Enemies of Intelligence by Richard K. Betts

Author:Richard K. Betts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science/Political Freedom and Security/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

What the 2002 NIE Did, Should Have Done, and Could Have Done

The full text of the October 2002 national intelligence estimate included caveats about the limits of the evidence on which it was based as well as extensive discussion of the reasons that the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) disagreed with the conclusion. (INR’s dissent is sometimes wrongly characterized as a judgment that Saddam did not harbor WMD. INR simply remained agnostic, neither endorsing nor opposing that conclusion.) The tone of the NIE, however, was confident, and the key judgments section—the summary of conclusions which is all that many consumers read—did not convey the limitations with sufficient force. Apart from directing readers to the two long paragraphs summarizing INR’s alternative view at the end and stating that “we lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD programs,” the key judgments mainly enumerated estimated Iraqi programs and capabilities, leaving the impression that the estimates derived from observed activities as much as deduction from behavior and assumed intentions.55 Again, as Sherman Kent recalled, the same thing happened in the Cuban crisis estimate: “How could we have misjudged? The short answer is that, lacking the direct evidence, we went to the next best thing, namely information which might indicate the true course of developments.”56

With the benefit of hindsight one might argue that the strictly correct estimate in 2002 should have been that the intelligence community simply did not know whether Iraq retained WMD in being or programs to obtain them. That would have been intellectually valid but would have abdicated the responsibility to provide the best support possible to the policy process. As Kent reminisced about Cuba in 1962, when dealing with something that cannot be known for sure, “there is a strong temptation to make no estimate at all. In the absence of directly guiding evidence, why not say the Soviets might do this, they might do that, or yet again they might do the other—and leave it at that?” Foreswearing any educated guess “has the attractions of judicious caution and an exposed neck, but it can scarcely be of use to the policy man and planner who must prepare for future contingencies.”57

Ironically, it was because they were conscious of their responsibility to contribute to decision that managers of the analytic process did not err on the side of caution. They wanted to avoid equivocation to keep the estimate from sounding useless. They believed that good analysis needed “to go beyond certain knowledge” even if this meant occasionally being wrong. As Mark Lowenthal, former assistant director of central intelligence, put it, “willingness to take such risks is undermined by fears of ‘failure.’ No one wants intelligence that is brash and wrong; pusillanimous intelligence is not any better.”58

If estimators were to act realistically and earn their pay, yet remain accurate given what was known and knowable at the time, they should have posed three key judgments in the October 2002 NIE:

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