVine, Intelligence Community Spending: Trends and Issues (Washington, DC:
Congressional Research Service, 2018), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/R44381.pdf.
Gives an excellent overview of IC budgets, including both the NIP and the MIP.
Richard Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA (West Sussex: Wiley & Sons,
2014).
A brief history with special emphasis on controversies involving covert action and CI.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2003).
An excellent, if critical, history of CIA activities.
Mark M. Lowenthal and Robert M. Clark, The Five Disciplines of Intelligence Collection (Wash-
ington, DC: CQ Press, 2016).
Provides a clear and concise explanation and history of the technical, human-source, and
open-source collectors.
Jeffrey Richelson, The US Intelligence Community, 7th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2015).
Provides a comprehensive description of the organizations, methods, and operations of
the entire US intelligence community.
Michael Warner, The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History (Washing-
ton, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014).
80 Chapter 4
Covers intelligence history from ancient to modern times, with special attention paid to
the IC.
Amy Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of CIA, JCS, and the NSC (Stanford, CA: Stan-
Describes the creation of the NSC, FBI, and CIA as a bureaucratic battle that impeded
effective intelligence management.
NOTES
First epigraph: Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, “Testimony before the Senate Armed Service Com-
mittee,” April 29, 1947, found in Office of Legal Counsel, Legislative History of the CIA and
National Security Act of 1947, July 25, 1967, declassified, https://www.cia.gov/library/reading
room/docs/DOC_0000511045.pdf.
Second epigraph: James Clapper, in Loch K. Johnson, “A Conversation with James R. Clapper,
The Director of National Intelligence in the United States,” Intelligence and National Security,
vol. 30, issue 1 (2015): 6.
1. These figures were cited by former DNI Michael McConnell in 2008. In 2016, the ODNI
released the 2016 figure for the National Intelligence Program as $53.0 billion. See ODNI,
News Release NR-20–16, October 28, 2016, https://fas.org/irp/news/2016/10/nip-2016.pdf.
Simultaneously, the DOD released the official FY 2016 requests for the Military Intelligence
Program controlled by the individual service intelligence agencies. See DOD News Release
NR-286–16, October 28, 2016, https://fas.org/irp/news/2016/10/mip-2016.html.
2. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2003), 16.
3. For discussion of the bureaucratic resistance to establishing a new Central Intelligence
Agency, see Richard Immerman, “Birth of an Enigma 1945–49,” The Hidden Hand: A Brief His-
tory of the CIA (West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 11–12.
4. Harry Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope (New York:
Doubleday, 1955, Vol. 2), 51–60. Legend has it that when Truman conferred the title of first
director of central intelligence on Sidney Souers, one of his close staff aides, he gave him a
black hat, a black coat, and a wooden dagger and called him the first “director of centralized
snooping.” See Jeffreys-Jones, CIA and American Democracy, 34.
5. Vandenberg began expanding current intelligence operations by gaining the authority
to hire staff rather than borrow from other agencies. See Immerman, “Birth of an Enigma,” 17.
6. See Michael Warner, The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 140.
7. Warner, 17.
8. 9/11 Commission, The Final Report on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
upon the United States (New York: Norton, 2003), 86.
9. An example of this is the infamous 2003 Iraq WMD estimate’s key judgments, which
all other agencies largely concurred in, but only the CIA was singled out publicly for having
produced flawed analysis.
10. David Thomas, “US Military Intelligence Analysis: Old and New Challenges,” in Ana-
lyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations, ed. Roger Z. George and James Bruce
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 143.
11. Thomas, 143–45.
12. Office of the DIA Historical Research, A History of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
2007, https://fas.org/irp/dia/dia_history_2007.pdf.
13. President Truman signed an NSC intelligence directive on October 24, 1952, creating
the NSA within the new DOD. See Records of the National Security Agency / Central Security
Service, National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/457
.html.
14. Morgan Chalfant, “Pentagon Mulling Whether Split of NSA-Cybercom Command,” The
Hill, February 23, 2017, http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/320736-pentagon-mulling
-split-of-nsa-cyber-command.
15. See Bruce Berkowitz, The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years: A Brief History
(Chantilly, VA: Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, 2011), 1, 11.
16. Darryl Murdock and Robert M. Clark, “Geospatial Intelligence,” in The Five Disciplines
of Intelligence Collection, ed. Mark M. Lowenthal and Robert M. Clark (Washington, DC: CQ
Press, 2016), 124. See also Bruce Berkowitz with Michael Suk, The National Reconnaissance
Office at 50 Years: A Brief History (Chantilly, VA: Center for the Study of National Reconnais-
sance, 2018), https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/about/50thanniv/The%20NRO%
20at%2050%20Years%20-%20A%20Brief%20History%20-%20Second%20Edition.pdf ?ver
=2019-03-06-141009-113×tamp=1551900924364.
17. Murdock and Clark, 124.
18. COMIREX was reorganized as the Central Imagery Office in 1992 and placed within
the DOD.
19. Berkowitz, National Reconnaissance Office, 15.
20. See Murdock and Clark, “Geospatial Intelligence,” 111–54, for a much more in-depth
explanation of GEOINT’s characteristics, processes, and applications.
21. Murdock and Clark, 131.
22. David Brown, “10 Things You Might Not Know about the National Geo-spatial Intel-
ligence Agency,” News and Career Advice, ClearanceJobs.com, March 22, 2013, https://
news.clearancejobs.com/2013/03/22/10- things- you-might-not- know-about- the-national
-geospatial-intelligence-agency/.
23. See Office of the Historian, United States Military Academy, NGA History, http://www
.usma.edu/cegs/siteassets/sitepages/research%20ipad/nga_history.pdf.
24. Mark Stout, “Bureau of Intelligence and Research at 50,” INR, December 1997.
25. John Prados, “The Mouse That Roared: State Department Intelligence in the Vietnam
War,” National Security Archive, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB121/prados
.htm.
26. In 2002, former undersecretary John Bolton is alleged to have threatened to fire INR
analysts for publishing findings at odds with his views on a number of issues, which was well
publicized during his ambassadorial nomination hearings in 2005. See Jonathan S. Landay,
“Ex-State Official Describes Bolton as Abusive, Questions Suitability,” McClatchy DC Bureau,
April 12, 2005, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article24445810.html.
82 Chapter 4
27. See Harvey Rishikof and Brittany Albaugh, “The Evolving FBI: Becoming a New
National Security Enterprise Asset,” in Roger Z. George and Harvey Rishikof, The National
Security Enterprise: Navigation the Labyrinth (Washington, DC: Georgetown Press, 2016), 229.
28. Former FBI intelligence officials will argue there is no official definition of “domestic
intelligence” but rather a redefinition of “national intelligence” that includes any information
collected anywhere that relates to security within US borders. See Maureen Baginski, “Domes-
tic Intelligence,” in Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations, 2nd ed., ed.
Roger Z. George and James Bruce (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 267.
29. See DEA, Drug Enforcement Center, El Paso Intelligence Center: Intelligence, https://
www.dea.gov/ops/intel.shtml#epic.
30. Katie Williams, “FBI, DHS Release Report on Russian Hacking,” The Hill, December
29, 2016, http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia
-hacking.
31. See Ron Nixon, “Coast Guard Faces Challenges at Sea and at the Budget Office,” New
York Times, July 4, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/us/politics/coast-guard-faces
-challenges-at-sea-and-at- the-budget-office.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad
-share&_r=0.
32. USCG, Publication 2–0, Intelligence, May 2010, https://www.uscg.mil/doctrine/CGPub
/CG_2_0.pdf.
33. Walter Pincus, “Sweeping Revamp of Intelligence System Drafted,” Washington Post,
November 8, 2001, http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0111080259nov08-story.html.
34. For an overview of many intelligence reforms, see Michael Warner and J. Kenneth
McDonald, US Intelligence Reform Studies since 1947 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of
Intelligence, 2005), www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications
/books-and-monographs/US%20Intelligence%20Community%20Reform%20Studies%20
Since%201947.pdf.
35. For an eyewitness account of IRTPA’s legislative history, see Michael Allen, Blinking
Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence after 9/11 (Washington: Potomac Books,
2013).
36. Cited in Richard Best, Intelligence Reform after Five Years: The Role of the Director of
National Intelligence, Congressional Research Service, June 22, 2010, 4, https://www.fas.org
/sgp/crs/intel/R41295.pdf.
37. Daniel R. Coats, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community: State-
ment for the Record, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, January 29, 2019, https://
www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/2019-ATA-SFR-SSCI.pdf.
38. “DNI James Clapper’s Statement to the Post,” Washington Post, August 29, 2013,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dni-james-clappers-statement-to
- the-post/2013/08/29/52d52090-10e1-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html?utm_term=
.5fd6ce866caf.
39. Questions and Answers, ODNI, 2010.
40. Robert Murrett, “Issues Confronting Military Intelligence,” Incidental Paper, Center for
Policy Research, Harvard University, December 2006, http://www.pirp.harvard.edu/pubs_pdf
/murrett/murrett-i06-1.pdf.
41. Nicholas Schmidle, “Getting Bin Laden,” New Yorker, August 8, 2011, http://www.new
yorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/getting-bin-laden.
42. Jeffreys-Jones, CIA and American Democracy, 35.

43. Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal: The Concluding Volume of His Memoirs (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1999), 316. He notes this committee was first established in 1948, was in
continuous existence under a variety of designations, and reviewed every covert operation
undertaken by the US government.
44. Excerpt from Executive Order 12333, ODNI, United States Intelligence Activities, Decem-
ber 4, 1981, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ic-legal-reference-book/executive-order-12333.
45. Former assistant DNI for analysis Thomas Fingar notes that the NIPF matrix arrayed
more than 280 “actors against thirty-two intelligence topics.” See Thomas Fingar, Reducing
Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2011), 51.
5
From Intelligence Cycle
to Policy Support
America’s ability to identify and respond to geostrategic and regional

shifts and their political, economic, military, and security implica-
tions requires that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) gather,
analyze, discern, and operationalize information. In this information-
dominant era, the IC must continuously pursue strategic intelligence
to anticipate geostrategic shifts, as well as shorter-term intelligence
so that the United States can respond to the actions and provocations
of rivals.
—National Security Strategy, 2017
The traditional intelligence cycle may adequately describe the struc-

ture and function of an intelligence community, but it does not
describe the intelligence process.
—Robert M. Clark, Intelligence Analysis
The preceding chapters have outlined the national security decision-making process
and described the large national intelligence enterprise. This chapter will address
how intelligence works in both theory and practice by examining the concept of the
“intelligence cycle,” then dissecting its key components and in the process describ-
ing its challenges and limitations. It will then explore a more practical way of distin-
guishing the separate missions that intelligence performs for the national security
enterprise.
As cited above, national security strategies rest on good information. They depend
on careful analysis of the international environment in which the United States oper-
ates and development of courses of action that can be implemented. Expanding a
bit on this “simple” process, there are always difficulties involved. American foreign
84
From Intelligence Cycle to Policy Support85
policies require good information for assessing the international environment, which
is not always available. Defining American interests is also a somewhat ambiguous
process, as those can change depending on the international and domestic condi-
tions at the time. Even if those interests are clearly defined, identifying the major
threats and opportunities to those interests rests as well on good information. And,
of course, once those threats and opportunities are laid out, there is the challenge
of formulating and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different policy
options. Without accurate information, decision-makers are prone to fail in assess-
ing the international environment as well as the costs and risks associated with their
policy decisions. The challenge for intelligence then is in providing the most relevant,
accurate, and timely information and analysis in order to give policymakers a realistic
picture of the world they face.
THE INTELLIGENCE CYCLE
How does a national security decision-maker get intelligence? Over the past
half-century, the American intelligence bureaucracies have developed processes
designed to collect, analyze, and disseminate critical information that senior officials
can use in making decisions. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, this system is often
called the “intelligence cycle.” As the US intelligence apparatus has grown, practitio-
ners and scholars have developed elaborate ways to describe this cycle. Graphically,
it can be displayed as in figure 5.1.
As the graphic shows, the intelligence cycle suggests a linear process that begins
with policymakers ranging from the president of the United States (POTUS) on
down laying out intelligence requirements for tasking (step 1) of the intelligence
community. These information needs, as discussed in previous chapters, can be
expressed in the NIPF rankings as well as many ad hoc requirements from the
White House or other senior officials. They can be conveyed during in-person brief-
ings, written directives to senior intelligence officials, or at interagency meetings
focused on high-priority policy issues. Collection (step 2) will then seek to fulfill
those intelligence requirements via the various intelligence disciplines. This “raw
intelligence,” or unevaluated information, is not yet ready for analysis but often
requires further processing (step 3). For example, collected communications intel-
ligence usually needs to be translated, and other types of electronic signals intel-
ligence may need to be decrypted and put into a format that is usable by analysts.
Raw CIA clandestine reports also have to be reviewed for relevance and validity;
this often involves expunging much information regarding the source and deter-
mining whether the new information is not only valid and credible but also pro-
vides what analysts are seeking to confirm or disconfirm in any previous reporting.
Figure 5.1. The Intelligence Cycle
Likewise, open-source intelligence—in addition to requiring language translation—

needs to be filtered to root out disinformation or irrelevant reporting. All of this
collection is typically “single-source” as it comes from one SIGINT, HUMINT,
IMINT, MASINT, or open source. All-source analysis (step 4) involves analysts tak-
ing all information available on a topic and assessing whether there are important
trends, patterns, or relationships among the data points that have significance for
US national security. The analytical process may require significant collaboration
with collectors for understanding the strength and validity of the reporting. Once
analyzed, the findings are disseminated (step 5) to policymakers via oral briefings
or written assessments in a variety of hard-copy or electronic formats.
Policymakers
Figure 5.1 also highlights the three principal groups of actors in the intelligence cycle.
First, of course, are the policymakers who work in the White House, the foreign and
homeland security–related departments, the military, and many other parts of the
executive and legislative branches. They are mostly involved in the tasking of the
IC in the form of intelligence needs or requirements. They also will provide feed-
back to the analysis provided them, either by asking for more information, critiquing
the analysis, or sometimes challenging intelligence judgments that require further
explanation or review by the analysts. The other factor to keep in mind is that many
policymakers have sources of information other than the IC. They are in close contact
with foreign officials who may represent their governments and policies in ways that
do not reflect the IC’s assessments. Naturally, policymakers may form opinions at
variance with IC analyses, and their own sources may contradict or at least diverge
from intelligence assessments. In a few cases, policymakers will consider themselves
to be “super analysts” and ask to receive as much raw intelligence as they can absorb
without having intelligence analysts put this reporting into proper context. This has
a way of undermining the purpose of the intelligence cycle—namely, to carefully col-
lect, evaluate, and integrate all available information into an all-source finished intel-
ligence analysis.
As suggested above, policymakers use a certain strategic logic in making their
national security decisions. First, they must assess the international environment to
determine what major trends and factors are critical to understand. In many cases,
policymakers bring to their jobs strongly held views, partly shaped by their own
political ideologies and partly by their own backgrounds and experiences. Each
administration will formulate a set of national security objectives based on tradi-
tional “national interests” such as protection of the homeland, promotion of eco-
nomic prosperity, maintenance of a stable international order, and preservation of
American values and institutions. In an effort to articulate these objectives, recent
88 Chapter 5
administrations have issued a long list of “national security strategies” focused on

terrorism, proliferation, homeland security, and even intelligence.1 Once those goals
and objectives are established, then they must assess what threats there are to those
interests and objectives as well as what opportunities for advancing those goals
exist. Based on these assessments, policymakers will review the types of policy
actions (options) that they can use to protect or advance US interests. Typically pol-
icymakers will consider a range of instruments—military, economic, political, and
so forth—and construct and assess a range of options to achieve them. Depending
on how much they cost or the risk policymakers are prepared to run, they will select
an option and execute it. Most often, policies take time to have any impact, and
some reassessment is likely, depending on whether the policy is having the desired
effects. Intelligence plays a critical role in all these steps, in informing broad policy
discussions, identifying threats and opportunities, supporting policy options, and
evaluating those executive actions.
In their deliberations, policymakers face many challenges in using intelligence.
First and foremost, decision-makers crave certainty, but intelligence officers live in a
world of ambiguity and uncertainty. Hence, policymakers are perennially dissatisfied
with intelligence. As one former senior intelligence manager noted, they can start
out highly skeptical of intelligence and then are pleasantly surprised, or they begin
with high expectations that are almost immediately dashed.2 Either way, policymak-
ers want intelligence that serves their agenda. They are generally highly skilled in
their own professions and confident of their own analytical judgments. Thus, they are
prone to ignore intelligence that conflicts with their views or are at least tempted to
skew intelligence judgments to make them fit their own preconceptions.
Second, policymakers have little time for complex issues and want their intelli-
gence boiled down to the one-page summary and “bottom lines.” Will China attack
Taiwan or not? What’s the likelihood of Iran building a nuclear weapon secretly?
What will be the next threat to the homeland? Most likely, analysts cannot satisfy
these black-and-white questions. Answers like “it depends on x, y, z” or “we cannot
confirm” or “there are a range of possibilities” only frustrate policymakers who want
actionable intelligence. If all intelligence can provide is low-confidence guesses
about the future, decision-makers are left to decide how much risk they are prepared
to take when there is no certainty that the intelligence is correct.
Third, and related to the previous point, policymakers must usually act before the
intelligence is sufficiently detailed or certain to guarantee successful action. As will be
explained in later chapters, strategic assessments and warnings must be issued well
in advance of a potential event, otherwise policymakers will have little opportunity to
prepare for those exigencies. President Obama approved the operation against Osama
bin Laden knowing there was a fair amount of uncertainty regarding his location. Only
after they were on the ground in Abbottabad could US commandos confirm they had
found bin Laden.
Collectors
The second group of actors includes collection agencies such as the NSA and CIA
that take policymaker tasking or requirements and translate them into collection
priorities and directives for their SIGINT and HUMINT operations. Often decisions
have to be made regarding the most relevant, reliable, and rapid methods for answer-
ing policymakers’ questions. Keep in mind that open-source intelligence is the most
readily available, least costly, and least risky in answering many questions. But when
“secret” information is required, then senior intelligence officials must determine
whether a technical or human operation is needed. In the case of technical intelli-
gence collection, the challenge may be whether a SIGINT or IMINT satellite can
access the needed information better than a risky HUMINT operation that puts a
CIA case officer and a clandestine source at risk of detection by a foreign govern-
ment. Collection priorities may also play a role. For a hypothetical example, tasking
an imaging satellite to monitor Chinese maritime activities in the South China Sea
might reduce the availability of that same satellite system to image North Korean
nuclear test sites or perhaps some other activity in South Asia. Collection managers
will have to juggle competing collection requirements to best satisfy the most cus-
tomers. Adjusting a satellite’s orbit, collection priorities, or frequency of accessing a
particular target is almost always an “opportunity-cost” decision. In the past decade,
however, the availability of less costly commercial satellite imagery has allowed the
United States to satisfy lower-priority collection needs without compromising cover-
age of higher-priority topics.
Collection faces its own challenges in providing the best information available to
analysts and decision-makers. First, some information simply might not be acces-
sible—that is, there is a collection gap. Information on a foreign adversary’s inten-
tions is usually hard to come by. If it exists, it is usually carefully guarded by a small
number of people. Imagine how few people knew about the 9/11 attack plans being
formulated. Sometimes foreign plans or decisions are not fully known even by the
adversary. One good example is that until shortly before the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979, the IC had no indication of such plans; however, it later became
known that there was a serious division within the Soviet leadership regarding the
invasion that only resolved itself just before the decision was taken. Second, collec-
tion is often impeded by an adversary’s deception and denial (D&D) plans. Many US
adversaries use camouflage over their military equipment or hide nuclear activities
in underground facilities; they also can put out false or misleading information on
their plans or activities. Saddam Hussein was able to deceive US intelligence prior
90 Chapter 5
to the 1990–91 Gulf War, allowing him to develop a potent WMD capability includ-
ing nuclear programs. Adversaries can deny US access to their information by using
encrypted communications or couriers instead of telephones or observing other prin-
ciples of “operational security” to keep their plans hidden. Overcoming these D&D
efforts by adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran can be nearly impossible. Third,
failure to share information among collection agencies can impede their ability to
develop a composite picture of an adversary’s plans and capabilities. Information not
shared might in some cases reveal the deeper significance of additional information
held by other agencies. Collectors all have so-called need-to-know rules that com-
partmentalize their sensitive intelligence to protect sources and methods. In many
cases, this need-to-know principle is well placed; however, too much compartmental-
ization can withhold valuable data to other agencies. After the 9/11 attacks, a need-
to-share principle took precedence since it became clear that information held by
the CIA and FBI had not been adequately shared. In the wake of the WikiLeaks and
Edward Snowden revelations of intelligence-collection programs, the pendulum may
be shifting away from a need to share back toward a need to know. All of these factors
can contribute to a less than complete or accessible set of raw intelligence reporting.
Analysts
The third set of actors is the analytical community. As described in chapter 4, there
are several agencies that have such all-source analysts, who are able to access vir-
tually everything the IC collects. The CIA’s Directorate of Analysis has the largest
cadre of analysts, who regard themselves as covering virtually the entire world. The
DIA’s Directorate of Intelligence (DI) also contains thousands of specialists in for-
eign military intelligence topics. Much smaller in size, the State Department’s Bureau
of Intelligence and Research is nonetheless regarded as highly skilled and often hav-
ing analysts who have worked on their accounts for decades, compared to CIA and
DIA analysts, who tend to move from account to account as they advance up through
their much larger bureaucracies. Last, the FBI has a large contingent of analysts who
work in investigations regarding domestic counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and
counterproliferation threats. The IC’s analytical tasks are many, but some basic kinds
of analysis include the following:
• Trend analysis: Data can be analyzed over time to establish increasing or

decreasing trends in a foreign actor’s military programs, economic develop-
ment, or political stability. Examples include monitoring military buildups
or arms races in the Middle East, tracking China’s economic growth rates,
and assessing the levels of terrorism, corruption, or instability in Afghani-
stan and Iraq.
• Pattern recognition: Data can also reveal interesting patterns in military

deployments and other activities over time or space. Examples include mod-
eling of terrorism incidents to uncover patterns to their occurrences by their
time, locations, or methods. Cyberattack data can be analyzed by type of
attack, Internet provider address, and volume to determine an attacker’s affili-
ation or identity.
• Relationship identification: Data can be used to establish whether relation-
ships exist among foreign actors. Examples include link analysis, which uses
Internet and phone-call metadata to connect suspected terrorist plotters to
other foreign actors. Such relationship analysis can also dissect foreign gov-
ernments or terrorist organizations to determine key players, their organiza-
tional structure, and decision-making processes.3
Becoming an intelligence analyst involves developing a range of skills not entirely

found in academic institutions. Naturally, a good analyst requires expertise on
the politics, economics, and military programs found in key foreign countries and
regions, not to mention a host of topics such as WMD proliferation and terrorism.
Analysts must also be well versed in US policies in order to understand what policy
makers’ agendas and intelligence questions might be. More uniquely, the analyst
must become an expert in tasking the exotic intelligence-collection systems; this
cannot be learned outside the IC but typically is the result of years of collaborating
with collectors and even working on an assignment inside those organizations to
better understand collection methods and procedures. Perhaps most important, ana-
lysts must develop a good sense of their own analytical biases and a set of analytical
practices—commonly called “tradecraft”—that can prevent those biases from skewing
their assessments. Last, analysts must be good team players, in the sense of working
collaboratively on intelligence targets that are multidimensional and require exper-
tise from a range of experts.
Analysts are the critical links between the collectors and the policymakers. In
many respects they are the ones who must direct collection efforts to ensure they
get the best information possible to answer questions posed by policymakers. And,
indeed, the analysts are often in the best position to understand the customer’s needs
because they are in the most direct contact with the White House, the State Depart-
ment, and the Defense Department. This puts a premium on analysts’ ability to work
with the collectors to develop strategies for getting the information needed in the
most efficient and reliable way. Analysts must also be sensitive to the strengths and
weaknesses of different collection methods (see table 5.1). No single source is likely to
be sufficient to answer complicated questions regarding a foreign adversary’s plans
and capabilities. Analysts must, accordingly, weigh the value that signals, imagery,
92 Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Collection Disciplines: Their Contributions and Constraints

INTELLIGENCE DISCIPLINES CONTRIBUTIONS CONSTRAINTS
HUMINT: human reports Provides information on a Time required to develop and vet
collected by case officers who foreign government, foreign sources. Hard to get access to
run agents in denied foreign officials, or nonstate actor’s decision-making circles. Risky to
areas; also diplomats’ and plans and intentions. agents and case officers for fear
defense attachés’ reports of counterintelligence.
IMINT/GEOINT: imagery and Provides quick graphic display Imagery captures only one
geospatial reports collected of foreign defense, industrial point in time and is subject to
remotely from overhead facilities, and test sites as well weather/malfunction. Requires
systems; UAVs transmitting live as geographically significant proper interpretation that can be
action on battlefields or other physical targets. difficult if D&D is used.
sensitive sites
SIGINT: communications and Provides voluminous Massive volume of material must

electronic signals collected information on foreign be decrypted, translated, and
remotely by ground sites, aerial, government, foreign officials, identified as involving significant
or space-based platforms or nonstate actors’ plans and actions/actors.
intentions.
MASINT: measurements Provides unique insight into Hard to evaluate and explain to
and reporting of changes in environmental conditions policymakers. Usually requires
environmental conditions via (e.g., temperature changes, unique access to a target and
variety of seismic, radiological, composition, chemical) special processing.
and materials sensors surrounding a target.
OSINT: open sources from Provides a baseline Voluminous material that

foreign print, broadcast, and understanding of a target that requires translation and time
social media can be corroborated by other to identify false or misleading
sources. information.
human reporting, and open-source media bring to answering such questions. In a

real sense, analysts are performing synthesis of many data points and trying to make
sense of that information. Some critics have charged that the 9/11 attacks were the
result of analysts not “connecting the dots,” a rather simplistic notion that presumes
all the dots were available and easily numbered like on a child’s coloring book. A bet-
ter metaphor is that of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for which there is no box-cover
illustration; moreover, analysts have to select from thousands of related and unrelated
puzzle pieces to begin to make out a pattern or shape.
THE ANALYTICAL PROCESS: A DESCRIPTION
To understand how finished intelligence is produced, a description of the analytical

process is helpful. First, the analyst needs to consider which key questions policy-
makers have.4 Part of the challenge is determining what senior officials are trying
to decide and what they already know about the subject. Close interaction with
the policymakers and their senior staff can help determine whether policymakers’
background knowledge is accurate or complete; likewise, analysts might need to
be prepared for the possibility that decision-makers have preconceptions or biases
regarding the answers they hope to receive. A second task is to determine how much
information and analysis decision-makers want, what kind of time horizon they might
be considering, and also where the policymaker is in the decision-making process. In
the latter case, it will matter whether an interagency discussion is only just beginning
or whether the broad outlines of a strategy have been set and policymakers are more
interested in intelligence focused on an adversary’s likely response to US actions.
To take one hypothetical example, consider the kinds of strategic intelligence ques-
tions that a new administration might have regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The IC
might produce a National Intelligence Estimate on the development of Iran’s nuclear
program, with a time-horizon of no more than four years—as this is the furthest out a
newly formed NSC team might be prepared to look. On the other hand, if two years
later the NSC team has developed a set of policies for dealing with Iran’s nuclear pro-
gram, it would be looking for more focused intelligence assessments regarding how
Iran is responding to those policies, the steps Iran might take to undermine US goals,
and the likely consequences of Iran’s countermeasures. Thus, strategic intelligence
has to be very much tailored to the needs and time frames of decision-makers.
A third step in developing strategic intelligence is to gather, organize, and evalu-
ate the available intelligence reporting on the topic. Having defined the specific set
of intelligence questions to be answered, analysts must gather all relevant intelli-
gence information, whether classified or open-source, that bears on the subject. At
this point, analysts may well need to generate new requests—officially described as
“requirements”—for additional information from collectors. Most strategic intel-
ligence topics have an enduring quality so that analysts can expect to be asked
to update or amend their assessments over time. Soviet military developments
dominated strategic intelligence throughout the Cold War, while counterterrorism,
counterproliferation, and now cyber threats are most prominent today. Hence, ana-
lysts need to remind collectors of their interest in new information on these and
other targets such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Continuing with the Iran nuclear example, analysts would task HUMINT, IMINT,
and SIGINT systems to collect any information on the state of Iran’s nuclear program.
Whatever assessment the analyst might produce today, it is likely to be amended
in a few months as new information becomes available. As analysts organize and
evaluate available information, they also need to be wary of taking each report at
face value. Just because reports are classified does not make the information true.
Indeed, HUMINT sources are hard to recruit, difficult to manage, and can turn out
to be self-promoters, fabricators, or double agents. SIGINT intelligence can require
94 Chapter 5
tremendous resources to collect and process but can provide important insights into
the motivations and plans of an adversary, depending on the quality and reliability of
the interception, decryption, and translation processes. Much of what we know about
al-Qaeda and ISIS has been the result of intercepting terrorist cells’ communications
or capturing computer data, which can contain terabytes of information. Imagery, too,
can detect planned military operations or nuclear test preparations of countries such
as North Korea, but it also needs to be carefully interpreted; that imagery can be of
poor quality or misleading as the result of weather, geography, or an adversary’s use
of camouflage and deception.
In many cases, well over half of an analyst’s information may come from open
sources, which also need to be evaluated for their accuracy and validity. Analysts
must be alert to the danger that OSINT may be promoting what a foreign govern-
ment wants the United States to believe. On the other hand, good journalists can
sometimes ferret out important facts regarding a government’s policies or personali-
ties that analysts can use. In general, analysts need to keep five factors in mind when
weighing evidence provided by human sources:
• Accuracy: Is an intelligence report consistent with other data that has been
validated as accurate?
• Expertise: Do sources have the knowledge or background to report accurately
on an intelligence target?
• Access: Has a report come directly from a source having observed the event,
or is it secondhand information?
• Reliability: Has a source been accurately reporting over time, or is it a new
source who requires further vetting?
• Objectivity: Is a source motivated by a hidden agenda or personal gain that
distorts reality?
After analysts have evaluated the reliability and validity of available reporting, they
also have to consider whether the information gathered is both relevant and plausible.
Some reporting may appear relevant to policymakers’ concerns but be highly implau-
sible. In the case of Iraq’s WMD program in 2002, there were rumors but scant reli-
able reporting that Saddam Hussein was prepared to share WMDs with al-Qaeda; to
analysts, it was implausible for the Iraqi leader, who despised and feared Islamic fun-
damentalism, to give al-Qaeda access to weapons it might use against him. At other
times, data may be too incomplete or insufficient to be of much value. In the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, among the hundreds of anecdotal reports of Soviet
activities, there were fewer than a half dozen credible HUMINT reports that the USSR
had placed missiles on the island. Also, the reliability of most of these sources was
judged to be very poor as they were uneducated émigrés who knew next to nothing
about Soviet weaponry.5
A fourth step in the analysis process is to generate key hypotheses that explain
the validated intelligence reporting. In intelligence, the facts do not speak for them-
selves. Rather, they must be organized, evaluated, and put into a framework of some
understanding. As analysts sift through the data, they will begin to formulate plau-
sible explanations for what they are observing. For seasoned analysts, they will have
accumulated a body of knowledge about the target and can imagine how data may fit
into how the target has behaved in the past. Often analysts are looking for patterns,
relationships, and trends in the data. They may detect some similarities as well as dif-
ferences in how the new information describes a target’s actions.
There usually is more than one possible explanation that is worth pursuing. Ana-
lysts must be alert to keeping an open mind regarding alternative hypotheses, as
additional data may confirm or disconfirm their current interpretation. It is wise for
them to ask themselves what future developments they would expect to see if a par-
ticular hypothesis is accepted. Alternatively, what information might disconfirm the
current hypothesis in favor of an alternative one? In 2007, for example, the controver-
sial NIE on Iran postulated a halt in parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons program begin-
ning in 2003, which was a major shift from the 2005 NIE. That earlier estimate had
concluded Iran was continuing its nuclear activities and was intent on building a
bomb.6 Clearly these earlier hypotheses had to be altered in favor of a more nuanced
one—namely, that Iran had curtailed for several years key aspects of its weaponization
research program.
A fifth step in the analysis process is making an argument. Having weighed the
evidence and developed alternative hypotheses or explanations for a target’s behav-
ior or actions, analysts must present findings or conclusions. Those findings—some-
times termed an assessment or in an NIE captured in summary form as the “key
findings” or “key judgments”—have to rest on a clear logic and rigorous use of evi-
dence. In most cases, analysts will begin with a strong key message, followed by a
succession of facts and reliable intelligence reporting. Analysts must be objective in
reporting the level of confidence they have in the sources used so that policymakers
can independently judge whether they find the argument compelling. Typically ana-
lysts will not have high confidence in their findings unless they are corroborated by
multiple high-quality sources from a variety of collection disciplines.7 Low confidence
levels result when there is scant information or the sources are not considered to be
fully vetted and reliable. Medium confidence often reflects a mixed set of reporting,
some of which might be contradictory. Even if analysts have high confidence in a
judgment, it is wise to consider including alternative explanations in order to high-
light how much uncertainty might still exist in these findings and also to convince
96 Chapter 5
policymakers that the analysts considered a range of scenarios that might yet occur
if circumstances change.
Analytical challenges are equally as important as those facing the collection agen-
cies. First, analysts must accept the fact that the available information is going to be
incomplete, contradictory, and sometimes false. To prepare first-rate all-source assess-
ments, the analyst must be able to deal with a high degree of ambiguity. Seldom will
analysts have all the information they want in order to answer a policymaker’s ques-
tions; at times they will be overwhelmed by too much information, which in itself can
make finding what is truly significant even more difficult. At other times there will
be huge intelligence gaps because of collection limitations or an adversary’s D&D
efforts. Compensating or accounting for the so-called missing information in an intel-
ligence assessment is a very difficult exercise.8 As the saying goes, there are known
unknowns but also unknown unknowns that can change an intelligence problem
dramatically. To cite only one example, American intelligence analysts incorrectly
assessed that the shah of Iran was not in danger of being toppled in 1979 because
they believed he would have acted more decisively if he felt threatened. Unknown to
analysts at the time was the fact that the shah was deathly ill with cancer (he would
die a few months later in exile), causing him perhaps to be much less decisive than he
had been previously.
A second challenge is the reliance on analytical assumptions and mind-sets in
formulating intelligence judgments. Analysts often operate on what others might call
“conventional wisdom.” These are the bedrock assumptions that analysts use to build
their intelligence assessments. These assumptions can prove to be either out of date
or flatly wrong. But analysts must often rely on assumptions when there is no hard
evidence. A classic example of a bedrock assumption that later proved wrong was that
Saddam Hussein was deceiving the UN inspectors about his renewed chemical, bio-
logical, and nuclear programs. This assumption formed after the Gulf War revealed
he had been hiding massive amounts of WMD stockpiles and was dangerously close
to having a nuclear bomb. Thereafter, analysts assumed Saddam would be effective
in deceiving UN inspectors. So, in 2002, the IC assessment was that he was again
hiding WMDs when American collection efforts did not produce much new and cor-
roborated information regarding Iraq’s programs (see chapter 6). The point is that
analysts must be attuned to their reliance on such assumptions and challenge them
periodically to revalidate them.
Closely related to the assumptions problem is the mind-set challenge. Every ana-
lyst has in his or her mind an image of how the world operates and in particular how
a particular target behaves. These mind-sets or mental maps help to filter information
coming to the analysts, who are prone to accepting a report as “confirming” their
mind-set or to dismissing it as inconsistent with the ways the target had previously
behaved. Analysts need these mental maps to organize their thinking, but they must
be careful not to allow them to become out of date.9
The IC can be faulted for not appreciating in the late 1980s that Mikhail Gor-
bachev was a new style of Soviet leader. The USSR had gone through a rapid series
of leadership changes as one aging Politburo chairman after another struggled to
maintain the Soviet Union’s hardline stances vis-à-vis the West. Inside the CIA,
there was a debate among military and political analysts about the authenticity
of Gorbachev’s reforms and whether they indicated a fundamental shift in Soviet
thinking. For many analysts, the dominant mental map was of a conservative com-
munist leadership unprepared for radical reforms that might threaten the socialist
system itself. Gorbachev’s behavior challenged that mental map, and many ana-
lysts were slow to appreciate it.10 Hence, their analysis underestimated Gorbachev’s
willingness to jettison Soviet practices and positions vis-à-vis the West. Gorbachev
subsequently surprised analysts by agreeing to far-reaching arms control agree-
ments as well as to German unification in 1990 and the ultimate withdrawal of
Soviet power from Eastern Europe.
Underlying both the assumptions and mind-set problems is the broader challenge
of “cognitive bias.” Scientists as well as intelligence scholars have written about the
way the human brain perceives, filters, and integrates information. The cognitive
process involves distilling huge volumes of information in an efficient way. Humans
develop thinking styles for perceiving the world that enable them to make inferences
or draw conclusions rapidly. In a major study, two psychologists termed this habitual
cognitive process as “thinking fast”—that is, using mental shortcuts that allow new
information to be quickly absorbed and integrated to an existing cognitive map.11
Such mental processes can cause analysts to make incorrect inferences or to dismiss
new information that “doesn’t fit.” Among the many analytical biases that can inter-
fere with more objective weighing of information, the following are often at the center
of flawed analysis:
• Confirmation bias: A human tendency to interpret information in a way that

confirms existing preconceptions. Analysts will seek out or give more weight
to information that confirms an accepted hypothesis or belief, while dismiss-
ing or devaluing disconfirming information.
• Anchoring bias: Previous analysis prevents analysts from reassessing their
judgments and allows for only incremental change in their forecasts. Analysts
are thereby “anchored” to those earlier assessments and unable to move away
from them.
• Mirror-imaging: Analysts presume that a foreign actor would behave much
as they would in the same situation. Thus, analysts look at a foreign actor and
98 Chapter 5
see themselves (i.e., in a mirror), disregarding the possibility that in other cul-
tures or political systems decision-makers might behave differently.
• Groupthink: Although not a cognitive bias, this group behavior can afflict
analysts who work together and strive for consensus rather than seek alterna-
tive hypotheses or explanations for information. In large agencies such as the
CIA and DIA, there develops an “agency line,” which can be hard to shift. The
phenomenon is even more prevalent among decision-makers working under
great time pressure and stress.
There are a few ways that analysts can work to overcome cognitive and other ana-
lytical biases. Most importantly, most CIA and DIA analysts receive some training in
the perils of cognitive biases and measures that can be taken to uncover them. They
are expected to employ structured analytical techniques (SATs), which can chal-
lenge these unconscious biases. While there are dozens of such techniques today, the
most often employed and powerful SATs are the following:
• Structured brainstorming: A structured discussion of a topic among a diverse

set of experts in which new ideas are actively encouraged and recorded (never
dismissed out of hand) in an effort to stimulate new analytical insights or
alternative hypotheses. This guards against a single consensus view or group-
think errors.
• Key assumptions check: Early identification of key assumptions underlying
an assessment, which are then reviewed to see how much confidence analysts
have in the logic and evidence for them. They should also examine what evi-
dence might disprove them. This can uncover hidden biases that are prevent-
ing more rigorous weighting of evidence.
• Analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH): Analysts create a matrix of individ-
ual data points and information alongside multiple hypotheses for explaining
a problem. Then they evaluate each data point to see if it confirms or discon-
firms the hypothesis. Information that confirms every alternative is judged
less useful than information that can disconfirm all but one explanation. This
prevents single-hypothesis analysis and forces more rigorous examination of
what reporting is truly significant.
• Scenario analysis: A group-designed technique for building multiple long-
term scenarios for complex and highly uncertain intelligence problems (e.g.,
the future of China), it relies heavily on bringing together a large group of
experts with diverse backgrounds and typically developing at least three or
four alternative futures based on critical uncertainties. This forces analysts
outside their conventional mind-sets and identifies plausible major discon-
tinuities that might occur.12
A second remedy to analytical bias is the IC’s maintenance of a healthy degree of

competitive analysis. This permits different agencies to simultaneously look at infor-
mation and draw their own independent conclusions. In this way, competing analyses
can challenge each agency’s use of information and logic. Throughout the Cold War,
the CIA and DIA were constantly producing competing analyses of Soviet military
programs and budgets, which helped maintain analytical rigor and expose any biases.
Similar competitive analysis exists today on Russian, Chinese, and other major mili-
tary programs. Such multiple advocacy has long been identified as a good check on
groupthink or stove-piped thinking found within individual agencies.
A more recent mechanism has been the creation of a number of “Red Cell” analyti-
cal units within CIA and DIA, where analysts are allowed to develop contrarian analy-
sis (sometimes termed “alternative analysis”).13 The CIA set up such a unit after the
9/11 attacks, and it continues to this day, along with smaller groups operating as Red
Cells within individual analytical offices. The notion of Red Cell work involves “think-
ing like the enemy” (an adversary’s Red Team versus the US Blue Team) and using
that enemy’s perspective in assessing how best to defeat US strategies and actions.
These groups are empowered to challenge prevailing lines of analysis, where mis-
takes might have catastrophic consequences for the United States. More generally,
they are instructed to “think outside the box” regarding unlikely but still plausible
outcomes that most analysts had discounted. Red Cells have now produced hundreds
of such contrarian analysis, using a variety of SATs.
A third corrective is more use of “analytical outreach” that allows nongovern-
ment experts to discuss and challenge intelligence judgments. To some degree,
this has always been a practice, when intelligence analysts wished to meet with
outside scholars on the Soviet Union regarding its military programs and budgets
or regarding the CIA’s analysis of worldwide energy production. Selectively, a few
cleared outside experts were allowed to review NIEs in draft and provide their cri-
tiques. Perhaps one of the best-known and respected outside consultants has been
Professor Robert Jervis of Columbia University. In his own writing, he describes his
involvement in a number of reviews he conducted of CIA analysis regarding the
1979 Iranian Revolution and the 2002 estimate of Iraqi WMDs.14
The 2004 9/11 Commission’s report encouraged the IC to engage even more in
this type of outreach to guard against its “lack of imagination” regarding terrorist
plots. Immediately after the report was issued, there was a surge in outreach efforts
and a loosened set of rules for analytical exchanges. Many analysts welcomed this
opportunity to interact with academics and other outside experts to sharpen their
own skills, develop networks of expertise, and prevent too much insular thinking on
their part. Such analytical outreach is limited, naturally, by the IC’s “security culture”
of classifying and compartmentalizing information. This inherent reluctance to share
its views—even in unclassified ways—with academics or other private-sector experts
100 Chapter 5
without security clearances still hampers effective challenging of long-held agency

views.15 Rules governing contacts with nongovernment experts can sometimes seem
so burdensome as to discourage the less enterprising analysts from attempting to
develop such relationships.
BEYOND THE INTELLIGENCE CYCLE:

AN ANALYST-CENTRIC PROCESS
The steps highlighted in figure 5.1 give the impression that there is a logical pro-
gression from requirement to collection and processing and ultimately to analysis
and dissemination of reporting. That, however, is highly theoretical and seldom
reflects the real process by which information in gathered, analyzed, and provided
to senior policymakers. In reality, there are any number of complexities that impede
the notion that policymakers are the initiators of intelligence collection and analysis.
First, policymakers seldom want to invest the time in prioritizing their intelligence
needs, although they will routinely ask for additional information in more of an ad hoc
fashion. In reality, senior intelligence managers must often identify key requirements
based on impressions—if not direct instructions—of presidential and cabinet officials’
intelligence needs. Agencies cannot wait for explicit instructions to collect what they
believe are essential intelligence data. Analysts are also important in directing col-
lectors to access the information they need to answer key intelligence questions they
have about their targets. They do not need the NSC or a senior official to tell them
that information on China’s military buildup in the South China Sea is important to
access, nor do they need to ask policymakers whether they would be interested in
knowing more about the cyber capabilities of America’s key adversaries.
Second, the notion of a linear or sequential “intelligence cycle” is also very sim-
plistic. Analysts and collectors are working most often in parallel or simultaneously
to answer policymakers’ questions. Analysts prepare analyses even as collectors are
continuing to search for new information on any given topic. A written assessment
is only a snapshot in time of what is known about a subject, but as new information is
collected, analysts will update, amend, or correct their earlier assessments to fit the
newly collected and evaluated information. A good example of this is to be found in
the 2007 NIE on Iran’s nuclear program.16 Based on new information, the IC aban-
doned previous judgments and assessed that Iran had halted a critical part of the
program in response to international pressure.
Third, the intelligence cycle also is less a linear process and more an interactive
one. That is to say that there is often communication back and forth between analysts
and policymakers as well as between analysts and collectors regarding intelligence
topics. Analysts often refine their assessments based on conversations with senior
Figure 5.2. Analyst-centric Intelligence Process
policymakers, in order to address their policy agenda more directly; similarly, collec-
tors may alter their collection strategies to fit analysts’ views of the kinds of informa-
tion they need to answer policymakers’ questions. Ironically, then, these interactions
run the intelligence cycle somewhat in reverse. Indeed, analysts are typically at the
center of the process of fielding intelligence requirements from policymakers and
working with them and collectors to satisfy their questions. A more realistic, if still
overly simplified, depiction of the analyst-centric intelligence process might be what
is shown in figure 5.2.
This analyst-centric process highlights how critical it is to define more precisely
the kinds of analytical tasks that must be undertaken to satisfy the long list of intelli-
gence concerns by American decision-makers across the government and now includ-
ing even state and local officials responsible for homeland security. Analysts must
be subject-matter experts on countries such as China, Russia, and Iran as well as on
transnational threats such as international terrorism, narcotic trafficking, and WMD
proliferation. They must also be knowledgeable about US national security policies
designed to deal with these issues. In other words, they are expected to know as much
about US foreign policy as they are to understand a foreign government’s policies. If
not, they will not be able to accurately gauge what constitutes a significant develop-
ment for presidents and their key advisers.
Analyst as Enabler
Today the analyst has the benefit—and the challenge—of understanding a long
list of explicit US strategies on security, homeland defense, counterterrorism, and
intelligence that have been drafted in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Septem-
ber 11, 2001. The 2010 National Security Strategy goes further than earlier ones in
mentioning the critical role of intelligence in shaping American strategies: “Our
country’s safety and prosperity depend on the quality of the intelligence we col-
lect and the analysis we produce, our ability to evaluate and share this information
102 Chapter 5
Figure 5.3. Intelligence as “Enabler of National Security Strategy”
in a timely manner and our ability to counter intelligence threats. This is true for
the strategic intelligence that informs executive decisions as it is for intelligence
support to homeland security, state and tribal governments, our troops and critical
national missions.”17
Likewise, the 2019 National Intelligence Strategy lays out the various missions of
the IC, including strategic intelligence, anticipatory (i.e., warning) intelligence, and cur-
rent operations as critical support to the decision-maker.18 Figure 5.3 graphically dis-
plays how the analyst makes contributions throughout the decision-making process.
An analyst who has studied the strategic thinking of key policymakers is in a better
position to enable those individuals to improve their performance at each step of the
decision-making and policy-execution processes. Seen in this context, virtually all intel-
ligence analysis is strategic, for it seeks to enable policymakers to achieve their goals
with the required means. That is, whether the analyst is describing the general strate-
gic environment, providing warning of some attack, merely describing the details of
an adversary’s military potential or infrastructure, or providing very tactical targeting
information, the endeavor itself is in support of an overall strategy to achieve certain
specific ends. As shown in figure 5.3, the analytical mission will change as policymakers
move from developing an understanding of the problem to defining the major goals for
US national security and then designing policy options and implementing them:
• The decision-maker brings to the process a worldview or perceptions about

the international environment to the strategy-making process. The analyst
brings expertise and analytical assessments to improve the policymaker’s
understanding of that environment.
• As the president and his advisers define the national interests and the princi-
pal threats and opportunities posed by the international environment, the key
function of the analyst is then to identify—that is, “warn” of—events or trends
that might constitute such threats or opportunities.
• As an administration formulates policy objectives and courses of actions,
the analysts support these deliberations by describing the opposing actor’s
strengths and weaknesses, possible foreign responses to any US course of
action, and perhaps unforeseen consequences of potential policy actions—
that is, information that relates to the real and potential costs and risks of
such policy actions.
• Finally, the NSC principals must assess the effectiveness of their policies and
refine or restructure the overall strategy. At this juncture, the analyst’s role is
to provide an assessment of how adversaries and allies have reacted to US
policies, what intended and unintended consequences those policies might
have had, and what future actions foreign state and nonstate actors might
contemplate to comply with or oppose US actions.
The next few chapters will examine in greater depth these four unique ways in
which intelligence analysis can enable effective strategy. The remainder of this
chapter will briefly outline their differences to illustrate that intelligence analysis is
not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Indeed, the IC must be sensitive to the stage at
which American policies are being formulated or implemented. Analysis that focuses
too much on broad trends when the strategist is already poised to select courses of
action or implement specific policy decisions is likely to be disregarded. Likewise, if a
decision-maker does not share the analytical community’s general views of a problem
early in the strategy-formulation process, then trying to provide policy support can
be doubly difficult for the IC.
Strategic Intelligence
The most fundamental goal of both the policymaker and analyst must be to compre-
hend the strategic environment in which the United States and other friendly and
adversarial actors are operating. However, the vantage point of the decision-maker
and analyst are very different. Whereas a policymaker such as a president usually
comes to the problem with a well-formed set of values, preconceptions, and policy
104 Chapter 5
goals, the analyst must attempt to examine the strategic context from a less explicitly
American perspective.
In the Cold War, US strategists were both contemptuous toward and alarmed by
the communist system. They could see the faults of the system but may have ascribed
more ideology to the factors driving Soviet policy than was actually the case. It was
the analysts’ responsibility to view the Soviet Union in its totality. Hence, the analyst
was obliged to assess the limits of the Soviet Union’s national economic, political, and
military power, the importance of Russian self-interest (vis-à-vis other competing com-
munist power centers such as China), and understand how interest groups inside the
Soviet Union (e.g., the party, the military, the government ministries) might be compet-
ing or working at cross purposes.
Today, as during the Cold War, analysts must consider the world as it exists, not
as one wishes it to be. Moreover, analysts must remain consciously more self-critical
than most policymakers; sometimes analysts can become too complacent or over-
confident about their knowledge and too resistant to alternative explanations and
thus miss important changes in the international environment or in the attitudes of
US adversaries. Hence, the analyst must constantly challenge his or her views on
an intelligence subject and use different analytical techniques to check whether key
assumptions are flawed; information is incomplete, misleading, or flatly wrong; or the
known facts about an issue could legitimately produce multiple thoughts rather than
a single conclusion.19
Informing the policymaker about the changing strategic environment is the most
all-encompassing role that the analyst performs. Adding knowledge to the policy dis-
cussion is what Sherman Kent described as the intelligence analyst’s goal of elevating
the level of the policy debate. Many policymakers do not always acknowledge this
quiet yet pervasive function of intelligence. But it is one that intelligence analysts
perform almost unconsciously in their everyday interactions with policymakers via
finished analysis, oral briefings, or telephone and face-to-face conversations. Some-
times providing a different perspective to a policymaker can be the most important
contribution to a strategy debate if it can put the decision-maker in the adversary’s
position or demonstrates that the American perspective on an issue is not the only
possible interpretation of the current problem.
The Warning Function

In most cases, intelligence analysts are ultimately—if not always fairly—judged on
whether they provided adequate strategic and tactical warning analysis of an impend-
ing change in the world. For the policymakers, however, the challenge is far more diffi-
cult. The policy community must first define what are the enduring American interests,
which must be protected—for example, a secure homeland, a democratic way of life, a
prosperous economy, access to energy supplies, effective alliances and defenses, and
the like—and how American hard and soft power will be used to achieve these goals.
Defining what are critical national interests at a given moment is not easy, nor is it
simple to prioritize, choose among, or balance those interests that might at times be
in conflict.20 If, in fact, US decision-makers have difficulty defining what are the most
critical US interests worth defending or advancing, then it stands to reason that intel-
ligence analysts will have an equally difficult time determining which issues need
to be watched to provide effective warning or—more positively—notification that an
opportunity exists to advance an important US interest. A case in point is the recent
intelligence findings that indicated the highest levels of the Russian government
authorized hacking into the US electoral system. It must be puzzling to intelligence
managers that President Trump has dismissed the issue as a “hoax,” which might
suggest the IC should not prioritize collecting and analyzing information on this. On
the other hand, other policy agencies, including the FBI and DHS, as well as Congress
seem adamant about getting to the bottom of the issue. There appears to be a division
of opinion on whether Russian hacking poses a serious threat to American democ-
racy, putting US intelligence in the middle of this controversy.
In the post-9/11 world, it is now axiomatic that a central mission of the IC is warn-
ing of any terrorist attack. A huge national effort has been launched to create large
analytical centers to identify and prevent such threats from materializing. Not only is
there a National Counterterrorism Center to which many national intelligence agen-
cies contribute, but there also are separate, departmental counterterrorism activities
throughout the government, most especially at the CIA, the FBI, the Treasury Depart-
ment, DHS, the DIA, and the State Department’s INR. In this sense, the analysts’ mis-
sion is clear. However, there is still a long list of other US national interests that must
also be protected and advanced, most of which have not been as clearly enunciated as
counterterrorism or counterproliferation. How many analysts also should be follow-
ing and reporting regularly on international human and drug trafficking, illegal bor-
der crossings, and organized crime activity that can threaten and potentially kill US
citizens? Moreover, are senior officials, to whom analysts might report their concerns,
paying attention to these issues?
Policy Support: Analysts’ Tactical Role

Compared to the warning mission of analysts, the job of providing intelligence that
can support policy actions is far more frequent but far less noticed or appreciated
by those outside the decision-making process. The reality is that decision-makers
spend far more time on the selection and implementation of courses of actions—that
is, choosing policy instruments and determining how to apply them—than they do on
their initial assessment of the strategic context and identification of principal threats.
106 Chapter 5
Once policymakers believe they understand the international environment and the
principal challenges facing the nation, they are concerned primarily about using the
military, diplomatic, economic, and other instruments of power at their disposal.
The role of the analyst, then, becomes one of providing information and analysis
that can enable the best tactical application of those courses of action—for example,
the imposition of sanctions, the offer or cancellation of foreign military assistance,
the threat of military intervention, or the use of public diplomacy. Few writers out-
side the IC, however, recognize the wide range of analytical contributions to this
phase in the policy process, which do not fall into the category of a major intelligence
warning or prescient reassessment of an important international development. There
are literally thousands of transactions between analyst and policymaker that fall into
the category of policy support. These involve the analyst providing bits and pieces
of information and insight on a specific policy issue—for example, where a diplomat
is trying to determine how best to use an instrument such as a foreign aid package
or to construct convincing arguments in a planned conversation with a foreign coun-
terpart or to contemplate possible countermeasures an adversary might take if the
United States were to initiate certain actions designed to increase US influence. As
Professor Jennifer Sims has argued, this kind of intelligence support is often judged
by whether it can give “decision advantage” to US policymakers.21 What is meant is
that timely intelligence can enable American decision-makers to react more quickly
and more effectively than an adversary can. Few of these activities are ever trans
parent to the outside observer. Analysts are being instrumental in providing informa-
tion, which “supports” current policy objectives, regardless of whether analysts think
the policy is correct or likely to succeed.
Policy Evaluation
It would be naive to assume that a president’s policies, once set, run their course
“automatically” until they achieve their stated goals. As military commanders often
say, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Likewise, when developing strate-
gic plans, there is the danger that the decision-makers will fall into the trap sometimes
known as the “fallacy of the first move”—presuming that the adversary will accept the
inevitability of an American action and comply in the ways imagined by its creators.
Sadly, the world is far more complex and less predictable than this. Numerous times
overconfident presidents or commanders have proclaimed that a stated policy action
will be successful and then were shocked by the persistence of an enemy’s resistance
or an actor’s clever response to some US policy action. One thinks immediately of
Bush administration officials’ claims that only a few Iraqi “bitter-enders” remained,
just prior to the onset of the violent Iraqi insurgency in 2005. The analysts’ role in the
postimplementation phase of strategy formulation is to report back to policymakers
on the effectiveness of their actions taken. This role is more feedback rather than
forecasting; in this case, analysts are required to draw up “after-action” reporting that
can assist policymakers in reassessing or redirecting their policies. Not surprisingly,
this is a contribution that is needed but not always welcomed, particularly when it
amounts to a failing grade or a less-than-overwhelming success for an American
administration. As former deputy national security adviser Leon Fuerth used to muse,
“There are no policy failures, only intelligence failures.”
Hence, the analyst must tread carefully in providing feedback to the strategist if
he or she is to maintain the trust of a president or other senior official. As another
former deputy national security adviser, James Steinberg, has noted, a smart policy-
maker would be foolish to dismiss analytical evaluations of policy simply because
they do not conform to his expectations.22 However, there are examples of where
the policymaker’s expectations and the analyst’s assessment of a policy action
were widely disputed. The long record of IC evaluations of US military policies in
Vietnam and American policymakers dismissing them is recorded by numerous
intelligence practitioners and policymakers and recounted in later chapters in this
volume.
In sum, policy evaluation of all the specific intelligence tasks is most likely to
breed distrust between the intelligence and policy communities. As the next chapters
lay out, strategic intelligence lays the groundwork for a dialogue about the interna-
tional environment between those two groups, while warning and policy support are
directed especially at assisting decision-makers in formulating and executing effec-
tive policies. But where the IC is most likely to encounter problems is when its analy-
sis suggests policies are not working or intelligence is perceived to be undermining a
president’s agenda. That is where the intelligence-policy relationship becomes most
challenging.
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
CIA Analytical Tradecraft Primer, https://w ww. cia. gov/ library/center - for - the- study - of
-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft%20Primer-apr09.pdf
A good summary of more recent analytical methods used to guard against mind-sets and
cognitive bias.
The Intelligence Cycle, https://fas.org/irp/cia/product/facttell/intcycle.htm
Gives a description of the intelligence process as a linear process.
FURTHER READING
Robert M. Clark, Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach (Washington, DC: CQ Press,

2004).
108 Chapter 5
A good examination of the analytical process and analysts’ role in the policy-collection-
analysis process.
Donald C. Daniel, “Denial and Deception,” in Transforming US Intelligence, ed. Jennifer Sims
and Burton Gerber (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005).
A concise description of the role that D&D plays in complicating US intelligence
assessments.
Richards Heuer, The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: Center for the
Study of Intelligence, 1999).
A ground-breaking examination of how analysts are prone to cognitive biases and mind-
sets and what measures can be taken to guard against them.
Mark Lowenthal and Robert M. Clark, The Five Disciplines of Intelligence Collection (Washing-
ton, DC: CQ Press, 2011).
An excellent collection of articles written by practitioners who examine each intelli-
gence discipline.
Douglas MacEachin, The Tradecraft of Analysis: Challenge and Change in the CIA (Washing-
ton, DC: Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, 1994).
A foundational examination of how analysts must guard against analytical biases.
Stephen Marrin, Improving Intelligence Analysis: Bridging the Gap between Scholarship and
Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012).
An intelligence scholar’s critique of intelligence analysis as practiced in the IC and how
social science scholarship might assist in improving the IC’s performance.
Mark Phythian, ed., Understanding the Intelligence Cycle (New York: Routledge, 2013).
An outstanding collection of articles on the origins, development, and limitations of the
concept, which may have outlived its usefulness.
NOTES
First epigraph: White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, December 2017, 32.
Second epigraph: Robert M. Clark, Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach (Washing-

ton, DC: CQ Press, 2004), 12.
1. A “national security strategy” refers to the development of plans for preventing a range
of threats to the United States, utilizing all elements of national power, including diplomatic,
military, economic, and information power. Typically they require coordination among all the
national security agencies, such as the State and Defense Departments and the Department of
Homeland Security, as well as the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
2. To paraphrase an anonymous senior intelligence official quoted in the CIA monograph
Intelligence and Policy: An Evolving Relationship (Washington, DC: Center for the Study
of Intelligence, 2003), 3, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi
-publications/books-and-monographs/IntelandPolicyRelationship_Internet.pdf.
3. For detailed discussion of analysts’ model building, see Robert M. Clark, Intelligence
Analysis: A Target-centric Approach (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2004), 39–62.
4. The author wants to acknowledge that much of this discussion of the analytical process
is drawn from a former colleague’s unclassified paper produced for the CIA’s Global Futures
Partnership in 2008. See Timothy Walton, “An Intelligence Analysis Primer: Six Steps to Bet-
ter Intelligence Analysis,” Global Futures Forum’s Community of Interest on the Practice and
Organization of Intelligence, Vancouver, Canada, March 2008.
5. See Sherman Kent, “A Crucial Estimate Relived,” Studies in Intelligence (Spring 1964):
185–87.
6. Thomas Fingar, chairman of the NIC at the time, described this new estimate in detail
in his chapter “Tale of Two Estimates,” in Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and
National Security, ed. Thomas Fingar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 89–125.
7. NIEs now contain a scope note laying out what the terms high, medium, and low confi-
dence imply about analysts’ views of the information on which their judgments are based. In
the 2007 NIE on Iran’s nuclear program, the following statement was included in the Scope
Note and repeated in all subsequent NIEs:
• High confidence generally indicates that our judgments are based on high-quality infor-
mation, and/or that the nature of the issue makes it possible to render a solid judgment.
A “high confidence” judgment is not a fact or a certainty, however, and such judgments
still carry a risk of being wrong.
• Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plau-
sible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of
confidence.
• Low confidence generally means that the information’s credibility and/or plausibility is
questionable, or that the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make
solid analytic inferences, or that we have significant concerns or problems with the
sources.
8. On the impact of missing information, see James Bruce, “The Missing Link: The Analyst-
Collector Relationship,” in Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’ Perspectives,
2nd ed., ed. Roger George and James Bruce (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
2014), 157–77.
9. The best source on the assumptions and mind-set problems is the book by Richards
Heuer Jr., The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: Center for the Study
of Intelligence, 1999), https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi
-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology -of-intelligence-analysis/PsychofIntel
New.pdf.
10. One senior analyst involved in those debates has recounted to the author that the inter-
nal CIA debate was won by those whose assessment was largely based on the continued high
defense spending by the USSR, which they believed was a reflection of a continuation of pre-
vailing Soviet foreign and security policy objectives. Separately, in the Aspen Security Forum
in the mid-1980s, a senior CIA official reflected this military perspective when he told an audi-
ence that that nuclear deterrence of the Soviet Union as we know it would be with us for as
long as one could imagine. See a description of scenario planning in Peter Schwartz, The Art of
the Long View: Paths to Strategic Insight for Yourself and Your Company (New York: Currency
Press, 1991).
11. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote about common analytical errors made by
people in reaching decisions. See Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Thinking Fast Think-
ing Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Richards Heuer Jr. also produced a
110 Chapter 5
groundbreaking book on the role of cognitive bias found in intelligence analysis. See Heuer,
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis.
12. For a fuller explanation of SATs and their purpose and process, see Randolph Pherson
and Richards Heuer Jr., “Structured Analytical Techniques: A New Approach to Analysis,” in
George and Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence, 231–48.
13. Micah Zlenko, “Inside the Red Cell,” Foreign Policy, October 30, 2015, http://foreign
policy.com/2015/10/30/inside-the-cia-red-cell-micah-zenko-red-team-intelligence/.
14. See Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the
Iraq War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). Jervis describes his long-standing rela-
tionship as an outside consultant and how it enabled him to identify a number of analytical
and collection pathologies that are endemic in intelligence failures.
15. For a comprehensive overview of recent academic outreach, see Susan H. Nelson, “Aca-
demic Outreach: Pathway to Expertise Building and Professionalization,” in George and Bruce,
Analyzing Intelligence, 319–38.
16. See the discussion of the 2007 Iran NIE in Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty, xxx.
17. White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, May 2010, 15, http://
nssarchive.us/NSSR/2010.pdf.
18. ODNI, The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America: 2014, 6,
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/2014_NIS_Publication.pdf.
19. See Roger George, “Fixing the Problem of Analytic Mindsets: Alternative Analysis,” in
Intelligence and the National Security Strategist: Enduring Issues and Challenges, ed. Roger A.
George and Robert D. Kline (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 311–26.
20. Today the homeland security debate often focuses on balancing American citizens’
right to privacy against their right to feel secure at home. Equally challenging is proper priori-
tization of domestic well-being in the form of spending on education, health care, or airport
security against defense spending or foreign assistance programs designed to avert failing
states that can become havens for future terrorists.
21. See Jennifer E. Sims, “Decision Advantage and the Nature of Intelligence Analysis,”
Oxford Handbook on National Security Intelligence, ed. Loch Johnson (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2010).
22. James Steinberg, “The Policymaker’s Perspective: Transparency and Partnership,” in
George and Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence, 95.
6
Strategic Intelligence
No matter what we tell the policymaker, and no matter how right we

are and how convincing, he will upon occasion disregard the thrust
of our findings for reasons beyond our ken. If influence cannot be our
goal what should it be? Two things. It should be relevant within our
competence, and above all it should be credible.
—Sherman Kent, former director, Board of National Estimates, 1968
The primary purpose of most intelligence estimates is, or should be,

to enhance decision maker understanding of complex and potentially
consequential issues shrouded in mysteries, secrets and enigmas.
The goal is to help them anticipate, abet, alter, avoid, or ameliorate
developments that they find desirable, dangerous, or disruptive.
—Thomas Fingar, former chairman, National Intelligence
Council, 2011
This chapter will examine the topic of strategic intelligence and how it supports the
national security enterprise. It will describe how strategic intelligence is conducted
and lays the foundation for other intelligence missions. The key role of the National
Intelligence Council and the National Intelligence Estimates process will be used to
illustrate the practice of preparing strategic intelligence, although other intelligence
agencies also produce strategic analysis. Last, the chapter will examine some of the
enduring challenges of such analysis to have impact as well as to ensure its accuracy
and quality.
WHAT IS STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE?
For both the intelligence analyst and the policymaker, the principal concern is the
strategic international environment in which the United States and other friendly and
111
112 Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Types of Intelligence
adversarial actors are operating. Intelligence analysts’ first task is to comprehend the
major trends and factors that are shaping the world in which the American govern-
ment is operating. Strategic intelligence, then, is defined as information and analysis
that informs policymakers about those critical trends and factors that will impinge on
broad and enduring US national security interests. As illustrated in figure 6.1, stra-
tegic intelligence goes beyond simply reporting of known facts (basic intelligence)
and daily events (current intelligence). Basic intelligence is best understood as cata-
logs of known information such as economic statistics, demographic data, and infra-
structure and logistics information (location of ports, airports, military installations,
power plants, etc.). Current intelligence is the daily production of short assessments
that distill the vast flow of diplomatic, military, clandestine, and open-source report-
ing that comes into the US intelligence community. Because of their time urgency
and brevity, current intelligence permits very little analysis of those reports. Yet good
current intelligence rests on solid strategic analysis.
In turn, strategic intelligence does rest on the analysts’ understanding of both basic
intelligence information and an awareness of current intelligence reporting. To be able
to produce solid strategic intelligence, analysts must have a good grasp of the basic
geographic, historical, political, and economic conditions of their country targets or
functional topics. On top of that, analysts must integrate the latest information on their
target with past reporting; however, strategic analysis must avoid being driven solely by
Strategic Intelligence113
the current development. Instead, strategic intelligence must integrate that new infor-
mation with a much larger body of past reporting to form a comprehensive picture of
a country’s or target’s actions and likely behavior. Thus, analysts working on a country
or functional subject will build up extensive knowledge about a country—its history,
economy, leadership, and politics.
In the precomputer age, a new analyst was sometimes directed toward a large four-
drawer file cabinet full of past intelligence reporting on his new intelligence account
(e.g., Iran, China, Russia, or ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, etc.). His supervisor
would point and say, “Read everything in that file drawer, and then we’ll see if you
are ready to write intelligence analysis.” While this is only a slight exaggeration, the
process of becoming a subject-matter expert (SME) on targets such as Iran or North
Korea or WMDs could take considerable time. Figure 6.2 lays out the layers of knowl-
edge that a senior intelligence analyst might be expected to achieve in order to pre-
pare strategic intelligence analysis. The analyst must understand a target country’s
political history, regional setting, and resource potential, which in turn feeds into a
broader international environment in which the analyst must understand the existing
division and dynamics of power. Factoring in a particular state’s political culture, gov-
ernment structure, and leadership styles will then permit the analyst to assess how a
particular national leadership will define its vital national interests, develop policy
objectives, and utilize the diplomatic, military, and economic power at its disposal in
dealing with the United States and US partners.
The first challenge for analysts is to determine what strategic intelligence trends
are of most importance to senior policymakers and to gather the best intelligence
available to help inform policymakers’ discussions and decisions regarding these
strategic issues. In wartime, strategic intelligence is obviously focused principally on
the opponent’s military capabilities, plans, and intentions; even in peacetime, how-
ever, strategic intelligence also can often be focused on military issues. Indeed, dur-
ing the Cold War, strategic intelligence focused extensively on the Soviet military
challenge. However, it was never limited to the military domain alone. The CIA and
other IC agencies also had to examine nonmilitary factors such as an adversary’s eco-
nomic performance (which can support its military potential) and its political system
and leadership characteristics, as those can inform US policymakers on how a foreign
adversary might behave or react to American policies.
Like intelligence analysts, policymakers undertake to both understand the inter-
national environment and attempt to shape it to the advantage of the United States.
Neither is necessarily easy. At times the international environment is difficult to
comprehend. Particularly at times of great change, as the United States finds itself
today, policymakers are often confronted with difficult questions about how the inter-
national system is changing, how power is distributed, and which states are likely to
Figure 6.2. Determinants of Foreign Actors National Security Policy
pose the greatest challenges to US interests. At the end of the Cold War, for instance,
the IC was focusing as much as 80 percent of its collection and analysis resources
on the so-called Soviet target, and it took considerable time to both reduce this pre
occupation and expand its global coverage of other issues.
Unlike during the Cold War, policymakers today do not have the luxury or clar-
ity to focus on a single actor or adversary. There are broader, more diffuse trends or
factors that may alter the international conditions in which the United States must
operate. For example, global climate change is likely to create new environmental
as well as geopolitical conditions in which US diplomacy must operate; if scientists
are correct, climate change may produce more failing states, humanitarian crises,
and interstate conflicts, for which the US will have to develop policies.1 Unlike intel-
ligence analysts, however, policymakers must go beyond identifying these factors
to fashioning strategies and enunciating policies designed to exploit opportunities
and prevent or at least reduce the threats that might emerge from changing interna-
tional conditions.
Informing the policymaker about the changing strategic environment is the most
challenging role that the analyst performs, and it can come in many forms. Provid-
ing knowledge is what Sherman Kent described in 1949 as the intelligence analyst’s
goal of elevating the level of the policy debate. Many policymakers do not always
acknowledge this quiet yet pervasive function of intelligence. But it is one that intel-
ligence analysts must perform in their everyday interactions with policymakers via
finished analysis, oral briefings, or telephone and classified email communications
and face-to-face conversations. Sometimes providing a different perspective to a poli-
cymaker can be the most important contribution to a strategic decision if it can put
the decision-maker in the adversary’s position or demonstrates that the policymaker’s
perspective on an issue is not the only possible interpretation of the current problem.
STRATEGIC ISSUES YESTERDAY AND TODAY
As mentioned above, strategic intelligence is designed to give the policymaker a

broad sense of how the international environment operates and which actors and
factors are critical to understanding how it is operating. Intelligence gathering and
analysis for such a strategic perspective requires a more comprehensive look at the
dynamics in the international environment. For example, when the IC was created
in the 1940s, the Cold War demanded strategic intelligence focused on the mili-
tary, economic, and political actions and capabilities of the Soviet Union, its Warsaw
Pact allies, and Communist China. Contrast that today with the far greater focus
on the global terrorism threat, the economic rise of China, and the proliferation
of dangerous WMD technologies and cyber threats. The annual DNI Worldwide
116 Chapter 6
Threat Assessment outlines the top-tier strategic intelligence challenges, and these
days that list begins with the transnational issues such as cyber domain, counter
intelligence, Internet manipulation terrorism, proliferation, and more traditional
adversarial relations with China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, just to name the
most obvious.2 Clearly, the international environment has shifted with the end of
the bipolar US-Soviet global competition. Nonetheless, Russia remains a strategic
challenge, even though it is nowhere near the top of the list of major threats facing
the United States today.
So, what is seen as having strategic importance will change, and necessarily US
intelligence has adapted its collection and analysis priorities to make sure it can
provide strategic intelligence on a whole range of subjects that were unknown or
unimportant before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. One way of understanding what
has become strategic is to look at the long list of national “strategies” that several
presidents have promulgated since 2000. These documents have been issued by
the White House or by individual agencies but often include in their titles the word
National to indicate they reflect a strategic priority that demands high-level attention
across the entire national security enterprise. It is hoped that also will carry a high
priority for intelligence. Even a short and incomplete list (and accompanying issue
dates) would include the following:
National Security Strategy (2017, 2015, 2010, 2008, 2002, etc.)

