Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [105]
Policy makers and intelligence officers have different institutional and personal investments in the issues on which they work. The policy makers are creating policy and hope to accrue other benefits (career advancement, reelection) from a successful policy. Intelligence officers are not responsible for creating policy or for its success, yet they understand that the outcomes may affect their own status, both institutional and personal.
The issue of politicization arises primarily from concerns that intelligence officers may intentionally alter intelligence, which is supposed to be objective, to support the options or outcomes preferred by policy makers. These actions may stem from a number of motives: a loss of objectivity regarding the issue at hand, a preference for specific options or outcomes, an effort to be more supportive, career interests, or outright pandering.
Intentionally altering intelligence is a subtle issue because it does not involve crossing the line from analysis to policy. Instead, the analyst is tampering with his or her own product so that it is received more favorably. The issue is also made more complex by the fact that, at the most senior levels of the intelligence community, the line separating intelligence from policy begins to blur. Policy makers ask senior intelligence officials for their personal views on an issue or policy, which they may give. It is difficult to conceive of a DNI or a DCI always abstaining when the president or the secretary of state asks such a question.
The size or persistence of the politicization problem is difficult to determine. Some who raise accusations about politicized intelligence are losers in the bureaucratic battles—intelligence officers whose views have not prevailed or policy makers (in the executive branch or Congress, either loyal to the current administration or in opposition) who are dissatisfied with current policy directions. Thus, their accusations may be no more objective than the intelligence that concerns them. Those unfamiliar with the process are often surprised to hear intelligence practitioners talk about winners and losers. But these debates—within the policy or the intelligence community—are not abstract academic discussions. Their outcomes have real results that can be significant and even dangerous. Analysts’ careers can rise and fall as well as a result of which side of a debate they are on. Just as intelligence officers serve policy makers, career officers—both intelligence and policy—serve political appointees, who are less interested in the objectivity of analysis.
For example, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many State Department experts on China (the “China hands”) had their careers sidetracked or were forced from office over allegations that they had lost China to the communists. Numerous scholars and officials interpreted their treatment as a gross injustice. But, as Harvard University professor Ernest R. May pointed out, the U.S. public in the elections of the early 1950s largely repudiated the anti-Chiang Kai-shek views of the China hands by returning the pro-Chiang Republicans to power. So the China hands not only had ideological foes within the government, but they also had no political basis on which to pursue their preferred policies. Similarly, the careers of many intelligence officers and Foreign Service officers involved in crafting and promoting the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT II) treaty during the Carter administration failed to prosper when Ronald Reagan, who opposed the treaty, took office. Again, their careers suffered only because of an electoral victory. One can argue that these punishments were not what the electorate had in mind, but they underscore the fact that