Brookings: Topics - Central Intelligence Agency

Lessons of the Syrian Reactor

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:01:00 -0400

The office of the assistant to the president for national-security affairs in the West Wing of the White House is a spacious, well-lit corner room in a building where space is at a premium. It contains not only the national-security adviser’s large desk but also a table for lunch discussions and other small meetings as well as a couch and easy chairs for more relaxed discussions. In April 2007, this commodious setting was the scene of a remarkable meeting. Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser at the time, welcomed Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, who came with a special briefing for his American host. Dagan revealed a secret nuclear reactor in the final stages of construction in the Syrian desert, developed with the help of North Korea. Knowledge of this project constituted a stunning intelligence coup for Israel.

Later that year, on September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Syria’s nuclear facility at Al Kibar along the Euphrates River. The mission emerged from more than two decades of comprehensive intelligence collection and analysis by American and Israeli intelligence services targeting Syria’s development of weapons of mass destruction. It was a dramatic demonstration of intelligence success—all the more so given the ongoing civil war that has devastated Syria since 2011. The world does not need to worry about a Syrian nuclear reactor under threat of capture by Islamic radicals. Israel took that concern off the table.

But the incident also demonstrated that once a policy-intelligence feedback loop becomes dysfunctional, as happened to the George W. Bush administration after it exaggerated and distorted intelligence estimates to justify the Iraq War, there are serious policy implications. Israel wanted America to take out the reactor, but Bush was constrained by an intelligence community unwilling to cooperate with another major military operation based primarily on intelligence data.

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Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The National Interest

Image Source: © Ho New / Reuters

Droning on: Thoughts on the Rand Paul “Talking Filibuster”

Sarah A. Binder — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Sen. Rand Paul has just completed his nearly thirteen hour filibuster against John Brennan's nomination to head the CIA. Breaking off his filibuster (because, he inferred, he had to pee), Rand was heralded for bringing back the "talking filibuster." There was much written (and tweeted) about his filibuster, which began with Paul’s dramatic:

"I will speak until I can no longer speak…I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court."

I thought I would add a few late-night thoughts in honor of this day spent with C-Span 2 humming in my ear.

First, I think Jon Bernstein’s reaction to the filibuster was right on the mark. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm for the talking filibuster today, from Ezra Klein's "If more filibusters went like this, there’d be no reason to demand reform," to Josh Marshall’s, "This is a good example of why we should have the talking filibuster and just the talking filibuster." But Bernstein raises a critical point: "Today’s live filibuster shows again just how easy it is to hold the Senate floor for an extended period." The motivation of recent reformers has been to reduce filibustering by raising the costs of obstruction for the minority. In theory, making the filibuster more burdensome to the minority—while putting their views under the spotlight—should make filibusters more costly and more rare. (Paul did note in coming off the Senate floor tonight that his feet hurt…) But as Bernstein points out, Paul believes in his cause, and it plays well with his constituencies. On the physical front, the tag-team of GOP senators rallying to Paul's cause also lessened the burden on Paul (as would have a pair of filibuster-proof shoes). That said, today's filibuster was a little unusual. The majority seemed unfazed by giving up the day to Paul’s filibuster, perhaps because the rest of Washington was shutdown for a pseudo-snow storm. Moreover, the Brennan nomination had bipartisan support, with Reid believing there were 60 senators ready to invoke cloture. In short, today's episode might not be a great test case for observing the potential consequences of reform.

Second, keep in mind that this was a double-filibuster day. The nomination of Caitlin Halligan for the DC Court of Appeals was blocked, failing for the second time to secure cloture. With 41 Republican senators voting to block an up or down confirmation vote on Halligan, an often-noted alternative reform (which would require 41 senators to block cloture instead of 60 senators to invoke it) would have made no difference to the outcome. And what if the minority had been required to launch a talking filibuster to block Halligan’s nomination? Reid might have been willing to forfeit the floor time to Paul today. But Reid would unlikely have wanted to give up another day to Halligan’s opponents. As Steve Smith has argued, the burden of talking filibusters also falls on the majority, which typically wants to move on to other business. "Negotiating around the filibuster," Smith has argued, "would still be common." On a day with two successful minority filibusters (at least in consuming floor time and deterring the majority from its agenda), we can see why the majority might be reticent to make senators talk.

Third, let's not lose sight of the target of Rand's filibuster: The head of the CIA. Although the chief spook is not technically in the president’s cabinet, the position certainly falls within the ranks of nominations that have typically been protected from filibusters. Granted, that norm was trampled with the Hagel filibuster for Secretary of Defense. But rather than seeing the potential upside of today's talking filibuster, I can't help but see the downside: In an age of intense policy and political differences between the parties, no corner of Senate business is immune to filibusters.

All that said, what's not to like about a mini demonstration of a real live filibuster?! Perhaps Paul's late day Snickers break was cheating. But it was a good C-Span type of day overall, for filibuster newbies to Franklin Burdette devotees. Even Dick Durbin well after midnight seemed to be enjoying the fray. Perhaps there’s a silver lining for talking filibusters after all.

Authors

Sarah A. Binder

Publication: The Monkey Cage

Image Source: © Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Ill Will and the Multiplier Effect: Counterterrorism Attacks in Pakistan

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

A story from northwest Pakistan involves a discrepancy between reality and perception with regard to U.S. drone strikes. Last month two attacks in the tribal belt generated the kind of spreading news that has come to be routinely associated with the drones. A couple of al-Qaeda types are killed, but so are several villagers. The Pakistani foreign ministry lodges a protest with the U.S. embassy. According to American officials, however, the United States and U.S. drones were not involved at all in the attacks. “They were not ours,” said one official.

American speculation is that the Pakistani military conducted the attacks and attributed them to the United States to escape blame for the collateral damage. If so, this represents a reversal of a previous Pakistani practice of claiming responsibility for what really were U.S. drone strikes, to escape the embarrassment of allowing the Americans to conduct, or not preventing them from conducting, attacks on Pakistani territory. So a variable in this case is whatever public relations problem the Pakistani military and government most want to avoid in any given week.

There is a larger phenomenon at work, however, which helps to account for the believability of the Pakistani cover story. Once the United States gains a reputation for something, for good or for ill, the reputation not only becomes hard to shake but also gets applied by foreign populations in an exaggerated or overly expansive way. People are reacting to the reputation more than to individual events, because their perception of an event is heavily colored by the reputation.

This phenomenon can sometimes work to the advantage of the United States. It is involved in deterrence; a reputation for striking back can dissuade others from some transgression without actually having to strike them. But more often lately it has been a disadvantage. This applies particularly to the reputation the United States has acquired for Muslim-bashing. Americans tend not to understand the phenomenon fully because they see this reputation as a bum rap and know their intentions are better than that. They not only do not realize what is coloring other Muslims' interpretation of American actions in their part of the world; they also miss how some of their actions are adding to the reputation and thereby coloring the interpretation of future events.

The policy lesson in this is to take full account of the reputation-based multiplier effect in weighing the costs and benefits of actions ranging from drone strikes to military deployments and much else. The policy-maker needs to realize how existing reputations will color how foreign publics and governments interpret whatever action is being contemplated. He also needs to realize how the action may in turn affect the reputation of the United States and thus affect how the United States will be either thanked or hated for future actions—maybe even actions the United States itself does not commit.

Authors

Paul R. Pillar

Publication: The National Interest

Image Source: © Ho New / Reuters

The Danger of Groupthink in the Obama Administration

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

David Ignatius has an interesting take on national security decision-making in the Obama administration in the wake of the reshuffle of senior positions taking place during these early weeks of the president's second term. Ignatius perceives certain patterns that he believes reinforce each other in what could be a worrying way. One is that the new team does not have as much “independent power” as such first-term figures as Clinton, Gates, Panetta and Petraeus. Another is that the administration has “centralized national security policy to an unusual extent” in the White House. With a corps of Obama loyalists, the substantive thinking may, Ignatius fears, run too uniformly in the same direction. He concludes his column by stating that “by assembling a team where all the top players are going in the same direction, he [Obama] is perilously close to groupthink.”