National Strategy for Counterterrorism (2018, 2011, 2006, 2003)
National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003, 2002)
National Strategy for Combating Biological Threats (2009)
National Strategy for Bio-surveillance (2012)
Strategy for Cyberspace (2011, 2002)
National Strategy to Combat Transnational Crime (2011)
National Security Space Strategy (2011, 2006)
National Strategy for the Arctic Region (2013)3
As this only partial list demonstrates, there is a wide range of international issues
for which there needs to be broad strategies that can orchestrate the activities of
numerous federal (and, in many cases, state and municipal) agencies. These enun-
ciated strategies are the results of NSC deliberations outlined in chapter 3. Many
more topics remain in classified channels, so they cannot be discussed as examples
here. Nonetheless, these classified interagency studies and decision memoranda are
prepared and coordinated by the interagency process. Presidents then approve strate-
gies for dealing with those problems. Many of those documents contain intelligence
assessments either as part of the national security decision memoranda or as separate
appendices or accompanying intelligence assessments that support the deliberations

of the NSC principals.
To provide one example, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George
W. Bush’s national security team developed a classified strategy for combating
WMDs. This National Security Presidential Decision 17 (NSPD 17) directed federal
agencies to develop a three-pronged approach to preventing the spread, use, and
consequences of WMDs. It also laid out the controversial policy of “preventive”
attacks against adversaries who might intend to develop or use WMDs against the
United States or its allies. In September 2002, President Bush issued a six-page
unclassified version of NSPD 17, which declared that the United States “will not
permit the world’s most dangerous regimes and terrorists to threaten us with the
world’s most destructive weapons.” This first National Strategy to Combat Weap-
ons of Mass Destruction highlighted the need to orchestrate the use of diplomacy
and deterrence, to develop better counterproliferation defenses, and to expand the
use of economic sanctions and export controls on sensitive technology. However,
equally important, it also emphasized the need for better strategic intelligence: “A
more accurate and complete understanding of the full range of WMD threats is, and
will remain, among the highest U.S. intelligence priorities, to enable us to prevent
proliferation, and to deter or defend against those who would use those capabilities
against us. Improving our ability to obtain timely and accurate knowledge of adver-
saries’ offensive and defensive capabilities, plans, and intentions is key to develop-
ing effective counter- and nonproliferation capabilities.”4 This is about as clear a
statement of the interconnection between strategy development and intelligence
support as one can find. Policymakers focused on combating WMD proliferation
and potential use—like many other issues—rely on timely, accurate assessments of
the evolving strategic environment.
FORECASTING: WHAT DISTINGUISHES STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE
Strategic intelligence—unlike basic or current intelligence—must be forward-looking

and longer-term, so analysts are expected to reach reasoned judgments about the
future conditions that policymakers could face. This requires that they forecast how
the target and/or its behavior might change over time and give some sense of the
probability of those changes occurring. This is perhaps the most challenging part of
the analyst’s job. Sherman Kent once said, “Estimating is what you do, when you do
not know.”5 Intelligence is not about prediction, but it is often judged on whether it
correctly predicts the actions of a foreign adversary. That said, analysts must reduce
the levels of uncertainty facing policymakers to the extent possible. Hence, they
are usually expected to assign some probability to their judgments—for example,
118 Chapter 6
highly or more likely, less likely, or improbable. Whatever the adjectives used by
analysts, they are impressions and judgments, not facts. As a rule of thumb, analysts
will attach qualifiers—often termed “caveats”—to their judgments to imply that an
improbable or unlikely event carries a probability of less than 50 percent, while
likely or almost certain events carry a probability of much more than 50 percent.
More precision is both impossible and reckless when so many known and unknown
factors can influence a foreign actor’s behavior. To manage this probability challenge,
analysts will also resort to developing alternative scenarios that permit them to rank
them in terms of their relative probability depending on which key factors become
more prominent in a foreign actor’s behavior. In many cases, analysts will distinguish
the most likely from the least likely cases based on their understanding of which
key factors and forces are most powerful in determining how a target might behave.
Among the scenarios, analysts might also highlight those likely to have the most
positive or negative consequences for US interests.
To take one example, if analysts were asked to assess the probability of China
attacking Taiwan, they might construct several scenarios based on factors such as
the nature of the Chinese leadership and the foreign policies of the current Taiwan-
ese government. Analysts would determine which factors might be most likely to
generate pressure for one or another scenario, and from those factors there would be
a set of indicators most likely to accompany increasing chances of one or another
scenario. So, for example, one scenario might judge an attack as unlikely, if the Beijing
leadership was stable and confident and the Taiwanese government had eschewed
any notion of independence from China. However, a second scenario might be judged
much more likely if the Beijing was undergoing a leadership struggle between hard-
liners and moderates, and a new Taiwanese government was toying with the idea of
declaring independence. Under the latter scenario, the risk of a preemptive Chinese
invasion might be significantly higher, and intelligence analysts would be looking for
new evidence (e.g., indicators) in Beijing and Taipei for radical departures from past
policies of coexistence.
One of the most critical yet challenging tasks for analysts is also laying out key
assumptions used in a strategic assessment. When forecasting the future, there is
seldom strong evidence for actions not yet taken by an adversary, so in place of facts
analysts must rely on past behavior and patterns. These assumptions, often unap-
preciated and usually unstated, may disguise potential analytical errors. In 1941,
American military intelligence dismissed a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in part
because of well-formed biases that the Japanese were culturally inferior and did not
have the military capabilities or skills to attack the US Pacific Fleet. In 1962, Sherman
Kent’s CIA analysts largely dismissed Soviet placement of offensive missiles on Cuba
because of the assumptions that the Soviets had never before deployed their missiles
outside of the USSR and that the Soviets would surely understand that the United
States would never tolerate such weapons ninety miles from American shores. Such
assumptions should be made as transparent as possible so that other analysts can
challenge them and policymakers can decide if they are well founded. In some cases,
it is useful to allow a diverse set of outside experts to review intelligence assessments
because they will often bring a different perspective and set of assumptions regard-
ing a topic and thus are then able to quickly identify and challenge the intelligence
analysts’ assumptions.
WHO DOES STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE?
Strategic intelligence comes in a variety of forms from a diverse set of producers.

Customarily, strategic intelligence products have been focused largely on future or
longer-term problems as opposed to current intelligence, which is principally report-
ing on what is happening today. This distinction has blurred a bit as many decisions
taken by the president and the national security team regarding a current problem
will have strategic and longer-term implications. That said, the traditional format for
strategic intelligence is the National Intelligence Estimate and other products that
reflect the views of the sixteen intelligence agencies. In the 1950s, the director of
central intelligence created an Office of National Estimates (ONE), which comprised
senior analysts from the CIA who wrote these assessments on behalf of the entire IC.
The most influential director of the ONE was Professor Sherman Kent, a Yale aca-
demic who had been recruited into the OSS during World War II and later joined
the newly formed CIA in 1950 to lead the new estimates process. Under his leader-
ship, the ONE became the most authoritative intelligence group within the US gov-
ernment. It recruited some of the leading academics from Ivy League universities
along with professional military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials.6 Kent largely
conflated “strategic” intelligence with “national” intelligence, by which he meant it
had to go beyond the usual departmental intelligence produced by one agency for
its own narrow list of consumers. This gave the large ONE staff and its smaller Board
of National Estimates (BNE) experts an elevated status beyond the analytical staffs
found in the military services or even in other parts of the CIA.7 The ONE, with its
BNE, continued to operate until the early 1970s, but it had become too “academic”
and out of touch with real policy issues in the eyes of many. CIA director William
Colby replaced that organization with the NIC and its group of national intelligence
officers in an effort to tie strategic intelligence closer to policy.
Even though the ONE was the principal body for providing strategic intelligence
to the president and the NSC in the early days of the IC, naturally the CIA, the DIA,
and even INR were also producing their own strategic intelligence products. Early
120 Chapter 6
in the Cold War, the CIA organized its analysts into groups with different functions;
one large group was the Office of Strategic Research (OSR), and the other was the
Office of Current Intelligence. The former focused on broad questions of Soviet mili-
tary and scientific developments. This is where much of the analysis of the USSR’s
military programs was conducted, including ballistic missile developments, nuclear
programs, and their strategic doctrines that guided their use of military force. These
analysts were producing a wide range of CIA assessments used by the Department
of Defense but also valuable to senior civilian leaders trying to understand how the
Soviet military planned to use nuclear weapons, how the Kremlin thought about war,
and what strategic plans the Soviets had for expanding their sphere of political and
military influence in Europe and Asia. Complementing this work on strategic military
questions, the CIA’s then Office of Economic Research developed the best models of
the Soviet economy’s performance, its growth rates, and, importantly, the extent of
the defense burden on the Soviet economy. These CIA analysts were also regularly
participating in the preparation of NIEs and might be the principal estimate drafters
if they were among the IC’s recognized experts.
At the same time, the DIA maintained its own cadre of senior military analysts
who focused on Soviet military power and its capabilities vis-à-vis the United States.
Within the DIA, there was a Directorate of Estimates, where longer-term estimates of
missiles, tanks, planes, and ships were developed. Those military estimates became
part of the broader IC’s development of NIEs. Over the years, disagreements between
DIA and CIA analysts over the size and growth rates of Soviet military programs and
budgets were quite controversial and heated. In a somewhat simplistic sense, defense
intelligence analysts tended to see the Soviets as “ten feet tall,” while civilian intel-
ligence analysts at the CIA and elsewhere tended to see a smaller and more backward
Soviet military threat.8 Disputes over the Soviet strategic capabilities and intentions
persisted throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when very elaborate studies of Soviet
weapon systems and military doctrine were deemed critical to whether the United
States could deter and survive a Soviet nuclear attack. Those assessments also played
a key part of the debate of the 1970s strategic arms control agreements negotiated by
President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger (discussed
in more detail in a later chapter).
The State Department’s INR bureau never had the staff to support a large-scale
intelligence-estimate effort. Nonetheless, it would periodically prepare its own longer-
term assessments that could be considered of strategic and national interest. INR
analysts were also drafters of NIEs on occasion, when the bureau had an outstanding
expert on the estimate’s topic. INR’s own all-source analysts were just as able to use
intelligence reporting from all national collectors as CIA and DIA analysts could, and
sometimes they could produce alternative views on major issues regarding Soviet
strategic intentions or prospects for success in Vietnam; in the latter case, INR’s pes-
simistic forecasts proved to be much more accurate than many of those produced by
other intelligence agencies.
THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL
Today strategic intelligence continues to be produced both within individual agen-

cies as well as in the NIC. Because of its historical roots in the ONE, the NIC retains
its status as the IC’s premier strategic intelligence producer. As laid out in the 2004
IRTPA, the NIC “shall be composed of senior analysts within the intelligence com-
munity and substantive experts from the public and private sector . . . [and] the
members of the National Intelligence Council shall constitute the senior intelli-
gence advisers for the purposes of representing the views of the intelligence com-
munity within the United States Government.”9
The NIC is currently made up of roughly one hundred experts and support staff
spread across the global set of strategic intelligence priorities of the US government.
The NIC chairman oversees the work of roughly a dozen or more national intel-
ligence officers, who cover major regional areas as well as critical functional topics.
The chairman is either a very senior intelligence official or often a highly regarded
academic or former policymaker. Some recent chairmen have included Professor
Joseph Nye of Harvard University, Dr. Gregory Treverton from the RAND Corpora-
tion, and Christopher Kojm, who served as former staff director of the 9/11 Commis-
sion; all had served previously in senior policy positions and were thus uniquely
placed to work closely with counterparts in the NSC, the State Department, and the
Defense Department. The council itself comprises the NIOs, their deputy NIOs, and
a Long-Range Assessments Group, which prepares a range of NIC products. A snap-
shot of the NIC’s organization would include NIOs for the following regional and
functional areas:
• Regional: Africa, Asia, Europe, Western Hemisphere, Near East, Russia/

Eurasia, and South Asia
• Functional: WMDs, cyber threats, transnational threats (e.g., terrorism), global
economics, technology
The NIC has distinguished itself by containing a diversity of experts with var-
ied military, diplomatic, academic, or private-sector backgrounds. As one former
NIC chairman pointed out, the NIC attracted senior CIA and DIA officers but also
experts from other IC agencies, the Federal Reserve, the West Point faculty, and
prestigious think tanks.10 As he put it, the NIC “wanted officers who were widely
122 Chapter 6
recognized inside and outside government, and respected for their expertise.”11 The
NIO’s job was not only to be a substantive expert but also a leader of the com-
munity of analysts and a bridge to the policy world. An NIO was responsible for
representing the IC’s collective views on international topics, not primarily their
personal judgments. As such, NIOs usually attended the interagency policy com-
mittee meeting on their respective areas and were often the plus one supporting
the DNI’s participation at the Principals Committee meetings. NIOs meet regularly
with senior NSC, State Department, and Defense Department officials to brief them
on community intelligence assessments and to develop an intelligence research
agenda that suits their needs.
In most cases, NIOs would propose topics for NIEs and other NIC products based
on their understanding of policymakers’ needs. Alternatively, senior policymakers
or even congressional committees can request a national estimate. It is then the
NIC’s and NIOs’ responsibility to prepare those along the lines and timetable of the
requestors. The NIOs are responsible for developing outlines (called a “terms of ref-
erence”) for each project, assign and manage the drafting of the assessments, lead
interagency “coordination” sessions of analysts that reviewed and revised the drafts,
and then edit and finalize those products. At the end of the process, the NIO would
present the estimate for review by the National Intelligence Board (NIB), comprising
the heads of all IC agencies and chaired by the DNI. This would be the final step when
any amendments or dissents to the NIE would be considered.
As of 2005, the NIC became part of the Office of the Director of National Intelli-
gence and now reports directly to the DNI. In his capacity as head of the IC, the DNI
would approve all NIEs produced by the NIC. While policymakers recognize the NIE
as the most authoritative product by the IC, it is by no means the most widely read
or popular NIC publication. Typically NIEs involve the most exhaustive drafting and
review process, often taking weeks if not months. Historically, the NIEs tended to be
lengthy, detailed studies that could run into tens if not hundreds of pages or even sev-
eral volumes, depending on the complexity of some technical topics such as weapon
technologies. In some cases, policymakers were not prepared to read such documents,
so the NIOs have often resorted to quicker memos—called “sense of the community
memoranda”—that are more focused on current priority issues and did not require
the lengthy review by the DNI and other IC chiefs. One recent example of such an
interagency memo was the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment titled
“Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions Regarding Recent US Elections.”12
These products, combined with individual NIO memos prepared for specific policy
consumers, have totaled more than seven hundred publications annually.13 Moreover,
recent NIC chairmen have dictated that NIEs should be no longer than twenty pages
in length, with a three-page “Key Judgments” (major conclusions) preface. This is all
designed to make the NIEs themselves more useful and increase the likelihood that
busy policymakers will actually read the products.
NIES: PROCESS AND PRODUCTS
Producing authoritative strategic intelligence depends on having a deep bench of

senior analysts within the IC who can provide insight into significant long-term
problems. It also requires a rigorous process of shifting through past assessments
on those topics, assessing the new trends and developments, and developing a fore-
cast of what the problem might look like anywhere from six months to several years
into the future. That process includes weighing past reporting against new reporting
and ensuring that all the perspectives of IC agencies are represented. The results
come in a variety of forms, from the NIE, to more focused interagency products and
NIO memoranda, to the elaborate and multiyear projects now known as the Global
Trends series.
Process
The NIE is considered the most authoritative form of strategic intelligence because
it has the most time-consuming and senior-level review of all IC products. The typi-
cal NIE is often the result of senior policymaker interest in a subject on which deci-
sions must be made or an NIO having determined that such an NIE may be needed
either to review past judgments made on a priority subject or to anticipate decisions
that might be made by the policy community. Often the focus of an NIE is derived
from interactions between the NIO and his counterparts at the NSC, the State Depart-
ment, and the Defense Department. Once the topic is agreed on, the NIO will chair
an IC-wide meeting of experts to develop an outline focused on the key questions
that the NIE is designed to address. NIOs will assign drafting responsibility to one or
more analysts from the CIA, the DIA, INR, and so forth, and he or his deputy NIO will
oversee the drafting process and act as a first-level reviewer and editor. Once a draft
is prepared, the NIO will circulate the NIE draft among the IC agencies for comment,
using that feedback to revise it. Most NIEs require several face-to-face meetings—
part of the coordination process—at which analysts representing their agencies will
review the draft line by line; this can be an exhausting day- or weeklong process,
depending on the complexity and scope of the NIE. Despite the term coordination,
the experience can be both frustrating and not entirely collegial.
At the end of the day, the NIO will determine if there is consensus on the subject
or whether further review and some “dissents” are needed to capture the difference
of opinion among the agencies. In the past, NIEs were often written as consensus
documents, with minor footnotes inserted when an agency disagreed on particular
124 Chapter 6
points; they would appear at the bottom of the page and identify those agencies dis-
senting and a brief discussion of their reasons. In the post-Iraq-WMD era, however,
such disagreements are highlighted in the text, allowing individual agencies to lay
out in more detail why their judgments differ and whether they believe the evidence
is available to support the majority’s line of argumentation.
Today senior NIC officials are averse to minimizing differences in the interest of
consensus; rather, the emphasis is on “clarity” in each agency’s views. Importantly,
each agency gets a vote, and directors of those agencies will have to ultimately con-
firm their approval at the final NIB meeting on the paper. This process, instituted
since the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate, is designed to force agencies to review
in a zero-based fashion their previous judgments on a subject and stand by those
views before it can be approved and disseminated by the DNI. At that final NIB meet-
ing, not only do agency heads need to confirm their agreement to the judgments but
collection agencies must also review the use of their source material and confirm
that they are confident in that information’s validity and use in the NIE. All of this is
designed to connote as much authority and responsibility for an NIE’s accuracy as
can be expected.
Estimative Products
NIEs come in all shapes and sizes. In the Cold War era, it was not unusual for estimates
on Soviet strategic nuclear forces to run into several volumes of several hundred pages
each. They truly were strategic research of the most basic kind. Those estimates on
Soviet strategic forces were given the series designation of “NIE 11-3/8” (see excerpt
in box 6.1) and were an annual exercise that was used by the Defense Department
to size US strategic forces and develop strategic plans to deter any plausible Soviet
nuclear strike. Based on those estimates, US policymakers developed a nuclear triad
of American land-based, sea-based, and airborne delivery systems to complicate any
Soviet temptation for “first strike.” Those estimates also became controversial in the
1970s, when President Nixon and National Security Adviser Kissinger were promot-
ing détente and signed the first major Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agree-
ment with the USSR. Disagreements between the CIA and DIA on future Soviet force
projections led to later charges that the CIA had politicized its lower force projections
to fit Kissinger’s détente policies; outside critics attacked those estimates, claiming
CIA analysts were prone to “best-casing” Soviet programs by assuming Moscow was
content on parity rather than superiority in strategic forces.14
Those days of lengthy NIEs and long, drawn-out disagreements over Soviet stra-
tegic doctrine and forces are long past. Estimates run the gamut from very short and
focused on a narrow question of a foreign government’s survivability to longer-term
prospects of threats to the US homeland. There has been a steady stream of shorter
Box 6.1 Soviet Forces for Intercontinental Attack

(Key Findings)
The intercontinental attack forces considered in this paper include intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers. In the
course of the past 10 years, the Soviets have engaged in a vigorous and costly buildup of
these elements of their military establishment. While all defense spending increased during
the period, the estimated share allocated to these forces doubled, going from about 5 per-
cent in 1960 to more than 10 percent in the later years of the decade. The 1969 level—an
estimated 2.3 billion rubles (the equivalent of $5.6 billion)—was more than three times as
high as the 1960 level. For the decade as a whole, spending on intercontinental attack forces
accumulated to about 16 billion rubles (about $36 billion) with ICBMs accounting for 80 per-
cent of this amount. . . .
As a result of this effort, the Soviets had on 1 October 1970 an estimated 1,291 operational
ICBM launchers at operational ICBM complexes, and they will have an estimated 1,445
launchers operational by mid-1972. . . . Of the 1,445 ICBM launchers estimated to be at oper-
ational complexes by mid-1972, 306 probably will be of the large SS-9 type and 850 the
smaller SS-11. . . .
In the early 1960s, the Soviet leaders, politically and ideologically hostile to the US, and
thinking and behaving as rulers of a great power, perceived that in this particular respect
their military forces were conspicuously inferior to those of their most dangerous rival, the
US. Consequently, they set themselves to rectify the imbalance—to achieve at a minimum a
relation of rough parity. Parity in this sense cannot be objectively measured; it is essentially
a state of mind. Such evidence as we have, much of it from the strategic arms limitation
talks, indicates that Soviet leaders think that they have now achieved this position, or are
about to achieve it, at least in respect to weapons of intercontinental range.
Source: Declassified excerpts from NIE 11-8-70 found in CIA, Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet
Strategic Forces, 1950–1983 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996), 263–67.
NIEs estimating the prospects for stability in such hot spots as Afghanistan and Iraq
that become part of the NSC interagency discussions on US strategies toward those
conflicts. One example of this is the January 2007 NIE on the prospects for Iraq
(see box 6.2), which was one major contribution to the decision about how to “surge”
American forces to defeat the Sunni insurgency.
Seeing a deteriorating security situation, well documented in the NIE, Presi-
dent George W. Bush simultaneously announced a new strategy that increased US
forces in Iraq by twenty thousand troops and embedded them in the Iraqi Security
Forces, which the NIE had also identified as a major weak point. This estimate was
quickly followed by several others, which updated the IC’s judgments on how well
the surge was working and whether progress was being made. In August 2007, for
example, the NIC disseminated an updated NIE titled Prospects for Iraq’s Stability:
126 Chapter 6
Box 6.2 Excerpts from January 2007 NIE Prospects

for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead
Key Judgments
Iraqi society’s growing polarization, the persistent weakness of the security forces and
the state in general, and all sides’ ready recourse to violence is collectively driving an
increase in communal and insurgent violence and political extremism. Unless efforts to
reverse these conditions show measurable progress during the term of this estimate,
the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess that the overall security situation will continue
to deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter part of 2006. If strengthened Iraqi Secu-
rity Forces (ISF), more loyal to the government and supported by Coalition forces, are able
to reduce levels of violence and establish more effective security for Iraq’s population, Iraqi
leaders could have an opportunity to begin the process of political compromise necessary
for longer term stability, political process and economic recovery.
• Nevertheless, even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all atti-
tude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be
hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this
Estimate.
A number of identifiable developments could help to reverse the negative trends driving
Iraq’s current trajectory. They include:
• Broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism . . .
• Significant concessions by Shia and Kurds . . .
A number of identifiable internal security and political triggering events, including sus-
tained mass sectarian killings, assassination of major religious and political leaders,
and a complete Sunni defection from the government have the potential to convulse
severely Iraq’s security environment.
Note: Bold and italics in original.

Source: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, National Intelligence Estimate: Prospects for Iraq’s Stabil-
ity; A Challenging Road Ahead, January 2007, https://www.fas.org/irp/dni/iraq020207.pdf.
Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive, a title that suggested
mixed success for the US strategy. This update used the January NIE as a “baseline”
and examined prospects for security and national reconciliation for the next six to
twelve months.15
Naturally, other NIEs have focused on the terrorist threat to the homeland. Also
in 2007, the NIC produced a major NIE titled The Terrorist Threat to the US Home-
land, which judged that the United States would face a “persistent and evolving ter-
rorist threat over the next three years.” In this estimate, the IC experts judged that
“greatly increased counter-terrorism efforts over the past five years have constrained
the ability of al-Qaida to attack the US homeland again and have led terrorist groups
to perceive the homeland as a harder target to strike than on 9/11.” Like other forward-
looking NIEs, it forecast the “likely spread of radical—especially Salafi—Internet sites,
increasingly aggressive anti-US rhetoric and actions, and a growing number of radi-
cal, self-generating cells in Western countries, indicating that the radical and vio-
lent segment of the West’s Muslim population is expanding, including in the United
States.”16 Again, these kinds of assessments bolstered the Bush administration’s confi-
dence that its efforts to combat terrorism abroad and tighten surveillance and border
security at home were working, yet it also put Washington decision-makers on notice
that radical Islamic extremism was spreading. Subsequent ISIS-inspired attacks in
Europe and even the United States confirmed that al-Qaeda was not the only group
that threatened US security.
Global Trends: An Atypical Strategic Assessment

A final example of relevant strategic intelligence is the NIC’s practice of publish-
ing a major unclassified report that amounts to a very speculative “estimate of the
world.” Its Global Trends series of strategic assessments discusses how key trends
and uncertainties might shape the world over the next five to twenty years. It is
designed to help policymakers consider longer-term developments as they develop
their current strategies and policies. These publications are unlike almost every
other intelligence product. First, unlike other NIC products, the Global Trends doc-
uments do not rely on secrets or classified information. To state the obvious, there
is next to no classified information that focuses on the future as far out as twenty
years. Second, the preparation of a Global Trends paper is not restricted to intelli-
gence analysts and agencies alone. It is also not the result of the customary coordi-
nated IC-drafting process. Rather, the NIC engages with a wide range of American
and foreign experts on a wide range of topics that go well beyond what is normally
considered a national security or intelligence topic. For instance, the Global Trends
documents regularly assess the state and future impact of factors such as demo-
graphics, energy, climate change, biomedical advances and health, financial and
business trends, and information technology. That requires the NIC to engage with
anthropologists, sociologists, demographers, epidemiologists, and technologists as
well as the usual security experts.
Last, unlike any other intelligence product, the Global Trends series has increas-
ingly brought the “US role” into its speculative analysis. As is well understood,
American intelligence analysts customarily do not analyze the United States, as their
mission is to focus on foreign policy developments. However, when the United States
is such a central actor and has such a huge influence over foreign adversaries’ and
allies’ policies and behaviors, it is almost impossible not to consider how Washing-
ton’s actions would shape other actors’ future actions. So, Global Trends has made
consideration of the US role one of the major “game changers,” particularly now as
it seems to be in a state of flux.17 Also, including foreign participants’ perceptions of
128 Chapter 6
current American policies is particularly relevant to the construction of provocative

speculation about the future.
The NIC has now produced five editions of Global Trends, timing them to be avail-
able to each new administration as it takes office in January. The principal drafters
commission studies by various think tanks and experts, schedule a series of confer-
ences on multiple continents, and post online their preliminary reports and drafts for
invited specialists to critique. The intent is to generate a variety of perspectives on
what are the most significant known factors shaping the world today and tomorrow, as
well as to highlight key uncertainties that might radically alter the current geopoliti-
cal environment. The result has been a series of thought-provoking and groundbreak-
ing papers. For example,
• In 1997, Global Trends 2010 forecast that the postwar international order was
ending, leading to three major significant trends: conflicts would be largely
internal, not state-to-state; weak states would fail, resulting in ethnic conflict
and refugee flows; and even major powers would lose some control over their
destinies by virtue of the advancing globalization process and technological
revolution.
• In 2001, Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future highlighted global
drivers of change (such as demographic trends, natural resources, globaliza-
tion, and even the role of the United States) and described plausible alterna-
tive futures to describe the range of outcomes possible under very uncertain
conditions.
• In 2004, Global Trends 2020: Mapping the Global Future deepened the prac-
tice of combining key uncertainties such as globalization and governance and
presented fictional scenarios. A “Davos World” foresaw challenges in sustain-
ing globalization’s positive aspects, “Pax Americana” examined whether the
American unipolar moment could continue, “A New Caliphate” illustrated the
impact of new identity politics, and “Cycle of Fear” captured a perfect storm of
WMD proliferation, international terrorism, and global power shifts.
• In 2008, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World foresaw a multipolar
world, with China, India, Brazil, Iran, and, perhaps, a resurgent Russia emerg-
ing as power blocs in contest with the United States. Postwar international
institutions would no longer be effective or be seen as legitimate by newly
rising powers, suggesting that major changes in the global order are needed.
• In 2012, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds identified “megatrends”
and “game-changers” (which includes the US role in the world) that could
create four quite different scenarios. Increased empowerment, widely avail-
able technologies, more diffusion of power among nations, and urbanization
and youth bulges in less-developed countries could produce some very chal-
lenging international conditions. The paper further identified a dozen key
emerging and disruptive technologies and their impact on world conditions.
With each new publication, the Global Trends series has experimented with dif-
ferent forms of consultation with the incoming national security team as well as with
outside experts and use of online social media. These unclassified assessments had
surprising impact on policymakers both in Washington and around the world. New
administrations received these papers well in advance of their formal publication, and
often they included some of the Global Trends thinking in the preparation of their
own National Security Strategy documents. Former NIC chairman Thomas Fingar
also noted that by involving hundreds of foreign participants in the preparation of
the papers, it built up interest in using the publications in their own governments and
translating the findings into foreign languages. Several North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
nization (NATO) allies adopted or echoed some of the findings and also began their
own “futures” projects.18
The most recent version, Global Trends: Paradox of Progress (2017), is perhaps
the most ambitious strategic analysis conducted by the NIC. It was a two-year
process of commissioning outside research and testing assumptions and themes,
with more than two thousand participants in thirty-five countries. Breaking new
ground, it went beyond the customary think-tank experts and foreign officials to
include focus groups with students, women’s groups, and entrepreneurs in a num-
ber of countries. Unlike past Global Trends, this one focused on both a five-year
and twenty-year time frame, believing that it would engage policymakers more to
see the kinds of projections that might actually impact their policies and priorities
as well as stimulate their thinking about how those same policies might shape the
longer-term future. The paper laid out three key scenarios, summarized below, built
on a set of key trends and implications outlines in the paper, shown in box 6.3. The
three scenarios—described as “Islands,” “Orbits,” and “Communities”—are the result
of responses made by key governments and other international actors to the near-
term volatility projected to occur:
• Islands is a major restructuring of the global economy of slow or no growth

that challenges states’ responses to societal demands for both physical and
economic security, where popular rejection of globalization and emerging
technologies transform work and trade. Governments adopt protectionist
policies and reduce support for multilateral cooperation.
• Orbits is a world of competing major powers seeking spheres of influence
while maintaining stability at home, driven by rising nationalism, disruptive
130 Chapter 6
technologies, and evolving forms of conflict that reduce global cooperation.

It foresees possible use of nuclear weapons, which forces international stake-
holders to rethink their actions.
• Communities reflects a world in which declining state capacity makes room
for local governments and private nonstate actors to build networks of coop-
eration, even in the face of national government resistance. It imagines how
information technology becomes a key enabler for companies, advocacy
groups, and local governments to effectively deliver services and build sup-
port for their agendas.19
Admittedly, the Global Trends series is not a coordinated, classified NIE that has
the gravitas of being endorsed by the ODNI and other heads of US intelligence agen-
cies. However, it has introduced a new type of strategic analysis that is closer to being
a “net assessment” of the interaction of US policies with the actions of foreign govern-
ments and future trends that the IC can imagine, although not predict. The NIC makes
no apologies for “getting some things wrong” in terms of its projections, although it
does conduct a self-review in preparation for each new project. Necessarily, such stra-
tegic speculation must be caveated as not representing the official views of the IC.
Moreover, despite foreign experts’ appreciation for inclusion in these Global Trends
exercises, many are puzzled that the IC might prepare assessments that project a
world that the United States does not wish to see or that might project a less powerful
American role. The best one can say is that this strategic analysis abides by the adage
of trying to imagine the future as best as one can understand it without making it fit
policymakers’ preferences.20
KEY ISSUES: IMPACT, ACCURACY, AND QUALITY
Strategic intelligence is a vital but not always widely appreciated function of the
IC. Critics contend that strategic intelligence is less relevant to daily policy deci-
sions and seldom critical to issues of war and peace. While there is some truth in
these arguments, one needs to keep in mind that good strategic research is the foun-
dation for providing good current intelligence and timely warning as well. If the
IC’s understanding of the strategic environment is flawed, most likely it will have a
skewed view of current events and major threats as well. Hence, it would be foolish
for policymakers to dismiss the importance of the NIC, CIA, DIA, and other agen-
cies conducting good strategic intelligence, even if it does not always address all
of their short-term intelligence needs. That said, it is important to examine several
dimensions of this argument to have a more balanced appreciation for what strategic
intelligence can and cannot provide policymakers.
Box 6.3 2017 Global Trends and Key Implications through 2035
The rich are aging, the poor are not. Working-age populations are shrinking in wealthy
countries, China, and Russia but growing in developing, poorer countries, particularly in
Africa and South Asia, increasing economic, employment, urbanization, and welfare pres-
sures and spurring migration. Training and continuing education will be crucial in developed
and developing countries alike.
The global economy is shifting. Weak economic growth will persist in the near term. Major
economies will confront shrinking workforces and diminishing productivity gains while recov-
ering from the 2008–09 financial crisis with high debt, weak demand, and doubts about glo-
balization. China will attempt to shift to a consumer-driven economy from its longstanding
export and investment focus. Lower growth will threaten poverty reduction in developing
countries.
Technology is accelerating progress but causing discontinuities. Rapid technological

advancements will increase the pace of change and create new opportunities but will aggra-
vate divisions between winners and losers. Automation and artificial intelligence threaten to
change industries faster than economies can adjust, potentially displacing workers and limit-
ing the usual route for poor countries to develop. Biotechnologies such as genome editing
will revolutionize medicine and other fields, while sharpening moral differences.
Ideas and Identities are driving a wave of exclusion. Growing global connectivity amid
weak growth will increase tensions within and between societies. Populism will increase on
the right and the left, threatening liberalism. Some leaders will use nationalism to shore up
control. Religious influence will be increasingly consequential and more authoritative than
many governments. Nearly all countries will see economic forces boost women’s status and
leadership roles, but backlash also will occur.
Governing is getting harder. Publics will demand governments deliver security and pros-
perity, but flat revenues, distrust, polarization, and a growing list of emerging issues will
hamper government performance. Technology will expand the range of players who can
block or circumvent political action. Managing global issues will become harder as actors
multiply—to include NGOs, corporations, and empowered individuals—resulting in more ad
hoc, fewer encompassing efforts.
The nature of conflict is changing. The risk of conflict will increase due to diverging inter-
ests among major powers, an expanding terror threat, continued instability in weak states,
and the spread of lethal, disruptive technologies. Disrupting societies will become more
common, with long-range precision weapons, cyber, and robotic systems to target infra-
structure from afar, and more accessible technology to create weapons of mass destruction.
Climate change, environment, and health issues will demand attention. A range of
global hazards pose imminent and longer-term threats that will require collective action to
address—even as cooperation becomes harder. More extreme weather, water and soil stress,
and food insecurity will disrupt societies. Sea-level rise, ocean acidification, glacial melt,
and pollution will change living patterns. Tensions over climate change will grow. Increased
travel and poor health infrastructure will make infectious diseases harder to manage.
Source: Excerpted from Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Global Trends: Paradox of Progress, Janu-
ary 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/nic/GT-Full-Report.pdf.
132 Chapter 6
Does Strategic Intelligence Have Impact and Relevance?

Policymakers often do not heed US intelligence or even read important NIEs. This
is not a new problem. Intelligence officials from the 1950s up to current times have
lamented the difficulty of getting busy policymakers to read lengthy NIEs or other
intelligence products. Often policymakers want the “bottom line” and then only if it
reaffirms what they already believe to be true. Some intelligence studies scholars have
concluded that in reality strategic intelligence has a very limited influence on national
security decisions. According to intelligence scholar Stephen Marrin, “strategic intel-
ligence has had less influence on American foreign policy than many would expect.”21
Marrin’s principal argument is that policymakers are analysts too. Like analysts, they
have their own cognitive biases and preferred sources of information; however, they
also have a preference for greater certainty than intelligence analysts are prepared to
give them. For all these reasons, then, policymakers will tend to favor their own world-
views over those of the IC, particularly if the IC’s findings are at odds with their own.
In many respects, they are now empowered by the existence of widely differing ideo-
logical news sources. They can also use their access to raw intelligence reporting—
further allowing them to be their own analysts—and pick and choose which reporting
favors their current ideological perspective.
Numerous examples of policymakers’ dismissal of strategic intelligence can read-
ily be found. One former senior intelligence manager, Douglas MacEachin, detailed a
number of cases where policymakers ignored strategic intelligence and suffered what
could be termed “strategic surprises.”22 In this study, some common causes were
• a static policy mind-set that discourages alternative policy approaches,

• a decision-making process driven by a mind-set that ignores dissenting intel-
ligence analysis or policy advice,
• lack of appreciation for on-the-ground expertise and reporting from the field,
• excessive compartmentalization of information that impedes the flow of intel-
ligence to policymakers,
• organizational cultural imperatives that play down intelligence findings or
distort the decision-making process, and
• time pressures that reduce attention to the intelligence findings and profes-
sional advice.
These findings suggest that strategic intelligence can be illuminating but nonethe-
less ignored for reasons that have little to do with its quality, accuracy, or relevance.
By the same token, strategic intelligence is often not credited as a contributing
factor to decision-making if one is trying to link a specific intelligence product to a
specific policy decision. As mentioned above, strategic intelligence on priority top-

ics such as the Cold War–era Soviet military challenge or today’s terrorism threats
are being provided constantly in a variety of products and forums. Thus, there is
more reason to believe that the totality of the intelligence provided has indirectly
or even subconsciously shaped the policymakers’ overall view of an international
problem. Decision-makers throughout the Cold War were inundated with NIEs on
the Soviet Union covering topics ranging from its strategic nuclear and conven-
tional forces to its civilian and defense industries. This steady stream of informa-
tion helped to shape successive administrations’ views on how poorly that centrally
planned economic system was performing and how large an economic burden the
Soviet military was.
More recently, it has been alleged that the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate was irrelevant
to the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq.23 Yet the 2005 Iraq WMD com-
mission report also concluded that the IC had been providing essentially the same
assessment of Iraq’s programs to the Clinton administration in the late 1990s. This
underlines the fact that the extant strategic intelligence had become part of most
Washington policymakers’—not just the Bush administration’s—mind-set regarding
the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.24 To say that the NIE did not drive the decision
for invasion ignores the fact that its conclusions were already part of the conven-
tional wisdom at the time. Indeed, many Bush administration officials did not believe
an NIE was needed, for precisely those reasons, and it was produced only because
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested it prior to the vote to
authorize the use of military force.25 As other practitioners have pointed out, NIEs
are often not the best or most useful vehicle for conveying strategic intelligence find-
ings, since they usually reflect views that have become widely known through other
means. As former NIC chairman Thomas Fingar has pointed out, “By the time most
estimates are produced, decision makers working on the issue have already received a
great deal of information on the subject, including both raw intelligence and analytic
products but also including briefings from and conversations with the analysts with
whom they interact on a regular basis.”26
Suffice it to say, then, that strategic intelligence at a minimum is likely to stimulate
discussion and debate, if not always lead to decisive action. As Kent argued back at
the dawn of US intelligence, such analysis should be part of the conversation, but
that does not necessarily mean policymakers will always agree or take actions that
intelligence might warrant. Moreover, even if policymakers are indifferent to strategic
intelligence, there are reasons why the IC would want to produce it. First, it records
the IC’s official views on important topics; indeed, it is often necessary to look back on
previous estimates and decide if those judgments need to be reviewed for the sake of
analytical rigor and integrity.27 Such strategic assessments become a source for future
134 Chapter 6
inspections and postmortems on how the IC’s judgments have evolved and a way to
critique the quality of intelligence over time.
Second, NIEs may be very useful to policymakers who are not themselves experts
on the subjects but wish to have a working knowledge of how the IC assesses a prob-
lem. In the author’s experience, diplomats and military officers wishing to “get smart”
on topics such as Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan will very often read recent NIEs and
other intelligence products to familiarize themselves with topics that might become
important if they are assigned to a Middle Eastern embassy or a command in that part
of the world. Likewise, new political appointees such as ambassadors are eager to read
the latest NIE or other finished intelligence products to understand what challenges
they will face when they are running US diplomacy from their foreign posts.
Finally, the IC has a selfish reason for developing strategic intelligence. Such work
is necessary to develop analysts’ skills at putting together cogent arguments, weigh-
ing evidence in a rigorous fashion, and challenging their own judgments by exposing
them to peers’ critiques and outside review. In regard to the latter, NIEs and other
strategic-level analysis are usually exchanged with foreign intelligence services. It is
common practice for the NIB to release sanitized versions (i.e., free of the most sensi-
tive intelligence reporting) to the other Five Eyes services (Commonwealth countries)
as well to those of other close NATO allies.28 Such exchanges not only help American
analysts to test their hypotheses against other perspectives but also can often help to
shape a foreign government’s views of an issue in ways that are advantageous to the
United States.
How Accurate Must Strategic Intelligence Be?

Strategic intelligence is not focused on predictions but rather on reducing uncer-
tainty to the extent possible. Yet many policymakers and outside critics of intelligence
expect the IC to make forecasts with unrealistic precision. From a decision-maker’s
perspective, uncertainty complicates the ability to take action. If intelligence assess-
ments are essentially saying an event is less than a 50 percent possibility, should
policymakers plan for it, or not? If a less than 50 percent event does occur, has the IC
“failed” to accurately forecast an event? Policymakers may not want to run the risk of
a less than even chance that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in three months
to a year or that Russia would consider conducting hybrid warfare against one of the
Baltic states. Even a 1 percent chance that Iraq might give a terrorist group access to
a nuclear weapon led Vice President Cheney to recommend that the United States act
as if it were a certainty and invade Iraq.29 Policymakers crave certainty, which intel-
ligence analysts are usually unable to give them. So how accurate and precise should
strategic intelligence strive to be?
The term national intelligence estimate contains part of the answer. “Estimates”
are not facts or predictions. The future is unknowable with any great certainty.
Estimates are informed judgments based on the best information available, but that
knowledge is usually incomplete and often contains contradictory evidence. What
facts do exist seldom allow for perfect certainty. As one former CIA deputy director
noted, these judgments are “not chiseled in stone,” never to be changed.30 Rather
they are subject to revision as new information is available that confirms, alters, or
rejects those previous judgments.
Policymakers must recognize that, at best, estimates and intelligence judgments
more generally must go beyond the few facts available and craft projections of how
the future might look. They can be useful in laying out the key factors that might
alter the future and preferably also suggest how a different plausible set of condi-
tions might produce different outcomes. In so doing, strategic intelligence can edu-
cate policymakers about the relationship among political, economic, and military
factors that they should be mindful of. Developing alternative outcomes can also
prepare decision-makers for circumstances they had not previously considered.
This can in turn allow military and civilian leaders to game out how US policies
and actions might have to change to address those different scenarios as well as
to highlight which factors are most problematic and might be susceptible to US
preventive action.
How Good Is Strategic Intelligence?

The quality of strategic intelligence is always an important criterion of whether it
can have impact and relevance. When the IC fails to provide good-quality analysis, it
can not only impact important foreign policy decisions but also undermine the con-
fidence policymakers will have in future intelligence assessments. The ill-conceived
October 2002 Iraq WMD NIE is a case in point. Once it became known that the
estimate was woefully off base, Congress and the public grew to distrust US intel-
ligence and place much of the blame for the Iraq War on the CIA’s poor analysis.
Somewhat ironically, some Bush officials also tended to hide behind the flawed NIE
even though their decisions preceded its publication. The fact is, however, that this
particular NIE haunts the IC to this day for its poor examination of the evidence and
its flawed argumentation.
Origins of the 2002 NIE

It is worth examining what went wrong in the 2002 Iraq WMD NIE because it high-
lights key challenges to preparing high-quality intelligence analysis. The 2005 Iraq
WMD commission examined the ninety-plus-page NIE as well as other intelligence
products and all the reporting used to prepare the estimate. Its findings were a dev-
astating indictment of the quality of reporting and analysis used to put the estimate
together. There are many lessons to be learned from the commission’s report as well
as from an SSCI inquiry that also focused on the NIE’s flaws.31
136 Chapter 6
This NIE was prepared at the mid-September request of the SSCI, which asked the
NIC to produce a broad estimate on Iraq’s WMD programs no later than October 1.
The Senate wanted it prior to its October 3 vote to approve an “authorization for the
use of military force” requested by the Bush administration. This “fast-track” NIE was
produced in less than three weeks, which allowed for only one day’s coordination of
the estimate by the IC’s WMD and Iraq experts. Moreover, the short-fuse estimate did
not permit a bottom-up review of past reporting but essentially was a “cut-and-paste”
cobbling of past intelligence judgments reached on Iraq’s WMD programs. The NIE’s
key conclusions were the following:32
• Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program and could have a nuclear device
in the next few years.
• Iraq’s biological weapons (BW) capability was larger and more advanced than
before the 1991 Gulf War.
• Iraq had renewed its production of chemical weapons (CW) and had a stock-
pile of one hundred to five hundred metric tons of mustard, sarin, VX, and
other dangerous neurotoxins.
• Iraq also had UAVs for delivering BW and ballistic missiles exceeding the
150-kilometer range banned by the United Nations.
Nearly all these key judgments proved to be wrong in most respects. Later
inspectors of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) found no evidence of CW or BW research
or stockpiles and, most important, no active nuclear weapons research and develop-
ment.33 The UAVs were most likely not designed for dispersing biological toxins,
and only some of the ballistic missiles found were capable of ranges exceeding 150
kilometers. Perhaps most shocking was the fact that the estimate had the temerity
to attach “high confidence” and “moderate confidence” to many of these judgments,
even though the evidence of any WMD activity proved to be so thin and mostly
false.
How could the IC get this critical estimate so wrong? First, collection failed to
provide significant and corroborated information on Saddam’s WMD activities after
UN inspectors were withdrawn from the country in 1998. The WMD commission con-
cluded that the CIA had no dedicated HUMINT sources in Iraq, and the handful of
assets it did have were not reliable. What little new information was collected, then,
turned out to be false, exaggerated, or fabricated by sources with personal agendas.
The ISG subsequently concluded that Saddam had unilaterally destroyed his WMD
stocks in 1991.34
Second, in the absence of good information, analysts fell back on their assump-
tions that Saddam probably had WMDs and was very clever in hiding them from
inspectors and the IC. Having underestimated Saddam’s WMD capabilities in 1990,
WMD analysts spent the next decade assuming Iraq was up to something, which the
commission found to be no longer just a hypothesis but a firm conclusion.35 As it
reported, “Rather than weighing the evidence independently, analysts accepted infor-
mation that fit the prevailing theory and rejected information that contradicted it.”36
Furthermore, analysts “layered” one judgment on top of another, so there was a cas-
cading set of unproven assumptions masquerading as evidence; this layering effect
disguised the fact that those previous judgments were also based on limited and
uncertain information.37
Third, intelligence analysts did not do a good job of understanding the pressures
the Saddam regime was under to curtail rather than restart its WMD programs.
Weapons analysts were not regional Iraq specialists, and they simply did not consider
how the political, cultural, and regional dynamics might play into Saddam’s theatrical
performance of inhibiting inspections of WMDs he no longer possessed. Analysts
failed to entertain the idea that “Saddam was actually telling the truth” or to revisit
earlier intelligence that suggested his programs had been dismantled.38
Finally, the estimate presented its findings without ever explaining its “high-to-
moderate” confidence judgments. While there were numerous caveats sprinkled
throughout the lengthy estimate underlining some of the intelligence gaps that
existed, the key judgments themselves contained far fewer qualifiers. Thus, Congress
and Bush administration officials had no way of knowing the basis on which they
were reached. Unbeknown to the few readers of the estimate, analysts themselves
had little information on the sources they were relying on, as collectors shielded that
information from most analysts. Up to that time, a general need-to-know principle
prevented HUMINT collectors from revealing the identity and other characteristics
of sources to analysts. Thus, there was little information available to judge a source’s
reliability.39
Improvements to Strategic Intelligence

In the wake of the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate, many critics have argued for reforming
the way strategic intelligence is prepared and disseminated. The 2005 WMD com-
mission’s lengthy report included a series of recommendations that not only led to
the major organizational reforms that created the DNI and associated analysis cen-
ters but also instructed the IC to improve its collection-and-analysis process. Among
those recommendations, five stand out:
• Embrace a need-to-share principle to avoid excessive compartmentalization

of source information that analysts would have to assess the credibility of
reporting.
138 Chapter 6
• Emphasize strategic analysis and establish a long-term research and analysis

unit under the NIC to lead interagency projects involving in-depth analysis
and expanded contacts with outside experts.
• Institute community-wide career-long training programs for analysts and
their managers.
• Encourage diverse and independent analysis throughout the IC by encour-
aging alternative hypothesis generation and by forming offices dedicated to
independent analysis.
• Develop and integrate new tradecraft tools to assist analysts in processing
and examining the huge volume of reporting.
• Ensure that analysts are engaging in competitive analysis, conducting routine
examinations of finished intelligence, and incorporating “lessons learned”
from postmortems into training programs.
The IC has made strides in all these areas, although more improvement is needed. The
NIC initially established its Long-Range Assessment Group, which has been empow-
ered to develop longer-term assessments of broad topics. This group—later renamed
the Strategic Futures Group—has now largely taken over the responsibility for organiz-
ing and drafting the Global Trends series. Those efforts are perhaps the best example of
extensive outreach to tap the knowledge of nonintelligence experts on broad national
security issues. The IC has also committed itself to more in-depth training of analysts
to ensure they understand the perils of poor analysis and can utilize more rigorous ana-
lytical methods to challenge their assumptions and judgments. Multiweek courses have
been established that enable analysts to use more structured analytical techniques—
some of which were described in chapter 5—that aim at uncovering key assumptions,
critically examining reporting, and developing alternative hypotheses. Inculcating
these so-called tradecraft tools has become a standard training objective at the CIA,
DIA, and several other intelligence agencies. The CIA as well as the DIA also created
lessons-learned centers, where classified postmortems are conducted on successes and
failures of strategic analysis. These studies in turn are often used in IC training courses.
At the CIA and DIA, a number of Red Cell teams have been created, whose mission
is to craft alternative analyses that challenge the conventional views held by analysts
or to provide unconventional perspectives on key intelligence questions. As described
in chapter 5, this technique helps analysts get out of their US mind-set. In this capac-
ity, the Red Cell will design strategies to undermine US interests and thereby dem-
onstrate how an enemy might react differently than the planners anticipate. The Red
Cells found in the IC often are asked to play an adversary’s “national security team”
and fashion hypothetical decision memos and policies to illustrate to US policymakers
how that enemy’s plans and intentions might deviate from their own presumptions.
Finally, the DNI has taken a number of steps to improve the NIE process to ensure
that mistakes made in the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate are not repeated. First, the DNI
has instructed that collection agencies must review all sources used by analysts and
stand by those sources’ reliability and validity; at every NIB review of an NIE, collec-
tion agencies must address how their products were used in the final estimate. At the
same time, the DNI has pressed HUMINT and SIGINT collectors to provide analysts
more information on the nature and reliability of the sources they are using. Second,
the DNI and the NIC have vowed to conduct future NIEs with an eye toward more
zero-based reviews of intelligence problems and to avoid accepting past judgments
as a starting point. The use of outside reviewers who can bring in different perspec-
tives has also been revitalized. Moreover, alternative views of an intelligence problem
are given equal treatment in the NIEs rather than being played down or minimized in
a short dissenting footnote as in the past.
A third initiative by the DNI has been to issue several important interagency Intel-
ligence Community Directives (ICDs) that have encouraged greater analytical rigor
as well as more extensive academic outreach to nonintelligence experts. For exam-
ple, in 2007, the DNI issued Intelligence Directive 203: Analytical Standards, which
instructs that all IC products shall
• properly describe all sources, data, and methodologies;

• properly express and explain uncertainties associated with major analytical
judgments;
• properly distinguish underlying information from analysts’ assumptions and
judgments;
• use clear and logical argumentation; and
• explain consistency to or change in analytical judgments.
Likewise, the DNI also promulgated in 2008 Intelligence Community Directive

205: Academic Outreach, which echoed the WMD commission’s recommendation
for more use of outside expertise:
• Analysts shall leverage outside expertise as part of their work.

• Each element of the IC shall establish a single academic outreach coordinator.
• The IC should use outside experts whenever possible to contribute to, cri-
tique, and challenge internal products and analysis and to provide alternative
perspectives.40
These directives have helped set community goals, but agencies and senior man-
agers are still in a position to encourage or resist such efforts. In the case of improved
140 Chapter 6
training, programs for integrating new tradecraft methods have continued, but some
of these techniques remain untested as to whether they truly improve analytical per-
formance or not.41 Most alarming, however, IC budgets have been cut, and some of the
previous tradecraft training has also been reduced. In terms of academic outreach, the
intent of encouraging more analysts to reach out to their counterparts in think tanks,
academia, and the private sector has not really grown. Indeed, the era of WikiLeaks
and Edward Snowden has caused senior intelligence managers to be reluctant to
expose their analysts to outside experts. Ironically, the outreach coordinators created
by ICD 205 became in some cases obstacles to greater academic exchanges, as they
created so much red tape and anxiety for analysts that they often just abandoned
efforts to contact nongovernment experts.42
When all is said and done, high-quality strategic intelligence rests on senior intel-
ligence officials as well as analysts taking seriously the mission of providing timely,
accurate, and cogently argued assessments within the limits of the information they
are able to use. It is incumbent on analysts to remain self-aware of their own analyti-
cal biases as well as be willing to alter their assessments as new evidence requires. As
senior intelligence officials such as Richard Kerr have argued, building and improv-
ing a strategic intelligence capability is not something achieved overnight: “Expertise
building cannot be achieved quickly or easily. Analysis is a ‘people’s business’ that
requires hiring, training, and leading the best thinkers. CIA has sought people with
area expertise, technical training, and linguistic skills to assemble the most complete
knowledge of important security issues.”43
In addition, efforts must be made to ensure that adequate priority is placed on con-
ducting strategic analysis despite the constant policymaker demand for more current
intelligence reporting. As another former senior CIA official, Douglas MacEachin, has
argued, weaving together a “comprehensive, detailed tapestry should not, however,
be treated as part of an ‘either-or’ tradeoff with the more concise products delivered
to top policy officials.” Strategic intelligence is more of a capital investment for the
overall intelligence enterprise.44
USEFUL WEBSITES
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of

-intelligence
Contains a number of declassified case studies and volumes of declassified NIEs and other
strategic analysis.
ODNI, Global Trends website, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/global-trends-home
Contains the latest Global Trends publications as well as past ones.
ODNI, National Intelligence Council, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are/organizations
/nic/nic-who-we-are
Contains unclassified NIEs and other NIC products.
FURTHER READING
A compilation of the author’s critiques of strategic intelligence’s role and inevitable
failures.
Center for the Study of Intelligence, Sherman Kent and the Board of National Estimates: Col-
lected Essays (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2007).
Provides an excellent description of how Kent constructed the NIE process and how he
viewed strategic intelligence.
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction, Report to the President, March 31, 2005.
https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmd_report.pdf.
Most complete postmortem of an intelligence failure on major strategic issues.
Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
A practitioner’s examination of how strategic intelligence informs policy, providing use-
ful case histories.
Harold P. Ford, Estimative Intelligence (Washington, DC: Association of Former Intelligence
Officers, 1993).
A early description and assessment by a well-known senior CIA estimates officer of how
national estimates were conducted.
Gregory F. Treverton, Intelligence in the Age of Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009).
A former senior official’s view of how strategic intelligence has adjusted to the post-9/11
world.
NOTES
First epigraph: Sherman Kent, “Estimates and Influence,” in Donald P. Steury, ed., Sherman
Kent and the Board of National Estimates: Collected Essays (Washington, DC: Center for the
Study of Intelligence, 1994), 34.
Second epigraph: Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National
Security (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 72.
1. See an example of an intelligence assessment on climate change prepared by the

NIC in ODNI, Implications for National Security of Global Climate Change, National Intelli-
gence Council, September 2016, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports
%20and % 20Pubs / Implications _ for _ US _ National _ Security _ of _ Anticipated _ Climate
_Change.pdf.
2. ODNI, Statement for the Records, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence
Community, May 11, 2017, Testimony before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, https://
www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/SSCI%20Unclassified%20SFR%20
-%20Final.pdf.
142 Chapter 6
3. These documents can be found at the National Security Archive, http://nsarchive.gwu

.edu/, as well as the Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?collection
&id=4. Multiple dates in parentheses indicate that successive administrations have issued
national strategy documents on a similar topic. This highlights the enduring if evolving nature
of these international issues.
4. White House, National Security Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, Sep-
tember 17, 2002, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-17.html. This short version was later
updated and expanded with the promulgation of the second National Strategy for Combat-
ing Terrorism, issued in February 2003, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/cia-the-war-on
-terrorism/Counter_Terrorism_Strategy.pdf.
5. Sherman Kent, “Estimates and Influence,” Studies in Intelligence (Summer 1968), declas-
sified in 2007, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications
/books-and-monographs/sherman-kent-and-the-board-of-national-estimates-collected-essays
/4estimates.html.
6. Donald P. Steury, Sherman Kent and the Board of National Estimates (Washington, DC:
Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1994), xxii.
7. Steury, Sherman Kent, xv. The ONE comprised the analysts and support staff, including
the much smaller and elitist BNE, on which sat Kent and a half dozen consultants drawn from
leading universities and think tanks.
8. Historically, CIA and DIA estimates of Soviet missile-production rates, missile accu-
racies, and the USSR’s defense burden were the subject of continuing internal government
disagreements, which sometimes broke out into the public. In the 1980s, the DIA took the lead
in producing a series of unclassified reports titled Soviet Military Power, which the Pentagon
promoted to highlight the threat and make the case for larger American military programs
and budgets. See DOD, Soviet Military Power, 1981, http://edocs.nps.edu/2014/May/Soviet
MilPower1981.pdf.
9. Pub. L. No. 108–458, 118 Stat. 3657, 50 U.S.C. 403–3b.
10. Christopher A. Kojm, “Change and Continuity: The National Intelligence Council
2009–2014,” Studies in Intelligence 59, no. 2 (June 2015): 7.
11. Kojm, 8.
12. ODNI, Intelligence Community Assessment, ICA-2017, Assessing Russian Activities
and Intentions in Recent US Elections, January 6, 2017, unclassified, https://www.dni.gov/files
/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf.
13. Cited by Dr. Gregory Treverton, NIC chairman until 2017, in an address to a Center for
Strategic and International Studies audience, “Strategic Intelligence: A View from the NIC,”
March 4, 2016, https://www.csis.org/events/strategic-intelligence-view-national-intelligence
-council-nic.
14. President Gerald Ford, with the then CIA director George H. W. Bush, agreed to conduct
the so-called Team A / Team B exercise, which pitted a group of outside critics of CIA analysis
against the drafters of NIE 11/3–8 in an effort to expose different assumptions used to analyze
Soviet strategic programs. The exercise was generally judged a failure because it was clear
from the beginning that the opponents had their own firm views. For a more complete discus-
sion, see Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983, ed. Don-
ald Steury (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996), 335–36, https://www
.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs
/Est%20on%20Soviet%20Strategic.pdf.
15. ODNI, Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation
Elusive, National Intelligence Estimate (Update to NIE, Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Chal-
lenging Road Ahead), August 2007, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Press
%20Releases/2007%20Press%20Releases/20070823_release.pdf.
16. ODNI, The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland, National Intelligence Estimate, July
2007, http://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//nukevault/ebb270/18.pdf.
17. According to one former NIC chairman, the NIC has tried to address the “US factor”
in products in addition to the Global Trends series. Private email with a former senior official,
June 2017.
18. Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty, 55.
19. See ODNI, NIC Global Trends: Paradox of Progress, January 2017, https://www.dni.gov
/files/documents/nic/GT-Full-Report.pdf.
20. Former NIC chairman Thomas Fingar has also commented to the author that when for-
eign officials were asked to share their views of what the United States might do in the future,
many were initially pleased to be asked but ultimately declined to provide any negative com-
ments. Personal email, June 2017.
21. Stephen Marrin, “Why Strategic Intelligence Analysis Has Limited Influence on Ameri-
can Foreign Policy,” Intelligence and National Security 32, no. 6 (2017): 725–42.
22. Douglas MacEachin and Janne Nolan, Discourse, Dissent, and Strategic Surprise: For-
mulating US Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study
of Diplomacy, 2006). The cases examined include 1979 US policy toward Iran, 1998 threats to
US embassies in East Africa, pre-1979 Soviet military preparations in Afghanistan, 1989 rise
of the Afghan mujahideen (“holy warriors”), and the 1998 Asian financial crisis.
23. Paul Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (2006):
15–27.
24. If one wants further evidence of the commonly held view on Saddam’s WMD programs
driven by intelligence, review Kenneth Pollock, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading
Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002), in which the former CIA analyst makes the case better
than the Bush administration for why containing Saddam was not sufficient.
25. An interesting fact is that of the few senators who did read the NIE, almost all voted
against the authorization to use military force, presumably because the full NIE contained a
large number of caveats on its judgments as well as dissenting opinions from the intelligence
analysts of the State Department and the Energy Department. This would suggest NIEs can
have impact if they are actually read carefully.
26. Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty, 108.
27. Fingar, 85–87.
28. Based on defense and intelligence cooperation among the United States and Brit-
ish Commonwealth countries during World War II, the Five Eyes forum includes the US, the
United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This forum is where multinational clas-
sified intelligence exchanges are the most frank and complete.
29. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
30. John McLaughlin, CNN interview, December 10, 2007.
144 Chapter 6
31. See also SSCI, Report on the Intelligence Community’s Pre-war Assessments of Iraq
WMD, July 7, 2004, https://fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/ssci_iraq.pdf.
32. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States regarding Weapons
of Mass Destruction, Report to the President, March 31, 2005, “Overview,” 8–9, https://fas.org
/irp/offdocs/wmd_report.pdf.
33. The ISG comprised fourteen hundred inspectors and support staff and issued a com-
prehensive final report on its findings. In three volumes, the ISG systematically assessed the
Iraqi regime’s intents and strategy as well as reviewed the state of Iraq’s delivery systems
and nuclear, chemical, and biological programs. See ISG, Comprehensive Report of the Special
Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD; 30 September 2004, https://www.cia.gov/library/reports
/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/. It concluded that Saddam had abandoned his nuclear
program in 1991, believing it was more important to get economic sanctions removed. Further-
more, it found no evidence of any CW or BW and concluded that Saddam wished to deceive his
enemies into believing he retained some WMDs to deter them from attacking him.
34. ISG Comprehensive Report, 151.
40. ICD 205 has been revised since 2008 but not made publicly available. Some intelli-
gence officials have implied that the new version is more cautious than the original one.
41. See Steve Artner, Richard S. Girven, and James B. Bruce, Assessing the Value of Struc-
tured Analytic Techniques to the U.S. Intelligence Community (Washington, DC: RAND Corp.
2016), 1–15, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1408
/RAND_RR1408.pdf.
42. See Susan Nelson, “Analytic Outreach: Pathway to Expertise Building and Profes-
sionalization,” in Roger Z. George and James Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence: National Secu-
rity Practitioners’ Perspectives (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 331.
She highlights some of the challenges to conducting outreach and calls for a more balanced
approach between counterintelligence concerns and analysts’ desire for outside perspectives.
For a more pessimistic view, see Roger Z. George, “Reflections on CIA Analysis: Is It Fin-
ished?,” Intelligence and National Security 26 no. 1 (March 2011): 78, http://www.tandfonline
.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2011.556360.
43. Richard J. Kerr and Michael Warner, “The Track Record of CIA,” in George and Bruce,
Analyzing Intelligence, 50–51.
44. Douglas MacEachin, “Analysis and Estimates,” in Transforming US Intelligence, ed. Jen-
nifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 126.
7
The Challenges of Warning
Successful warning is essentially a two-fold process; if warning is to

be effective, not only must the alert be given, but the consumer of
intelligence must accept the fact that he has in fact been warned.
—CIA director John McCone, 1962
After every crisis there surfaces in the press some obscure intelli-
gence report or analyst purporting to have predicted it, only to have
been foolishly ignored by policymakers. What these claims omit to
mention is that when warnings become too routine they lose all sig-
nificance; when reports are not called specifically to the attention of
the top leadership they are lost in the bureaucratic background noise,
particularly since for every admonitory report one can probably find
also its opposite in the files.
—Henry Kissinger, White House Years, 1979
Warning has a special priority in American intelligence. Were it not for the 1941 Jap-
anese attack on Pearl Harbor, it is debatable whether there would have been such
urgency in establishing the CIA in 1947 or encouraging the growth of the huge intel-
ligence enterprise that exists today. Without the “surprise attack” on December 7,
American intelligence might have remained largely a military service function, with
some diplomatic reporting provided by the Department of State. Instead, the growing
fear of “another Pearl Harbor”—whether from Soviet strategic nuclear missiles in the
Cold War, a catastrophic terrorist attack like 9/11, or a possible massive cyberattack
against the US homeland’s infrastructure—has made warning a major mission of the
US intelligence community. This chapter will describe what warning analysis is and
how the warning process is conducted and organized. In addition, it will present a
short survey of major warning cases, which can then be analyzed for some general
lessons learned and challenges for the future.
145
146 Chapter 7
WHAT IS WARNING?
Not all strategic analyses contain a warning. However, warning invariably involves
detailed examination of intelligence that leads analysts to conclusions that certain
trends are moving in a dangerous direction. Historically, warning has been associ-
ated with a military threat. In fact, the best-known “strategic surprises”—for example,
Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler’s 1941 eastern offensive against Joseph Stalin’s armies, the
1950 North Korean attack on the south, and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan—are most often associated with direct military attacks. For much of the Cold
War, American intelligence was focused heavily on the danger of a Soviet or Chinese
conventional or nuclear attack on the United States or its allies in Europe or Asia. For
example, in 1975 an authoritative definition of “strategic” warning issued by the direc-
tor of central intelligence read, “Strategic warning is defined as the earliest possible
warning that the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, the PRC, or North Korea is consider-
ing military action by its armed forces beyond its borders, or is employing its military
capabilities beyond its borders in ways that might threaten military confrontation
with the United States.”1 Fear of a “bolt-from-the-blue” conventional attack or nuclear
strike motivated American defense planners to argue for a rigorous warning system
that could provide Washington a timely alert to evidence of Soviet preparations for
war. Thus, the warning mission was foremost in the minds of both intelligence offi-
cials and decision-makers.
Like other forms of strategic analysis, there has to be a strong linkage between
intelligence and policy. A longtime military intelligence analyst, Cynthia Grabo,
wrote a major treatment on warning in the 1960s that remains relevant even today.
In it she describes warning analysis as “the considered judgment of the finest ana-
lytic minds available, based on an exhaustive and objective review of all available
indications, which is conveyed to the policy official in sufficiently convincing lan-
guage that he is persuaded of its validity and takes appropriate action to protect
the national interest.”2 Embedded in this citation, as well as in the two epigraphs
that open this chapter, are three key characteristics of good warning: (1) exhaus-
tive study of all available information, (2) development of a set of indicators that
can alert warning analysts of an impending threat, and (3) successful and convinc-
ing communication of that threat to policymakers so they are in a position to take
action. This seemingly simple description of warning process disguises an incred-
ibly elusive result.
Warning in many respects remains the most difficult form of strategic analysis.
First, it requires in-depth strategic intelligence conducted by analysts who under-
stand what effective warning is. Warning intelligence is unique in that it is not just
reporting the latest or most alarmist report received but rather is a careful sorting
The Challenges of Warning147
through—what Grabo and others describe as “exhaustive” study—of an adversary’s

capabilities and intentions. It requires careful understanding of past as well as cur-
rent behavior. Most often this results in the development of indicators (unique and
observable actions or behavior tied to hostile intent) that warning analysts monitor
over time. As Grabo noted, “Rarely if ever will [the analyst] regard a single report or
indication as a cause for alerting the community.”3
Second, it requires a good understanding of what developments would conceiv-
ably damage US national interests in a significant way. In the Cold War, warning
analysts understood how Soviet strategic missile forces operated and the Soviet stra-
tegic military doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons. Military analysts also had a
good understanding of Soviet ground-force capabilities opposite NATO and what
the USSR’s war plans probably entailed. For nonmilitary situations such as political
instability, financial crises, or ethnic conflicts, the indicators would be very differ-
ent and in most cases harder to assess. Analysts both inside and outside govern-
ment have tried to develop indicators that would help to anticipate higher chances
of state failure or political instability. For a time, the CIA had a Political Instabil-
ity Task Force, which attempted to develop a model for forecasting where the next
government crisis or coup might occur in developing nations; these efforts focused
on identifying “triggers” (events) that might lead to broader political unrest or key
“vulnerabilities” that might tip weak states into a crisis.4 Unlike military indicator
methods, however, there seem to be far fewer highly predictive factors. Efforts to cor-
relate economic performance, demographic shifts, unemployment trends, or abuses
of power have not necessarily been good indicators of state failure. Looking at the
grim statistics of North Korea’s economic performance, quality of life, and human
rights abuses, some experts have anticipated the regime’s collapse for decades, yet
it has not occurred. So, indicators might not work as well in the socioeconomic field
as in the military domain.
Third, warning rests on analysts being able to convince policymakers that US inter-
ests are at risk. Here the challenge is presenting sufficient evidence that the plausible
outcome would lead to an actual commencement of military hostilities, a military
coup, government collapse, or economic setback to the United States and its interests.
Such a message should not be buried in a lengthy assessment that can be too easily
lost—it needs to be the headliner of the assessment or be part of a special warning
memorandum that will grab the attention of the policymaker. To take a simple exam-
ple, analysts have to present a cogent argument for why observed military activities
are not merely training exercises or an attempt to blackmail an opponent. Then the
argument has to lay out the consequences of this military operation. For instance, if
the warning suggests that a limited military clash is possible rather than a precursor
to a large-scale invasion, policymakers may not feel compelled to act. On the other
148 Chapter 7
hand, if the warning is that an adversary has marshaled sufficient forces to conduct a
rapid invasion in a matter of days, it would presumably draw far more attention. There
is always the danger that too many such warnings will be seen as “crying wolf” and
thus will lose their impact with policymakers over time. Decision-makers can worry
that intelligence will often provide a “worst-case analysis” and cause them to over-
react in those cases.
And fourth, it requires that policymakers be convinced to take action that might
avert or at least reduce the impact of such a development. Often policymakers will
wish for more time to deliberate and for more confirming information before they
are forced to take action. Good strategic warning sometimes involves telling policy
makers, “You’ve been warned, and we are not likely to be able to give you much tacti-
cal warning.” Senior officials or military commanders must have an appreciation for
how quickly the situation they face might worsen if they do not act now. To take one
recent example, NATO experts have said that a plausible Russian invasion of a Baltic
state could occur quickly and be completed long before US or other NATO forces are
able to reach the battlefield. Knowing that, policymakers have to weigh the merits of
putting more NATO forces closer to the Baltics and/or raising the tempo and size of
NATO forces that are temporarily rotated into the Baltic states to show the alliance’s
resolve in defending them.5 In sum, warning provided too late is neither strategic
nor helpful.
WARNING: TERMINOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY
There is a very unique terminology when talking about warning intelligence. First, one
has to distinguish strategic warning from tactical warning. Intelligence professionals
want to provide as much time as possible prior to a major shift in an adversary’s hos-
tile intent so that policymakers can act to build up US defenses or reposition them, or
at least disperse them so as to blunt any possible military attack. Likewise, other types
of strategic warning might alert policymakers to unfavorable economic or political
trends in key countries that might be moderated by timely American actions. Tactical
warning essentially is intelligence that announces that military hostilities or other
dangerous events are now occurring and the United States must be ready to absorb
whatever military shocks or politico-economic disruptions are underway. The lack of
accurate or timely tactical warning is often the source of many strategic surprises,
even if there has been demonstrable strategic warning given to decision-makers.
Strategic Warning’s Characteristics

