Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [43]
An obvious way to fill the requirements gap left by policy makers would be for the intelligence community to assume this task on its own. However, in a system such as that of the United States, where a strict line divides policy and intelligence, this solution may not be possible. Intelligence officials may feel that the limits on their role preclude making the decision; policy makers may view intelligence officials who seek to fill the void as a threat to their function and may even react with hostility.
The intelligence community thus faces two unpalatable choices. The first is to fill the requirements vacuum, running the risk of being wrong or accused of having overstepped into the realm of policy. The second is to overlook the absence of defined requirements and to continue collection and the phases that follow, based on the last-known priorities and the intelligence community’s own sense of priorities, fully realizing that it may be accused of making the wrong choices.
Some intelligence managers might take issue with this interpretation of their choices. They would note, correctly, that one function of intelligence is to look ahead, to identify issues that are not high priority at present but may be so in the future. But, as important as this function is, it is difficult to get policy makers to focus on issues that are far off or only possibly significant. They are hard-pressed to work on the issues demanding immediate attention. Intelligence officers may be tempted to “shop” an issue, that is, to look for some policy maker who will take interest in it and thus enhance its priority, but this comes very close to breaching the intelligence-policy barrier once again. Thus, the requirements conundrum remains.
Conflicting or competing priorities are also an issue. Although some sense of order may be easily imposed on certain issues, others may end up claiming equal primacy. Again, policy makers should make the difficult choices. In reality, most governments are large enough to have various competing sectors of interest either between or within departments or ministries. The result is that, once again, the intelligence community may be left to its own devices. In an intelligence community such as that of the United States, parts of the community may reflect the preferences of the policy makers to whom they are most closely tied. In some cases, there may be no final adjudicating authority, leaving the intelligence community to do the best it can. In the U.S. system, the National Security Council (NSC) sets the policy and intelligence priorities. The director of national intelligence (DNI) should be the final adjudicator within the intelligence community, but the director’s ability to impose priorities on a day-to-day basis across the entire intelligence community remains uncertain. All issues tend to get shorter shrift when too many are competing for attention.
Figure 4-1 Intelligence Requirements: Importance Versus Likelihood
One intellectual means of assessing requirements is to look at the likelihood of an event and its relative importance to national security concerns. Of great concern will be high-likelihood and high-importance events. It should be easier to assess importance (which should be based on known or stated national interests) than it is to assess likelihood (which is itself an intelligence judgment or estimate). (Likelihood, however, is not a prediction. See the discussion in chap. 6.) For example, during the cold war a Soviet nuclear attack would have been judged a high-importance but low-likelihood event. Italian government instability would have been judged a high-likelihood but low-importance event. Of the two, the Soviet issue would rank higher as a priority or intelligence concern because of its potential effect, even though an attack seemed possible in only a few instances and an Italian government fell several dozen times.