We are dealing here with tendencies to which the executive branch of the U.S. government is more vulnerable than many other advanced democracies, where leading political figures with a standing independent of the head of government are more likely to wind up in a cabinet. This is especially true of, but not limited to, coalition governments. Single-party governments in Britain have varied in the degree to which the prime minister exercises control, but generally room is made in the cabinet for those the British call “big beasts”: leading figures in different wings or tendencies in the governing party who are not beholden to the prime minister for the power and standing they have attained.

Ignatius overstates his case in a couple of respects. Although he acknowledges that Obama is “better than most” in handling open debate, he could have gone farther and noted that there have been egregious examples in the past of administrations enforcing a national security orthodoxy, and that the Obama administration does not even come close to these examples. There was Lyndon Johnson in the time of the Vietnam War, when policy was made around the president's Tuesday lunch table and even someone with the stature of the indefatigable Robert McNamara was ejected when he strayed from orthodoxy. Then there was, as the most extreme case, the George W. Bush administration, in which there was no policy process and no internal debate at all in deciding to launch a war in Iraq and in which those who strayed from orthodoxy, ranging from Lawrence Lindsey to Eric Shinseki, were treated mercilessly. Obama's prolonged—to the point of inviting charges of dithering—internal debates on the Afghanistan War were the polar opposite of this.

Ignatius also probably underestimates the contributions that will be made to internal debate by the two most important cabinet members in national security: the secretaries of state and defense. He says John Kerry “has the heft of a former presidential candidate, but he has been a loyal and discreet emissary for Obama and is likely to remain so.” The heft matters, and Kerry certainly qualifies as a big beast. Moreover, the discreet way in which a member of Congress would carry any of the administration's water, as Kerry sometimes did when still a senator, is not necessarily a good indication of the role he will assume in internal debates as secretary of state. As for Chuck Hagel, Ignatius states “he has been damaged by the confirmation process and will need White House cover.” But now that Hagel's nomination finally has been confirmed, what other “cover” will he need? It's not as if he ever will face another confirmation vote in the Senate. It was Hagel's very inclination to flout orthodoxy, to arrive at independent opinions and to voice those opinions freely that led to the fevered opposition to his nomination.

Nevertheless, Ignatius is on to something that is at least a potential hazard for the second Obama term. The key factor is not so much the substantive views that senior appointees bring with them into office. As the cliché goes, a president is entitled to have working for him people who agree with his policies. The issue is instead one of how loyalty—not only to the president, but collective loyalty as part of the president's inner circle—may affect how senior officials express or push views once they are in office.

In this regard it is useful to reflect on the meaning of “groupthink.” The term has come to be used loosely as a synonym for many kinds of conventional wisdom or failure to consider alternatives rigorously. But the father of research on groupthink, the psychologist Irving Janis, meant something narrower and more precise. Groupthink is pathology in decision-making that stems from a desire to preserve harmony and conformity in a small group where bonds of collegiality and mutual loyalty have been forged. It is the negative flip side of whatever are the positive attributes of such bonds. LBJ's Tuesday lunch group was one of the original subjects of Janis's writing.

With this in mind, the second term appointment that becomes even more interesting regarding Ignatius's thesis is that of John Brennan. Ignatius has Brennan well-pegged, including a comment that he “made a reputation throughout his career as a loyal deputy.” One might expand on that by observing that among Brennan's talents—and they are considerable—is a knack for what is often called managing up. Earlier in his career he was a protégé of George Tenet, and during the past four years he appears to have forged a similar relationship with Barack Obama.

One ought to ask what all of this might mean for Brennan's ability and willingness to speak truth not only to power, but to his patron—and to do so especially at politically charged times when his patron may be under pressure or may have other reasons for wanting to move in a particular direction in foreign policy. This is more of a question with Brennan than it would have been with David Petraeus if he were still the CIA director. Petraeus was very conscious of the truth-to-power issue, and more generally of the importance of objectivity, when he was appointed. As he himself observed, on matters relating to Afghanistan he might find himself “grading my own work.” Because the issue was recognized and involved obvious matters such as the Afghanistan War, and because there was nothing even remotely resembling a patron-protégé relationship between Petraeus and Obama, the issue was not destined to be a significant problem. The intimate, cloistered nature of the patronage involved in the Obama-Brennan relationship is something quite different.

Against this backdrop—and given how the Obama administration appears to have signed on to the conventional wisdom about unacceptability of an Iranian nuclear weapon—one ought to look more closely at a troubling line in Brennan's statement submitted to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for his confirmation hearing. In listing some of the national security challenges that require “accurate intelligence and prescient analysis from CIA,” the statement said: “And regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems rather than fulfilling their international obligations or even meeting the basic needs of their people.” Two countries, Iran and North Korea, get equated in this statement even though one already has nuclear weapons (and recently conducted its third nuclear test) while the other forswears any intention of building any. There are other related differences as well, including ones having to do with international obligations: North Korea renounced the Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 and has been a nuclear outlaw for ten years, while Iran is a party to the treaty and conducts its nuclear work under IAEA inspections.

The judgment of the U.S. intelligence community is that Iran has not to date decided to build a nuclear weapon and, as far as the community knows, may never make such a decision. One would think that senators would be making better use of time if, instead of asking for the umpteenth time for still more information about the Benghazi incident, they would ask instead why the nominee to be CIA director, by saying that Tehran is “bent on pursuing nuclear weapons,” disagrees with a publicly pronounced judgment of the intelligence community.

If a crunch comes that is related to this issue, perhaps the rest of the intelligence community will play a beneficial role. I have been quite critical of the intelligence reorganization of 2004 as being a poorly thought-out response to the post-9/11 public appetite to do something visible that could be called “reform.” The rapid turnover in the job of director of national intelligence is a symptom of the problems the reorganization has entailed. The current director, James Clapper, deserves the public's thanks for taking a thankless job and performing it with distinction. But maybe in the face of certain types of personal relationships and certain decision-making patterns, the new arrangement can have some payoffs. If Clapper—who does not figure into Ignatius's discussion of Obama's inner circle—becomes, on Iran or any other issue, a counterweight to any White House-centered groupthink that might emerge in that circle, he will have earned even more thanks.

Authors

Paul R. Pillar

Publication: The National Interest

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

What It Takes to Fight the Terrorists

Ursula Wilder — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

President Obama has characterized John Brennan, his nominee for CIA director, as “one of our most skilled and respected professionals” and by quipping: “I’m not sure he’s slept for four years.” Mr. Brennan has been the chief adviser at the White House on counterterrorism and homeland security.

I have worked alongside and formally studied the professionals who do the work of counterterrorism, and the president’s comments touched on the dedication, determination, and also the stress, intensity, and exhaustive pace of work that characterizes this cadre of exceptional people.

Despite how they are often portrayed on screen and in fiction, they are ordinary people tackling intransigent problems, against monumental odds, often while in personal danger. In contrast to their terrorist opponents, they are neither grandiose nor deluded and are not emotionally or morally stunted. They do not think they are invulnerable to criticism or that history will guarantee them success. They know they can make terrible mistakes, and they know real failure.

Take for example the now iconic photograph of the president and his cabinet watching events unfold during the raid in Abbottabad in May 2011 in pursuit of Osama bin Laden. We now know how that raid would end. At the time the photo was taken, however, these world leaders did not know how the story would end, and it shows in their faces. You do not see hubris or vanity in this shot, but tense, tired, mature people with stress in their eyes. The president is seated on a folding chair; the vice president and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff hold rosaries; the room is too small; coffee cups are strewn on the table. This image has become iconic among the thousands available surrounding that historic raid because this scene was not staged; it shows the world’s most powerful political leaders at their most vulnerable, doing the job of countering terrorism together.

