How people notice and make sense of phenomena are core issues in
assessing intelligence successes and failures. Members of the U.S.
Intelligence Community (IC) became adept at responding to certain
sets of phenomena and "analyzing" their significance (not always
correctly) during the Cold War. The paradigm was one of "hard,
formalized and centralized processes, involving planned searches,
scrupulously sticking with a cycle of gathering, analyzing,
estimating and disseminating supposed enriched information." The
paradigm did not stop within the IC, either. As Pierre Baumard
notes, it was also imported, unchanged, by corporations. However,
the range of phenomena noticed by intelligence professionals has
broadened from a focus on largely static issues to encompass highly
dynamic topics over the two decades since the end of the Cold War.
Intelligence professionals are challenged to stay abreast. A
growing professional literature by intelligence practitioners
discusses these trends and their implications for advising and
warning policymakers. Th e literature by practitioners embodies a
trust that national intelligence producers can overcome the
"inherent" enemies of intelligence to prevent strategic
intelligence failure. Th e disparity between this approach and
accepting the inevitability of intelligence failure has grown sharp
enough to warrant the identification of separate camps or schools
of "skeptics" and "meliorists." As a leading skeptic, Richard Betts
charitably plants the hopeful note that in ambiguous situations,
"the intelligence officer may perform most usefully by not offering
the answer sought by authorities but by forcing questions on them,
acting as a Socratic agnostic." However, he completes this thought
by declaring, fatalistically, that most leaders will neither
appreciate nor accept this approach. Robert Jervis resurrects a
colorful quote from former President Lyndon Johnson, who epitomized
the skeptical policymaker: Let me tell you about these intelligence
guys. When I was growing up in Texas we had a cow named Bessie. I'd
go out early and milk her. I'd get her in the stanchion, seat
myself and squeeze out a pail of fresh milk. One day I'd worked
hard and gotten a full pail of milk, but I wasn't paying attention,
and old Bessie swung her shit 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
shit-smeared tail through it. Jervis asserts that policymakers and
decision makers "need confidence and political support, and honest
intelligence unfortunately oft en diminishes rather than increases
these goods by pointing to ambiguities, uncertainties, and the
costs and risks of policies." The antagonism is exacerbated when
policy is revealed to be fl awed and to have ignored intelligence
knowledge. For example, in the case of the Bush administration's
handling of the Iraq War, intelligence challenges to policy were
seen as "being disloyal and furthering its own agenda." Jervis adds
that the Bush administration is only the most recent one to exhibit
such behavior. He finds that the administrations of Presidents
Clinton, Johnson, Kennedy, and Eisenhower also browbeat and ignored
intelligence.
General
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