Strategic warning is perhaps the most difficult concept to define with any precision.
This kind of intelligence has at least three significant dimensions. First, the word
strategic suggests that the warning focuses on an event or trend that would have a
major impact on US national interests in a physical way (such as a direct attack on
the US homeland or forces or those of our close allies or partners) or would under-
mine American economic prosperity or political influence abroad. Second, analysts
need to have sufficient information and also enough confidence to determine that the
development has a reasonable probability of occurring within a given time frame that
matters to policymakers. Third, such strategic warning needs to be given enough in
advance so that policymakers are in a position to take actions designed to head off the
danger or at least ameliorate the consequences of the event occurring.
All three characteristics are subject to great debate about what qualifies as a stra-
tegic threat, what is a reasonable probability that analysts and policymakers consider
worrisome, and how much advance warning (i.e., time to prepare) must be given to
allow policymakers to adopt measures to avert some disaster or negative trend. The
simple answer to those questions is that it depends on the issue, the set of conditions
surrounding it, and the current US policies and set of policymakers. Consider that dur-
ing the Cold War, policymakers viewed our greatest threat to be a nuclear war with the
Soviet Union; accordingly, they designed US military forces and intelligence systems
around strategies that could give us maximum survivability and warning time in order
to deter Moscow’s consideration of a first-strike nuclear attack.6 Analysts generally
did not believe there was a high probability of a Soviet preemptive attack so long as
the United States maintained a diversified set of nuclear systems, but even if the prob-
ability was low, the consequences were so high that adequate warning was considered
critical to giving the president time for deciding whether to launch a US counterstrike.
Today, the overriding importance of strategic warning of a Russian attack is lower but
certainly not zero in the era of Vladimir Putin. Instead, the consequences of a military
confrontation with North Korea or emergence of a nuclear Iran seem more threatening
and more probable than another nuclear confrontation with Moscow.
Military threats are not the only ones requiring strategic warning. In today’s world,
there are a variety of plausible scenarios around which advanced warning needs to be
provided:
1. Military attacks: Warning focuses on detecting a changing order of battle

between adversarial states that indicates preparations for war. Typically, good
indicators are based on analysis of past military exercises, redeployments, or
doctrinal changes.
2. Military/scientific breakthroughs: These are announcements or forecasts
of major military capabilities detected in weapon laboratories and at test
facilities (e.g., nuclear detonations, missile tests, and antiballistic missile
intercepts).
150 Chapter 7
3. Internal instability: Alerts to a possible military coup, state failure, or lack of

effective governance—such as forecasts of major outbreaks of violence, geno-
cide, or ethnic-cleansing campaigns.
4. Transnational threats: Warning of terrorist plots and attacks, pandemic dis-
ease outbreaks, financial meltdowns, or cyberattacks against major infra-
structure or financial institutions also constitute tough warning problems,
given the paucity of good indicators.
Warning is easiest when there are easily observable indicators such as the move-
ment or massing of large forces, clear battle lines, and large-scale operations that
require time and large amounts of equipment and personnel. Those indicators are
more easily observed by US reconnaissance satellites and SIGINT systems. The US
intelligence system was largely based on a military type of indications and warning
(I&W) analysis. Analysts would determine what kinds of military actions an adver-
sary like the Soviet Union or now Russia and China might contemplate in Europe or
Asia. This was based on observations of the kinds of military training exercises or
actual combat those militaries have conducted. For example, Russia’s war with Geor-
gia in 2008 and its use of hybrid warfare against Ukraine have provided insights
into the kinds of operations Russia might engage in vis-à-vis the Baltics as well as
what steps it can take to mask or obscure its intentions or actual military presence in
Eastern Ukraine.
I&W analysis amounted to studying how an adversary plans or has used its military
forces. As Grabo defined it, an indicator list is a “compilation of projected, anticipated,
or hypothetical actions which any nation might take in preparation for hostilities or
other inimical actions.7 These indications, however, have to be ones that are clearly
linked to some planned actions as well as be visible or collectable. Typical indicators
of possible military hostilities might include
• reallocation of civilian industrial production for military use,

• plans for rationing strategic goods (e.g., petroleum, medical supplies, food),
• sudden cancellation of military leave or mobilization of reserve forces,
• relocation or reinforcement of key military posts,
• heightened operational security around military facilities,
• abnormally high communications between field commanders and headquarters,
• higher alert levels for air-defense forces, or
• increased intelligence collection against specific military targets.8
For other categories, such as military/technological breakthroughs, the indi-

cators may also be reasonably observable and reliable since they usually involve
extensive research and development activities at known institutes or industrial

facilities. A foreign military’s own highly technical monitoring of those tests are
themselves often detectable or collectable by American intelligence collectors. As
one former senior CIA official noted, the track record of monitoring Soviet and Chi-
nese military programs has been reasonably good. Few military or scientific devel-
opments are entirely missed, although the IC is often surprised when an adversary
can achieve a military capability faster than anticipated.9 As recent North Korean
nuclear and missile tests show, with enough concealment and secrecy even a poor
nation committed to gaining a military capability can complicate accurate forecasts
of its programs.
Strategic warning of internal political instability—for example, state failure, civil
wars, or genocide—often are less convincing or precise than military-technological
threats. Knowing when a government or country has reached a “tipping point” toward
chaos or a coup depends on understanding the unique characteristics of a foreign
political culture and its leadership. Many intelligence estimates have forecast politi-
cal challenges for governments that the United States was either supporting or oppos-
ing. In the former category, many pessimistic NIEs were written about the stability of
the South Vietnamese government during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1979, however,
intelligence failed to warn of the growing indecisiveness of the shah of Iran or his pos-
sible demise. In the case of adversaries, the CIA and IC generally is unfairly faulted
for not having forecast (i.e., warned about) the possible collapse of the Soviet Union.
More recently, the intelligence forecasts of Iraq and Afghanistan have been filled with
warnings of sectarian and religious animosities, high levels of corruption, and waning
popular support for governments that had only limited political legitimacy. Develop-
ing reliable indicators that would convince analysts, much less policymakers, that a
government collapse or military coup is coming is far more difficult. Often analysts
resort to describing a range of outcomes, including a fairly dire or worst-case sce-
nario. In a few instances, a clear call has been made, but policymakers even then may
choose not to act in a timely fashion.
The track record of the last warning category of transnational threats, which
includes terrorism, financial crises, climate change, and pandemics, is even more
dismal. One can argue that strategic warning of major terrorism threats has been
reasonably good, even if tactical warning of actual plots has been much more mixed.
In the case of financial crises, very few have been accurately forecast as there are far
too many intervening variables to understand when a failing bank or investment
house or a currency crisis will turn into a full-blown global financial meltdown.
These fall into the realm of “black swans,” a term popularized by Nassim Taleb to
describe unique, hard-to-predict discontinuities that have huge consequences and
appear to come out of nowhere with little warning.10
152 Chapter 7
This notion of black swans also is so ill-defined that it is hard to generalize about
the characteristics that might allow analysts to develop an I&W-style list of indica-
tors. Terrorism might lend itself to such analysis, if the target is a large, multifaceted
organization like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).11 In many
respects, both operated more like military organizations—and their members con-
sidered themselves “soldiers”—which included having identifiable logistics experts,
financiers, bomb makers, and commanders who used a variety of communication
systems and locations. In the case of ISIS, it operated tanks and field artillery, had
organized brigades in Syria and Iraq, and considered itself a state, not just an orga-
nization. Hence, monitoring via technical and human means might yield some indi-
cators of plans and capabilities. Indeed, prior to the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda, CIA
director George Tenet remarked that the “system was blinking red,” meaning a lot of
intercepted communications chatter was saying something big was coming.12 On the
other hand, small, self-radicalized cells or “lone wolf” individuals are much harder to
monitor and forecast whether they have the intention and capability to attack unpro-
tected targets. Naturally occurring events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and pan-
demics are more like mysteries, for which no reliable method exists to forecast with
any precision. Some would argue that Californians have been given strategic warning
that the “big one” is overdue and so the only question is whether citizens are prepared
and whether any better seismic-monitoring system might give them enough tactical
warning to take cover.
Tactical Warning: Hard to Provide

While the track record of strategic warning shows as many successes as failures, tac-
tical warning is far more difficult. As suggested above, if strategic warning has been
given, the intelligence challenge becomes one of gathering enough information to
answer the questions of “where, when, how, and who?” In many cases, the IC is not in
a position to give high-confidence answers to those questions. Tactical surprise can
occur, even when analysts and decision-makers know there is a general threat out
there. Among the many causes for such failures, the following are most common:
1. Collection gaps frequently exist in how a threat will materialize, in what form,
at what time, or where.
2. Deception and denial can magnify existing collection gaps if an adversary
has maintained good operational security, spread disinformation to confuse
analysts, and mastered other deception techniques that cloak its preparations.
3. Misinterpretation and mind-sets can cause analysts to miss signals or dismiss
them as “noise” or disinformation because they do not fit their expectations
of how an adversary would behave.
4. Poor communication of warning can mute or muddle the message so policy-

makers do not realize they have been warned.
5. Policymakers’ wishful thinking can lead them to dismiss warnings as indica-
tive of the IC’s worst-case or cry-wolf syndromes.
AN EVOLVING WARNING PHILOSOPHY
American intelligence has conducted warning in two fundamental ways—either

through specialized warning staffs or by assigning the warning mission to every
analyst; some mix of both has also been practiced. Simplistically put, during the
Cold War, the emphasis was on the Soviet and Chinese military threats and asso-
ciated conflicts that involved the US-Soviet bipolar competition. Faced with a
standing threat of a nuclear or a large-scale land war in Europe or Asia, Ameri-
can intelligence established a set of special intelligence units dedicated to provid-
ing warning of possible attack. Over the decades, these groups carried a variety
of names, such as the Watch Committee, the National Indications Center, and the
National Warning Staff. But essentially their mission was to create a set of indica-
tors that analysts would monitor to ensure that the Soviets and their allies were
not making preparations for war. These groups could issue their own “alert memo-
randa” that laid out changed military conditions such as a higher military readiness
on the part of an American adversary (e.g., the Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam,
North Korea). These warnings might also be inserted into the daily intelligence
publications, including the President’s Daily Brief, fast-track special NIEs, or other
sensitive daily publications produced by the CIA and DIA.
The Defense Department naturally puts special emphasis on warning of military
attacks and historically has organized its own warning systems as part of a broader IC
effort. Each combatant command (e.g., European Command, Pacific Command, Strate-
gic Command) has maintained a warning staff, as has the Joint Staff J-2 (intelligence
directorate) in the Pentagon. These staffs received information from SIGINT, IMINT,
and other collectors on its specific set of indicators that would allow warning officers
to determine if there had been significant change in enough factors that there might
be a higher possibility of military hostilities. In the 1960s and 1970s, this system
was called the Worldwide Indications and Warning System, which was replaced in
1990s with the Defense Indications and Warning System, which was again renamed
in 2008 the Global Warning Enterprise and continues to this day.13
The NIC also has been involved in providing warning by issuing NIEs on adver-
saries’ military capabilities and intentions. The annually updated estimates on
Soviet strategic and conventional force developments were constantly describing
new Soviet military capabilities and interpreting Soviet military doctrine regarding
154 Chapter 7
its war plans; these inherently carried important warnings. Special estimates such
as the infamous 1962 special NIE on the Soviet military buildup in Cuba contained
warnings that were insufficient to alert policymakers to Moscow’s intentions regard-
ing support to Fidel Castro’s regime. The 2002 Iraq WMD NIE could also be catego-
rized as a warning analysis regarding Saddam Hussein’s intentions to resume his
nuclear and other programs, even as flawed as it was.
The NIC became even more involved in the warning process when, in 1979, DCI
Stansfield Turner created the national intelligence officer for warning (NIO/W).
Following the strategic surprise of the shah’s fall, he established this new position
to head the national warning system that already existed. The NIO/W was now
directly responsible for providing warning analysis to the DCI and to the policy
community. Accordingly, these duties included becoming an advocate for warn-
ing across the community’s analytical elements but also for improved collection
to reduce intelligence gaps and to improve analysis. As a matter of course, this
individual also would be responsible for overseeing the national warning system
plus coordinating the warning activities of other regional and functional NIOs.
Individual NIOs were in turn responsible for monitoring conditions in their areas of
responsibility and would host monthly “warning meetings” at which agencies could
raise concerns about developments that might lead to political instability, military
conflicts, or other negative consequences. These NIO reports would be inputs to the
NIO/W’s own monthly report to the DCI. In addition, the NIO/W could indepen-
dently raise concerns with other NIOs if he or she believed developments in their
areas were occurring that needed more attention. In this way, the NIO/W could
provide a “second opinion” or act as a “devil’s advocate” when there might be too
much consensus or complacency among analysts regarding a security issue. This,
naturally, could create friction between the NIO/W and his counterparts who might
view this intervention as crying wolf or micromanagement. Depending on the per-
sonality of the NIO/W, the relationship between his office and those of other NIOs
could be collaborative or frosty.
This centralized system of an NIO/W running the national warning system ended
in 2011 when DNI James Clapper eliminated the NIO/W position and directed that
“every analyst is a warning analyst.” The notion that warning constituted an impor-
tant duty of every intelligence analyst was by no means new. Even during the Cold
War and its centralized system of warning, there had been the mantra that every
analyst must be writing assessments that highlight both threats and opportunities
for policymakers. However, with the end of the bipolar military competition and the
proliferation of many nonmilitary threats, the NIO/W seemed to be a legacy of a
bygone era. The national warning system and its entire I&W methodology had been
predicated on an enduring Soviet-American military competition. The NIO/W and
the national warning staff were likewise seen as being more military analysts than
experts in political instability, economic crises, or a host of other transnational chal-
lenges. Hence, intelligence officials came to believe that analysts responsible for
each issue were in the best position to warn of any changes that would endanger US
national interests.
That said, individual NIOs continue to be responsible for warning in their regional
and functional areas. More than anything, however, the new mantra was “integra-
tion” of efforts to make the IC a single operation. Hence, holding out warning from
other analytical and collection functions clashed with DNI Clapper’s vision of a more
integrated national intelligence enterprise. To accomplish this, he also established a
new group of national intelligence managers (NIMs)—generally mirroring the sepa-
rate regional and functional areas covered by NIOs—which were now responsible for
ensuring that the IC’s many functions, including warning, were integrated rather than
operating separately from each other. As such, NIMs were responsible for ensuring
that adequate collection as well as analytical resources were available to promote
timely warning.
A MIXED TRACK RECORD ON WARNING
Having laid out the distinction between strategic and tactical warning and their char-
acteristics and challenges, it is useful to consider some of the more prominent warn-
ing successes and failures. Having done that, the remainder of the chapter will assess
what can be learned from them.
1941 Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

Japan’s attack on the US Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor is considered a clas-
sic warning failure that involved a “strategic surprise”—one that caused significant
damage to the US military as well as a strong psychological blow to the American
sense of invulnerability. Its causes are still debated by scholars. Early writers on the
attack believed there was sufficient information to provide strategic warning that the
Japanese might begin hostilities against the United States somewhere in the Pacific
region, although this information was lost in the “noise” of other reporting and so was
not picked up in a timely fashion.14 Other scholars emphasize the mind-set held by
most analysts and military leaders that the Japanese were inferior militarily, had not
trained for attacking harbors like Pearl, and did not have torpedoes that could oper-
ate in such shallow waters. Many critiques also emphasized the poor coordination,
information sharing, and dissemination of intelligence by the US Army and US Navy
that contributed to policymakers and military commanders not appreciating the
urgency of preparing for war. Another school believes that information was difficult
156 Chapter 7
to come by, given excellent Japanese military operational security.15 In the end, one
can say that tactical information on the where, when, and how was lacking regard-
ing Japanese attack plans, so that even with the knowledge that a US-Japan conflict
was unavoidable, few senior Washington officials and military commanders in Hawaii
believed the war would begin there.
1950 North Korean Invasion of South Korea

The US forces in South Korea, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, had seen reports of
possible invasion but tended to disregard them because they judged North Korean
forces to be inferior. The CIA had reported a buildup of Kim Il-sung’s forces that
had the capability to attack, but the dominant analytical mind-set was that the North
Korean leader could not unilaterally initiate hostilities without Soviet acquiescence.
Most importantly, analysts doubted Stalin wanted to start a conflict with Washington,
being convinced that Moscow was mostly focused on the Cold War crises in Ger-
many and Central Europe. Overall, the evidence for an attack was spotty, and such
intelligence reports were mostly nonspecific and obscured by the prevailing North
Korean war rhetoric.16 The CIA did somewhat better in alerting US policymakers and
commanders to China’s preparations to intervene on North Korea’s behalf when Gen-
eral MacArthur advanced toward the Yalu River. However, as before, MacArthur dis-
missed those warnings until it was too late.
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis has become the most widely discussed, dissected, and reex-
amined case of a failure to warn but also of ultimately successful crisis management
with the aid of subsequent intelligence.17 In September 1962, the Board of National
Estimates issued its special NIE (SNIE 85-3-62) that concluded the Soviets would
avoid the risky move of placing offensive nuclear missiles on the island for fear of
provoking an American invasion. This reassuring message was in short order dashed
by resumed U-2 imagery two weeks later showing advanced preparation for dozens of
intermediate- and medium-range missiles. Postmortems later would emphasize that
limited HUMINT and effective Soviet D&D (not to mention outright lying by senior
Soviet diplomats to President John F. Kennedy) combined with a dominant analyti-
cal mind-set to suggest that such a move was inconsistent with past Soviet caution
about deploying nuclear-armed missiles outside the USSR. Sherman Kent defended
his analysts by suggesting that they could not be held accountable for Premier Nikita
Khrushchev miscalculating on how the United States would react.18 Policymakers
were aware of the risks but generally agreed with analysts—the exception being CIA
director John McCone—that Khrushchev would not dare to challenge the United
States in its own backyard.
1967 Israeli Six-Days War against Arab States

A case of successful warning was CIA forecasting of an Israeli defeat of the Arab
military coalition against it. Israel, having sensed a growing threat from the combined
armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, preempted what Israeli intelligence believed
would be a combined Arab assault on its southern and eastern borders. Soviet arms
deliveries prior to the war threatened the favorable military balance Israel held up to
that time. Then, in May 1967, Egypt further escalated tensions by closing the Gulf of
Aqaba, Israel’s main access to the Red Sea. Israel (and the United States previously)
had termed this an act of war.
The CIA had by then produced an assessment of the military balance, which fore-
cast that Israel could “defend successfully against simultaneous Arab attacks.” A sec-
ond, joint CIA-DIA paper on the military capabilities of Israel and the Arab states
forecast that Israel would need seven to nine days to reach the Suez Canal. When
war broke out on June 5, President Lyndon Johnson already knew that the IC judged
Israel would prevail, and hence he chose not to respond to the urgent request of
Israeli prime minister Golda Meier for emergency military supplies, which the White
House deemed unnecessary. This set of judgments was considered by then CIA direc-
tor Richard Helms as “pretty much a triumph.”19 Credit was given to good intelligence
on the state of Arab military preparedness and analysts’ excellent understanding of
the order of battle of the contending armies. This success also convinced many Mid-
dle East military analysts of Israeli’s air-combat superiority, leading them to believe
another war was unlikely until that military balance was dramatically altered.
1973 Egyptian Attack on Israel (Yom Kippur War)

In contrast to the previous case, the October 1973 Egyptian attack into the Sinai dur-
ing the Yom Kippur holiday caught Israeli and US intelligence totally flat-footed. Pre-
vious warnings in 1972 and early 1973—derived from good HUMINT and SIGINT
sources—had led to Israeli military mobilizations, and there had been no Egyptian
attack. Based on good intelligence about Egyptian war plans, Israeli intelligence and
military officials concluded that Egypt would not attack so long as it lacked suffi-
cient air-defense systems needed to fend off a superior Israeli air force. Accordingly,
Israeli officials allowed soldiers home leave for the holidays, even as Egyptian forces
were preparing to attack. US intelligence estimates also were flat-out wrong as they
accepted the Israeli analysis that there would be no war. This message was conveyed
to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on the morning of October 6, just as the
attack had commenced in the Sinai.
Official postmortems of what caused this warning failure focused not only on
excellent Egyptian deception regarding large-scale exercises it was conducting but
158 Chapter 7
also on optimistic Israeli and American assumptions that Egypt would not start a war
it could not win. Described by many such critiques as “the concept,” this assumption
of inferior Egyptian forces being incapable of attacking Israeli air bases or defend-
ing against Israeli air strikes combined with what were seen as past “false alarms”
of Egyptian attacks to dissuade the Israeli military to mobilize again.20 Such deci-
sions led to the near defeat of Israel and a subsequent major reorganization of its
intelligence services. Moreover, US and Israeli analysts failed to understand Egyptian
president Anwar Sadat’s motive for war: he did not presume he would win but that he
could deal Israel a severe blow to its military prowess and sense of security, thereby
regaining the diplomatic initiative. In the United States, the Yom Kippur War also
was a reminder that relying too heavily on foreign governments’ assessments could
be dangerous—a problem that cropped up again in the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

The Soviet full-scale military invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas 1979 shocked the
Carter administration, which had dismissed the possibility, believing that Moscow
would not wish to undermine a newly negotiated SALT II strategic agreement with
Washington. Distracted by the Iran hostage crisis as well as the growing debate over
Soviet deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles opposite NATO, senior
officials engaged in wishful thinking. It also caught most US intelligence analysts
by surprise. Nearly all had agreed that the Soviet military was in a position to inter-
vene massively, as they monitored and reported a steady buildup of forces, but most
analysts doubted Moscow would commit to a long-term, costly, and likely unsuccess-
ful engagement in a faraway land. What warnings were provided forecast a modest
and graduated injection of Soviet forces. According to a September 1979 interagency
intelligence memorandum, the two options confronting Moscow were gradually
increasing assistance, amounting to a “division or two” or a “commitment of large
numbers of regular ground forces in a potentially open-ended operation.”21 As the
Soviet buildup intensified in November and December, some Carter advisers became
alarmed, but discussion of policy options was hampered by disagreement among
them and preoccupation with other issues. Some participants lamented that the IC
had not “predicted” an invasion in order to force the Carter administration to consider
a firmer response that might have deterred Moscow from intervening.22
1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait

IC failure to provide timing warning of Saddam Hussein’s intention to invade Kuwait
was an important reminder to analysts that sometimes a low-probability event can
shift quickly. In assessing Iraq’s military potential in 1989, CIA analysis suggested
“diminished threats to the region,” largely as a result of the mutually exhausting
eight-year war between Iraq and Iran. Analysts perceived Iraq to be a war-weary
state, deeply in debt as a result of loans it needed from Kuwait and other Gulf states
to keep its war with Iran going. In assessing Saddam’s views toward Kuwait, analysts
agreed that he had territorial and financial grievances against the Kuwaiti monarchy
but that his saber-rattling military buildups were more of a “shakedown” than war
preparations. Ten days prior to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, US policymakers as
well as analysts were reassured by messages from key Gulf allies (especially Egyp-
tian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Hussein) that Saddam was bluffing.
George H. W. Bush administration officials appeared divided over the seriousness
of the threat and inclined to study the problem rather than act. In mid-July 1990,
DIA and CIA assessments separately said Iraq was unlikely to use “significant force”
against Kuwait.23
However, as Saddam’s buildup accelerated, some intelligence mind-sets, if not all,
began to perceive that Saddam had the intention to invade if his demands for loan for-
giveness and territorial concessions were not accepted. On July 25, the NIO/W alerted
the White House to this danger, a week before Iraqi forces entered Kuwait. Other CIA
analysts were slow to come around to this, perhaps explaining why the Bush adminis-
tration had not made stronger statements or taken some preparatory actions to deter
Saddam. However, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in defense of the administration,
told senators, “All the reports we received from those most directly affected focused
specifically on the proposition that Saddam Hussein will never invade Kuwait.”24
Breakup of the Soviet Union and Coup Potential

As the Cold War ended, the IC wrestled with the problem of forecasting what would
become of the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1980s, the IC had been monitoring the
steady decline of the USSR’s economy, its mounting social and political problems,
and the restlessness of its Warsaw Pact allies, where dissidents in Poland, Hungary,
and Czechoslovakia were pressing their communist governments for political and
economic reforms. NIEs and CIA assessments were issuing numerous warnings of
problems, even for a reformer such as Mikhail Gorbachev.25 Preparing for his 1989
summit with Gorbachev in Malta, President George H. W. Bush remarked that a CIA
paper has impressed him with the warning that his counterpart’s economic and politi-
cal reforms were enough to disrupt the old system but not strong enough to produce
any benefits, thereby putting Gorbachev in some jeopardy.26 A selection of titles from
NIEs released from 1988 to 1990, when Gorbachev narrowly survived a failed coup,
testify to the warnings embedded in numerous intelligence assessments:
• NIE 11-23-88, December 1988: Gorbachev’s Economic Programs: The Chal-

lenges Ahead
160 Chapter 7
• NIE 11-18-89, November 1989: The Soviet System in Crisis: Prospects for the
Next Two Years
• NIE 11-18-90, November 1990: The Deepening Crisis in the USSR: Prospects
for the Next Year
If fault can be laid on the IC’s doorstep, perhaps it was its overwhelming focus
on Moscow’s economic problems and not imagining how the political system could
be undone by them. Yet, in April 1991, the director of the Office of Soviet Analysis,
George Kolt, prepared a prescient analysis laying out the possibility of political col-
lapse, including a move by hardliners to remove reformers through force and restore
a communist dictatorship. Titled “The Soviet Cauldron,” the analysis warned that
Gorbachev was in deep trouble and that civilian and military opponents of reform
had already put steps in motion so that a military coup was possible. (See box 7.1 for
a more complete set of intelligence findings.) Already alert to Gorbachev’s precari-
ous position, President Bush was less shocked by the announced August 1991 coup
against this hapless reformer as he vacationed in Crimea. Bush stood by Gorbachev,
having also been alerted to other reporting that suggested the coup plotters were
poorly organized and not widely supported.
The 1990 Breakup of Yugoslavia

This warning “success” is a case of “we told you so, but you did not listen.” As the
Soviet Union was breaking apart and the George H. W. Bush administration was
prosecuting the Gulf War, the IC was also monitoring the growing dissension among
the ethnically diverse regions of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Led
by strongman Slobodan Milošević, the large Serbian Republic was battling with the
Croatian, Slovenian, and Bosnian Republics to preserve and dominate the federal sys-
tem that Marshal Josip Broz Tito had ruled until his death in 1979. In October 1990,
the IC issued an unusually stark and precise warning that “Yugoslavia will cease to
function as a federal state within one year and will probably dissolve within two”
(see box 7.2 for full set of key points). It went on to conclude that the state could slide
from sporadic ethnic violence into an inter-republic civil war. However, perhaps its
most ominous and controversial statement was that “the United States will have little
capacity to preserve Yugoslav unity.”
At the time this estimate was released, the Bush administration was fully preoc-
cupied with the USSR’s breakup and had no interest in legitimizing another federal
state’s dissolution. There is little doubt that the warning message was received, but
it drew little policy attention from an administration filled with senior officials who
had served in Yugoslavia and knew the situation well.27 Instead, the administration
determined that it had no strategic interest at stake (e.g., Secretary of State James
Baker declared “we had no dog in the fight”) and relied on European allies who had
Box 7.1 April 1991 CIA Analysis: The Soviet Cauldron (Excerpts)
The economic crisis, independence aspirations, and anti-communist forces are breaking
down the Soviet empire and system of governance.
[Gorbachev]’s attempts to preserve the essence of a center-dominated union, Communist

Party rule and a centrally-planned economy without the broad use of force, however, have
driven him to tactical expedients that are not solving basic problems and are hindering but
not preventing the development of a new system.
Gorbachev has truly been faced with terrible choices in his effort to move the USSR away
from the failed rigid old system. His expedients have so far kept him in office and changed that
system irretrievably, but have also prolonged and complicated the agony of transition. . . .
[A] pre-meditated, organized attempt to restore a full-fledged dictatorship would be the most
fateful in that it would try to roll back newly acquired freedoms and be inherently destabiliz-
ing in the long term. Unfortunately, preparations for dictatorial rule have begun in two ways:
• [M]ilitary, MVD, and KGB leaders are making preparations for a broad use of force
in the political process.
• A campaign to retire democratically inclined officers or at least move them out of
key positions has been going on for some time.
Any attempt to restore full-fledged dictatorship would start in Moscow with the arrest or
assassination of Yeltsin and other democratic leaders. . . . The long-term prospects of such
an enterprise are poor, and even short-term success is far from assured.
Even a putsch is not likely to prevent the pluralistic forces from emerging in a dominant posi-
tion before the end of this decade.
The current Soviet situation and the various directions in which it could develop over the
short term present us with three possible Soviet Unions over the next year:
• Continuation of the current political stalemate would maintain the current Western
dilemma of developing the proper mix of relationships with contending forces.
• An attempt at the restoration of dictatorship would face the West with a repetition
of Poland 1981 but almost certainly with more brutality and bloodshed.
• An accelerated breakthrough by the pluralists would create the best prospects for
internal and external stability based on cooperative arrangements.
Source: Extracts from a ten-page assessment authored by George Kolt, “CIA Memo, The Soviet Cauldron,” in
Center for the Study of Intelligence, At Cold War’s End: US Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
1989–1991 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1993), https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for
-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/at-cold-wars-end-us-intelligence-on-the
-soviet-union-and-eastern-europe-1989–1991/art-1.html#rtoc7.
pledged to manage the crisis. The warning did not generate any major US policy ini-
tiative or shift. Subsequent national estimates on the possible outbreak of violence in
Bosnia also elicited little policy response until after President Bill Clinton took office,
when the Serbian-led ethnic-cleansing campaign shocked the conscience of the world
and pressed the new administration to get more involved.
162 Chapter 7
Box 7.2 NIE 15–90: Yugoslavia Transformed, October 1990

(Key Points)
• Yugoslavia will cease to function as a federal state within one year, and will prob-
ably dissolve within two. Economic reform will not stave off the breakup.
• Serbia will block Slovene and Croat attempts to form an all-Yugoslavia federation.
• There will be a protracted armed uprising by Albanians in Kosovo. A full-scale,
inter-republic war is unlikely, but serious intercommunal conflict will accompany
the breakup and will continue afterward. The violence will be intractable and bitter.
• There is little the United States and its European allies can do to preserve Yugoslav
unity. Yugoslavs will see such efforts as contradictory to advocacy of democracy
and self-determination.
Source: DCI, NIE 15–90: Yugoslavia Transformed, October 18, 1990, iii.
In this case, then, the warning of political dissolution was accurate as was its
ominous forecast of violence. However, it failed to move policymakers in a way that
might have tried to head off the violence that lasted from 1991 to 1995. Some crit-
ics believe that the NIE’s presumption that the United States could not prevent the
breakup was not only flawed but also verged into being policy-proscriptive. Others
held the estimate up as an example of how pointless strategic warning analysis can
be when an administration has already formed an opinion and is resistant to revisit-
ing those views.
2001 al-Qaeda Attack

The stunning al-Qaeda airliner attack on the Twin Towers in New York City and the
Pentagon was not the first intelligence failure regarding al-Qaeda–sponsored terror-
ism against the United States. It was preceded by the 1993 failed attack on the Twin
Towers, the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, and the 2000 boat-borne
explosives attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. Terrorism had become an important
intelligence target and major warning concern by the mid-1990s. Indeed, CIA direc-
tor George Tenet had declared in a 1998 memorandum to other IC agency heads, “We
are at war with Al-Qaeda,” and the Clinton administration had admonished the newly
elected George W. Bush team that terrorism would constitute its most serious threat
upon taking office.28 Tenet has recounted numerous meetings at which senior intel-
ligence officials conveyed their concerns to the new White House national security
team. In July 2001, a senior operations officer briefed National Security Adviser Con-
doleezza Rice of Osama bin Laden’s intentions, saying, “There will be a significant
terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months.” The CIA did not know the specific
day, but in the officer’s words, “it will be spectacular,” and multiple and simultaneous
attacks are possible.29
In that sense, the IC had provided “strategic warning.” Publications such as a 1995
NIE on terrorism had already forecast terrorist attacks, even in the United States.30
The DCI’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment testimonies to Congress from 1998
onward had identified Bin Laden’s shadowy organization as the number-one terrorist
threat. Moreover, in August 2001, in response to a question from President George W.
Bush, the PDB ran a lead item titled “Bin Laden Intent on Striking the U.S. Homeland”
(see box 7.3). Following the attacks, the 9/11 Commission conducted an extensive
investigation that concluded the IC had failed to apply its own warning methods to
al-Qaeda, which contributed to a “failure of imagination.” Also, the Commission cred-
ited poor information sharing by the CIA and FBI that might have identified some
of the nineteen plotters who had already entered the country and were taking flying
instructions.
The 9/11 Commission’s findings remain controversial, as many intelligence
experts defended the IC’s performance in the face of vocal criticisms coming from
the 9/11 victims’ families and many in the public at large.31 The fact that the CIA, its
Counterterrorism Center (CTC),32 and other agencies had repeatedly warned about
Box 7.3 President’s Daily Brief, August 6, 2001,

Regarding Bin Laden (Excerpts)
Clandestine, foreign government and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has
wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in
1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of the World Trade Center bomber
Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden’s first serious
attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US.
Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not
deterred by setbacks.
Al-Qaida members—including some who are US citizens—have resided in or traveled to the

US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such
as that from a [foreign intelligence] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack
a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” Umar Abd al-Rahman and other US-held
extremists.
Source: “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US,” President’s Daily Brief, August 6, 2001, https://nsarchive2.gwu
.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf.
164 Chapter 7
Bin Laden’s plans to attack US interests is seen by those defenders as evidence of

the IC having provided strategic warning. They argue that seldom can intelligence
collect sufficiently detailed information on the “where,” “when,” “who,” and “how” to
prevent such attacks.
The CIA in particular felt singled out unfairly for its failure to imagine such an
audacious attack, when it was the one agency doing the most to capture or kill Bin
Laden. Almost a dozen previous CTC plans to go after him were largely squelched by
a Clinton administration worried about the uncertainty of the intelligence and pos-
sible blowback that such operations might have. Where some fault may lie is in the
Bush administration’s slowness in adopting a more rigorous counterterrorism strat-
egy being recommended by then senior counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke or
in pushing other federal agencies (e.g., the Federal Aviation Administration, customs
officials, and the FBI) to take more counterterrorism measures.
KEY LESSONS AND CHALLENGES TO WARNING
The list of successes and failures in warning tends to highlight some recurring pat-
terns in how surprise happens, even when policymakers are warned. Among the most
typical causes and challenges of effective warning are cognitive biases, organizational
hurdles, and policymakers’ resistance to accepting and acting on warning. However,
a fourth lesson learned is that adversaries often can play on those weaknesses in the
warning process by effective use of deception, disinformation, and denial.
Cognitive Bias: The Mind-set Problem

In many of the cases cited above, analysts—and often policymakers as well—were
prone to dismiss existing evidence of a military attack or other challenges to Ameri-
can interests. In the case of Pearl Harbor, military analysts had a mind-set of an inferior
enemy who would most likely go for an easy target in East Asia rather than challenge
the US Pacific Fleet in its home waters. Likewise, Israeli and American analysts had
a preconceived view that Arab armies were too weak to challenge the more powerful
Israel Defense Forces. In the end, those analysts were correct about Israel’s ultimate
victory, but they failed to realize that Egypt had not expected it could defeat Israel but
only aimed to deal Israel a shock that would force negotiations (which it did).
Mind-sets, it turns out, are hard to change, particularly when there is a paucity of
information that challenges the conventional wisdom. So, US analysts reported in
September 1962 that they were confident that the Soviets would not dare to place
strategic missiles in Cuba, and there was almost no credible reporting that mis-
siles were in place prior to the U-2 flights later in October. Overcoming cognitive
biases like these takes much more positive information than is often available to
the analysts or policymakers. In 2002, analysts warned that Saddam possessed sub-
stantial WMD stockpiles and might be making progress toward developing nuclear
weapons. There was little real information that pointed to renewed WMD activities,
but collectors also had not been providing any disconfirming information either. So,
in the absence of good information, analysts will always fall back on their assump-
tions about how capable or devious an adversary is. Robert Jervis, a distinguished
political scientist and frequent consultant to intelligence agencies, has famously
written about the power of decision-makers’ perceptions and misperceptions, which
can be far off the mark.33
Doing good warning, then, requires that analysts and policymakers be aware
of their own biases and unproven assumptions about the world and how it oper-
ates. Too often Americans presume that foreign leaders will operate and calculate
the risks and benefits of taking certain actions much as Washington does. In such
instances, analysts conclude that an adversary would not start a war it cannot win or
take an action that would be too risky were it an American decision. Analysts must
guard against such mirror-imaging. Understanding foreign leaders, who have been
raised in very different cultures and for whom risk and benefit may be assessed dif-
ferently, is perhaps the hardest job that analysts face. Historically, the IC has not
done well anticipating how dictators such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Serbia’s Slo-
bodan Milošević, or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un might behave. Warning of foreign
leaders’ erratic, or what some people might consider irrational, behavior poses real
challenges without some resort to different cultural and psychological lenses. At the
least, warning analysis needs to take advantage of structured analytical techniques—
Red Cell analysis, devil’s advocacy, or assumptions checks—that can challenge an
American analytical mind-set.
Organizational Effects
Contributing to many successes and failures is the role that the IC’s own operations
and organizational cultures play in shaping warning. During the Cold War, a cen-
trally directed warning system performed well enough that the United States never
experienced a strategic surprise involving nuclear weapons. The national warning
system was sufficiently reliable, and American nuclear forces were sufficiently sur-
vivable that the Soviets were convinced that a surprise “first strike” could not disarm
the United States. National warning systems, including the sizable specialized warn-
ing staffs and the actions of the NIO/Ws, also were reasonably good at alerting poli-
cymakers to major military buildups. However, the CIA and DIA as organizations
also tended to fall into recognizable and predictable camps regarding the nature
of the Soviet threat. The CIA tended to take a more benign view of Soviet strate-
gic programs, believing Moscow would reason that nuclear war was “unwinnable”
166 Chapter 7
and so achieving strategic parity with the United States was sufficient. On the other
hand, the DIA and the military intelligence services tended to ascribe more ambi-
tious goals, including achieving strategic superiority and “winning” a nuclear war, to
the Soviet leadership. Neither got it exactly right. At times the CIA underestimated
the Soviet strategic programs, while defense intelligence was generally regarded as
taking a worst-case position.
Intelligence organizations also tend to develop a “party line” on warning issues. In
1973, the CIA was confident that Israel’s superior military could not be defeated, so
Egyptian president Sadat would not dare to attack Israel. The CIA also tended to defer
to Israeli intelligence, which also had developed a “conception” that Egypt would not
consider attacking Israel again until its military had vastly improved its air defenses.
Once an analytical judgment has been pronounced within an agency, it takes on an
important foundational basis for all future analysis. Few analysts are willing to con-
test a well-accepted office position. Hence, “linchpin” assumptions, as one senior CIA
official termed them, go unchallenged because they reflect past conclusions that the
agency’s analysts feel obliged to defend. The accepted wisdom that “Saddam was hid-
ing WMDs” or that “Egypt would not start a war it could not win” or that “the Soviets
would not deploy offensive missiles in Cuba” would have been tough for any indi-
vidual analyst to question, much less debunk.
Organizations also share information poorly, which can undermine effective warn-
ing. As seen in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the army and navy code-breakers were
competing to provide deciphered messages to the few Washington officials privy to
them, and bureaucratic infighting slowed down communication with policymakers.
In the case of 9/11, there was information collected overseas on the plotters, which
the CIA had and did not share with the FBI, and the FBI field offices also had col-
lected information, which it had not provided to its Washington headquarters or the
CIA. For a variety of reasons, each agency saw no reason it should pass its unique
information to each other. This hampered analysts in building a complete picture of
the threat, which had both domestic and international aspects. Since 9/11, there have
been efforts to soften the long-standing need-to-know principle that compartments
information inside organizations or even within an organization’s separate divisions.
The DNI’s call for a “need to share” has helped to break down some of these organi-
zational barriers, but it remains a challenge when so many intelligence organizations
are now involved in monitoring a range of international threats.
It is worth considering whether the transition from a centrally directed warning
system relying on warning specialists to one that places primary warning responsi-
bility on all analysts is working. It presumes a solid understanding of what warning
is and how it must be communicated to policy officials. Yet at the moment there is
very little formal warning training, especially in civilian intelligence agencies such as
the CIA. Moreover, it presumes that effective warning can be produced through the
normal analytical production methods, when warning is as much an art as a science.34
As troubling, the DNI’s latest moves away from old-style warning to something now
termed “anticipatory” intelligence has created a new concept in need of further defini-
tion. As articulated by the DNI, “anticipatory intelligence is the result of intelligence
collection and analysis focused on trends, events, and changing conditions to identify
and characterize potential or imminent discontinuities, significant events, substantial
opportunities, or threats to U.S. national interests.”35
To some analysts, anticipatory intelligence is nothing more than new jargon for
what has long been called strategic and warning analysis. But that definition fails to
highlight the need to provide advanced skills to analysts or to develop mechanisms
for passing such anticipatory intelligence to policymakers who can take action. At
a minimum, more needs to be done to foster the skills for such missions regardless
of what one calls it. In partial recognition of the need to do more, the NIC now has a
special adviser on warning, whose mission might appear to be advocating for more
attention to warning issues. At the time of this writing, that adviser appears to lack the
substantial staff or authority previously held by the NIO/W.
Policymakers’ Wishful Thinking

In reviewing the many warnings provided to presidents and their national security
teams, there emerges a pattern of some policymakers not wanting to believe the
warnings that the IC issues. As Sherman Kent’s comment at the opening of this
chapter indicates, national security decision-makers can ignore intelligence. Partly
policymakers are reluctant to make decisions on incomplete information that sug-
gests there is some risk but no certainty that a postulated threat will actually occur.
Usually taking steps to avert some disaster has its own consequences and costs.
Today’s dilemma of halting a North Korean nuclear program highlights the policy-
maker’s set of bad choices. Strategic warning of an eventual North Korean capability
to strike the United States with a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile
has been delivered. Indeed, this warning has been provided to the White House ever
since Bill Clinton was president. He and his successors all tried measures short of a
preemptive attack—for example, use of sanctions as well as economic incentives to
halt the program—in an effort to head off such a threat. Today, however, President
Donald Trump faces some of the same unappealing choices of minimizing the threat
or using economic sanctions to pressure Kim Jong-un to halt his program or con-
sidering a military course of action to destroy or at least retard that program. Such a
military step would have huge consequences for South Korea and the United States,
as well as other Asian allies and partners. Hence, acting on intelligence warnings is
never as easy as it might appear.
168 Chapter 7
Some of the aforementioned cases of warning also show that, confronted with
growing evidence of possible military conflict (e.g., the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan) or ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia (the 1990–95 breakup and
the Bosnian War), neither the Carter administration nor the Bush administration
wanted to take action. In the former case, it was the wishful thinking that Moscow
would not want to jeopardize its relations with Washington; further, it would under-
mine a strategic arms treaty that Congress would most likely reject if the Soviets
invaded. In the latter case, it was the Bush administration’s hopes that Europeans
would manage the Yugoslav crisis and that it could avoid involvement while it dealt
with more pressing problems such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the
Gulf War. In both cases, warning was provided but just not acted on. From the ana-
lysts’ perspective, this might seem irresolute or even irresponsible. But from the poli-
cymakers’ perspective, this is their choice to make. What often happens, however, is
policymakers will later lament that the IC had not effectively communicated their
concerns, had not highlighted the consequences, or had played down the probability
of such dire events occurring.
The Adversary Gets a Say

Blaming failure to warn on either analysts or policymakers is not completely correct.
Some credit is due to adversaries and their own efforts to confuse and surprise the
United States. It is important to recognize that adversaries often are very clever in
playing on the cognitive biases, organizational hurdles, and wishful thinking of Ameri-
can analysts and decision-makers. In many of the cases examined here, the adversary
was able to use D&D techniques to hide their actual intentions and preparations or at
least to play into the existing mind-sets of analysts and wishful thinking of policymak-
ers. D&D had been used effectively by the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor, so that the
United States had no idea where the Japanese fleet was headed. The Soviets masked
the nature of the military equipment being shipped to Cuba for months before it was
finally detected by aerial reconnaissance flights. Egypt skillfully announced and con-
ducted what first appeared to be routine annual military exercises around the time
of the Yom Kippur holiday. And Saddam Hussein effectively hid his WMD programs
from the United States prior to the 1990 Persian Gulf War.
In the military field, analysts must in particular be alert to the use of D&D to cover
up what might be military preparations for attacks. Many adversaries have devel-
oped these concealment techniques to a fine art. Iran has built many of its nuclear-
related facilities in underground locations, partly to hide them but also to make them
less vulnerable to attack. Likewise, North Korea has put many of its military assets
in either underground facilities or in caves where they cannot be observed, much
less destroyed. The Russians continue to use a variety of techniques to mask their
own military operations, whether it is “little green men” (soldiers wearing uniforms
that bear no unit designations) or conducting hybrid warfare through the use of
“volunteers.”
Operational security—steps used to prevent the IC from intercepting sensitive
communications—also has been a commonplace technique for hostile militaries but
also for terrorist groups. The Japanese maintained radio silence between Tokyo and
its fleet in the Pacific. The Soviet and Russian military have routinely encrypted com-
munication systems to keep military plans secret and also routinely put out misinfor-
mation to disguise their true intentions. Even al-Qaeda and ISIS are wise to the ways
of operational security. They learned to avoid using cell phones or any Internet sites
that would be susceptible to American intelligence collection, opting instead for cou-
riers and other low-tech methods of communication. Use of the “dark Web” and heavy
encryption also can shield terrorist and other illicit operations from US intelligence
and law enforcement. Likewise, if such groups suspect that the IC is listening, they
will invoke euphemisms or code words to describe their planned activities. Terrorist
cells and their networks are by their very nature decentralized, making it harder to
uncover all of their plots by capturing a key leader or a terrorist cell’s computers and
mobile phones.
IS EFFECTIVE WARNING POSSIBLE?
When all is said and done, warning remains the most difficult but most important
task for intelligence. As the previously discussed cases illustrate, the IC’s record of
warning successes and failures is mixed. Improving it has proven difficult, espe-
cially as the types of warning issues have moved from strictly military problems
into transnational issues, where there are fewer secrets and more mysteries. Richard
Betts, who has written widely on intelligence and strategic surprise, has concluded
that “intelligence failures are inevitable.” In his view, surprise occurs most often by
policymakers’ inability or unwillingness to accept warnings and act on them. So long
as warning information remains ambiguous—that is less than certain—then policy
makers will harbor the illusion that somehow intelligence should have been better or
needs to be improved.36 On the other hand, intelligence faults should not be excused
entirely. Other scholars have argued that providing strategic warning is seldom
enough to avoid strategic surprise.37 But good strategic warning can alert the IC to
devote more collection and analytical resources to develop tactical warning. Thus,
specific measures to expand collection that reduces information gaps on strategic
warning issues can be made; moreover, strategic warning should put analysts on
notice that they also need to review their assumptions and mind-sets that may have
lulled them into complacency.
170 Chapter 7
At the same time, however, policymakers must be more attuned to what the IC is
communicating and also to telling their intelligence counterparts which issues are of
most concern to them, about which they need to be warned. As one seasoned intelli-
gence analyst concluded, “To expect to predict or prevent any and all surprises is not
reasonable. But it is unreasonable to expect that intelligence analysts will not make
mistakes, just as policymakers have and will.”38
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Strategic Warning, 2002, https://www.cia.gov/library

/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/kent-vol1no1/html/v01n1p.htm
A senior CIA intelligence adviser and training officer’s assessment of how to avoid future
intelligence failures.
Joint Military Intelligence College, Intelligence Warning Terminology, October 2001, https://
archive.org/stream/JMICInteligencelwarnterminology/JMIC_intelligencewarnterminology
_djvu.txt
A useful collection of specialized warning concepts and terms as used in the Department
of Defense.
The 9/11 Commission Report, https://www.9–11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf
A well-written description of how the 9/11 attacks occurred and what intelligence agencies
were doing at the time.
FURTHER READING
Erik Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and
Beyond (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011).
Author makes the case that tactical intelligence failed to provide sufficient warning in
both cases.
John Gentry and Joseph Gordon, Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and
Prospects (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019).
The most recent and definitive treatment of warning by two recognized warning
practitioners.
Cynthia Grabo, Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning (Lanham, MD: Univer-
sity Press of America, 2004).
One of the earliest, and now declassified, treatments of the warning problem, which
remains a classic.
Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).
Author compares warning failures of these two cases and analyzes their causes and
impacts.
Janne Nolan and Douglas MacEachin, eds., Discourse, Dissent, and Strategic Surprise: Formu-
lating U.S. National Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2006).
Authors review a series of lesser-known cases where intelligence warnings were pro-
vided but not heeded by policymakers.
Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1962).
Study remains the classic description of an intelligence warning failure, arguing that too
much noise disguised available signals of a Japanese attack.
NOTES
First epigraph: John McCone quotation in the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection, as cited
in Charles E. Lathrop, The Literary Spy: The Ultimate Source for Quotations on Espionage and
Intelligence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 411.
Second epigraph: Henry Kissinger quotation from his memoir White House Years, cited in
Lathrop, Literary Spy, 413.
1. US Intelligence Board, DCI Directive No. 1/5, “Strategic Warning,” February 6,

1975, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91M00696R0006001500
12-2.pdf.
2. Cynthia Grabo, Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 2004). An “indication” is new information that reveals an adver-
sary’s intentions for aggressive action. Usually it includes specific changes in behavior or capa-
bilities that are defined as “indicators.” For example, new imagery showing a transfer of forces
along a contested border, a higher state of military readiness, or major buildup of ammunition
depots could be indicators of an intent to commence military actions.
3. Grabo, 37.
4. J. Eli Margolis, “Estimating State Instabilty,” Studies in Intelligence 56, no. 1 (March
2012): 13.
5. David Shlapak and Michael Johnson, Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank,
RAND Paper 1200, 2016, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports
/RR1200/RR1253/RAND_RR1253.pdf.
6. Once the launch of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles has been detected, nuclear
planners believed that a president would have no more than thirty minutes to make a decision
to launch American missiles before the ICBMs could destroy American land-based nuclear
missiles.
7. Grabo, Anticipating Surprise, 365.
8. These examples are drawn from a more comprehensive set of military indicators found
in John Gentry and Joseph Gordon, Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and
Prospects (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019).
9. See Richard Kerr and Michael Warner, “The Track Record of CIA’s Analysis,” in
Roger Z. George and James Bruce, eds., Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practi-
tioners’ Perspectives (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 41. One clear
exception was the Soviet biological weapons program that was not discovered until a high-
level defector revealed the extensive R&D conducted by Moscow in violation of its commit-
ment to the BW convention.
172 Chapter 7
10. Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (London: Penguin,
2008).
11. Roger George and James Wirtz, “Warning in an Age of Uncertainty,” in George and
Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence, 225.
12. See George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at CIA (New York: Harper
Collins, 2007), 133–74. Although a “hindsight” reflection, the chapter titled “They Are Coming
Here” recounts the CIA director’s unsuccessful efforts to draw attention to the grave danger of
a major attack in the spring and fall of 2001. It illustrates that warning messages may not be
convincing enough to produce action.
13. See the excellent description of the I&W methodology and strategic warning in John A.
Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon, Strategic Warning: History, Challenges, and Prospects (Wash-
ington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019).
14. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-
versity, 1962).
15. Erick Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to
9/11 and Beyond (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013).
16. See Eric Dahl, “Testing the Argument: Classic Cases of Surprise Attack,” in Dahl, Intel-
ligence and Surprise Attack, 69–70.
17. The volume by Graham Allison and Phil Zelikow, The Essence of Decision: Explaining
the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999), remains widely read and an authorita-
tive treatment of how Kennedy and his advisers negotiated the removal of missiles during the
thirteen-day crisis.
18. See his defense in Sherman Kent, “A Crucial Estimate Relived,” Studies in Intelligence
(Spring 1964), declassified, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence
/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/sherman-kent-and-the-board-of-national-estimates
-collected-essays/9crucial.html.
19. David S. Robarge, “CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War,” Studies in Intelligence
49, no. 1 (April 2007), https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi
-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no1/html_files/arab_israeli_war_1.html.
20. See Ephraim Kahana, “Early Warning Concept: The Case of the Yom Kippur War 1973,”
Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 2 (2002): 81–104.
21. Extracted and quoted from IIM Soviet Operations in Afghanistan, found in Janne Nolan
and Douglas MacEachin, eds., Discourse, Dissent, and Strategic Surprise: Formulating U.S.
National Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2006), 55.
22. Nolan and MacEachin, 62–63.
23. CIA and DIA assessments are described in John Diamond, The CIA and the Culture
of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2008 ), 141–56 and 126–27, respectively.
24. Diamond, CIA and Culture of Failure, 139–40.
25. For a defense of the CIA’s record on tracking the Soviet decline, see Bruce Berkowitz,
“Intelligence Estimates of the Soviet Collapse: Perception and Reality,” International Journal of
Intelligence and Counterintelligence 21 (2008): 237–50, https://www.cia.gov/library/reading
room/docs/20080229.pdf.
26. Cited in Jon Meacham, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert
Walker Bush (New York: Random House, 2015), 383.
27. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, a retired US Air Force lieutenant general,
had served as assistant air attaché in Yugoslavia in the early 1960s, and Deputy Secretary of
State Lawrence Eagleburger had been ambassador there in the late 1970s.
28. See Tenet, Center of the Storm.
29. Tenet, 151–52.
30. 9/11 Commission, Final Report of the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks
against the United States, 341, https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf.
31. See Paul Pillar’s critique of the 9/11 Commission’s work blaming the CIA and using the
9/11 attacks for justifying the unnecessary intelligence reforms that created the ODNI and the
NCTC. Paul Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
32. The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) is primarily focused on the collection of
human intelligence on terrorist organizations and has a small number of targeting analysts
assigned to it. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), created in 2004 and run by
the DNI, has overall responsibility for coordinating counterterrorism policies as well as for
producing finished intelligence analysis on counterterrorism threats. As part of a major orga-
nizational modernization in 2015, the CTC was combined with elements of the directorate of
operations and renamed the Mission Center for Counterterrorism.
33. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976).
34. See Gentry and Gordon, Strategic Warning, 82–89. The authors are generally critical
of the abandonment of a national warning system in which trained “warning analysts” would
devote their full attention to monitoring worrisome trends and for which formal training in
warning methodologies as well as foreign D&D techniques were emphasized.
35. ODNI, The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, February 2014, 7, https://
www.dni.gov/files/2014_NIS_Publication.pdf.
36. Richard Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National
Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 19.
37. Dahl, Intelligence and Surprise Attack, 176.
38. John Hedley, “Learning from Intelligence Failures,” International Journal of Intelli-
gence and Counterintelligence 18, no. 2 (February 2007), 447.
8
Intelligence Support
as Policy Enabler
The ultimate objective of intelligence is to enable action to be opti-

mized. The individual or body which has to decide on action needs
information about its opponent as an ingredient likely to be vital
in determining its decision; and this information may suggest that
action should be taken on a larger or smaller scale than that which
otherwise would be taken, or even that a different course of action
would be better.
—R. V. Jones, “Intelligence and Command,” 1989
Current operations intelligence includes the intelligence necessary

to support time-sensitive needs of the military, diplomatic, homeland
security and policy customers in times of conflict or crisis, but also
provides opportunities to shape future operations and desired opera-
tional outcomes.
—National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, 2019
Compared to long-range strategic intelligence forecasting or urgent warning analy-

sis, intelligence that is required for effective policy decisions or actions is far less vis-
ible or controversial. Yet in many respects this type of policy support is the lifeblood
of intelligence. It is occurring constantly in the form of current intelligence reporting,
analyst briefings, and interactions with policymakers in all national security depart-
ments on a wide range of topics. Thus, this chapter will review some of the major
ways in which intelligence contributes not only to the development of national secu-
rity policies but also to their actual implementation and operation. It will begin by
examining the role of current intelligence but then broaden into a discussion of sev-
eral unique forms of policy support to crisis management, diplomatic negotiations,
174
Intelligence Support as Policy Enabler175
and operational targeting. Providing such tactical support also raises some wicked
choices about how to spread limited resources across a vast list of targets and how to
satisfy both national and military intelligence users.
Once decision-makers have assessed a particular issue, considered the relevant
intelligence, and evaluated their possible courses of action, they announce a policy
or set in motion diplomatic, economic, or military actions. But intelligence is not fin-
ished supporting policy. In the case of North Korea, a presidential decision to pres-
sure Pyongyang to stop and eventually give up its nuclear weapons program may
include new diplomatic measures to isolate North Korea or to generate international
agreement to impose new economic sanctions. It might also involve military mea-
sures to strengthen South Korean missile defenses or other measures short of war. In
a worst case, a president might determine that some preemptive action is needed to
avert North Korean achievement of an intercontinental-range nuclear weapon system
that could directly threaten the United States homeland. Intelligence will play a role
in all aspects of American actions vis-à-vis Pyongyang.
Looking at this one example, one can envision a wide variety of intelligence analy-
sis or operations that can support different elements of an American strategy to con-
tain and curtail North Korean nuclear proliferation threats. Table 8.1 lays out some of
those types of direct intelligence support that policymakers might expect or ask for.
In these ways, intelligence is an “enabler” of US policy instruments—diplomatic, mil-
itary, economic, and informational. In the diplomatic field, intelligence can provide
assessments of how key foreign governments might react to American proposals in
international forums such as the UN Security Council and Asian regional security
organizations. At the same time, intelligence might be asked to provide briefings or
unclassified white papers (official reports not identified as written by intelligence
agencies)1 assessing North Korea’s nuclear programs, which can be used with allied
governments and publics as part of a “public diplomacy” campaign. As the inter-
national community, led by the United States, has imposed strenuous economic
sanctions on North Korean trade and financial dealings, intelligence is expected to
monitor and report on the impact those sanctions are having and whether any viola-
tions are occurring that need to be addressed. Potential military options will require
the intelligence community to identify key nuclear and missile facilities, their vul-
nerabilities, and their susceptibility to military or potentially nonkinetic attacks
(e.g., cyberattacks) designed to disable or destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile
programs.
As will be discussed in the next chapter, some intelligence planning could poten-
tially go into covert action operations designed to discredit or weaken the North
Korean regime’s stability or status as well as disrupt its military programs. In each
case, intelligence can provide “opportunity” analysis that highlights the regime’s
Table 8.1. Intelligence as Policy-Support “Enabler”: Examples for North Korea
Diplomatic Policy Economic Policy Informational Policy Military Policy
International Organizations Foreign Assistance Public Diplomacy Coercive Actions

• Prepare briefings to UN • Monitor illicit trafficking • Prepare white papers on • Support WMD interdiction
Security Council members • Identify critical shortfalls WMDs operations
• Support démarches on WMDs • Review government • Construct cyber actions
• Publish white papers statements/speeches • Plan covert operations
• Monitor foreign media
International Law Economic Sanctions Political Actions Paramilitary Actions
• Report on human rights • Monitor border traffic • Identify political • Support special operations forces’
violations • Report sanction violations vulnerabilities/opportunities plans to capture WMD devices
• Support extraditions/ • Assess regional impact • Assist strategic • Warn of / identify North Korean
renditions communication plans plans to attack South Korea
Alliances/Coalitions International Trade Policies Intelligence Sharing Force Short of War
• Assess Japanese and South • Monitor world markets • Share information with • Map suspect WMD sites/facilities
Korean plans/intentions • Support free-trade International Atomic Energy • Support intrusive inspection
• Forecast foreign public negotiations Agency regimes
reactions to US actions • Joint counterproliferation
operations
International Negotiations Humanitarian Operations Soft Power War Plans
• Assess North Korean/ • Monitor North Korean refugee • Assess North Korean public • Provide target information
Russian/Chinese negotiation flows to China diplomacy campaigns • Conduct bomb-damage
style/posture • Forecast casualty figures in • Monitor North Korean assessment
• Inform US negotiating case of conflict disinformation / cyber
position operations
Note: This figure was adapted from one used by Dr. Robert Levine in teaching intelligence at the National War College. Used by permission.
military or economic vulnerabilities, internal pressure points, or poor relations with

key partners that can be leveraged by US actions.
As table 8.1 makes clear, analysts are providing bits and pieces of information and
analysis related to various policy actions, where the policymakers are trying to deter-
mine how best to use an instrument or which possible countermeasures an adversary
might take if the United States were to initiate certain actions designed to increase
US leverage. Few of these intelligence activities should be transparent to the outside
observer, but they are critical contributions to enabling American policies to succeed.
In simple terms, intelligence analysis can enable decision-makers to choose the
best course of action. Few writers outside the IC, however, recognize the wide range
of analytical contributions to this phase in the policy process, which are less notice-
able than a major intelligence warning or prescient strategic analysis of an impor-
tant international development. As longtime intelligence professional and educator
Jack Davis has noted, there are literally thousands of what he termed “transactions”
between analyst and policymaker that fall into the category of policy support.2 The list
of such policy-support activities is almost endless, and the daily demands unending.
IC analysts receive such requests, or “taskings,” at interagency meetings as a result of
a one-to-one briefing or at the end of an important telephone or email conversation
with a policymaker. Here is where analysts are at their most objective and least likely to
be regarded as undermining current policies with critical analysis. Analysts are being
mostly instrumental in providing information, which “enables” current policy objec-
tives, regardless of whether analysts think the policy is correct or likely to succeed.
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
Current intelligence has been a steady staple of intelligence support to policymakers.

