Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Cramer, and members of the subcommittee:

I appreciate the opportunity to testify today about the nation’s intelligence system and the absolute imperative for effective ongoing reform.

It is now four years and one month since the 9/11 attack on America.

The comparable date for World War II would have been January 19, 1946. By that point the United States was largely demobilizing its forces after a victorious global war.

During the comparable length of time that we have been responding to the 9/11 attacks on America, the World War II generation of Americans had rebounded from the attack on Pearl Harbor and defeated Germany, Japan and Italy, built a worldwide military and intelligence capability, built the atomic bomb, massed and organized industrial power, and laid the foundation for the worldwide network of alliances that has stabilized the world for the last sixty years.  

This difference in energy, intensity, and resolve should worry all of us.

The difference between allied success in breaking the German and Japanese codes and the level of surprise our enemies routinely achieve against us today in London, Amsterdam, and Baghdad should worry all of us, as should each of the following failures:

• the failure to dominate terrorists in Iraq;
• the failure to penetrate North Korea after 55 years of trying;
• the failure to penetrate Iran; and
• the failure to have adequate intelligence about China.

These failures are a problem for all of our instruments of national security.

For today’s purposes I will focus on intelligence.

Put succinctly, the nation’s intelligence system is broken and we cannot rest until we fix it.  

Everything we have done for the last four years must be put in the context of the Second World War because the time it took for America to win that war was shorter than the length of time since 9/11.

There has been no urgency, no resolve, and no mobilization comparable to World War II.

The creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was a start but it was only a start. At its core, intelligence reform has to be centered on performance and only then can we deal with organizational structures.  

In terms of structure, in order to develop the intelligence capabilities that America will require for the 21st Century, the Congress should actively consider a combination of the National Defense Act of 1947 with the Goldwater-Nichols systemic reforms of 1986 because that is the level of change that we need. Anything short of this scale of analysis and thinking will fail.

In this testimony, there are five themes that I urge this subcommittee to keep in the forefront of its thinking about intelligence reform.

1. America’s Global Responsibilities Are Far More Complex Today than during the Cold War

The scale, nature, and speed of national security challenges facing the United States in the early 21st century is far more complex than we faced during the Cold War and requires a new system of analysis, planning, and operations within the Intelligence Community.  

Between World War I and World War II there were a wide range of contingencies which national security planners had to take into account. Since they could not focus on any one threat and develop a plan for only a single contingency they had to develop a broad range of options.

In retrospect, the process of planning for a multitude of threats was extraordinarily useful in helping American leaders think through contingencies and develop thinking for what became a world war, crucial months before war actually commenced, a lead time that many historians claim could very well have been the deciding factor between victory and defeat for America.   This pre-planning and scenario building was crucial in such diverse elements as training schedules, logistical infrastructure development, staff training, and weapons procurements. Without this pre-planning and scenario building, our offensives in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters, starting in 1943, would have been impossible, our timetable for ultimate victory would have been off by at least a year or more, with potentially disastrous results, both during the war and during the subsequent Cold War.  

This multiple contingency process went on throughout the interwar period without regard to budget cuts, immediate threats or the debates of any particular period. It was an ongoing evolution of strategic analysis and thinking that helped shape the entire system. In the process it helped produce some of the most sophisticated senior leaders in American history.

During the Cold War the threat was so narrowly and decisively focused that strategic planners did not need to have a wide spectrum of options. Containing the Soviet Union until it collapsed was the overwhelming focus of American strategic planning from 1947 to 1991.

Then in the 1990s we were so busy absorbing the collapse of the Soviet Union and trying to accommodate the extraordinary changes from a bipolar world to one with a single superpower that comprehensive planning was virtually impossible.

Now the contingent threats and complexities of the 21st century national security world are beginning to emerge. It is possible to discern a range of challenges and a range of contingencies which need to be thought through and planned for by the Intelligence Community.  

Set forth in Appendix 1 to this statement is a list of several of the national security challenges for which the Intelligence Community must prepare in this new, complex national security environment.

We must develop a national security and homeland security system, with intelligence as a core component, which can deal with this complexity in real time in an information age.

2. The Challenges to American National Security Are Far More Difficult Today than during the Cold War

The challenges to America’s national security today are far more difficult than what we confronted during the Cold War and it will be much harder to get good intelligence than it was during WWII and the Cold War. Each challenge will require an honest assessment of intelligence requirements and a plan to satisfy those requirements.  
 
While many of the national security challenges are outlined in Appendix 1, it warrants particular mention here of the tremendous difficulty we face with our most visible national security challenge today, which we currently call the Global War on Terror.  

First, we continue to have difficulty in accurately identifying an adequate conceptual framework for this war, and the term “Global War on Terror” reflects this inadequate framework. With an inadequate conceptual framework of this war, we will be unable to determine an effective theory of victory, let alone an effective understanding of the intelligence requirements of that theory.  

Because this war is at its core an ideological war, it is more accurate to think of and identify this war as the “Long War”.  

It is stunningly hard to win a war of ideology where the enemy is religiously motivated to kill us.  

