Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [99]
For analysts, I&W can be a trap rather than an opportunity. Their main fear is failing to pick up on indicators and give adequate warning, which in part reflects the harsh view of intelligence when it misses an important event. In reaction, analysts may lower the threshold and issue warnings about everything, in effect crying wolf. Although this may reduce the analyst’s exposure to criticism, it has a lulling effect on the policy maker and can cheapen the function of I&W.
Terrorism presents an entirely new and more difficult I&W problem. Terrorists do not operate from elaborate infrastructures, and they do not need to mobilize large numbers of people for their operations. One attraction of terrorism as a political tool is the ability to have a large effect with minimal forces. Thus, an entirely new I&W concept is needed to fight terrorism, one more likely to catch the much smaller signs of impending activity. In some respects, the I&W function for terrorism becomes very close to police work and keeping watch over neighborhoods or precincts, looking for things that “just don’t look right.” Terrorism also raises the duty to warn issue. lf credible evidence indicates a potential attack, does the government have a responsibility to warn its citizens? A warning may tip off the terrorists to the fact that their plot has been penetrated, thus putting sources and methods at risk. Also, citizens may become inured to—if not downright cynical about—recurring changes in the level of warning, especially if the attacks do not occur. Some may come to believe that the government, and especially the intelligence agencies, is trying to cover itself in case an attack does occur. This phenomenon has been seen in the United States since 2001 as alerts have been issued and then withdrawn after the threat subsided or failed to materialize.
OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS. I&W is not only one of the most important analytic functions but it is also one that comes naturally to intelligence analysts. A primary reason to have intelligence agencies is to avoid strategic surprise (see chap.1). I&W is a means to that end. But I&W can become something of a trap, a theme that is reverted to too often lest something be missed.
Policy makers understand that I&W leaves them in the position of reacting to intelligence. But policy makers also want to be actors, to achieve goals and not just prevent bad things from happening. As more than one senior policy maker has said, “I want intelligence that helps me advance my agenda, that makes me the actor, not the reactor.” This is often referred to as opportunity analysis.
Opportunity analysis is a sophisticated but difficult type of analysis to produce. First, it requires that the intelligence managers or analysts have a good sense of the goals that the policy maker seeks to achieve. Successful opportunity analysis may require some degree of specific and detailed knowledge of these goals. For example, knowing that a goal is arms control may not suggest many useful avenues of opportunity analysis beyond broad generalities. Knowing that the goals include certain types of weapons or restrictions would be more helpful. Thus, again, emphasis is placed on the importance of the intelligence analysts knowing the intended directions of policy. Second, opportunity analysis often seems more difficult or riskier as it requires positing how foreign leaders or nations will react to policy initiatives. Positing a foreign action and then describing either the consequences or possible reactions often seems easier than the reverse process. After all, an analyst often feels more comfortable understanding how a nation or its policy makers are likely to react