In contrast to strategic analysis, discussed in chapter 5, current intelligence is focused
more on the present than the future. But, if truth be told, most policymakers also oper-
ate more in the present than the future. Much of what the IC produces has to address
the current set of issues facing policymakers each morning when they reach their
offices or military headquarters. The virtue of current intelligence is that it can be
produced quickly and focus on those specific issues that are on each decision-mak-
er’s short-term agenda. As mentioned earlier in this volume, the range of intelligence
users and their intelligence needs is vast. Thus, current intelligence must be prepared
by multiple agencies and in a variety of forms. To a large degree, each policy agency’s
departmental intelligence element produces such products that are tailored to the
specific needs of their principal customers.
Large agencies such as the CIA and DIA produce their own unique current intel-
ligence publications. The CIA in the early 1950s had an Office of Current Intelligence
178 Chapter 8
devoted to the production of daily publications. This office—as opposed to the Office
of National Estimates—focused on fast-breaking events. Its Current Intelligence Bul-
letin (CIB) was produced for the president and senior officials. Over time, the OCI
broadened the distribution of its daily publication while also writing a version—later
known as the President’s Daily Briefing—exclusively for the president. These CIB pub-
lications were notable for their brevity and lack of deep analysis; they were intended to
be quick updates on breaking events, not strategic assessments of long-term trends.
As box 8.1 illustrates, early current intelligence reports covered in a few pages a half
dozen topics that summarized a day’s events with only brief comments on their sig-
nificance. In these excerpts on Korea, analysts reported on recent announcements by
the Chinese government regarding termination of 1950–53 conflict. This would have
been a high priority topic for President Eisenhower, who inherited the UN military
operation from the outgoing Truman administration and had pledged to end it.
Such CIA current intelligence products got lengthier and more sophisticated
over time as policymakers demanded coverage of more aspects of the Cold War.
What began as the CIB evolved into the National Intelligence Daily (NID), which
was distributed to dozens of senior officials in the NSC, the State Department, and
the Defense Department as well as to other intelligence agencies. The NID became
for many decades the document of record regarding what CIA analysts were report-
ing on a daily basis. In the intervening years, the information technology revolution
Box 8.1 1954 Current Intelligence Bulletin (Excerpts on Korea)
September 17, 1954 FAR EAST
1. Chinese to permit neutral surveillance of troop withdrawal from Korea.
The Neutral National Inspection Team at Sinanju, North Korea, reported on 16 September
that it had received official notification that seven Chinese Communist divisions would leave
Korea starting next week. The movement, under the surveillance of the NNIT will consist of
ten trains daily, each composed of from 20–24 cars.
Comment: Peiping’s public announcement on 5 September of its intention to withdraw these

divisions was a departure from its usual practice, and undoubtedly was intended to counter-
act the announcement of UN withdrawals. At the time of the announcement, it was not clear
whether the Chinese intended to withdraw troops in addition to those which had previously
returned to China unannounced.
By permitting NNIT surveillance for the first time, the Communists are attempting to
strengthen their case in the UN General Assembly against expected moves to terminate
the mission of the teams. If these divisions are infantry units, their withdrawal would reduce
Chinese strength in Korea from 709,000 to 604,000.
Sources: CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, Current Intelligence Bulletin, approved for release January 16, 2004.
and decision-makers’ need for rapid intelligence support pushed the transformation
of the NID into a quicker publication called the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief
(SEIB); that then morphed into an even more sophisticated daily publication called
the Worldwide Intelligence Report, or WIRe. As its acronym conveys, this is very
user-friendly and electronically distributed to other civilian decision-makers, military
commanders, and intelligence agencies across the government and overseas.
Other intelligence agencies, however, were also providing daily publications and
briefings for their departmental customers. At the DIA, intelligence analysts prepare
daily summaries of politico-military developments around the world. The DIA is
responsible for supporting not only the secretary of defense and his civilian defense
experts throughout the Pentagon but also for supporting the Joint Staff and the
military combatant commanders around the globe. Short intelligence items, termed
Defense Intelligence Notices (DINs), were compiled in two daily publications called
the Defense Intelligence Summary (DINSUM) and the Military Intelligence Digest
(MID). These products aimed at providing “situational awareness” wherever US
defense forces or interests were at risk; naturally, they primarily reported foreign mili-
tary capabilities and threats as well as related political and economic developments
that would impact US defense policies. In comparative terms, the DINSUM and the
MID were equivalent to the CIA’s NID, SEIB, and the later WIRe publications. Like the
CIA, the DIA produced a more exclusive intelligence summary for the secretary of
defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the Morning Summary, which
was not widely circulated and emulated the PDB in terms of its sensitivity and narrow
distribution. The DIA also supported the J-2’s daily Chairman’s Brief, which was an
oral presentation of the most important topics with PowerPoint slides that could be
later circulated electronically to some other parts of the Pentagon.3 The agency also
set up a special office that provided direct support to senior customers in the Penta-
gon via a system of briefers.
These intelligence products could run more than two dozen pages as they
attempted to update politico-military events wherever US defense interests were at
stake; their customers might be officials in the Pentagon, on the Joint Staff, or over-
seas commanders in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. Depending on the individual
users’ interests, some daily items had direct relevance, while other updates would be
far outside a reader’s area of responsibility. Given their broad distribution, they often
did not contain the most sensitive defense information. The example provided in box
8.2 illustrates how the DIA was obliged in the 1960s to follow political events that
might impact the US military campaign in Vietnam. Defense intelligence analysts
were assessing how China would react to President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to
halt the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and they concluded it would not
result in any major Chinese shift in commitment to Hanoi or its defense production.
180 Chapter 8
Box 8.2 1966 Defense Intelligence Summary (Excerpts on China)
January 3, 1966 DINSUM FAR EAST ASIA SECTION
Developments in Communist China
No Chinese Communist military reaction to the pause in US air strikes in North Vietnam has
been detected.
Peiping has, however, issued a stinging restatement of its position on Vietnam. An edito-
rial in the authoritative Party organ, People’s Daily, of 1 January asserted that the US was
merely spreading a peace smokescreen to conceal preparations for an expanded war and
that “unconditional discussions” meant “unconditional surrender.” Chinese efforts to pre-
vent any peace talks are, therefore, likely to continue.
A spate of year-end reports out of Peiping noted Chinese industrial achievements during
1965 and announced the beginning of the long-awaited Third Five-Year Plan on 1 January. . . .
The Chinese expect progress to be slow and calculate it will take from 20 to 30 years for
their economy to surpass those of “advanced countries.”
The new plan shows some signs of being especially tailored to meet commitment in Vietnam
and to a possible showdown with the US. People’s Daily said on 31 December that national
defense would be bolstered and basic industry, communications, and transport strength-
ened. . . . Chinese leaders indicated that they were still primarily concerned with economic
priorities and feared that emphasis on military production would have adverse effects on
food production.
Source: Freedom of Information Act release, Defense Intelligence Summary, #10–66, January 13, 1966.
While large intelligence agencies such as the DIA and CIA produce current prod-
ucts for their many customers on a diverse set of security topics, smaller intelligence
agencies tend not to produce daily reports but rather issue current intelligence
reports when developments warrant it or when tasked by specific policymakers to
assess a particular topic they are following. For example, the State Department’s
Bureau of Intelligence and Research has adopted this model. For a time, INR strug-
gled to produce a daily current intelligence product comparable to CIA and DIA
publications; of course, it focused on a range of topics of interest to a secretary of
state and the assistant secretaries responsible for regional diplomatic policies, nego-
tiations, or other politico-military affairs. This document was known as the Secre-
tary’s Morning Summary. Like the NID and the DINSUM, it covered a dozen or more
topics but had to do that in no more than a dozen pages. The Secretary’s Morning
Summary was welcomed by many secretaries of state because it addressed issues
they cared about; however, in many ways it duplicated what was found in CIA publi-
cations. Moreover, INR has only a very small cadre of intelligence analysts and so its
leadership decided in the early 2000s to discontinue producing a daily intelligence
Box 8.3 1994 State Department Secretary’s Morning Summary

(Excerpt on DPRK)
January 29, 1994 DPRK: Reaction to Patriots
Precisely how Pyongyang reacts to reports of US plans to deploy Patriots in

South Korea will be determined, in part, by what else happens in the days and
weeks ahead. For now, the North is holding its options open.
First Reaction: The North’s initial response to the news of Patriot deployments, an unattrib-
uted commentary issued yesterday, is typical of what Pyongyang does in the initial stages
of a new situation: the North wants to record its strong opposition without committing itself
to any line of action while it sorts out its options. A higher-level, more definitive response—a
NoDong Sinmum editorial or a foreign ministry statement, for example—awaits leadership
decisions that usually take several days.
Though mostly a pastiche of themes that have appeared in other commentaries over the
past month, this first response to the Patriots is clearly intended to signal that, at least for
now, there has been no decision to back away from diplomatic engagement with the United
States on the nuclear issues.
Breathing space
The commentary notes that the Patriots have not yet arrived and that the deployment is still
only a “plan.” By portraying the process as in an early phase, the North has given itself room
to maneuver. . . . The characterization of the plan to introduce Patriots as an “unpardonable
grave military advantage,” and the warning that pressure on the North may lead to a “catas-
trophe,” are not unusual, especially in this sort of low-level, unattributed piece.
Source: State Department Review Authority, declassified August 11, 2008.
product and move toward more tailored intelligence reports for specific senior dip-
lomatic officials. That said, it was not uncommon for some occupants of the White
House to complain that they liked the writing style found in the Secretary’s Morning
Summary and learned more from it than they did from CIA publications. As box
8.3 demonstrates, this discontinued intelligence product might focus on coercive
diplomatic efforts, such as the 1994 movement of US Patriot antimissile batteries
to South Korea (“DPRK” referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or
North Korea).
President’s Daily Brief: Coin of the Realm

Having described broadly the range of current intelligence products produced and
circulated widely among national security agencies, one should acknowledge that
these publications were not intended to radically shape or alter major US policies.
However, by contrast, the President’s Daily Brief is likely the most influential and
182 Chapter 8
actionable current intelligence publication that the IC produces. This daily summary
of current events designed for the president has been a feature of US intelligence
since Harry Truman first requested a consolidated digest of intelligence drawn from
all government sources. The CIA produced this first compilation of intelligence
reporting, then called the Daily Summary, beginning on February 15, 1946. It was a
simple, two-page document focused principally on Cold War issues emanating from
Germany, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and China.4 From then on, each successive president
has received a daily summary of the most sensitive reporting on the world’s hot spots
that threaten US national security interests. In the early days, this daily publication
carried a variety of names (e.g., Current Intelligence Bulletin and the President’s Intel-
ligence Checklist) and formats; it was not until 1964 when it became formally known
as the President’s Daily Brief. Given a president’s crowded schedule, the document
seldom exceeded more than a dozen pages. Former CIA director Allen Dulles termed
it “snappy, short, but at the same time fairly comprehensive” in its effort to cover the
past twenty-four hours of world events that mattered.5 Until the 1980s, the existence
of the PDB was not widely known.
The PDB began as an exclusively CIA publication, although periodically other
agencies’ analysts were invited to submit articles or to provide their own comments
on and dissents to the CIA’s analysis. After 2005, with the creation of the Director of
National Intelligence, the DNI became responsible for preparing the PDB. Thus, the
PDB is now a community product that can contain articles prepared by other analytical
offices at INR, the DIA, and others. For many at the CIA, loss of exclusive control over
the PDB to the DNI was an emotional blow, from which analysts have gradually recov-
ered. In fact, CIA analysts continue to prepare most PDB items. In reality, most other
agencies’ analysts consider their department’s officials, not the White House, to be
their principal customers, and they dread the complicated and time-consuming PDB
coordination process. Although the DNI oversees its preparation, the PDB is reviewed,
edited, and assembled at CIA headquarters. Thus, in practical terms, the PDB remains
a largely CIA product, and as former CIA director Robert Gates put it, “Writing for the
PDB . . . was the reason for our existence.”6
Several things distinguish the PDB from other current intelligence reporting. First,
its exclusivity allows for the inclusion of extremely sensitive intelligence and more
explanation of sources (including very restricted SIGINT and HUMINT reporting)
than would otherwise be permitted in daily publications distributed broadly through-
out the government. For more than a few decades, the very existence of the PDB was
not disclosed beyond the Oval Office or the CIA. The document was considered so
sensitive that it was sent via courier and retrieved after the president finished with it.
The PDB was truly the president’s document. Accordingly, each president has
established his own list of recipients. It is not unusual for that list to be extremely
narrow at the beginning of an administration. In a few cases, only the president and
his national security adviser have initially received the PDB. Vice presidents did
not regularly see the PDB until Gerald Ford held that office. Typically, however, as a
president’s time in office lengthened, more recipients would be added. This becomes
almost unavoidable, as items in the PDB could prompt a president to start a discus-
sion with his secretaries of state and defense about an issue. Hence, it soon proved
necessary to include those senior officials, in addition to the national security adviser.
As often as not, the eventual distribution list will include—in addition to the presi-
dent, vice president, and national security adviser—the White House chief of staff,
the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. In most instances, each of these officials’ deputies (who attend the Depu-
ties Committee meetings where presidential policies are often hashed out) will also
receive the PDB. Hence, depending on a president’s style and comfort with intelli-
gence sharing, the list could range from a handful to a dozen or more senior officials
across the government. Since 9/11 and the growing concern about terrorism, the PDB
has been provided to the FBI director and the secretary of homeland security, as they
now carry major national security responsibilities for protecting the homeland.
A second characteristic unique to the PDB is that it is redesigned to suit each presi-
dent’s own preferences. Formatting and length will change to suit a president who is a
comfortable or uncomfortable reader. The use of graphics, maps, and photo imagery
augment the attractiveness of the publication. For example, a typical PDB might show
charts of increased Chinese military spending over time or photos of the latest North
Korean missile launch site or nuclear test. If a president was particularly interested
in a topic, the PDB might carry a special analysis or include raw clandestine or dip-
lomatic reporting on that topic. In its latest iteration, the PDB is now provided on a
classified iPad so that each of the articles is available electronically. Its virtues include
good graphics and more storage so that additional reporting and other intelligence
products can be loaded onto the iPad should a recipient have further questions raised
by a PDB item.7
A third unique feature of the PDB is its production process and presentation. Each
morning, analysts will review their message traffic and determine if a current intel-
ligence item needs to be prepared; only a few of these current items are ever judged
of “presidential level” interest. For example, President Trump is likely interested in
statements issued by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and how they should be inter-
preted or the latest missile tests conducted by Iran. Those items will receive much
more extensive review by analysts and their supervisors, knowing that they must pass
muster with senior intelligence officials before they will be included in the PDB. An
analyst might spend a day or more writing, revising, and coordinating the article with
other analysts across their agency and the IC more broadly. Once that is finished, PDB
184 Chapter 8
editors will examine the item to determine whether it would be of high-level interest
and reflects critical information or analysis that would be new to the president. Even
after the item is edited and approved by the editorial staff, the analyst’s job is not
yet done. Presuming that this article will appear in the next day’s PDB, the analyst is
obliged to arrive at the office in the early hours that next day to review any new infor-
mation that came in during the night that might require revising the article.
In addition, the PDB has become the only current intelligence product that regularly
is conveyed by a “briefer.” Since the days when the PDB was transported via courier,
those individuals have now become senior-level briefers of the PDB for the recipients.
Depending on the president (and other recipients), the briefer may simply hand over
the document, or the briefer might highlight or summarize orally the key items. That
means the president (as well as other recipients) will have several analysts assigned to
provide him his daily intelligence brief. Analysts selected for such assignments have
to be more than just good analysts; indeed, they must be fast learners, well spoken, and
have thick skins for tough feedback provided to them by demanding c onsumers. These
briefing assignments are coveted positions, as they come to know what the president
is interested in, how much information he has already received on any given topic, and
what particular complaints or kudos he has for the PDBs he has received.
This daily feedback is very important for shaping the intelligence reporting to
suit presidential needs. Equally important, it also motivates analysts to undertake
the onerous PDB process for a president and other senior officials when they know
their work has impact. Hence, the analyst drafting a PDB will be expected to meet
the president’s briefer on that early morning in order to prepare the briefer for
follow-up questions that the president might have about the piece. Typically, PDB
briefers also want to hear from the analyst how good the sourcing is, in case the
president probes on “how we know something” or asks how confident the IC is in
these judgments.
Early each morning, PDB briefers spread out across Washington, DC, to their
respective recipients, prepared to hand over their documents, explain items, take
follow-up questions, and return to their offices to debrief senior intelligence officials
and analysts on how the PDB was received. In the case of the White House, PDB
briefers will often provide separate briefings to the national security adviser and pos-
sibly the vice president prior to briefing the president, when those individuals and
others such as the chief of staff might also be in attendance. A former PDB briefer for
President George W. Bush, Michael Morell, described his preparation process in the
following fashion:
It was my job to deliver the PDB—five days a week during the transition
and six days a week after the inauguration. I’d start work at 4 a.m., sifting
through the most critical pieces of current intelligence and analysis, decid-
ing which ones to present and in what order, cramming additional infor-
mation on each topic into my head in case the president or any of the
others in the room—almost always Vice President Dick Cheney, National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and White House Chief of Staff Andy
Card—had additional questions, as they almost always did. . . . It was like
preparing to orally defend several graduate school dissertations every day,
six days a week.8
A final educational feature of the PDB is worth mentioning. When incoming presi-
dents receive their initial PDB briefing, it is often their first exposure to intelligence.
Traditionally, during election campaigns, major candidates will receive several gen-
eral briefings; however, the president-elect will begin to get the full PDB only after the
election. Thus, the PDB process becomes a way of educating a president and other
recipients not only on the wide range of national security topics but also about what
the intelligence community can provide. Over a presidential term of four or possibly
eight years, presidential learning curves will flatten out, so material presented in the
PDB at the start of an administration is most likely far too general and unfocused for
a seasoned president. The president will become more knowledgeable about foreign
affairs and perhaps more demanding of intelligence as time goes on. In cases where
presidents receive the PDB briefer each day and develop a good working relationship,
they can push intelligence to provide far more insight than those who do not meet
regularly with their briefers.
The PDB process also educates the IC about presidential style and needs. It can
help to determine how much and what kind or forms of information a new president
wants. Sadly, this process takes some time before a new president can come to trust
the IC is working for him and not his predecessor. Even so, most cabinet officials privy
to the PDB feel obliged to review it since they know it is available to the president,
vice president, and the national security adviser. At the moment, it is far from clear
whether President Trump has developed a real relationship with the PDB briefer or
any familiarity with how this document can serve him. The few media reports on how
Trump approaches intelligence suggest that the PDB writers have tried to focus on
economic topics, using graphics as much as possible.9
SPECIALIZED TYPES OF POLICY SUPPORT
The PDB and National Intelligence Estimates garner the most attention of outside
observers of the IC’s work, but there is much more specialized policy-support work
that seldom if ever is noticed or understood. These types of policy support range
186 Chapter 8
from intelligence provided to diplomats for negotiations, to that used to support mili-
tary and civilian crisis managers, to intelligence supporting ongoing operations to
counter other threats, such as terrorism, proliferation, and drug trafficking. Describ-
ing a few such examples will illustrate how different these activities are from strategic
analysis, warning, or current intelligence reporting.
Intelligence Support to Diplomatic Negotiations

Policy support might also be described as a kind of “scouting” function the analyst
can provide to senior officials. In numerous negotiation arenas over the years, US
diplomats have wanted to put themselves into the shoes of the adversary or ally to
understand what their negotiating strategy might be. Analysts are often called on
to imagine how the other party will behave in those negotiations, what their bottom
lines will be, and what compromises they might be willing to strike. In other cases,
they are providing technical analysis or assessments for arms control negotiations
involving nuclear, chemical, or conventional weapons. As one former intelligence
adviser to the US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, put it, “Intelligence is
the silent partner in these diplomatic endeavors, rarely acknowledged or recognized.
Intelligence is a support function to diplomacy, not a peer relationship.”10 Without
suggesting what the United States should do, analysts—either as advisers to a US del-
egation or in written assessments—often can indirectly suggest how to play an issue
to the best American advantage or provide information that can strengthen the US
bargaining position.
Throughout the US-Soviet era of arms control negotiations, CIA analysts were
part of the negotiating process. They brought their knowledge of the opposing Soviet
military capabilities and past negotiating behavior along with an understanding
of Kremlin politics to help shape an effective American strategy. In those bilateral
diplomatic negotiations, military analysts could advise American diplomats on the
composition and capabilities of Soviet forces—often providing surprisingly detailed
facts about Soviet nuclear weapons that the Russian military had not shared with
their own negotiators. Moreover, intelligence support had to also assess the implica-
tions of a strategic arms treaty’s provisions. The first question was, Would the treaty
improve Moscow’s forces relative to the United States? Analysts had to forecast how
Soviet forces would be able to modernize under the treaty terms. However, a second
question for the IC always was whether it could adequately monitor an arms control
treaty and detect any militarily significant treaty violations. In the 1970s, monitor-
ing the major arms control agreements limiting each superpower’s nuclear arsenal
rested largely on the use of national technical means (NTM).11 In simple terms, it
meant that each party’s intelligence assets would be used to monitor compliance
(see box 8.4). Much of the debate regarding those treaties had to do with whether
Box 8.4 National Technical Means
National technical means is the term referred to in many bilateral US-Soviet arms control
agreements when referring to each country’s reliance on its own national intelligence assets
to monitor compliance with the SALT, ABM, INF, and START I Treaties’ limitations. US reliance
on its NTM practically means using its multidiscipline intelligence collection systems of all
kinds. However, it has traditionally meant heavy reliance on nonintrusive overhead recon-
naissance satellites that collect SIGINT and imagery of weapon sites, test ranges, produc-
tion facilities, and other significant aspects of an opponent’s military capabilities that are
covered by a specific treaty. In fact, the design and deployment of overhead surveillance
systems in the 1970s and 1980s essentially focused on monitoring Soviet capabilities and
helped to make arms control agreements possible.
In some of those treaties, each party also agreed to certain “cooperative measures” that
would allow NTM to monitor compliance with key treaty limitations. Some of these included
banning the use of camouflage or coverings over missile sites or the encryption of telemetry
information used by a party to monitor a weapon system’s operational capabilities. Informa-
tion exchanges were also called for in many agreements to facilitate verification of weapon
numbers and locations.
Separate from NTM, some US-Soviet treaties also included a set number of on-site inspec-
tions to verify the destruction or removal of prohibited systems. Indeed, there is still an
agreement in place that permits a small number of aerial overflights of Russia and the
United States by each other’s reconnaissance aircraft to verify aspects of some treaties that
are still in effect.
Source: Amy Woolf, Monitoring and Verification in Arms Control, Congressional Research Service, December 23,
2011, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41201.pdf.
the IC could detect Soviet cheating. Administrations often had to commit to funding
additional defense programs—including intelligence collection—to reassure skepti-
cal senators that ratifying those treaties was in the best interest of the United States.
To support SALT negotiations, the CIA initially established a small team of mili-
tary analysts called the “SALT support staff.” When developing an interagency con-
sensus on a proposed arms control negotiation, this staff and its larger successors
were responsible for representing the IC’s views on the agreements’ impact on the
respective US-Soviet military balance. Intelligence analysts would participate in the
interagency process, providing briefings on Soviet force levels and plans as well as
presenting the IC’s views on which treaty provisions were most needed to be able
to monitor a treaty. Many times these interagency “negotiations” over monitoring
requirements were as important and fractious as those that had to be hammered out
with the Soviets; when it came to on-site inspections, the IC would propose more
intrusive measures on Soviet programs than the Pentagon would want to permit on
American defense programs.12
188 Chapter 8
Once the United States had developed its negotiating strategy, it was the job of
this staff to provide updated intelligence assessments to the SALT negotiating teams
meeting in Geneva. This SALT support staff was also made available to advise mem-
bers of the US delegation. In preparing for the later SALT II Treaty ratification, the
then CIA director Stansfield Turner further underlined the IC’s role in three areas:
• assessing the size, capabilities, and future potential of the Soviet strategic
forces to be limited by the agreement
• providing timely, responsive support to policymaking agencies and officials
in the process of developing US positions and in negotiating the agreement
• providing assessments of the US capability to monitor proposed treaty
provisions13
Regarding the monitoring responsibility, this activity included ensuring that

intelligence-collection and analytical resources were adequately assigned to that mis-
sion in order to be able to report on Soviet compliance and support US officials who
had to reach decisions regarding Soviet violations. Senior intelligence officials also
had to testify before congressional armed services and foreign relations committees
to explain how well the IC could monitor those agreements. Many expensive over-
head reconnaissance programs were approved largely to ensure that arms control
treaties could be adequately monitored and approved by the Senate.
Later, as arms control grew in importance in the 1980s—when the United States
was engaged in multiple negotiations over strategic nuclear weapons and interme-
diate nuclear forces (INF) in Europe as well as the conventional forces in Europe
(CFE) reduction talks in Vienna—this staff expanded and became known as the Arms
Control Intelligence Staff (ACIS).14 The ACIS became the IC’s—not just the CIA’s—
clearinghouse for collection and analysis for answering negotiation team questions,
monitoring and assessing treaty compliance, and briefing senior executive branch
officials as well as congressional oversight committees on the intelligence impli-
cations of various arms control agreements. In the case of the INF and CFE treaty
negotiations, ACIS was also actively briefing NATO allies regarding Soviet positions
and on-site inspection provisions in order to build European support for American
negotiation approaches. In this respect, intelligence was playing a direct diplomatic
support role for US policies.
Likewise, today one finds many analysts working to support difficult negotiations
vis-à-vis North Korea, Iran, and other states, whose intentions and actions require
serious all-source analysis and deep expertise. At the CIA, the office most respon-
sible for policy support for these issues through the 1990s and early 2000s was the
Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). This
office housed analysts knowledgeable about the processes involved in developing

weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, and biological programs.
As the name implies, it also serviced the needs of policy agencies engaged in pre-
venting the spread of WMD technologies, including negotiations that might be pur-
sued to that end. During President Obama’s terms of office, the then CIA director
Leon Panetta reorganized WINPAC by combining most of its analytical elements
with the separate Counterproliferation Center of the Directorate of Operations that
was responsible for tracking and disrupting proliferation networks. This new Mis-
sion Center for Counterproliferation (previously known as the CTC) thus became the
CIA’s counterpart to the DNI’s National Counterproliferation Center—similar to how
the CIA’s Mission Center for Counterterrorism (a combined operation by the Direc-
torate of Analysis and the Directorate of Operations) complements the DNI-managed
National Counterterrorism Center.
In the nonproliferation field, the United States has been an active participant in
the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime as well as the Chemical Weapons and Bio-
logical Weapons Conventions. In each case, when US diplomats enter into diplomatic
discussions or formal negotiations, they can depend on the IC to support their intel-
ligence needs. Thus, a prime example of the kinds of intelligence support to interna-
tional negotiations can be seen in how the US delegation to the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) operates in Vienna. The US ambassador to the IAEA heads the
American delegation,,15 which—in addition to its role of assisting in the peaceful uses
of nuclear power—is principally responsible for controlling and monitoring the nuclear
activities of nonnuclear NPT member states.16 In this capacity, the ambassador repre-
sents US views on suspected nuclear activities in such places as Iran, North Korea, and
previously Syria. To do this effectively, the ambassador relies heavily on intelligence
support provided by WMD analysts, some of whom are part of his team in Vienna.
The ambassador to the IAEA has had a unique and close arrangement with the IC.
The United States has placed a high priority on monitoring nonproliferation threats
and presenting compelling arguments to the IAEA board regarding the proliferation
threats from countries such as Iran and North Korea. This makes intelligence sup-
port essential. Accordingly, the ambassador can rely on his or her intelligence team
to highlight the latest intelligence—both raw and finished—that arrives daily via CIA
support cables. Moreover, given the salience of Iran and North Korea’s nuclear pro-
grams, the IAEA ambassador can reach back to Washington and talk to senior WMD
intelligence experts there whenever additional or special kinds of intelligence sup-
port are needed. In addition to the small intelligence team in Vienna, other WMD
analysts can be sent to the mission for short periods on special projects or to provide
in-depth briefings to the US delegation and in some cases to foreign delegations at
the IAEA.
190 Chapter 8
Importantly, the IAEA is heavily dependent on member states such as the United
States providing information to the organization in order to prepare its reports on
compliance with NPT safeguards. Naturally, the United States has been a critically
important partner for the IAEA in monitoring suspect activities in Iran and North
Korea. In exchange, the US mission can also provide intelligence analysts with impor-
tant insights into foreign governments’ attitudes toward IAEA safeguards compliance
and inspections of suspect sites. This two-way street illustrates how the intelligence-
policy relationship is perhaps the most intimate and least fractious when focused on
implementing US policies.
Target Analysis: An Expanding Mission

The chapter’s earlier discussion about intelligence’s enabling role noted that intel-
ligence supports many US activities involving the threat or use of force. Historically,
military intelligence organizations have been involved in developing target sets for
foreign military production plants, bases, equipment, and the forces themselves. Mili-
tary intelligence analysts working in the individual military services or later in the
Defense Intelligence Agency were assigned the job of identifying military threats and
any vulnerabilities in adversaries’ military systems that could be exploited. For much
of the Cold War, these skills were trained on the Soviet Union, Communist China,
and their allies. In America’s wars in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere, a form of target
analysis was central to reducing the enemy’s military production, logistics, and force
concentration. In Vietnam, for example, there had to be extensive military target anal-
ysis to conduct the bombing campaigns over North Vietnam and to interdict Hanoi’s
supply routes into the south. More recently, military target analysis was used to iden-
tify key Bosnian and Serbian military targets for NATO’s air strikes that were used
to compel the warring parties to negotiate peace settlements in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Such targeting requires analysts to combine information gained from HUMINT,
SIGINT, and open sources to identify and monitor a range of objects or even indi-
viduals. For many military operations, the work of defense intelligence organizations
such as the NGA, NSA, and DIA has played a central role. But in large-scale oper-
ations, the CIA was also called on to provide such target analysis. For example, in
the case of Bosnia, President Bill Clinton placed the highest intelligence priority on
American “force protection,” which practically meant that even the CIA was asked to
identify possible Serbian targets. In addition, the CIA has also been involved in bomb
damage assessment, requiring military analysts to examine targets attacked by US
forces to determine whether they have been destroyed. But in the pre-9/11 period, the
CIA considered target analysis to be a minor responsibility.
All of this changed after the September 2001 attacks. Within the CIA’s Counter-
terrorism Center, there had been a small cadre of operators and analysts who were
responsible for tracking terrorist networks. As early as 1995, a few analysts from
CIA’s DA joined some DO officers to begin working on Afghanistan and investigat-
ing a group that became known as al-Qaida (The Base). This CIA unit—known as
Alec Station—became the core of the al-Qaeda target analysis team. It had prepared
numerous reports on a little-known Saudi who had fought in Afghanistan against the
Soviets and helped to finance the mujahideen. The team examined operational intel-
ligence reporting and developed a good understanding of the al-Qaeda network’s
financing, recruitment, leadership, and operational capabilities. These few target ana-
lysts continued to write some PDB items and other longer reports for policymakers,
but they were increasingly drawn into supporting DO operations to help track, locate,
and apprehend known terrorists. Unlike most analysts in the CIA’s DA who have little
day-to-day contact with operations officers, target analysts were immersed in opera-
tional-level discussions with collectors. They knew their sources better than almost
any other analytical group in the CIA.17 Their numbers remained small, growing
slowly after the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania but then
expanding rapidly after the 9/11 attacks (see box 8.5).
In order to augment the few target analysts already in the CTC, the CIA turned to
analysts in the agency’s crime and counternarcotics center, who also were trained in
following narco-traffickers and organized crime groups and assisting operations offi-
cers and law enforcement in apprehending them. Such skills transferred well to the
counterterrorism operations that were scaled up at the CTC and later the NCTC. As
a former chief of the counternarcotics center explained target analysis, “Rather than
focusing on the preparation of analytic assessments to support the policy decision
process, target analysts within the intelligence community seek to develop detailed
understanding of individuals, networks, and organizations for operational purposes.
Those operational objectives can range from developing plans to collect further
Box 8.5 Targeting Analysis: Bin Laden Raid
In the summer and early fall of 2010, I did not know that a small cell of analysts at CIA had
acquired a lead on a courier thought to be in contact with Bin Laden. In the end, he would
be found not through the $25 million reward or any help from the Pakistanis. Bin Laden was
found through old-fashioned detective work and long, painstaking analysis by CIA experts.
There would be a lot of heroes in the Bin Laden raid and even more people in Washington
who would take credit for it, but without those extraordinary analysts at CIA, there would
have been no raid.
—Robert Gates, former secretary of defense, 2014
Source: Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense (New York: Knopf, 2014), 538–39.
192 Chapter 8
intelligence on the persons or organizations involved to designing operations to dis-

rupt their activities.”18
Today target analysis is considered a major analytical discipline, on par with politi-
cal, military, or economic analysis. Defense intelligence agencies as well as the CIA
are recruiting and training analysts for these challenging assignments. Much of the
training every analyst receives on weighing evidence and evaluating sources, fer-
reting out deception, filling intelligence gaps, and employing structured analytical
techniques is very relevant. What distinguishes target analysis are the different data
sets and sources, some of the specialized data-mining tools, and network-analysis
techniques that are used against a range of targets. Thus, target analysis can be
aimed at terrorism, WMD proliferation, insurgencies, narco-trafficking, and counter
intelligence or cyber threats. While such analysts still write threat assessments for
policymakers, they are much more engaged in providing close support to intelligence
operators, the military, and law enforcement officials responsible for identifying and
removing those threats.
Crisis Management: Task Force Reporting

Daily tactical intelligence support is perhaps most crucial during crises when senior
officials are trying to understand fast-changing events in far-flung lands. To manage
these crises, policymakers often require more than the customary intelligence report-
ing. Hence, when major events are unfolding, the CIA and other agencies will often
establish special task forces of analysts drawn from different parts of their agencies to
provide more in-depth and around-the-clock coverage of an issue. One early example
of this was the CIA’s coverage during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Having discovered
Soviet missile shipments, the CIA quickly assembled a team to increase collection
coverage and produce situation reports (“sit-reps”) on developments in Moscow, in
Havana, and in the waters around the island nation. During those famous thirteen
days, overhead collection was resumed, and SIGINT coverage increased on Soviet
vessels approaching the island and on Soviet missile crews at the suspected missile
sites. HUMINT sources were debriefed for whatever information they could reveal
about the state of readiness of those missiles. Analysts provided frequent updates,
including imagery of the missile sites themselves.
In what was perhaps the most famous public use of highly classified U-2 photos,
US ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented the evidence of Soviet missiles to the UN
Security Council, proving that the United States had caught the Soviet Union red-
handed. Military analysts briefed President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Committee
of the National Security Council frequently and were called on to make estimates of
when those missiles might be operational. All of this information played directly into
Kennedy’s own calculation of how much time he had to negotiate their withdrawal.
Because of their resource demands, task forces are created only for short periods
of time during the most acute crises. When there was the prospect or outbreak of war
in the Middle East, task forces have been assembled. Similarly, when crises occurred
within the Soviet sphere of influence—for example, during the Soviet suppression of
the Prague Spring in 1968 or the Polish martial law was invoked in 1981—task forces
were used to monitor and report on Soviet diplomatic and military moves.19 Task
forces are particularly useful when there is an urgent need for quick and coordinated
responses to policy needs; they can bring together all the expertise on a problem,
expedite collection requirements to the many different collectors, and ensure that
intelligence is providing a coherent and common picture of a crisis situation.
One early example of this kind of policy support was the establishment of the Bal-
kan Task Force (BTF), born out of the 1990 dissolution of Yugoslavia. Established
in June 1992, it became the first and longest-lasting interagency task force in the
IC’s history. For more than thirty months, the BTF followed the breakup of Yugosla-
via, which began during President George H. W. Bush’s term and continued through
most of President Clinton’s first term. At the time, the then CIA director Robert Gates
announced its creation to assist President Bush in managing what many feared would
be a spreading instability in the entire Balkans region.20 In practice, much of its work
focused on the Bosnian War and anti-Serbian sanctions.
The BTF’s organizational structure illustrates the wide range of policy-support
functions that intelligence can provide to presidents and their civilian and mili-
tary advisers. The BTF had three major functions: (1) to centralize and coordinate
enhanced collection against the Balkans crisis, (2) to centralize and coordinate
economic-sanctions monitoring on Serbia and its allies, and (3) to coordinate general
and tactical military intelligence support to US policy. In practical terms, this led to
the CIA’s inclusion of senior collection representatives from the NSA, the DIA, and
its own DO into the task force team in order to ensure higher intelligence-collection
priorities that presidential decisions would need. The BTF also established three sep-
arate analytical groups to follow these activities and provide direct support to differ-
ent aspects of US policy:
• Political Group: Prepared current-intelligence and longer-term assessments

of political developments in the region as well as leadership analysis. It ulti-
mately was producing both daily and weekly summaries of major events.
• Economic Group: Published a weekly sanctions-monitoring report that exam-
ined the impact sanctions were having and evaluated compliance by regional
neighbors.
• Military Group: Provided tactical intelligence support to UN peacekeepers
and later US forces in the form of general order-of-battle databases, military
194 Chapter 8
assessments, and monitoring of arms flows into the former Yugoslavia. It also
would produce weekly military update reports.21
These separate BTF analytical units were instrumental in providing policymakers

in both the Bush and Clinton administrations with up-to-date assessments of the mili-
tary conflict as well as direct assistance to enforcing the economic and arms embar-
goes against Serbia. Customers not only included executive branch officials but also
key congressional committee members and their staffs, who were following the con-
flict and calling administration officials to testify on all aspects of the Balkans conflict.
Less visible but no less important, the BTF assessments of the ethnic-cleansing cam-
paigns in Croatia and Bosnia were instrumental in decisions to provide humanitarian
assistance to displaced persons in Bosnia and for documenting war crimes charges
that would eventually be brought against senior Bosnian Serb and other officials.22 In
a more traditional fashion, the BTF would produce articles for the PDB and NID daily
publications; however, it also distributed electronically a sit-rep every eight to twelve
hours for those senior officials responsible for US Balkans policies.
When the Clinton administration entered office, Bosnia was only one of several
high priorities, but it quickly came to dominate the Clinton presidency. It convened
its first two Principals Committee meetings devoted entirely to Bosnia, at which BTF
military assessments were key intelligence products.23 Senior Clinton officials also
relied heavily on the BTF’s assessment of Serbia’s economic vulnerabilities in target-
ing certain sectors for sanctions; in many ways, the BTF was responsible having in
place key assessments of how sanctions could be made most effective if they were
made comprehensive and the administration engaged with all of Serbia’s neighbors.
As an example of real policy impact, the BTF’s bleak assessment of the number of
displaced persons (upward of one hundred thousand) in Bosnia during its upcoming
harsh winter months led to a Deputies Committee decision to double US Air Force
planned air-drops of tents, blankets, food, and fuel onto those locations. Such direct
support was made easier by having the chief of the BTF attend NSC, PC, and DC
meetings as the plus one to the CIA director.24 As the US/NATO bombing of Bos-
nian Serb forces and joint Bosnian-Croatian military victories drove Belgrade to the
negotiating table in 1995, the BTF was also instrumental in informing US negotiators
regarding the parties’ negotiating redlines and complications in any settlement. Bal-
kans analysts were able to provide a more historical perspective to the policymakers’
question of whether a cease-fire would hold (see box 8.6).
The scope and size of the BTF, involving multiple agencies and dozens of ana-
lysts over nearly three years of operation, was highly unusual. However, the use of
task forces of various durations and scale is normal whenever political instability or
extreme violence occurs around the world. A more recent variant on the ad hoc task
Box 8.6 Balkan Task Force Assessment, September 1995 (Excerpt)
DCI Interagency Balkan Task Force

27 September 1995
Ceasefires in the Balkans: A Historical Overview
The previous country-wide cease-fires that have lasted the longest have done so
either because the warring parties had some mutual interest in temporarily reducing
the level of violence or because weather would have limited fighting in any event. The
presence of peacekeeping forces probably has influenced somewhat the longevity of
cease-fires, but has not been decisive.
UN forces in Bosnia are adequate to monitor implementation of an in-place cease-
fire as long as they enjoy complete freedom of movement. They are not, however, to
deter any of the warring parties from deciding to abandon the peace process.
Some incentive for both sides to comply with a cease-fire—possibly including a desire to
build up forces prior to renewed fighting—has been the key factor in cease-fire maintenance.
The “successful” cease-fires to date have codified a willingness to cease offensive actions
when none of the factions would benefit from them. . . .
If the negotiating parties entered into a cease-fire agreement in good faith, the UN could
monitor compliance relatively quickly using existing peacekeepers and military observers.
Large numbers of outside forces would not be needed immediately so long as observers
already in the country enjoyed freedom of movement and the terms of the peace agree-
ment—such as demilitarized zones, limitations on training and maneuvers and on-site
inspections of heavy weapons at declared sites were designed to simplify verification of
compliance.
Source: Bosnia, Intelligence and the Clinton Presidency: The Role of Intelligence and Political Leadership in End-
ing the Bosnian War, CIA Library, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/bosnia-intelligence-and
-clinton-presidency; boldface and italics in original.
force phenomenon is the growth in close tactical military and counterinsurgency

support that is now provided by the CIA and DIA to warfighters in the Middle East
and South Asia. The DIA as a combat-support element of the DOD has always had
a role in providing support to military commanders in the field. The CIA, typically,
has not always been a major contributor to military operations in the field. However,
criticism of the CIA’s performance in the 1990 Gulf War led to a rethinking of how
it might support the military and resulted in the CIA establishing an Office for
Military Affairs, headed by a two-star general officer who could enhance coopera-
tion and information flow between the CIA and the military. The CIA also began
assigning senior analysts to each unified and specified command as well as a senior
CIA representative to the JCS chairman’s office to ensure close agency support to
the military.
196 Chapter 8
In the almost two-decades-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, intelligence support

to combatant commands has grown tremendously. Today there are large numbers
of CIA and DIA analysts deployed to the field to provide a range of services from
target analysis to assessments of local and regional politico-military developments.
These analysts, in turn, develop regional expertise as well as send reports back to
their respective headquarters that can be included in both current and longer-term
assessments for Washington-based officials.
Policy Rotations: On the Desk Support

A discussion of the types of intelligence support provided to decision-makers would
not be complete without mention of the practice of loaning mid- to senior-level ana-
lysts and sometimes operations officers to serve in key policy agencies. The best exam-
ple of this can be found at the NSC, where intelligence officers are asked to spend a
tour of one to two years working in one of the regional or functional directorates. One
reason intelligence officers are valued at the NSC is that they come with no policy or
agency bias—that is, as intelligence officers they are trained not to advocate policy. So,
unlike career diplomats or military officers, they are not viewed as carrying State or
DOD policy preferences into the White House. Another advantage is their expertise.
Most of the intelligence officers serving at the NSC have worked on their regional or
technical issues for many years and are well-known experts in their own right. One
prime example is former CIA China analyst and senior manager Dennis Wilder, who
served in George W. Bush’s NSC. A PhD in Chinese area studies, Wilder was centrally
involved in numerous crises, including the downing in 2001 of an American surveil-
lance aircraft and tricky negotiations for the return of the plane and its crew.25
Policy rotations to the Department of State and the DOD are also routine. As for-
mer CIA deputy director John McLaughlin notes, these are highly valued by both the
policy agency and the intelligence organization.26 On the one hand, State or the DOD
gets the services of a well-regarded intelligence expert on whatever policy issue he or
she is assigned. The rotation can allow policy officials to more directly reach back to
the IC with intelligence questions and tasking. On the other hand, career intelligence
officers get a bird’s-eye view of the policy process, can develop a network of policy
contacts that can serve them well later in their careers, and receive greater insight
into what kinds of intelligence would be useful to those policy agencies.
As often happens, an officer who has performed well in such a policy rotation often
is promoted further, as his or her understanding of the policy process and connec-
tions with senior policymakers are judged to be valuable. In the author’s case, a policy
rotation at the Department of State led to his selection as a national intelligence offi-
cer, a position that depended heavily on having a good reputation with senior offi-
cials at the NSC, the State Department, and the DOD, where he was already a known
quantity. John McLaughlin, who served earlier in his career at the State Department,
also credits some of his career success to being more aware of how the policy process
operates, having proven himself to senior policy officials and then helping the CIA
develop a better relationship with a wide range of customers downtown.
KEY CHALLENGES: BALANCING COMPETING

INTELLIGENCE PRIORITIES
As this chapter demonstrates, intelligence support to decision-makers’ formulation

and execution of policy comes in many forms, depending on who the customers are
and what their specific needs are. As mentioned in earlier chapters, intelligence is a
finite resource, and some trade-offs inevitably are made when the demands exceed the
supply of information and analysis. In the collection field, there is at least a National
Intelligence Priorities Framework that theoretically orders by rankings (1 to 5) the
immediate and long-term needs of policy users; in practice of course, the immedi-
ate and urgent needs tend to crowd out other important priorities. This certainly is
true of analytical resources, which are also finite and have to be distributed across
an equally broad set of intelligence topics and policy needs. Among the many chal-
lenges the IC faces, the trade-offs are most obvious between current versus strategic
analysis, global coverage versus specific threats, and military versus national intelli-
gence needs. Unfortunately, these are never easy choices in what are usually zero-sum
circumstances.
Current versus Longer-Term Analysis

As this chapter demonstrates, current intelligence support has become a multi
faceted set of activities. Historically, this was not the case, as the CIA placed a great
deal of emphasis on so-called strategic research (and had an office dedicated to it).
Alongside this Office of Strategic Research was the Office of Current Intelligence.
They coexisted for more than a decade until the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis was
reorganized into a set of regional and functional offices. Over time, and especially
with the end of the Cold War and the advent of the global war on terrorism, a new
emphasis was placed on providing timely, actionable intelligence (i.e., information
that can be acted on quickly). The epitome of this was the rising stature of the PDB.
This became the symbol of the CIA’s and later the DNI’s relevance to the president
and his advisers. The long-standing criticism of NIEs and other long-term assess-
ments was and continues to be that they take too long to produce, are ponderous,
and were seldom read. One example of this is the well-known fact that the flawed
2002 NIE on Iraq’s WMD program was read by only a half-dozen senators prior to
the Senate’s vote to authorize the use of force against Saddam; ironically, it was the
198 Chapter 8
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that had requested this estimate. Other
critics often complain that longer-term assessments seldom are focused on their
immediate agendas. Hence, there has been a risky trend to play down longer-term,
in-depth assessments in favor of more current intelligence products such as the
PDB and the WIRe.
While it might seem obvious that intelligence should produce timely and concise
reports that are useful to policymakers, prioritizing short-term production ignores the
importance of conducting longer-term research that is necessary to build expertise
among intelligence analysts. The in-depth understanding of an intelligence issue and
the ability to look over the horizon at potential shifts or new trends enables analysts to
bring attention to emerging issues when policymakers can take timely action. One of
the critiques of the CIA and IC after 9/11 was that they had not produced any NIEs on
terrorism or al-Qaeda specifically since 1995, suggesting that long-term research into
Bin Laden had suffered because analysts were too busy supporting current targeting
operations conducted by the CTC.
One of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission’s report was to reestablish
an intelligence unit inside the National Intelligence Council to conduct longer-term
research on subjects that might not get attention by offices more focused on produc-
ing PDBs and other intelligence products. As mentioned in chapter 6, this unit is now
largely responsible for preparing the NIC’s Global Trends series as well as other spe-
cial projects that might be considered out of the normal range of intelligence topics.
The CIA’s Senior Analytical Service (SAS) was designed shortly prior to 9/11 to offer
analysts the opportunity to remain specialists in their preferred region or technical
fields precisely to enhance in-depth expertise on the highest-priority topics. This SAS
is a cadre of several hundred senior officers who are often called on to guide complex
analytical challenges and conduct “deep-dive” discussions with a president or cabinet
officer on topics such as Russia, China, or Iran.
But the question remains whether enough analysts—especially at the CIA and
DIA—are conducting longer-term research in order to sharpen their expertise for
when those topics demand deeper understanding. Given that most analysts’ career
tracks move them among various offices and intelligence targets, there is now a ten-
dency to devalue deep expertise over a generalist’s skill set. This may create intelli-
gence gaps if senior intelligence managers do not make sure that sufficient analytical
resources are placed on issues that might one day become more significant.
Global Coverage versus Specific Threats

US intelligence prides itself on being a global intelligence enterprise. Given the far-
flung American interests across the globe, there is a tendency to presume that the
IC must follow every single country, target, and topic that any policymaker might
conceivably wish to learn about. That is a goal that even the large IC cannot easily
meet. Often the decision about so-called global coverage revolves around how much
collection to require. Specific threats such as Iran and North Korea tend to produce
insatiable demands for information and analysis. Thus, justifying higher intelligence
priorities on many developing countries where US interests seem remote is hard. For
example, during the budgetary and personnel build-down of the IC in the early 1990s,
collection was cut, with defense attaché offices and CIA stations closed in parts of
Africa. Then, in 1994, the Rwanda genocide occurred, which dramatically highlighted
the relatively poor collection and coverage of what was going on in Central Africa.
While there was some diplomatic reporting, it did not get the proper attention it
deserved until large-scale massacres had already occurred.27
In many cases, when a topic is placed in the global-coverage category, it remains
without much coverage at all. Often the instinct is to delegate those low priorities to
the Open Source Enterprise to collect materials such as radio and television broad-
casts and blogs from online media. When relying on such open sources, however, it
may then be difficult to quickly ramp up other collection efforts that require reporting
from defense attachés, diplomats, or CIA case officers. When a country is judged to be
a low priority, it also usually means that few analysts are left to watch developments
there. Historically, for example, the CIA has usually had many more analysts follow-
ing large targets such as China, Russia, and Iran, while leaving only a few to cover
large parts of Africa and Latin America. This often then requires a sudden surge of
collection efforts and assignment of additional analysts to a problem like Rwanda,
or other hot spots, in order to respond to the uptick in intelligence requests. A more
recent example of this problem may have been the limited coverage given to Tuni-
sia, where violence and rebellion against an autocratic regime exploded in 2010 and
began what became known as the Arab Spring.
There are no quick fixes for this trade-off, as too many developing countries can
easily tip into a state of instability or failure. The 2017 case of Zimbabwe’s toppling of
longtime head of state Robert Mugabe makes the point that seemingly stable situa-
tions can quickly deteriorate and demand more intelligence attention. Efforts to retain
deeper knowledge on lower-priority intelligence topics sometimes have to include
use of outside experts at universities or former intelligence specialists working at
consulting firms. Realistically, the IC will have to be flexible and resilient enough to
quickly shift its attention to newly arising problems, either in the form of task forces
or more current intelligence coverage than was previously thought necessary.
Military versus National Intelligence Needs

Closely related to the above challenges is the issue of how much attention the IC
should give to military users as opposed to senior civilian leaders. Their intelligence
200 Chapter 8
needs overlap but often diverge. Since the DOD controls a large share of intelli-
gence resources, there has been a tendency to favor military users over the national
intelligence priorities of civilian intelligence agencies and policymakers in other
departments. Specifically, the DOD controls the major overhead satellite collection
systems (run by the NRO and exploited by the NGA) as well as the SIGINT activi-
ties of the NSA. A strong argument can be made, and has been repeatedly, that sup-
port to the warfighter must be the highest intelligence priority. This proved to be
the case during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm in 1990–91,
the Balkans wars of the mid-1990s, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of the 2000s
and 2010s. One of the lessons learned from the Gulf War was that commanders
need the national IC to contribute even more to the intelligence requirements in the
field. For example, commanders often complained that the CIA’s analysis often was
so highly classified that it could not be provided to field commanders lacking the
proper clearances. Today the process of downgrading military intelligence for use
in the field is much more efficient because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have
put more analysts in the forward operating areas who can quickly determine what
information is needed.
That said, the CIA has long worried that DOD intelligence priorities would ignore
its interest in other political and economic information of high interest to Washington
policymakers but of less salience to military customers. One of the reasons why the
2004 IRTPA legislation was so controversial was that early recommendations from
the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) called for placing the NSA and
NRO under the leadership of a strengthened DCI.28 Members of the Senate Armed
Services Committee—along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—argued stren-
uously against this recommendation, and so those agencies remain combat-support
elements of the DOD.29 However, it highlights how sensitive the issue of turf can be
among intelligence agencies.
Looking to the future, US intelligence is likely to remain confronted with difficult
decisions regarding the need to balance all the competing demands for its finite
collection and analytical resources. It is difficult to imagine major shifts in the focus
on current intelligence as well as military intelligence needs so long as the United
States remains engaged in so many international problems around the globe. For a
stopgap, the IC will inevitably have to resort to placing its bets on where the next
hot spot or crisis is likely to be and try to develop workforces and intelligence-
collection systems that are flexible enough to surge to wherever information and
analysis is needed. The practice of standing up new crisis task forces is also likely
to remain an important tool for ensuring adequate intelligence for decision-makers
confronted with new decisions and the call for action.
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
Bosnia, Intelligence and the Clinton Presidency: The Role of Intelligence and Political Leadership
in Ending the Bosnian War, CIA Library, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection
/bosnia-intelligence-and-clinton-presidency
The best compilation of declassified policy documents and intelligence assessments of a
major crisis where intelligence played a major role.
President’s Daily Brief: Nixon and Ford PDBs Released in 2016, CIA Library, https://www.cia
.gov/library/readingroom/presidents-daily-brief
A recent volume that includes redacted PDB items reflecting the intelligence priorities of
the Nixon and Ford presidencies.
FURTHER READING
Peter Bergen, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad (New
York: Broadway, 2012).
A leading counterterrorism expert’s review of how the CIA tracked and eventually tar-
geted Osama bin Laden.
Ellen Laipson, Intelligence: A Key Partner to Diplomacy, Case 337, Institute for the Study of
Diplomacy Case Study Series (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2017).
A former official’s assessment of the role intelligence plays in major negotiations.
Michael Morell, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight against Terrorism—from al Qa’ida
to ISIS (New York: Hachette, 2016).
A former PDB briefer and later senior official recounts how daily actionable intelligence
was provided to and used by presidents.
David Priess, The President’s Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to
America’s Presidents from Kennedy to Obama (New York: Public Affairs, 2016).
A practitioner’s history and assessment of the PDB’s central role.
NOTES
First epigraph: R. V. Jones, “Intelligence and Command,” Intelligence and National Security 3,
no. 3 (July 1988): 288.
Second epigraph: ODNI, National Intelligence Strategy of the United States: 2019, 10, https://
www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/National_Intelligence_Strategy_2019.pdf.
1. Some examples include the white paper that distilled the unclassified findings of the
2002 Iraq WMD estimate, and the series of DIA-prepared white papers on Soviet military
power in the 1980s, and the more recent DIA white paper focused on China’s military power.
See DIA, China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win 2019, www.dia.mil
/Military-Power-Publications.
2. Jack Davis, “Facts, Findings, Forecasting, and Fortune-Telling,” Studies in Intelligence
39, no. 3 (1995): 25–30.
202 Chapter 8
3. Author’s November 2017 email correspondence with a former senior DIA official
involved in current and long-term analysis.
4. David Priess, The President’s Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings
to America’s Presidents (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016), 5. This is perhaps the most compre-
hensive examination of the PDB, written by a former CIA historian who has interviewed PDB
briefers and reviewed many PDBs as part of his research.
5. Priess, 25.
6. Priess, 54.
7. Priess, 283.
8. Michael Morell, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight against Terrorism—From al
Qa’ida to ISIS (New York: Hachette, 2016), 32.
9. Julian E. Barnes and Michael S. Schmidt, “To Woo a Skeptical Trump, Intelligence
Chiefs Talk Economics Instead of Spies,” New York Times, March 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes
.com/2019/03/03/us/politics/trump-daily-intelligence-briefing.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share.
10. Ellen Laipson, Intelligence: A Key Partner to Diplomacy, Case 337, Institute for the
Study of Diplomacy Case Study Series (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2017).
11. For more complete description of the current US-Russian nuclear arms control negotia-
tions and monitoring provisions, see Amy Woolf, The New START Treaty: Central Limits and
Key Provisions, Congressional Research Service, October 5, 2017, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke
/R41219.pdf. Recent American approaches rely primarily on NTM, data exchanges and notifi-
cations, and scheduled and short-notice on-site inspections of deployed systems to confirm the
accuracy of the data exchanges.
12. The Defense Department in 1987 established a new On-Site Inspection Agency that was
responsible to manage the DOD’s treaty-implementation responsibilities under various trea-
ties; it later became part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which commands almost $3
billion annually to implement US obligations under numerous arms control treaties and WMD
agreements.
13. See CIA, “Memorandum for the Record, Admiral Turner’s Contribution to SALT, Janu-
ary 21, 1981,” approved for release July 3, 2003, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom
/docs/CIA-RDP86B00269R000800040001-8.pdf.
14. This discussion has been aided by communications with former senior analysts who
were directly responsible for overseeing the ACIS’s activities during the 1980s.
15. The US mission in Vienna is formally called the UN Mission to International Organiza-
tions in Vienna, which represents the United States to the IAEA but also to a number of other
UN-related international organizations such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Organization and
the International Narcotics Control Board.
16. The IAEA, established in 1957 by the UN, has become the foremost scientific and techni-
cal organization for fostering peaceful uses of nuclear energy as well as for developing safeguards
to verify that nations are not diverting their nuclear energy programs for military purposes. As
such, it has a Department of Safeguards responsible for verifying the peaceful uses of nuclear
power. The IAEA can demand documentation and on-site inspection by its teams of technical
inspectors to verify that nuclear facilities in member states are not violating the NPT obligations.
17. This information is based on communications with two former target analysts who
worked in the CTC from 1995 until 2013.
18. John Kringen, “Serving the Senior Military Consumer: A National Agency Perspective,”
in Roger Z. George and James Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’
Perspectives (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 108.
19. According to former military analysts interviewed by the author, more informal office-
level task forces were often established to enhance reporting on things as diverse as the Falk-
lands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, the Cuban involvement in Angola,
and various Taiwan Straits crises involving the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of
China.
20. See Deputy DCI, Memorandum to National Foreign Intelligence Board, “Establishment
of the Interagency Balkan Task Force,” June 12, 1992, in Bosnia, Intelligence and the Clinton
Presidency: The Role of Intelligence and Political Leadership in Ending the Bosnian War, CIA
Library, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/bosnia-intelligence-and-clinton
-presidency.
21. Deputy DCI, Memorandum to National Foreign Intelligence Board, 33. Leadership
analysis is focused on describing individual foreign leaders’ personalities, decision-making
styles, and ideological or political convictions. They are highly valued by diplomats and mili-
tary commanders who negotiate with foreign officials.
22. As a result of the BTF’s work, the CIA established its own war crimes team, which collected
eyewitness accounts via intelligence reporting and debriefing of émigrés that was later part of the
State Department’s program to support the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia, which brought to justice such well-known figures as Serbian president Slobo-
dan Milošević, Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadžić, and the Bosnian Serb military leader
Ratko Mladić.
23. Daniel Wagner, “Year One of the DCI Interagency Balkan Task Force,” in Bosnia, Intel-
ligence and the Clinton Presidency, 18. According to the BTF’s senior manager, these first meet-
ings focused on the news that Bosnian Serbs were holding Muslims in detention camps, and
the BTF had already produced a map showing suspected camps.
24. A. Norman Schindler, “Reflections on the DCI Interagency Balkan Task Force,” in Bos-
nia, Intelligence and the Clinton Presidency, 25.
25. Wilder served as the NSC senior director for East Asia during the incident in which a
US Navy EC-3 was damaged by a Chinese fighter (which crashed, killing its pilot) and had to
land on Hainan Island, where it was seized and its crew detained. There were extended negotia-
tions during which he was one of the key experts advising President Bush on how to respond
to the challenge. Wilder went on to become a senior office director at the CIA, later also run-
ning the critical preparation of the PDB, from which he retired to teach at Georgetown Univer-
sity. For one view of his centrality, see Chris Nelson, “America’s China Brigade,” International
Economy, Spring 2007, http://www.international-economy.com/TIE_Sp07_Nelson.pdf.
26. John McLaughlin, “Serving the National Policymaker,” in George and Bruce, Analyzing
Intelligence, 81–92.
27. For a detailed look at the reporting that came out of the Rwanda crisis, see the National
Security Archive, which includes some declassified current intelligence reporting on the crisis
as it unfolded. See, e.g., William Ferragiaro, “The United States and the Genocide in Rwanda
1994: Information, Intelligence, and the U.S. Response,” March 24, 2004, National Security
Archive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/.
204 Chapter 8
28. Brent Scowcroft, who headed the PIAB under President George W. Bush, reportedly had
made this recommendation but faced stiff opposition from Defense Secretary Donald Rums-
feld. See Philip Zelikow, “The Evolution of the Intelligence Reform: A Personal Reflections,”
Studies in Intelligence 56, no. 3 (2012): 6–9, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of
-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-56-no.-3/pdfs/Studies56-3-September
2012-18Sep2012-Web.pdf.
29. See the excellent discussion of intelligence-defense turf questions in Michael Allen,
Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence after 9/11 (Dulles, VA: Potomac
Books, 2013), esp. 14–15.
9
Covert Action as
Policy Support
Meddling secretly in other people’s internal politics is distasteful; it

is so much at odds with our domestic arrangements and values. On
the other hand, however much Americans might like it otherwise, the
world frequently is a nasty place. If we are to compete, it often seems,
we may have to be just as nasty as our adversaries.
—Gregory Treverton, Covert Action
It is true that the CIA’s biggest mistakes involved covert action. But
it is also true that these mistakes, without exception, also involved
operations carried out at the behest of presidents pursuing flawed
policies. And for every covert action that failed spectacularly, there
have been others that enabled presidents and policymakers to
achieve ends in the nation’s interest with an unseen hand, which is
almost always preferable to a heavy footprint.
—Jack Devine, former CIA senior official responsible for numer-
ous covert operations
This chapter will explore the CIA’s role as a policy implementer, when it conducts
covert action in support of special operations at the direction of the president. Often
described as the “third way” between inaction and the use of military force, covert
action is another policy instrument at the disposal of the president and the NSC.
Covert action is the one area in which the CIA participates as an influential deci-
sion-maker that executes policy, which gives it a special stake in how policy is fash-
ioned. At the same time, the CIA operates under strict guidelines, requiring far more
presidential involvement and congressional notification than is required for the US
military when it conducts its own special operations. This chapter will examine the
205
206 Chapter 9
purposes, scope, and processes involved in covert action. In particular, it will exam-
ine the roles the president, the NSC, and Congress play in providing accountability
and oversight. Some of the major successes and failures, along with lessons learned,
will be examined. Finally, the chapter will highlight special challenges that covert
action presents for the CIA and the US government more generally.
WHAT IS COVERT ACTION?
Covert action, in the American context, has evolved over time to describe a range of
measures taken by the US government in which its role is designed to be hidden or
deniable. According to section 503 (e) of the National Security Act of 1947, covert
action is “an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence politi-
cal, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the
United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” As will
be detailed later, such operations can be long- or short-term, of a military, diplomatic,
or economic character, and involve very little or very large amounts of resources and
people. It all depends on the goals set out by the president and his or her advisers.
When the Cold War broke out in the late 1940s, President Truman and his advis-
ers were much concerned about Soviet subversion taking place in Europe. Moscow’s
involvement in the 1946–49 Greek Civil War, the Soviet-sponsored coup overthrow-
ing the Czechoslovak government in 1948, and the rising influence of communist
parties in Western Europe prompted Washington to find countermeasures. George
Kennan, the father of the emerging US containment policy as well as a drafter of the
Marshall Plan for Europe, was among those recommending immediate political war-
fare. Hand in hand with the publicly announced Marshall Plan to aid weak European
economies, Truman approved NSC-4/A, a directive that authorized secret “psycho-
logical warfare” by the CIA as a government “service of common concern.” Among
other things, the CIA provided funds to Christian Democratic parties in Italy and
France to support their electoral campaigns to defeat resurgent communist parties in
the 1948 elections.
A year later this mandate was expanded to a broader range of activities known
as “covert” action. A new directive, titled NSC-10/2, instructed elements in the CIA
to undertake operations “which are conducted or sponsored by this Government
against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or
groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Government responsi-
bility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US
Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.”1 Thus was born
the notion that covert actions would be measures taken secretly that could be plau-
sibly denied, even if used in conjunction with overt programs such as the Marshall
Covert Action as Policy Support207
Plan to bolster weak democratic institutions in postwar Europe. As Kennan himself

described it, covert action should be “preventive direct action,” including sabotage,
subversion against hostile states, assistance to resistance movements and guerril-
las, and support of indigenous anticommunist elements.2
Although covert action was seen as essential to counter Moscow’s subversion,
from the beginning it was controversial. First, there was concern about officially
giving this responsibility to the CIA, which might prove to be too independent
and expand such operations beyond what might be approved by the State Depart-
ment or might undermine US foreign policy objectives. These objections were
partly overcome by assigning Kennan himself to be the State Department’s first
representative to the interagency oversight group—called the Senior Consultants
to the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC)—that would review any CIA plans for
covert action.3 A second concern was whether the CIA was the appropriate place for
“paramilitary operations,” which the CIA initially questioned but Kennan seemed
to insist on. Given the CIA’s origins in the OSS, the prospect of it conducting quasi-
military operations might seem logical, but the OSS’s wartime performance had
not been that impressive. Defense Department officials were not keen to have “cow-
boys” operating outside its control. This issue has continued to be a source of fric-
tion between the DOD and CIA over the years and will be touched on later in the
chapter.
However, other factors argued for assigning covert action to the CIA. First, the
insistence on “plausible deniability” required secrecy, a capacity best suited to the
new CIA. It could operate more quietly than either the State or Defense Departments;
moreover, its budgets and programs were entirely cloaked in secrecy, unlike other
national security operations. Second, a wide range of covert actions were best cen-
tralized in one place, rather than distributed across different agencies depending on
whether they were essentially political, economic, or military measures. Again, the
CIA was the logical location. Third, the CIA was forging close liaison relationships
with other intelligence services throughout the world. Thus, it was building a global
overseas presence and had officers who ran agents, spoke the local languages, and
were most aware of any counterintelligence threats. Finally, since the director of cen-
tral intelligence reported directly to the president, this would ensure that the com-
mander in chief could be fully in charge of all covert operations.
Throughout the early phases of the Cold War, presidents from Truman through
Johnson utilized covert action extensively. According to one scholar, by 1952 there
were more than forty covert action programs in Central Europe alone.4 Another declas-
sified study reports that the CIA conducted over 80 operations during the Truman
administration, over 100 during the Eisenhower years, approximately 160 during the
brief Kennedy administration, and over 140 during Johnson’s term. While the scale
208 Chapter 9
and duration of those operations varied widely, it is nonetheless impressive that they
totaled in the hundreds.5
WHAT FORMS DOES IT TAKE?
Covert action is indeed an instrument of policy. Unlike the usual set of overt political,
military, economic, or informational tools of statecraft, it is designed to remain secret.
Simply stated, covert action encompasses all the instruments of statecraft when used
covertly and run by the CIA under the auspices of the president. Hence, the range of
covert action can be quite broad. Whether large or small, those operations can apply
one or blend several of the usual tools of American statecraft. Some forms of covert
actions might include the following:
• Political: paying or pressuring foreign officials to take pro-US positions; sup-

porting or influencing political parties, unions, or other interest groups; spon-
soring pro- or antigovernment demonstrations; supporting coup plotting
• Economic: providing funds to enable groups to undertake actions deemed
favorable to the United States; conducting economic sabotage of foreign mili-
tary or industrial production; disrupting a hostile government’s or organiza-
tion’s financial transactions
• Military: sponsoring pro-US factions within a foreign military; providing arms
and training to rebels or governments favorable to the United States; fielding
paramilitary groups fighting a US opponent; covertly weakening or destroy-
ing an enemy’s military capabilities
• Informational: conducting covert psychological warfare or propaganda;
paying foreign journalists to promote favorable views of US policies; plac-
ing media stories in foreign newspapers; sponsoring radio broadcasts into
“denied” areas; conducting cyber operations against an adversary
The early use of covert action in Western Europe in the late 1940s illustrates
some of these forms of covert action. In 1947, as the threat of communist control of
Western European governments rose, the United States began secretly providing
money to selected prodemocracy groups in several European countries.6 In addi-
tion to the well-known Truman Doctrine of openly aiding governments opposed
to communist subversion, the CIA sponsored so-called black propaganda in the
form of widely distributed pamphlets that publicized the Red Army’s brutal tactics
during the war and the dismal conditions in communist-led countries.7 Much of the
focus was on the 1948 Italian elections. However, similar covert assistance was also
provided to the Greek government by the CIA.
Most of the above-mentioned forms of covert action were primarily responses

to Soviet subversion. Yet the Truman administration also wished to take some cau-
tiously proactive actions. For instance, the June 1948 Soviet-Yugoslav split (when
Stalin expelled Yugoslavia from the Soviet-sponsored Comintern [Communist Inter-
national] for its failure to defer to Moscow) opened an opportunity for the United
States—through the CIA—to offer Belgrade secret aid to enhance its ability to with-
stand a possible Soviet attack.8 Subsequent decisions by the Truman administration
included not only overt trade assistance to Tito’s fragile economy but also secret CIA
liaison with Yugoslav military intelligence.9 Moreover, the NSC approved at least two
secret shipments of military equipment—orchestrated by CIA covert action director
Frank Wisner—to bolster the Yugoslavian army’s morale.10 More broadly, the Truman
administration wished to conduct psychological warfare against the Soviet Union
by broadcasting news into Eastern Europe. For this purpose, the CIA sponsored the
National Committee for a Free Europe, which set up Radio Free Europe (RFE), a ser-
vice that broadcast news into Czechoslovakia beginning in 1950, and eventually a
separate service, Radio Liberty (RL), that broadcast into the Soviet Union itself. The
CIA secretly funded both RFE and RL until 1971, when its sponsorship was revealed
and the function was transferred to the State Department as part of its overt public
diplomacy programs.11
Covert action programs are sized to suit specific US political objectives, the feasi-
bility and cost of covert action options, and the risk and damage that failure or dis-
closure of such operations might hold for the United States. The least risky is the
use of propaganda, which can range from “white” to “gray” to “black” operations (see
box 9.1). Political action is usually taken when more rapid results are desired and
the United States is prepared to run higher risks. The least-used but most controver-
sial are paramilitary operations, which tend to be costly, lengthy, and hard to keep
secret. Usually such paramilitary operations become known if not openly acknowl-
edged by the United States. For example, by the early 1980s, it became impossible
for the expanded scope of US support to the Afghan mujahideen fighters to be dis-
guised; deniability was maintained in name only. The United States understood that
the Soviets knew who was supplying US-manufactured Stinger antiaircraft missiles
to the Afghans.12
WHAT MAKES FOR SUCCESSFUL OR FAILED COVERT ACTION?
Covert action has had a mixed reputation, at least in terms of what is known or
believed by the public. In reality, most covert action operations remain unknown.
From the hundreds (now probably thousands) of operations approved by presidents
since 1945, only a small percentage have been publicly revealed or acknowledged. Of
210 Chapter 9
Box 9.1 Types of Covert Action
Propaganda: Most often used form of covert action requiring few resources. Often takes
longer to have impact, if only indirectly. Variants:
• “White”: Usually advertised as being produced by a US government agency, such
as the former US Information Agency; it is overt and usually truthful. Voice of
America radio broadcasting is a good example of US efforts to provide truthful
information.
• “Gray”: Usually hides the fact of a US source, but sponsorship is often known by
experts to be backed by the United States. The information is often accurate, if
spun to a favorable view of the United States. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty
were initially examples of gray propaganda.
• “Black”: Usually well-hidden sources that are providing disinformation designed to
discredit an adversary or undermine an opponent. Forged documents are a classic
form of black propaganda that alleges some horrific action by an adversary. For
example, Soviet disinformation placed in Indian newspapers claimed the CIA had
produced the AIDS virus.
Political action: Used to directly influence a foreign government’s policies and actions;
designed to have more immediate impact on decision-makers. For example, developing
agents of influence who are able to work inside a foreign government or institution:
• supporting media: buying or subsidizing newspapers or other foreign media for
the purpose of developing inroads into foreign public opinion and government
decisions
• supporting civil society organizations: funding special-interest groups that are
hostile to an anti-US regime; providing resources for their activities
• supporting political parties: funding their officials and campaigns as well as pro-
viding them with information, political expertise, or campaign supplies that are in
short supply
• influencing elections: supporting activities that can shift electoral support for or
against particular candidates or parties through propaganda, demonstrations, or
covert interference in electoral processes
Economic: Covert use of economic tools (money, financial manipulation, or sabotage)

to directly support groups working against a US adversary or alternatively to weaken it
economically:
• provision of money and other resources to political groups fighting against author-
itarian governments
• use of sabotage against the economic or industrial capacity of a foreign
government
• manipulation of monetary and financial transactions of a hostile actor involving
freezing bank funds or transfers
Paramilitary: Unacknowledged military assistance or actual use of force to weaken or remove

a hostile government or actor; least often employed as it usually requires more resources,
has far more consequences, and is often hard to disguise the US role:
• supplying of weapons, ammunition, and other matériel (e.g., radios, medical sup-
plies) that can be readily used by a rebel group, often types that are not clearly of
US manufacture
• providing military training of rebel or guerrilla groups to improve their military

effectiveness
• providing intelligence to assist paramilitary operations to target high-value targets
of a hostile government
Lethal military: Political assassination is prohibited by law, but the use of lethal military force
by covert means is authorized in certain war zones and regions of terrorist activities:
• targeted attacks on known terrorists by armed drones
• special covert military operations conducted in conjunction with the US military’s
special operations forces to eliminate known terrorists
course, the most publicized are those that fail or possibly involved wrongdoing. Some
lessons can be drawn from some of the most infamous and celebrated cases: the 1953
coup in Iran, the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation, the 1986 Iran-Contra scandal, and the
1980–88 program to aid Afghans fighting the Soviets.
The 1953 Coup in Iran: Lucky, Short-Term Success?

