Pat M. Holt
from the
Dissatisfied
with what the CIA is telling the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has set up his own unit to analyze reports from the CIA and other agencies. He
is relying on this process for justification of his bellicose policy toward
It is typical
of presidents to want the CIA to report what they want to hear. When Lyndon
Johnson sent troops to intervene in the
During the
first Bush administration, when CIA director William Webster told the House
Armed Services Committee that the collapse of Soviet and Warsaw Pact military
power was irreversible, Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, now vice
president, complained that such statements made it more difficult for him to
persuade Congress to approve the defense budget.
With respect
to
For example,
we might have bribed a foreign official or broken a foreign code. If the
intelligence is disclosed, the foreign government will recognize the source and
take steps to ensure that we cannot use it again. Maybe it executes the person
who told us; maybe it changes the code. This is what is meant by protecting
sources and methods.
Sometimes,
however, there is no such intelligence; there are no secrets being protected.
What is happening is that a government official (sometimes the president
himself) has made an assertion that is unsupported by
evidence.
During the
cold war, Defense and CIA consistently differed in their estimates of Soviet
military strength. Whenever this happened, liberals accused Defense analysts of
inflating intelligence estimates; conservatives accused the CIA of minimizing
them. Finally, it was agreed that outside experts would be brought in to provide
independent judgments. They were organized into Team A and Team B, one examining
Defense data and methodology, the other that of the CIA. The Senate Intelligence
Committee made its own review and reported that the exercise was inconclusive.
When the end of the cold war opened Soviet files to some extent, it was found
that both Defense and CIA had overestimated Soviet military spending, Defense
more so.
Aside from
the different approaches to intelligence by Defense and CIA, there are other
reasons for this deep-seated rivalry. One is money. The director of the CIA is
charged by law with coordinating the government's intelligence work, but most of
the money (an estimated 80 percent) is concealed in the Defense Department
appropriation. In addition, a great deal of the actual collection and analysis
of intelligence is done by the Defense Department. This includes the operation
of spy satellites as well as the tactical intelligence of the armed
forces.
It should be
said that interpreting intelligence (what do hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
reports, some of them conflicting, mean, if anything?) is no simple task. The
question of bias applies alike to the analyst and the policymaker to whom he
reports. Does either or both have an ax to grind? The informed observer can
never be sure. He can only identify with experience some telltale signs to look
for.
• Pat M.
Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.