In the course of my research on the psychology of those engaged in countering terrorism, policymakers from various administrations described the politics they must manage in the counterterrorism arena as particularly challenging and ethically demanding. Political misjudgment, the errors of others, unforeseen outcomes, or even simple bad luck can result in catastrophe and haunting personal second-guessing on the part of a politician, with a crushing sense of personal responsibility.

They also described to me how their mental energies can be wholly colonized by terrorism, how shifting attention from the daily terrorist “threat stream” to concentrate on other important political priorities—or even to simply enjoy daily life, or to get a good night’s sleep—takes an effort of active will. For all that, the policymakers said that in countering terrorism, they are using their talents and living out their political vocations at a peak of intensity and significance.

As with the politicians, the field professionals in counterterrorism—those who physically go where the terrorists operate “on the ground”—also report exerting their talents to the maximum. Their fieldwork is physically dangerous, as exemplified by the September 2012 killing of a U.S. ambassador and three of his colleagues in Benghazi, Libya; the killing in December 2009 of seven CIA officers in Khost, Afghanistan; and the many thousands of deaths and wounding of U.S. military since 9/11. Field professionals measure their personal courage while also facing psychologically harrowing conditions.

Consider for example the psychological experiences of personnel whose jobs take them to the scenes of terrorist bombings to secure the site, succor the wounded, recover the dead, or conduct forensic investigations and deal with desperate and bereaved loved ones who come to the site. I was told by several such personnel that you never forget the distinct smell of the site of a terrorist bombing. Yet these field professionals described their job as intensely rewarding and themselves as privileged to perform them.

Another vital class of counterterrorism officials—often caricatured in fictional treatments—are the intellectuals. Intelligence analysts, targeting officers, and other “brain workers” immerse their minds daily in the malevolent worldviews of terrorists. As a result their own worldviews can become more somber. They experience frustration and anxiety when their hard-won insights are not acted on. They fear analytic failure, dread missing something critical. Their successes are anonymous and often secret. Every successful terror strike is an opportunity to experience guilt, self-doubt, and failure. Yet they are passionately dedicated to their work and believe it is vital.

One terrorism analyst described to me working at his desk inside the Pentagon on 9/11, running out of the building after the plane struck, then pushing his way back into the burning building with some colleagues over the strenuous objections of first responders. They needed to get back to their desks and assist in the frantic analytic efforts to understand what was happening to the nation that day. He said that for him and many other terrorism analysts, “every day after that was 9/12.” I suspect that the new CIA director, if confirmed, shares these sentiments.

Authors

Ursula Wilder

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Larry Downing / Reuters

Separating Facts from Fiction In Zero Dark Thirty, Hollywood’s Take on the Death of Osama bin Laden

Benjamin Wittes — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

After nearly ten years of diligent CIA intelligence work, U.S. Navy SEALs tracked 9-11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan and killed him. It was an attack that resonated around the world and is now portrayed in the movie, Zero-Dark-Thirty. Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes discusses the facts and the myths in Hollywood’s telling of the fateful events leading to the death of the notorious al Qaeda leader.

Video

Separating Facts from Fiction In Zero Dark Thirty

Authors

Benjamin Wittes

John Brennan Is An Excellent Choice to Lead the CIA

Bruce Riedel — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:30:00 -0500

John Brennan is an excellent choice to be the next director of the CIA. He served in the agency both on the analytic and operational sides of the organization. He has an insiders understanding of the unique culture of the spy organization. At the same time he has the confidence of the President from four years in the White House as Obama's counter terrorism czar. Its a very unique skill set. He will inherit an agency facing some key decisions. For a decade, the CIA has rightly been pre-occupied with the al Qaeda threat and supporting two large wars. The era of large ground wars is ending even as the al Qaeda threat is being transformed by the Arab Awakening from Mali to Syria. The challenge ahead will getting conflicting priorities right in an era when America faces many intelligence requirements with tighter budgets to meet them. The DCIA also oversees a global espionage alliance and he has to build and manage productive liaison relations with many other countries, some friends and some not so friendly or even worse. Brennan has years of experience with this clandestine diplomacy. His close ties to Obama will enhance his strengths as America's top spy master.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

Syria and Chemical Weapons: What Can the U.S. Do Now?

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Syria has the Arab world’s most lethal arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, hundreds of chemical warheads, dozens of Scud missiles and bombs which can deliver them anywhere in the Levant. Stopping them from falling into terrorist hands should be our top intelligence priority.

Syrian scientists developed an effective chemical weapons program using primarily the nerve agent sarin, a substance 500 times more toxic than cyanide, in the 1980s. Syria mated the nerve agent with Scud missiles and with bombs and artillery shells. When Israel learned of the Syrian program it considered military action to destroy it but concluded the program was too disbursed to be susceptible to air attacks without an unacceptable risk that Syria would respond by firing chemicals into Tel Aviv. Securing all of the arsenal today would require a very large military intervention.

As Syria collapses further into chaos over the next few months the most immediate danger is that al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, the al-Nusra front, will take control of a military facility with a cache of chemical weapons. They could use them against Assad’s forces, or more likely spirit them into a third country to attack an American target. Jordan foiled an al-Qaeda plot to attack our Embassy in Amman this fall with mortar fire. How well al-Qaeda could maintain and use chemicals is unknown. Chemical weapons in amateur hands can be very dangerous both to the amateur and his enemy. We don’t want to take the chance.

The key to stopping al-Qaeda or Hezbollah gaining control of a cache is good real time actionable intelligence. The CIA and Mossad have had almost two years to ramp up intelligence collection on Syria but it’s a formidable challenge. U.S. and Jordanian commandoes need to be ready to secure any loose bombs.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Washington Post

Image Source: © Yazan Homsy / Reuters

The CIA Directorship Needs a 10-Year Term, Without the Politics

Bruce Riedel — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Through no fault of his own, President Obama is about to appoint his third director of the Central Intelligence Agency in less than four years. That is no way to run espionage. We need consistency and a 10-year, one-term-only, apolitical director akin to the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The C.I.A. has two crucial jobs, collecting and analyzing information on national security issues, and conducting covert, often paramilitary, operations abroad. The agency has a long history of doing both, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

In the 1960s the agency ran enormous covert operations in Indochina with its own air force and a systematic campaign to kill Viet Cong cadre (the Phoenix program). At the same time its analysts generally told the White House that America was losing the war. Director Richard Helms delivered truth to power because he enjoyed the confidence of the president and was seen as an objective truth teller.

Ronald Reagan introduced politics into the director's job when he appointed his campaign manager, Bill Casey, to be director in 1981. Casey over saw the agency’s most decisive covert action program ever, the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan by an American-Pakistani-Saudi intelligence alliance. But his term at the top ended in arms for hostages and Iran-contra. George Bush and Dick Cheney pushed for the Iraq weapons of mass destruction estimate they wanted and that ended in a quagmire. More recently four of the last five director's have prematurely proclaimed the demise of Al Qaeda.

The best way to ensure the intelligence process can both produce the best analysis possible, free from political and policy influence, and that covert operations are smart and legal is to ensure the director is an independent actor not subject to political pressure. Making the job a 10-year appointment, which will cross the lines of elections, offers a way to reduce the risk of politicization.

The director would still be subject to Senate approval and still report to the president via the director of National Intelligence so checks and balances would be kept appropriately rigorous. But he or she (and we are over due for a female spy master) should be an independent actor providing the White House, Congress and the nation the best intelligence possible.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The New York Times

Image Source: © Larry Downing / Reuters

After Petraeus: Replacing the CIA Director

Bruce Riedel — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:46:00 -0500

The position of director of central intelligence had a long history of scandal well before David Petraeus's resignation. The DCI position is also not nearly as powerful as it once was. But it's still a critical job and President Obama needs to pick the right successor to the war hero who resigned.

Many DCIs have left under a shadow. Allen Dulles, who was in command of the agency when it put the shah back in power in Iran, left after the disastrous Bay of Pigs debacle. JFK was furious at the CIA.