The CIA helped to engineer the coup that put the shah back on the throne in Teh-
ran. This operation has been responsible for much of the myth regarding the agency’s
ability to topple governments. The facts show that in 1953, the CIA’s efforts in what
was initially a British-backed effort to remove Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh
almost failed. The prime minister’s nationalization of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
and his increasing reliance on the Soviet-backed Tudeh Party had made him very
unpopular in the West. The British and American governments were both convinced
that he was becoming susceptible to Soviet influence, if not a communist himself. The
British had removed their petroleum engineers, making it impossible for Iran to oper-
ate its oil fields, and the Eisenhower government prevented international institutions
from providing Iran with loans until Tehran reversed its decision on nationalization.
These measures alone brought on a severe financial crisis in the country.
British and American early plans to have the young Reza Shah remove Mosaddegh,
however, were dashed when he fled to Paris, fearing the growing political instabil-
ity. For a time, the prospects of removing the prime minister seemed remote. How-
ever, his government was already highly unpopular, having lost the support of the
clerics and the military. His increasingly autocratic behavior, such as his decision
to dissolve the parliament, and his inability to control the streets were proving to be
real liabilities, on which a second CIA covert operation (code name AJAX) was built.
Through the secret funding and organization of antigovernment demonstrations and
negative press articles, the CIA was able to convince the shah to return; thereafter, his
loyal military removed Mosaddegh, and a more pliable prime minister was appointed.
212 Chapter 9
Kermit Roosevelt, one of the architects of this operation, remarked on what condi-
tions need to be present: If “we are ever going to try something like this again, we
must be absolutely sure that people and the army want what we want.”13
The Iranian coup—despite its primarily indigenous causes—became a model for
subsequent efforts to use psychological and propaganda operations to force other
anti-American leaders from office. The removal of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Árbenz
in 1954 followed this pattern. Like Mosaddegh, Árbenz had shown a willingness to
resist Washington, expropriate American companies, and toy with the idea of accept-
ing aid from Moscow. Through the use of very modest amounts of money and people,
the US operation (code-named PBSuccess) was able to fool Árbenz into thinking that
a major counterrevolution was occurring. Using two planes, dropping a single large
bomb on a large military parade ground, and issuing radio broadcasts reporting col-
umns of soldiers marching to the capital, the CIA frightened Árbenz into resigning
and seeking asylum at the Mexican embassy.
Again, a small operation had led to surprising results. But, unfortunately, the lesson
learned was that the CIA could easily pull off such coups without major costs. By one
estimate, the Iran operation lasted less than six months, involved a handful of CIA
officers, and cost around a million dollars.14 At the time, the operation was judged a
huge success, and the shah’s strong support for US policies, including his anti-Soviet
and pro-Israeli leanings, made his government a major pillar of US Middle East poli-
cies. Less appreciated at the time was the prospect that installing the shah by stealth
would make the United States the “Great Satan” to many Iranians who would later
resent the shah’s Westernization plans and his vicious security service, SAVAK. The
1953 coup has remained a key element of the grievances and strong anti-American
attitudes of the post-1979 governments of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Likewise, top-
pling the Árbenz government was a relatively minor paramilitary operation, but it too
did not lead to better governance but rather decades of repressive authoritarian rule,
albeit one that was more anticommunist in tone.
The 1961 Bay of Pigs Fiasco: Wishful Thinking

The story behind the Bay of Pigs highlights the dangers of inadequate—but not non-
existent—oversight by the president of covert operations for which he will be held
responsible. The 1959 Cuban Revolution ousted the reviled dictator President Ful-
gencio Batista in favor of the young, charismatic revolutionary Fidel Castro. Rising
animosity between the Castro government and the Eisenhower administration caused
Havana to embrace Moscow’s patronage by 1960. At that point President Eisenhower
asked CIA director Allen Dulles for a covert action plan to bring down the Castro
regime. Near the end of his term, a few senior CIA officials had developed an elaborate
paramilitary plan (code-named Operation Zapata) to place fifteen hundred trained
and armed exiles onto the island, who would be the vanguard to an expected mass
uprising against the supposedly unpopular Castro. President Kennedy insisted that
the US role remain invisible and would not approve sufficient air support to the beach
landing that some military advisers believed was necessary.15 Dulles and his head of
covert operations, Richard Bissell, downplayed this requirement in conversations with
President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and believed
that the president would be forced to authorize more overt force if the invasion started
to go badly. It did go badly almost immediately, but Kennedy would not approve more
than one hour’s sortie of six bombers, which could not turn the tide.
Thus, the exiles soon found themselves on an inhospitable beachhead (known as
the Bay of Pigs). The few unmarked aircraft allowed to bomb the Cuban airfields were
not successful in destroying the Cuban air force jets that would quickly attack the
beach landings. Cuban ground forces numbering nearly twenty thousand and armed
with tanks easily defeated and killed or captured the exiles. As postmortems would
testify, the covert action plan suffered from wishful thinking that Castro was unpopu-
lar and that a general uprising would spontaneously occur; moreover, the operation
itself was not a secret, as Latin American newspapers had been reporting the training
of an exile force that would mount an invasion. Finally, the strict compartmentaliza-
tion of the operation inside the CIA had prevented any true country experts from
questioning the operational assumptions and details. In the end, however, President
Kennedy admitted it was his mistake to depend so heavily on a few senior CIA offi-
cers who were so committed to the operation that they could not be objective about
its chances for success.
The abject failure of this operation convinced President Kennedy that he needed
much more oversight of future operations. He did not give up on anti-Castro covert
action, but he did deputize his brother to oversee future plans to ensure no new fail-
ures. Much has been written about other, more multifaceted CIA plans to remove Cas-
tro (under what became known as Operation Mongoose). While that program focused
on economic sabotage, it did include assassination plots—none of which were ever
executed.16
The 1986 Iran-Contra Operation: The NSC Goes Rogue

The Iran-Contra affair arose out of the Reagan administration’s simultaneous efforts
to free hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in 1985 while running a major para-
military operation in Central America. In both cases, the administration faced some
political and legal impediments. In the first case, it was US policy not to negoti-
ate with terrorists for hostages. At the time, Hezbollah held seven Americans in
Lebanon, and President Reagan was eager to get them back. In the second case, the
Reagan administration had been running a CIA-backed paramilitary operation that
was no longer popular with Congress and sought ways to circumvent legislative
restrictions.
214 Chapter 9
President Reagan earlier had approved a covert action plan for the CIA to fund anti-
Sandinista rebels (the “Contras”) to harass the Nicaraguan government, which was
seen as a pro-Cuban foothold in Central America. Following some missteps by the CIA
(including the illegal mining of harbors in Nicaragua), Congress had steadily limited
the agency’s backing of the Contras by allowing only nonlethal aid, then putting fund-
ing limits on the aid and eventually banning it entirely in 1985 through the Boland
Amendment. US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Oliver North, assigned to the NSC,
was put in charge of finding new ways to fund the Contras. He succeeded in soliciting
monies from “third countries” (largely from the Middle East) but soon began funnel-
ing the profits from the sale of arms to Iran to aid the Contras—both actions that would
later been seen as circumventing congressional intent if not the law.
Unbeknown to most CIA officials as well as large parts of the US national security
bureaucracy, North concocted this elaborate illegal covert plan (called “the Enter-
prise”) with CIA director William Casey and a few others. Senior CIA officers, includ-
ing its then deputy director, opposed CIA involvement in the plan. In essence, the
NSC now was running a covert action program. North along with the then national
security adviser, Vice Adm. John Poindexter, were largely responsible for planning
and running the operation, enlisting individual officers from the NSA and CIA for
logistical support as needed. Most significantly, the operation was conducted with-
out any clear presidential approval. Poindexter later admitted a presidential directive
was approved only retroactively, which included the proviso that the CIA not inform
Congress, but Reagan never actually signed it.17 Following lengthy congressional and
a special prosecutor’s investigations, North, Poindexter, and other NSC, military, and
CIA officers were indicted on a range of charges including obstruction of justice,
destroying evidence, and lying to or withholding evidence from Congress. Many were
later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush.
This scandal highlighted the need for more executive and legislative control over
covert action. In addition, President Reagan empowered a special presidential review
board (named the Tower Commission after its chairman, Sen. John Tower) to investi-
gate how the NSC found itself at the center of this failed operation. The Tower Com-
mission’s recommendations also became instrumental in reforming the role of the
NSC system that Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, established. As some former
officials noted at the time, “the report reached important conclusions that the covert
action on the sale of arms to Iran did not comply with U.S. law prior to a written finding.
The executive branch did not comply with legal requirements that Congress be noti-
fied of covert actions in a ‘timely’ manner.”18 In other respects it let the Reagan admin-
istration off gently by suggesting Iran-Contra was an “aberration.” That said, it was
clear that the NSC system under Reagan—which saw a revolving door of six national
security advisers in eight years—had proven to be one of the least well managed.
1980−88 Afghanistan: Successful but Hardly Covert

As one participant termed it, the Reagan plan to reverse the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan proved to be the largest and last covert action of the Cold War.19 Initi-
ated by President Carter, what President Reagan inherited was a very small operation.
Designed to merely “harass” the Soviets, not defeat them, it amounted to a few mil-
lion dollars to purchase bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifles and transfer them via Pakistan
to anti-Soviet mujahideen. Upon taking office, however, President Reagan and his
advisers determined they were prepared to expand their objectives to inflict heavy
political and military costs on the Soviets.20 The program grew from $120 million in
1981 to over $700 million in 1988, when the program ended by successfully pushing
the Red Army out of Afghanistan.21 What began as the procurement of a few rifles
and mortars became a massive transfer of sophisticated weapons and ammunition
to support 120,000 mujahideen. The end result was the death of thousands of Rus-
sian soldiers, a major headache for the Kremlin at home, and the eventual withdrawal
of Soviet forces in 1988. One important feature of this successful operation was the
strong congressional support it had elicited from the beginning. Indeed, a few propo-
nents, such as Congressman Charlie Wilson, became well known publicly and closely
associated with this supposedly secret war against the Kremlin.22
One by-product of this success, however, was greater difficulty in maintaining any
plausible deniability. At the height of the program, the Afghan task force of CIA officers
numbered over a hundred. The program had initially relied mostly on Egyptian- and
Chinese-manufactured weaponry. However, the Soviet introduction of heavily armed
M-24 Hind helicopters had made the arduous transport of weapons through moun-
tain passes costly. After some deliberation, the CIA elected to arm the mujahideen
with advanced, US-manufactured, shoulder-fired Stinger surface-to-air missiles. These
weapons proved effective in pushing Soviet helicopters beyond the range of their own
weapons, so they were unable to staunch the resupply of Afghan fighters from Paki-
stan. The problem, of course, was that the sophistication of these weapons undermined
the already thin veneer of plausible deniability with which the program had begun.
By the late 1980s, however, the Reagan administration was less concerned about US
sponsorship remaining secret and more convinced that such a forceful covert action
program had dealt the Soviets a serious setback that should be trumpeted.
LESSONS THAT SHOULD BE LEARNED
Decades and hundreds of operations later, there are clear lessons that one can learn
from the successes and failures of presidentially directed covert action. First, covert
action should never be either the “first or last resort.” That means covert action is best
216 Chapter 9
conducted as part of a comprehensive set of policy actions, of which it is only one

small piece. It is not a replacement for good statecraft and overt diplomacy, nor can
it substitute for the absence of any other good options. The adage of covert action
being a “third option” between doing nothing or going to war misrepresents the kind
of leverage it can realistically produce.
Second, as a rule covert action is most effective when it remains small and discreet.
The use of propaganda and some modest political action can help to reinforce overt US
political, economic, and military actions. With covert action kept modest and secret, the
chances it will be disclosed and possibly discredit American foreign policies remain
low. Also, setting modest objectives with limited resources increases the prospects of
its success.
Third, covert action works best if it has bipartisan congressional support. If that is
lacking, there may be good reasons why a president should rethink the feasibility or
value of an operation. Where there is serious congressional opposition, there may be
a deeper foreign policy disagreement than simply the use of covert action. Significant
opposition in Congress or perhaps even within the national security enterprise also
increases the risks of whistleblower leaks to the media that can defeat such programs.
Fourth, good covert action requires good intelligence and rigorous analysis. A poor
understanding of the geopolitical context in which an operation is to be conducted
is a recipe for failure. Moreover, optimistic appraisals by committed proponents of
an operation should be tested by other experts both inside the CIA and by national
security officials with no stake in the game.
Last and most important, covert action proposals need to balance their ethical and
legal aspects against the purported political benefits of such operations. There needs
to be proportionality in how much the United States will risk in terms of its moral and
political standing in the world against the short-term gains a covert action program
might produce. In many cases, the unintended consequences of success may well
carry greater costs than those near-term benefits. Like the overt use of military force,
however, covert action should be directed only against serious external threats for
the purpose of protecting the United States and its institutions as well as its people.
Thus, some practitioners, such as former senior British intelligence official Sir David
Omand, have suggested applying a set of principles—“just intelligence” (jus intelli-
gentia)—that mirrors the just war doctrine applied to the use of lethal military force.
Accordingly, those principles would involve
• a sufficient and enduring cause (significant threat or opportunity),

• an integrity of motive (US actions are legitimate and moral),
• proportionate methods (US actions are reasonable and limited in effect),
• a legitimate authority (presidential authorization and congressional notification),
• a reasonable prospect of success (US actions are well conceived/planned), and

• reliance as a last resort (other options have been judged insufficient and require
such additional methods).23
If these principles were applied to covert action decisions, a president would have
to weigh the nature of a threat, the legitimacy and morality of a US covert operation,
its chances of success, and its likely longer-term consequences, as well as whether
other less risky options might achieve similar or better results.
HOW HAS COVERT ACTION BEEN MANAGED?
For the first three decades of the CIA’s existence, covert action was conducted with
few formal restrictions or regulations and uneven oversight. Presidents from Truman
to Carter varied in the degree to which they wished to oversee the CIA’s covert action
programs, although each established an NSC committee to oversee and provide
advice on covert action programs. Those committees took a variety of names, often
carrying cryptic titles (e.g., “Special Coordination Group” under Eisenhower, “Special
Group” under Kennedy) or were given numbers (e.g., “40 Committee” under Nixon/
Ford, “303 Committee” under Johnson).24 Those NSC groups typically included CIA
covert action managers plus representatives from the State and Defense Depart-
ments, along with an NSC staff member representing the president.
It was common for presidents to issue NSC decision documents authorizing the
CIA to conduct covert actions aimed at some general political objectives without nec-
essarily reviewing all the details of the plans. Naturally, for large and highly risky or
sensitive operations, such as the 1953 Iran coup and the 1962 Bay of Pigs operation,
presidents took a more prominent role. Partly presidents distanced themselves from
the operational details in order to preserve plausible deniability. In fact, for many
of the smaller, less controversial covert programs, the CIA director could essentially
authorize them without formal presidential approval, so long as the NSC oversight
committee considered them to be consistent with American foreign policy objectives.
In some administrations, operations that involved costs under $25,000 and were pre-
sumed to be less risky were left to the CIA director’s discretion.
Legislative oversight of covert action was virtually nonexistent until the creation
of the intelligence oversight committees in the mid-1970s. Up to then, subcommit-
tees of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees of both houses signed
off on CIA budget authorization and appropriations, including covert action pro-
grams. In the early days, Congress was especially wary of knowing too much about
covert action. The Armed Service and Appropriations Subcommittees were mainly
concerned about the CIA having sufficient resources to fight communism, and less
218 Chapter 9
interested in overseeing its operations. The few congressional initiatives to estab-

lish real oversight in the 1950s and 1960s—such as calls to create a joint oversight
committee—never garnered much support. For the most part, oversight consisted of
private, informal conversations between the CIA director and individual powerful
committee chairmen, who typically did not wish to know too much.25
CURRENT LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT
A series of events and revelations led to what is today’s congressional oversight of

intelligence activities, especially covert action. First, in the aftermath of the Vietnam
War, Congress determined that President Nixon had conducted secret wars in Laos
and Cambodia without informing Congress, partly through the use of CIA covert
action capabilities. So, in 1974, Congress passed the Hughes-Ryan Amendment to
the Foreign Assistance Act, which compelled the president to approve a finding
for each covert action program and required that those findings be “notified” to the
select members of the armed services and appropriations committees prior to the
operation. This measure did not give Congress a veto on any program, but it did
prevent future presidents from denying their involvement should an operation be
exposed. Subsequent legislation in 1980 (the Intelligence Oversight Act) strength-
ened the original Hughes-Ryan Amendment’s insistence on “advance” notification
to demand “timely” notification.
Second, the Watergate hearings that revealed significant ill-advised and in some
cases illegal activities by the CIA, NSA, and FBI against anti–Vietnam War activists
led in 1975 to the hearings of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmen-
tal Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Among other things, this so-
called Church Committee (named after its chairman, Sen. Frank Church) explored
CIA covert action programs extensively. It criticized presidents for not ruling out
some of the more extreme plans, such as the one to assassinate Fidel Castro. Senator
Church famously warned during the hearings that the CIA was a “rogue elephant,”
yet the final conclusions of the year-long investigations essentially disproved the alle-
gation that the CIA had conducted covert operations without presidential approval.
Although some of the operations may have been misguided, poorly implemented,
or illegal, it became clear that all had the blessing of President Nixon or President
Johnson. At the conclusion of the hearings, Congress did establish separate Senate
and House intelligence committees, with the expectation that they would be briefed
on the CIA’s covert action programs more completely than in the past.
The third event was the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986, which moved congressional
oversight of covert action to an even higher level. As Congress became less and less
enthusiastic for the funding of the Contras’ war against communists in Nicaragua,
it passed key legislation that added new requirements on presidential notifications

of major covert action programs to the oversight committees. In particular, the 1988
and 1991 intelligence legislation insisted the president notify congressional com-
mittees within forty-eight hours, that there be a written finding signed by the presi-
dent, that it not be issued retroactively (as occurred in the Iran-Contra case), and
that the president list all involved US government agencies (such as the Depart-
ment of State or Department of Defense) as well as any foreign entities. Most of
these new restrictions were aimed at heading off another circumvention of congres-
sional intent as occurred in the Iran-Contra affair.26
As a practical matter, congressional notification of covert action findings does not
prevent the president from going forward. However, it does impose a degree of disci-
pline on what an administration attempts to do covertly, when it runs the risk of con-
gressional condemnation. At worst, the oversight committees might refuse funding
in the next year’s appropriations for a covert action program they did not support or
put strict funding or operational limits on a program. On the positive side, a president
benefits from having congressional assent to its covert action programs, particularly
if they prove to be controversial or possibly fail; in such circumstances, the White
House can at least spread responsibility down Pennsylvania Avenue. And finally, out-
side critiques can in some instances head off ill-advised proposals or warn a president
of political controversy a program could entail that had not been raised by Executive
Branch advisers.
CURRENT PROCEDURES FOR APPROVING COVERT ACTION
In the post-1990 period, covert action programs have been reviewed and approved
using the long-established interagency process described in earlier chapters. Like
other policy decisions, a covert action proposal will often emerge from the White
House or other NSC discussions. Most administrations produce a classified national
security directive outlining the interagency process by which it planned to propose,
review, and approve covert action. While each administration since 1990 has modi-
fied that process in some ways, each has had a much more deliberate process that
ensures covert actions are rigorously reviewed internally by the CIA as well as by the
NSC, fully briefed to and duly authorized by the president, and, finally, notified to the
appropriate congressional oversight authorities.
As an illustration of this elaborate vetting process, the following describes how
covert action was handled during George W. Bush’s tenure.27 At the request of
President Bush, the national security adviser would typically draft a memo to the
CIA director (and after 2005, the director of national intelligence). Almost without
exception, no CIA planning would begin without NSC authorization. Then, the CIA’s
220 Chapter 9
Box 9.2 Typical Covert Action Authorization Process
1. Presidential request for covert action options (memo from the national security adviser
to the CIA).
2. CIA covert action staff develops options (e.g., the scope, methods, costs, and risks) with
regional operations division and agency legal counsel.
3. Interagency legal group from the CIA, the NSC, and the State, Justice, and Defense
Departments approves the legal basis and appropriateness of covert action proposals.
4. Special Principals Committee and Deputies Committee group reviews and approves covert
action proposals prior to transmittal to the president.
5. President reviews, then approves, disapproves, or modifies a presidential finding.
6. White House “notifies” congressional oversight committees of a presidential finding.
Directorate of Operations would assign the appropriate regional or functional oper-

ations division (or, after 2015, the appropriate mission center) to prepare proposals
(see box 9.2). For instance, it would be natural that any covert action dealing with a
Middle Eastern country would be developed within the CIA’s regional mission cen-
ter covering Middle Eastern countries or that a counterterrorist covert action would
emanate from the Mission Center for Counterterrorism.
In virtually all cases, lawyers are extensively involved in planning and overseeing
covert operations to ensure they are conducted within the bounds of the intelligence
community’s standing regulations, executive orders, and US law. The CIA’s Office
of General Counsel will have to sign off on any proposals before they are reviewed
by the NSC’s legal counsel as well as by the interagency NSC Lawyers Group (LG),
chaired by the NSC’s legal counsel and including lawyers from the Department of
State, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice.
The LG also participates in the interagency annual review of every ongoing covert
action program. Based on this review, the president would then send a report to the
congressional intelligence oversight committees that indicated which programs
would be continued, modified, or terminated in the coming year. This elaborate pro-
cess, if anything, dispels the notion that the CIA can independently launch secret
operations without the knowledge or approval of the president and his senior policy
advisers.
A CIA covert action proposal would normally consider a number of possible
options that might achieve the proposed policy objectives. Each would be evaluated
in terms of
• resources (personnel required, funds for assets or equipment),

• operational methods and scope,
• operational and human risks,
• prospects for success and/or compromise, and

• degree of involvement of other agencies or foreign intelligence services.
The CIA might present a set of options or make a recommendation on the most
promising one that it believes meets the president’s objective. Once the covert
action proposal has met with the approval of the Directorate of Operations, a cross-
directorate review group reporting to the CIA director (i.e., the Covert Action Review
Group) would review, amend, or approve the proposal. If the CIA director approves
the plan, it would be forwarded to the White House for interagency review.28
At the White House, the NSC’s senior director for intelligence (typically a CIA
officer assigned to the NSC) would chair a special interagency policy committee that
reviews covert action plans. Attendance would be limited to the specially cleared rep-
resentatives from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Joint Staff,
along with the LG representatives.29 The White House contingent would typically
include NSC senior directors responsible for the region or focus of the covert action,
a senior representative of the vice president’s office, the NSC’s legal counsel, and a
senior deputy from the Office of Management and Budget. On occasion, a Treasury
representative might be included if the covert action involves financial transactions.
The IPC would focus on the obvious questions about a program’s costs, benefits,
risks, chances of success, and legality. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence
and Research would also be attuned to how the covert action would fit with and
impact existing diplomatic policies and how ambassadors in the region of the opera-
tion might react or be affected. It might take several meetings and drafts of a potential
finding before it is ready to be transmitted to the Deputies Committee and eventu-
ally the Principals Committee for approval and signature by the president. By law,
once the president has signed a finding, it has to be transmitted to the congressional
oversight committees. That is usually accomplished within forty-eight hours unless
there are special circumstances. In highly sensitive and fragile operations, such noti-
fication can also be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight—the majority and minority
leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the majority and minority leaders of the
two intelligence oversight committees.30
KEY COVERT ACTION ISSUES IN A POST 9/11 ERA
The 9/11 attacks have once again elevated covert action to an important instrument
of national security policy. One measure of this is the huge increases in the CIA’s
budget that are partly explained by the use of covert action applied to the global war
against terrorism across multiple presidential administrations in countries such as
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Those operations depended much more on new forms of
222 Chapter 9
covert action, including renditions, interrogations, and armed drone operations. The
earlier question of where paramilitary operations rightfully belong—at the CIA or the
DOD—has also risen again. And there is now the rising concern about foreign intelli-
gence services employing cyber operations not only for espionage purposes but also
for covert information operations against the United States and other democracies.
Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation

In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and the fear of follow-on attacks, President George
W. Bush authorized the CIA to conduct covert action not just to disrupt terrorism
plots but also to detain and interrogate alleged al-Qaeda members, who might have
information regarding any future plots.31 These covert activities amounted to a sensi-
tive collection operation that did not fit neatly under the definition and interagency
review procedures for covert actions. Those authorities, which the DOJ approved at
the time, included secret renditions from theaters of combat and harsh interrogations
at undisclosed overseas locations. Slightly more than a hundred detainees were cap-
tured on the battlefield, held at these sites, and interrogated. President Bush publicly
acknowledged the program of detention and transfer of some detainees to Guanta-
namo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, on September 6, 2006.
As described by former CIA director Michael Hayden, enhanced interrogation
techniques (EITs)—including sleep deprivation, stress positions, body slaps, water
dousing, and in a few cases “waterboarding”—were used on about one-third of the
detainees. Director Hayden claims that roughly half of what the CIA knew about
al-Qaeda came from detainees.32 Other officials—including President Obama’s first
DNI, retired admiral Dennis Blair—were less convinced that EITs were effective,
legal, or ethical.33 Obama’s first CIA director, Leon Panetta, also had testified at
his nomination hearing that he believed waterboarding constituted torture, and
President Obama issued an executive order shortly after taking office that limited
interrogation techniques to those found in the then existing army field manual on
interrogation, and he specifically prohibited waterboarding.34
The interrogation program’s effectiveness and appropriateness remains a debat-
able proposition. An extensive six-thousand-page Senate Select Committee on Intelli-
gence review of the interrogation program—including a declassified six-hundred-page
summary—claimed that the CIA’s program was deeply flawed. Specifically, it charged
that it was poorly run, harsher than described to either White House officials or the
leadership of the congressional oversight committees, and did not produce the intel-
ligence claimed to justify its existence.35 CIA director John Brennan took issue with
some of the report’s findings but agreed that waterboarding was not appropriate.36
As with many controversial covert action programs, the CIA has taken the brunt of
the criticism. Asked by President Bush shortly after the brutal airliner attacks in 2001,
the CIA took action to use whatever means necessary to ensure that other plots were
not about to unfold. The CIA has acknowledged that the initial phase of the interro-
gation program was not well managed; its revelation in the press has also caused the
CIA to lose credibility and possibly the support of other intelligence partners who
had agreed to host “secret prisons” where some of the EITs were conducted. Over-
all, a president’s sense of urgency overrode caution about whether a program could
be both effective and ethical. And, not surprisingly, journalists began reporting that
there had been concerns that the CIA would once again be “scapegoated” once the
political winds shifted.37
Early in his term, President Donald Trump had hinted that he might consider
restoring some of the harsher interrogation techniques, but his then secretary of
defense, James Mattis, said he did not believe they were necessary or effective. Other
former intelligence officials, including Michael Hayden, have stated that any reintro-
duction of waterboarding would force military officers to refuse an “illegal order,” as
prescribed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So far, there has not been any
sign of the Trump administration returning to such covert collection operations.
Drones and Targeted Killings

A second new dimension to post-9/11 covert action has been the advent of armed
unmanned aerial vehicles—commonly called drones. Since the Balkan crises of the
1990s, the CIA has operated UAVs for intelligence-collection purposes—for example,
surveillance of battlefields and tracking military movements. Those surveillance pro-
grams have become a standard part of the CIA’s mission for identifying and track-
ing suspected terrorists and other battlefield combatants. Following the al-Qaeda
attacks on the US embassies in Africa and the USS Cole, the Bill Clinton White House
urgently pressed to begin arming some UAVs for possible covert action operations.
Shortly before the 9/11 attacks, high-level discussions between the White House, the
Pentagon, and the CIA focused on the merits of arming the current Predator UAV
for the purpose of targeting Osama bin Laden. As former CIA director George Tenet
described those decisions in the late 1990s, “the National Security Council autho-
rized us [CIA] to begin deploying the Predator by September 1, in either an armed or
unarmed reconnaissance mode. . . . We preferred that the next time it was over Afghan-
istan that it be equipped to take immediate action if we spotted UBL.”38 Although
targeted killings had long been the practice by the US ally Israel, it constituted a new
policy for the United States. Following the 9/11 attacks, any hesitation about arming
the Predator evaporated.
Drone attacks began in earnest during the Bush administration. The US Air Force
conducted those battlefield operations in Afghanistan, but of course it relied exten-
sively on intelligence provided by the CIA and other agencies. When President Obama
224 Chapter 9
took office, he markedly increased drone strikes, which some observers believed were
designed to shift from a boots-on-the-ground strategy toward a counterterrorism strat-
egy. At the same time as drone strikes were escalating, outside observers believed that
collateral damage caused by them was also rising. Several reports claimed that the
civilian casualties might be as low as 250 or as high as 400 to 900.39 Later, CIA direc-
tor Brennan publicly defended the Agency’s claims that there had been no civilian
deaths caused by any classified drone programs, because President Obama instituted
a much more rigorous process that called for near certainty before approving a strike.40
Skeptics remain unconvinced regarding a nearly perfect record of drone strikes, and
the debate over whether drones attacks are effective continues. Proponents argue they
are far more precise and less risky to the US military than aerial bombing raids or
ground operations; moreover, drone attacks are also less visible. Opponents argue that
drone strikes create a moral hazard of encouraging more attacks on less important tar-
gets because they pose no major risk to US personnel. They also believe that collateral
damage is higher than the US government is willing to acknowledge and that civilian
deaths result in increased recruitment to terrorist organizations.
According to press reports, the Obama administration eventually reduced drone
strikes, partly due to its successful elimination of key targets. In July 2016, President
Obama also moved to quell allegations of substantial civilian casualties by issuing an
executive order that required agencies to develop more precise rules of engagement
and target selection.41 This was accompanied by an annual report from the DNI on
the number of strikes in areas outside active hostilities, the number of combatant and
noncombatant casualties, and the reasons for any discrepancies between noncomba-
tant drone casualty estimates by nongovernmental organizations and the US govern-
ment. In 2018, there had also been some hints that the Trump administration might
be considering shifting such drone operations to Afghanistan. In any case, US use
of armed drones and targeted killings has set a precedent that other countries may
eventually use to justify their own lethal drone operations. Even now, there are report-
edly cases of Syrian opposition forces attempting to attack the main Russian military
bases there through armed drones.42
Paramilitary Operations: CIA or DOD?

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have revived a long-standing question of whether
the US military or the CIA should be principally responsible for major paramilitary
operations. When 9/11 occurred, the CIA was ready with a plan to insert CIA officers
into Afghanistan to work with the Northern Alliance to build a military campaign
against the Taliban. The CIA had the foreign intelligence as well as an intelligence
network in Afghanistan and could operate covertly and quickly to put this in place.
Yet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was not comfortable with the CIA leading
the operation and insisted there be some agreement about how the CIA’s covert
action role and the United States Central Command’s operations would be coordi-
nated. There was a memorandum of understanding that laid out the terms of the two
organizations’ operating areas and responsibilities, including a commitment to col-
laborate as well as deconflict their operations.43
While this division of effort seemed to work in Afghanistan, it never fully settled
the issue. Periodically there have been efforts by the DOD to gain more control over
paramilitary activities. In 1995, when former deputy secretary of defense John Deutch
became DCI and CIA director, he tried unsuccessfully to allow more military control
over CIA operations. His assistant DCI for military support, Adm. Dennis Blair (later
DNI under President Obama) also believed the military should be running any covert
paramilitary operations.44 However, their efforts failed to gain much White House
or congressional support. Following the 9/11 attacks, many Pentagon officials and
advisers believed the department needed to get more involved in the covert side of
the war on terrorism, recommending large increases in special operations forces and
expanded missions.45 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tried to expand military operations
to include measures that smacked of covert political-influence operations as well as
covert HUMINT operations that had not been approved by Congress.46
The reality is that the CIA and DOD seem to be conducting similar activities with
many of the same goals and results but under very different authorities. CIA opera-
tions are covered under Title 50 of the United States Code. Among other aspects
of war, it specifies that any covert actions—as distinguished from its intelligence-
collection mission—be approved by the president in a written finding and notified
to the congressional oversight committees. Such covert actions are conducted with
the expectation that the United States will deny official responsibility and that CIA
personnel have none of the legal protections that uniformed military officers would
normally have.
Under Title 10 of the United States Code, traditional military activities include
kinetic (lethal) action in the form of unconventional warfare and special operations
necessary in preparation of the battlefield environment. DOD special operations thus
fall under these statutes. In most instances, however, military personnel are in uni-
form, are protected by the Geneva Accords if captured, and must follow the rules of
war. Typically they are operating only in declared war zones such as Afghanistan and
Iraq and usually with some form of congressional authorization for the use of force.
Most important, the United States Special Operations Command is not under any
obligation to prenotify Congress of these special operations. Figure 9.1 illustrates the
different chains of command used in Title 10 and Title 50.
The May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden has considerably blurred the above
distinction. CIA director Leon Panetta announced the successful operation as being
226 Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. CIA and DOD Covert Operations Compared
conducted under Title 50 authorities, in which he had overall responsibility for the
covert action. At the same time, he and President Obama acknowledged that spe-
cial operations forces, under the command of Vice Adm. William McRaven, had con-
ducted the covert strike action. A number of national security legal specialists had
noted that the modern battlefield has led to a greater synthesis of intelligence and
military operations than ever before, blurring any clear lines between the two func-
tions: “As a matter of law, the President may authorize any agency to conduct a covert
action via presidential finding. Alternatively, the President must justify the use of
force under traditional military activities under jus ad bellum doctrines in domestic
and international law.”47
Another example of blurred lines has been the paramilitary activities conducted in
the Syrian conflict. In 2013, President Obama was reluctant to intervene in what many
believed to be a messy civil war, choosing instead to encourage regional states such as
Turkey and Saudi Arabia to take a larger role in supporting the opposition to Syrian
president Bashar al-Assad. Observers believed that Obama was trying to end the Iraq
conflict, not get the US military involved in neighboring Syria. As recounted in several
memoirs by former senior Obama advisers, they were urging the president to sup-
port opposition groups in Syria openly as well as covertly. Part of the explanation for
multiple programs lay in the changing nature of the conflict. Once ISIS had become a
bigger threat to Iraq, the Obama administration was obliged to adopt an overt military
effort to defeat it rather than rely solely on other covert means of pressuring Assad to
relinquish power. The Pentagon’s program was designed to bolster Iraqi forces fight-
ing ISIS rather than strengthen Syrian opposition forces. But having simultaneous
and ultimately unsuccessful programs running within the same country, under very
different authorities, merely highlights the unclear lines separating military and intel-
ligence operations (under Title 10 and Title 50, respectively).
If future presidents consider more joint military-intelligence operations, then
those distinctions may become less and less clear, and perhaps there will need to
be new executive orders or legislation that create a new category of covert joint
military-intelligence operations. Without it, there will be concerns that DOD clan-
destine operations might suffer from a lack of presidential and congressional over-
sight of special military activities. Shortly after taking office, President Trump gave
Secretary of Defense Mattis wider authority for conducting military operations
against terrorism, after the Obama administration had been accused of overly cau-
tious “micro-management.”48 Since then, several special operations have suffered
some notable casualties, including a US Navy SEAL lost in a botched operation in
Yemen and four US Army Special Forces troops ambushed in Niger in 2017. The loss
of the personnel in Niger has raised new concerns about the preparedness of the
DOD to conduct such special activities, which had not been previously approved at
the highest levels in the executive branch or by congressional oversight committees.
President Trump reacted to that event by noting he had given his generals more lee-
way and had not specifically authorized this mission.49 Congressional investigations
into these events may well lead to more debate over whether the DOD or the CIA
is best suited for covert paramilitary activities or whether some better mix of those
organizations’ capabilities should be found.
Future Covert Action: Cyber Operations

Covert action in the future will also increasingly involve cyberspace. Although unac-
knowledged, it is likely that recent US presidents have already authorized some
covert operations designed to attack adversaries’ information systems and the mili-
tary programs run by them. The IC has long had the intelligence-collection mis-
sion of penetrating and exploiting adversaries’ critical information systems. That
collection mission has put the CIA and other intelligence agencies such as the NSA
in a position to go further, if directed, to conduct operations that could disrupt or
destroy an enemy’s military capabilities. Naturally, the DOD is also involved in cyber
operations. In the past few years, senior defense officials have acknowledged that
the United States is prepared not just to conduct defensive cyber operations to pro-
tect military information systems but also to consider conducting offensive cyber
operations.50
228 Chapter 9
Little is known, correctly so, about the nature and extent of US covert cyber
operations. United States Cyber Command is responsible for shielding DOD infor-
mation systems from attacks and for conducting military cyber operations. At the
moment, however, the four-star officer leading the NSA is also responsible for run-
ning CYBERCOM. The current arrangement where a single senior military officer is
dual hatted, running a major intelligence organization as well as a separate military
command, further blurs the lines between intelligence and military operations. The
Obama administration had considered separating the two responsibilities, and that
might still occur in the future.
The CIA, on the other hand, has been involved in so-called information operations
as part of its own intelligence mission. It established a Directorate of Digital Innova-
tion as part of a 2015 modernization of the agency’s organizational structure. That
directorate collects cyber-related intelligence as well as manages the increasingly
important exploitation of “big data.”51 At the same time, the CIA may well be called
on to develop covert actions that involve the use of cyber operations. Some press
reporting has indicated that small cyber operations may have been launched against
the personal computers of key al-Qaeda members.52
Given the growing importance of cyberspace to most governments’ civilian
sectors and military programs, it seems inevitable that cyber operations will be a
significant new form of covert action. Where once the United States focused on eco-
nomic or military “sabotage” or “political influence” conducted through newspaper
placements and black broadcasting, now there can be cyber options. This has been
amply demonstrated by the North Korean cyber operation against Sony Pictures
in 2014, which penetrated the American entertainment company’s computer sys-
tem, published its emails, and also destroyed some data. The 2010 attack on Iran’s
nuclear program has also been analyzed by private security firms to be so sophis-
ticated that it was more likely conducted by a government than any individual or
hacker group. Likewise, the 2019 DNI’s Worldwide Threat Assessment identified
Beijing as posing a persistent cyber threat to the United States’ military and critical
infrastructure systems.53
The Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential campaign has become an
example of how covert use of cyberspace to penetrate electoral computer systems and
to manipulate social media websites to produce bogus news stories can influence voters.
A joint NSA-CIA-FBI-DNI assessment characterized the Russian political-influence
campaign as an officially sanctioned and highly organized effort to use covert cyber
operations, along with overt Russian media, third parties, and social media bloggers, to
undermine the Hillary Clinton campaign in favor of Donald Trump’s.54 Other examples
are likely to emerge over time, suggesting that this will be a potential tool for the United
States as well as its adversaries.
To summarize, then, covert action is likely to remain a potent tool for future presi-
dents but also one that contains a number of operational, political, and legal-ethical
risks. As former official Gregory Treverton’s comments at the beginning of this chapter
note, Americans do not want to think of their government as conducting dirty tricks,
but the fact that governments hostile to the United States will do so tempts any presi-
dent or senior US official to reply in kind. Adopting a set of principles such as cited by
Sir David Omand earlier in this chapter would be one way to ensure that covert actions
remain within the bounds of what would be acceptable to the American people.
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
Marshall Curtis Erwin, Covert Action: Legislative Actions and Possible Policy Questions, Con-
gressional Research Service, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL33715.pdf
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Background to “Assessing Russian Activities
and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribu-
tion, January 6, 2017, at URL: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
United States Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, “Executive Summary,” Committee
Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, https://fas
.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/ssci-rdi.pdf
FURTHER READING
William Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency (Lexington: Univer-
sity Press of Kentucky, 2004).
Provides a practitioner’s view of earlier covert actions, which defends its uses when prop-
erly authorized and executed.
Jack Devine, Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story (New York: Farrar, Strauss and
Giroux, 2014).
Describes the career of a CIA practitioner of covert action and his principal lessons
learned from both successes and failures.
Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action and Counterintelligence (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001).
Presents a typology of covert actions and some of the pros and cons of its uses since
1945.
Richard Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA (New York: Wiley, 2014).
Provides a good discussion of the early decisions regarding covert action and some of
the major successes and failures throughout the CIA’s history.
Jennifer D. Kibbe, “Covert Action,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, http://internationalstudies
.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626
-e-135.
Provides an extensive review of the covert action literature and highlights some of its
challenges.
230 Chapter 9
Peter Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (New
York: New Press, 1998).
Recounts the most often cited failure of CIA-sponsored covert action.
Gregory Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World (New York:
Basic Books, 1987).
A former staff member of the 1975 Church Committee provides his perspective on the
CIA’s secret operations up until those hearings.
NOTES
First epigraph: Gregory Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar
World (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 11.
Second epigraph: Jack Devine, Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story (New York: Far-
rar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014), 5.
1. See Office of the Historian, “Notes on Covert Action,” in Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1964–48; Western Europe, vol. 12, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus
1964-68v12/actionsstatement.
2. See Richard Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA (New York: Wiley,
2014), 19–29.
3. The OPC was the element within the CIA where covert action was centralized. The
Senior Consultants included representatives from the Departments of State and Defense and
the Joint Chiefs of staff.
4. Treverton, Covert Action, 38.
5. See “History of Evolution,” Coordination and Approval of Covert Operations, Febru-
ary 23, 1967, CIA Library, declassified May 2002, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom
/docs/DOC_0000790232.pdf.
6. See James Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War: US Policy, Intelligence and CIA
Operations (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 37–38.
7. Callanan, 41.
8. At the time, the CIA was assessing this split as the most significant division in the
Soviet sphere of influence and was alert to the possibility of Stalin considering attacking Yugo-
slavia to force it back into the fold.
9. See Coleman Mehta, “The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split,” Cold War Studies 13,
no. 1 (Winter 2011): 101–45.
10. Mehta.
11. John Prados, CIA’s Secret Wars (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 17, 312–13.
12. Devine, Good Hunting.
13. Quoted in William Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 138.
15. The US military had more elaborate plans for the invasion of Cuba and believed noth-
ing short of a major operation would dislodge Castro. However, it was content to let the CIA
continue its plans, believing in the end that Kennedy would have to provide more military
support and thereby be open to its more overt plans for invasion. This was an important back-
drop to the military’s thinking that invasion was necessary during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
16. Daugherty, Executive Secrets, 154.
18. Former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, quoted in the New York Times, March 1, 1987.
19. Devine, Good Hunting, 25–42, provides an eyewitness account of the operation by the
former Afghan task force chief of the covert action program against the Soviet occupation.
20. On March 27, 1985, “National Security Decision Directive 166: U.S. Policy, Programs,
and Strategy in Afghanistan” stipulated that “our covert program will deny Afghanistan to the
Soviets as a secure base from which to project power further in the region.”
21. Daugherty, Executive Action, 206. Another feature of the program’s funding was that
Saudi Arabia had pledged matching funds to whatever the US Congress was prepared to
appropriate.
22. Some media, along with a book and movie, have characterized the Afghan operation as
“Charlie Wilson’s war” in view of his strong advocacy for the program.
23. Adapted from Sir David Omand, “Ethical Guidelines in Using Secret Intelligence for
Public Security,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19, no. 4 (2006): 613–28. Text in
parentheses mine.
24. Each president usually issued a national security memorandum detailing the responsi-
bilities and representation on covert action oversight groups. NSDM 40 (Nixon) became the
title of the NSC subgroup assigned to review and approve covert action proposals.
26. Daugherty, Executive Action, 100.
27. The author is indebted to a former senior NSC official responsible for overseeing covert
action who explained the Bush process in some detail.
28. Daugherty, Executive Action, 103–4.
29. Attendance might expand depending on the topic and region. If other agencies, such as
the FBI, DEA, or Department of Commerce had equities at stake, they might also be included.
30. According to one former NSC participant in covert action decisions, a senior congres-
sional official might strongly object to a proposed finding, which raised the risk of a leak if the
president went ahead with the operation.
31. CIA, Office of the Inspector General, Unauthorized Interrogation Techniques, Octo-
ber 29, 2003, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/0006541525.pdf.
32. Michael Hayden, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (New
York: Penguin, 2016), 223–25.
33. Hayden, 223–25. Hayden and other former officials have noted that the full list of ten
techniques has not been revealed, but once the existence of the interrogation program and
waterboarding had leaked, the list was cut down and waterboarding was eliminated.
34. The United States ratified in 1994 the UN Convention on Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which defines torture as “any act by which
severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.”
In August 2002, the DOJ produced a legal memorandum for President Bush that approved
a wide range of techniques, concluding that “while many of these techniques may amount to
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, they do not produce pain or suffering of the necessary
intensity to meet the definition of torture.”
232 Chapter 9
35. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee’s Study of the CIA’s Detention
and Interrogation Program, Executive Summary and Key Findings, and Declassified Revisions
December 3, 2014, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/7/c/7c85429a-ec38
-4bb5-968f-289799bf6d0e/D87288C34A6D9FF736F9459ABCF83210.sscistudy1.pdf.
36. “Statement from Director Brennan on the SSCI Study on the Former Detention and
Interrogation Report,” December 9, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases
-statements/2014-press-releases-statements/statement-from-director-brennan-on-ssci-study
-on-detention-interrogation-program.html.
37. Mark Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of
the Earth (New York: Penguin, 2013), 120.
38. George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: Harper
Collins, 2007), 158.
39. The New America Foundation claims that, by 2017, the United States had conducted
over four hundred strikes in Pakistan, causing anywhere from 245 to 303 civilian casual-
ties out of a total casualty range of 2,359 to 3,685. See New America Foundation, “America’s
CounterTerrorism Wars: Drone Strikes Pakistan,” https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth
/americas-counterterrorism-wars/pakistan/. The Bureau for Investigative Journalism reports
that there were 429 confirmed strikes in Pakistan, resulting in 2,514 to 4,023 deaths, of which
424 to 926 were civilian deaths. See Bureau for Investigative Journalism, “Strikes in Pakistan,”
accessed January 5, 2017, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/drone-war/data/pakistan
-covert-us-reported-actions-2017.
40. Scott Shane, “CIA Is Disputed on Civilian Toll in Drone Strikes,” New York Times,
August 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/asia/12drones.html.
41. See “Executive Order: United States Policy on Pre- and Post-Strike Measures to Address
Civilian Casualties in U.S. Operations Involving the Use of Force,” July 1, 2016.
42. Neil MacFarquhar, “Russia Says Its Syria Bases Beat Back an Attack by 13 Drones,” New
York Times, January 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/world/middleeast/syria
-russia-drones.htm.
43. Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, 216.
44. Daugherty, Executive Secrets, 65–68.
45. Greg Miller, “Wider Pentagon Spy Role Urged,” The Nation, October 26, 2002, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html.
46. Barton Gellman, “Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld’s Domain,” Washington Post, Janu-
ary 23, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html.
47. See Jeff Mustin and Harvey Rishikof, “Projecting Force in the 21st Century: Legitimacy
and the Rule of Law; Title 50, Title 10, Title 18, and Art. 75,” Rutgers Law Review 68 (Summer
2011): 1251.
48. Jim Michaels, “Trump Gives Defense Chief Mattis Running Room in War-Fighting,” USA
Today, April 5, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/05/mattis-trump
-syria-iraq-yemen-isis/100016758/.
49. John Haltiwanger, “Trump Blames Generals for Ambush That Got Four Servicemen
Killed,” Newsweek, October 25, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/trump-blames-generals-niger
-ambush-four-us-soldiers-killed-693227.
50. See Joint Staff, Cyberspace Operations, Joint Publication-3–12, February 5, 2013, II-2,
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_12r.pdf, which lays out how cyberspace operations are to
be conducted, including mention of “offensive operations.”
51. “Big data” typically refers to extremely large and complex data sets that require sophis-
ticated software to analyze and exploit the information found there. For intelligence pur-
poses, big data analysis can reveal trends, patterns, or relationships hidden within these huge
amounts of information gleaned from websites, blogs, or social media sources.
52. David Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks against Iran,” New York
Times, June 1, 2012.
53. ODNI, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, January 29,
2019, 5.
54. ODNI, “Key Judgments,” Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in the Recent U.S.
Presidential Elections, ICA 2017–01D, January 6, 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents
/ICA_2017_01.pdf. See also the Mueller Report, formally known as the Report on the Inves-
tigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, volumes 1 and 2, submit-
ted by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, March 2019, https://www.justice.gov/storage
/report.pdf.
10
The Challenges of
the Intelligence-Policy
Relationship
Presidents and their national security teams usually are ill-informed

about intelligence capabilities; therefore they often have unrealistic
expectations of what intelligence can do for them, especially when
they hear about the genuinely extraordinary capabilities of U.S. intel-
ligence for collecting and processing information.
—Robert Gates, former CIA director, 1989
Often we feel the desire to influence policy and . . . to wish simply for
influence can, and upon occasion does, get intelligence to the place
where it can have no influence whatever. By striving too hard in this
direction, intelligence may come to seem just another policy voice,
and an unwanted one at that.
—Sherman Kent, Estimates and Influence, 1968
American intelligence has provided presidents and national security teams with an
amazing amount of information and insight into a bewildering array of international
challenges. As the preceding chapters make clear, intelligence has played a part in the
shaping and execution of foreign and security policies at both the strategic and tac-
tical levels; moreover, intelligence at times has to implement policies in the form of
covert action. That said, the relationship between intelligence and policy has remained
contentious and unpredictable. While policymakers and intelligence officers share the
same national security enterprise, they sometimes appear to be coexisting in parallel
universes. Policymakers and intelligence officers are driven by different sets of political
interests and bureaucratic imperatives. This chapter will explain how the relationship
234
The Challenges of the Intelligence-Policy Relationship235
has evolved but remains full of friction. In particular, it will examine how “politicization”
of intelligence occurs, spotlighting some major cases and raising some issues about the
future of the intelligence-policy relationship.
OPPOSING TRIBES: POLICY AND INTELLIGENCE
Early in the US intelligence community’s formation, a clear distinction was made

between those officials responsible for policymaking and others carrying the respon-
sibility of presenting intelligence for a national security team’s use. As the 1947
National Security Act makes clear, the director of central intelligence (and after the
2004 intelligence reform legislation, the director of national intelligence) was not a
policymaking official but rather an “intelligence adviser.” This signified a clear line
between those empowered to make national security decisions and others who were
merely providing inputs from their respective areas of expertise; intelligence, like
military advice, was more an instrument for policymakers than policy itself. The CIA
director and later the DNI were to bring the best information and analysis to the pres-
ident and his senior policy officials. In a formal sense, no intelligence official would
have a say in determining what US national security policy would be. This clearly
separated the policy and intelligence communities.
As chapter 3 made clear, the policy advisers and their agencies are responsible for
determining how to develop strategies for advancing US national interests and develop
responses to major threats and opportunities to those interests. The policy “lane” is
clearly distinguishable from the provision of information and analysis constructed in
the intelligence “lane.” Policymakers are always sensitive to intelligence usurping or at
least complicating their roles by presenting national intelligence estimates and other
assessments that might undermine the assumptions behind their preferred policies
or suggest that a selected course of action might not have the desired results. Policy
makers are above all else protective of their “decision space,” which in the best of all
worlds means not having any constraints on their freedom of action.
Many presidents and senior policy officials come from the worlds of politics,
law, and business and are people of action. They are highly confident of their own
abilities and firm in their own beliefs. As such, they are inclined to be optimists
and bridle at any suggestion that their policies might be ineffective, unsustainable,
or too risky. As political scientist and intelligence scholar Robert Jervis has noted,
policymakers have to oversell their policies to domestic and foreign audiences, and
that leads inevitably to distortion of intelligence and thus clashes with the IC.1 A
further demand of policymakers is the desire for “certainty” regarding future impor-
tant events. They fear surprise and any unanticipated complications to their policy
agendas.2
236 Chapter 10
In contrast, intelligence officers by their very nature are more cautious if not
skeptical about the feasibility of ambitious policy initiatives and wary of providing
high-confidence judgments or predictions regarding the future. “It’s complicated”
would capture the essence of the intelligence world. Analysts in particular tend to
see the world in shades of gray rather than black-and-white terms. Uncertainty can be
bounded but not reduced to zero. Above all else, intelligence is designed to be “policy
neutral,” or free of any particular policy agenda. Indeed, the whole purpose of hav-
ing an independent intelligence community is to assure that the most comprehen-
sive set of facts and analysis can be brought to bear on very complex foreign policy
issues. At best, that information might present policymakers with inconvenient facts
and alternative assessments of an adversary’s capabilities, intentions, or reactions to
American policies; at worst, intelligence might raise questions about the underlying
premises or conclusions of a policy decision. However, for intelligence officers, pre-
senting the facts is more important than seeking approval from their policy masters.
ALTERNATIVE INTELLIGENCE-POLICY MODELS:

KENT VERSUS GATES
At the outset of the Cold War, intelligence as a discipline was poorly understood, and
the clear lines between policy and intelligence were not so carefully defined. However,
a senior intelligence expert in the OSS (the CIA’s precursor), and later a key official in
the early estimates process at the CIA, laid out the ground rules for the IC’s operation
in the policy process. In his 1949 book Strategic Intelligence for an American World
Policy, Sherman Kent enunciated the basic principle that intelligence should “raise
the level of discussion” around the policymaking tables. In Kent’s view, intelligence
should not advocate a specific policy position; instead, it should inform policy. Intelli-
gence analysts should be cognizant of, but detached from, any specific policy agenda.
Kent knew that lively debates would tempt strong-willed policymakers to manipulate
intelligence findings. Thus, intelligence analysts had to strive to present information
objectively without regard to whether it was pleasing to senior officials.
Stating this principle, however, was not to say it would be easy to achieve in prac-
tice. Nor were intelligence assessments uncontroversial when matters of war or peace
were to be based partly on these findings. Over the decades, US intelligence has been
faulted for not only being incorrect at times but also of being biased against presi-
dential policies. Intelligence frequently became embroiled in debates over strategy
and was sometimes accused, rightly or wrongly, of becoming “politicized” (i.e., dis-
torted by political agendas).
The Kent model of a kind of “arm’s-length” approach to policymakers was designed
to avoid becoming entangled in such political debates. However, it also tended to
instill an attitude among analysts that they could write what they wished and that
policymakers could take or leave their analysis. This “ivory-tower” intelligence atti-
tude toward policy could at times verge on hubris. Policymakers would accuse ana-
lysts of indulging in faintly disguised criticism of policies with which they did not
agree. Moreover, the CIA often conducted analysis on topics as much to sharpen the
skills of its own analysts and deepen their expertise as to inform a specific policy dis-
cussion. Hence, periodically policymakers have complained that intelligence was not
relevant to their policy needs. In the early days, intelligence assessments tended to
be lengthy, excessively detailed, and hard to digest for harried policymakers. Indeed,
the CIA and other agencies always considered themselves as much the audience for
intelligence products as the policy agencies themselves.3
The end of the Cold War and demise of the Soviet Union found the IC less pre-
pared to justify its huge operations than ever before. Some critics, citing the CIA’s
failure to forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union, asserted that there was no need
for the agency at all if the principal threat was gone. Sen. Daniel Moynihan famously
proposed in the early 1990s to either fold the CIA into the State Department or abol-
ish it entirely.4 Even before this time, however, senior officials, including Robert Gates,
began to articulate a different intelligence-policy model that highlighted “relevance”
in the place where “objectivity” once had pride of place. As a Soviet analyst, Gates had
served in several presidents’ National Security Council staffs, and he made the obser-
vation that too often analysis was not addressing current policy agendas. He wrote
that while intelligence prided itself on understanding how foreign governments
worked, few analysts understood how the US government worked or seemed aware of
the policy processes that drove American foreign policy.5 As deputy director for intel-
ligence in the 1980s, he instructed his senior managers and analysts to spend more
time “downtown” in interagency meetings and in the offices of NSC, State Depart-
ment, and Defense Department policymakers.6 Only then could analysts understand
what the true intelligence needs of the government were.
From then on and up to the present, the CIA in particular has aimed to be close to
policymakers in order to understand what policies are being considered and thereby
tailor intelligence to the issues that most mattered. Senior analysts increasingly took
rotational assignments to policy agencies in order to get close to policy discussions
and to help provide direct intelligence support. The author was himself assigned to
the State Department’s policy planning staff in 1989–91 in order to help bring intel-
ligence to some of Secretary of State James Baker’s closest advisers.7 The crafting
of a President’s Daily Brief (explained in detail in chapter 8) is perhaps the best
example of the Gates model in action, as it explicitly focuses on presidential intel-
ligence requirements. As the PDB became the key intelligence product, assignment
as a PDB briefer was sought after by rising analysts, who were frequently promoted
238 Chapter 10
to become senior managers on the basis of their performance as briefers to the presi-
dent or other cabinet officers. For example, Michael Morell, who was one of President
George W. Bush’s PDB briefers, went on to become a senior office manager, executive
director (the number-three position), and eventually CIA deputy director. In practice,
a briefer’s exposure to senior policy officials gave them insight into how the inter-
agency policy process ran and the types of intelligence questions being posed by
senior officials. In addition, they gained personal credibility with their counterparts
in the White House and State and Defense Departments, which built up important
intelligence-policy relationships for the future.
Less apparent, however, was the inherent risk that this model presented to main-
taining intelligence’s analytical objectivity and integrity. By virtue of being close to
policy, was there not a danger of analysts becoming inadvertently biased toward the
policy preferences of the current occupant of the White House? As Richard Betts
noted, “Packaging intelligence to be more productive makes it harder to draw sharp
lines between what is relevant and what supports a particular policy choice.”8 Robert
Gates, who had been deputy director of the CIA during the Reagan years, became the
target of vicious accusations of “skewing” analysis in ways favorable to the hawkish
views of CIA director William Casey and President Reagan (see box 10.1). The ten-
dency for presidents also to pick their CIA directors from among personal advisers
Box 10.1 The Gates Confirmation Hearings and Charges of Politicization
In the fall of 1991, Robert Gates was nominated to become George H. W. Bush’s CIA director.
During the nomination hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sev-
eral senior CIA analysts accused Gates of forcing analysts to rewrite analysis of the Soviet
Union to bolster the Reagan administration’s skeptical perceptions of Mikhail Gorbachev’s
so-called New Thinking. Those analysts claimed that as deputy director of intelligence, Gates
had dismissed the Gorbachev phenomenon as mere tactics, exaggerated the Soviet military
threat, and played down instability in the USSR.
Gates’s own defense was primarily focused on his review responsibilities that CIA analysis
be as rigorous and analytically defensible as possible. He acknowledged that he criticized
some assessments as “flabby and complacent” and some analysts as being “closed-minded,
smug, [and providing] arrogant responses to legitimate questions.”* In his own memoir of the
1990s, he also admitted that he had significant differences with the then secretary of state
George Shultz, who complained that Gates was using his position as CIA director to question
Gorbachev’s abilities and indirectly Shultz’s diplomatic overtures toward Gorbachev.†
* Elaine Sciolino, “The Gates Hearings: Bush’s C.I.A. Choice in Counterattack at Senate Hearing,” New York
Times, October 4, 1991, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/04/us/the-gates-hearings-bush-s-cia-choice-in-counter
attack-at-senate-hearing.html?pagewanted=all.
†
Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold
War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 443–47.
and political supporters rather than careerists also increased concerns that intelli-
gence might become more prone to politicization.
PRESIDENTS AND THEIR INTELLIGENCE ADVISERS
Given that the assigned role of CIA directors and later directors of national intelligence
is to be the principal intelligence adviser to presidents and the NSC, their relation-
ships with their presidents has often become critical to the broader intelligence-
policy relationship. Those presidents who had a better understanding of and valued
intelligence tended to establish strong bonds with their intelligence advisers, while
those less familiar or comfortable with intelligence kept a more arm’s-length attitude
toward those individuals and their agencies.
Among the presidents who held the most sophisticated views of intelligence,
Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush stand out. As a military commander,
Eisenhower had used intelligence throughout his wartime campaigns and saw it as
a force multiplier in the struggle against communism during the Cold War. He was
responsible for the development of some of the earliest overhead imagery programs
(the U-2 “spyplane” and the first satellite programs). Moreover, as a military com-
mander, he had been comfortable exploiting secret operations and later eagerly used
covert action programs crafted by his CIA director, Allen Dulles. Eisenhower placed
great confidence in Dulles, who had conducted OSS wartime operations overseas,
and he boosted the agency’s covert action programs.
George H. W. Bush was another president with a unique understanding of intelli-
gence, as he served as CIA director under Gerald Ford. He came to this position with
substantial international experience, having served as US ambassador to the UN and
as first US envoy to the People’s Republic of China. Later, as vice president during the
Reagan presidency, he was authorized to read the PDB and enjoyed the interactions
with his personal briefer. Hence, when he became president in 1988, he made it a
practice to read the PDB every day, elevating the status of the document more than
any previous president. “When I was president,” he told the CIA history staff, “one
of my favorite times of the day was when I would sit down with a briefer and read
through the PDB.”9 He also decided to retain President Reagan’s CIA director, for-
mer FBI director William Webster, who had replaced the controversial William Casey.
Bush had failed to retain his own CIA directorship when President Carter came into
office, so he also wanted to send the message that the job should be nonpolitical.10
Many presidents have been far less knowledgeable, supportive, or comfortable with
intelligence. Christopher Andrew, the British intelligence historian, has described
Harry Truman as “almost totally ignorant” of intelligence when he took office.11 Tru-
man also famously worried about creating a CIA that could become an American
240 Chapter 10
Gestapo but eagerly wanted a single organization to collate and provide him infor-
mation. John F. Kennedy came into office largely ignorant of intelligence operations
but trusting and relying on careerists such as Allen Dulles. However, the Bay of Pigs
fiasco quickly dispelled this confidence, and he designated his brother, Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, to watch over the CIA to make sure it did not get him into
trouble. Lyndon Johnson was perhaps the earthiest in reflecting on his problems with
intelligence: “One day, I’d worked hard and gotten a full pail of milk, but I wasn’t pay-
ing attention, and old Bessie swung her s—smeared tail through the bucket of milk.
Now, you know that’s what these intelligence guys do. You work hard and get a good
program or policy going, and they swing a s—smeared tail through it.”12
As Johnson’s quote makes clear, presidents are often frustrated by intelligence
assessments that do not support their policy agendas. In particular, Richard Nixon
suspected the CIA was opposed to his presidency, believing the agency was somehow
involved in his defeat in the presidential election of 1960 and filled with “Georgetown
liberals” who despised him and his conservative views.13 In general, new occupants to
the office are wary of the CIA, given its attention to presidential intelligence needs.
They often suspect that the CIA and the IC more generally have been working so long
for their predecessors (often from the opposing party) that they have become cap-
tives of, if not advocates for, that former president’s policies. During the postelection
transition period prior to taking office, the president-elect begins to meet with senior
intelligence officials and might see their first PDBs. They begin to take the measure
of the current intelligence officials and their views. Likewise, those senior intelligence
officials are anxious to prove their ability to work for the new president, regardless of
party or policy views, and to get a sense of the new president’s intelligence priorities.
That “shake-down cruise” is sometimes smooth but often very bumpy.
The transition from George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton was clearly a bumpy one.
President Clinton appointed James Woolsey, who had been a prominent defense
official in previous Democratic administrations. However, Clinton had never met
Woolsey, and the two men proved unable to forge a close relationship. Clinton never
became an avid reader of the PDB or comfortable with his intelligence advisers. Wool-
sey became the victim of political cartoons showing him failing to get access to the
Oval Office, and he eventually departed in frustration. Clinton’s efforts to appoint his
first national security adviser, Anthony Lake, as the next CIA director—in order to have
someone with whom he did have a good relationship—foundered in the nomination
process, and he eventually selected Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch, who
had a similarly checkered and short tenure at the CIA. George Tenet, once Clinton’s
NSC senior director for intelligence and then the deputy DCI, would eventually take
the number-one position. He proved to be a better fit for Clinton and clever enough
to be retained during the first years of George W. Bush’s presidency.14 Throughout his
presidency, however, Clinton seldom saw a PDB briefer, content to allow his national
security advisers to read the PDB and remind him of the important articles he should
read. While acknowledging the importance of intelligence, Clinton never took a par-
ticular interest in it.
The transition to the George W. Bush presidency saw the IC and its leadership hav-
ing to prove itself once again to an occupant who had very little foreign policy experi-
ence or interest. He surrounded himself, however, with a skilled team of senior advisers
who did have significant experience and strong opinions regarding intelligence. Sec-
retary of State Colin Powell was supportive but skeptical at times, while Vice President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were suspicious and often
critical of the CIA’s intelligence judgments. Bush, however, had an open mind and was
encouraged by his father’s positive experience working at and with the CIA. During
early intelligence briefings at his “Texas White House,” the president-elect remarked
that he hoped when he was finally in office, he would be able to get the “good stuff!”15
This remark put the CIA into a state of high anxiety, believing it already was providing
the best intelligence it could. However, the then CIA director George Tenet decided
to brief the president himself in order to sensitize him to the spectacular sources and
methods the CIA employed as well as cement a solid personal relationship with the
new president. That relationship survived the disastrous 9/11 attacks, but ultimately
Tenet was a casualty of the Iraq WMD estimate’s flawed findings.
His successor, Congressman Porter Goss, had even less success in building rap-
port with the president or his own workforce. In addition, the creation of the position
of director of national intelligence demoted CIA director Goss’s status and often put
him at odds with the first DNI, John Negroponte. Goss left shortly thereafter, hav-
ing unsuccessfully challenged Negroponte’s authority to redirect some of the CIA’s
counterterrorism activities.16 As the Iraq War bogged down into a protracted civil
war, the Bush administration was tempted to let the CIA’s flawed 2002 estimate carry
a large share of the blame for the failing policies. The White House also did little to
shield the CIA from congressional criticism for conducting presidentially approved
secret detention and interrogation programs. US Air Force general Michael Hayden’s
selection as CIA director helped to quiet the uproar over the CIA’s role in “torture,”
as he pledged to take the agency off the front pages. His longtime intelligence back-
ground and service as NSA director made him a suitable partner with DNI Negro-
ponte. Most important, he formed a good relationship with President Bush.
Intelligence under President Obama began with its own share of controversy. His
appointment of Leon Panetta—who had considerable political experience and clout but
no intelligence background—struck many as puzzling if not risky. President Obama had
publicly condemned the Bush administration’s Iraq policies and its counterterrorism
policy of using enhanced interrogation techniques. This led to a chilly relationship
242 Chapter 10
between the president and CIA professionals initially. Panetta, however, proved to be
a skilled bureaucratic leader who had the president’s ear. In short order, he restored
morale at the agency and also its credibility with the White House.
If anything, Panetta overshadowed Obama’s first DNI, retired admiral Dennis Blair,
who managed to clash repeatedly with the CIA—especially over overseas assignment
of chiefs of station—and lose the confidence of the White House. His replacement by
James Clapper—a career military intelligence professional—proved to be a stroke of
genius in terms of crafting an effective partnership among senior intelligence officials.
Along with NSC senior director for counterterrorism and intelligence John Brennan,
the intelligence leadership formed an effective team that gained the president’s con-
fidence. Obama came to appreciate intelligence, particularly the use of covert action
and special operations, which led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama also
proved to be an exceptionally good reader of intelligence, requesting that his PDB
be delivered via a classified electronic tablet that he regularly read. When he decided
to shuffle his cabinet in his second term, he chose Brennan to become CIA director.
By placing at Langley a former senior NSC adviser and seasoned intelligence profes-
sional, Obama ensured he had someone who could deliver tough intelligence assess-
ments, oversee both active counterterrorism and covert action programs, and work
with his defense, intelligence, and law enforcement counterparts.
Those positives, however, were overshadowed by the impact of Edward Snowden’s
stunning leak of highly sensitive electronic surveillance efforts by the NSA. The IC
had to explain long-standing programs designed to collect metadata of millions of
American citizens from major Internet and phone providers, which the IC could comb
through to track down possible links to foreign terrorist organizations. In addition,
this massive release of NSA intercept programs revealed collection efforts against key
allied leaders, most notably German chancellor Angela Merkel. The diplomatic fallout
from the Snowden leaks damaged not only US credibility but also strained the White
House relationship with some intelligence officials. The administration was obliged to
ratchet back those programs and establish new policies regarding collection against
key allies. A presidentially appointed commission found that those NSA programs had
probably overreached and did not in fact surface enough valuable information to jus-
tify the intrusion into Americans’ personal communications. The Obama administra-
tion subsequently directed that the NSA would not collect that data but that Internet
providers would have to archive that information in case a FISA warrant were issued
allowing IC to access an individual user’s metadata. (See chapter 11 for more details.)
In the most recent presidential transition, it became clear that president-elect Don-
ald Trump would not readily accept the joint CIA, NSA, FBI, and DNI assessment
that the Russian government had covertly interfered in the 2016 elections in an effort
to undermine his opponent’s candidacy. To President Trump, these assessments
diminished his confidence in the intelligence leadership and the community’s non-
political nature. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump campaign had
mocked IC findings as speculation, stating, “These are the same people that said Sad-
dam had weapons of mass destruction.”17 Throughout the campaign and even after
taking office, he expressed skepticism about the Russian hacking episode; moreover,
unlike any previous president, he attacked the independence and credibility of the
FBI’s efforts to uncover the Russian “active measures” program.18 Like many presi-
dents before him, President Trump wanted to have people leading intelligence agen-
cies who shared his views and who were loyal to him. His selection of Republican
congressman Mike Pompeo to be his first CIA director fit this mold of having political
appointees. Likewise, the appointment of former diplomat John Bolton as President
Trump’s third national security adviser also raised alarm bells regarding politicization
driven by a strong policy advocate with a record of misrepresenting intelligence.19
On the positive side, the appointment of a competent if controversial professional
intelligence officer, Gina Haspel, as the first female CIA director likely will have a
mixed impact on the policy-intelligence relationship.20 Her nomination hearings were
clouded by criticism of her involvement in the discredited CIA “torture” program
and senatorial complaints that she might not stand up to President Trump’s seem-
ing attraction to harsher interrogation methods. Yet she pledged as a professional to
speak truth to power and seemed to demonstrate this in the 2019 Worldwide Threat
Assessment hearings, when she and DNI Dan Coats laid out IC assessments on Rus-
sia, Iran, North Korea, and ISIS that the media characterized as being at odds with the
president’s own views.21 Periodic presidential dissatisfaction with his intelligence and
law enforcement leaders now appears almost predictable, if they are asked to set the
record straight.
President Trump has also proven to be an indifferent reader of the PDB. According
to numerous press reports, he does not enjoy reading it and is content to be briefed
orally on intelligence topics. While he receives the PDB daily, it is clear he is not overly
focused on using an intelligence briefing to shape his agenda.22 Some CIA careerists
defend this practice as not being a huge deviation from some past presidents who
also did not read every item or who preferred oral briefings; they note that other presi-
dents also relied on their national security advisers to tell them which intelligence
reports were significant.23 From what reporters have learned, the president’s national
security adviser and other key White House officers remain readers of the PDB.
INTELLIGENCE AT THE CENTER OF POLICY DISPUTES
Policy disputes in which intelligence assessments play a role are often a reason for pres-
idential distrust of and disregard for intelligence. As mentioned earlier, policymakers
244 Chapter 10
have their policy agendas and their own worldviews. When intelligence challenges
either of those, conflict is sure to erupt. Because intelligence brings facts and uniquely
secret information into a policy discussion, it can play an incredibly powerful role in
supporting or opposing presidential decisions. A longtime scholar of the intelligence-
policy relationship, Joshua Rovner, has noted that normal friction between intelli-
gence and policy results when the two hold different assessments about the quality,
objectivity, and implications of intelligence assessments. In such circumstances, well-
informed policymakers have every right to challenge intelligence assessments and to
demand the IC explain and prove its case. However, politicization most often occurs
when policy officials try to manipulate or cherry-pick intelligence to suit their policy
preferences.24 Those instances tend to be ones where policymakers are so committed
to a set of policies that any hint that intelligence might question their basis would be
extremely damaging politically. Sometimes those instances reflect a genuine discon-
nect between policies and the intelligence that might undergird them. In others, poli-
cymakers accuse intelligence officials of producing estimates specifically to challenge
policies with which they disagree.
The specific motivations for and forms of politicization are many, and Rovner’s
scholarship suggests they can be found in the policy assumptions and agendas,
bureaucratic parochialism and organizational processes, and partisan and scapegoat-
ing tactics embedded in the intelligence-policy relationship (see box 10.2).
Box 10.2 Rovner’s Taxonomy of Politicization Varieties
Embedded assumptions: Analysts may embrace political and social assumptions held by poli-
cymakers that limit their exploration of intelligence issues. These may be driven by conven-
tional wisdom.
Intelligence parochialism: Analysts may unconsciously or consciously shade their analysis to

suit policy preferences, to satisfy the desires of their superiors, and to receive more positive
feedback and possible promotion.
Bureaucratic parochialism: Intelligence agencies interested in promoting their bureaucratic

interest in budgets and personnel can be tempted to skew intelligence assessments in ways
that will benefit their own organizational interests.
Partisan intelligence: Political parties can align themselves with or criticize intelligence for
partisan political gain. This can distort the work of intelligence agencies, leading them to be
more closely associated with particular political factions.
Intelligence as scapegoat: Intelligence assessments are regularly blamed for failed policies.
According to the “Washington Rule,” there are only policy successes and intelligence failures.
Source: Derived from a lengthy appendix in Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security Politics of Intel-
ligence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 207–9. Used with author’s permission.
Blatant manipulation of intelligence judgments is relatively rare but nonetheless

occurs. Many times politicization is more subtle and subject to debate about its inten-
tion and scope. The cases that follow represent varying degrees and forms of politi-
cization. Sometimes it can be obvious or subtle; sometimes it is primarily driven by
policymakers’ assumptions and preferences, but it can also be the result of intelli-
gence’s skepticism about policy choices or driven by bureaucratic and organizational
processes.
Vietnam War Estimates in the Johnson Administration