To put this into perspective, if the people of the United States were to suddenly decide that a particular concept was inherently wrong in our educational system, it could easily take 20 to 30 years to change that concept, rewrite all the text books, and retrain all the educators. That example is one completely within our culture. If one includes intercultural communication difficulties, the problem grows exponentially harder. If we use every tool at the disposal of the American people in support of a coherent theory of victory, the Long War might only last 50 – 70 years. Yet, it will probably last much longer.  

Second, unlike wars of the past, our enemy today in the Long War escapes a ready identification. As with the term “Long War”, we need to name our enemy accurately to help us properly conceptualize this war and develop the intelligence system required to win it.

We can start to overcome this difficulty by identifying the enemy in the Long War as the “Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.” It is a war against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam because this enemy believes in a strikingly different world then the one we believe in, a world with which there can be no compromise. It is an uncivilized and barbaric world that cannot be reconciled to a civilized one. This wing of Islam, and its adherents and recruits, are irreconcilable because they cannot peacefully coexist with the civilized world. Their views on the role of women, on the application of medieval religious law (the Sha’ria) and religious intolerance (prosecuting Christians) make them irreconcilable with civilization in the modern age.

This is a societal war of identity so there are no holds barred, no rules, and no real accommodations (only tactical maneuvers) or potential for compromise solutions on their part that would be culturally acceptable to us, or to them.  

Given the existence of nuclear and biological weapons and the efforts of enemies to secure them, the Long War is potentially an existential threat to our survival as a free country.   

Four years after 9/11 and with active military operations first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, it is also difficult for the American public to appreciate that this war for civilization is still only in its early stages. And that it is at once a global military fight and a battle of ideas between those who would defend civilization and those who would destroy it. The startling fact that all of the London subway bombers were British citizens strongly implies that the Bush Doctrine is only partly right. In other words, spreading democracy may be essential to win this war, but by itself it may not be sufficient. This poses a new and extraordinarily difficult challenge for America’s security.

If the London bombings were not enough evidence, one need only look at the Netherlands, a fellow democracy. In the Netherlands, there is the case of a film-maker killed by a religiously motivated extremist. The murderer has vowed to kill again if he could. From his viewpoint, this is completely rational. After all, nothing the state can do to him in this world could possibly outweigh what God can do for him in the next. We must develop a reasonable means of internal intelligence to protect Americans from threats within our borders and in a way that protects civil rights. This is something that we have never really done, will find distasteful and unnatural, and we need to have a serious discussion about what this means and how to do it. I think in a few years time, the United States will have implemented many of Tony Blair’s innovations dealing with “preachers of hate”. The only question will be if we implement them as a result of adult discussion and debate or if we do it as a knee-jerk reaction because of another major terrorist attack. If it is the latter, it will, no doubt, involve greater loss of privacy and civil rights than a more reasoned approach can ensure.

The Long War is 90% intellectual, communications, political, economic, diplomacy, and intelligence focused. It is at most 10% military. We have not yet developed the doctrine or structure capable of thinking through and implementing a Long War (30 to 70 years if we are lucky) on a societal scale. This challenge is compounded because it is fundamentally different from waging the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Cold War was essentially a grand siege in which a defensive alliance could contain the Soviet Union until it collapsed.

This is an inherently offensive war in which we have to actively defeat our opponents. Furthermore this war resembles the Reformation-era wars of religion in which fellow nationals may be traitors serving the other side (examine Elizabethan England and the origins of the English secret service as an example).  

Analyzing this societal reality, designing strategies that first avoid defeat and then achieve victory, communicating these strategies to the Congress and the American people so they understand and support them, and then communicating them to our allies and neutrals around the world in terms which they can support is a challenge dramatically more complex and difficult than the development of the containment strategy from 1947 to 1950. It is also central to our survival and to our ability to lead the world.  

Third, the Long War has a particular focus in the Middle East where Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are all potentially flash points of great danger. Within the Middle Eastern focus there are currently campaigns underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

The Iraq campaign is actually a regional campaign with enemy forces using sanctuaries in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Emirates.  

The Afghan campaign clearly has a sanctuary in northern Pakistan.

It is within this regional framework -- and with the understanding that many of the elements of financing, recruiting, arming, and planning occur outside of Iraq and Afghanistan -- which the American Intelligence Community has to operate.  

Trying to win or understand the two immediate campaigns without understanding that we are engaged in the Long War is simply hopeless. It would also be hopeless for the Intelligence Community to conceptualize these two campaigns without reference to the Long War and without identifying the enemy as the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.

3. The Intelligence Community is Grotesquely Under Sourced for the Level of Achievement that Political Leaders Claim They Want

The current intelligence system is too small, too under funded, too bureaucratic, too culturally inbred and too ineffective.  

A successful 21st century American intelligence system will require much greater capabilities with much greater resourcing and much greater complexity of organization.