Bill Casey, probably the most powerful DCI ever and the only one who sat as a cabinet member, died before the investigation of his central role in the Iran-Contra affair shifted into high gear. It was fortunate timing for the ex-OSS man: he probably would have gone to jail over the scandal, which involved trading arms for hostages. Other directors have left after revelations about assassination plots, high-level foreign penetrations of the agency, terror plots missed, and missing weapons of mass destruction. The agency soldiers on; much of its veteran workforce is used to living in a controversy-prone outfit that often takes the hit for decisions made in the Oval Office.

Only one DCI really went on to bigger things: George H. W. Bush, who came to the job after the scandals discovered in the early 1970s. He didn’t stay long, but the headquarters complex now bears his name. No one who spent his career at the agency and worked as an intelligence officer for the CIA has been in charge since before Bush.

Dulles, Bush, and Casey not only ran the CIA, they were in charge of the entire intelligence community. They oversaw national intelligence estimates and signed off on the president’s daily brief every night before it was delivered to the top customer. Now the director of national intelligence does all that and is the DCI’s boss. And the real boss in the Obama administration is John Brennan, a career CIA officer, who works inside the White House as Obama’s counterterror czar. The president trusts him for good reason: he knows what he’s doing.

It may not be a good job to get promoted from; prone as it is to scandal and dishonor, it is not what it once was. But CIA director is still a key position. Like 007’s boss M, the DCI runs a global network of spies often in very dangerous places like Benghazi or Afghan forward operating bases. Mistakes bring home dead officers or bad intelligence or both. Today the job description includes running a drone war from Pakistan to Yemen—a conflict which is only likely to get bigger.

The DCI also oversees the best analysts in America who can find high-value targets and help bring them to justice. They also predict China’s future, the Euro’s fate, understand Saudi royal-family politics and monitor Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Often the DCI has to deliver very bad news to presidents—as Richard Helms did about Vietnam to LBJ. He said the war was going badly when the generals and diplomats all said it was OK.

That is the most vital requirement Obama needs to look for: a man or woman who will deliver truth to power no matter how unpopular the task. America needs a spy master who will tell his boss the truth he doesn’t want to hear, who won’t cherry pick the spy reports and who, if it is the only way to avert disaster, will resign instead of backing a flawed intelligence estimate. It’s a tall order.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Post-Petraeus CIA Should Kill Less and Spy More, Former Chief Says

Noah Shachtman — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

When David Petraeus got the job of CIA chief, he knew what job #1 was: find out everything he could about al-Qaida and its allies — and then assist in their removal from the land of living. Fourteen months and more than 110 drone strikes later, the breaking of al-Qaida’s core that began under Petraeus’ predecessors is almost complete. Yet a major chunk of the nation’s intelligence community remains singularly focused on terrorism.

It’s time to give that a rest, a former leader of the Central Intelligence Agency says — especially with Petraeus gone. There’s a whole world out there that needs to be snooped on.

“We have been tremendously focused on counterterrorism for the last 11 years [since 9/11]. How do you now begin to make sure that you cover other necessary things without making the country less safe?” asks former CIA director and retired Gen. Michael Hayden.

Nearly every major international security concern facing Petraeus’ successors is, in essence, a question of intelligence: What is Iran’s nuclear capability, really? Which way will the Syrian civil war go? Why is China building up its Navy so fast? What the hell is Kim Jong-Un up to? “Those are things that you’re not going to learn through diplomacy or through press reporting. And that takes you to intelligence,” notes John E. McLaughlin, the CIA’s former acting director. He doesn’t believe the counterterrorism necessarily needs to be pared back. There are just all these other jobs that the nation’s spy agencies have to handle. “The biggest challenge may be the sheer volume of problems that require intelligence input.”

That broader mission set carries all kinds of risks for the U.S. intelligence community, beyond the obvious ones of resource allocation. The counterterror focus has kept morale afloat at Langley, even when there’s enormous turnover at the top: five directors in eight years. The last time Washington’s spies were left to juggle so many different jobs was the 1990s, which are now seen by American intelligence professionals as a demoralizing, aimless chapter in their history.

Nor is it clear how much help the skills honed since 9/11 will be in these new missions. The intelligence agencies are going to have to redouble their efforts to listen in on phone calls, steal documents, and find well-placed sources in foreign capitals who can be turned to work for America’s interests. They’ll need the analysts who can tease out of these complex, often contradictory sources of information subtle meanings on political developments and strategic shifts. The White House isn’t about to order a paramilitary raid on Beijing, after all.

“We have been laser-focused on terrorism, OK? And some of that is very high end, very sophisticated, very nuanced. But an awful lot of that, when you step back, looks more like targeting than it does classical intelligence,” Hayden tells Danger Room.

Hayden knows a bit about targeting militant suspects. The CIA-led drone war in Pakistan began to really ramp up in the late summer of 2008, when Barack Obama was just a presidential candidate — and Hayden was in charge of the agency. He says he constantly had to be careful not to let the manhunt become the entire job.

“I knew how much of my day would have been consumed with counterterrorism if I had not tried to discipline myself — and more broadly, the agency — to work hard to have a broader perspective. That’s not a criticism [of the CIA today]. But you can’t always let the urgent drown out the important,” Hayden says. It’s a tension that’s even more acute today, he adds: “If anything, the operational tempo has only increased.”

Of course, the nation’s spies haven’t just been chasing al-Qaida. There’s been an active campaign of espionage and sabotage against the Iranian nuclear program, for instance, and a quiet effort to keep dictators like Bashar al-Assad of Syria from getting the gear and chemicals needed to make nerve gas and other weapons of mass destruction. The monitoring of China’s and Russia’s leadership has not exactly ground to a halt.

A few days before he abruptly resigned, Petraeus’ spokesperson told Danger Room that he was in no way allowing the drone strikes and the counterterror raids to dominate his day. ”From his first day on the job, Director Petraeus has sought to achieve a balance between our counterterrorism efforts and ensuring the Agency’s ability to cover the full range of national security challenges facing the U.S.,” Jennifer Youngblood said in an e-mail. ”While counterterrorism remains a top priority, the Agency is equally determined to enhance our capabilities against the enduring threats from strategic competitors and adversaries that will always be at the core of our mission. In fact, Director Petraeus has overseen the development of an initiative to increase global coverage significantly, and that effort is now ongoing.”

But according to one person who used to brief Petraeus, the CIA director didn’t seem to be completely locked in when discussing matters outside the Middle East and Central Asia. “He was focused on his legacy in the sandbox,” the former intelligence official tells Danger Room.

Almost of the candidates currently floated as Petraeus’ replacements have something of a drone warrior reputation: Michael Morrell, Petraeus’ deputy, helped his boss carry out the whack-a-militant mission; White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan presides over the administration’s “matrix” of who deserves a robotic end; Pentagon intelligence chief Michael Vickers has been battling off and on in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region since the 1980s, when he was the “principal strategist for the largest covert action program in the CIA’s history,” as his Pentagon biography puts it.

Which means the new occupant of Petraeus’ chair will have to take on some rather unfamiliar tasks — while protecting the agency as it comes under criticism for its performance in Libya. Even before Petraeus’ resignation, the CIA was being condemned for downplaying its role in the events that led up to the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, for ignoring cries for help from its field operatives in Benghazi, and then for pulling its employees from Benghazi after the assault. A closed-door hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Benghazi is scheduled for Thursday.

So add one more task to the substantial to-do list awaiting the next CIA chief: keeping the reputation it built up during the drone-and-night-raid years. As if keeping tabs on the entire world wasn’t enough.

Authors

Noah Shachtman

Publication: Danger Room (Wired)

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

Death of Suleiman: Egypt's Revolution Outlives its Torturers

Omar Ashour — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Faced with thousands of Egyptians in Tahrir Square in February 2011, the man responsible for the security of the Mubarak regime was reportedly asked what he wanted the protesters to do.