The mid-1960s CIA estimates on the conduct of the war in Vietnam were overwhelm-
ingly pessimistic, at a time when the Johnson administration was making the case
that the United States was winning. In its political assessments, the IC raised seri-
ous doubts about the political stability of the South Vietnamese governments, which
were seen as inept, out of touch with important segments of the population, and
increasingly corrupt.25 Somewhat ironically, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
was touting successful military operations while also approving increasing numbers
of US forces to bolster the South Vietnamese army. DCI John A. McCone was aware
of this discrepancy and of Johnson administration disapproval of CIA assessments,
and he directed the Board of National Estimates to rewrite its assessments to be
more in line with the views coming out of the US embassy and military command
in Saigon.26
The clash between policy and intelligence, however, escalated further with a series of
national military estimates from 1965 to 1967, when CIA military analysts disputed the
military intelligence’s order-of-battle tables.27 The military intelligence assessments
coming out of Saigon showed much lower numbers of “irregular” fighters (100,000 to
120,000) and were supportive of the view that the United States was gradually reduc-
ing the enemy’s strength by attrition. In contrast, CIA military analysts used a differ-
ent methodology,28 and they were convinced that there were far larger irregular forces
(250,000 to 300,000) than defense intelligence acknowledged. Efforts to arrive at a
consensus proved unsuccessful, and senior military commanders demanded that the
CIA agree to the lower DIA-approved numbers in the NIEs. The senior CIA represen-
tative reported to the then CIA director Richard Helms that the “rationale for the lower
number seems to be that any higher figure would generate an unacceptable level of
criticism from the press.”29 After much hand-wringing, Helms ordered this official to
agree with the lower numbers, arguing that the CIA had made its case to the military
and the White House and that it was now time to let the military have its way. CIA
analysts believed that Helms caved to administration pressure, and several remained
“renegades” who eventually went public with their charges that the CIA had acqui-
esced to the politicization of intelligence by the US military.30
246 Chapter 10
In retrospect, senior CIA officials have documented how their warnings of deterio-
rating political conditions in South Vietnam had been provided through field report-
ing, CIA assessments, and NIEs, which President Johnson and Secretary McNamara
dismissed as too pessimistic and politically inconvenient. Only much later did the
former defense secretary acknowledge in his own memoirs that those intelligence
assessments were correct and he had been “wrong, terribly wrong.”31
Soviet Estimates in the Nixon and Ford Administrations

In 1969, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger,
embarked on a series of ambitious arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.
Simultaneously Nixon pressed forward on the development of antiballistic missile
(ABM) defense systems, partly as a bargaining chip in what became the Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks. During these negotiations, the CIA and the IC were also con-
tinuing to produce the famous NIE 11–8 series on Soviet strategic nuclear programs.
Those annual estimates updated existing and projected Soviet offensive strategic
forces in terms of their launcher numbers, warhead loads, and targeting accuracies.
The 1968 version in the series, NIE 11-8-68, directly contradicted the Nixon admin-
istration’s argument that the ABM defenses were needed to counter a more powerful
Soviet SS-9 missile system. According to the IC, this system could not give the Rus-
sians the “first-strike” capability that the DOD was citing to justify building the Safe-
guard ABM system. In angry response, Kissinger proposed a special review panel to
examine the intelligence in hopes it could pressure the CIA to alter its assessments.
According to Joshua Rovner’s extensive study of politicization, the administration
promoted leaks designed to support the White House and blame the CIA for political
bias.32 Steady pressure from the White House and the Pentagon succeeded in chang-
ing the 1969 NIE 11–8, in which CIA director Helms agreed to remove language that
disputed the SS-9’s MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle) capa-
bility.33 Like the Vietnam OOB dispute, Helms justified his altering of intelligence
judgments on the claim that the CIA would maintain its separate analytical position
and allow the Pentagon to have its own way.34
Kissinger’s dispute with the IC was largely driven by his wish to conclude the 1972
SALT and ABM treaties as a key element of the Nixon administration’s détente poli-
cies. Those policies, however, came under vicious attacks during the Ford presidency,
when Republican and hawkish Democratic senators attacked the agreements as con-
ceding Soviet nuclear superiority based on the alleged détente bias of CIA estimates.
In 1975, those critics compelled President Ford and CIA director George H. W. Bush
to agree to an outside review (known later as the Team A / Team B exercise) to exam-
ine the CIA’s estimates of Soviet strategic programs. Well-known and outspoken crit-
ics of the CIA, such as Albert Wohlstetter and Paul Nitze, believed CIA estimates
had failed to forecast the continued buildup of Soviet strategic forces because of the
agency’s support for détente and a mistaken belief that the Soviet Union subscribed
to American views of mutual deterrence.35 Team B, made up of those subscribing to
the Wohlstetter-Nitze view, naturally concluded that CIA analysts (Team A) had used
incorrect assumptions in forecasting Soviet force projections, which reflected a bias
for the Kissinger policies of détente. Later examinations of the entire Team A / Team B
exercise concluded that its findings were hardly objective or independent of bias
themselves.36
A more balanced critique by the then chairman of the House Armed Services Com-
mittee, Les Aspin, concluded that CIA estimators had used incorrect assumptions
about how Soviet planners would retire older weapon systems. CIA analysts may also
have fallen prey to mirror-imaging in presuming that Soviet planners would favor
eliminating obsolete weapons and favor quality over quantity by producing fewer
missile launchers carrying more warheads; however, political bias was not the basis
of those calculations.37
2002 Intelligence about Iraq during the Bush Administration

Much has been written about the ill-fated 2002 NIE on Iraq’s WMD programs and
its role in the Iraq invasion. In that estimate, the IC concluded, wrongly, that Saddam
Hussein had restarted his nuclear, biological, and chemical programs and might be
able to have a nuclear capability within the decade (see chapter 6 for more details).
Critics of the Iraq War blamed the IC for developing “intelligence to please” for a
Bush administration intent on toppling Saddam. But, in fact, the IC’s analysis of Sad-
dam’s WMD programs shows surprisingly strong consistency from the Clinton to the
Bush presidencies. The IC’s conventional wisdom reflected a deep-seated belief that
Saddam was hiding weapons as he had previously, and analysts had a poor under-
standing of why Saddam would prevent UN inspectors from confirming the absence
of WMDs. In 2004, the Iraq Survey Group documented in an extensive report (known
as the Duelfer Report) how secretive Saddam was in preserving the fact that he had
terminated virtually all of his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons work but
tried to preserve the appearance of having programs in waiting to deter his enemies,
such as Israel and Iran.38
Importantly, the October 2002 NIE was written well after President Bush had
decided in early August on an invasion, and he had secretly instructed the Pentagon
to develop an operational plan without a formal meeting at which senior intelligence
officials were present.39 So, it is somewhat illogical to conclude that the NIE drove
the decision to invade. However, critics nonetheless believe the NIE was used to jus-
tify the invasion with Congress and the public, even if the IC did not produce it for
that reason. Indeed, it was prepared at the request of the Democratic chairman of
248 Chapter 10
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bob Graham. He and other Democrats
expected a lively Senate debate over giving President Bush an authorization to use
force. That only a half dozen senators bothered to read the classified and lengthy
estimate also suggests it was not a critical determinant of the congressional decision
to go to war.
In evaluating whether politicization occurred or not, the subsequent 2004 Robb-
Silberman WMD commission concluded that there was no evidence of blatant pres-
sure on the CIA to alter intelligence judgments to support the Bush administration’s
policies. The commission did not evaluate how the Bush administration used intel-
ligence. And this, in fact, is where some former intelligence officials centrally involved
in the assessments regarding Iraq believed politicization occurred. Paul Pillar, the
national intelligence officer for the Middle East and one of the authors of the 2002
NIE, contends that Bush officials “pocketed” the flawed judgments on Saddam’s
WMD programs because they helped build the case; moreover, White House officials
went further in knocking down any intelligence judgments that conflicted with the
campaign to sell the war’s legitimacy.40
Pillar’s argument is that senior Bush officials conspired to selectively cite intel-
ligence reporting they liked, dismiss or discredit analysis they did not like, and
encourage alternative intelligence assessments that favored their own views of
Iraq’s involvement in terrorism. Senior officials such as Vice President Cheney
and Secretary Rumsfeld regularly appeared before congressional committees or
on major TV programs, citing often uncorroborated intelligence reports that they
characterized as providing absolute certainty that Saddam had a nuclear program.
Simultaneously, some officials were actively discrediting anyone who had presented
disconfirming evidence. In particular, Cheney’s chief of staff had tried to punish for-
mer ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had confirmed to the CIA that reporting on
Iraq’s purchase of “yellow cake” uranium ore from Niger was entirely bogus. Finally,
Rumsfeld’s deputies had set up an in-house Pentagon unit for producing alternative
intelligence assessments aimed at finding links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which
the CIA had largely dismissed. Known as the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation
Group, its mission was to collect as much information as possible of those possible
links for use with the public but also to undermine IC assessments that dismissed
this linkage.
In view of these less visible forms of politicization and a steady stream of official
requests for only information that confirmed prowar positions, Pillar believes that
there was a not so subtle message to analysts: “Intelligence officers also did not need
explicit threats or pressure to be all too aware of the ways in which producing what
policymakers did not want to hear would make the officers’ professional lives unpleas-
ant but producing what was wanted would reduce the unpleasantness.”41
A final fault line in the intelligence-policy relationship over Iraq occurred as the
war was about to be launched. NIO Pillar had commissioned two interagency assess-
ments on the impact of Saddam’s removal on regional stability and Iraq’s domestic
future. Requested by Colin Powell’s policy planning director, Richard Haass, both
reports were generally pessimistic about the impact the war would have on the region
and Iraq’s future. One suggested that an invasion could bolster anti-American sen-
timent as a result of the occupation and generate support for al-Qaeda. The other
warned that Iraq had little prospect for representative democracy because it was a
society deeply divided among Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions and faced a huge
economic recovery problem.42 “No one who accepted and reflected on these assess-
ments’ conclusions,” as Pillar recounts, “could possibly think the war was a good
idea.”43 Not surprisingly, the Bush administration paid no heed to these assessments,
largely ignoring the implications that the United States would have to shoulder a
much larger and longer role in providing security and economic assistance to guar-
antee Iraq’s recovery.
November 2007 Iran Nuclear NIE in the Bush Administration

Even as it struggled with the Iraq War, the Bush administration also was embark-
ing on a new campaign to pressure Iran over its violations of the IAEA nuclear safe-
guards program requiring declarations of facilities and on-site inspections. In 2005,
the IAEA had complained about Iran’s failure to report on its activities and concluded
Tehran had displayed a “pattern of concealment.” That same year, the IC also was
monitoring two undeclared nuclear facilities and had issued an intelligence mem-
orandum stating that Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its
international obligations. However, the flaws in the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate made
it incumbent on the IC to restore its credibility for producing accurate and rigor-
ously prepared assessments. Accordingly, the newly created DNI began in early 2005
to put in place a new set of analytical standards and processes for producing NIEs.
Those analytical changes included more rigorous testing of assumptions, new stan-
dards for assigning confidence levels to evidence, and regular use of Red Cell teams
to challenge and validate the judgments of intelligence estimators.44
One of the first tests of this new system was the call for an updated NIE on Iran’s
nuclear programs. The National Intelligence Council oversaw this project, which the
administration expected would reaffirm the earlier 2005 conclusions. In fact, as the
NIC was about to issue a new estimate, additional information was received that not
only delayed publication of the NIE but also altered a small but significant portion
of the estimate’s findings. When the NIE was published in November 2007, it began
its first key judgment with “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran
halted its nuclear weapons program.”45
250 Chapter 10
Lost in translation was an important footnote to this judgment clarifying that the
estimators meant that only the “weapons design” aspects of the nuclear program had
been halted, not the covert, large-scale uranium enrichment necessary to produce
weapons-grade fuel. Also, the IC concluded in the later parts of the key judgments
that Tehran’s agreement to sign an additional safeguards protocol was the result of
“international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously
undeclared nuclear work.” In essence, the IC believed it was confirming that the Bush
administration’s efforts to pressure Iran were working. In preparing these new find-
ings, the then DNI Michael McConnell also promised the White House, and later
announced to the press, a new policy of not releasing declassified key judgments as
had occurred with the 2002 Iraq NIE.
The reaction from policymakers was quite different. First, the White House
reached the conclusion that the key judgments were so different in tone from those
in 2005 that they were likely to leak selectively and would draw fire from Congress.
So, President Bush directed that the entire key judgments be declassified to show
how much of the Iranian program was unaffected. Second, the administration found
itself caught in a dilemma of explaining why more pressure on Iran was needed,
if indeed a major part of Tehran’s weaponization program had been halted. It was
in the process of urging European allies, Russia, and China to join in additional
sanctions measures. The release of the estimate’s key judgments would most likely
weaken support among those countries, and indeed it did. State and DOD defend-
ers of the Bush actions against Iran accused the IC of political bias and trying to sty-
mie the White House plans to threaten Iran with harsher measures, even possible
military strikes.46 Voices in Congress concluded that the military option was off the
table and that allies would be less likely to back more hawkish moves against Iran.47
While the White House attempted to put the best spin on the NIE, it was unhappy
about the tenor and timing of this estimate, about which the IC had not warned the
president.
Charges of analysts infusing their political bias into this estimate were unfounded,
and intelligence professionals defended the NIE for its careful weighing of evidence
and the genuine surprise that they felt in receiving new information confirming a
halt in the weaponization process.48 Senior intelligence officials did wonder if the key
judgments’ prose that was released would be easily understood by outsiders without
knowledge or clearances. This example of intelligence-policy differences highlights
just how different the two tribes’ perspectives can be. By 2007, senior policymakers
were well acquainted with Iran’s nuclear program and did not need a general tutorial
of how the IC had covered Iran in the past, allowing the IC to go directly to what had
changed. On the other hand, the public and Congress would not read the estimate in
the same fashion, and they would not appreciate that the estimate was referring only
to one part of the nuclear program, while other parts (e.g., the production of fissile
materials and testing of ballistic missiles) continued unchanged.
Assessments of Russian Interference in the 2016 Elections

The growing body of evidence that the Russian government directed a sophisti-
cated social media campaign to shape American voters’ views of the candidates and
favor Donald Trump’s candidacy posed a huge challenge for American intelligence
and law enforcement agencies. The fact that the Soviet Union and now Russia were
capable of and likely to use active measures to weaken or distort American foreign
policies was not at all new. There are numerous examples of Soviet-era active mea-
sures designed to attribute a variety of negative actions to the United States and
its allies. Those techniques included use of front organizations, manipulation of
press reporting, forgeries, clandestine broadcasts, and exploitation of unwitting for-
eign academics or businesspeople.49 What distinguished the 2016 campaign was
not only its scale and sophistication and the speedy manipulation of social media
but also its focus on undermining the very political institutions on which Ameri-
can democracy depends. Intelligence agencies have no difficulty informing senior
US officials and Congress about Russian covert operations aimed at undermining
American foreign policy; however, reporting on efforts to interfere with a US presi-
dential election thrust US law enforcement and intelligence directly into domestic
and partisan politics.
Recognizing the political sensitivity of these findings, the IC was cautious in pub-
licly announcing its suspicions in the run-up to the election. However, as the evidence
grew, it became impossible for agencies to avoid raising alarms. The first public indi-
cation that Moscow was meddling in domestic US politics came in the fall of 2015,
when the FBI quietly notified the Democratic National Committee that there was evi-
dence that Russian hackers were trying to access its data. Then, once the presiden-
tial election campaigns were in full swing, there was a series of WikiLeaks-related
postings of Hillary Clinton’s personal emails, which the Russian-backed Guccifer 2.0
group had obtained. The WikiLeaks posting of twenty thousand stolen emails was
closely timed to the July convention when Clinton would be nominated as the Demo-
cratic Party’s candidate. At this point, the FBI launched a full-scale investigation into
the hacking of the DNC website.
By early fall 2016, unnamed law enforcement officials were hinting to news outlets
that the Russian government was suspected. These hints were followed shortly by a
joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the DNI pointing
directly at the Russian government: “The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is con-
fident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from
US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent
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disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and
by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations
of Russian-directed efforts.”50
This was only part of the IC’s assessment. Once the election was over, the IC
reported that in addition to the cyberattacks on the Democratic candidate and party
organization and selected state electoral systems, the shadowy Internet Research
Agency in Russia had run a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign.
According to various media reports, this social media campaign involved hundreds
of individuals, costing millions of dollars; more important, it may have reached over
a hundred and twenty-five million Americans via a variety of social media websites.
The combined effect of the hacking and social media campaigns raised serious ques-
tions about the results of the presidential election that was determined by fewer than
eighty thousand votes across three states key to the Electoral College’s tally.
After briefing both President Obama and president-elect Trump, the IC issued a
joint CIA, FBI, NSA, and DNI report in January 2017 (see box 10.3). Looking back to
the campaign, an observer can raise a number of questions. First, should President
Obama and his administration have intervened more actively during the campaign
to alert Americans about Russian meddling? Would the public perceive such action
as a sitting Democratic president, in essence, intervening in an ongoing presidential
Box 10.3 Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions

in Recent US Elections (Excerpts from Key Judgments)
Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent
expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic
order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activ-
ity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed
at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US dem-
ocratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presi-
dency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference
for President-elect Trump. . . .
We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s
election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting
her unfavorably to him. . . .
We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at
the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies
and their elections.
Source: ODNI, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, Intelligence Community
Assessment, January 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf.
election that might sway voters in a favorable direction? Related to that, should intel-
ligence agencies have spoken out more publicly as well? On the one hand, intelli-
gence is not supposed to get involved in political matters; on the other hand, to avoid
alerting the American public of the Russian interference might itself have helped
determine the election’s outcome.
An equally vexing question is how would a newly elected president, whose vic-
tory might well have benefited from Russian interference, respond to the intelligence
assessment provided to him by his intelligence advisers? President Trump’s campaign
posture had been to deny any connection to the Russian government and to assert
that the IC was merely speculating that the Russian government was behind the email
leaks. Once in office and officially briefed, President Trump remained ambivalent
regarding the veracity of the intelligence assessments when he mused that it might
have been Russia or it might have been someone else; however, he was adamant that
those activities had not affected the election. Moreover, he repeatedly misrepresented
the intelligence assessments and the results of the 2018 House intelligence commit-
tee investigations by saying they confirmed that the Russian activities had not helped
him or had any connection to his campaign.51 In both cases, he misstated what the IC
and congressional committee had concluded. Hence, President Trump was fudging
the intelligence he received, for his own political and personal advantage.
Like no other president—except perhaps Richard Nixon—Donald Trump has formed
a hostile perception of the law enforcement and intelligence communities. He acts
as if he believes that they are intentionally disloyal if they present evidence of Rus-
sian behavior that suggests he may have personally benefited from those actions.
This places the IC in an exceedingly awkward position of trying to present objective
judgments on ongoing counterintelligence threats to an unwilling audience. While
this particular set of circumstances is unique in American history, it highlights the
inherent danger when intelligence officials attempt to present inconvenient truths to
senior policy officials. The result is often that policymakers will attempt to discredit
the reports, as well as the agencies presenting them, in order to rescue their policies or
personal reputations. In such cases, intelligence agencies have little ability to defend
themselves. Only Congress, which can also act on the basis of intelligence, has the
power to correct the record publicly, but it too is presently polarized and in a poor posi-
tion to give a more objective review of the IC’s performance.
ISSUES FACING THE INTELLIGENCE-POLICY RELATIONSHIP
The foregoing cases of politicization of intelligence suggest that it can occur for a
variety of reasons and be committed by both the policymaker and the intelligence
officer. Blatant politicization, as seen in the case of the Vietnam War estimates and
254 Chapter 10
the Nixon-era disputes over strategic nuclear assessments, happens less often than
generally appreciated. Subtler forms of politicization are usually at work, when
“high politics” are in play. In the Iraq case, policymakers used intelligence selec-
tively to win support but ignored and dismissed other assessments that would
undermine their public diplomacy. This cherry-picking of intelligence happens reg-
ularly, often simply when informal policy discussions ensue. However, sometimes
this practice can force senior officials—as in the case of the 2007 Iran NIE—to get
the full story out by declassifying assessments they otherwise would prefer to keep
secret. Finally, there is a natural tendency for those running programs to assess
their operations more favorably than intelligence agencies with no direct responsi-
bility for them. In those few instances where military intelligence is slanted toward
more positive assessments, they are often a matter of opinion and highly subjective.
One person’s slanted intelligence is another person’s more rigorous analysis. For all
these reasons, a friction-free intelligence-policy relationship free from politiciza-
tion is not likely to emerge.
Is Intelligence Becoming More Politicized?

In the current polarized American political environment, many observers worry that
intelligence is becoming more politicized. Signs of this are seen in the manner in
which intelligence is used or misused by senior White House and congressional
members to win political arguments. Over the past several decades, more and more
intelligence has been drawn into public discussions of national security policies. On
the one hand, this can inform the debate if used appropriately. However, in some
instances intelligence has become the scapegoat for mistaken policies (for example,
in the case of the Iraq War) or has been accused of having its own political agendas
(for example, the recent charges of an FBI that is politically corrupt and biased
against President Trump).
Adding to this highly charged and polarized political environment is the erosion
of nonpartisan congressional oversight. Scholars have noted that this less effective
intelligence oversight has been developing since the mid-1980s.52 The 2003 Iraq
invasion and its aftermath caused a major new schism between Democrats and
Republicans, which accelerated this trend toward more partisan sparring over intelli-
gence. It erupted again during President Obama’s tenure, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein
released a six-hundred-page declassified summary of the Senate intelligence commit-
tee staff’s findings that criticized the CIA’s use of extreme interrogation methods as
“torture.”53 This generated a strongly critical Republican minority report claiming the
program had saved lives and that the Democratic staff had misrepresented the facts
in its findings.54
In 2016, the tables were turned as Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
This time it was House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigations
into Russian interference in recent US elections that has been stymied by sharp dis-
agreements between its ranking Republican and Democratic members.55 Separate
majority and minority reports were issued, which disagreed on whether these inves-
tigations uncovered Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Much of this played out
on television as leading Democratic members of the House attacked the Republican
report as a whitewash, and Republicans called for a speedy end to the many investiga-
tions underway. At the time of this writing, the congressional battles with the Trump
White House and the Justice Department over the just-released Mueller Report
promise to ignite another round of partisan debates over the quality and integrity of
intelligence and law enforcement activities.
The other feature that is alarming is the more open commentary on national secu-
rity topics by former senior intelligence officials. Heretofore, most departing direc-
tors and deputy directors avoided directly engaging in partisan debates. They were
mostly content to write memoirs about their past service or sit on boards of major cor-
porations or think tanks. With few exceptions, they were satisfied if asked to provide
advice privately to legislators or executive branch officials. The 2016 elections have
seemingly changed this. A number of former Bush and Obama intelligence officials
have become regular commentators on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. This follows
news outlets’ earlier use of retired senior military officers to comment on ongoing
national security issues. Some of these officers have also decided to become strong
backers or critics of presidential candidates; in 2016, retired general John Allen
spoke at the Democratic convention on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and retired gen-
eral Michael Flynn gave a rousing speech for Donald Trump at the Republican con-
vention. In response, former JCS chairman Martin Dempsey has admonished such
behavior, as it can give the appearance of a military that is itself politicized and less
professional.56
In late 2016, former CIA directors Michael Hayden and John Brennan and DNI
James Clapper challenged President Trump’s attacks on the IC (especially the CIA
and FBI) as well as criticized his admiring comments about Vladimir Putin. Since
leaving office, Brennan and Clapper have gone well beyond defending the IC to criti-
cizing Trump’s statements or actions as dangerous. They have also hinted that the
president himself may have personal and unpatriotic motives for discrediting intel-
ligence and refusing to admonish Russian behavior.57 In response, President Trump
has gone beyond just attacking these individuals publicly to terminating John Bren-
nan’s security clearance and threatening to do the same for other former officials
criticizing him or his actions. Both these former officials’ actions and the president’s
256 Chapter 10
response are almost unprecedented and reveal a deep division between intelligence
and the president it serves.
While these former officials have the right to exercise free speech, their state-
ments also give the appearance of an IC that is prepared to engage in politics. If this
becomes more widespread, there is a danger that the comments of former senior offi-
cials could undermine the public’s view that intelligence agencies are above party
politics when issuing their findings. Likewise, the president’s broad attack on some
past and even current leaders of the intelligence and law enforcement communities
will spark further politicization charges and undermine public trust in the nonpoliti-
cal nature of intelligence activities.
How Can Intelligence Shield Itself from Politicization?

As the preceding discussion suggests, politicization remains a serious challenge, par-
ticularly when major party and policy disagreements exist in Washington. The rem-
edies for politicization are relatively few. First, as many scholars have pointed out,
policymakers have a right to question intelligence and to ignore it if they firmly believe
it is incorrect. Second, identifying politicization is often a very subjective process; any-
thing other than blatant pressure on the IC to alter its judgments can be as easily
attributed to an honest analytical disagreement about how the IC relied on certain ana-
lytical assumptions, weighed the available evidence, and drew up its findings. Third,
when policy matters—especially in issues of war and peace—political leaders naturally
are going to want to have intelligence on their side. To expect that intelligence would
not be drawn into a policy debate is to suggest it is irrelevant to those decisions, which
would be tantamount to saying there is no reason for intelligence to exist.
In most cases, the best remedy for avoiding politicization is to conduct analysis
in as rigorous and transparent a fashion as possible. A former senior CIA official,
following the disastrous Iraq WMD estimate, addressed an audience of analysts to
warn them, “If we don’t conduct self-criticism effectively, someone else will.”58 The
use of more rigorous analytical tradecraft methods—discussed in chapter 5—provides
analysts with a way to make their analysis more transparent to policymakers so as
to demonstrate how judgments were reached, based on certain evidence and key
assumptions. Such exercises, along with the use of Red Cell alternative analysis of
important intelligence issues, can help analysts avoid mind-sets arising from hidden
political or analytical bias. Equally important, providing this kind of transparency to
policymakers critical of intelligence findings may well head off charges of political
bias on analysts’ part.
A second structural check is the existence of multiple intelligence agencies that
examine intelligence from their own perspectives and can deliver independent
judgments that diverge from a consensus view. For all its flaws, the 2002 Iraq WMD
estimate contained important dissents by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelli-
gence and Research and the Department of Energy’s intelligence office, which doubted
that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear program or had acquired the proper steel
cylinders for fashioning nuclear centrifuges. Procedures adopted since that estimate
have also encouraged more sharing of views across the community, more rigorous
drafting of key judgments to reflect only the actual text that follows, and inclusion in
key judgments all dissents or minority views held in the IC.59
Improving the Intelligence-Policy Relationship

The foregoing discussion leaves one relatively pessimistic that much can be done
to improve the intelligence-policy relationship. As some scholars have concluded,
“There are reasons to expect that intelligence will play a smaller role in strategy
and policy over time, and that the quality of the intelligence-policy relationship will
steadily decline.”60 In most cases, that relationship will remain subject to the future
idiosyncrasies of the president and his key advisers as well as the particular policy
and intelligence issues they face. That said, there are some lessons learned from past
experience that might help to improve those relationships.
First, the role and value of intelligence is enhanced when the national security
decision-making process itself is transparent and conducted in ways that provide
an opportunity for intelligence to make its legitimate contribution. When informal
decision-making processes or presidential impulses drive decisions, there is less room
for intelligence to perform its role of informing and warning policymakers of the con-
sequences of their decisions. The IC has left behind the Sherman Kent arm’s-length
model and moved so much closer to policy debates to be relevant. That requires that
the IC be more vigilant to the dangers of politicization. It means the intelligence world
must respect the policymaker’s world and a president’s agenda without self-censoring
itself or producing slanted findings. At the same time, policymakers must understand
that inclusion does not mean “loyalty” to their worldviews or policies. Policymakers
retain the right to disagree with intelligence assessments and ultimately be wrong in
some cases. But they must respect the independence and analytical integrity of the IC
if they are to gain the kind of support they need.
Second, given the limited understanding that many policymakers have of intel-
ligence when they enter government service, the IC would benefit by providing
more opportunities for tutoring presidents-elect and other senior officials on how
the intelligence process works, how analysis is conducted, and what the strengths
and weaknesses of intelligence are. Intelligence literacy is extremely uneven and
generally low among policymakers. At the moment, IC training programs focus on
258 Chapter 10
educating analysts about the policy process, and many IC agencies strive to give
their stronger analysts opportunities to serve in policy agencies to broaden their
understanding of how policymakers operate. A comparable effort to educate policy-
makers on the IC does not exist. The sole opportunity for this at the moment is the
presidential transition process, when intelligence officials can meet with the presi-
dent-elect and his or her likely key advisers to begin a dialogue. This is a time when
a future president and his or her team might be most susceptible to understand-
ing how the IC is postured to meet the new administration’s information needs.
The briefers should not only cover the latest intelligence but should also conduct a
high-level tutorial on intelligence, particularly for those officials who had not served
previously in government and perhaps have never held a security clearance or seen
classified information.
A third lesson is that selecting senior intelligence officials who have both the
subject-matter competence and the confidence of the White House can dramatically
shape the intelligence-policy relationship. There is no single recipe for successful
intelligence leadership. Seemingly well-informed former military and civilian offi-
cials have failed as CIA directors and DNIs. Others with little practical experience in
intelligence but great political skills have succeeded without overly politicizing intel-
ligence. Whoever a president selects for intelligence advisers should, however, under-
stand the role he or she is to play and the red lines between intelligence and policy.
As intelligence has become such an integral part of the policymaking process, the
senior-most positions in the IC are just as important as selecting a national security
adviser or secretaries of state and defense. Some scholars have recommended those
positions come with a set term of office, like the FBI director’s, in order to make those
assignments less political. That has merit but only if a president and those advisers
can develop a trusting relationship.
Finally, it is unreasonable and unlikely to expect the IC could return to a Kent-
style model of arm’s-length advising, given the need for rapid and constant intelli-
gence support. As one scholar notes, it was possible in the Cold War to rely on such
a model when the dominant strategy was “deterrence” of a low-probability Soviet
nuclear strike.61 In the twenty-first-century world of quickly emerging transnational
threats, intelligence must be at the elbow of policymakers and run the risk that its role
can become politicized. Few would argue that a less forward-leaning IC would have
prevented the Russian interference into the 2016 elections. Likewise, the increasing
openness in discussing intelligence as part of American foreign policy debates is also
not likely to decline. The challenge will be to establish the correct balance between
keeping intelligence secret so it can provide decision-advantage to policymakers and
still providing enough information for an informed congressional and public debate
over critical national security decisions.
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
Iraq’s Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction: Key Judgments (from October
2002 NIE), https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Iraq_NIE_Excerpts_2003.pdf
National Intelligence Council, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, 2007 NIE, https://
www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Press%20Releases/2007%20Press%20Releases
/20071203_release.pdf
ODNI and DNI, Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elec-
tions”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution, January 6, 2017, https://www
.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in
the 2016 Presidential Election, vols. 1 and 2, March 2019, https://www.justice.gov/storage
/report.pdf
FURTHER READING
A compilation of this intelligence scholar’s views on intelligence analysis, politicization,
and the intelligence-policy relationship.
James Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence (New York: Penguin /
Random House, 2018).
Recounts a former DNI’s experiences dealing with policymakers, including presidents
unwilling to accept intelligence judgments.
Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Describes the lessons learned from working closely with policymakers and how intel-
ligence was used and misunderstood by various administrations.
John L. Helgerson, Getting to Know the President: Intelligence Briefings of the Presidents, 1952–
2004 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2012).
Provides a senior agency officer’s study of how the CIA has provided intelligence during
the transitions and terms of most recent presidents.
Paul Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2011).
A practitioner’s critique of the intelligence-policy relationship that examines how intel-
ligence has not been the cause of failed policy choices but nonetheless suffers from
politicization to suit policy preferences.
Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2011).
The most serious study of politicization, using a series of case studies to argue that the
phenomenon should be expected when intelligence touches on high-stakes policy issues.
Gregory F. Treverton, “Intelligence Analysis: Between ‘Politicization’ and Irrelevance,” in Ana-
lyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations, 1st ed., ed. Roger Z. George and
James Bruce (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008).
260 Chapter 10
Focuses on the types of politicization that can occur and the methods for countering
them.
NOTES
First epigraph: Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents
and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 567.
Second epigraph: Sherman Kent, “Estimates and Influence,” in Don Steury, Sherman Kent, and
the Board of National Estimates, Collected Essays (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of
Intelligence, 1994), 42.
1. Robert Jervis, “Why Intelligence and Policymakers Clash,” Political Science Quarterly
125, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 185–204.
2. James Steinberg, “The Policymaker’s Perspective: Transparency and Partnership, in
Roger Z. George and James Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’
Perspectives (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 2nd ed., 94.
3. The author as analyst recalls having examined numerous dissemination lists of assess-
ments he prepared and found that far more copies were distributed among other intelligence
agencies’ analysts than were turned over to policy agencies.
4. Richard Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA (New York: John
Wiley, 2014), 150.
5. Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and
How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 56. Gates also recounts that
senior managers discouraged him from taking an NSC assignment as it was not considered
career enhancing, exactly the opposite of what he came to believe after serving on the Nixon,
Carter, and Reagan NSC staffs.
6. According to John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA, Gates insisted
that any analyst who wished to compete for a senior management job serve a tour in a policy
agency before being promoted. See John McLaughlin, “Serving the National Policymaker,” in
George and Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence, 2nd ed., 84.
7. As a member of the policy planning staff, the author was able to direct intelligence
requirements to CIA offices and get quick responses to State Department counselor Robert
Zoellick and policy planning director Dennis Ross, for whom he worked. This assignment also
involved organizing senior intelligence briefings for these officials.
8. Richard K. Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National
9. Cited in David Priess, The President’s Book of Secret: The Untold Story of Intelligence
Briefings to America’s Presidents from Kennedy to Obama (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016),
165.
10. Bush laments that when Jimmy Carter became president, he did not keep him on in
order to depoliticize the CIA director’s job. He urged his son later to keep CIA director George
Tenet, partly to dispel the notion that the CIA job was a political assignment.
11. Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the Ameri-
can Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 3.
12. Quoted in Robert Gates, “An Opportunity Unfulfilled: The Use and Perceptions of Intel-
ligence at the White House,” Washington Quarterly, Winter 1989, 42.
13. See Evan Thomas, “Why Nixon Hated Georgetown,” Politico, June 4, 2015, https://www
.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/richard-nixon-georgetown-set-118607.
14. John L. Helgerson, Getting to Know the President: Intelligence Briefings of the Presidents,
1952–2004 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2012), 170–71, https://www
.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs
/getting - to - know - the - president /pdfs / U - % 20Book - Getting % 20to % 20Know % 20the % 20
President.pdf.
15. Priess, President’s Book of Secrets, 227.
16. David Stout, “CIA Director Goss Resigns,” New York Times, May 6, 2006, https://www
.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/washington/05cnd-cia.html.
17. Linda Qiu, “How Trump Has Flip-Flopped on Intelligence Agencies,” New York Times,
December 7, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/us/politics/trump-reversals-fbi
-intelligence-agencies.html.
18. Qiu. “Active measures” is the term applied to Soviet/Russian covert political warfare
designed to increase Moscow’s influence over world events and diminish US and other West-
ern powers’ influence.
19. See former deputy secretary of state Anthony Blinken’s New York Times op-ed that
lays out the numerous charges made against John Bolton when he was a senior State Depart-
ment official during the Bush administration. The story recounts how Bolton misused intel-
ligence and employed blatant pressure and threats to force changes in intelligence judgments.
Anthony Blinken, “When Republicans Rejected Bolton,” New York Times, March 23, 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/john-bolton-republicans.html.
20. Director Haspel has also selected a career analyst and senior manager, Vaughn Bishop,
as her deputy director, which could further insulate the agency from political pressures that a
White House might like to exert in the future.
21. Jaqueline Thomsen, “Trump Strain with Intel Chiefs Spills into the Public,” The Hill,
February 2, 2019, https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/428157-trumps-strain-with-intel
-chiefs-spills-into-public.
22. Carol Leonnig, Shane Harris, and Greg Jaffe, “Breaking with Tradition, Trump Skips
Reading President’s Written Intelligence Report for Oral Briefings,” Washington Post, Febru-
ary 9, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/breaking-with-tradition-trump-skips
-presidents-written-intelligence-report-for-oral-briefings/2018/02/09/b7ba569e-0c52-11e8
-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html?utm_term=.694e7cd2b642.
23. David Priess, “CIA Tailors Its Briefing So It Doesn’t Anger Trump; That’s Good,” Wash-
ington Post, December 14, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp
/2017/12/14/the-cia- tailors-its-briefings-so-it-doesnt-anger- trump- thats-good/?utm_term=
.0f099c5983be.
24. Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 29.
25. See Harold Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962–1968 (Wash-
ington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1991), https://www.cia.gov/library/center
-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/cia-and-the-vietnam
-policymakers-three-episodes-1962-1968/.
262 Chapter 10
26. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, episode 1, https://www.cia.gov/library/center

-policymakers-three-episodes-1962-1968/epis1.html.
27. The OOB analysis in this case was assessing the numbers and organization of both
regular North Vietnamese military units and the irregular forces (i.e., part-time fighters not
assigned to specific military units) that constituted the Viet Cong.
28. CIA methodology involved analysis of captured enemy documents, which an enterpris-
ing military analyst, Sam Adams, used to calculate much higher (and more accurate) numbers
of Viet Cong, which he believed should have alerted the United States to the forthcoming 1968
Tet Offensive.
29. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, episode 3, https://www.cia.gov/library/center
-policymakers-three-episodes-1962-1968/epis3.html.
30. Helms recounts that a particularly zealous, self-assured analyst, Sam Adams, continued
to dispute the military OOB and conducted what Helms described as a “crusade” that led
to television appearances and a libel suit against Gen. William Westmoreland. See Richard
Helms, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random
House, 2003), 326–27.
31. Harold P. Ford, “Why CIA Analysts Were So Doubtful about Vietnam,” Studies in Intel-
ligence 40, no. 5: 87, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi
/vol40no5/pdf/v40i5a10p.pdf.
32. Rovner, Fixing the Facts, 100. Rovner’s study goes into detail on this particular episode,
noting that CIA director Helms chose to remain silent during critical Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearings, where Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird made the case that the DOD
viewed the SS-9 as a first-strike weapon.
33. Rovner, 101. MIRV capability allowed a single missile to attack multiple targets
simultaneously.
34. Helms, Look over My Shoulder, 386–87.
35. Wohlstetter was a towering figure in the strategic studies community as a longtime
RAND Corporation specialist. He published a series of critiques of NIEs found in Foreign Pol-
icy magazine in 1974. See Albert Wohlstetter, “Is There a Strategic Arms Race?,” Foreign Policy
15 (Summer 1974): 3–20.
36. Ann H. Cahn, Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park: Pennsylvania
State Press, 1998). Her view was that the exercise was “concocted by conservative cold warriors
determined to bury détente and the SALT process.”
37. Les Aspin, “The Debate over Soviet Strategic Forces: A Mixed Review,” Strategic Review
8, no. 3 (Summer 1980): 22–59.
38. After the war, DCI Tenet commissioned former State Department official Charles
Duelfer to lead a large US team of inspectors to determine whether Saddam had restarted his
WMD programs. Called the Iraq Survey, it spent months inspecting Iraqi facilities, examin-
ing captured documents, and interviewing former Iraqi scientists, which resulted in a three-
volume report laying out how Saddam and his regime had disposed of the WMD programs and
how he kept his own senior officials unaware of exactly what capabilities he retained. See Com-
prehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, September 2004, https://
www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/.
39. CIA director George Tenet recounts that a “presidential decision on going to war was
always alluded to by the NSC in hypothetical terms, as though it were still up in the air and the
conferees were merely discussing contingencies.” See George Tenet, Center of the Storm: My
Years at CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 308.
40. Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 140.
41. Pillar, 155.
42. See National Intelligence Council, Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq,
Intelligence Community Assessment, January 2003, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom
/docs/DOC_0005299385.pdf; and National Intelligence Council, Principal Challenges of a
Post-Saddam Iraq, Intelligence Community Assessment, January 2003, https://www.cia.gov
/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005674817.pdf.
43. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy, 58.
44. See Gregory Treverton, Support to Policymakers: The 2007 NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Inten-
tions and Capabilities (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2013). This
case study provides a comprehensive look at the intelligence-policy friction surrounding this
estimate.
45. ODNI, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, National Estimate, November 2007,
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Press%20Releases/2007%20Press%20
Releases/20071203_release.pdf.
46. John Bolton, “Flaws in the Iran Report,” Washington Post, December 6, 2007, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502234.html.
47. Steven Lee Meyers, “An Assessment Jars Foreign Policy Debate on Iran,” New York
Times, December 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/washington/04assess.html.
48. See Thomas Fingar, “It’s Complicated,” American Interest (May/June 2013): 31–35,
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/04/12/its-complicated/.
49. See US State Department, Soviet Active Measures: Forgery, Disinformation, and Politi-
cal Operations, Special Issue No. 88, October 1981, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom
/docs/CIA-RDP84B00049R001303150031-0.pdf.
50. Department of Homeland Security, Joint Statement of the Department of Homeland
Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security, October 2017,
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and
-office-director-national.
51. Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe, and Philip Rucker, “Doubting the Intelligence, Trump Pursues
Putin and Leaves a Russian Threat Unchecked,” Washington Post, December 14, 2017, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald- trump-pursues
-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/?utm_term=.4af26317f918; Greg Megerian, “Trump
Praises House Republicans Who Found No Evidence of Russian Collusion,” Los Angeles Times,
March 13, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-essential-washington-updates
-president-trump-praises-house-1520952667-htmlstory.html.
52. Marvin Ott, “Partisanship and the Decline of Intelligence Oversight,” International
Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 16 (2003): 69–94.
53. Senator Feinstein as chairperson initiated in 2009 a massive, years-long investiga-
tion into the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which concluded the program
was poorly run, caused the death of some detainees, and failed to elicit claimed information
264 Chapter 10
that resulted in foiled terrorist plots. See US Senate, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
Staff Study on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, December 2014, https://www
.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/7/c/7c85429a-ec38-4bb5-968f-289799bf6d0e
/D87288C34A6D9FF736F9459ABCF83210.sscistudy1.pdf.
54. Jonathan Topaz, “GOP Senators Defend CIA in Alternative Report,” Politico, Decem-
ber 9, 2014, https://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/gop-senators-defend-cia-alternate-report
-113434.
55. As of this writing, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation into the
Russian hacking appear to be operating much better, largely because of the comity between
the ranking Democratic senator, Mark Warner, and Republican chairman Richard Burr. The
Senate’s investigations had not yet been released when this chapter was completed.
56. Martin Dempsey, “Military Leaders Do Not Belong at Political Conventions,” letter to
the editor, Washington Post, July 30, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/military
- leaders-do-not-belong-at-political-conventions/2016/07/30/0e06fc16-568b-11e6-b652
-315ae5d4d4dd_story.html?utm_term=.a200eb158f2c.
57. See, e.g., Harriet Sinclair, “Trump Finances May Be the Next Shoe to Drop in Russia
Probe,” Newsweek, February 18, 2018, http://www.newsweek.com/james-clapper-donald-trump
-russia-probe-810357; and Matthew Rosenberg, “Ex-CIA Chief Says Putin May Have Compro-
mising Material on Trump,” New York Times, March 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018
/03/21/us/politics/john-brennan-trump-putin.html.
58. The author was present when the then deputy director of intelligence John Kringen
addressed senior analysts at the CIA auditorium on the issue of analytical tradecraft.
59. Fingar, “It’s Complicated,” 32–33.
60. Rovner, Fixing the Facts, 199.
61. Gregory F. Treverton, “Intelligence Analysis: Between ‘Politicization’ and Irrelevance,”
in Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations, 1st ed., ed. Roger George and
James Bruce (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 101.
11
Intelligence and
American Democracy
If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls

on government would be necessary. In framing a government which
is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in
this; you must first enable the government to control the governed;
and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
—Federalist No. 51 (James Madison)
Oversight is designed to look into every nook and cranny of govern-

mental affairs, expose misconduct, and put the light of publicity to it.
Oversight can protect the country from the imperial presidency and
from bureaucratic arrogance.
—Former congressman Lee Hamilton, cochair of the 9/11
Commission
We are responsible stewards of the public trust; we use intelligence

authorities and resources prudently, protect intelligence sources and
methods diligently, report wrongdoing through appropriate chan-
nels; and remain accountable to ourselves, our oversight institutions,
and through those institutions, ultimately to the American people.
—Principles of Professional Ethics for the Intelligence
Community
In democracies the role of intelligence remains controversial and at times problem-

atic. On the one hand, democracies thrive on openness and transparency. On the
other hand, they also face international and domestic threats that require protection
by all elements of national power, including intelligence. Like the military instrument,
265
266 Chapter 11
intelligence requires careful supervision, and its use must be consistent with the US
Constitution and federal law. This chapter will examine the challenges that intelli-
gence poses to democratic principles in its efforts to safeguard national security. The
executive, legislative, and judicial mechanisms for oversight will be described and
analyzed. Finally, the chapter will examine issues related to post-9/11 intelligence
operations and their impact on American democracy. Today the practice of intelli-
gence has become more complex, and the existing oversight framework that balances
security and liberty have been severely tested.
IS INTELLIGENCE ETHICAL?
There is an argument that intelligence and democracy are so antithetical to each

other that there should be no place for intelligence at all. This proposition, like paci-
fism, rests on an idealistic notion of peaceful and nonthreatening relations among
states. Before the Cold War, American leaders were also very wary of creating perma-
nent intelligence organizations. Clearly, most of today’s American policymakers and
politicians do not share this view but instead believe intelligence—like the military
instrument—is a legitimate tool for protecting a democracy. In this view, it would be
unethical not to seek or to withhold important intelligence needed to make better
policy decisions or to protect the security of the homeland. Who would argue that
the United States should decide on war or peace in an information vacuum? Even the
United Nations has recognized the utility of member states providing intelligence
for use in UN Security Council deliberations. As a practical matter, the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring of suspect WMD facilities also is aided by mem-
ber states’ contributions of their national information for that purpose. In the Cold
War, the United States and the former Soviet Union cautiously revealed intelligence
data for the purpose of negotiating and implementing major nuclear arms control
negotiations. In this case, intelligence can be credited with helping to prevent a major
nuclear confrontation by applying national technical means for verifying compliance
with those agreements. And the ongoing US and international efforts to head off fur-
ther development of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea depend in part on a
robust intelligence capability.
The ethical issues notwithstanding, the CIA and other intelligence collectors have
the authority under US law to break the laws of other countries by recruiting foreign
nationals to spy or by stealing secrets by other technical means. (Of course, the target
country sees these activities as illegal and will take steps to stop them.) For the pur-
pose of protecting and enhancing a state’s security, presidents, prime ministers, and
monarchs have all used human as well as technical intelligence to know the plans,
intentions, and military capabilities of their adversaries. The Russian and Chinese
Intelligence and American Democracy267
foreign intelligence services as well as most US European allies’ foreign intelligence

agencies recruit foreign agents. They and the CIA use a variety of techniques to spot,
develop, recruit, and run agents. The CIA historically has used American “soft power”
to attract foreign officials and influential private citizens to volunteer (as so-called
walk-ins). In these cases, spies volunteer to assist the United States because of their
distaste for the despotism of their own governments and a wish to bring about long-
term positive changes to their societies. In other instances, the CIA can recruit such
agents because of their need for money, revenge, or greater self-esteem or status. For
some, playing on the weaknesses or vulnerabilities of such agents seems reprehen-
sible. Yet the United States’ interest in knowing more about Vladimir Putin’s Russia or
Kim Jong-un’s North Korea overrules individual morality that would discourage the
exploitation of human frailties.
Likewise, the NSA is authorized to collect the electronic communications of foreign
governments and foreign citizens. These broad authorities have necessitated high
levels of secrecy to enable collectors to conduct their operations without detection and
to provide the United States with plausible deniability. As is sometimes acknowledged,
foreign governments know that US intelligence is breaking their laws and diplomatic
codes, intercepting their communications, and recruiting their citizens to spy for the
United States. This is tolerated so long as it remains shrouded in secrecy and because
many of those same governments are using similar methods to gather intelligence on
the United States.1
Collection of intelligence also raises another ethical issue seldom appreciated
by those outside the intelligence community—namely, given the risks of secretly
breaking the laws of foreign governments, US intelligence has a moral and practi-
cal obligation to protect its sources and methods. In cases of human intelligence,
a case officer is promising to protect the anonymity of a foreign national commit-
ting treason from exposure, prison, and possible death. It is no light matter to ask a
person to risk his freedom and possibly his life to spy for the United States. Hence,
US intelligence officers must weigh the benefits of what a foreign spy can provide
against the risks that person faces if caught. As a rule of thumb, the case officer
should not ask any asset to collect what is already known or easily acquired through
less risky means. In the 1990s, when the issue of whether the US IC should be col-
lecting economic intelligence, senior Treasury officials such as Lawrence Summers
challenged the CIA’s collection and analysis of international monetary data, when
as deputy secretary he could phone any head of a foreign central bank for that same
information. Likewise, deputy director of the CIA Robert Gates noted at that time
he would not ask a CIA officer to spy for General Motors. His point was that intelli-
gence should be collected to benefit US national security, not American companies,
even if such practices were found among some foreign intelligence services.
268 Chapter 11
Intelligence analysis raises different ethical questions. First, speaking truth to

power, as the saying goes, is the first obligation of the analytical profession. Analysts
are schooled in the belief that their analysis must be as objective as possible, present
all the relevant facts, and lay out significant implications for US policies regardless
of how inconvenient to policymakers. Following the embarrassing 2002 Iraqi WMD
estimate, the director of national intelligence issued “Intelligence Community Direc-
tive 203,” which laid out the central ethical elements of the analytical profession:
Analysts must perform their functions with objectivity and with awareness
of their own assumptions and reasoning. They must employ reasoning
techniques and practical mechanisms that reveal and mitigate bias. Ana-
lysts must be alert to influence by existing analytic positions or judgments
and must consider alternative perspectives and contrary information. . . .
Analytic assessments must not be distorted by, nor shaped for, advocacy
of a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint. Analytic judgments
must not be influenced by the force or preference for a particular policy.2
A second ethical issue for intelligence analysis involves providing its judgments on
a confidential basis to policymakers. To have maximum benefit and give policymak-
ers a decision advantage, analytical judgments should remain secret and available
only to those decision-makers with a need to know. This maxim has encouraged the
IC to classify virtually everything it produces as SECRET or TOP SECRET, depend-
ing on its sensitivity. Revealing what US intelligence knows about a foreign govern-
ment’s military plans and capabilities reduces policymakers’ ability to take advantage
of known vulnerabilities and to avoid an adversary’s strengths. Intelligence analysts
thus prepare assessments on the assumption that their judgments will remain secret,
so they can be as candid and objective as possible regarding a foreign government’s
behavior. If analysts believe their analysis will be leaked to the press, they would most
likely have to hold back on some assessments for fear of their impact on US diplomacy.
As discussed in chapter 10, the selective leaking or misrepresentation of intelli-
gence judgments can alter the political debate on important issues. This can politi-
cize intelligence in ways that do not serve the country well. Even the approved release
of controversial NIEs’ key judgments—such as the 2007 Iran nuclear estimate—can
produce huge political repercussions and generate subsequent regret on the part of
some senior intelligence officials regarding how they wrote those judgments. Current
ODNI policy is that there will be no future release of estimates or their key judg-
ments, but whether that stated policy will withstand future political pressure remains
to be seen. Unauthorized leaks, which have caused huge damage to US foreign policy
and intelligence performance, will remain a major threat, particularly with the rising
occurrence of the so-called insider threat (i.e., a government employee or contractor

with access to intelligence who knowingly releases classified materials to the public).
Finally, the ethics of conducting covert operations continues to be controversial.
As described in chapter 9, there are now elaborate executive branch procedures for
proposing, approving, and notifying Congress about covert action programs. None-
theless, justifying one democracy’s interference in the internal affairs of other gov-
ernments seems contradictory.3 Yet presidents from both major parties have always
wanted to have a third way other than doing nothing or going to war. Should Ameri-
cans feel comfortable that their government is influencing—without acknowledging
it—a foreign government’s behavior? For example, should Americans embrace the use
of covert action to weaken an autocratic regime that is repressing its people or perhaps
to disrupt a proliferation network that is operating in a number of countries, including
those of American allies? Which is the greater evil—doing nothing to stop actions that
threaten US interests and values or interfering in a sovereign government’s internal
affairs? The United States is not alone in conducting such interference, as we know
from the recent Russian hacking activities.
One standard that has some merit is insisting that any proposed intelligence oper-
ation must pass the “Washington Post test”—namely, if an activity were to be revealed
in that major newspaper, would the American people find those actions acceptable or
reject them? On that basis, some operations might never have been considered in the
first place, while others might be easily justified. Consider for example, the difference
between conducting a covert action aimed at subverting a democratic election in
Chile in the 1970s versus operations to sabotage the Iranian or North Korean nuclear
programs. Likewise, most Americans might readily accept the clandestine collection
of information against a well-known autocrat like Russia’s Vladimir Putin but might
well question the same tactics used against a democratically elected leader like Ger-
man chancellor Angela Merkel.
IS SECRECY NECESSARY?
To many scholars and practitioners of intelligence, secrecy is the central concept that
distinguishes intelligence from other information used by national security decision-
makers. This is, to be sure, too narrow a definition of intelligence, but it is a start-
ing point for discussing the unique role intelligence plays in American democracy.
Americans have long been wary of secrecy as a tool of statecraft, bemoaning the Old
World’s reliance on secret alliances and treaties used to carve up much of the globe
and plot wars. Woodrow Wilson’s principle of “open covenants, openly arrived at”
during the Treaty of Versailles negotiations of 1919 captured the American ethos that
somehow the United States would operate differently from other nation-states.
270 Chapter 11
Yet in reality the United States has had to rely on secret intelligence from the time
it declared its independence—with Gen. George Washington presiding as essentially
the country’s first spymaster. Nonetheless, there has been discomfort with espionage,
surveillance, and reliance on secret information throughout US history. Secret intel-
ligence and spying were reluctantly deemed appropriate when the country was at war
but discontinued when peace ensued.
The solution to the dilemma of conducting secret intelligence in a democracy was
to ensure that there was proper governmental guidance on the purposes for which
it was conducted, the kinds of information that could be collected, and with whom it
could be shared. While the 1947 National Security Act was extremely vague on the
operation of the CIA and the authorities granted to the DCI (later the DNI), it did
charge this official with the protection of sources and methods used to collect secret
intelligence. The 1949 Central Intelligence Agency Act also authorized the agency to
protect (i.e., classify) the names and numbers of its employees. From the beginning,
the IC’s budget remained classified, hidden within the much larger Defense Depart-
ment’s appropriation. Only recently has the DNI agreed to publish the “top-line” (total
figure) of the IC’s spending as a nod to greater transparency.
Presidential executive orders have also laid out the IC’s responsibility to protect
secrets. However, they directed that these authorities could not be used to hide viola-
tions of law, administrative errors, or personal embarrassment of US agencies or offi-
cials. The IC was permitted only to classify information that was needed for national
security purposes in the following categories:
• military plans, weapon systems, or operations

• foreign government information
• intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or
methods, or cryptology
• foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confiden-
tial sources
• scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to national security
• government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities
• vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, proj-
ects, plans or protection services relating to national security
• the development, production, or use of WMDs4
That said, there is tendency toward “overclassification” of information in the US

government generally and the IC more specifically. The CIA and other agencies have
programs to declassify documents after twenty-five years unless there is a compelling
“sources and methods” reason for continued secrecy. Most of these efforts are slow and
considered inadequate by historians and intelligence scholars eager to know more

about the IC’s past activities. The 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) mandates
that federal executive agencies respond to citizen’s requests for information that no
longer needs to remain classified. A number of volumes have been published by the
CIA’s History Staff focused on the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam
War, and other major international crises; volumes on past CIA analysis on the Soviet
Union, China, and Yugoslavia are also available to scholars. Most recently, the CIA
released a voluminous collection of President’s Daily Briefs from 1969 to 1977, the
first such glimpse into what these sensitive documents covered during the Nixon,
Ford, and Carter presidencies.5
PROTECTING PRIVACY RIGHTS—UP TO A POINT
By definition, a liberal democracy is one that protects individual privacy while

demanding government transparency. In a narrow sense, intelligence collected on
its citizens secretly is antithetical to democracy. Governments should leave citizens
alone and not be allowed to monitor their thoughts or beliefs so long as they do not
lead to criminal acts. But individual privacy, like government secrecy, has its limits.
Often the statement is made that Americans must choose between personal liberty
and public safety; in fact, this is a false dichotomy. As intelligence scholar Richard
Betts notes, there is a trade-off, but it is seldom an either/or choice between collec-
tive national security and individual civil liberties: “There is no need to compromise
the more important elements of civil liberties having to do with freedom of speech,
political organization, religion, or especially the right to due process of law—freedom
from arbitrary arrest and incarceration without a chance to contest one’s guilt. Having
one’s phone tapped without proper cause is not as damaging as being imprisoned for
years without trial.”6 Compromises between individual privacy and public safety can
be reasonably made. Intercepting an individual’s phone conversations in an effort to
protect the public’s safety is hardly a severe overreach by the federal government, pro-
vided it has reasonable cause to believe that individual is working for a foreign power
or is part of a terrorist organization whose goals are to attack innocent American
citizens. None of these concerns necessarily breaches the First Amendment rights of
free speech, assembly, or religion.
It is important to distinguish between an individual’s privacy rights and his
broader civil liberties. During the Cold War, those individual privacy rights could
justifiably be infringed only if there was evidence of criminal behavior or a genu-
ine counterintelligence threat. Under United States Code, law enforcement agencies
such as the FBI could monitor citizens for the purpose of gathering evidence of a
crime having been committed. Those searches and seizures usually required a court
272 Chapter 11
order or warrant showing “probable cause” (meaning a high standard of evidence),

and often the individual was made aware of those warrants when a physical search
was being conducted. Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),
however, law enforcement and intelligence agencies also could conduct clandestine
surveillance if there was thought to be a counterintelligence threat in which the
target was “a foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power” (discussed in more
detail later in this chapter). In these cases, according to the act, law enforcement
could maintain such secret surveillance without a court order for up to a year so long
as the attorney general of the United States certified to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC) that there was minimal risk of turning up information
on innocent US citizens. Suffice it to say that protecting individual privacy in the
information and social media age has become a complicated domain in which civil
libertarians, Internet and social media companies, and law enforcement officials all
have competing equities.
THE ROLE OF OVERSIGHT
Given the tremendous powers that the IC has to collect and analyze secret infor-
mation, as well as conduct covert operations, there must be a system of oversight
and control to ensure that such authorities are not abused. Within the US govern-
ment, there is an elaborate framework of legislative, executive, and judicial review of
intelligence activities. It is complicated and far from perfect but probably the most
comprehensive oversight system of any democratic government in the world. It
was created over time to reflect the growing scale and complexity of US intelligence
operations as well as a result of intelligence failures and abuses that occurred along
the way.
Many of these checks on US intelligence activities reflect lessons learned from
painful mistakes made by intelligence agencies as well as a failure of effective execu-
tive and congressional oversight in the past. In particular, the current system is the
result of the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, which prompted the
Nixon White House to resort to extralegal surveillance of civil rights and antiwar
activists. On the heels of President Nixon’s resignation in 1974, revelations of CIA,
NSA, and FBI illegal surveillance of Americans led to the House and Senate investi-
gations (later known as the Pike and Church hearings, respectively) of wrongdoings
and intelligence failures.7 This series of public hearings produced massive reporting
on previously unknown plans, some of which had proposed illegal opening of mail,
wiretaps, and home entries. It also confirmed the existence of a seven-hundred-page
dossier of the CIA’s “Family Jewels”—a compilation of agency missteps that included
failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, mind-altering drug experimentation
programs, and involvement in coup attempts.8 These hearings gave the appearance
of the CIA operating as a “rogue elephant,” as Sen. Frank Church once characterized
it, and called for further controls on intelligence agencies.9
Legislative Oversight
As a result of the Pike and Church hearings, both houses of Congress established
select committees on intelligence in the late 1970s.10 These two committees have
slightly different mandates (see box 11.1). The House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence (HPSCI) has exclusive jurisdiction over the national intelligence pro-
gram and shares jurisdiction over tactical military intelligence and budgets with the
House Armed Services Committee. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
has sole jurisdiction only over the CIA and the DNI and its various subelements (e.g.,
the NIC, NCTC, and NCPC). At the same time, the Senate Armed Services Commit-
tee essentially retains oversight of the much larger defense intelligence programs
and budgets of the NSA, NRO, NGA, and DIA. Although these two oversight com-
mittees carry out the bulk of the oversight responsibilities, it should be noted that
the armed services, judiciary, homeland security, and appropriations committees do
retain substantial leverage when it comes to defense intelligence (roughly 70 per-
cent of the IC’s budget), FBI and DHS intelligence activities, and any intelligence
appropriations.
Box 11.1 House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees
The House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) was established in 1977, and
its size has fluctuated from twenty to twenty-two members. The majority-minority ratio is
roughly comparable that found in the full House but generally is no more than a 3:2 ratio.
At least one member must be drawn from the membership of the House Appropriations,
Armed Services, Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees. The HPSCI has jurisdiction over
the National Intelligence Program and the Military Intelligence Program. Jurisdiction over
the FBI and DHS is shared with other committees of the judiciary and homeland security.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) was established in 1976 and is currently
composed of fifteen senators. By custom, the majority party always has eight members and
the minority has seven members, regardless of the full Senate composition. In a sign of
bipartisanship, the SSCI also has a vice chairman representing the minority party. At least
one member is drawn from the armed services, foreign relations, appropriations, and judi-
ciary committees. The chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Ser-
vices Committee are also ex officio members of the SSCI. The SSCI has jurisdiction only
over the National Intelligence Program budget, including the CIA and the Office of the DNI.
Otherwise, it has limited jurisdiction over DOD, DHS, Treasury, and Justice Department enti-
ties with the corresponding committees of the Senate.
274 Chapter 11
For reassuring the public’s confidence in intelligence, the SSCI has the responsibil-
ity for confirming the appointment of the DNI, the CIA director, and all other direc-
tors of the National Intelligence Program, including those within the Department of
Defense, such as the NSA and DIA. This lends the SSCI the power to hold public
hearings and grill those officials on their views prior to confirming them. This can be
a platform from which to express critical views and concerns regarding the operation
of intelligence as well as to extract promises of greater transparency and truthfulness
regarding the IC’s performance. As was demonstrated in early 2018, the nomination
of Gina Haspel as CIA director allowed for a robust congressional and public debate
over past CIA conduct regarding secret detention camps and enhanced interrogation
techniques. Her pledge to speak truth to power in dealing with President Trump as
well as to never to employ “torture” again were conditions on which her nomination
was narrowly approved.
The earlier chapter on covert action described in great detail the procedures for
sharing presidential findings with Congress. However, it is worth underlining the key
role the intelligence oversight committees play in reviewing and commenting on
highly classified CIA operations. The 1980 law requires that the CIA share presiden-
tial findings with both House and Senate oversight committees in a timely manner
(see box 11.2). While these committees have no power to stop or modify those opera-
tions, hypothetically they could encourage the passage of legislation to prevent their
future funding or alter their scope. Having that kind of power tends to discourage
ill-advised or highly risky operations. When a covert action is considered extremely
sensitive, the president may decide to delay notification beyond the normal forty-
eight-hour period. Alternatively, the president may elect to brief only a select group of
congressional leaders. Often, the so-called Gang of Eight—the Senate majority leader
and the House speaker, along with their ranking minority leaders and the chairmen
Box 11.2 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act
The 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act requires the CIA director to keep the intelligence over-
sight committees “fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities, including any
significant anticipated intelligence activity.” It requires timely notification of any significant
illegalities or intelligence failures. Importantly, it supersedes the Hughes-Ryan Amendment
in providing that the president notify the intelligence oversight committees of any decision
for a planned covert action and lays out the procedures and timelines for such notifica-
tion. In exchange for eliminating the requirement that the CIA report significant intelligence
operations to up to eight separate congressional committees, it reduced that requirement to
only the two intelligence oversight committees and demanded a set of detailed procedures
(later known as “findings” and “notifications”) for informing those committees of presiden-
tially approved covert actions.
and ranking minority members of the two oversight committees—is employed to

keep congressional knowledge to a minimum. This has become a more controversial
method, as it is sometimes seen more as an excuse to limit possible congressional
criticism than a protection against possible leaks.
As with any other congressional committee, the intelligence oversight committees
have power of the purse over intelligence programs and budgets, including the author-
ity to disapprove or approve spending on specific programs. Each oversight commit-
tee—as well counterpart appropriations committees in both houses—maintains large
audit staffs that are continuously reviewing the IC budgets and spending to ensure
they are adhering to legislative guidance and priorities. They will examine the annual
consolidated intelligence budget request prepared by the DNI—contained in thick,
highly classified congressional budget justification books (CBJBs)—that has already
been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (see box 11.3).
Senate and House congressional committee budgetary experts will pick apart and
question these spending requests, often requesting further information or briefings.
Typically the DNI and heads of individual agencies will testify before the committees
to answer questions and defend these budget requests.
Committees will frequently question spending or proposed additional funding
for programs they wish to see advanced or protected. In the 1980s, for example, the
SSCI prohibited the CIA from spending money to provide lethal aid to the Contras in
Nicaragua, which the Reagan administration wanted to use to undermine the Cuban-
backed Sandinista government. Subsequent legislation demanded that any covert
action program be “notified” to the oversight committees prior to its initiation. Addi-
tional legislation followed that set out an elaborate procedure for presidential find-
ings (see chapter 9) of covert action to ensure proper authorization and notification
within both the executive and legislative branches. In another sensational case, the
SSCI’s audit team, according to a Washington Post story, discovered that the National
Box 11.3 Congressional Budget Justification Book
“The CBJB is the annual report to Congress that describes in detail the full extent of intel-
ligence capabilities, essentially detailing what we’d done with the money that had been allo-
cated to us and justifying our requests for the following year. It went into specifics about
many programs—how they worked, what results they produced, and the effect they had on
national security. It covered how we protected our forces from insurgent attacks and how
we assessed adversarial leaders’ intentions. It explained how we monitored proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, including in Iran, North Korea, and Syria. It contained, in short,
the full expanse of how the US conducts intelligence.”
Source: James Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truth from a Life in Intelligence (New York: Viking, 2018), 240.
276 Chapter 11
Reconnaissance Office had not spent previously appropriated and designated funds
and later reprogrammed some monies for its headquarters building in Northern
Virginia. The NRO had never briefed these plans to Congress. Needless to say, the
committee’s chairman held hearings and demanded an explanation and ultimately a
resignation of a senior NRO official.11
Congressional oversight via its hearings and independent investigations can also
constrain and shape intelligence activities. In the wake of the 2002 Iraqi WMD NIE
scandal, both oversight committees undertook their own investigations into what
went wrong. They reviewed intelligence documents, interviewed analysts and manag-
ers, and reached a series of critical findings regarding CIA and IC analytical tradecraft
practices. Similarly, in 2011, at the behest of the then chairperson Dianne Feinstein,
a two-year staff investigation focused on the CIA’s secret detention and interroga-
tion program. A massive classified final report outlining the program’s flaws and false
claims—including a redacted six-hundred-page summary—was prepared to underline
the committee majority’s belief that the program was misguided and should never be
repeated. More contemporary examples have been the separate House and Senate
committee investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 elections, which
are not yet completed at the time of writing.
Executive Branch Oversight

Long before Congress established more focused committee attention to intelligence
activities, the executive branch held the principal responsibility to supervise and
direct the IC. As made clear in earlier discussions of the national security decision-
making process, the IC reports to the president and the NSC, giving them more daily
contact over and control of intelligence matters. In addition to the various NSC bod-
ies established by presidents to set intelligence requirements, approve budgets, and
authorize covert actions, presidents have relied on advisory bodies to review the per-
formance of the IC.
President’s Intelligence Advisory Board

One of the earliest tools of presidential oversight has been the President’s Intelli-
gence Advisory Board (PIAB). Created in 1956 by President Eisenhower, its purpose
was to provide him with outside recommendations on how to improve intelligence
on the growing Soviet military program. In his executive order, Eisenhower noted
that he sought out the best advice from the scientific, military, and business com-
munities. His relatively small board of six to eight acknowledged experts provided
him influential views on developing overhead reconnaissance programs, devising
a new technical directorate for the CIA, and proposing a new Defense Intelligence
Agency to centralize military intelligence functions.12 Later presidents would also
ask the PIAB to perform postmortems on intelligence failures and examine the
effectiveness of implemented intelligence reforms. For example, President George
W. Bush’s NSC staff engaged the PIAB during the 2008 revisions to the FISA. Presi-
dent Obama also reportedly directed his PIAB to examine the intelligence failure
surrounding the “Underwear Bomber’s” nearly successful downing of an airliner in
2009; the board also proposed ways to manage the expanding volume of data on
the Internet and investigate what the government can do about WikiLeaks types of
disclosures.
The PIAB has fluctuated in size and significance, depending on each president’s
personal involvement in intelligence matters and relationship with the board and its
chairman. A president typically issues an executive order laying out the size, duties,
and scope of this advisory group. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, the
body was instrumental for some major organizational innovations at a time when the
IC was still taking shape. Other presidents have relied on it far less. Indeed, President
Carter chose not to create a PIAB, as the new congressional oversight committees had
just been established and he believed they would be sufficient oversight of a function
in which he had little interest. During those times when the PIAB was little used—as
in the Clinton presidency—it became largely a ceremonial body, where presidential
friends or party stalwarts could occupy a seemingly lofty position.
In most cases, the PIAB’s operations are seldom known and remain noncontro-
versial. One exception was during the Ford administration, when the body urged the
creation of the Team A / Team B exercise that attacked the CIA’s estimates of Soviet
strategic programs. A more recent exception occurred during George W. Bush’s first
term, when his PIAB chairman, Brent Scowcroft, reportedly recommended that post-
9/11 intelligence reforms include moving the NSA and NRO out from under the
secretary of defense in order to give the then director of central intelligence more
authority. This recommendation was never officially released and was reportedly
strongly opposed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This dispute, combined
with Scowcroft’s open letter criticizing the administration’s invasion of Iraq, led to his
removal from the PIAB after 2004.
Intelligence Oversight Board