One example of a national security challenge for which we are dramatically under resourced is with respect to the Gray World -- the ungoverned areas of the planet that provide sanctuary and resources to terrorists and criminals.   Appendix 1 to this statement describes the Gray World. In addition, submitted as part of this testimony is a map generated by the CIA that graphically illustrates the location of these ungoverned areas. In an age of globalization, we are all effectively adjacent to these areas. The Intelligence Community will require more resources to penetrate and understand these areas.

4. Today’s Level of Complexity and Difficulty Requires a Metric Based System of Accountability

To be sure, perfect intelligence is impossible. Not knowing something is not always an intelligence failure. Notwithstanding all the efforts we will make, we must expect that we will experience surprise in painful and dangerous ways. That is why there has to be a Department of Defense and a Department of Homeland Security for the times when intelligence is inadequate and we are taken by surprise.

Nevertheless, we are not optimized correctly to gather and exploit intelligence effectively in the 21st Century.  

The intelligence system is, to a large extent, a product of the lessons learned from World War II and the challenges of a bureaucratic and largely monolithic Soviet opponent during the 44 years of the Cold War. The intelligence agencies are largely a collection of large industrial style bureaucracies. Those bureaucracies, as effective as they once were, are not capable of dealing with the world of the 21st Century. If one looks at the organizations and tools that seem to be best adapted to the 21st Century, UPS, FEDEX, GOOGLE, Automatic Teller Machines, cell phones with cameras, EBAY, Amazon.com, etc., one can easily see that the standard of the future reflects very flat hierarchies, very lean infrastructure, very rapid turn around, and responsiveness to change. It is clear that the great inherited industrial/agricultural systems are incapable of doing those things. These large bureaucracies do not work anymore. They do not work in defense. They do not work in border control. They certainly do not work in intelligence.

We had a striking example of how poorly our large bureaucracies adapt to new challenges in the aftermath of Katrina. The images of suffering, death, and loss in New Orleans demonstrate that many of our bureaucracies are unable to adapt to the unplanned and the unexpected. It is dangerous to assume that our intelligence bureaucracies are any more adaptable or responsive.

We have to reinvent our bureaucracies and transform our government anew to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Intelligence is simply one component of the development of a 21st century effective intelligent government.  

The difference in orientation between what we are currently focused on and where we should be going can be illustrated vividly. See "Building 21st Century Government".

Of course, it is not possible to reach the desired future in one step. It will involve a series of transitions, which can also be illustrated. See "Transitioning to 21st Century Government."

We need a comprehensive review of the challenges to America, the requirements of American success, and the metrics by which that success could be measured. Then we need a thorough overhaul of the current system to achieve that success. The overhaul has to include the White House and the Congress as well as the traditional “intelligence community.”

Every intelligence agency requires a reporting process comparable to the COMPSTAT and TEAMS reporting instituted by Mayor Giuliani and Chief of Police William Bratton in the New York City Police Department and the Prisons in the 1990s, and now by Chief Bratton with the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani’s book Leadership is a superb introduction to the concept of COMPSTAT and similar reporting and managing tools. The key is for senior leadership to constantly (weekly in key areas, monthly in others) review the data and make changes in a collaborative way with the team charged with implementing the system.  

Every significant intelligence strategy requires an Assessment Room in which the senior leadership can visibly see all the key data and review the totality of the strategy’s implementation in one sweeping overview. Determining what metrics should be used to define success and maintaining those metrics with accuracy is a major part of this process. The absence of COMPSTAT systems, the absence of Assessment Rooms, and the absence of routine review is a major factor in the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the Federal Government in almost every department. “You get what you inspect not what you expect” is an old management rule. If no one knows what is going to be inspected and if no data is available for inspection it should not surprise us that the current system also does not function very well, including within the intelligence agencies.

A simple metrics based example would be for the Congress to set targets for and measure the number of deep agents per country and the number of American agents for designated countries.  

In addition, this subcommittee can help develop measurements of core Intelligence Community values. As General Hayden testified in July, a major reason for creating the DNI was to make the Intelligence Community function as a community. General Hayden also testified that a core mantra of DNI leadership is to infuse “Community” into everything that it does. This subcommittee can play a role in advising what should be some of the animating core values that should be infused within the Intelligence Community. Set forth in Appendix 2 to this statement is a description of four such core values that should characterize the Intelligence Community.   

5. Congress Needs To Be Prepared to Evolve as an Institution To Deal With the New Complexities of National Security and Homeland Security and the Corresponding Intelligence Requirements  

In the intelligence reform process the Congress should also take a hard look at itself

Members of Congress should have an educational track which makes them much more sophisticated consumers of intelligence. The speed and complexity of the 21st Century requires more of Congressional leadership. In order to effectively exercise oversight of the Intelligence Community, Congressional Leadership will need to participate in war gaming, metrics assessment, and academic training to an unprecedented extent.

The congressional committees should develop a metrics based system with an assessment room capability to handle the scale of complexity and to ensure that metrics can be inspected. Congress should develop a much more self aware understanding of what it has done in the past and what has worked and what has failed.

Congress should also have a little humility about the degree to which many of today’s intelligence problems are a direct function of past congressional assaults on the process of intelligence, starvation of the community, micromanagement of operations and establishing of legalistic standards which cannot be employed in a genuine clandestine service.

