Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [96]
DEALING WITH LIMITED INFORMATION. Analysts rarely have the luxury of knowing everything they wish to know about a topic. In some cases, little may be known. How does an analyst deal with this problem?
One option is to flag the problem so that the policy client is aware of it. Often, informing policy consumers of what intelligence officials do not know is as important as communicating what they do know. Secretary of State Colin Powell (2001-2005) used the formulation: “Tell me what you know. Tell me what you don’t know. Tell me what you think.” Powell said he held intelligence officers responsible for the first two but that he was responsible if he took action based on the last one. But admitting ignorance may be unattractive, out of concern that it will be interpreted as a failing on the part of the intelligence apparatus. Alternatively, analysts can try to work around the problem, utilizing their own experience and skill to fill in the blanks as best they can. This may be more satisfying intellectually and professionally, but it runs the risk of giving the client a false sense of the basis of the analysis or of the analysis being wrong.
Another option is to arrange for more collection, time permitting. Yet another is to widen the circle of analysts working on the problem to get the benefit of their views and experience.
A reverse formulation of this same problem has arisen in recent years. To what degree should analysis be tied to available intelligence? Should intelligence analyze only what is known, or should analysts delve into issues or areas that may be currently active but for which no intelligence is available? Proponents argue that the absence of intelligence does not mean that an activity is not happening, only that the intelligence about it is not available. Opponents argue that this sort of analysis puts intelligence out on a limb, where there is no support and the likely outcome is highly speculative worst-case analysis. On the one hand, intelligence analysis is not a legal process in which findings must be based on evidence. On the other hand, analysis written largely on supposition is not likely to be convincing to many and may be more susceptible to politicization.
For many years, the intelligence community has stressed the importance of analytic penetration, as an intellectual means of trying to overcome a dearth of intelligence sources. Analytic penetration means thinking longer and harder about the issue, perhaps making suppositions of what is most likely, and perhaps laying out a range of outcomes based on a set of reasonable assumptions. The underlying premise in analytic penetration is that the analytic community does not have the luxury of simply throwing up its hands and saying, “Sorry, no incoming intelligence; no analysis.” But if analysis is required and the sources are insufficient, there has to be rigor applied to the analysis that attempts to make up for these missing sources. This is an area where greater collaboration across offices and agencies would be most useful.
The concerns about dealing with limited intelligence arose in the reviews of intelligence performance before the 2001 terrorist attacks and the intelligence before the Iraq war (2003- ). The problems in each case were not identical. In the case of the September 11 attacks, some people criticized analysts for not putting together intelligence they did have to get a better sense of the al Qaeda threat and plans. Intelligence officials were also criticized for not being more strident in their warnings—a charge that intelligence officials rebutted—and policy makers were criticized for not being more attuned to the intelligence they were receiving. However, no one has been able to make the case that sufficient intelligence existed to forecast the time and place of the attacks. The admonition about strategic versus tactical surprise is apropos (see chap. 1). Stopping a terrorist attack requires tactical insights into the terrorists’ plans.
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