In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed an executive order (EO 11905) outlining
steps to prevent intelligence abuses or infringement on Americans’ civil liberties as
occurred during the Nixon administration. This responded not only to the findings
of the Pike and Church hearings into the CIA’s and other agencies’ illegal activities
but also a separate presidential commission (called the Rockefeller Commission).13
In the executive order, President Ford banned political assassinations (a prohibition
that remains in force through subsequent presidential executive orders) and created
278 Chapter 11
a small (three to five members) Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), which would
investigate and report to the attorney general and Department of Justice any illegal
activities by the CIA or other intelligence agencies. The IOB serves as a subcommittee
to the PIAB itself and thus ultimately reports to the president. Intelligence agencies
and their inspectors general (IGs) are responsible for making any and all information
available to the IOB for them to conduct their independent investigations.
Inspectors General
By law and executive order, many of the national intelligence agencies must maintain
an Office of the Inspector General.14 At the CIA, for example, the Office of the Inspec-
tor General was established in 1953 but later made fully autonomous in 1989 by a
separate statute. The president nominates an individual who must then be confirmed
by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; only the president can remove the
IG, making him or her more independent of the current CIA leadership.
By statute, an IG is charged with conducting routine audits and inspections of units
and programs within an executive department as well as performing special investiga-
tions to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and legality of the organization’s activi-
ties. In the CIA, audits focus on financial transactions and accounting practices, while
inspections can examine the performance of specific agency components or crosscut-
ting programs. Investigations can be launched to uncover alleged fraud, waste, misman-
agement, or violations of laws and government regulations. These reports are sent to
the CIA director for his or her review and possible further administrative actions. Such
reports can focus on employees’ fraudulent submission of time cards and misuse of
government property or funds, all the way up to illegal covert actions, alleged detainee
abuse, or unauthorized destruction of detainee interrogation methods videos.15 IG
reports involving possible criminal activity must be reported to the attorney general,
while those investigating significant intelligence failures or problems must be shared
with the congressional oversight committees. In this way, IGs often assist in the legis-
lative branch performing its own oversight responsibilities.
While most reports and investigations are used to determine internal administra-
tive actions—such as reprimands or dismissals for inappropriate and unethical behav-
ior or legal wrongdoing—occasionally an IG report becomes a public issue. In 2001,
Inspector General John Helgerson, a senior career CIA analyst, produced a report
critical of the CIA Counterterrorism Center’s performance prior to 9/11, which rec-
ommended forming an accountability board to reprimand individuals for their mis-
takes. This angered the CIA leadership and also demoralized some CTC analysts.
Helgerson’s office also later issued a 2004 study that claimed the secret CIA deten-
tion and interrogation program very likely violated the United Nations Convention
against Torture. This made it harder for the Bush administration to brush aside civil
libertarian organizations’ criticisms of the secret prisons and harsh treatment of

detainees and led the SSCI to commence its own separate investigation.16 Director
Michael Hayden reportedly was unhappy at the time and authorized a study of the
IG’s operations by the CIA’s general counsel. That report led Hayden to install an
ombudsman over the IG to ensure quality control and to keep the agency managers
informed as to its activities. Reportedly, Helgerson agreed to these changes, but he
was not made available to comment to the media on these changes.
The DNI also established his own statutory IG, created by the Intelligence Autho-
rization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. This IC IG, also accountable to Congress, conducts
inspections, audits, and investigations across the entire sixteen-member IC. This
office is also designed to provide leadership, training, and coordination of the other
IGs across the community. Other agencies, such as the DIA, NSA, and NGA, main-
tain IGs to monitor these organizations’ performance for efficiency as well as ethical
standards.
Judicial Oversight: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

The judicial branch has broad authority to interpret national security laws passed
by Congress and implemented by the executive branch. In this oversight capacity,
the courts have the power to restrict intelligence activities desired by a president
and demand some procedures be in place for justifying the secret collection of infor-
mation. In these ways, federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court can place
checks on how US intelligence operates. The Supreme Court has often served as a
brake on presidential authority and an interpreter of legislation related to national
security and intelligence. In the post-9/11 era, Supreme Court decisions have placed
limits on presidential actions aimed at detainee operations at Guantanamo Bay Naval
Base, in particular. In the 2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, the court ruled that the
George W. Bush administration’s military commissions at Guantanamo violated US
and international law; it also ruled that Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (“mini-
mal protections”) applied to detainees as well.17 In a subsequent 2008 case, the court
further ruled that the military commissions violated the Constitution by not provid-
ing detainees the same rights of habeas corpus petition as US citizens.18 In general,
the Supreme Court’s rulings have tended to extend more protections to non-US citi-
zens than presidents are inclined to confer.
The best-known judicial oversight activity is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court. Established under the 1978 FISA, this court was seen as one remedy to the
Church committee’s recommendations for more oversight of the executive branch’s
use of intelligence. The FISC would review requests for search warrants to allow elec-
tronic (and later physical) surveillance in national security cases. This special court
would operate in secret and comprise eleven federal judges drawn from different
280 Chapter 11
Box 11.4 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created the Foreign Intelligence Sur-
veillance Court (FISC), which reviews and approves requests from law enforcement and
intelligence agencies for physical and electronic surveillance of persons suspected of “being
foreign agents for foreign powers” of espionage or terrorism. Section 702 of the FISA allows
law enforcement and intelligence agencies to obtain emails and telephone communications
of foreigners outside the United States without a warrant.
Significantly, it strictly defines the procedures under which a federal warrant for elec-
tronic (and later physical) surveillance can be conducted. The primary purpose must be to
protect against a foreign power’s or its agent’s efforts to engage in an attack, sabotage,
international terrorism, or clandestine intelligence activities. If the intelligence information
concerns a “United States person,” the information must be necessary to prevent an attack,
sabotage, or act of terrorism or espionage.
Subsequent interpretation and Justice Department procedures led to a restriction (“The
Wall”) on allowing law enforcement and intelligence agencies to coordinate and share infor-
mation for fear of tainting criminal proceedings. Essentially, a FISA warrant cannot be used
to get around the Fourth Amendment’s “due process” protections for American citizens.
federal court districts around the country. The FISA instructed the court to review
search warrant requests of communications intercepts of foreign targets operating
outside the United States in order to prevent or at least “minimize” the intercept of
American citizens’ communications.19 The act requires that the DOJ apply for a war-
rant in order to collect communications transmissions on foreign targets that are col-
lected in the United States. The department must provide probable cause that the
target is a “foreign power” or “agent of a foreign power” (see box 11.4).
The FISA was renewed and amended in 2008 amid considerable debate regard-
ing the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs, later revealed by Edward Snowden. At
that time, the IC was adamant that it needed certain provisions found in Section 702
that permitted the NSA to collect—with court supervision—communications of non-
US persons operating outside the United States who might be involved in terrorism.
According to legal scholars, the law had previously always distinguished between US
citizens and non-US citizens as well as between domestic and foreign locations. The
FISA essentially eliminated both distinctions if the government could show probable
cause that an individual was an “agent” of a foreign power.20
Following the Snowden leaks, which revealed extensive collection of Americans’
Internet and telephone metadata, DNI James Clapper and other senior intelligence
officials tried to dispel congressional concerns that this provision was being misused
to spy on innocent American citizens. Clapper maintained that when the IC moni-
tored the communications overseas of a non-US person who was speaking to a US
citizen, such “incidental collection” would be deleted if it had no foreign intelligence
value.21 There have been continuing press reports that the NSA’s ability to carefully
track only non-US persons communications is far from perfect. The New America
Foundation’s analysis of ODNI semiannual reports on Section 702 reveal that the
law’s complexity as well as the NSA’s vast collection capabilities means that inad-
vertent collection of Americans’ phone messages and emails continues because of
human error and poor tasking instructions.22 The Privacy and Civil Liberties Over-
sight Board (PCLOB)—created by the 2004 intelligence legislation—also investi-
gated the use of Section 702 and concluded that while the error rate was low, given
the size and complexity of the collection programs, mistakes were inevitable. In its
defense, the IC has duly reported these errors and has modified training of signals
analysts to reduce these incidents.
POST-9/11 INTELLIGENCE CHALLENGES
At the end of the Cold War, it may have appeared that the United States could wind
down its defense commitments and intelligence efforts. However, the attacks of
September 11, 2001, put security back on the front burner. Moreover, it made more
apparent the dilemmas of security versus liberty. More intrusive surveillance and
interrogation techniques, as well as the resort to intelligence-led targeted killings,
have led to questions regarding the adequacy of executive and legislative oversight.
In addition, the need to share intelligence more widely within the IC and with foreign
partners to aid counterterrorism has come at a time when unauthorized disclosures of
classified intelligence programs have undermined America’s trustworthiness in the
eyes of some partners. Current and future US policymakers will have to wrestle with
these issues in order to restore US credibility both at home and abroad.
Harsh and Intrusive Intelligence Collection

The global war on terrorism ushered in a new set of intelligence tasks designed to
take down international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and
most recently ISIS. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush autho-
rized the CIA to conduct its most extensive covert action programs to disrupt future
terrorist plots and destroy al-Qaeda. These included not just paramilitary operations
in Afghanistan but also secret renditions and interrogations of captured fighters held
at undisclosed camps outside the United States. These measures allowed the CIA to
conduct very harsh interrogations it felt necessary to elicit information that could
reveal plans for future attacks. This was done despite the United States being a signa-
tory party to the United Nations Convention against Torture,23 which bans “any act by
which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted
on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third party information or
282 Chapter 11
a confession.”24 It further bans what it calls cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of

prisoners of war.
At the time, the president and his closest advisers believed that it was urgent to
prevent follow-on attacks at any cost. Authorizing the use of EITs—including the
waterboarding of detainees that simulated drowning—on known al-Qaeda members
seemed legitimate. Accordingly, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in Janu-
ary 2002 had already announced that the Bush administration did not believe that
al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters deserved protections under the Geneva Conventions
as they were judged to be “unlawful combatants” rather than prisoners of war.25 How-
ever, the CIA wanted more reassurance of the legality of its program and so requested
and received in August 2002 a DOJ legal memorandum that judged those measures
to fall short of the definition of torture. In that memo, DOJ lawyers argued that the
president as commander in chief had the authority to conduct operations to pro-
tect the United States (the so-called necessity defense) and that United States Code
regarding the UN Convention against Torture proscribed only the most extreme acts
that inflicted severe pain or mental suffering:
We conclude that for an act to constitute torture as defined in [United States

Code,] Section 2340, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physi-
cal pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain
accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment
of bodily function, or even death. For purely mental pain or suffering to
amount to torture under Section 2340, it must result in significant psycho-
logical harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.26
By this definition, the DOJ set the bar very high before any charges of torture
could be brought against any CIA staff or contract employee involved in the program.
The executive branch also believed it had covered itself by informing a few key
members of Congress regarding the broad nature of the rendition and interrogation
program. In September 2002, CIA officials briefed the ranking majority and minority
members of the House intelligence committee—Porter Goss (later CIA director) and
Nancy Pelosi (at the time, the House minority leader). Additional briefings were sub-
sequently provided to a few more congressional oversight committee members, but
the program was not briefed to the full committees until two years later. According to
Bush administration and CIA officials, those few congressional leaders expressed no
qualms at the time. The Washington Post revelation of the secret prisons and harsh
interrogations program prompted the CIA to defend the program without provid-
ing any details, but it ultimately terminated it.27 Later Pelosi alleged she had been
lied to about the character and extent of the interrogation techniques. In particular,
she claimed never to have been told about waterboarding, a claim that CIA officials
strongly disputed. More broadly, this controversy not only raised questions about
the practice of briefing only a small number of congressional figures rather than full
committees, but it also suggested that CIA officials could not be trusted to volunteer
information unless congressional oversight committee members posed direct ques-
tions to them.28 In sum, the intelligence oversight function was seen to have proven
inadequate to guaranteeing proper review of an ethically and legally questionable
program.
The use of roughly a dozen coercive techniques continued until the program of
secret prisons was leaked to the press in the fall of 2005. While never fully revealed,
they appeared to include isolation, stress positions, faked executions, harsh slaps,
sensory deprivation, dietary adjustments, extreme temperature changes, removal of
clothing, and in three cases waterboarding. Once the program became exposed in
2005, President Bush and his advisers were forced to consider modifications, and
Director Goss suspended the techniques in late 2005. Later in 2009, President
Obama went further and prohibited them by executive order, limiting any US inter-
rogations to following the existing US Army field manual that specifically prohibited
waterboarding among other coercive methods.
American intelligence leaders have publicly disagreed on the extent to which these
techniques actually produced actionable intelligence. Hayden and those involved in
the program remain convinced they did produce useful intelligence that even con-
tributed eventually to finding Bin Laden. Former CIA director John Brennan, on the
other hand, has been more critical of the methods and equivocal about whether the
CIA could prove they were decisive in preventing other attacks. What is known is that
their use remains an ethical stain on America’s reputation as a liberal democracy gov-
erned by the rule of law. The UN and most allied governments considered those mea-
sures to be torture and denounced them. Combined with the shocking photos of the
military interrogations conducted at Abu Ghraib prison in Afghanistan, the United
States had lost considerable credibility. It may have also cost the US future coopera-
tion from some allied intelligence services. In sum, it appeared that a president gave a
compliant CIA license to conduct an ill-advised and poorly improvised coercive pro-
gram, justified by a DOJ only too willing to please an administration driven by fear.
Equally problematic was the Bush administration’s secret approval of extensive
electronic surveillance of foreign and domestic communications for the purpose
of detecting new terrorist threats. In October 2001, President Bush determined
that the extraordinary emergency facing the United States from al-Qaeda justified
the NSA’s electronic surveillance of both foreign and domestic Internet and phone
communications without a court order. The NSA could collect metadata for a period
of thirty to sixty days, and this authority was repeatedly renewed for nearly five
284 Chapter 11
years.29 The NSA was then able to analyze the metadata and report it to the FBI and
CIA as well as to other counterterrorism organizations. As was revealed later by
Edward Snowden, one such technical collection program was code-named Prism.
It involved the NSA collecting and storing millions of records from major Internet
service providers, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, AOL,
Skype, and Apple. As much of the world’s Internet traffic passes through the United
States via the “backbone” of major Internet providers, it was a simple matter for the
US government to secretly get them to give the NSA access to receive and store
such metadata records.
According to a 2009 report to President Obama by the IGs of the DOD, DOJ, CIA,
NSA, and ODNI, NSA director Michael Hayden had briefed the HPSCI in October
2001 that under pre-9/11 FISA rules, the NSA would not have been able to adequately
detect new terrorism threats.30 FISA requirements for a court order would be too slow
and cumbersome to ensure timely interception of phone or email traffic. In his view,
however, collecting only the metadata without individual court orders raised fewer
constitutional issues—such as Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable
searches and seizures”—than collecting the content of those communications. After
the administration successfully lobbied Congress for a freer hand in the way it con-
ducted surveillance, Congress approved the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. It allowed law
enforcement to use the same electronic tools available against organized crime and
drug traffickers (such as “roving wiretaps” and access to business records) to investi-
gate terrorists. Most importantly, Section 215 of this act permitted the NSA to store
telephone metadata provided by major Internet and phone companies. At the time,
few in Congress understood how broadly this authority would be interpreted. Indeed,
according to released records later, the more expansive NSA surveillance programs
were not briefed to congressional leaders—and then only to the Gang of Eight—more
than two years after the programs commenced.
This President’s Surveillance Program (PSP) was given legal justification in a series
of DOJ memoranda prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel. Their author, the only
official given access to this highly classified program, was conservative legal scholar
John Yoo, who had also authored the controversial “torture memos” justifying the CIA’s
secret interrogation program. Yoo’s memoranda quickly dismissed Fourth Amend-
ment concerns as not relevant to the collection of electronic communications on non-
US persons. Regarding electronic surveillance of US persons, he opined that Fourth
Amendment protections applied solely to law enforcement activities, which should
not be construed to obstruct “direct support to military operations” duly authorized
by the president as commander in chief.31 Later, when other DOJ lawyers were allowed
access to the PSP, they came to question Yoo’s legal analysis that a president’s war-
time powers were excluded from FISA limits.32 They warned Attorney General John
Ashcroft that the PSP might be based on unsound legal arguments. When then deputy
attorney general, James Comey, was briefed on the PSP and its legal basis, he too was
concerned about the legal arguments that appeared to ignore an act of Congress and
failed to notify congressional leaders of this opinion.
Later DOJ legal opinions argued for revisions in the program following a March
2004 comprehensive briefing of the Gang of Eight. At that time congressional leaders
expressed concerns about the surveillance program but did not oppose its continu-
ation. In 2008, Congress passed FISA amendments that allowed the NSA to collect
electronic communications inside the United States of non-US citizens believed to be
involved in terrorism activities. This legislation gave the government even broader
authority to intercept international communications than did the provisions of the
presidential authorizations governing the NSA’s activities begun in 2002.
In sum, 9/11 caused considerable expansion of electronic intelligence operations
within the United States on the presumption that such authorities were critical to
protecting American citizens. In practice, some individual privacy rights had to give
way to public safely. Yet the effectiveness of this extensive surveillance program
remains at best very ambiguous. The 2009 joint IGs report notes that it was difficult
to assess or quantify the overall effectiveness of the PSP program because it was
highly compartmentalized and hard to interview participants involved. With that
limitation in mind, the DOJ’s IG concluded that “although PSP-derived information
had value in some counterterrorism investigations, it generally played a limited role
in the FBI’s overall counterterrorism efforts.”33 According to the same report, CIA
and NCTC analysts were somewhat more positive, noting that the PSP-derived infor-
mation had contributed; however, the program’s effectiveness was difficult to assess
because of its sensitivity and in the end proved no more useful than other streams
of intelligence.34
The question in 2009 was whether the expansion of the NSA’s surveillance authori-
ties to find a few suspected terrorists was worth the cost of appearing to compromise
all Americans’ privacy protections. President Obama decided in 2010 that such an
expansion of surveillance was unwarranted. His presidential commission on this mat-
ter reviewed the program and concluded that there were less intrusive ways to access
these sources of information without jeopardizing American public safety. President
Obama accepted the commission’s recommendations that the NSA curtail bulk meta-
data collection and instead require that phone and Internet providers store their
customers’ metadata, which could be accessed by law enforcement and intelligence
agencies with a request to the FISC. Congress also subsequently reinforced this presi-
dential decision with new legislation that effectively replaced the PATRIOT Act’s loose
authorities granted the NSA with the US Freedom Act (see box 11.5). This 2015 law
essentially forbids the NSA from retaining metadata and also requires the executive
286 Chapter 11
Box 11.5 USA Freedom Act
The 2015 USA Freedom Act bans the George W. Bush–era bulk collection of metadata and
requires that a government surveillance request “specifically identify a person, account,
address, or personal device,” which limits as much as possible the scope of the information
sought to the purpose of the investigation. Furthermore, it directs the government to adopt
“minimization” procedures to protect American citizens’ privacy rights and allows FISC
judges to direct additional minimization procedures concerning any nonconsenting persons.
It also requires the US attorney general to submit to Congress an annual report of how many
warrant requests were made to the FISA court, how many were granted but modified, and
how many were rejected.
branch to issue annual reports that revealed how many FISA requests were made to
the FISC, in order to provide more transparency to Congress and the American public.
One lesson from these various episodes is that 9/11 produced a sense of fear and
urgency, conditions that encouraged loosening the restrictions on intelligence-collection
practices at the expense of American civil liberties; moreover, this same sense of fear and
urgency also tempered proper oversight by both the executive and legislative branches
of government. These experiences should be remembered if there comes another major
attack on the United States so that proper oversight can be exercised. A second lesson is
that the IC cannot resort to simply staying “within the law” as interpreted by an admin-
istration’s own lawyers. As one scholar put it, compliance with the law is not sufficient if
those activities are not likely to be viewed as legitimate and ethical.35
Need for More Professionalism and Transparency

The foregoing discussion highlights how challenging it is for effective oversight of a
secretive IC. The post-9/11 surveillance controversies have been proven to be nearly
as damaging to US intelligence as the post-Watergate 1970s. The revelations of secret
renditions and prisons, the use of extreme interrogation bordering on torture, and the
extensive warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone, email, and social media com-
munications have led to a deep cynicism and diminished public trust regarding the IC.
To rebuild public trust, the IC has pledged a renewed commitment to a set of ethi-
cal principles as well as greater transparency. First, the IC did some soul-searching
about its practices and determined that a community-wide set of professional prin-
ciples was needed. In 2012, the DNI announced those principles as being ones that
cover the full scope of intelligence activities across the sixteen agencies:
1. Mission. We serve the American people, and understand that our mission
requires selfless dedication to the security of our Nation.
2. Truth. We seek the truth; speak truth to power; and obtain, analyze, and pro-
vide intelligence objectively.
3. Lawfulness. We support and defend the Constitution, and comply with the
laws of the United States, ensuring that we carry out our mission in a manner
that respects privacy, civil liberties, and human rights obligations.
4. Integrity. We demonstrate integrity in our conduct, mindful that all our
actions, whether public or not, should reflect positively on the Intelligence
Community at large.
5. Stewardship. We are responsible stewards of the public trust; we use intel-
ligence authorities and resources prudently, protect intelligence sources and
methods diligently, report wrongdoing through appropriate channels; and
remain accountable to ourselves, our oversight institutions, and through
those institutions, ultimately to the American people.
6. Excellence. We seek to improve our performance and our craft continuously,
share information responsibly, collaborate with our colleagues, and demon-
strate innovation and agility when meeting new challenges.
7. Diversity. We embrace the diversity of our Nation, promote diversity and
inclusion in our work force, and encourage diversity in our thinking.36
These seemingly obvious principles are important, if only because they commit
the IC’s agencies and individuals to weigh the ethics of their practices. These princi-
ples demand that officials authorizing collection operations, covert action, or analysis
be cognizant that their efforts must serve the nation, respect American laws and civil
liberties, speak truth to power, and remain accountable to oversight institutions and
the American people.
Second, the IC has created new “Principles of Transparency,” including the estab-
lishment of a community-wide Intelligence Transparency Council.37 Its mandate
is to work toward greater release of information so that the public can know more
about intelligence missions, authorities, and oversight mechanisms. The four broad
transparency principles attempt to strike a balance between encouraging more
release of information that can inform the public and at the same time protecting
what are absolutely essential sources and methods (see box 11.6). They seem to
acknowledge that the IC must do better in only classifying what truly would cause
major harm to national security and make a concerted effort to get more informa-
tion declassified.
Third, the IC needs to talk up what successful contributions it does make to
national security and public safety when it can do so without damaging intelligence
collection or analysis. When DNI James Clapper announced this initiative, he also
encouraged the individual agencies to speak more openly to the public about how
288 Chapter 11
Box 11.6 Principles of Intelligence Transparency
1. Provide appropriate transparency to enhance public understanding about:

a. the IC’s mission and what the IC does to accomplish it (including its structure and
effectiveness);
b. the laws, directive, authorities, and policies that govern the IC’s activities; and
c. the compliance and oversight framework that ensures intelligence activities are con-
ducted in accordance with applicable rules.
2. Be proactive and clear in making information publicly available through authorized

channels, including taking affirmative steps to:
a. provide timely transparency on matters of public interest;
b. prepare information with sufficient clarity and context, so that it is readily under-
standable;
c. make information accessible to the public through a range of communications chan-
nels, such as those enabled by new technology. . . .
3. In protecting information about intelligence sources, methods, and activities from unau-
thorized disclosure, ensure that IC professionals consistently and diligently execute
their responsibilities to:
a. classify only that information which, if disclosed without authorization, could be
expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security;
b. never classify information to conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative
error, or to prevent embarrassment. . . .
d. consider the public interest to the maximum extent feasible when making classifica-
tion determinations, while continuing to protect information as necessary to maintain
intelligence effectiveness, protect the safety of those who work for or with the IC or
otherwise protect national security.
4. Align IC roles, resources, processes, and policies to support robust implementation of

these principles, consistent with applicable laws, executive orders, and directives.
Source: ODNI, “Principles of Intelligence Transparency for the Intelligence Community,” https://www.dni.gov/
files/documents/ppd-28/FINAL%20Transparency_poster%20v1.pdf.
they contributed to the public’s security. In a 2016 speech, he noted the significant
role that the NRO and NGA had played in providing essential information to the
first responders to a variety of natural disasters, such as hurricanes Rita and Katrina,
as well as manmade ones, such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On top of
that, he and other senior intelligence officials have made more efforts to make public
addresses when possible. In addressing one large audience, however, he hinted at
how hard this was going to be for a community raised in a culture of secrecy to come
from the shadows: “I admit, because of my experience growing up in the SIGINT busi-
ness and my decades of intelligence work, the kind of transparency we’re engaged
in now feels almost genetically antithetical to me. . . . I think Air Force 2nd Lt. Jim
Clapper, from 1963, would be shocked by the level of detail with which we talk about
SIGINT specifically and intelligence activities in general in 2015.”38
Fourth, the IC needs to remind the public about its commitment to safeguarding
their civil liberties at home. Within the ODNI, the PCLOB was established as part
of the 2004 intelligence reforms. It comprises four part-time members and a full-
time chairman, who are responsible for reviewing executive branch counterterrorism
actions to ensure that those actions are balanced with the need to protect privacy
and civil liberties. The board is also there to ensure any future development of laws,
agency regulations, or policies are consistent with American civil liberties. In this
latter case, it was instrumental in issuing recommendations following the Snowden
revelations that shaped the USA Freedom Act and curtailed aspects of the NSA’s
surveillance programs. Its 2014 report on Section 215 and Section 702 of the 2008
FISA Amendments Act proved very influential in shifting congressional and execu-
tive branch thinking on electronic surveillance. All of the board’s recommendations
regarding these programs have been implemented in part or in full.
Moreover, those reports were public documents, allowing Americans to read more
about their IC’s surveillance activities than ever before. The PCLOB can and should
provide status reports on how its recommendations are being implemented. It can
hold public hearings and can involve outside experts and organizations in its delib-
erations, creating an indirect connection between the secretive IC and the American
public. At the moment, the board’s jurisdiction is limited to the IC’s counterterror-
ism programs; however, civil liberties advocates strongly endorse broadening the
PCLOB’s mandate to cover a fuller range of intelligence-collection programs.39 How
effective this board will be under President Trump remains to be seen. In the past few
years, it has been less highly regarded by Congress in particular, and its membership
has dropped. In 2018, President Trump had named several new members, giving it
the minimum of three necessary for a quorum.40 Those supporters of an active board
have recommended that the PCLOB be empowered to issue an annual report to Con-
gress on how current intelligence practices and policies have impacted Americans’
civil liberties. Efforts to pass such legislation failed in the last Congress, and it is
uncertain whether it might be revisited any time soon. That said, should there be
new threats to America’s security that generate additional intelligence surveillance
programs, it would be desirable to have an effective board that can ensure that Ameri-
cans’ civil liberties are not unduly infringed upon.
Whether the IC can regain American public trust is obviously a work in progress.
While there are few public opinion polls on intelligence, what is available suggests
the public is suspicious of intelligence yet regards its missions are vital. A 2015 Pew
Research poll reported that following the Snowden affair, two-thirds of respondents
“do not trust” intelligence agencies regarding its information collection and data
290 Chapter 11
privacy.41 In a 2017 study, polls showed that a slight majority (55 percent) consider the
IC “plays a vital role in warning against foreign threats and contributes to national
security.” Only a small minority (12 percent) felt the IC posed a threat to civil liberties.
While those figures might be reassuring, other findings were less so:
• Millennials (individuals born after 1982) were least likely to believe the IC is
vital and were less well informed about the IC.
• Almost a majority of those crediting the IC with a vital role said they had little
knowledge of its missions.
• Nearly 60 percent of those responding to the question rated the IC’s ability to
protect privacy as “not very effective” or “not effective at all.”42
At this juncture, one has to remain hopeful that the IC will do more to explain
its role in the national security enterprise and its commitment to balancing security
with protecting Americans’ privacy. One of the purposes of this book has been to
make the contribution of the IC more transparent to students of American national
security. It has laid out the complexity of the national security enterprise as well as
the diversity and secretive nature of the huge US IC. That said, much of what the IC
provides to American policymakers will remain known only to those inside the gov-
ernment. As we enter a new decade with rising peer rivals and resurgent ones such as
China and Russia as well as rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, intelligence
will be as important as ever. Add to that the unpredictable nature of the digital and
cyber worlds, and there is every reason to believe that intelligence will have many
challenges to providing actionable information to protect Americans’ safety while
safeguarding US institutions and values.
USEFUL DOCUMENTS
Executive Order 12333 (as amended), https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12333–2008.pdf

The key document authorizing and controlling US intelligence activities.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (as amended in 2008), https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg
/PLAW-110publ261/pdf/PLAW-110publ261.pdf
The major legislation creating secret judicial review of sensitive US intelligence activities
involving US persons.
President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, Liberty and
Security in a Changing World, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files
/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf
President Obama’s commission that reviewed the NSA surveillance programs and recom-
mended major changes.
USA Freedom Act of 2015, https://www.congress.gov/114/bills/hr2048/BILLS-114hr2048
enr.pdf
Current law that restricts the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs that must be reviewed
and reauthorized by the end of 2019.
FURTHER READING
Kenneth Absher, Michael Desch, and Roman Popadiuk, Privileged and Confidential: The
Secret History of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky, 2012).
Provides the most authoritative descriptions of this highly secretive presidential advi-
sory group.
Ross Bellaby, “What’s the Harm? Ethics of Intelligence Collection,” Intelligence and National
Security 27, no. 1 (February 2012): 93–117.
Describes the arguments for a “just intelligence” set of principles to guide post-9/11
intelligence collection.
James Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence (New York: Viking, 2018).
Lays out some of the challenges a career intelligence officer faced in balancing the pub-
lic’s right to know and the IC’s need for secrecy.
Genevieve Lester, When Should State Secrets Stay Secret? Accountability, Democratic Gover-
nance, and Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Provides an analytical framework for critiquing intelligence’s internal and external
mechanisms for oversight, concluding ironically that creating more oversight mecha-
nisms have actually reduced their overall effectiveness.
Steven Slick and Joshua Busby, “Glasnost for US Intelligence: Will Greater Transparency
Lead to Increased Public Trust?,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, May 24, 2018, https://
www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/glasnost-us-intelligence-will- transparency-lead
-increased-public-trust.
Summarizes what little recent opinion polling exists on public attitudes toward the IC.
L. Britt Snider, The Agency and the Hill: CIA’s Relationship with Congress, 1946–2004 (Wash-
ington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2008).
Documents the CIA’s stormy oversight relationship with Congress, as told by a former
senior CIA legislative affairs official.
NOTES
First epigraph: James Madison, “The Structure of Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks
and Balances between Different Departments,” Federalist Paper no. 51, February 6, 1788, http://
constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm.
Second epigraph: Lee Hamilton, “Oversight vs. Glitzy Investigation,” Christian Science Moni-
tor, July 15, 1999, https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0715/p11s1.html.
1. Among US allies, only Canada claims to not maintain a clandestine HUMINT capabil-
ity, instead relying solely on its diplomatic reporting. That said, within the Five Eyes intel-
ligence sharing, Canada has access to American and British information; moreover, Canada
does maintain a SIGINT capability of its own.
292 Chapter 11
2. ODNI, “Intelligence Directive 203: Analytic Standards,” June 21, 2007, https://www.dni
.gov/files/documents/ICD/ICD%20203%20Analytic%20Standards.pdf.
3. Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University has compared American and Soviet elec-
toral interventions and found that the United States conducted more than 70 percent of over
a hundred instances of foreign interferences in other states’ elections. According to Levin,
the United States has regularly attempted to interfere in foreign elections in Latin America,
the Middle East, and Asia; in many cases, this was done secretly. See Dov H. Levin, “Datas-
ets,” http://dovhlevin.com/datasets.
4. Executive Order 13526 / Intelligence Community Directive 710, “Classification Man-
agement and Control Markings System,” https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICD/ICD
_710.pdf.
5. See “President’s Daily Brief 1969–1977,” CIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room, https://
www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/presidents-daily-brief-1969-1977.
6. Richard Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National
7. The House committee was headed by Rep. Otis Pike and the Senate committee by Sen.
Frank Church.
8. The CIA director of security compiled the list of questionable (“flap potential”) activi-
ties at the direction of CIA director James Schlesinger, and later CIA director William Colby
felt compelled to release the study to the Pike and Church oversight committees. A redacted
version is available through a FOIA request. See “Memorandum for the Executive Director,
Subject: Family Jewels, May 16, 1973,” https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC
_0001451843.pdf.
9. Senator Church would eventually retract his statement, as the hearings revealed that the
CIA and other intelligence agencies were largely operating under the direct or indirect instruc-
tions of the White House. But the public relations damage to the CIA and the IC was done.
10. A select committee is composed of legislators drawn from other standing committees.
In the case of both intelligence committees, members are selected from the foreign affairs,
armed services, judiciary, homeland security, and appropriations committees.
11. The SSCI held hearings on the NRO building in 1994, demanding that the NRO’s
director, Marty Faga, explain how the committee did not receive any information regarding
the construction of a classified headquarters costing $300 million or more. See Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, Hearing on NRO Headquarters Project, August 10, 1994, https://
www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/103997.pdf.
12. Cynthia Nolan, “PIAB: Presidents and Their Foreign Intelligence Boards,” International
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 23 (2010): 27–60.
13. President Ford created the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States in
January 1975 to determine whether any domestic CIA activities exceeded the agency’s statu-
tory authority. It concluded that some of the CIA’s domestic activities were approved either
directly or indirectly by presidents and fell into a gray area, while in a few cases CIA activities
were “plainly unlawful and constituted improper invasions of the rights of Americans. See
Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, June 6,
1975, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/1561495.pdf.
14. The Inspector General Act of 1978 has mandated the creation of such positions in more
than sixty federal agencies. Some IGs are “statutory,” meaning they are required by law and
have responsibilities to inform Congress as well as their agency heads of any major legal or
ethical problems. Nonstatutory IGs report only to their agency heads and thus can be removed
without congressional involvement.
15. For a list of exemplary titles of CIA IG reports, see “Agency Inspector General Reports
and Investigations,” The Black Vault, http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/agency
-inspector-general-reports-and-investigations/#.
16. John Warrick, “CIA Sets Changes to IG’s Oversight, Adds Ombudsman,” Washington
Post, February 2, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01
/AR2008020103150.html?noredirect=on.
17. See Harvey Rishikof, “The Supreme Court: The Cult of the Robe in the National Secu-
rity Enterprise,” in Roger Z. George and Harvey Rishikof, The National Security Enterprise:
Navigating the Labryinth, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016) 312.
18. Rishikof, 313.
19. “Minimization” refers to the practice of removing the name of an American citizen from
any intercepted communication and replacing it with a designation (e.g., “US person #1”) in
any signals intelligence report.
20. Rishikof, “Supreme Court,” 315.
21. James Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence (New York:
Viking, 2018), 198–99.
22. See Robyn Greene, “Unintentional Non-compliance and the Need for Section 702
Reform,” Lawfare (blog), October 5, 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/unintentional
-noncompliance-and-need-section-702-reform.
23. The full title is “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment.” The United States is a party to the convention, which came into
effect in 1987 and commits each state party to uphold these principles, not to transport indi-
viduals to states where they might be subject to such practices, to investigate suspected cases,
and to compensate victims of such practices.
24. UN, Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment, entry into force June 26, 1987, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest
/Pages/CAT.aspx.
25. According to the 2006 Military Commissions Act, an “unlawful combatant” is a person
who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities
against the United States or its cobelligerents. Lawful combatants are only persons who are
“members of regular forces of a state party” or “members of a militia, volunteer corps or orga-
nized resistance movement belonging to a State party engaged in hostilities, which are under
responsible command, wear a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry their arms
openly and abide by the law of war.”
26. See “Memorandum for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez, Counsel to the President,
Re: Conduct for Interrogations under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340–2340A,” August 1, 2002, https://www
.justice.gov/olc/file/886061/download.
27. Dana Priest, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,” Washington Post, Novem-
ber 2, 2005.
28. Paul Kane, “CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations,’” Wash-
ington Post, May 7, 2009, http://thehill.com/homenews/house/65111-dems-say-cia-may-have
-misled-congress-5-times.
294 Chapter 11
29. Metadata is typically understood to be the records that commercial carriers routinely
collect that are associated with individual phone calls, text messages, or emails. They can
include the time and date of the transmission, the phone number, the email address and/or the
Internet provider’s address, the duration of the phone call, and the location of the phone call or
email address. It does not include the content of the phone call or the email message.
30. See Offices of the Inspectors General of the DOD, DOJ, CIA, NSA, and ODNI, Unclassified
Report on the President’s Surveillance Program, July 10, 2009, https://oig.justice.gov/special
/s0907.pdf.
31. Offices of the Inspectors General, 12.
32. Offices of the Inspectors General, 20. Senior DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith reviewed the
Yoo memo in 2003 and noted that it had omitted any reference to the FISA provision allowing
interception of electronic communications without a warrant for a period of fifteen days follow-
ing a congressional declaration of war. This provision would seem to directly contradict Yoo’s
argument that Congress had never considered FISA applying in wartime. See 50 U.S.C. § 181l.
35. Zachary K. Goldman, “The Emergence of Intelligence Governance,” in Global Intelli-
gence Oversight: Governing Security in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Zachary K. Goldman and
Samuel J. Raschoff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 220.
36. ODNI, Principles of Professional Ethics for the Intelligence Community, January 2012,
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/CLPO/Principles%20of%20Professional%20Ethics
%20for%20the%20IC.pdf.
37. ODNI, The Intelligence Transparency Council, April 5, 2016, https:// fas
.org
/sgp
/othergov/intel/dni-itc.pdf.
38. James Clapper, “Remarks on Transparency in Intelligence at AFCEA/INSA National
Security and Intelligence Summit,” September 9, 2015, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/news
room/speeches-interviews/speeches-interviews-2015/item/1250-remarks-as-delivered-by-the
-honorable-dni-james-r-clapper- transparency-in-intelligence-with-great-power-comes-great
-responsibility-at-the-afcea-insa-national-security-and-intelligence-summit.
39. Daphna Renan, “The FISC’s Stealth Administrative Law,” in Goldman and Raschoff,
Global Intelligence Oversight, 140.
40. Matthew Kahn, “Trump Nominates Two New Members to Privacy and Civil Liber-
ties Oversight Board,” Lawfare (blog), March 13, 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.com/trump
-nominates-two-new-members-privacy-and-civil-liberties-oversight-board.
41. Mary Madden and Lee Rainie, “Americans’ Attitudes about Privacy, Security and Sur-
veillance,” Pew Research Center, May 20, 2015, http:// www .pewinternet
.org
/2015/05/20
/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/.
42. Steven Slick and Joshua Busby, “Glasnost for US Intelligence: Will Transparency Lead
to Increased Public Trust?,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, May 2018, https://www.the
chicagocouncil.org/publication/glasnost-us-intelligence-will- transparency-lead-increased
-public-trust. It reports on a survey of a thousand Americans taken in May and June 2017. The
survey provides a benchmark for future surveys on a range of questions regarding Americans’
attitudes toward intelligence and democracy.
Glossary
Intelligence Terms
actionable intelligence. Intelligence that can lead to quick decisions or actions is

often termed actionable to connote that it is highly valued as being timely and
detailed enough to give decision-makers a decision advantage in being able to act
quickly in ways that can mitigate risks or take advantage of opportunities.
all-source analysis. All-source analysis is based on the best reporting available from
all sources, including HUMINT, IMINT, SIGINT, and open sources. All-source
analysts are those experts able to access both classified and unclassified sources
who are not working solely with a single source of information, as are IMINT or
SIGINT analysts.
alternative analysis. Alternative analysis is the term often applied to a range of
structured analytical techniques used to challenge conventional thinking on an
analytical problem. The word alternative is used to underline the importance of
using various techniques—such as devil’s advocacy, Team A / Team B analysis, or
analysis of competing hypotheses—to surface alternative interpretations of avail-
able information.
analysis. In intelligence, analysis is a cognitive and empirical activity combining
reasoning and evidence in order to produce judgments, insights, and forecasts
intended to enhance understanding and reduce uncertainty for national security
policymakers. Analysts prepare “finished” assessments spanning current intelli-
gence or more strategic research issues addressing the information requirements
of government officials. Analysis includes understanding and tasking collectors,
assessing both open-source and classified information, generating and evaluating
hypotheses about events or developments, and identifying their implications for
US security policies.
analytical assumption. An analytical assumption is any hypothesis that analysts
have accepted to be true and that forms the basis of their assessments. The use of
assumptions is part of the analytical process, but it is often difficult for analysts to
identify these hypotheses in advance. Implicit assumptions can drive an analytical
argument without ever having been articulated or examined.
295
296Glossary
analytical tradecraft. Analytical tradecraft is the term used to describe the principles
and tools used by analysts to instill rigor in their thinking and prevent cognitive
biases from skewing their analytical judgments. Through the use of so-called struc-
tured analytical techniques, analysts make their argumentation and logic more
transparent and subject to further investigation. The term tradecraft originated
with the Directorate of Operations term for techniques used to avoid counter
intelligence detection and to successfully recruit and run agents.
anchoring bias. A form of cognitive bias, anchoring bias occurs when a previous anal-
ysis of a subject prevents analysts from reassessing their judgments and allows for
only incremental change in their forecasts. In essence, the initial judgment acts as
an anchor, making the final estimate closer to the original one than should be the
case, given the new information available to analysts.
basic intelligence. Basic intelligence is the fundamental and factual reference mate-
rial on a country or issue that forms the foundation on which analysts can base
current and estimative analysis. Examples include economic statistics, topographic
and geographic information, and documentary information on a country’s form of
government, rules of law, and electoral procedures and patterns. The CIA’s World
Factbook is a product containing basic information on major countries of the world.
caveat. A caveat is a term used within the analytical community to suggest analysts
are qualifying their judgments because of a problem in sourcing or in interpreting
available information regarding an intelligence topic. Caveats include the use of
qualifying statements, such as “we believe” or “we estimate,” which indicate that
analysts are reaching judgments, not stating facts.
clandestine. In intelligence terms, clandestine refers to the manner of acquiring
information on a target in such a way as to conceal the collection operation itself
as well as the identity of the source. It differs from covert in that a covert operation
is observable but the US government is able to plausibly deny it had conducted the
operation.
classified intelligence. Classified intelligence information requires special, expen-
sive, or risky methods to collect, either by technical systems or humans, which
must be protected. The risk of compromising these sources and methods is given
a security classification (confidential, secret, or top secret). Classified intelligence
is then shared only with those individuals who have a “need to know” this informa-
tion. Analysts use this information in written assessments, which carry classifica-
tion markings according to the sensitivity of the information used.
cognitive bias. Cognitive biases are mental errors caused by unconscious and sim-
plified information-processing strategies. The human mind’s natural tendency to
develop patterns of thinking, or mind-sets, often distorts, exaggerates, or dismisses
new information in ways that produce errors in judgment or thinking. Forms of
Glossary297
cognitive bias can include mirror-imaging, anchoring bias, confirmation bias, and
hindsight bias, to name a few.
collection. Gathering of raw information through specialized methods and systems
used by intelligence agencies. Collection methods can be clandestine as well as overt
and range from technical systems to human sources recruited to spy for the United
States. Collection along with analysis are key elements in the intelligence cycle.
collection gap. Analysts identify shortfalls in their knowledge on a subject, and these
collection gaps become “requirements” for future collection efforts. Identifying
important collection gaps not only aids collectors but also sensitizes analysts to
the need to qualify, or caveat, their judgments or set more modest levels of confi-
dence in reaching their analytical conclusions.
collector. The organizations that operate a variety of technical systems or espionage
units are collectors. They are part of the US intelligence community and are tasked
by analysts through the development of complex sets of “collection requirements.”
For example, the National Security Agency is the principal SIGINT collector, while
the CIA’s Directorate of Operations is the principal HUMINT collector.
combat-support agency. The Department of Defense designates certain intelligence
agencies as responsible for directly supporting department-level as well as tactical
military combat operations. Such combat-support agencies include the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance
Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
communications intelligence (COMINT). COMINT is information gathered from
the electronic gathering of foreign communications of individuals or organiza-
tions, including from telephone, fax, and Internet systems, that can indicate the
plans, intentions, and capabilities of foreign actors. It is part of the signals intel-
ligence technical collection system.
competitive analysis. Competitive analysis refers to the explicit use of competing
sets of analysts or analytical units to reach judgments on the same intelligence
subject. The goal is to determine whether competing analysis will uncover differ-
ent sets of assumptions, use of evidence, or contrasting perspectives, which would
enhance analysts’ understanding of an important topic. Historically, the CIA and
the Defense Intelligence Agency provided competing analysis of Soviet military
developments, often based on different assumptions about Soviet behavior.
confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the human tendency to search for or interpret
information in a way that confirms a preconception. Analysts will often seek out or
give more weight to evidence that confirms a current hypothesis or the “conven-
tional wisdom” while dismissing or devaluing disconfirming information.
congressional notification. The process by which the executive branch will inform the
congressional intelligence oversight committees of any covert action or anticipated
298Glossary
significant intelligence activity. Typically notification must be delivered in writ-

ten form prior to the activity and is shared either with the full committees or with
a smaller “Group of Eight,” representing the majority and minority leaders of the
House and the Senate and their respective intelligence committees.
coordination process. Many analysts or units often review an assessment because
it may discuss aspects covered by more than one expert. The lead analyst or unit
will share or “coordinate” an assessment with other experts across the agency or
even with experts in other analytical agencies. This coordination process pro-
duces a “corporate” product that reflects the collective views of an agency or
the entire intelligence community rather than the individual view of the prin-
cipal drafter. Coordination is sometimes blamed for watering down judgments
to a lowest common denominator. Conversely, coordination ensures analytical
accountability because many analysts and mangers have checked sourcing, lan-
guage precision, and the quality of a product.
counterespionage. As part of a counterintelligence effort, counterespionage seeks
to penetrate foreign intelligence entities to assess their capabilities, exploit their
vulnerabilities, and disrupt their hostile activities aimed at the United States.
counterintelligence (CI). CI is the gathering and analysis of information as well as
the activities conducted to counter hostile foreign intelligence efforts to penetrate
US national security and intelligence systems. It aims to identify foreign intelli-
gence threats in order to counter or neutralize them.
covert action. Covert action describes operations conducted to influence foreign
actors that remain secret so that the United States can plausibly deny its role.
Covert action differs from clandestine action in that the former makes little attempt
to conceal the operation but focuses instead on keeping the US role secret.
current intelligence. Current intelligence (also often called current analysis) is
reporting on developments of immediate interest that is disseminated daily or
even more frequently, allowing for little time for evaluation or further research.
Current analysis appears in the daily products such as the President’s Daily Brief
(PDB) and the Worldwide Intelligence Report (WIRe) as well as other departmental
intelligence products.
deception. Deception refers to the manipulation of intelligence by introducing false,
misleading, or even true but tailored information into intelligence-collection
channels with the intent of influencing analytical judgments and those who use
them in decision making. Deception is used in conjunction with denial (together
referred to as D&D) by both state and nonstate actors to gain advantage by reduc-
ing collection effectiveness, manipulating information, or otherwise attempting to
manage perceptions by targeting intelligence producers and, through them, their
Glossary299
consumers (e.g., policymakers and warfighters). Classic intelligence failures such

as Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Normandy, and the Yom Kippur War involved
deception.
denial. Denial describes activities and programs by an intelligence target intended to
eliminate, impair, degrade, or neutralize the effectiveness of intelligence collection
against the target, within and across human and technical collection disciplines.
Examples of denial include communications encryption for SIGINT, camouflage
and concealment for IMINT, surveillance detection for HUMINT, and rigorous
operational security for all collection disciplines. Successful denial causes intel-
ligence gaps, and the resulting missing information often degrades analysis.
departmental intelligence. Departmental intelligence is distinguished from national
intelligence in that the former is produced within a single department and is largely
for the use of that department’s senior officials. For example, the State Depart-
ment’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research produces departmental intelligence
principally for the use of the secretary of state and other senior State Department
officials, as does the Defense Intelligence Agency for the Defense Department.
Deputies Committee (DC). The DC is a subgroup of the National Security Coun-
cil made up of the deputy secretaries of state, defense, homeland security, and
treasury, with the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and deputy director
of national intelligence as military and intelligence advisers. Additional deputy
cabinet officers will be invited if issues related to their departments are to be dis-
cussed. The DC reviews the work of lower-level interagency policy committees
(IPCs) and forwards any policy issues and recommendations to the Principals
Committee. The DC is also responsible for monitoring the implementation of
presidential decisions taken after NSC and DC discussions.
devil’s advocacy. Devil’s advocacy is an analytical technique designed to challenge a
consensus view held on an intelligence topic by developing a contrary case. Such
contrarian analysis focuses on questioning the key assumptions or the evidence
used by analysts holding to the conventional wisdom. Designed more as a test of
current thinking than a true alternative to it, devil’s advocacy has been used by
some intelligence agencies on those issues said to be life-or-death matters.
Directorate of Analysis (DA). The DA is the major branch of the CIA in which all-
source analysis is conducted on both regional and functional topics. Within the DA
there are analysts and managers responsible for Europe/Russia, Asia, Africa and
Latin America, the Near East, and South Asia as well as for analyzing transnational
issues such as weapon developments, proliferation, and terrorism.
Directorate of Operations (DO). Formerly known as the National Clandestine Ser-
vice, the DO is responsible for directing all HUMINT operations across the US
300Glossary
government, including the FBI and Department of Defense, for conducting foreign
intelligence collection and covert action abroad. The director of the DO reports to
the director of the CIA. As such, the DO is the principal “collection” manager—like
the National Security Agency for SIGINT—for human intelligence.
director of central intelligence (DCI). Prior to 2004, the DCI headed both the
CIA and the intelligence community and was the president’s and the National
Security Council’s senior intelligence adviser. The position was abolished and
replaced by the director of national intelligence as part of the 2004 intelligence
reforms.
director of national intelligence (DNI). The DNI serves as the head of the US Intel-
ligence Community. The DNI also acts as the principal adviser to the president,
the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence
matters related to national security. He or she also oversees and directs the imple-
mentation of the National Intelligence Program.
drones. Drones is the term given to unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) that were
originally deployed to collect imagery and electronic intelligence over battlefields.
They have more recently been armed with standoff missiles, allowing operators to
target suspected terrorists on a real-time basis.
electronic intelligence (ELINT). ELINT is intelligence gathered from technical
collectors that reveals the existence and characteristics of foreign electronic sys-
tems such as radars, air defense systems, and other military electronic systems.
It assists traffic analysis that identifies the location, frequency, and strength of
electronic warfare systems.
enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). EITs are measures that cause distress,
confusion, and compliance in order to elicit uniquely valuable information from
suspected terrorists who have been captured or rendered into US custody. Water-
boarding is the most well-known and controversial of those measures.
estimative intelligence. Finished intelligence assessments that are focused on
longer-term and inherently unknowable events are termed estimative intelligence
to convey that these analytical judgments rest on incomplete or sometimes non-
existent evidence. Assessing the future actions, behavior, or military potential of
known adversaries is by definition estimative. The best-known form of estima-
tive intelligence is the National Intelligence Estimate, which is produced by the
National Intelligence Council.
executive order. An executive order is a memorandum or document issued by a pres-
ident that instructs federal agencies to abide by regulations contained in those
memoranda or documents. So long as Congress has not issued any legislation
that would contradict those executive orders, they have the force of law. Executive
Glossary301
Order 12333, which was first issued by President Ronald Reagan and revised in
2008, governs overall US intelligence activities.
finished intelligence. Finished intelligence refers to the written assessments pro-
duced by all-source analysts, who evaluate raw intelligence reporting and prepare
reports that are then disseminated to other US government agencies. Examples of
finished intelligence include the President’s Daily Brief, the National Intelligence
Daily (now called the WIRe), and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Military Intel-
ligence Digest—all of which are produced daily. Such analysis also includes longer-
term assessments such as National Intelligence Estimates.
forecast. A forecast is an intelligence judgment concerning the future. In analysis,
such estimative or predictive statements aim to reduce or bound uncertainty about
a developing or uncertain situation and highlight the implications for policy
makers. Forecasts are accompanied by probability statements ranging, for exam-
ple, from “highly likely” to “very unlikely” or numerical odds that an outcome will
or will not happen.
foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT). FISINT is part of the
SIGINT technical collection system, which primarily monitors foreign military
and scientific testing and tracking systems. TELINT (telemetry) is one such cat-
egory of missile test data used for monitoring foreign military activities, which
contributes to national technical means.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The 1978 FISA established proce-
dures for the electronic and physical surveillance and collection of information
regarding “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers” suspected of espi-
onage or terrorism. It established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(FISC) to review and approve federal warrants to monitor the activities of non-
US persons suspected of planning espionage or terrorism. As amended in 2008,
FISA requires “minimizing” the chances of inadvertent collection of information
on US citizens.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The FISC came into existence in
1978 and oversees federal requests from law enforcement and intelligence agen-
cies for monitoring the activities of non-US persons suspected of conducting
espionage or planning terrorist acts. It meets in secret and grants, denies, or
requires modifications of any federal warrants. FISC consists of eleven federal
judges selected by the Supreme Court chief justice from around the country who
serve for a term of seven years.
Gang of Eight. The Group of Eight comprises the senior congressional leaders often
first briefed on the most sensitive covert actions. They include the Senate major-
ity and minority leaders, the speaker of the House and the House minority leader,
302Glossary
and the chairmen and ranking minority members of the House and Senate intel-
ligence oversight committees. Presidents resort to briefing the Gang of Eight
when they do not wish to reveal the most sensitive operations to the full oversight
committees.
geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). GEOINT is derived from exploitation and analy-
sis of imagery and geospatial information describing and visually depicting physi-
cal features and geographically referenced activities on Earth.
groupthink. Groupthink is a concept that refers to faulty group decision-making that
prevents consideration of all alternatives in the pursuit of unanimity. Groupthink
occurs when small groups are highly cohesive and must reach decisions under
severe time pressures. The psychologist Irving Janis developed this notion in
studying US decision-making during the Vietnam War. It is sometimes misapplied
to analytical failures, where there may have been cognitive errors.
human intelligence (HUMINT). HUMINT consists of collection activities to gain
access to people (agents or liaison services), locations, or things (e.g., information
systems) to obtain sensitive information that has implications for US security inter-
ests. Examples would be information collected clandestinely by agents, obtained
from foreign intelligence services of other governments (“liaison”), or more openly
by diplomats and military attachés and other US government officials. HUMINT
is particularly valuable for analysts when assessing the plans and intentions of
governments or nonstate actors.
imagery intelligence (IMINT). Sometimes referred to as PHOTINT (photo intelli-
gence), IMINT is derived from the images collected from a variety of platforms
ranging from handheld cameras to space-based and other overhead technical
imaging systems controlled by the US government. Imagery analysts study spe-
cific intelligence targets through the use of imaging systems and issue reports
based principally on those collected images. The National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency processes and analyzes IMINT and geospatial data for use by all-source
analysts and other US government agencies.
indications and warning (I&W). I&W is the term for intelligence activities designed
to identify on a timely basis foreign developments that could become a threat to
US national interests or those of its allies and partners. It can encompass military,
political, economic, or cyber activities, including threats from terrorism, nuclear
weapons, and other WMDs as well as major political or military developments
such as military attacks, political coups, and economic dislocations.
indicator. Any identifiable action or development that focuses on the conditions that
might reflect a government or nonstate actor’s likely behavior. In a military con-
text, indicators usually reflect capabilities intended for aggressive action. Socio-
political indicators (e.g., civil disturbances, crime rates, political activities) might
Glossary303
precede a government’s collapse or state failure. Indicator lists include military,

economic, diplomatic, or domestic actions a foreign adversary might be expected
to take if it intended to initiate hostilities.
inspector general. IGs are officials empowered to investigate the activities of their
respective agencies for evidence of fraud, mismanagement, and illegal or inap-
propriate activities. The IG typically reports to the director of his or her respec-
tive agency, but if the position has been created by legislative statute, the IG
must also report significant findings to the appropriate oversight committees.
Statutory IGs exist in the Department of State and Department of Defense as
well as in the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Their
reports often result in management changes, personnel actions (reprimands, dis-
missals, or criminal proceedings), or sometimes new executive orders or legisla-
tive changes.
INT. Abbreviation used to identify specific intelligence disciplines used for col-
lecting raw intelligence. The INTs typically include HUMINT, IMINT, GEOINT,
TECHINT, and OSINT.
intelligence community (IC). As of 20018, the IC includes the following sixteen
agencies or key elements of them: Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, the
Central Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence
Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the State
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of the Treasury,
the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marine Corps
Intelligence, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnais-
sance Office, the National Security Agency, and Navy Intelligence. The director of
national intelligence heads the IC.
intelligence cycle. The intelligence cycle is the multistep process of setting intel-
ligence requirements, collecting and processing information, analyzing and pro-
ducing finished intelligence, and disseminating it to policymakers, who will then
provide feedback on what further intelligence they may need or pose questions
about the intelligence provided.
intelligence failure. While there is no commonly accepted definition, an intelligence
failure occurs when there is a systemic or organizational inability to collect correct
and accurate information in a timely fashion or interpret this information prop-
erly and analyze it in a timely way in order to alert policymakers to a major new
development. Typically an intelligence failure is characterized by collection and
analysis problems as well as by insufficient attention to bringing a warning to poli-
cymakers so they can respond appropriately.
Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB). The IOB is a small, independent board that
investigates intelligence activities to ensure they comply with the US Constitution
304Glossary
and other applicable laws as well as executive orders and presidential directives.
It reports to the president as part of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA). The IRTPA
created the director of national intelligence (DNI) and implemented many of the
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission as well as other studies and commis-
sions that focused on intelligence reform. Among the other recommendations that
the IRTPA implements were the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center
and a National Counterproliferation Center. It also separated the roles of DNI from
the CIA director.
interagency policy committee (IPC). IPCs are the lowest level of interagency coor-
dination of policy recommendations and studies that are formed by the National
Security Council. IPCs report to the Deputies and Principals Committees and carry
out presidential directives that are issued through the NSC system. Policy as well
as intelligence agencies are represented at most IPCs, which can cover a wide
range of topics.
interagency process. The interagency process involves analysts participating in many
interagency meetings, where they present their intelligence assessments for use in
policy discussions among the National Security Council, the State Department, and
the Defense Department. Working-level interagency meetings are often held prior
to more senior-level meetings where decisions will be made. Typically analysts sup-
port discussions at the working level and participate in those meetings. For meet-
ings of the Deputies Committee (deputy-secretary level) or Principals Committee
(secretary-level), analysts will provide briefing papers or prepare senior intelligence
community leaders who will represent the IC at those discussions.
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The JCS is composed of the military chiefs of the army,
navy, air force, and Marine Corps. It is chaired by a four-star general officer (rotat-
ing among the services) named by the president and confirmed by the Senate to be
the chairman of the JCS.
level of confidence. Analysts must determine how confident they are in reaching ana-
lytical judgments based on the quality of the information available and the com-
plexity of the issue. Assigning a “low” level of confidence to a judgment may result
from collection gaps, contradictory information, or the presence of deception
and denial. “High” confidence may result from having very sensitive HUMINT
or extremely precise technical intelligence on a military plan or a weapon system
that is corroborated from multiple independent sources.
measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT). MASINT is technically derived
intelligence data other than standard imagery and SIGINT. It employs a broad
group of disciplines including nuclear, optical, radio frequency, acoustics, seis-
mic, and materials sciences. Examples of MASINT are the detection of low-yield
Glossary305
nuclear tests by seismic sensors or by collecting and analyzing the composition of

air and water samples.
military analysis. Military analysis encompasses basic as well as current and estima-
tive assessments of a foreign government’s or nonstate actor’s military capabilities
and intentions, including order of battle, training, tactics, doctrine, strategy, and
weapon systems. It also examines the entire battle space (i.e., land, sea, air, space,
and cyber) as well as transportation and logistics capabilities. Other broad areas
are the military production and support industries; underground facilities; military
and civilian command, control, and communications (C3) systems; camouflage;
concealment and deception; foreign military intelligence; and counterintelligence.
Military Intelligence Program (MIP). The MIP comprises the combined budgets and
programs of the military services’ tactical intelligence activities. It was established
in 2005 and is separate from the National Intelligence Program, which the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence oversees. The MIP is under the control of
the secretary of defense and comprises Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence,
Marine Corps Intelligence, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and Special Operations
Command Intelligence. Only the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelli-
gence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-
Intelligence Agency are considered part of both the NIP and MIP.
mind-set. A mind-set is a type of cognitive filter or lens through which information
is evaluated and weighed by the analyst. Beliefs, assumptions, concepts, and infor-
mation retrieved from memory form a mind-set or mental model that guides per-
ception and processing of new information. Typically a mind-set rests on a series
of assumptions about the way the target of the analyst’s investigation behaves.
Closely related to a mind-set is a “mental model,” which connotes a more highly
developed set of ideas about a specific subject. Mind-sets and mental models form
quickly and become hard to change, particularly when they prove useful in fore-
casting future trends. Once mind-sets are proven successful, analysts can accept
them uncritically despite changes in the environment that would suggest they
have become outdated or inaccurate.
mirror-imaging. Mirror-imaging is a cognitive error that occurs when analysts pre-
sume that a foreign actor will behave much as they would in the same situation.
In this sense, the analysts see their image when they observe the foreign actor.
Often analysts have developed a strong expertise on a subject and believe there
is a logical way to develop a weapon system, conduct a coup, or reach a decision.
They will, then, presume that a foreign actor would go about these tasks as they
would. Classic examples include analytical views that assumed risk-averse Soviet
behavior in the Cuban Missile Crisis and similar Arab reluctance to start a war
with Israel in 1973.
306Glossary
National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC). The NCSC oversees

the counterintelligence activities conducted by the CIA, FBI, and Department of
Defense and oversees and coordinates the programs and priorities on behalf of the
director of national intelligence. It also conducts damage assessments of Ameri-
can counterintelligence cases.
National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC). The NCPC was established in 2005
within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It coordinates intelli-
gence support to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
and related delivery systems. It also develops long-term strategies for better col-
lection and analysis on future WMD threats.
National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The NCTC was established in 2005 as
part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The NCTC
integrates all intelligence—both foreign and domestic—within the US government
pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism. It conducts strategic operational
planning and also produces intelligence analysis for key policy agencies. It is part
of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC is responsible for producing National
Intelligence Estimates for the US government and for evaluating community-wide
collection and production of intelligence by the intelligence community. The NIC
is made up of roughly a dozen senior intelligence experts, known as national intel-
ligence officers.
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). An NIE is usually a strategic assessment of
the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and probable courses of action of foreign nations
or nonstate actors, produced at the national level as a composite of the views of
analysts throughout the US intelligence community (IC). It is prepared under the
auspices of the National Intelligence Council, and one or more national intelli-
gence officers will guide the drafting of the estimate. Analysts throughout the IC
participate in preparing and approving the text. The NIE is then presented to the
heads of the IC and officially released by the director of national intelligence as the
IC’s most authoritative statement on an intelligence subject.
national intelligence officer (NIO). An NIO is a senior expert on either a region (e.g.,
Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East) or a functional area (e.g., weapons of mass destruc-
tion, transnational threats, or conventional military affairs) who directs the produc-
tion of National Intelligence Estimates on those topics. NIOs guide and evaluate
the quality of analysis in their substantive areas, represent intelligence community
analysts at interagency meetings, and interact regularly with senior policy officials
to ensure intelligence production is directed at policy issues of importance.
National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF). The NIPF is an elaborate
framework for prioritizing intelligence collection and analysis according to the
Glossary307
target country and intelligence topic. The NIPF assigns a numerical priority (1
to 5) according to the importance senior officials attach to the topic, and those
priorities are used to allocate and justify intelligence community resources and
programs.
National Intelligence Program (NIP). The NIP is the consolidated budget of the
sixteen national intelligence agencies, which the director of national intelligence
(DNI) is responsible for compiling, reviewing, and presenting to the Office of Man-
agement and Budget and Congress. The DNI has some limited authority to revise
or prioritize funding and usually works closely with the defense secretary, who has
daily budget control of the large military intelligence budgets.
National Security Act of 1947. The National Security Act of 1947 created a unified
Department of Defense and the CIA as well as the National Security Council
(NSC), which advises the president on national security matters. It specifies the
core members of the NSC to be the president, vice president, and secretaries of
state and defense and traditionally includes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and the director of national intelligence as advisers on military and intelli-
gence matters. This act mandates the NSC as the primary mechanism for advising
the president and ensuring that all instruments of national power (diplomatic, mili-
tary, economic, and informational) be integrated for formulating and implement-
ing national security strategies.
National Security Council (NSC). Established by the 1947 National Security Act, the
NSC is chaired by the president and includes the vice president, the secretaries of
defense, state, and treasury as well as the national security adviser. The chairman of
the Joint Chiefs and the director of national intelligence participate as the president’s
senior military and intelligence advisers. The NSC directs the work of lower-level
committees: the Principals Committee, the Deputies Committee, and interagency
policy committees.
national technical means (NTM). NTM is the term applied to intelligence systems
used to monitor arms control agreements to ensure that the signatories are abiding
by the provisions of those treaties. NTM relies heavily on imagery and electronic
intelligence platforms to monitor the activities in countries such as Russia, which
have signed a number of nuclear arms control agreements with the United States.
need to know. Senior intelligence managers use the “need to know” principle to deter-
mine whether intelligence will be shared with other intelligence professionals or
policy officials. By executive order, the knowledge or possession of such informa-
tion shall be permitted only to persons whose official duties require such access in
the interest of promoting national defense.
need to share. Following the 9/11 attacks, the presidential commission examining
the intelligence failure concluded that the intelligence community needed to share
308Glossary
information more broadly among the various agencies in order to ensure effective
coordination of intelligence and to prevent compartmentalization from inhibiting
the development of a comprehensive view of future terrorist threats.
Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS was the intelligence organization estab-
lished during World War II that later became the basis of the CIA. The OSS con-
ducted overseas collection and covert action as well as maintained a research and
analysis capability. It was led by William “Wild Bill” Donovan.
open-source intelligence (OSINT). OSINT involves collecting information from
unclassified, publicly available sources and analyzing its significance to the US
government. Open sources would include newspaper, magazine, radio, television,
and computer-based information in many foreign languages; public data found in
government reports, press releases, and speeches; and professional and academic
journals and conference proceedings. Increasingly, OSINT has focused on exploit-
ing the Internet world of websites and bloggers. The Open Source Enterprise is
the intelligence community’s primary organization responsible for the collection
and analysis of open-source information.
order of battle (OOB). In military analysis, an OOB identifies military units, their
command structure, and the strength and disposition of personnel, equipment, and
units of an organized military force on the battlefield. It is especially used in warn-
ing analysis of major military threats.
policy support. Policy support describes intelligence reporting and analysis that is
provided specifically to inform policy decisions and enable decision-makers to
conduct or evaluate policy options. It does not imply intelligence advocating any
particular policy agenda.
politicization. There is no generally accepted definition of politicization, but it com-
monly refers to the intentional biasing of intelligence analysis to suit a particular
set of political goals or agendas. Analysts can be prone to politicization if they
allow their personal views to influence their analytical judgments. Likewise, policy-
makers can politicize intelligence by forcing analysts to tailor their judgments to
suit a policy agenda or by misrepresenting analysis as supporting their preferred
policies.
presidential finding. A presidential finding is the presidential document authorizing
a covert action. It must be signed by the president prior to the operation, and in
most cases the finding must be shared with the oversight committees as a “con-
gressional notification.”
President’s Daily Brief (PDB). The PDB is a daily compilation of current intelli-
gence items of high significance provided to the president and key advisers by
the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the State Department’s Bureau of
Intelligence and Research. A briefer delivers it to the president, and other briefers
Glossary309
provide it to a select group of senior officials designated by the president as recipi-

ents. The PDB is constantly being refined to suit each president’s individual prefer-
ences for format, presentation style, and length.
President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB). An outside independent board estab-
lished by each president, the PIAB can conduct studies of intelligence activities and
make recommendations for changes or reforms of the intelligence community.
Principals Committee (PC). The PC is a group of senior cabinet officials advising the
president on national security matters. Secretaries of state, defense, treasury, and
homeland security along with the director of national intelligence and chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff form the core group, to which are often added other cabinet
officials when issues within their areas of responsibilities are discussed. The PC is
customarily chaired by the national security adviser, and its recommendations are
then provided to the president directly or brought to the National Security Council,
at which the president and principals meet.
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). The 2004 intelligence reforms
created the independent PCLOB within the executive branch to advise the president
and other officials with respect to privacy and civil liberties when senior officials
are developing and implementing laws, regulations, and executive policies related
to terrorism.
Red Cell analysis. This structured analytical technique is aimed at countering cul-
tural bias and the mirror-imaging problem by constructing a team of analysts who
will consciously try to “think like the enemy” rather than like American intelli-
gence analysts. Red Cell analysts study and then role-play the key decision-makers
in a foreign government or perhaps a terrorist cell. They adopt the same decision-
making styles, goals, or methods that such adversaries might use in accomplishing
their objectives. Red Cell assessments provide US policymakers with an unconven-
tional look at how their opponents might perceive a situation.
rendition. Rendition is the process of transferring a prisoner or detainee from one
country to another without a judicial process. Renditions were conducted as part
of the US counterterrorism policies after 2001 in order to detain and interrogate
individuals at locations outside the United States, including the Guantanamo Bay
Naval Base on Cuba.
requirements. Requirements are the general and specific subjects for which addi-
tional information is required for effective analysis and eventually decision-making.
Analysts most often levy new requirements on intelligence collectors. Some deci-
sion-makers will occasionally directly task new intelligence requirements on the
intelligence community. Such requirements are part of the intelligence cycle.
signals intelligence (SIGINT). SIGINT is interception and analysis of a target’s use
of technical signals and communication systems. It encompasses COMINT as well
310Glossary
as ELINT and FISINT. The National Security Agency is the principal SIGINT col-
lector in the US government.
signature. Analysts rely on understanding unique “signatures,” or patterns, in the way
a target operates, equips, or deploys military forces or weapon systems. For exam-
ple, patterns of military communications can also indicate how military forces are
likely to operate in the field; these signatures might indicate levels of readiness or
whether operations were underway.
single-source intelligence. Raw information or reporting that is derived from only
one collection discipline, such as technical, human, or open source. Single-source
reporting is analyzed and then combined with other single-source reports to
develop all-source intelligence.
situation report. A situational report (commonly called a “sit-rep”) is reporting that
is rapidly disseminated as soon as analysts receive it, to give policymakers the
most up-to-date information for a quickly developing story. Sit-reps typically focus
on what the facts are and any immediate implications of the event. Reporting on
coups, deaths of world leaders, military clashes, and sudden breakdowns in public
order or negotiations would be the most likely topics of such reports.
sources and methods. Sources and methods are those technical and human means of
gathering information clandestinely on intelligence topics. A source can be a satel-
lite imaging system operating high above a foreign country, a diplomat’s reporting
from an embassy, or a source’s clandestine meeting with a case officer to report on
a high-level meeting of his government. Analysts must “source” their reports and
assessments by demonstrating they have a variety of reporting, preferably from
very different kinds of sources and correction disciplines and assess the validity
and credibility of the reporting. Such scrutiny reduces the chances of deception or
fabrication of reporting if it came from a single source. Protection of “sources and
methods” is considered a vital responsibility for intelligence officials.
strategic intelligence. Unlike situational reporting or current analysis, strategic intel-
ligence focuses less on events than on long-term trends. It is usually performed
only on subjects of enduring interest to the United States. For example, analysis of
foreign ballistic missile developments or of the Chinese military would be of endur-
ing interest to policymakers, regardless of their immediate policy agendas. Such
analysis is inherently “estimative,” as there is little detailed information on trends
beyond a year or more.
structured analytical techniques (SATs). Structured analytical techniques are used
to provide more rigor to analytical judgments and to make them more transpar-
ent and testable. Various structured analytical techniques—such as devil’s advo-
cacy, Team A / Team B exercises, analysis of competing hypotheses, and scenarios
analysis—attempt to record the logic employed by analysts in reaching judgments.
Glossary311
By structuring the analysis according to a set of principles (e.g., listing key assump-
tions, evaluating the quality of information, examining multiple hypotheses, iden-
tifying collection gaps, or detecting possible deception and denial), analysts can
establish more systematically their levels of confidence in judgments reached.
Moreover, they can also track changes in their judgments over time and revisit
conclusions that new evidence might appear to challenge.
target analysis. Target analysis is that conducted in direct support of military oper-
ations, counterterrorism, or counterproliferation operations and that focuses on
understanding, monitoring, and targeting specific individuals, units, or groups for
possible apprehension or physical attacks.
Team A / Team B analysis. This structured analytical technique uses separate analyt-
ical teams that contrast two or more strongly held views or competing hypotheses
about an intelligence topic. Each team will develop its assessments using the avail-
able evidence after laying out their key assumptions about the topic. The value
comes in arraying the two competing views side by side, which highlights how
different premises cause analysts to reach different conclusions.
technical intelligence (TECHINT). TECHINT comprises technical intelligence-
collection systems, including IMINT, GEOINT, SIGINT, COMINT, ELINT,
FISINT, and MASINT. They are used in combination with HUMINT intelligence
to observe and monitor foreign government and nonstate actor actions and behav-
ior. They constitute the largest portion of the US intelligence community’s budget
and programs.
tradecraft. In analysis, tradecraft comprises the cognitive and methodological tools
and techniques used by analysts to gather and organize data, interpret their mean-
ing, and produce judgments, insights, and forecasts for policymakers and other
users of finished intelligence products. An example of intelligence tradecraft is the
analysis of competing hypotheses.
warning analysis. Warning analysis anticipates potentially threatening or hostile
activities and alerts policymakers to the possible implications should the activ-
ity occur. “Strategic” warning refers to relatively long-term developments, which
provide a lengthy period of time before the event during which a policymaker can
develop policies or countermeasures. “Tactical” warning refers to alerting policy-
makers to near-term events, for which there is little time to prepare.
weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). WMDs are commonly considered to
be nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons that can cause mass
casualties.
Worldwide Intelligence Report (WIRe). The WIRe has replaced the National Intel-
ligence Daily (NID) as the CIA’s current publication circulated throughout the US
government to senior policy officials. This is now a more Web-based publication
312Glossary
that has an electronic dissemination within Washington and overseas. It can be

updated frequently throughout the day rather than operate as a once-a-day printed
publication like the NID.
worst-case analysis. Worst-case analysis occurs when analysts “assume the worst”
in reaching judgments about a future event. It can occur when analysts base their
analysis on assumptions that an adversary will always select a course of action
aimed to create the worst problem for the United States or that the adversary’s
intentions are uniformly hostile toward the United States. Likewise, analysts are
often accused of using such assumptions in an effort to ensure that they never fail
to warn a policymaker of a possible surprise. Worst-case analysis, then, becomes a
rationale for policymakers to ignore warnings that were actually far more balanced
than assumed.
Index
Boxes, figures, notes, and tables are indicated by b, f, n, and t following the page number.
accuracy of strategic intelligence, 134–35 anticipatory intelligence, 167