Some areas, however, demand further oversight and leadership. While it would be preferable for rules of interrogation and rules for detention to be published by the Executive Branch, such guidance is needed both to guide our young troops in the field and to send the message that, even in war, the United States adheres to the rule of law, including a bedrock respect for human rights.   

In addition to the foregoing suggestions, set forth in Appendix 3 to this statement is a list of 25 specific recommendations that this subcommittee can consider in its ongoing oversight of the Intelligence Community.  

In preparation for this testimony, input was solicited from a number of intelligence professionals for their unvarnished and confidential views about what is required to radically improve our nation’s intelligence system. Set forth in Appendix 4 to this statement is four of the most insightful assessments that were received.   

Representative Harman had it exactly right when she stated in July that the only relevant measure of the DNI structure being put in place is whether it is keeping us safer. This subcommittee should consider itself duty bound to be absolutely ruthless in holding leaders of the Intelligence Community accountable for developing an American intelligence system that will keep us safer.

The failure of our intelligence system at a time when American soldiers are being killed is scandalous. For example, the failure to adequately exploit for intelligence purposes the documentation of the Saddam Hussein regime during a time of war is a scandal without justification or excuse. A failure to act forcefully, swiftly, and repeatedly to fix such flaws in the system would be even more scandalous.

This subcommittee should keep in mind that between June 1939 and June 1940, at a time when we were not yet at war, General George C. Marshall eliminated inadequate performers in the Army.   During that time he retired 54 generals and 445 colonels in an Army numbering only about 225,000.

By contrast, we are at war and this nation’s leaders should uphold standards of accountability as firmly as General Marshall.

If this subcommittee finds that something about the new Intelligence Community architecture is not working, then it should move the Congress to fix it. Fast.

If this subcommittee finds that Intelligence Community personnel are not up to the task of rapidly implementing needed reforms, then such personnel should lose this subcommittee’s and the public’s trust and be asked to move on. Fast.

In the global war in which we are engaged, speed of adaptation counts more than raw firepower.

Creating an effective intelligence system is going to require real change of a wrenching sort.   Yet we have no choice. The very survival of our way of life depends on it.  

Since the founding of the Republic, our country has been abundantly blessed by the courage of the American soldier. Each generation of Americans has been reminded that America depends on courage to be safe and free, as we do now at the start of the 21st Century.  

We have seen in places like Fallujah and Tal Afar that this generation of American soldiers has the right stuff -- the courage to keep us safe.   

Not wanting for courage to win this war, America needs a dramatically more effective intelligence system to win this war.

Let us not for a moment be confused about this – effective intelligence is the linchpin of our efforts to save American lives and defend American liberty.  

Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI and the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Appendices

Appendix 1 - National Security Challenges 
Appendix 2 - Core Values of the Intelligence Community 
Appendix 3 – Recommendations 
Appendix 4 – Four Inside Assessments of Intelligence Reform 

Appendix 1

National Security Challenges

1. The Long War against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.   Because what is currently referred to as the “Global War on Terror” is at its core an ideological war, it is more accurate to think of and identify this war as the “Long War”.  

It is stunningly hard to win a war of ideology where the enemy is religiously motivated to kill us.  

To put this into perspective, if the people of the United States were to suddenly decide that a particular concept was inherently wrong in our educational system, it could easily take 20 to 30 years to change that concept, rewrite all the text books, and retrain all the educators. That example is one completely within our culture. If one includes intercultural communication difficulties, the problem grows exponentially harder. If we use every tool at the disposal of the American people in support of a coherent theory of victory, the Long War might only last 50 – 70 years. Yet, it will probably last much longer.  

Second, unlike wars of the past, the enemy today in the Long War escapes a ready identification. As with the term “Long War”, we need to name the enemy accurately to help us properly conceptualize this war and develop the intelligence system required to win it.

We can start to overcome this difficulty by identifying the enemy in the Long War as the “Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.” It is a war against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam because this enemy believes in a strikingly different world then the one we believe in, a world with which there can be no compromise. It is an uncivilized and barbaric world that cannot be reconciled to a civilized one. Their views on the role of women, on the application of medieval religious law (the Sha’ria) and religious intolerance (prosecuting Christians) make them irreconcilable with civilization in the modern age.

This is a societal war of identity so there are no holds barred, no rules, and no real accommodations (only tactical maneuvers) or potential for compromise solutions on their part that would be culturally acceptable to us, or to them.  

The Long War is 90% intellectual, communications, political, economic, diplomacy, and intelligence focused. It is at most 10% military. We have not yet developed the doctrine or structure capable of thinking through and implementing a Long War (30 to 70 years if we are lucky) on a societal scale. This challenge is compounded because it is fundamentally different from waging the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Cold War was essentially a grand siege in which a defensive alliance could contain the Soviet Union until it collapsed.

This is an inherently offensive war in which we have to actively defeat our opponents. Furthermore this war resembles the Reformation-era wars of religion in which fellow nationals may be traitors serving the other side (examine Elizabethan England and the origins of the English secret service as an example).  

