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By Root 713 0

and every mistake seemed to incur a large political cost for the intelligence agencies. This can have an additional cost in the analytic system if analysts become risk-averse because of the political costs of being wrong. Even though most observers would agree that 100 percent accuracy is unachievable, they would also argue that the “big things” are the issues where accuracy matters. Examples of such “big things” would be the existence of Iraqi WMD or the impending fall of the Soviet Union. But these are the very issues where intelligence is more likely to be wrong because they run counter to years of collected intelligence and presumably accurate analyses. Recall the pearl metaphor discussed under collection: the slow, steady accumulation of intelligence over time, often decades. This accumulative process has an effect on the analysts. It leads them to create what they believe are accurate pictures of behavior and more or less likely outcomes. But the “big things” tend to be hardest to foresee for the very reason that they run counter to all of that accumulated intelligence. Even today, long after the facts, it is difficult to make an analytical, intelligence- based case that (1) when a crisis erupts in the Soviet Union the Communist Party will peacefully give up power; or (2) that Saddam Hussein is telling the truth and has no WMD on hand.

As unsatisfactory as this standard is, other metrics are not much better. For example, a batting average could be constructed over time—for an issue, for an office, for an agency, for a product line. Or the quality of intelligence could be assessed on the basis of the number of products produced—estimates, analyses, images. But these measures are inadequate, too. Furthermore, they are not meant to be as frivolous as they seem. They are meant to give a feel for the difficulty of assessing what is good intelligence.

However, producing good intelligence is not some sort of Holy Grail that is rarely achieved. Good intelligence is often achieved. But one must distinguish between the steady stream of intelligence that is produced on a daily basis and the small amount within that daily production that stands out for some reason—its timeliness, the quality of its writing, its effect on policy. The view here—and it is one that has been debated with the highest intelligence officials—is that effort is required to produce acceptable, useful intelligence on a daily basis, but that producing exceptional intelligence is much more difficult and less frequently achieved. A conflict arises between the goal of consistency and the desire to be exceptional. An entire intelligence community cannot be exceptional all the time, but it does hope to be consistently helpful to policy. Consistent intelligence and exceptional intelligence are not one and the same. (As a cynic once said, “Only the mediocre are at their best all the time.”) Consistency is not a bad goal, but it allows analysis to fall into a pattern that lulls both the producer and the consumer. Thus, for all that is known about the distinctive characteristics of good intelligence, it remains somewhat elusive in reality, at least as a widely seen daily phenomenon. But, for analysts, that is one of the positive challenges of their profession.

In the aftermath of 9/11 and Iraq WMD, and after the promulgation of analytic standards, there still has not been closure on the key question: How good is intelligence supposed to be, how often is it to be supplied, and on which issues? There are both professional and political answers to this question, but the inherent differences between them have not been resolved.

KEY TERMS

analyst agility

analyst fungibility

analytic penetration

analytical stovepipes

assessments

clientism

competitive analysis

confidence levels

current intelligence

duty to warn

estimates

global coverage

groupthink

layering

long-term intelligence

mirror imaging

opportunity analysis

politicized intelligence

FURTHER READINGS

The literature on analysis is rich. These readings discuss both broad general issues