Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [141]
The degree to which each administration formally communicates its requirements—versus relying on the intelligence community to know which issues matter—also varies. President Clinton was willing to go through a formal requirements exercise only once in eight years. Under President George W. Bush the requirements are reviewed every six months. No matter which method is used or the frequency of formal requirements, the intelligence community is held responsible for ensuring that it has collection and analytical resources on the most important issues. Policy makers also tend to expect that the intelligence community anticipates the emergence of new issues. After all, isn’t this one of the main functions of intelligence? The answer is not a firm yes if you take into account the fact that surprises occur: assassinations, coups, elections, reversals of policy. Not everything can be anticipated.
The difference in the approaches of policy makers and intelligence officials to requirements is not played out entirely in formulating the requirements themselves, but in the ensuing phases of the intelligence process.
COLLECTION. Policy makers tend to be divorced from the details of collection unless they involve political sensitivities. In such cases, policy makers can have direct and dramatic effects. (See box, “Policy Makers and Intelligence Collection. ”) Their practical concerns lie, first, in the budget, as collection is one of the major intelligence costs, particularly technical intelligence. But policy makers also tend to assume, incorrectly, that everything is being covered, at least at some minimal level. Thus, when one of the low-priority issues explodes, they expect that a certain low level of collection and on-the-shelf intelligence already exists and that collection can be quickly increased. Both assumptions may be strikingly false. Collection priority decisions tend to be zero-sum games, and not all collection assets are easily fungible.
The intelligence community would rather collect more than less, although intelligence officials recognize that they cannot cover everything and hope to get policy makers to concur in the areas left uncovered. Still, collection is the bedrock of intelligence. But when policy makers place limits on collection, the intelligence community obeys, even if its preference is to collect. Like the policy makers, intelligence officials are aware of the costs of collection, but they cannot spend more on collection than the policy makers (the president and Congress) are willing to allocate. The customary practice is for the policy community to set budgetary limits on collection resources that are lower than the intelligence community would like.
POLICY MAKERS AND INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION
In several instances, policy makers have intervened in intelligence collection for political reasons.
In Cuba, at the onset of the missile crisis in 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk opposed sending U-2s over the island because a Chinese Nationalist U-2 had recently been shot down over China and an Air Force U-2 had accidentally violated Soviet air space in Siberia. The need for imagery of possible Soviet missile sites in Cuba was great, but Rusk had other-also legitimate-concerns about avoiding further provocation.
In Iran, several successive U.S. administrations imposed limits on intelligence collection. Basically, intelligence officers were not allowed to have contact with those in the souks (markets and bazaars) who were opposed to the shah, because the shah’s regime would be offended Instead, U.S. intelligence had to rely on the shah’s secret police,