Analyzing this societal reality, designing strategies that first avoid defeat and then achieve victory, communicating these strategies to the Congress and the American people so they understand and support them, and then communicating them to our allies and neutrals around the world in terms which they can support is a challenge even more complex than the development of the containment strategy from 1947 to 1950. It is also central to our survival and to our ability to lead the world.  

Third, the Long War has a particular focus in the Middle East where Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are all potentially flash points of great danger. Within the Middle Eastern focus there are currently campaigns underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

The Iraq campaign is actually a regional campaign with enemy forces using sanctuaries in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Emirates.  

The Afghan campaign clearly has a sanctuary in northern Pakistan.

It is within this regional framework -- and with the understanding that many of the elements of financing, recruiting, arming, and planning occur outside of Iraq and Afghanistan -- which the American Intelligence Community has to operate.  

Trying to win or understand the two immediate campaigns without understanding that we are engaged in the Long War is simply hopeless.   It would also be hopeless for the Intelligence Community to conceptualize these two campaigns without reference to the Long War and without identifying the enemy as the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.

2. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Threat. There was a commission of seven physicists who published a report on the EMP threat which stated that an EMP attack on the U.S. could fundamentally damage our civilization as we know it. This report has had absolutely no impact on our government. Perhaps because it is an issue that does not neatly fit into our bureaucracies or the budget. Perhaps it is an issue that is so large and frightening that people just do not want to deal with it. However, if we do not think about it and make plans, we may find three minutes in the next conflict, our lives have been fundamentally and irrevocably altered. The breakdown of fundamental services in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina was the worst disaster in America in decades, possibly the worst ever. An EMP attack using a single weapon could easily destroy electrical, water, and telecommunications services for not just a single city but a third or more of the country.  

3. Nuclear Non-Proliferation.   If the North Korean government is willing to shrink its own population by four inches, it is challenging to determine what sanctions might be effective to deter it from acquiring nuclear weapons. After 50 years of trying to build nuclear weapons, North Korea is unlikely to give them up. Likewise, Iran will probably acquire nuclear weapons. The recent intelligence estimate that Iran would not have nuclear weapons for 10 years is dangerous. The truth is that we do not know anything. We have little to no penetration in their system. We were totally wrong in 1991 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In 2003, we were totally wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In 1991, we underestimated Iraq’s capabilities. In 2002, we overestimated Iraq’s capabilities. We were wrong both times. If Iran and North Korea get nuclear weapons and it is accepted by the United States and the world, it is only a matter of time before there is a nuclear Japan, a nuclear Taiwan, a nuclear Turkey, or a nuclear Egypt. The world suddenly becomes radically more difficult.

4. Latin America.   Latin America is potentially the next great regional explosion challenging America and a much bigger challenge then the bureaucracies in Washington understand. While America has focused on the Middle East opponents to America have been gaining ground throughout Latin America. The systematic planning to weaken, isolate and undermine America by the current Cuban and Venezuelan governments may soon include other governments.   There must be a substantially greater investment of resources, people, and senior leadership time in trying to get change the emerging pattern in Latin America before it becomes a real crisis.

5. The Gray World.   A byproduct of globalization is the “Gray World”, those ungoverned areas of the world that are the sanctuary of terrorists and international criminals. If you take illegal drug dealing, illegal arms dealing, illegal transportation, illegal people movement – including by the way, 800,000 slaves a year, there are systems of illegal transportation and finance that support these actions. They are all very sophisticated, very enduring, move much faster than our bureaucracies, and have more available cash. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, human trafficking alone generates an estimated $9.5 billion in annual revenue. That is just the revenue from selling the people. The International Labor Organization (ILO) – the United Nations (UN) agency charged with addressing labor standards, employment, and social protection issues – estimates that there are 12.3 million people enslaved in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor, sexual servitude, and involuntary servitude at any given time. That is a tremendous amount of productivity being siphoned from the legitimate world and used to produce revenue for criminals and terrorists. In short, the Gray World provides sanctuary to the worst terrorist and criminal elements in the world.

6. Rising Powers. The reality of the rise of China and India as economic powers, energy purchasers, goods producers (including military goods) and the diplomatic and alliance building patterns which energetic, rising heavily populated non-western countries can develop. Iran in an earlier time might have been coerced by the United States and Europe. Now Iran has India and China as customers and trading partners. With high priced oil Iran can build a factory in Venezuela and a refinery in Indonesia. The underlying patterns of power, trade, diplomacy and alliance are shifting. We need new models and new maps to understand this shift. We need new reporting and analytical efforts to follow carefully both the activities of India and China and the networking of anti-American countries into more coherent patterns of mutual trade and mutual support. We also need a longer range view of the challenge China and India will present as they continue to modernize and grow. In some ways they resemble the rising United States from 1840 to 1918 (by which point we had become the most powerful country in the world). In other ways they may resemble the rise of Germany 1864-1914 or the rise of Japan 1868-1941.

