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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Transforming U.S. Espionage: A Contrarian's Approach
by Jennifer Sims
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, national security experts have tried to identify the causes of U.S. intelligence failures and propose structural reforms to remedy them. Yet in designing proposals for reform, experts have overlooked a contradiction with important implications for intelligence. On the one hand, academic and government-sponsored research has substantiated a disturbing trend of which the growing terrorist threat is just one part—the rise of hostile networks, net-centric warfare, and “smart mobs” empowered by modern personalized communications and the Internet.1 The prescription: de-emphasize central authority and empower lower levels of decision making because, according to this view, “it takes networks to fight networks.”2
On the other hand, the 9/11 Commission, which substanti ated the failures of U.S. government bureaucracies before the attacks, has noted the dangers of uncoordinated decision making at lower levels. The prescription: bureaucratic reforms that call for new authorities and centralized command at the highest levels of Washington’s intelligence establishment.”3
In other words, looking at what went wrong on 9/11, we have a near consensus that the United States needs a more powerful manager at the top of a more centralized intelligence community. 4 But, looking at the future of warfare, communications, and interstate competition, we also have a near consensus that decentralized authority and the ability to rapidly build and disassemble teams for field operations against a networked adversary is most essential.5
This contradiction in analysis and prescription is less interesting on its merits than it is for illustrative use in classroom discussions of the public policy process. It is, after all, far harder to legislate better intelligence policies and practices than it is to centralize and augment bureaucratic power in the hopes that someone with “real authority” at the top can do so. Academics, free from policy responsibilities, too frequently offer creative prescriptions that lack roadmaps for implementing them.6 This article bridges this gap by focusing less on struc tures than on the policies and practices of intelligence—the “how–to’s” of getting the job done. It will also focus on one of the most important domains of intelligence— human intelligence (HUMINT) or espionage, widely regarded to be under-powered as a result of years of budget cuts.7
Of course, such an approach does not mean that governmental structures are irrelevant to success. It does mean that, if one goes to the meat of the matter and asks intelligence professionals what capa bilities U.S. intelligence needs that it does not have now, the first answer will not likely be a new office in Washington. Instead, it will be to provide them with the policies and practices necessary for intelligence to succeed in the twenty-first century. If we begin with this issue of necessary capabilities and attendant con straints, it may be possible to suggest reforms that follow function and to satisfy perhaps the greatest deficiency the 9/11 Commission identified: a lack of imagi nation, practically employed.
The Conventional Wisdom on Espionage. Expert observers generally hold to three “truths” about human intelligence: it is the most important mode of intelligence collection against transnational networks such as al-Qaeda, especially when married to timely law enforcement information; reconstituting American capabilities in this area will take at least five years; and, in the meantime, gaps in espionage capabilities can be filled through foreign intelligence liaison. Insiders quietly discuss a fourth “truth”: spies posing as diplomats will no longer be effective in the new “war” against terrorism and its allies in inter national organized crime.
Whereas all four assertions contain kernels of truth, they also involve dangerous misperceptions. For example, foreign intelligence liaison provides intelligence with a catch; allies often want to help, but they have their own agendas, including influencing U.S. decisions and keeping terrorists from turning on them or crossing their own borders. Intelligence liaison demands superb counterintelligence capabilities or it risks distorting operations and misleading decision makers. Witness the results of “liaising” with Iraqi dissidents prior to the Iraq war—significant overestimation of the WMD threat. Unfortunately, counterintelligence is hardly U.S. intelligence’s strongest suit. While there are gains to be had from liaison, there is, perhaps, no way for it to fill near-term gaps in unilateral human intelligence capabilities.
Jennifer Sims is Visiting Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence Coordination and the Depart ment of State's first Coordinator for Intelligence Resources and Planning.