Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [42]
Identifying requirements, conducting collection, and processing and exploitation are meaningless unless the intelligence is given to analysts who are experts in their respective fields and can turn the intelligence into reports that respond to the needs of the policy makers. The types of products chosen, the quality of the analysis and production, and the continuous tension between current intelligence products and longer range products are major issues.
The issue of moving the analysis to the policy makers stems directly from the multitude of analytical vehicles available for disseminating intelligence. Decisions must be made about how widely intelligence should be distributed and how urgently it should be passed or flagged for the policy maker’s attention.
Most discussions of the intelligence process end here, with the intelligence having reached the policy makers whose requirements first set everything in motion. However, two important phases remain: consumption and feedback.
Policy makers are not blank slates or automatons who are impelled to action by intelligence. How they consume intelligence—whether in the form of written or oral briefings—and the degree to which the intelligence is used are important.
Although feedback does not occur nearly as often as the intelligence community might desire, a dialogue between intelligence consumers and producers should take place after the intelligence has been received. Policy makers should give the intelligence community some sense of how well their intelligence requirements are being met and discuss any adjustments that need to be made to any parts of the process. Ideally, this should happen while the issue or topic is still relevant, so that improvements and adjustments can be made. Failing that, even an ex post facto review can be tremendously helpful.
REQUIREMENTS
Each nation has a wide variety of national security and foreign policy interests. Some nations have more than others. Of these interests, the primacy of some is self-evident—those that deal with large and known threats, those that deal with neighboring or proximate states, and those that are more severe. But the international arena is dynamic and fluid, so occasional readjustments of priorities are likely even among the agreed on key interests. For example, the Soviet Union was the overwhelming top priority of U.S. intelligence from 1946 to 1991, after which the country as we knew it ceased to exist. The problems associated with its fifteen successor states have been very different and required different intelligence strategies. In the early years of the twenty-first century there has been a resurgence of Russian power, based largely on its control of oil and natural gas. Also, terrorism has been a concern of U.S. national security policy since the 1970s, but the nature of the terrorism issue changed dramatically in 2001. So, even for issues that have long been on the national security agenda, there are shifts in priorities and in the intrinsic importance of the issues.
Given that intelligence should be an adjunct to policy and not a policy maker in its own right, intelligence priorities should reflect policy priorities. Policy makers should have well-considered and well-established views of their own priorities and convey these clearly to their intelligence apparatus. Some of the requirements may be obvious or so long standing that no discussion is needed. The cold war concentration on the Soviet Union was one such priority.
But what happens if the policy makers do not decide, find that they cannot decide, or fail to convey their priorities to the intelligence community? Who sets intelligence priorities then? These questions are neither frivolous nor hypothetical. Senior policy makers often assume that their needs are known by their intelligence providers. After all, the key issues are apparent. A former secretary of defense, when asked if he ever considered giving his intelligence