7. New Power and Diplomatic Patterns. There are new patterns of planning, negotiating, regulating and communicating which do not fit the Cold War, Eurocentric, and bilateral patterns to which we are accustomed and for which our institutions have been staffed. To the rest of the world the United Nations means a lot more than it does to us. This is a fact not a problem. What we do about it is the problem. The European Union is a fact. The Brussels bureaucracy is going to be planning regulatory, tax, scientific research, defense and foreign policy strategies for 25 countries with a population and an economy larger than the United States (and a lot more votes in the U.N.). With every passing year Brussels will become more important and European national capitals less important. It has to be staffed, planned for, and managed far more intensely and with far more resources than we have invested. Beijing and New Delhi are capitals of rising powers which will become the second and third most important economies in the world. Along with Japan they form an Asian center of activity which has to be constantly analyzed and planned for. Mexico City has an enormous ability to impact on the United States. Brasilia has less ability to impact on the United States but Brazilian interests and national pride combined with the sheer size of the country mean that we must pay constant attention. Finally, Moscow remains vital because of its possession of nuclear weapons and the continuing Russian investment in very high quality military research and development. Our analyses, our planning and our organizations must be refocused and in some cases restructured to recognize these emerging realities.

8. Energy.  The rise of China and India as massive purchasers of energy combined with the decline of politically stable inexpensive oil reserves probably means that oil prices will be higher than they have been in the past. Because this was widely predicted in the 1970s and then was followed by very low prices in the 1980s there is now enormous skepticism about this prediction. The skeptics could be right. Furthermore the prospect of higher prices had led to a very substantial increase investment in energy efficiency. The result was that America is far less affected by higher oil prices than are third world and much less energy efficient countries.   Finally a number of relatively inexpensive oil fields were discovered in paces like West Africa. Despite that historic detour toward lower prices it is at least possible that the massive increase in the standard of living in China and India and the growth of huge car markets (China will pass the U.S. to become the world’s largest car market around 2025) will lead to higher oil prices for the long run. This will have significant foreign exchange implications for the United States. Furthermore, a more intense pursuit of oil and competition for oil will lead to a greater risk of crisis and war if the oil supply is threatened at any point. Thus the development of greater Chinese and Indian naval capabilities to protect their oil supply lines is almost guaranteed. It is very unlikely that these two large countries will follow the Japanese in accepting an American protectorate for the safe passage of their oil. Finally as American dependency on imported oil continues to grow there is a parallel increase in the threat of a national security crisis in which countries decide to quit selling us oil.

9. Math and Science as a National Security Crisis. The collapse of math and science education in the United States and the relative decline of investment in basic research is an enormous strategic threat to American national security. This is a strategically disappearing advantage. There is a grave danger that the United States will find itself collapsing in scientific and technological capabilities in our lifetime. A true national security analysis (as opposed to a narrowly military analysis) has to draw the distinction between societal capabilities and defense capabilities. The Japanese had terrific military capabilities in 1941. They simply did not have a societal capacity to sustain that capability and their air and sea power rapidly disintegrated when faced with a vastly more powerful society. It is very possible that America will find itself in this position within 20 years. We could have a solid military but a hollow society. The consequences could be catastrophic and without warning. The Hart-Rudman Commission warned that this is the second greatest threat facing American national security. In fact, the 14 bipartisan members unanimously agreed that the failure of math and science education is a greater threat than any conceivable conventional war in the next 25 years. The Commission went on to assert that only a nuclear or biological weapon going off in an American city was a greater threat. Looking beyond immediate defense needs is nothing new for professionals in national security.   In the middle of the depression one of then Major Eisenhower’s assignments was to visit almost bankrupt companies and ask them how rapidly they could mobilize and expand if America found itself in a big war. We need a similar deep analysis that looks out 20 years and assesses the probable scale of scientific change, the capacity of foreign scientific education and research and the requirements of both education and research investments needed for America to remain the leading power in the world in scientific knowledge and technological capability.

10. Breakouts. The next conflict may not be about mass production after the fact; it may be about technology hegemony, applied at the weakest point, on the day of the attack. Breakout working groups need to be developed to aggressively analyze areas in which other countries could suddenly develop capabilities we could not match and might not even understand. Quantum computing, electromagnetic pulse, engineered biologicals, nanoscale systems are some examples of possible breakouts. We need an insurance strategy of ensuring that in true areas of potential breakout that we have overmatching human and financial investments without regard to other budgetary concerns. The investment in radar, proximity fuses, the Atomic Bomb, computationally and mathematically based signals decoding (Ultra, Magic) and a host of similar breakout capabilities in World War II gave the allies huge advantages.   Similar investments in breakouts sustained the allied advantage over the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.   It is vital that the tables not be turned by immediate investments crowding out the more esoteric but ultimately more powerful breakout possibilities.

11. Taiwan. The Taiwan situation is so dangerous and potentially involves such a powerful collision between the United States and China that it should be constantly thought through.   This is the place most likely to lead to a direct nuclear threat against American forces or even against America. The intensity of emotion which led Austria-Hungary to insist on war in 1914, Japan to insist on war in 1941 and Syria and Egypt to prepare for war in both 1967 and 1973 is the kind of intensity which could be triggered over Taiwan and could lead to a collision with incalculable consequences. The entire process of the Chinese-Taiwan-US relationship deserves the kind of continuing intellectual attention we gave to coming to grips with nuclear weapons in the 1950s.