ACH (analysis of competing hypotheses), 98 Árbenz, Jacobo, 212
Acheson, Dean, 26 armed services committees, 72, 217
ACIS (Arms Control Intelligence Staff), 188 Arms Control Intelligence Staff (ACIS), 188
actionable intelligence, 88 Ashcroft, John, 284–85
Adams, Sam, 262n28, 262n30 Aspen Security Forum, 109n10
aerial reconnaissance, 64 Aspin, Les, 247
Afghanistan: Abu Ghraib prison, 283; covert action assassinations, 211b. See also targeted killings
in, 215, 223–24, 231nn19–22, 281; intelligence pri- assumptions checks, 165
orities for, 200; NIEs on, 125; paramilitary opera-
tions in, 209, 224–25; rendition programs of CIA, Baker, James, 35, 160, 237
41; Soviet invasion of, 89, 158, 215; target analysis Balkans wars (1990s), 200
on, 191, 196; warning intelligence on, 151 Balkan Task Force (BTF), 193–94, 195b, 203nn22–23
after-action reporting, 107 Bannon, Stephen, 29
Albright, Madeleine, 186 basic intelligence, 112, 112f
Allen, John, 255 Bay of Pigs (1961), 212–13, 230–31n15
all-source analysis, 16. See also finished intelligence Betts, Richard, 169, 271
al-Qaeda: analysis of information on, 94, 127, 198; biases: of analysts, 91, 97–99, 119–20, 238, 240, 256;
covert action against, 222; cyber operations cognitive bias, 97, 109–10n11, 164–65; overcoming,
against, 228; interrogation of members, 282; 98–99; of policymakers, 17, 88, 212–13. See also
Iraqi relations, 94, 248–49; 9/11 attacks, 162–64; mind-sets; politicization
operational security of, 169; PDB on, 163b; target big data, 228, 233n51
analysis on, 191, 191b; warning intelligence on, 152, bilateral operations, 14
163. See also Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden, Osama: covert action against, 223; DCI
alternative analysis, 99, 135, 138 and, 70; intelligence sources on, 15, 88–89; killing
analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH), 98 of, 21, 225–26, 242; long-term analysis on, 198;
analysis of intelligence: anticipatory intelligence, 167; NGA and location of, 64; PDB on, 163b; target anal-
as central to intelligence cycle, 100–107, 102f; chal- ysis on, 191, 191b; warning intelligence on, 162–64
lenges in, 96–99; current vs. long-term, 197–98; Bishop, Vaughn, 261n20
development of techniques, 20; ethical issues Bissell, Richard, 213
in, 268; intelligence cycle and, 7–8, 90–92, 92t; black sites, 40–41
outside experts for, 99–100, 110n14, 119, 139–40; black swan events, 151–52
overview, 16–17; process description, 92–100; Blair, Dennis, 222, 225, 242
raw intelligence and, 10–14, 16, 85; Reagan on, 7; Board of National Estimates (BNE), 119, 142n7, 156, 245
subject-matter experts, 113; uncertainty of informa- Bolton, John, 43, 81n26, 243, 261n19
tion, 236. See also strategic intelligence; warnings border security, 68–69
analytical assumptions, 96 Bosnia: Balkan Task Force and, 193–94, 195b,
analytical errors, 118–19 203nn22–23; target analysis on, 190–91; Yugosla-
analytical outreach, 99–100 via breakup and, 160–61
analytical tradecraft, 76 Brennan, John, 78, 222, 224, 242, 255, 283
anchoring bias, 97 briefers, 184, 237–38, 258
Andrew, Christopher, 239 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 43
313
314Index
BTF (Balkan Task Force), 193–94, 195b, 203nn22–23 75; independence of, 56; INR and, 67; intelligence
Bundy, McGeorge, 25, 29, 43 cycle and, 89; intelligence failures and, 272–73,
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR): analysts 292n8; intelligence support and, 45; interagency
in, 90; covert action and, 221; current intelligence cooperation and, 90; IPC participation of, 31–32;
publications of, 180–81, 181b; establishment of, on Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 158–59; Iraqi WMD
24n10; independence of, 81n26; on Iraq WMD esti- and, 80n9, 136, 241; long-term analysis of, 198;
mate, 257; overview, 65–67; PDB and, 73; strategic military support from, 195; missions of, 56; 9/11
intelligence of, 120–21; on Vietnam War, 66 attacks and, 57, 162–64, 172n12; NRO and, 62;
Burr, Richard, 264n55 Office of General Council, 220; outside expert
Bush, George H. W.: Balkan Task Force, 193–94; as review of analysis, 99; oversight of, 76, 273–74,
CIA director, 142n14, 260n10; end of Soviet Union 274b, 277–78, 292n13; PDB and, 73, 182; policy
and, 159–60; foreign policy and relations, 43, 45; IC understanding of, 237; Political Instability Task
relationship of, 239; Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and, Force, 147; post-9/11 era and, 20, 24n10, 56, 75;
159; PDB and, 46b, 239; Strategic Arms Limitation raw intelligence reports, 85; Red Cell analytical
Talks (SALT), 246; Yugoslavia breakup and, 160 units, 99, 138; rendition programs of, 41; role in
Bush, George W.: CIA growth and, 75; counter intelligence community, 54–59; Soviet Union arms
terrorism efforts of, 126–27, 281–86; covert action control agreements and, 186–88, 246–47; State
and, 219–20, 220b, 222–24, 231n34; decision- Department interactions, 35, 49n12; strategic intel-
making style of, 42; foreign policy and relations, ligence of, 119–20, 124, 142n8; Vietnam War and,
43–44; Homeland Security Council, establishment 245–46, 262nn27–28; war crimes team, 203n22.
of, 28; IC relationship of, 241; intelligence reforms See also covert action
of, 20; intelligence success and failures, 21; inter- Central Intelligence Group (CIG), 55, 76
rogation and torture, 40–41, 278–79, 281–83; Iran certainty of strategic intelligence, 134–35, 235–36
nuclear NIE, 249–51; Iraqi WMD program and, 17, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), 36–37
247–49; Iraq War, 44, 106, 125–26, 126b, 133, 136, Chairman’s Brief, 179
249; 9/11 attacks (2001), 163–64; NSA surveil- Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons
lance program, 283–84; NSC principals and, 42–43; Conventions, 189
on NSC role in executive branch, 29; PDB and, Cheney, Dick: declassification of NRO information,
184–85; PIAB relations, 277; post-9/11 era and, 62; IC relationship of, 241; invasion of Iraq and,
281–86, 286b; WMDs, strategy to combat, 117 134; on Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 159; Iraqi WMD
intelligence and, 248; NSC process and, 43; PDB
Cambodia, covert action in, 218 briefing and, 185
Canada, HUMINT and SIGINT capabilities, 291n1 chief of station, 49n12
Card, Andy, 185 China: Corona program and, 62; as cyber threat, 228;
Carter, Jimmy, 63, 157, 277 North Korean invasion of South Korea and, 156
case officers, 13–14 Church, Frank, 218, 273, 292n9
Casey, William, 214, 238 CI. See counterintelligence
Castro, Fidel, 212–13, 218 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency
caveats, 118 CIG (Central Intelligence Group), 55, 76
CBJBs (congressional budget justification books), civilian casualties of drone attacks, 224, 232n39
275, 275b civil liberties, 18–19, 22, 60–61, 110n20, 271–72, 289
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): aerial recon- civil servants, 34
naissance advancements, 64; analysis of USSR CJCS (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), 36–37
leadership, 97, 109n10; biases of agents, 98, 240; clandestine, 10
chain of command, 225, 226f; counterterrorism Clapper, James: criticism of Trump, 255; as DNI, 242;
efforts of, 57, 163–64, 173n32, 190–91, 278; covert elimination of NIO/W, 154–55; on IC budget, 75;
action authorization for, 9, 27, 55–57; Cuban on integration of IC, 7; NGA and, 65; on NIP, 52;
Missile Crisis (1962), 192; current intelligence on NSA spying, 280; transparency principles and,
publications of, 177–79; declassifying information, 287–89
270–71; Directorate of Analysis, 90; on end of Clark, Robert M., 84
Soviet Union, 159, 161b; establishment of, 54–55, Clarke, Richard, 164
145; foreign counterintelligence, monitoring, 18b; classified intelligence: categories of, 270; counter
Global Futures Partnership, 108–9n4; growth of, intelligence and, 18b; HUMINT collection, 14;
Index315
leaks of, 18, 21, 61, 90, 140, 216, 268; overclassifi competitive analysis, 76, 99
cation, 270–71; secrecy and, 268; transparency confidence levels, 95–96, 109n7, 136, 249
principles and, 287 confirmation bias, 97
climate change, 115, 151 Congress: 2016 election interference by Russia and,
Clinton, Bill: Balkan Task Force, 193–94; Bosnia, 40, 105; constitutional authority of, 25; covert
target analysis on, 190; covert action and, 223; action oversight, 216–19, 221, 231n24, 282–83;
decision-making style of, 42; foreign policy and defense budget and, 70, 75; IC oversight, 254,
relations, 43–44, 50n26; IC relationship of, 240–41; 273–75b, 273–76; Iran, nuclear arrangement with,
NEC, establishment of, 27–28; PDB and, 240–41; 40; national security enterprise and, 40, 47; NIEs
PIAB relations, 277; on terrorism, 162; Yugoslavia and, 198; ODNI and, 76; on surveillance program,
breakup and, 161 284–86, 286b. See also specific acts of legislation
Clinton, Hillary, 43, 69, 228, 251, 252b congressional budget justification books (CBJBs),
Coats, Dan, 40, 74, 243 275, 275b
coercive techniques. See interrogation; torture congressional notifications, 19
cognitive bias, 97, 109–10n11, 164–65 Constitution, US: congressional power in Article
Colby, William, 119, 292n8 1, 25; DNI mission and, 287; executive power in
Cold War: analysis of intelligence during, 104; autho- Article 2, 25; habeas corpus violations by military
rization of covert action during, 27; competing commissions and, 279; intelligence gathering and
analyses use during, 99; covert action in Afghani- covert action staying in bounds of, 5, 19. See also
stan, 215; end of, 159–60, 237; need for peacetime Fourth Amendment
intelligence, 54; NIEs during, 124, 125b, 133; NRO conventional wisdom, 96
and, 62–63; nuclear arms control negotiations, 74, Convention on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
120, 124, 158, 186–88, 187b, 202nn11–12, 246–47, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UN),
266; open-source intelligence use during, 15; stra- 231n34, 278, 281–82, 293n23
tegic intelligence trends during, 113, 115; warning coordination process, 123
intelligence during, 146–47, 149, 153–54, 171n6. See Corona program, 62
also Soviet Union counterespionage, 18, 57
collateral collection, 64 counterintelligence (CI): CIA and, 57, 207; domestic
collateral information, 16 surveillance and, 271–72; explanation of, 18b; FBI
collection gaps, 89, 152 and, 67; National Counterintelligence and Security
collection management officers, 17 Center, 73; risk of human source information and,
collection of intelligence: analysts and, 91–92, 92t, 15, 18
100–101; data leaks on, 18, 61, 90; defined, 7; democ- counterterrorism. See terrorism and counterterrorism
racy and, 281–86, 286b; development of techniques, covert action, 5, 205–33; Congressional oversight of,
20; failures in, 136–37; intelligence collection disci- 216–19, 221, 231n24, 282–83; criteria for success,
plines (INTs), 10–16, 11b, 91, 92t; intelligence cycle 209–15; cyber operations, 227–29; defined, 9;
and, 7, 10, 85, 89–90; NIE improvements and, 139; drones and targeted killing, 223–24, 232n39; elec-
in post-9/11 era, 281–90, 286b; reform for improve- tion influencing, 206, 208, 210b, 292n3; ethics of,
ments in, 70, 286–90. See also interrogation; specific 216, 269; forms of, 208–9; history of use, 206–8;
intelligence collection agencies lessons from, 215–17; management of, 217–18; NSC
collector, 10 and, 45–46, 77, 205, 217, 221, 231n24, 231nn29–30;
combat-support agencies, 36. See also specific agencies paramilitary operations, 224–27, 226f; in post-9/11
Comey, James, 285 era, 9, 27, 221–29, 226f, 281–86, 286b; presidential
Commerce Department, 37 authorization of, 55–57, 205, 207, 214, 217–19, 225–
Commission on CIA Activities, 292n13 26; as presidential tool, 27, 55–57, 205; procedures
Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploita- for approving, 219–21, 220b; rendition, detention,
tion (COMIREX), 63 and interrogation, 222–23, 281–83; surveillance
communication of warning, 153 programs, 283–86; types of, 210–11b; “Washington
communications intelligence (COMINT), 12, 61, 169 Post test” for, 269. See also Central Intelligence
communism: containment strategy for, 26; covert Agency
action against, 206–9, 217; Iran and, 211–12; Iran- crisis management: Cuban Missile Crisis and, 156;
Contra Operation (1986), 44, 213–14, 218–19. See Deputies Committee and, 31; interagency process
also Cold War; specific communist countries for, 33, 49n9; policy support for, 186, 192–96, 195b
316Index
Cuba: Bay of Pigs (1961), 212–13, 230–31n15; Cuban challenges and, 281–90; privacy rights and, 271–72;
Missile Crisis (1962), 65, 94–95, 118–19, 156, professionalism and transparency of intelligence,
172n17, 192, 231n15; Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, 286–90, 288b; Russian election hacking as threat
222, 279; warning intelligence on Soviet buildup to, 105, 251
in, 154 Democratic National Committee (DNC), 251
current intelligence: daily intelligence reports, 45, Dempsey, Martin, 255
66, 153, 178–79; defined, 112, 112f; long-term vs., denial. See deception and denial
197–98; for policy support, 174, 177–85, 178b, departmental intelligence, 56, 65, 76, 177
180–81b Department of ___. See specific name of department
Current Intelligence Bulletin (CIB), 178 Deputies Committee (DC), 30–34, 77, 221
cyberattacks: countering as key mission, 20; covert detention programs, 57, 222–23, 241, 274, 276
action to counter, 227–29; DHS and FBI counter- Deutch, John, 65, 225, 240
ing, 69; on DNC, 251–52; election interference devil’s advocacy, 154, 165
(2016) as, 69, 228; NSA and, 61 Devine, Jack, 205
Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), 61, 228 DHS. See Homeland Security, Department of
Czechoslovakia, covert action in, 209 DIA. See Defense Intelligence Agency
DINs (Defense Intelligence Notices), 179
daily intelligence reports, 45, 66, 153, 178–79. See also DINSUM (Defense Intelligence Summary), 179, 180b
President’s Daily Brief diplomatic interactions: embassy operations, 34,
dark Web, 169 38, 66, 68; Foreign Service officers, 14, 34–35, 66;
Davis, Jack, 177 HUMINT reports from, 14; intelligence support
DC (Deputies Committee), 30–34, 77, 221 from, 186–90, 187b; leadership analysis and, 203n21
DCI. See director of central intelligence Directorate of Analysis (DA), 56
DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), 68–69 Directorate of Digital Innovation, 228
deception and denial (D&D), 89–90, 152, 156, 168–69 Directorate of Operations (DO), 56–57, 220–21
defense appropriations bills, 75 director of central intelligence (DCI): DNI and,
Defense, Department of (DOD), 35–37; arms control 69–70, 235; establishment of, 20, 27; NRO and, 63;
agreements, monitoring, 202n12; budget of, 34, role in NSC, 9, 19, 57; on strategic warning, 146;
35–36, 50n16; chain of command, 225, 226f; covert warning intelligence for, 154–55. See also director
action of, 227; cyber operations of, 228; establish- of national intelligence
ment of, 55; intelligence community members, director of national intelligence (DNI): anticipatory
53b; military mission of, 36; military vs. national intelligence, 167; DOD and, 36; establishment of, 19,
intelligence needs, 199–200; NSC representatives 57, 69–70, 137; inspector general for, 279; integration
from, 36; paramilitary operations and, 225; warn- of IC and, 76–79; Intelligence Community Direc-
ing intelligence and, 153 tives from, 139–40; intelligence support and, 45; IPC
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA): biases of agents, participation of, 31–32; National Counterterrorism
98; current intelligence publications of, 177, 179, Center (NCTC), 173n32; need-to-share principle
180b; Directorate of Intelligence, 90; establish- and, 166; NIC and, 122; NIE improvements and, 139;
ment of, 20; IPC participation of, 31; on Iraqi NSC and, 71b; PDB and, 182; professional principles
invasion of Kuwait, 159; military support from, 195; for IC, 286–87; role in IC, 69–74, 75, 235, 239; on
PDB and, 73; Red Cell analytical units, 99, 138; role Russian election interference, 251; transparency of
in intelligence community, 59–60; strategic intel- intelligence and, 270; Worldwide Threat Assess-
ligence of, 120, 142n8 ment, 21, 73–74, 115–16, 163, 228. See also Office of
Defense Intelligence Notices (DINs), 179 Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
Defense Intelligence Summary (DINSUM), 179, 180b director of the NSA (DIRNSA), 61
Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), 65 disinformation campaigns, 252
democracy, 5, 265–94; Congressional oversight dissemination of intelligence, 8, 87, 155
of intelligence and, 273–75b, 273–76; ethics of DMA (Defense Mapping Agency), 65
intelligence, 18–19, 22, 266–69; executive branch DNI. See director of national intelligence
oversight of intelligence and, 276–79; intelligence DOD. See Defense, Department of
collection and, 281–86, 286b; judicial oversight DOJ. See Justice, Department of
of intelligence and, 279–81, 280b; necessity domestic intelligence, 67, 72, 82n28. See also Federal
of secrecy, 205, 269–71; post 9/11 intelligence Bureau of Investigation
Index317
domestic surveillance, 18, 60–61, 271–72, 283–86. See capabilities, 234; foreign relations and, 25–26;
also National Security Agency intelligence-policy relationship and, 239–43;
Donovan, William J. “Wild Bill,” 54–55 interagency process for policymaking and, 26,
drones, 21, 22, 223–24, 232n39 30–34, 31–33f, 40; media leaks and, 40–41, 242;
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 68–69 national security advisers and, 41–44; NSC and,
drug trafficking, 68–69 27–30; oversight of intelligence, 276–79, 292n9;
Duelfer, Charles, 262n38 presidential findings, 19, 274; on protection of
Dulles, Allen, 182, 212–13, 239–40 sources and methods, 270; tutorial on intelligence
duplicative information, 75–76 for, 257–58; wartime powers of, 284–85, 294n32.
See also President’s Daily Brief
economic agencies, 37, 39, 68, 120. See also specific executive orders, 20; Executive Order 11905 (1976),
agencies 277; Executive Order 12333 (1981), 18b, 70, 71b, 77
economic covert action, 208, 210b expertise, 113, 198. See also National Intelligence
Egypt: attack on Israel (1973), 157–58; Yom Kippur Estimates; outside experts
War (1973), 157–58 extradition, 68
Eisenhower, Dwight: Bay of Pigs and, 212; CIB on
Korea, 178, 178b; covert action and, 207, 239; Faga, Marty, 292n11
decision-making style of, 44; DIA and, 20; IC failure of intelligence. See intelligence failures
relationship of, 239; Iranian relations, 211; National failure to warn: adversary D&D, 168–69; cognitive
Photographic Interpretation Center, 64; NRO and, bias and, 164–65; Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), 156;
20, 62; NSC and, 29; PIAB relations, 277 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990), 158–59; Israeli
EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques), 21, 40–41, Six-Day War (1967), 157; 9/11 attacks (2001), 57,
222, 241, 263–64n53, 274, 282 67, 70, 162–64; North Korean invasion of South
election influencing as covert action, 206, 208, 210b, Korea (1950), 156; organizational effects and,
292n3 165–67; Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 54–55, 118, 145,
election interference (U.S. 2016): as cyber security 155–56; policymaker wishful thinking and, 167–68;
issue, 69, 228; investigations of, 40, 255, 264n55; Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), 158; Soviet
policy disputes regarding, 251–53, 252b; Trump on, Union break up and end of Cold War, 159–60; Yom
105, 242–43 Kippur War (1973), 157–58; Yugoslavia breakup
electronic intelligence (ELINT), 12, 23n4, 61 (1990), 160–62, 162b
electro-optical (E-O) systems, 12, 23n2 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): analysts of,
El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), 69 90; counterterrorism efforts of, 37–38, 67–68, 285;
embassy operations, 34, 38, 66, 68 foreign counterintelligence, monitoring, 18b, 54;
encryption, 61, 90, 169 interagency cooperation and, 90; National Secu-
Energy Department, 49n2, 143n25, 257 rity Branch, 67–68; national security enterprise
enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), 21, 40–41, and, 37–38; 9/11 attacks (2001) and, 163; role
222, 241, 263–64n53, 274, 282 in intelligence community, 67–68; WikiLeaks
environmental monitoring, 63 investigation, 251
espionage, 13, 52, 280. See also human intelligence Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
estimative intelligence, 45 50n16
ethics of intelligence: covert action and, 216, 269; feedback from policymakers, 8, 16, 17, 87, 184
democracy and, 18–19, 22, 266–69; interrogation Feinstein, Dianne, 41, 254, 263–64n53, 276
and torture, 222, 283; post-9/11 era and, 286–87; financial crises, 151
Principles of Professional Ethics for the Intelli- Fingar, Thomas, 83n45, 111, 129, 133, 143n20
gence Community, 265 finished intelligence: analytical process description,
Europe: covert action in, 208; Marshall Plan for, 92–100; duplication of, 75–76; on Iraqi WMD, 17;
206–7; Radio Free Europe (RFE), 209. See also preparation of, 10, 16–17, 87
specific countries first responders, 39, 288
executive branch: Congress and foreign policy, 40; Five Eyes forum, 134, 143n28, 291n1
constitutional authority of president, 25, 28–29; Flynn, Michael, 255
covert action authorization from, 55–57, 205, 207, FOIA (Freedom of Information Act, 1966), 271
214, 217–19, 225–26; criticisms of intelligence, Ford, Gerald, 77, 142n14, 246, 277, 292n13
20–21; DNI and, 70; expectations of intelligence forecasting, 117–19, 147
318Index
Foreign Assistance Act (1961), 218 Haig, Al, 44

foreign instrumentation signals intelligence Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), 279
(FISINT), 12, 61 Hamilton, Lee, 265
foreign intelligence services, 18, 54, 57, 134, 207 Haspel, Gina, 243, 261n20, 274
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, 1978), Hayden, Michael, 222–23, 231n33, 241, 255, 283, 284
272, 277, 280b, 284–85, 289, 294n32 Health and Human Services Department, 63
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), 272, Helgerson, John, 278–79
279–80, 280b, 285, 286b Helms, Richard, 157, 245, 262n30, 262n32
foreign policy and relations: Congress and, 40; Heuer, Richard, J., 109–10n11
DOD and, 36; INR and, 66–67; leaked information high confidence, 95, 109n7, 136
as threat to, 216, 268–69; NSC and, 30, 45–46; Homeland Security Council (HSC), 28, 72
presidential involvement in, 43–45; strategic intel- Homeland Security, Department of (DHS): estab-
ligence and, 132, 134. See also State Department lishment of, 20, 47; intelligence functions of, 69;
Foreign Service officers, 14, 34–35, 66 national security enterprise and, 37, 38–39, 49n10;
Fourth Amendment, 280b, 284 requests for imagery, 63; on Russian election
France, covert action in, 206 interference, 251
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 1966), 271 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Fuerth, Leon, 107 (HPSCI), 255, 273, 282, 284, 292n10
Hughes-Ryan Amendment (1974), 218, 274b
Gang of Eight, 221, 274, 284–85 human intelligence (HUMINT): analysts and, 91, 92t;
Gates, Robert: BTF and, 193; career of, 237, 260n5; analytical process and, 93; of CIA, 55; on Cuban
confirmation hearings for, 238b; on human intel- Missile Crisis, 156, 192; defined, 10, 11b; ethics of,
ligence, 267; on intelligence capabilities, 234; 18–19; intelligence cycle and, 89; on Iraqi WMD,
intelligence-policy model of, 237–38; on PDB, 182; 136–37; necessity of, 269–71; overview, 13–16;
rivalry in NSC, 43, 50n25; on senior management protection of sources and methods, 267, 270;
experience, 260n6 recruitment and, 266–67; risks of, 15, 18; SIGINT
General Motors, 267 vs., 74–75; target analysis from, 190
Geneva Conventions, 225, 279, 282 humanitarian relief efforts, 63, 65
geospatial intelligence (GEOINT): analysts and, 91, human rights, 19
92t; defined, 11b, 13, 64; IMINT and, 63–64; NRO Hussein, Saddam: al-Qaeda relations, 94; invasion of
and, 63. See also National Geospatial-Intelligence Kuwait (1990), 158–59; Iraqi WMD program and,
Agency 16–17, 66, 89–90, 94, 96, 136–37, 247–49; mind-set
Germany, counterintelligence efforts in, 18 regarding, 96, 133
global coverage vs. specific threats, 198–99 hypotheses, 95, 98
Global Trends, 127–30, 131b, 138, 198
Global Warning Enterprise, 153 IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), 189–90,
Goldsmith, Jack, 294n32 202nn15–16, 249, 266
Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986), 37 IC. See intelligence community
Gonzales, Alberto, 282 ICDs (Intelligence Community Directives), 139
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 97, 159, 238b IGs (inspectors general), 278–79, 284–85, 292–93n14
Goss, Porter, 241, 282–83 imagery intelligence (IMINT): analysts and, 91, 92t;
Grabo, Cynthia, 146–47, 150 analytical process and, 93–94; budget constraints
Graham, Bob, 248 and, 74; defined, 11b, 12–13, 23nn2–3; development
Great Britain, intelligence service of, 54 of, 239; GEOINT and, 63–64; NRO and, 61–63;
Greece, covert action in, 206, 208 warning intelligence from, 153
groupthink, 76, 98 indications and warning (I&W) analysis, 150–54
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, 222 indicators, 147, 153, 171n2
Guatemala, covert action in, 212 informational covert action, 208
Gulf War, 89–90, 200 information security (INFOSEC), 61
information sharing: as challenge for IC, 281; DHS
Haass, Richard, 249 and, 38; with foreign intelligence officers, 14, 38;
habeas corpus violations, 279 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and, 280b;
Index319
need-to-share principle and, 90, 137, 166; 9/11 politicization of intelligence, 256–57; Russian
attacks and, 67, 70, 90, 163; PDB access and, 183; interference in 2016 elections, 251–53, 252b;
warning analysis and, 166 Soviet estimates, 246–47; understanding, 8; Viet-
INR. See Bureau of Intelligence and Research nam War estimates, 245–46
Inspector General Act (1978), 292–93n14 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
inspectors general (IGs), 278–79, 284–85, 292–93n14 (IRTPA, 2004), 57, 70, 74, 121, 200
intelligence, 3, 7–24; as analysis, 16–17; as collection intelligence support. See policy support
of secret information, 10–16; defined, 10; disci- Intelligence Transparency Council, 287
plines and their uses, 11b; as enabler of strategy, interagency cooperation: for counterterrorism, 72–73,
8–10; history of use, 19; NSC and, 45–46; pur- 76; FBI and, 67; for IC oversight, 77–78; NIEs and,
pose of, 19–22; risk of, 17–19. See also counter 123–24; NRO and, 63; post-9/11 era and, 90; task
intelligence; strategic intelligence forces, 193–94, 195b. See also information sharing
Intelligence Authorization Act (2010), 279 interagency memos, 122, 139
intelligence community (IC), 4, 52–83; budget and interagency policy committees (IPCs), 31–32, 221,
size of, 52, 74–75, 110n20, 140; CIA and, 54–59; 231n29, 237
declassified assessments of, 41; defined, 1; DIA interagency process: congressional involvement in,
and, 59–60; DNI and, 69–74; expansion of, 58–65; 40; covert action and, 219; defined, 26; DOD and,
FBI and, 67–68; function of, 7; history of, 52, 53–57; 35–36; explanation of, 30–34, 31–33f; NSA and,
INR and, 65–67; integration vs. centralization, 42–43; for nuclear arms treaties, 187; State Depart-
75–76; issues for, 74–79; NGA and, 63–65; NIP ment and, 35; strategies for international issues
members and missions, 53b; NRO and, 61–63; NSA and, 116. See also national security enterprise
and, 60–61; other agencies and, 68–69; profes- International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 189–90,
sionalism and transparency, 286–90, 288b; public 202nn15–16, 249, 266
relations and, 286–90, 294n42. See also oversight International Criminal Tribunal, 203n22
of intelligence community; post-9/11 era; specific interrogation: covert action issues and, 222–23;
intelligence organizations and agencies declassified summary on criticism of, 254;
Intelligence Community Assessment (2017), 122 enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), 21,
Intelligence Community Directives (ICDs), 139 40–41, 222, 241, 263–64n53, 274, 282; Inspectors
intelligence cycle, 4, 84–110; as analyst-centric General and, 278–79; investigation of methods,
process, 100–107, 101–2f; analysts and, 90–92; 263–64n53; legal methods of, 231nn33–34; limits
analytical process description, 92–100; collection on methods, 222; in post-9/11 era, 281; rendition
agencies and, 89–90; collection methods and, programs for, 41, 222–23, 282; SSCI report on, 41,
91, 92t; defined, 8; intelligence process and, 84; 222, 254, 263–64n53, 279; Trump on methods for,
National Security Strategy on, 84; policymakers 223, 243. See also torture
and, 87–89; steps in, 85–87, 86f INTs (intelligence-collection disciplines), 11, 11b, 16,
intelligence estimates. See National Intelligence 91, 92t. See also specific intelligence disciplines
Estimates IOB (Intelligence Oversight Board), 277–78
intelligence failures: analysts and, 92; attention IPCs (interagency policy committees), 31–32, 221,
placed on, 21; CIA and, 272–73, 292n8; on collapse 231n29, 237
of Soviet Union, 151; IC budget and, 52; Iraqi Iran: coup (1953), 211–12; cyberattack on nuclear pro-
WMD, 135–40; PIAB and, 277; as risk of intelli- gram, 228; death of shah (1979), 96, 151; hostage
gence, 17–19. See also failure to warn crisis, 158, 213; NIEs on, 95, 249–51, 268; nuclear
intelligence gaps, 96 activities of, 39, 40, 95, 249–51, 266; sanctions on,
Intelligence Oversight Act (1980), 218, 274, 274b 39, 250
Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), 277–78 Iran-Contra Operation (1986), 44, 213–14, 218–19
intelligence-policy relationship, 5, 234–64; alterna- Iraq: al-Qaeda relations, 94; Bush (G.W.) policies on
tive models for, 236–39, 238b; improving, 257–58; war in, 44, 106, 125–26, 126b, 133, 249, 263n39;
intelligence and policy disputes, 243–53, 244b, Cheney and invasion of, 134; insurgency (2005),
252b; Iran nuclear NIE, 249–51; Iraq WMD 106; intelligence priorities for, 200; invasion of
intelligence, 247–49; opposition in, 235–36; Kuwait (1990), 158–59; NIEs on, 125–26, 126b,
politicization of intelligence, 254–56; presidents 247–49; target analysis on, 196; warning intelli-
and intelligence advisers, 239–43; remedies for gence on, 151; weapons of war. See Iraqi WMD
320Index
Iraqi WMD: al-Qaeda and, 94; analysis of intelligence 133; Strategic Intelligence for an American World
on, 16–17; CIA and, 57, 80n9; collection of intel- Policy, 236
ligence on, 90; Congress on, 133, 143n25; dissents Kerr, Richard, 140
of intelligence on, 66, 143n25, 257; intelligence key assumptions, 98, 118
improvements following flawed estimate, 137–40; key findings, 95, 125b
ISG assessment of, 136, 144n33, 247; mind-sets Khrushchev, Nikita, 156
on, 96, 133; NIE on, 70, 135–40, 154, 197–98, 247; Kim Il-sung, 156
politicization of intelligence, 247–49; post-war Kim Jong-un, 167
inspection for, 262n38; quality of strategic intel- Kissinger, Henry: on IC oversight, 76–77, 83n43; as
ligence on, 135; warning intelligence on, 154 national security adviser, 29, 44, 45; NSC and, 26,
Iraq Survey Group (ISG), 136, 144n33, 247 29–30, 43; PDB and, 43; Strategic Arms Limitation
IRTPA (Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Preven- Talks, 120, 124, 246–47; on warning analysis, 145;
tion Act, 2004), 57, 70, 74, 121, 200 Yom Kippur War and, 157
Islamic extremism, 126–27 Kojm, Christopher, 121
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 94, 127, 152, Kolt, George, 160
169, 226–27 Korean War, 26, 29, 59, 178b
Israel: Six-Day War (1967), 157; Yom Kippur War Kosovo, target analysis on, 190
(1973), 157–58 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of (1990), 158–59
Italy, covert action in, 206, 208
Laird, Melvin, 262n32
Japan, Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 55, 118, 145, 155–56 Laos, covert action in, 218
Jefferson, Thomas, 64 leadership analysis, 203n21
Jervis, Robert, 99, 110n14, 165, 235 leaked information: to alter public debate, 41, 268;
Johnson, Lyndon: covert action authorization and, compromise of counterintelligence operations and,
207, 218; IC relationship of, 240; Israeli Six-Days 18; consequences for IC, 90; executive branch and,
War and, 157; NSC meetings and, 50n26; Vietnam 40–41; on interrogation and torture, 40–41, 283; on
War and, 179, 245–46 NSA metadata collection, 283–84; outside experts
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 26, 60, 179, 221 and, 140; purpose of, 21; Snowden data leaks, 18, 61,
joint operations, 14 90, 140, 242, 280, 284, 289–90; as threat to foreign
joint terrorism task forces (JTTFs), 38, 68 policy, 216, 268–69; WikiLeaks, 90, 140, 251–52
Jones, R. V., 174 legal attaché (LEGAT) offices, 38, 68
judicial oversight of intelligence, 279–81, 280b legality of covert action, 220, 222
Justice, Department of (DOJ), 68, 220, 231n34, lethal military covert action, 211b
282–85 level of confidence, 95–96, 109n7, 136, 249
just intelligence principles, 216–17 Levin, Dov, 292n3
Lewis and Clark Expedition, 64
Kahneman, Daniel, 109n11 lone wolf terrorists, 152
Karadžić, Radovan, 203n22 long-term assessments, 138, 197–98. See also Global
Kennan, George, 206–7 Trends; National Intelligence Estimates
Kennedy, John F.: Bay of Pigs and, 213, 230–31n15; low confidence, 95, 109n7
covert action authorization and, 207; Cuban Mis-
sile Crisis and, 156, 172n17, 192; decision-making MacArthur, Douglas, 156
style of, 44; DIA and NRO, 20; IC relationship of, MacEachin, Douglas, 132, 140
240; NSC and, 29; PIAB relations, 277 Madison, James, 265
Kennedy, Robert, 240 Marrin, Stephen, 132
Kent, Sherman: on Cuban Missile Crisis, 156; on Marshall, George C., 24n10, 26, 28–29
forecasting, 117; on goals of analysts, 115; on Marshall Plan, 206–7
ignoring intelligence, 167; on intelligence, 9b; Mattis, James, 223, 227
on intelligence influence in policy, 111, 234; McCone, John A., 145, 156, 245
intelligence-policy model of, 236–37; Office of McConnell, Michael, 250
National Estimates and, 119; on purpose of intel- McLaughlin, John, 196–97, 260n6
ligence, 8, 104, 111; on strategic intelligence, 111, McNamara, Robert, 59, 62, 66, 245–46
Index321
McRaven, William, 226 national foreign intelligence program, 63

measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT): National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), 62,
analysts and, 91, 92t; defined, 11b, 13; DIA and, 60; 63–65
signature, defined, 23–24n4 National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), 65
media: analytical process and, 94; covert action using, National Intelligence Board (NIB), 122, 139
209, 210b; criticisms of intelligence community, National Intelligence Council (NIC): establishment
21, 223, 282–83; on interrogation and torture, of, 119; Global Trends series, 127–30, 131b, 138, 198;
282–83; manipulation of reports from, 251; national NIE process improvements, 249; purpose and role
security enterprise and, 40; senior intelligence offi- of, 72, 121; regional and functional areas of, 121;
cers’ commentary to, 255; “Washington Post test” Strategic Futures Group, 138; strategic intelligence
for covert action, 269. See also leaked information and, 121–23; warning intelligence from, 153–54
Meier, Golda, 157 National Intelligence Daily (NID), 178–79
Merkel, Angela, 242 National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs): CIA and,
metadata collection, 283–86, 294n29 120; commencement of, 27; criticisms of, 197; on
military: covert action of, 208; IC role of, 58; illegal Cuban Missile Crisis, 156; defined, 9; DNI and,
orders, refusing, 223; national intelligence 73; on end of Soviet Union, 159–60; estimative
needs vs., 199–200; NRO and, 62; paramilitary products, 124–27, 125–26b; as format for strategic
operations and, 225–26; peacetime intelligence intelligence, 119–20; Global Trends, 127–30, 131b;
function, 53–54; politicization of, 255; unification impact and relevance of, 132–34; improvements to,
under DOD, 55. See also Defense, Department of; 139; on Iran, 95, 249–51, 268; on Iraq, 247–49; on
Defense Intelligence Agency Iraqi WMDs, 70, 135–40, 154, 197–98, 247; length
military analysis, 58 and structure of, 122–23; outside expert review
Military Commissions Act (2006), 293n25 of, 99; production and process of, 72, 123–27,
Military Intelligence Board (MIB), 60 125–26b, 249; purpose of, 111; requests for, 122;
Military Intelligence Digest (MID), 179 on Soviet Union, 124, 125b, 133, 142n14, 246–47;
Military Intelligence Program (MIP), 75 on terrorism, 163; on Vietnam War, 66; warning
Milošević, Slobodan, 160, 203n22 intelligence in, 153–54; on Yugoslavia breakup,
mind-sets: avoiding, 138, 256; as cause of intelligence 162, 162b
failure, 152; cognitive bias and, 97, 109–10n11, national intelligence managers (NIMs), 155
164–65; failure to warn and, 155–56, 164; ignored national intelligence officer for warning (NIO/W),
strategic intelligence, 132–33; intelligence judg- 154–55, 159
ments based on, 96–97 national intelligence officers (NIOs), 72, 122
mirror-imaging, 97–98 National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF),
misinformation, 169 78, 83n45, 85
misinterpretation, 152 National Intelligence Program (NIP): budget for, 52,
Mladić, Ratko, 203n22 58, 74–75, 80n1; Clapper on, 52; combat-support
moderate confidence, 95, 109n7, 136 agencies of, 36; members and missions of, 53b
Morell, Michael, 184–85, 238 National Intelligence Strategy (2019), 20
Morning Summary: for JCS, 179; for secretary of state, National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC),
66, 180–81, 181b 64–65
Mosaddegh, Mohammad, 211 National Reconnaissance Office (NRO): budget for,
Moynihan, Daniel, 237 74; Corona program of, 62; monitoring Soviet
Mueller Report, 255 military activities, 20; oversight of, 275–76, 292n11;
Mugabe, Robert, 199 role in intelligence community, 61–63
Murrett, Robert B., 76 National Security Act (1947): Bundy on, 25; on covert
action, 206; excerpts from, 28b; executive branch,
National Counterintelligence and Security Center influence in, 27–29; impetus for, 54–55; national
(NCSC), 73 security system resulting from, 8–9, 26–27; passage
National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC), 73 of, 8; on peacetime intelligence function, 19; on
National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), 20, protection of sources and methods, 270; purpose
72–73, 105, 173n32 of, 47; on role of DNI, 235
National Economic Council (NEC), 27–28, 49n3 national security advisers, 29, 41–44, 77
322Index
National Security Agency (NSA): authorization of, NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), 62,
267; budget for, 74; cyber operations, 228; estab- 63–65
lishment of, 20, 60; intelligence cycle and, 89; role NIB (National Intelligence Board), 122, 139
in intelligence community, 60–61; surveillance NIC. See National Intelligence Council
program of, 18, 61, 90, 140, 242, 280–81, 283–86, Nicaragua, Iran-Contra Operation (1986), 44, 213–14,
289–90 218–19
National Security Council (NSC): committee struc- NID (National Intelligence Daily), 178–79
ture, 30–31, 31f; covert action, recommendations NIEs. See National Intelligence Estimates
on, 45–46, 77, 217; covert action authorization, 205, NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency), 65
217, 221, 231n24, 231nn29–30; DNI and, 71b, 72; NIMs (national intelligence managers), 155
economic advisers and, 27–28; establishment of, 9/11 attacks (2001): interagency relations and, 57,
8–9, 28b; executive branch and, 42–45; expanding 67, 70, 90, 92; warning intelligence on, 162–64,
role of, 26–27, 29–30; foreign policy and relations, 172n12. See also post-9/11 era
45–46; IC oversight, 76–79, 83n43; intelligence 9/11 Commission, 56, 99, 163, 198
and, 45–46; interagency process and, 26, 30–34, NIOs (national intelligence officers), 72, 122
31–33f; Iran-Contra Operation (1986), 214, 218–19; NIO/W (national intelligence officer for warning),
Lawyers Group (LG), 220; national strategy docu- 154–55, 159
ments and, 116; NSC 68 document, 26; policy rota- NIP. See National Intelligence Program
tions and, 196, 237, 260n5; purpose of, 19, 71b, 77 NIPF (National Intelligence Priorities Framework),
national security enterprise (NSE), 3, 25–51; Con- 78, 83n45, 85
gress and, 40; DHS and, 38–39; DOD and, 35–37; Nitze, Paul, 246–47
economic agencies and, 39; expansion of, 34–37; Nixon, Richard: covert action and, 218, 231n24, 272;
FBI and, 37–38; foreign policy and, 43–44; future decision-making style of, 44; foreign policy and
of, 47; media and, 40–41; National Security Act, relations, 44, 45; IC relationship of, 240; NSC and,
28b; national security adviser and, 41–43; NSC and, 29; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 120,
26–34, 28b, 31–33f, 45–46; overview, 2–3, 6n1; PDB 124, 246
and, 46b; State Department and, 34–35; structure Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 189–90
vs. informality, 44–45 North, Oliver, 214
National Security Presidential Decision 17 (NSPD North American Treaty Organization (NATO), 148,
17), 117 190
national security strategies, 88, 108n1 North Korea: cyberattack on Sony Pictures, 228; indi-
National Security Strategy (2010), 7, 101–2 cators of state failure, 147; invasion of South Korea
National Security Strategy (2017), 84 (1950), 156; nuclear activities of, 21, 151, 167, 266;
National Security Strategy (2019), 102, 174 policy on, 176t; sanctions on, 167, 175
national strategy documents, 116, 142nn3–4 NPIC (National Photographic Interpretation Center),
National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass 64–65
Destruction (2002), 117 NRO. See National Reconnaissance Office
national technical means (NTM), 186, 187b NSA. See National Security Agency
NATO (North American Treaty Organization), 148, NSC. See National Security Council
190 NSC 68 document, 26
natural disasters, 63, 64, 152, 288 NSE. See national security enterprise
NCPC (National Counterproliferation Center), 73 NSPD 17 (National Security Presidential Decision
NCSC (National Counterintelligence and Security 17), 117
Center), 73 NTM (national technical means), 186, 187b
NCTC (National Counterterrorism Center), 20, nuclear weapons: arms control agreements, 74, 120,
72–73, 105, 173n32 124, 158, 186–89, 202nn11–12, 246–47, 266; avoid-
near-real time, 23n2 ance of use, 27; Department of Energy and, 49n2;
NEC (National Economic Council), 27–28, 49n3 International Atomic Energy Agency and, 189–90,
need-to-know principle, 13, 90, 137, 166, 268 202nn15–16, 266; of North Korea, 21, 151, 167, 266;
need-to-share principle, 90, 137, 166 of Syria, 21; warning system for attacks, 146, 149,
Negroponte, John, 241 171n6. See also weapons of mass destruction
New America Foundation, 232n39, 281 Nye, Joseph, 3, 121
Index323
Obama, Barack: Bin Laden, operation against, 88–89; judicial branch, 279–81, 280b; by NSC, 76–79; in
counterterrorism policies, 22; covert action and, post-9/11 era, 281–86, 286b; Privacy and Civil Lib-
222–24; on data collection by NSA, 242; decision- erties Oversight Board, 281, 289; purpose of, 265
making style of, 42, 50n23; foreign policy and
relations, 44, 45; IC relationship of, 241–42, 254; Pakistan, drone strikes in, 232n39
integration of NSC and HSC, 28; interrogation and Panetta, Leon, 50n25, 78, 189, 225–26, 241
torture, 222, 254, 283; Iran, nuclear arrangement paramilitary operations, 209, 210–11b, 212–14,
with, 40; NSA surveillance program, 284–85; NSC 224–27, 281
principals and, 43, 50n25; PDB and, 242; PIAB partisanship, 254–55
relations, 277; Russian election interference and, pattern recognition, 90
252–53; Syrian civil war and, 226 PC. See Principals Committee
Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), 39 PCLOB (Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight
Office for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Board), 281, 289
(OTFI), 39 PDB. See President’s Daily Brief
Office of Current Intelligence, 120 peacetime. See intelligence community
Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI): Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 54–55, 118, 145, 155–56
Congress on, 76; establishment of, 20, 47; on Pelosi, Nancy, 282–83
national security enterprise, 49n10; NIC as part Pentagon. See Defense, Department of
of, 122; on release of estimates, 268; size and influ- Perry, William, 65
ence of, 72–73; staff of, 70 Philippines, tsunami (2004), 64
Office of Economic Research, 120 PIAB (President’s Intelligence Advisory Board), 200,
Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA), 39, 69 276–78
Office of National Estimates (ONE), 119, 142n7 Pillar, Paul, 248–49
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), 54, 58 Poindexter, John, 214
Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), 207, 230n3 Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, 248
Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), 26, 36 policy evaluation, 106–7
Office of Strategic Research (OSR), 120 policy formation and implementation: analysis of
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 24n10, 54–55, 66, intelligence and, 102–6; DOD and, 36; economic
207 agencies and, 39; NIEs, impact of, 132–34; State
Omand, David, 216, 229 Department and, 35; warning intelligence and,
open-source intelligence (OSINT): analysts and, 91, 147–48. See also covert action; foreign policy and
92t; analytical process and, 94; availability of, 15; relations; intelligence cycle; intelligence-policy
defined, 11, 11b; intelligence cycle and, 87, 89; for relationship
low priority analyses, 199 policymakers: biases of, 17, 88, 212–13; feedback from,
operational security, 90, 169 8, 16, 17, 87, 184; INR and, 66; intelligence cycle
Operation Desert Shield (1990–1991), 200 and, 87–89; lack training on IC, 258; warning intel-
Operation Desert Storm (1991), 200 ligence and, 145, 167–68, 170; wishful thinking of,
operations centers, 33, 49n9 153, 158, 167–68, 212–13
Operation Zapata (1961), 212–13 policy options papers, 32
opportunity-cost decisions, 89 policy rotations, 196–97, 237, 260nn5–6
order-of-battle (OOB), 58 policy support, 4, 174–204; analysts’ role in, 105–6;
OSD (Office of Secretary of Defense), 26, 36 crisis management and, 192–96, 195b; current
OSINT. See open-source intelligence intelligence publications for, 177–85, 178b,
OSR (Office of Strategic Research), 120 180–81b; current vs. long-term analysis, 197–98;
OSS (Office of Strategic Services), 24n10 defined, 174; diplomatic negotiations, 186–90,
OTFI (Office for Terrorism and Financial 187b; global coverage vs. specific threats, 198–99;
Intelligence), 39 military vs. national intelligence needs, 199–200;
outside experts, 99–100, 110n14, 119, 139–40 NSC and, 45; policy rotations, 196–97; purpose
oversight of intelligence community: by Congress, intelligence for, 174; target analysis, 190–92, 191b;
254, 273–75b, 273–76; by executive branch, 276–79; types of, 175–77, 176t
Intelligence Oversight Act (1980), 218, 274, 274b; political covert action, 208, 210b
Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), 277–78; by political instability, 150, 151
324Index
politicization: increase in, 254–55; intelligence-policy security vs., 22, 110n20, 271–72; in post-9/11 era,
models and, 236–37; Iran nuclear NIE, 249–51; Iraq 283–86, 286b, 289–90; Privacy and Civil Liberties
WMD intelligence, 247–49; motivations and forms Oversight Board, 281, 289; public opinion on IC
of, 244, 253–54; presidential appointments and, and, 289–90
238b, 239, 243; remedies for IC, 256–57; Rovner’s processing of intelligence, 7–8, 85
taxonomy of, 244b; Russian interference in 2016 propaganda, 209, 210b, 212, 252
elections, 251–53, 252b; Soviet estimates, 246–47; PSP (President’s Surveillance Program), 284–85,
Vietnam War estimates, 245–46 294n32
Pollock, Kenneth, 143n24 psychological warfare, 206, 209, 212
polygraph exams, 18b public relations, 286–90, 292n9, 294n42
Pompeo, Mike, 243 Putin, Vladimir, 149, 252b, 255
post-9/11 era: analytical outreach and, 99; CIA and,
20, 24n10, 56, 75; counterterrorism as central radar signatures, 13
mission, 105; covert action and, 9, 27, 221–29, 226f, Radio Free Europe (RFE), 209
281–86, 286b; FBI role and, 37–38, 67; Homeland Radio Liberty (RL), 209
Security Council, establishment of, 28; IC budget raw intelligence, 10–14, 16, 85
increases, 75; intelligence collection methods, Reagan, Ronald: Afghanistan, covert action in,
281–86, 286b; intelligence reforms, 20, 38, 47, 67, 215; foreign policy and relations, 44; Gorbachev,
78–79, 277; interagency cooperation and, 90; joint skepticism of, 238b; on intelligence analysis, 7;
terrorism task forces and, 68; long-term analysis intelligence-policy relationship and, 238; Iran-
and, 198; national security and, 9–10; privacy Contra Operation and, 213
rights in, 283–86, 286b, 289–90; professionalism Red Cell analysis, 99, 138, 165, 249
and transparency, need for, 286–90, 288b; Red redundant information, 75–76
Cell analytical units, 99; reforms for, 20, 38, 47, 67, reforms: following Iran-Contra Operation, 214; impe-
78–79, 277 tus for, 21, 47, 78; for improvements to strategic
Powell, Colin, 241 intelligence, 137–38; Intelligence Reform and Ter-
presidential findings, 19, 274 rorism Prevention Act (IRTPA, 2004), 57, 70, 74,
President’s Daily Brief (PDB): on Bin Laden, 163b; 121, 200; PCLOB and, 289; post-9/11 era and, 20,
briefers for, 184, 237–38, 258; Bush (G.H.W.) and, 38, 47, 67, 78–79, 277
46b, 239; Bush (G.W.) and, 184–85; CIA global relationship identification, 90
assessments in, 56, 57; Clinton and, 240–41; com- rendition programs, 41, 222–23, 282
mencement of, 27, 178, 182; distribution list for, requirements for intelligence, 8, 93
183; intelligence-policy relationship and, 237–38; research and development activities, 150–51, 171n9
National Security Act and, 9; national security RFE (Radio Free Europe), 209
advisers and, 43; Obama and, 242; overview, Rice, Condoleezza, 43, 162, 185
181–85; preparation of, 73, 183–84; publication of, RL (Radio Liberty), 209
271; purpose of, 45; Truman and, 182; Trump and, Robb-Silberman WMD commission, 248
43, 185, 243; warning intelligence in, 153, 163 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 26, 54–55
President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), 200, Roosevelt, Kermit, 212
276–78 Rovner, Joshua, 244, 246, 262n32
President’s Surveillance Program (PSP), 284–85, Rumsfeld, Donald: IC relationship of, 241; Iraqi WMD
294n32 intelligence and, 248; Iraq War and, 44; on military
Principals Committee (PC): covert action and, 221; vs. national intelligence priorities, 200, 204n28;
defined, 29, 49n6; DNI and, 70; interagency pro- on NSC meetings, 47; NSC process and, 43; on
cess and, 30–33, 77 paramilitary operations, 224–25; on post-9/11 IC
Principles of Professional Ethics for the Intelligence reforms, 277; on role of DCI, 70
Community, 265 Russia: warning intelligence on Baltic invasion, 148,
prisoners of war. See interrogation; torture 150. See also Cold War; election interference (U.S.
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board 2016); Soviet Union
(PCLOB), 281, 289
privacy rights: domestic surveillance and, 18–19, Sadat, Anwar, 157
60–61, 271–72, 283–86; minimization of inter- SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), 120, 124,
cepted communications, 280, 293n19; national 158, 186–88, 246–47
Index325
sanctions: economic departments’ role in, 37, 39, 68; Snowden data leaks, 18, 61, 90, 140, 242, 280, 284,
on Iran, 39, 250; on North Korea, 167, 175; on Ser- 289–90
bia, 193–94; as WMD deterrent, 117, 144n33, 167 social media, 13, 64
satellite systems, 12, 23nn2–3, 61–62, 64, 74, 239. See Souers, Sidney, 54, 55, 80n4
also imagery intelligence sources and methods, 13, 18, 287
SATs (structured analytical techniques), 98 South Korea, invasion of (1950), 156
scenario analysis, 98 Soviet Military Power (DIA), 142n8
Schlesinger, James, 292n8 Soviet Union: Afghanistan invasion (1979), 89, 158,
scientific developments, 149, 150–51 215; Bay of Pigs (1961), Cuba, 212–13; biologi-
Scowcroft, Brent, 42–43, 46b, 69, 204n28, 277 cal weapons, 171n9; break up and end of Cold
searches and seizures, 271–72, 284 War, 159–60, 237; CIA analysis of leadership, 97,
search warrants, 271–72, 279–80 109n10; Corona program and, 62; covert action
secrecy: classified information and, 268; collection of as response to subversion of, 209; Cuban Missile
intelligence and, 10–16, 267; espionage, 13, 52, 280; Crisis (1962), 65, 94–95, 118–19, 156, 172n17, 192;
necessity of, 205, 269–71. See also covert action; intelligence failure on, 151; NIEs on, 124, 125b, 133,
human intelligence; leaked information 142n14, 246–47; North Korean invasion of South
secretary of defense, 63, 69–70, 72, 75, 179. See also Korea and, 156; strategic intelligence on, 120,
Office of Secretary of Defense 142n8; strategic warning of attack from, 149, 171n6;
secretary of energy, 27, 49n2 Yugoslavia, expulsion from, 209, 230n8. See also
secretary of state, 35, 65–67, 180 Cold War
Secretary’s Morning Summary, 66, 180–81, 181b special activities. See covert action
security clearance, 18b, 100, 200 special agents, 68
seismic detectors, 13 spying, 13, 52, 280. See also human intelligence
Senate Armed Services Committee, 200, 273–75b, SR-71 aircraft, 12
273–76 SSCI. See Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI): Stalin, Joseph, 156, 209
establishment of, 292n10; on interrogation pro- State Department: dissenting opinion on Iraqi NIE,
grams, 41, 222, 254, 263–64n53, 279; NIEs and, 143n25, 257; foreign policy authority of, 26; over-
133, 135–36, 198; oversight role of, 273–75b, 273–76, sight of IC, 207, 220–21; overview, 34–35; public
292n11; on Russian hacking, 264n55 diplomacy programs, 209; reports from, 56; Secre-
senior director for intelligence programs, 77–78 tary’s Morning Summary, 66, 180–81, 181b. See also
Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (SEIB), 179 Bureau of Intelligence and Research; foreign policy
senior intelligence managers and analysts, 100, 113, and relations
237–38, 258, 260n6 Steinberg, James, 107
sense of the community memoranda, 122 Stevenson, Adlai, 192
September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. See 9/11 attacks Stimson, Henry, 53
Serbia: Balkan Task Force and, 193–94, 203nn22–23; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 120, 124,
target analysis on, 190 158, 186–88, 246–47
Shultz, George, 44, 238b Strategic Futures Group, 138
signals intelligence (SIGINT): analysts and, 91, 92t; strategic intelligence, 4, 111–44; accuracy of, 134–35;
analytical process and, 93–94; budget constraints analytical process and, 93, 103–4; defined, 56, 112;
and, 74; on Cuban Missile Crisis, 192; defined, 11b, failure of, 135–37; forecasting, 117–19; history of,
12; HUMINT vs., 74–75; intelligence cycle and, 89; 115–17; impact and relevance of, 132–34; improve-
Iraqi WMD and, 16; NRA and, 61–63; NSA and, ments to, 137–40; NIC and, 121–23; NIES and,
60–61; target analysis from, 190; warning intelli- 123–30, 125–26b, 130b; overview, 111–15, 112f, 114f;
gence from, 150, 153. See also National Reconnais- producers of, 119–21; quality of, 135–40. See also
sance Office; National Security Agency warnings
signatures (radar), 13, 23–24n4 Strategic Intelligence for an American World Policy
Sims, Jennifer, 106 (Kent), 236
single-source analysis, 16–17, 87 strategic warning, 146, 148–52, 163–64, 169
situational awareness, 179 structured analytical techniques (SATs), 98
situation reports (sit-reps), 192, 194 structured brainstorming, 98
SMEs (subject-matter experts), 113 subject-matter experts (SMEs), 113
326Index
Summers, Lawrence, 267 travel restrictions, 18b

Supreme Court, US, 279 treason, 13, 267
surveillance. See domestic surveillance; National Treasury Department, 37, 39, 68, 267
Security Agency; privacy rights Treaty of Versailles (1919), 269
Syria: civil war in, 226; foreign policy on, 45; nuclear trend analysis, 90
weapons of, 21 Treverton, Gregory, 121, 205, 229
Truman, Harry: covert action authorization and, 9,
tactical warning, 152–53 27, 206, 207–9; decision-making style of, 44; IC
Taleb, Nassim, 151 relationship of, 239–40; JCS and, 26; need for
target analysis, 190–92, 191b peacetime intelligence and, 54–55, 80n4; NSA,
targeted killings, 21, 211b, 223–24, 232n39, 281 establishment of, 20, 60; NSC and, 29, 49n7; PDB
task forces, 192–96, 195b, 203n19 and, 182
taskings, 177 Truman Doctrine, 208
Team A/Team B exercise, 246, 277 Trump, Donald: on 2016 election interference by
technical intelligence (TECHINT), 10, 12–14 Russia, 105, 242–43; counterterrorism efforts, 227;
Tenet, George: on drones and targeted killings, drone operations and, 224; IC relations, 43, 105,
223; on Iraq war and WMD, 262–63nn38–39; as 242–43, 253, 255–56; on interrogation techniques,
national security advisor, 240–41, 260n10; on 9/11 223, 243; North Korean nuclear weapons and, 167;
attacks, 152, 162; as NSC senior director, 78 NSC appointments, 29; PDB and, 43, 185, 243; Pri-
terrorism and counterterrorism: analysis of informa- vacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and, 289;
tion on, 94, 105; CIA role, 57, 163–64, 173n32, on Worldwide Threat Assessment (2019), 74
190–91, 278; countering as key mission, 20; drones Turner, Stansfield, 154, 188
and, 22; FBI role, 37–38, 67–68; foreign assistance Tversky, Amos, 109n11
programs and, 110n20; intelligence agencies Twitter, 40
for, 20; interagency cooperation and, 72–73, 76;
interrogation and torture, 281–83; joint terrorism U-2 aircraft, 12
task forces, 38, 68; lethal military covert action for, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), 12, 223–24,
211b; National Counterterrorism Center, 20, 72–73, 232n39
173n32; NIEs on, 126–27; NRO role, 63; Privacy UN Convention on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, 281, 289; sur- or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 231n34,
veillance programs and, 283–86; Treasury Depart- 278, 281–82, 293n23
ment and, 39; warning intelligence for, 150, 151–52, under-cover officers, 14
162–64. See also Homeland Security, Department undersecretary of defense for intelligence (USDI), 36,
of; post-9/11 era; specific terrorist attacks 50n14, 59, 75
Tito, Josip Broz, 160 Uniform Code of Military Justice, 223
torture: black sites for interrogations, 40–41; DOJ unilateral operations, 14
criteria for, 282; Haspel nomination and, 243, United Nations, 266
274; leaked information on, 40–41, 283; rendition United States Code: definition of torture in, 282; FBI
programs and, 41, 222–23, 282; SSCI report on, powers under, 271; Title 10 military activities, 225
41, 222, 254, 263–64n53, 279; UN Convention on unlawful combatants, 282, 293n25
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 12, 223–24, 232n39
Treatment or Punishment, 231n34, 278, 281–82, USA Freedom Act (2015), 285–86, 286b, 289
293n23; unlawful combatants and, 282, 293n25; USA PATRIOT Act (2001), 284–85
waterboarding, 222–23, 231n33, 282–83 US Coast Guard (USCG), 69
Tower, John, 214 US special trade representative (USTR), 39
Tower Commission, 214
tradecraft, 13, 91, 96, 140, 257–58 Vandenberg, Hoyt, 52, 55–56, 80n5
training: in espionage methods, 13; to overcome video-teleconference (VTC) facilities, 33
biases, 98; in policy process, 257–58; policy Vietnam War: CIA estimates on conduct of, 245–46,
rotations as, 196–97, 237, 260nn5–6; in warning 262nn27–28; covert action and, 218, 272; DINSUM
analysis, 166–67, 172n34 on, 179, 180b; domestic surveillance during, 18, 60;
transnational threats, 151 estimates during, 245; mapping services coordina-
transparency of intelligence, 19, 270, 286–90, 288b tion, 65; NIE on, 66; target analysis during, 190
Index327
Warner, Mark, 264n55 Webster, William, 239

warnings, 4, 145–73; adversaries and, 168–69; Weinberger, Caspar, 44
challenges in, 145, 169–70; characteristics of, 146; Westmoreland, William, 262n30
cognitive bias and, 164–65; defined, 104, 146–48; whistleblowers. See leaked information
history of, 155–64, 161–63b; organizational effects White House Situation Room, 33, 49n9
and, 165–67; philosophy of, 153–55; policymakers white papers, 175, 201n1
and, 145, 167–68, 170; strategic warning and, 146, WikiLeaks, 90, 140, 251–52
148–52, 163–64, 169; tactical warning and, 152–53; Wilder, Dennis, 196, 203n25
training in, 166–67, 172n34. See also failure Wilson, Charlie, 215, 231n22
to warn Wilson, Joseph, 248
“Washington Post test” for covert action, 269 Wilson, Woodrow, 269
waterboarding, 222–23, 231n33, 282–83. See also WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation,
torture and Arms Control Center), 188–89
Watergate hearings, 218 wishful thinking, 153, 158, 167–68, 212–13
weapons: assessments of adversaries’ systems, 22; Wisner, Frank, 209
foreign instrumentation signals intelligence Wohlstetter, Albert, 246–47, 262n35
(FISINT), 12; of Iraq, 136; measurement and signa- Woolsey, James, 240
ture intelligence (MASINT), 13, 23–24n4; of Soviet World War II, 54–55
Union, 120, 142n8. See also nuclear weapons Worldwide Intelligence Report (WIRe), 179
Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Worldwide Threat Assessment, 21, 73–74, 115–16, 163,
Control Center (WINPAC), 188–89 228, 243
weapons of mass destruction (WMD): countering worst-case analysis, 148
as key mission, 20; monitoring proliferation of,
63, 68; National Counterproliferation Center, 73; Yoo, John, 284, 294n32
sanctions as deterrent, 117, 144n33, 167; strategic Yugoslavia: breakup of (1990), 160–62, 162b, 193–94,
intelligence on, 135–40; strategy for combating, 117. 195b, 203nn22–23; covert action and, 209; expul-
See also Iraqi WMD; nuclear weapons sion from Soviet Union, 209, 230n8
About the Author
Roger Z. George has taught intelligence and national security subjects at Occidental
College, Pepperdine University, and Georgetown University’s Security Studies Pro-
gram. He also was professor of national security strategy at the US National War Col-
lege from 2009 to 2015. During a thirty-year career as a CIA analyst, he also served
on policy planning staffs at the Department of State and the Department of Defense
and was the national intelligence officer for Europe. He is coeditor with James B.
Bruce of Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’ Perspectives (second
edition), and coeditor with Harvey Rishikof of The National Security Enterprise: Navi-
gating the Labyrinth (second edition). Dr. George earned his PhD from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and his BA in political science from
Occidental College.
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Intelligence

Georgetown University Press / Washington, DC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: George, Roger Z., 1949- author.

Printed in the United States of America.

Cover design by Jeff Miller, Faceout Studio.

List of Abbreviations xiii

1 How to Use This Book 1

3 What Is the National Security Enterprise? 25

4 What Is the Intelligence Community? 52

5 From Intelligence Cycle to Policy Support 84

6 Strategic Intelligence 111

7 The Challenges of Warning 145

8 Intelligence Support as Policy Enabler 174

9 Covert Action as Policy Support 205

10 The Challenges of the Intelligence-Policy Relationship 234

11 Intelligence and American Democracy 265

Glossary: Intelligence Terms 295

About the Author 328

2.1 Sherman Kent on Intelligence 9

11.1 House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees 273

3.1 The NSC Committee Structure 31

5.1 Collection Disciplines: Their Contributions and Constraints 92

ABM antiballistic missile

MASINT measurement and signature intelligence

OSINT open-source intelligence

Keep giving me things that make me think.

Intelligence is often an invisible player in presidential formulation and execution of

USE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

Chapter 9 focuses on the special and controversial intelligence mission of “covert

It is not enough, of course, to simply collect information. Thoughtful

Our country’s safety and prosperity depend on the quality of the

The Intelligence Community exists to provide political and military

US national security decision-making relies on intelligence. Although the relation-

INTELLIGENCE: AN ENABLER OF STRATEGY

Box 2.1 Sherman Kent on Intelligence

Box 2.2 Intelligence Disciplines: Their Uses

Human intelligence (HUMINT) is gained overtly by diplomats and military attachés or

open-source intelligence (OSINT) (see box 2.2). Collectively, these intelligence-­

As technology has advanced in the development of sensors as well as computer

including an intelligence source. This kind of direct knowledge of a foreign govern-

open-source intelligence to give analysts and policymakers a more complete picture

Intelligence Is Risky Business

Box 2.3 Counterintelligence Explained

Protecting US sources and methods (via counterintelligence) often involves having

targets tend to be less controversial. Covert actions to influence foreign governments

WHY INTELLIGENCE MATTERS

Good strategy is dependent on understanding the nature of the international sys-

the US Air Force credited with saving at least $1 billion in research-and-­development

ODNI, A Consumer’s Guide to National Intelligence, 2009, https://​www​.dni​.gov​/files​

or nuclear isotope that is characteristic of a WMD or an acoustic signal typical of a nuclear-

The buck stops here.

A particular virtue of the National Security Act is its flexibility.

WHAT IS THE NATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEM?

Box 3.1 The National Security Act of 1947

Sec. 101 (original):

Sec. 102 (original):

Section 102 (amended in 2004*):

Expanding Role of the NSC and Its Staff

The Interagency Process: How It Works

3 What Is the National Security Enterprise? 25

2.1 Sherman Kent on Intelligence 9

11.1 House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees 273

3.1 The NSC Committee Structure 31

5.1 Collection Disciplines: Their Contributions and Constraints 92

open-source intelligence (OSINT) (see box 2.2). Collectively, these intelligence-

the US Air Force credited with saving at least $1 billion in research-and-development

ODNI, A Consumer’s Guide to National Intelligence, 2009, https://www.dni.gov/files

Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/

Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org

Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov