Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [48]
The PDB, SEIB, and Executive Highlights are all current intelligence products, focusing on events of the past day or two at most and on issues that are being dealt with at present or will be dealt with over the next few days. NIEs are long-term intelligence products that attempt to estimate (not predict) the likely direction an issue will take in the future. Ideally, NIEs should be anticipatory, focusing on issues that are likely to be important in the near future and for which sufficient time exists to arrive at a community-wide judgment. This ideal cannot always be met, and some NIEs are drafted on issues that are already on policy makers’ agendas. If these same issues demand current analysis, it is distributed through other analytical vehicles or via a SNIE.
The following are questions the intelligence community must consider in the dissemination of information.
• Among the large mass of material being collected and analyzed each day, what is important enough to report?
• To which policy makers should it be reported—the most senior or lower ranking ones? To many or just a few?
• How quickly should it be reported? Is it urgent enough to require immediate delivery, or can it wait for one of the reports that senior policy makers receive the next morning?
• How much detail should be reported to the various intelligence consumers? How long should the report be?
• What is the best vehicle for reporting it—one of the items in the product line, a memo, a briefing?
The intelligence community customarily makes these decisions taking into account a number of factors and making the occasional trade-offs between conflicting goals. Ideally, the community employs a layered approach, using a variety of intelligence products to convey the same intelligence (in different formats and degrees of detail) to a broad array of policy makers. Its decisions should also reflect an understanding of the needs and preferences of the policy makers and should be adjusted as administrations change.
Most discussions of the intelligence process do not include the consumption phase, given that the intelligence is complete and has been delivered. However, this approach ignores the key role played by the policy community throughout the entire intelligence process.
FEEDBACK
Communications between the policy community and the intelligence community are at best imperfect throughout the intelligence process. This is most noticeable after intelligence has been transmitted. Ideally, the policy makers should give continual feedback to their intelligence producers—detailing what has been useful, what has not, which areas need continuing or increased emphasis, which can be reduced, and so on.
In reality, however, the community receives feedback less often than it desires, and it certainly does not receive feedback in any systematic manner, for several reasons. First, few people in the policy community have the time to think about or to convey their reactions. They work from issue to issue, with little time to reflect on what went right or wrong before pushing on to the next issue. Also, few policy makers think feedback is necessary. Even when the intelligence they are receiving is not exactly what they need, they usually do not bother to inform their intelligence producers. The failure to provide feedback is analogous to the policy makers’ inability or refusal to help define requirements.
THINKING ABOUT THE INTELLIGENCE PROCESS
Given the importance of the intelligence process as both a concept and an organizing principle, it is worth thinking about how the process works and how best to conceptualize it.
Figure 4-2, published by the CIA in A Consumer’s Handbook to Intelligence, presents the intelligence cycle (as the guide calls it) as a perfect circle. Beginning at the top, policy makers provide planning and direction, and the intelligence community collects intelligence, which is then processed and exploited, analyzed and produced, and disseminated to the policy makers.
Although meant to be little more than a quick