Appendix 2
 
Core Values of the Intelligence Community

1. A Sense of Urgency In Addressing the Most Visible Threat: Constantly Challenging a Theory of Victory in the Long War against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam Against New Intelligence

In order to win the Long War against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam, we must have a coherent theory of victory and therefore a theory of the intelligence requirements of victory in that war.   This is a classic example of Sun T'zu's dictum "…know your enemy and you have won half the battle, know yourself and a thousand victories are yours".

When our nation entered World War I, we learned that we had to mobilize the entire nation for war. Our military then spent most of the period between the World Wars thinking about exactly how to do that.  After World War II, we were able to use the same mindsets and institutions to develop and implement the theory of containment. With very few exceptions, we sustained the Cold War from 1947 to 1991. Conservative or liberal, there was a relatively consistent theory of victory and we implemented it using the large industrial style bureaucracies that we developed between the World Wars and during and after World War II.  

Likewise, we need a theory of victory for the Long War with the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.   In the October 1964 edition of Science magazine, John Platt argued that molecular biology and high-energy physics were making stunning breakthroughs because the scientists in these fields usually have well developed theories and design experiments to validate them prior to spending money in the laboratory. In policing, Mayor Giuliani and Chief Bratton applied the best available management techniques in New York City to determine if they would work to achieve the goal of a safer and more prosperous city. They did. The implication for the federal government and national security is clear. We need a clear vision of success, a theory of victory of how to achieve that vision of success, and active and engaged assessments to determine if we are achieving our definition of success.

We are nowhere near that point today. We are much closer to Abraham Lincoln in 1861 then to George Marshall in 1941. This is the beginning of a period of intellectual argument, intellectual discovery, and intellectual effort that is extremely hard.  

We had a theory of intelligence based on the Soviet Union but we do not have a theory of intelligence based on fighting a networked opponent engaged in a long term rebellion against the modern world and willing to operate across borders and in highly fluid ways. For example, there must be more emphasis on the “organized crime” parallels to analysis by family and by networked pattern.

The Intelligence Community must make it a core value that the nation’s working theory of victory is known, debated, and challenged by new intelligence. There must an established communitarian value that it is acceptable to challenge prevailed wisdom based on new information and new analysis. What should count is quality of analysis.

Expertise resides all across the Intelligence Community. The CIA does not have a monopoly on truth and expertise.   The CIA has been terribly wrong at times. The need for multiple voices, analysis, and opinions is the only antidote for group think.   The DNI faces a challenge in focusing resources on what is truly important without gagging those who might have dissenting insights. The end goal should be clarity of data, not consensus of opinion. In this regard, it might be very worthwhile to establish competing analytical teams in each agency to provide a wider venue of scenarios to decision makers (a “Team A/Team B Approach”).

Leadership - civilian and military - needs to be more demanding and critical of assessments and analysis. Assumptions should be challenged. Shallow or faulty analytical judgments need to be identified. Leaders should not hesitate to demand answers or criticize intelligence analysis on account of any type of "Bolton Effect" -- any lingering impact of criticism related to charges of ideologues shaping intelligence. There is a fine line here but we have too many leaders that do not demand more substantive and in-depth assessments and challenge the assumptions upon which analysis is based.

There will be those who say we can not begin to reform the intelligence system until we have a coherent theory of victory. It is true that once a coherent theory of victory is developed we will need to reshape our government agencies and public management processes to support it.   However, without an effective intelligence system, we will be unable to develop a coherent theory of victory that will actually result in effective policies and strategies.

2. There is no Substitute for Human Intelligence

We no longer live in a world where it is sufficient to count divisions in the field and ships at sea. The ironic lesson of this great high-tech information age is that it has empowered shadowy networks of individuals to the point where they can inflict pain on a nation state. We are in a global campaign against a religiously motivated minority in an age of weapons of mass destruction.       

The sooner we force a new approach to intelligence and a new system of organization, the sooner we will be getting inside our enemy’s decision cycle and the sooner we will begin to regain intelligence domination of the battlefield.

One part of the problem is analysis. We simply lack the sophisticated, focused analytical systems with people who understand our enemies, understand their networked, family based systems of operation and can focus over time on developing the kind of sophisticated intelligence which we had against both Germany and Japan in the Second World War. We do not identify the analytical qualities needed, allow people to spend years on the problem, and then create a resource center which can overmatch our opponents. This will require invention inside the system and will be bitterly opposed by those who undervalue intelligence and those whose careers have been embedded in the old style of intelligence.

Another part of the problem is much better gathering of intelligence at a tactical level. Our ability to acquire virtually real time intelligence and understand what it means needs to be upgraded as much as analytical capabilities. This will require substantial investments in better intelligence, more tactical intelligence personnel, more translators, greater language capabilities, more in depth education about the enemy, etc.