"I want them to go home," came his reply.

General Omar Suleiman, the former head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Apparatus (EGIA), Hosni Mubarak's deputy just before his ousting, and a former presidential candidate, died aged 76 in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 19, 2012. But his legacy will undoubtedly live on.

Suleiman was the head of the EGIA, the country's espionage agency, for 18 years between 1993 and 2011 - making him the longest serving director since the authority's establishment in 1954. General Salah Nasr, who is credited for building the institution and launching a "spy war against Israel", headed it for only ten years (1957-1967).

Suleiman's legacy is unique. During his tenure at the EGIA, many Egyptians believe that the principal mandate of the institution changed - from counter-espionage with a focus on Israel to counter-opposition with a focus on Islamists, a major change in institutional dogma. The EGIA reportedly began pursuing opposition figures locally and abroad, coordinating even with Israeli security services and reportedly torturing Egyptian and Arab citizens to extract information for foreign security services, most notably the US Central Intelligence Agency. Orchestrating such acts, Suleiman's name appeared in many US diplomatic cables, several of which were released by WikiLeaks. One "confidential" cable from the US embassy in Cairo described the relationship as follows: "In this regard, our intelligence collaboration with Omar Soliman, who is expected in Washington next week, is now probably the most successful element of the relationship." But the change of dogma and the resulting shift in behaviour implicated Suleiman in a variety of human rights violations. Activists and human rights organisations have accused him and his organisation of ordering or being complicit in torture, extra-judicial killings and extraordinary renditions.

Alleged CIA role

One of the most notable of the aforementioned violations is the case of Talaat Fu‘ad Qassim, an Egyptian refugee in Denmark who was a spokesman for the armed Islamic group Gama'a Islamiyya in the 1990s, and a former member of its governing council. According to Richard Clarke, then the head of counter-terrorism efforts at the US National Security Council, Qassim was taken into custody by US forces and handed over to the EGIA. He has not been seen since. Qassem's lawyers and family believe that he was executed in 1995.

Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi (Ali Mohammed al-Fakheri) is the second most infamous case under Suleiman. He was a Libyan citizen reportedly captured and interrogated by the CIA, the EGIA, and other security services. The George W Bush administration cited the false information al-Libi gave under torture by Egyptian authorities as evidence of the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in the months preceding the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

When the information was proven to be false, it was a source of great personal embarrassment to Suleiman. Not only had he allegedly tortured an Arab citizen to extract information for the CIA, but he also inadvertently provided justification to the Bush administration for the invasion of Iraq. This is an addition to the apparent incompetence in assessing the information extracted under torture. al-Libi was handed over to the Gaddafi regime in Libya, which Suleiman visited in May 2009. By the time Suleiman's plane left Libya, al-Libi had allegedly "committed suicide", the Gaddafi regime announced.

"This is the bloody joke," a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who was imprisoned with al-Libi in Tripoli's notorious Abu Salim prison, told me in an interview. "Al-Libi is a religious man. He would never do that. He was killed by the Libyan Internal Security Services as a favour to Suleiman."

Intelligence and politics

Domestically, Suleiman increased the political role of the EGIA, a move which became quite apparent during the revolution. He led negotiations with various pro-change forces during the 18 days of revolution, including the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation he had repeatedly accused of spawning terrorism. Suleiman offered the group a political "reform" package if the Brotherhood agreed to disband the sit-in in Tahrir Square. Otherwise, "you will face a brutal military coup", he told [Ar] revolutionaries in the meeting, according to famed poet Abdul Rahaman Yusuf.

Suleiman mastered co-option, intimidation, deception, and agent-provocateur tactics. And he was quite effective in using those tactics against Egyptian opposition, until the 2011 revolution. In the end, he was undermined by the revolution. He lived long enough to see a political prisoner from the MB as the elected Egyptian president and torture-victims as parliamentarians; still, he was just down not out.

Suleiman was notably not chosen to be among the 19 generals that formed the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. He belonged to a faction within the ruling establishment that believed that Hosni Mubarak should survive at any cost. If not, then an honourable exit, with immunity from prosecution, should be offered to him. This faction did not get its way and this ultimately affected the fate of the EGIA. The department of military intelligence, operating under General Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, was reportedly granted some of EGIA's responsibilities and extra-judicial powers - most recently the power to arrest civilians (an order which was later rescinded).

Comeback bid

Despite this loss, anti-SCAF, pro-Mubarak loyalists considered Suleiman a patriot who did not abandon his leader. For them, he was a rallying figure. "The general [Suleiman] is coming back and he is going to silence all the dogs," one of his supporters told me in a small rally after Mubarak's spy chief declared his presidential bid.

This bid was, in fact, one of several attempts made by pro-Mubarak forces to orchestrate a "comeback". These attempts involved efforts in a variety of areas, including electoral politics. The level of Suleiman's direct involvement in such attempts, however, remains unknown. But he was without a doubt an active player until the end. During his candidacy, Suleiman threatened to unleash classified information from his "black-box" to foment political chaos. The EGIA had then to release its first ever public statement: a reminder of "Law Number 100 of the Intelligence Service", which bans political involvement of its members, and the release of classified information.

Despite the potential persistence of his legacy, Suleiman's death may herald the beginning of a new era. After all, Egypt is now seeing a revolution in transparency, accountability and freedom. Its ultimate test will be whether elected civilians gain meaningful control over the intelligence and security services. Suleiman would have stood strongly and effectively against that core of democratic transition. His death may herald the crumbling of yet another obstacle to the completion of Egypt's hard-fought transition to civilian democratic rule.

Authors

Omar Ashour

Publication: Al Jazeera English

Image Source: © Asmaa Waguih / Reuters

Focus on Al Qaeda in Yemen Magnifies Chronic Instability

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

In a recent conversation, the White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and Yemen's newly elected President Abdrabu Mansour Hadi "pledged that the two countries, together with Yemen's other international partners, will work closely together to confront Yemen's security and economic challenges".

Despite the fact that Yemenis signed a power-transfer deal in November in the hopes of achieving lasting political change, this process was not mentioned in that high-level conversation. Undoubtedly, political progress has been made, with the election of a new president and the formation of a coalition government, yet economic improvements have yet to be delivered. Yemen is increasingly insecure, as the number of drone attacks has risen post-revolution.

No wonder The Washington Post reported last week: "The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, US officials said."

Since the February 25 inauguration of Yemen's new president, Abyan province has become the front of a new war against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In mid-March, the bombing of Abyan resulted in the deaths of more than 60 militants.

By mid-April, violence had escalated; at least 222 people were killed in five days of clashes around the southern town of Loder. This escalation sends a clear message that a security solution is being pursued even more aggressively today than under the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who still wields considerable power in the country. Recent actions also suggest that the pattern of investing resources in a security solution - even at the expense of economic development - is also surviving in Yemen's post-Saleh period.

With the "Friends of Yemen" scheduled to meet next month, the international community should think carefully about the aid it provides. Investing resources in fighting AQAP has caused more harm than good.

In the past few years, focus on military spending to aid the fight against AQAP has perpetuated domestic instability. This can take place in two ways. First, in the context of instability, units created to preserve security can be manipulated to serve narrow political agendas. For example, the counterterrorism unit which the US helped to create and train, headed by Mr Saleh's nephew Yahya, opted to stay in Sanaa to protect the former president during the uprising - rather than mobilise in the South to preserve security.

Yemen's security establishment remains divided between supporters of the former regime and Mr Hadi and his supporters, creating dangerous conditions for the manipulation of security resources.

Second, the fight against AQAP has created beneficiaries who now depend on continued fighting for their survival. AQAP, for instance, announced that its attack against the Yemeni army, immediately following the inauguration of Mr Hadi, killed over 100 soldiers and led to the capture of their weaponry. Al Qaeda is arming itself with the weapons meant to fight it.

