Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (16 page)

Read Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy Online

Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

DISSEMINATION AND CONSUMPTION
 
The process of
dissemination,
or moving the intelligence from the producers to the consumers, is largely standardized. The intelligence community has a set product line to cover the types of reports and customers with which it must deal. The product line ranges from bulletins on fast-breaking and important events to studies that may take a year or more to complete.
PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF. The president’s daily brief (PDB) is delivered every morning to the president and some of the president’s most senior advisers by the PDB staff. Formerly this was a CIA function but now comes under the DNI. The PDB is formatted to suit the preferences of each president in terms of length, display, detail, use of graphics, and so on.
 
WORLDWIDE INTELLIGENCE REVIEW. The WIRe is an electronically disseminated analytical product, the successor to the CIA’s Senior Executive Intelligence Brief and the
National Intelligence Daily,
both of which were viewed as early morning intelligence “newspapers.” WIRe articles vary in length and detail and include links and graphics that allow readers to drill down for more information.
 
DIA/J2 EXECUTIVE HIGHLIGHTS. Unlike the SEIB, which is theoretically a product of the entire intelligence community as all agencies have an opportunity to comment on articles, the Executive Highlights is prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Although it is produced primarily for Department of Defense (DOD) policy makers, this product is also circulated elsewhere in the executive branch. Thus, in the sense of offering a different array of issues and perhaps different analyses, the Executive Highlights is a counterpart to the SEIB. On any given day, the SEIB and Executive Highlights cover some of the same issues, as well as issues that are of particular interest to their primary readers. The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had long produced a similar morning report of its own, the Secretary’s Morning Summary (SMS). In 2001, INR abandoned the SMS, relying on other vehicles to communicate with its major policy customers.
 
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES. National intelligence estimates (NIEs) are the responsibility of national intelligence officers (NIOs), who are members of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which now comes under the DNI. (The NIC had come directly under the DCI but was considered separate from the CIA.) NIEs represent the considered opinion of the entire intelligence community and, once completed and agreed to, are signed by the DNI for presentation to the president and other senior officials and to Congress. The drafting of NIEs can take anywhere from a few months to a year or more. Special NIEs, or SNIEs (pronounced “sneeze”), are written on more urgent issues and on a fast-track basis.
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 schematic presentation, the CIA diagram misrepresents some aspects and misses many others. First, it is overly simple. Its end-to-end completeness misses many of the vagaries in the process. It is also oddly unidimensional. A policy maker asks questions and, after a few steps, gets an answer. There is no feedback, and the diagram does not convey that the process might not be completed in one cycle.
 
Figure 4-2
The Intelligence Process: A Central Intelligence Agency View
Source:
Central Intelligence Agency.
A Consumer’s Handbook to Intelligence
(Langley, Va.: Central Intelligence Agency; 1993).
 
 
Figure 4-3
The Intelligence Process: A Schematic
 
A more realistic diagram would show that at any stage in the process it is possible—and sometimes necessary—to go back to an earlier step. Initial collection may prove unsatisfactory and may lead policy makers to change the requirements; processing and exploitation or analysis may reveal gaps, resulting in new collection requirements; consumers may change their needs or ask for more intelligence. And, on occasion, intelligence officers may receive feedback.
This admittedly imperfect process can be portrayed as in Figure 4-3. This diagram, although better than the CIA’s, remains somewhat unidimensional. A still better portrayal would capture the more than occasional need to go back to an earlier part of the process to meet unfulfilled or changing requirements, collection needs, and so on.
Figure 4-4 shows how in any one intelligence process issues likely arise (the need for more collection, uncertainties in processing, results of analysis, changing requirements) that cause a second or even third intelligence process to take place. Ultimately, one could repeat the process lines over and over to portray continuing changes in any of the various parts of the process and the fact that policy issues are rarely resolved in a single neat cycle. This diagram is a bit more complex, and it gives a much better sense of how the intelligence process operates in reality. being linear, circular, and open-ended all at the same time.
 
Figure 4-4
The Intelligence Process: Multilayered
 
KEY TERMS
 
ad hocs
analysis and production
collection
consumption
dissemination
downstream activities
feedback
footnote wars
priority creep
processing and exploitation
requirements
tyranny of the ad hocs
FURTHER READINGS
 
The intelligence process in the United States has become so routinized in its basic steps and forms that it is not often written about analytically as an organic whole. These readings are among the few that attempt to examine the process on some broader basis.
 
Central Intelligence Agency.
A Consumer’s Handbook to Intelligence.
Langley, Va.: CIA, 1993.
Johnson, Loch. “Decision Costs in the Intelligence Cycle.” In
Intelligence
: Policy and Process.
Ed. Alfred C. Maurer and others. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985.
—. “Making the Intelligence ‘Cycle’ Work.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
1 (winter 1986-1987): 1-23.

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