Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [145]
Given the range of issues on which they must work, senior policy makers probably are not fully conversant with every issue. The best policy makers know what they do not know and take steps to learn more. Some are less self-aware and either learn as they go along or fake it.
The most dreaded reaction to bad news is killing the messenger, referring to the practice of kings who would kill the herald who brought bad news. Messengers—including intelligence officers—are no longer killed for bringing bad news, but bureaucratic deaths do occur. An intelligence official can lose access to a policy maker or be cut out of important meetings.
Policy makers can also be a source of politicization in a variety of ways (see chap. 6): overtly—by telling intelligence officers the outcome the policy maker prefers or expects; covertly—by giving strong signals that have the same result; or inadvertently—by not understanding that questions are being interpreted as a request for a certain outcome. Again, the repeated briefings requested by Vice President Dick Cheney in the period before the start of the war in Iraq were seen by some, mostly outside the intelligence community, as a covert pressure on the intelligence community for a certain outcome—agreement that Iraq was a threat based on its possession of weapons of mass destruction. Even though this was the analytic conclusion, an investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that was highly critical of the analytic process found no evidence of politicization.
THE USES OF INTELLIGENCE. One of the divides between policy makers and intelligence officers is the use to which the intelligence is put. Policy makers want to take action; intelligence officers, although sympathetic and sometimes supportive, are concerned about safeguarding sources and methods and maintaining the community’s ability to collect intelligence.
For example, suppose intelligence suggests that officials in a ministry in Country A have decided to arrange a clandestine sale of high-technology components to Country B, whose activities are a proliferation concern. The intelligence community has intelligence strongly indicating that the sale is going forward, although it is not clear whether Country A’s leadership is fully aware of the sale. The State Department, or other executive agencies, believes that the situation is important to U.S. national interests and wants to issue a démarche to Country A to stop the sale. The intelligence community, however, argues that this will alert Country A—and perhaps Country B as well—to the fact that the United States has some good intelligence sources. At a minimum, the intelligence community insists on having a hand in drafting the démarche so as to obscure its basis. This can result in a new bureaucratic tug of war, because the State Department wants the démarche to be as strong as possible to get the preferred response—cessation of the sale.
This type of situation arises so frequently that it is accepted by both sides—policy and intettigence—as one of the normal aspects of national security. The struggle is analogous to the divide between intelligence officers and law enforcement officials: Intelligence officers want to collect more intelligence, whereas law enforcement officials seek to prosecute malefactors and may need to use the intelligence to support an indictment and prosecution. On occasion, policy officials cite a piece of open-source intelligence that makes the same case that the classified intelligence does, and they then argue that it can be used as the basis