Some Yemeni analysts such as Abdul Ghani Al Iryani trace the emergence of Ansar Al Sharia - an AQAP-linked group - to the December 2009 drone attack that killed over 40 people, many of whom were civilians. Mr Al Iryani suggests: "Of the thousands of Ansar Al Sharia now fighting in Abyan, the majority were not Al Qaeda; they were angered by what they saw American aggression … one event that radicalised the entire [province]".

A third reason the international community should not invest in additional attacks is that the security solution has failed miserably. The most noticeable accomplishment of the drone attacks has been the aggravation of the security situation on the ground. Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen agrees, stating that "such an approach actually does more to exacerbate the problem of Al Qaeda than it does to solve it". AQAP, which has something to fight against as long as attacks continue, has recently become stronger in Abyan, gaining control over areas such as Arhab, Jaar, Shaqra, Rawdah and Azzan.

Furthermore, continuing drone attacks are overshadowing Yemen's political process. Success in the country has been measured by the number of AQAP members killed, rather than by the development of a viable political system post-Saleh. Indeed, five months have passed since the signing of the transfer of power, yet no agreement has been signed on the location, participants or agenda of the upcoming national dialogue.

The Friends of Yemen meeting on May 23 should keep in mind that true friendship to Yemen involves helping the country become self sufficient through the delivery of economic assistance and the launch of a genuine, inclusive and sustainable national dialogue. It is also imperative for a clear political road map to emerge. The GCC-mediated power transfer led to a fragile peace, yet mistrust in the political process lingers. A successful national dialogue process may secure the now-fragile peace.

Pursuing a security solution in Yemen has created greater instability. A development strategy featuring an inclusive national dialogue should help break the cycle of violence. The time has come for a paradigm shift. A security solution is not sustainable in the long term in Yemen, yet economic development and a viable political road map are.

Publication: The National

Focus on Al Qaeda in Yemen Magnifies Chronic Instability

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Yemen's security establishment remains divided between supporters of the former regime and Mr Hadi and his supporters, creating dangerous conditions for the manipulation of security resources.

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: The National

David Petraeus: Knowing the Enemy Up Close

Bruce Riedel — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

David Petraeus is superbly qualified to be the next Director of Central Intelligence, perhaps the hardest job in Washington where successes are a secret and failures a disaster. He knows the face of our enemies up close.

Almost certainly, Petraeus will push the C.I.A. to provide better support to the military.

As commander in Iraq and Afghanistan he knows al Qaeda and its jihadist allies. As commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, he knows Iran. In both hats he knows our partners Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- both their valuable assistance and their insidious duplicity. He knows the Washington decision-making process intimately both in the White House situation room and in the Congress.

The military has long provided the agency with generals and admirals to lead it but Petraeus’s battlefield experience is unique. He has been a customer and analyst of intelligence in the field, unlike any of his predecessors. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of intelligence work products and the collection process up close where errors are deadly. Almost certainly, he will want to push the agency to up its game and provide better support to the military. Since we are fighting three wars today that makes perfect sense.

But he will also have to provide better support to what the agency calls its “first customer.” It is an open secret that President Obama and his team want better information and analysis from the intelligence community. I saw that in the administration's first 60 days. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, asked me once how is it we don’t have a clue where Osama bin Laden is after all these years. It is still a good question. Just as important is answering questions like how will Al Qaeda exploit the Arab revolutions and where is the next flash point of unrest? These are tough, big picture issues that battlefield commanders don’t usually worry about.

The challenge of getting the right tactical information to the battlefield commander and the right strategic analysis to the Oval office is daunting. It requires balancing priorities and resources very carefully. It also means conveying unpleasant facts that presidents often may not want to hear. Intelligence is more often than not bad news.

No where is that challenge harder than in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Obama inherited a disaster in south Asia, a war where early victory had been squandered and defeat was imminent two years ago. He has tried to turn the situation around despite widespread skepticism that the patient, the Kabul government, can be revived.

To succeed, we must understand our enemy and our “frenemies,” both their strengths and weaknesses, and get the best possible intelligence to our generals and our president. Tough job.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The New York Times (Room for Debate blog)

Pakistan's Role in the Afghanistan War's Outcome

Bruce Riedel — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:30:00 -0400

Rarely does a country fight the same war twice in one generation. Even rarer is to fight it twice from opposite sides. Yet that is in many ways what America is doing today in Afghanistan. In the 1980s the CIA engineered the largest covert operation in its history to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan working from a safe haven in Pakistan. Today America is fighting a Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan operating from a safe haven in Pakistan. Many suggest that the outcome will be the same for America and its NATO allies as it was for the Soviet Union—ultimate defeat at the hands of the insurgency. That analysis misses the many fundamental differences between the two wars. But it is also important to note the one major similarity between them: the key role played by Pakistan, which could again determine the outcome.

The most critical differences are goals and objectives. America intervened in Afghanistan in 2001 on the side of the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan only after it had been used as a base for the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks in America. The American goal, endorsed by the UN and NATO, was self-defence against a government that had allowed its territory to be used for an act of war against another state. From the beginning, America has had no ambition to dominate or subjugate the Afghan people, or to stay in Afghanistan once the threat posed by al-Qaeda had been removed and the Taliban defeated. President Barack Obama said this again in his speech outlining his new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on March 27th 2009.

The Soviet invasion in 1979 was a different matter. Its goal was to shore up a communist regime that was on the brink of collapse. The Soviet leadership wanted an Afghanistan that would be like other Soviet satellite states, that is, under virtual Soviet imperial rule with only the façade of independence.

The Soviet invasion and the attempt to impose communism on a rural and largely illiterate Islamic country produced the predictable result: a mass national uprising. In contrast, polls show most Afghans have supported the coalition forces that overthrew the Taliban from 2001 onwards, although that support is now dwindling as the coalition has failed to provide law and order and reconstruction. The Taliban insurgency is very much restricted to the Pashtun community. It has little appeal to the almost 60% of Afghans who are not Pashtun. The Soviet Union's task was much more difficult than the one facing NATO today.

The Soviets responded with a ferocity and brutality that made the situation even worse. At least 1.5m Afghans were killed, another 5m or so fled the country to Iran and Pakistan, and millions more were displaced inside the country. A country that began the war as one of the poorest in the world was systemically impoverished and even emptied of its people. The Soviets carpet-bombed cities such as Kandahar, whose population fell from 250,000 to 25,000. Millions of land mines were planted all over the country, with no maps kept of where they had been laid. Nothing even approaching this level of horror is happening today in Afghanistan.

If the differences between the American and Soviet experience are significant, there is also at least one major similarity: the role played by Pakistan. In the 1980s, Pakistan was the base for the Saudi-American alliance behind the mujahideen. Today, Pakistan is the safe haven of the Taliban insurgency and its logistical supply line. Pakistan also serves as the major logistical line for the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Over 80% of the supplies coalition forces depend on to survive arrive via Pakistan from the port of Karachi. Geography effectively precludes an alternative, unless the alliance is willing to rely on either Russia or Iran for its logistics.

So Pakistan has unusually strong leverage on both sides of the war. This winter, Pakistani police for the first time began arresting senior Afghan Taliban leaders, but the campaign was not sustained and proved to be a one-off. It is widely assumed in Pakistan that American and European patience to fight it out in Afghanistan is eroding, an assumption reinforced by polls that show support for the conflict steady declining on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Obama's mid-2011 deadline has been interpreted by many as signalling an early withdrawal, despite his aides' attempts to suggest otherwise.

Pakistan's passive support of the Taliban is thus a useful hedge against the day when NATO decides to start pulling out and gives up the struggle. Pakistan will then have a relationship with the Pashtun future of southern and eastern Afghanistan and will have an asset in the struggle for post-NATO Afghanistan. Thus it is crucial that the alliance makes it clear to Islamabad that the Taliban are not going to succeed on the battlefield and that Pakistan must aggressively weaken both the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban.

There is no inherent reason for the NATO war in Afghanistan to follow the pattern of the Soviet war. The differences between the two outweigh the similarities, especially in what most Afghans want for their country. While pundits may find the cliché that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empire simplistically attractive, there is every reason to believe smart policies can avoid such an outcome—but much depends on Pakistan.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Economist

The Search for al Qaeda : Its Leadership, Ideology, and FutureRevised edition

Bruce Riedel — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press 2010 186pp.

Bruce Riedel’s The Search for al Qaeda is more timely now than ever, as Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who eluded United States and allied forces for nearly a decade, was killed in a firefight in Pakistan on May 1, 2011. But as President Obama stated to a U.S. and international audience, the search and the fight against terrorism continues.“The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s efforts to defeat al Qaeda. But his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad.”

Download a free version of Chapter 7: "How to Defeat al Qaeda".

“Riedel manages to distill the essence of Al Qaeda in just 150 pages. Among other things, he notes that the Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America’s values, only its policies. . . . A starting point for a much-needed debate.”
—New York Times Book Review
Al Qaeda is the most dangerous terrorist movement in history. Yet most people in the West know very little about it, or their view is clouded by misperceptions and half truths. This widely acclaimed book fills this gap with a comprehensive analysis of al Qaeda—the origins, leadership, ideology, and strategy of the terrorist network that brought down the Twin Towers and continues to threaten us today.
Bruce Riedel draws on decades of insider experience—he was actually in the White House during the September 11 attacks—in profiling the four most important figures in the al Qaeda movement: Osama bin Laden, ideologue and spokesman Ayman Zawahiri, former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musaib al Zarqawi (killed in 2006), and Mullah Omar, its Taliban host. These profiles provide the base from which Riedel delivers a much clearer understanding of al Qaeda and its goals, as well as what must be done to counter and defeat this most dangerous menace.

Praise for the Hardcover Edition:

“Bruce Riedel’s The Search for al Qaeda is in parts alarming and in parts reassuring. Yes, we need to be worried Riedel argues. . . . Yet the situation is not hopeless: good policy would ameliorate the problem. In a literature tending towards either the blithe or the fatalistic, Riedel’s book stands out. . . . An extremely valuable primer.”
—Clive Crook, Financial Times
“A timely book with solid analysis and important policy advice by a former insider about how to more effectively deal with al Qaeda, the broader challenge of extremism, and the core issues in the world’s most volatile region. The next administration should read closely.”
—Robin Wright, author of Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East
“If you are tired of the same old talking heads blathering on TV about things they don’t really know about, this is the book for you. Bruce Riedel is the real expert on al Qaeda.”
—Leadership Development News

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce Riedel

Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He served in the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly three decades, advising three U.S. presidents as a senior adviser on Middle East and South Asian issues in the White House. At the request of President Obama, he chaired an interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan for the White House that was completed in March 2009.

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{BEE4D1CC-5E07-4799-AEF4-76EAC977FCEC}, 978-0-8157-0451-5, $19.95 Order
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A Response to Ken Lieberthal's Report on the Intelligence Community

Matthew Frankel — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

As a Federal Executive Fellow in Brookings’ 21CDI project I read last month’s publication "The U.S. Intelligence Community and Foreign Policy: Getting Analysis Right" by Ken Lieberthal with great interest.

It’s a fascinating work. The paper covers a lot of ground and makes some excellent points, most notably on the IC’s First Customer focus and on the difficulties surrounding the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) process. Regarding the IC’s PDB obsession, I would argue the pendulum is beginning to swing back towards a greater emphasis on longer-term research under this administration. As to the dysfunctional NIE process, part of the underlying problem with their creation is that it is not clear exactly what role the National Intelligence Officers are supposed to play in this process: clearinghouse for the views of the entire IC or producers of their own independent analysis. The idea, historically, has been for the NIC to play the former role but the subordination of the NIC to the DNI seems to be pushing it towards the latter. Either way, I wholeheartedly agree with the author’s assertion that we should resist the urge to declassify the finished products.

I have to differ, however, on the constant assertion that the IC falls short in "deep country knowledge." While we clearly need analysts with deep substantive expertise on China, Iran, Russia and other countries of high importance, there is just as great a need for broad specialists with strong analytic tradecraft, and swinging the pendulum too far back towards area specialization would damage the IC’s efforts in many key areas, especially those of highest national security importance.

For example, in August 2001, few could have predicted the importance that Afghanistan would pose to the intelligence community over the following years. At the time, only a handful of analysts were Afghanistan experts; in order to plus up the analytic cadre, a number of generalists, who could more easily transfer accounts and quickly produce strong intelligence analysis on a totally new target, were shifted to Afghanistan. Generalists have been able to make the transition to surge accounts more seamlessly and tend to stay on the issue longer than area specialists, who often feel out of their comfort zone. Continuing to successfully support efforts on Afghanistan, Iraq and counter-terrorism will be more difficult if the IC becomes, as Lieberthal argues, more specialist-centric.

It seems to me that Lieberthal’s vision for the intelligence community is to be a think tank with access to classified information, but that uses the secret information only to buttress what is already available in the unclassified realm. However, there is far more value and context to classified information than the author seems to believe. For example, debriefings of detainees in Iraq provided not only tactical targeting information on militant networks but also vital strategic information on these groups not readily available in the unclassified world—a far cry from the claims that it is "substantively marginal." The belittling of the value of classified information is a bit disingenuous, especially where Lieberthal claims that it is more subject to manipulation. Is information gained from "official" government statistics or press releases not subject to manipulation as well?

We should also not downplay, as the report does, the importance of the ties between analysts and operations officers. One of the main findings of the 9/11 Commission concerned the dangers of firewalls between analysts and operators and, since then, the flow of information between the two camps has increased exponentially to their mutual benefit. On one hand, Lieberthal decries the IC’s lack of understanding of the credibility of its sources but at the same time, they seek to distance analysts from building the types of relationships that would help shed light on this credibility.Finally, the argument about the lack of interaction between the IC and the think tank/academic world is overstated. While there are certainly security concerns at play, there are still numerous opportunities for regular contact. For example, Brookings annually hosts a member of the intelligence community as a fellow and a number of its senior fellows have given presentations at IC-sponsored conferences throughout DC.

Authors

Matthew Frankel

Examining the Procedures Used by the U.S. Intelligence Community

Kenneth G. Lieberthal — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:16:21 -0400

Ken Lieberthal reveals that many of the procedures and processes used by the U.S. Intelligence Community are flawed and often counterproductive. In The U.S. Intelligence Community and Foreign Policy Getting Analysis Right, Lieberthal identifies weaknesses in the intelligence services and recommends actions for strengthening this important tool of U.S. foreign policy.

Video

The U.S. Intelligence Community and Foreign Policy

Kenneth G. Lieberthal — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0400

Executive Summary

Intelligence analysis seeks to provide necessary information in a timely manner to help policymakers from the president on down make better decisions. The information and judgments must be pertinent to what policymakers need to know but not skewed to support a particular policy outcome. In reality, this is more of an art than a science, especially because the manner and means of most effectively informing the president and other senior policymakers changes with the preferences and working style of each new administration.

The Intelligence Community (IC) of the United States has been undergoing major reforms since 2005 when President George W. Bush signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. Under the new Director of National Intelligence, the shortcomings in intelligence analysis that came to light in the wake of the 9/11 and Iraq WMD intelligence failures are being addressed through revamped analytic standards, increased resources for the IC, and numerous organizational and procedural changes. These analytic transformation initiatives seek to reduce barriers among organizations and individuals across the IC and to more effectively prioritize missions.

As of now, many of these innovative initiatives are in the development stage. Once completed, given their conceptual and technological complexity, it will be important to continually assess whether these initiatives result in a significantly improved analytic product. Mindsets and cultures of various IC components may prove serious obstacles to the kind of open and collaborative environment envisioned in these efforts; these new capabilities may prove most effective among digitally- savvy analysts in their twenties rather than among more senior analysts and managers.

Against this background of ongoing reform, this study assesses the current state of play, identifies systemic concerns, and offers practical ideas to improve analytic transformation and make the interactions between the analytic community and policymakers more effective. Extensive interviews with current and former policymakers and intelligence community analysts and managers reveal that there are flaws in the current system that require dedicated attention. The most consequential include:

Overemphasis on the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) – President George W. Bush elevated the PDB to an unprecedented level of importance, which had the unintended effect of skewing intelligence production away from deeper research and arms-length analysis to being driven by the latest, attention-grabbing clandestine reports from the field.

Disappointing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) – NIEs are meant to be one of the major products of the IC, yet they are frequently too late, too long, and too detailed to serve high-level policymakers well. Moreover, NIE analytic quality is often compromised by the effort to present a unified analytic position, producing reports that can become the lowest common denominator statement that is able to achieve agreement across the IC silos.

Analytic Risk Aversion – In the wake of the Iraq WMD fiasco, the pendulum has swung decidedly toward a tendency for analytical products to focus on amalgamating all potentially relevant data and to present only that to policymakers—leaving it up to them to draw the analytic conclusions. DNI Dennis Blair has recently made a welcome commitment to having opportunity analysis— the identification by analysts of unanticipated windows of opportunity to advance U.S. policies—become a key component of intelligence products.

Insufficiently Deep Country Knowledge – Many of the young IC analysts are trained to follow a particular stream of information from ”their” country but lack the deep immersion in the country’s political system, economy, and modern history necessary to produce nuanced, insightful analytic products. Moreover, very burdensome security constraints make it extremely difficult for them to build that kind of analytic depth.

Overemphasis on Classified Sources – IC analysts tend to gravitate to information obtained by clandestine means. Yet much of that information lacks context and is substantively rather marginal. As a consequence, analyses overly driven by classified sources may suffer from ignorance of important information in unclassified sources. This is especially notable with the explosion of unclassified material now available on key targets such as China.

This report’s recommendations to address these shortcomings fall into three broad categories.

On improving the capabilities of analysts:

Recruit a greater percentage of the incoming class of analysts from those in their late twenties and early thirties who have had extensive experience related to the country of concern – This change can present a security challenge but the added benefits in terms of maturity, life experience, and deeper country knowledge are worth the additional effort and attention needed to clear these individuals.

Establish a National Intelligence University with its own campus and faculty – If the vision of a truly integrated analytic corps is to be achieved, there needs to be an academy that allows the IC to not only establish crossagency relationships and cultivate common standards and procedures, but also to better draw lessons from its own historical successes and failures and to incorporate those into training programs.

Devote greater time and attention to formal training – To address the question of analytic depth, special short-term courses that draw in specialists from outside of the IC and that test participants’ learning in the course should be conducted on a regular basis. Moreover, analysts should be encouraged to attend programs held by various Washington-area think tanks, not (as is now the case for many) discouraged due to security concerns.

Nurture and reward area specialists – There is no substitute for the key analyst with deep substantive knowledge and experience on a single country or issue. The IC may wish to consider assigning some analysts to conduct in-depth studies of major long-term issues in key countries such as China (e.g. study of the long-term evolution if civilian-military relations in the PRC) in order to help a cohort of analysts develop such depth.

Break stovepipes in analytic assignments – On National Intelligence Estimates and other key products, consideration should be given more often to assigning individuals from two different disciplines joint leadership in developing the analysis. This would foster, for example, greater integration of political and technical analysis of missile development.

On improving the utility of IC analytical products for policymakers:

Provide formal introductory briefings for incoming policymakers on IC capabilities and limitations – Often, new policymakers come into office with very impressionistic and misinformed views on what the IC is able to produce. Senior IC managers should develop introductory briefings that help policymakers think critically about their intelligence needs and how they can best utilize the IC.

Assign IC analysts systematically to provide on-site support to policymakers at and above the assistant secretary level – This not only can help the policy maker but also can provide invaluable feedback to the IC about the policy maker’s actual intelligence needs.

Develop regular feedback mechanisms from the policymaker to analysts – Periodic meetings can greatly help the IC understand the look-ahead intelligence requirements of policymakers and garner critical feedback on materials sent over since the last such meeting.

Allow for NIEs with formal dissenting opinions, similar to Supreme Court decisions – In such NIEs, dissenters can write specific dissenting opinions and even those who agree can pen concurring opinions that articulate a distinctive analytical approach.

Train analysts in the power dynamic between analysts and policymakers – The desire of analysts to please the most senior intelligence consumers who are driving to a decision based, in part, on intelligence judgment can lead analysts unintentionally to overstate their confidence in the intelligence. Analysts need to be better trained and equipped to understand the subtle effects of power dynamics between analysts and policymakers, and policymakers need to keep in mind that their power and positions are intimidating to many analysts who brief them.

On improving the ability of policymakers to elicit and utilize high quality IC analysis:

Encourage policymakers to better articulate their intelligence questions and priorities – Taking the time to think through the analytic question they want answered will pay dividends for policymakers. Requests that do not assume the form of analytical questions too often fail to motivate IC analysts to think through the implications of their data, debate the relative significant of different factors, and make explicit their levels of confidence in their responses.

Elicit what analysts know, what they don’t know, and what they think is likely to happen – Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told his IC briefers that they would be responsible if he took action based on what they said they know and do not know but that he would be responsible if he took action based on what analysts said when asked what they think is likely to happen. As a result, he incentivized analysts to be both rigorous and thoughtful.

Provide the IC with the insights the policymakers themselves gain from their meetings with foreign officials – Presidents and many other senior policymakers are experts at “reading” other political leaders—a skill most IC analysts understandably do not share. If such insights are routinely shared they may improve the quality of intelligence analysis, especially as regards elite politics.

Avoid as much as possible the temptation to declassify NIEs – When NIEs are likely to be declassified, analysts are prone—either consciously or subconsciously—to pull their punches and hedge their analysis. Moreover, the impulse to declassify NIEs or to leak selectively from NIEs is often based on the faulty assumption that the IC’s analysis can and should authoritatively settle a policy debate.

In the wake of failures early in this decade, the Intelligence Community today has both the opportunity and obligation to transform itself. With fifty percent of the IC workforce hired since 9/11, there is now a large pool of young, technologysavvy talent that is eager to be shaped into a superior new IC. Indeed, cultural shifts based on the information age almost guarantee that many important changes will happen simply because of the nature and talents of this younger generation.

Ongoing IC cultures of insularity and secrecy, though, present major obstacles to realizing the IC’s full potential. For example, some IC managers continue to deny information to other parts of the community because they do not utilize identical security screenings, such as the polygraph. To cite another example, the need for a National Intelligence University has been understood for some time, but the IC’s sixteen disparate agencies still resist merging their educational and training programs. This resistance highlights that the IC still has some distance to go in terms of individual agency cultures and mindsets if it is to be truly unified under the leadership of the DNI.

The division of labor and of tasking among the major components of the IC should remain a concern. Post 9/11 changes created the ODNI and repositioned the CIA and the NIC, among other shifts. In short, key pieces have been moved on the IC chessboard, and such major changes inevitably require a substantial period of time to gel fully. This report does not, therefore, provide specific recommendations on additional changes in the distribution of responsibilities and authorities among the major IC players. But the research suggests that a thoughtful review of current relationships—especially those among ODNI, the NIC, CIA, DIA, and INR—might prove of considerable value again in about two to three years.

Finally, the task of analytic transformation cannot fall on the IC alone. Policymakers can affect the quality of analysis if they do take the time to provide clear and candid feedback to the IC. Policymakers also should understand the process of intelligence analysis to the point that they can read products as well-informed customers. It would be helpful to good analysis if policymakers realized their own value as IC sources. They should in particular inform analysts of relevant discussions with foreign leaders that may shed light on intentions and motivations. Too often policymakers simply assume that analysts know what the policymakers themselves know, and that comes at some cost to insightful IC analysis.