For example, we have been involved in Korea in one way or another since 1945. We have been committed to the active defense of South Korea since 1950. Yet only 35% of our Korean analysts speak any Korean. Only 10% of our analysts are fluent in Korean. So that means that 90% of Korean analysts are unable to read the newspapers or only marginally understand the newscasts from the country that they are responsible for briefing the rest of the government about. Sixty-five percent of the analysts are unable to order food in a Korean restaurant or ask for directions to the restroom. Yet these are the people we depend on to plumb the depths of North Korean psychology. Admittedly, Korean is a hard language to master. It takes up to 63 weeks of dedicated study to learn the language at an elementary level. However, one would think that after 55 years of involvement, we might have more than 10% of the analysts actually able to speak the language of the country that they study. In fact, speaking a foreign language fluently is often considered a liability in some intelligence agencies because the individual is considered too specialized.

As we move forward, the focus should be light on bureaucracy and heavy on talent. One can have the best organizational structure but if bad people staff them, that structure will never work. Put talented, dedicated, honest, smart people in the worst organizational structure and they will find a way to get the mission accomplished somehow.

3. Mastering the Special Challenge of Information and Money

It is also useful to mention that this war has two non-geographic theaters as well, information and money. If one views this in terms of intelligence, we are not well postured to analyze either one adequately. Both information and money pass between borders. Neither can be tracked by expensive space based systems. Both require an in depth level of knowledge dealing with systems, financial and cultural, that are beyond the experience of the typical intelligence analyst. Yet, both must be mastered. We have had success in both areas to a certain extent, but it is clear that we are unable to actually perform a meaningful and relevant intelligence preparation of the battle space for these two non-geographic theaters of war.  

To a certain extent, understanding the money side is a tool to help United States foreign diplomacy. If the United States is to effectively provide financial aid, we must understand where that money must go to have the greatest effect. However, to a larger extent, the intelligence system needs to know who is paying for the enemies’ propaganda. Pamphlets preaching hate against all non-Muslims are not printed for free.  

Likewise, if the United States wishes to communicate what it considers acceptable behavior from those with whom we share the planet, we must know the best way to transmit those messages in a venue that is both accessible and acceptable to the intended audience. It is essential we know who is writing books advocating violence and murder as acceptable ways to change society. It is equally essential that we can identify the moderate voices of reform.

4. Lessons Learned Must be a Core Intelligence Community Value

We need a robust and intellectually honest lessons learned system with an historical component that continuously looks at opponent denial and deception and whether or not we could penetrate it (note Iraq lessons learned as an example). This lesson learned system then has to be driven into changing practices, investments and structures by senior leadership.

There must also be a systematic tactical and operational lessons learned approach with a historic component. For example there should be ongoing studies done of the most intensely bombed and attacked corridors in Iraq and the lessons to be learned from those areas. What surveillance and operational assets would we need to have a safe drive in from the airport to downtown Baghdad would be an example of a specific historic study that looked at what has worked and what has failed in that one combat zone. At a minimum, the current lessons learned program by DIA needs to scraped and a more interactive process operating at multiple levels of classification to include codeword across all executive branches of Government needs to implemented with the same vigor that the DOD has implemented the Joint Universal Lessons Learned System.

Appendix 3

Recommendations

Organizations that are undergoing real change with a lessons learned driven approach have noticeable characteristics. First, non-performers are rapidly fired. One could see this in the Army prior to World War II with General Marshall.   Second, the unqualified are rapidly transferred or retrained. Third, those who have useful skills – in this case languages, culture, insurgency and counterinsurgency - are rapidly promoted.

We need to define now the metrics of measuring those changes and insist on the organizational structures and personnel changing to meet the metrics.

This subcommittee is doing vital work in identifying what changes need to be made so we can move to an intelligence system that can keep up in the information age. Set forth below are a list of 25 recommendations. Some of them would apply to any large governmental bureaucracy while others are unique to intelligence. Some useful changes to consider would be:

1. The complexity, dangers and speed of the emerging 21st century world require very profound improvements in intelligence. Faster and more complex operations and activities require deeper analysis and planning (the difference in depth of perception and analysis required by a Boeing 747 compared to a Piper Cub would be analogous). The new intelligence capabilities have to be developed on a deep-mid-near basis so there is a long term analysis within which there are mid term and immediate analyses. Because the modern world is global and the threats are agile and interrelated the system has to be comprehensive and has to be an all sources and all points system. Since so much of the modern world is in fact open source a large part of the new 21st century intelligence system will involving acquiring, analyzing and connecting information from open sources. The new system has to have global, regional and local coverage and analysis and the three have to be interconnected for synergistic patterns, etc. As our competitors and opponents study us (and all of them do) their ability at denial and deception will increase. We need a much larger focus on contemporary denial and deception efforts by others.
2. Treat the intelligence process as an integrated process, moving it in complexity, speed, and effectiveness beyond the current model of the inter-agency process and require that it be measured and assessed using the same tools developed by JCS J5 Iraq interagency assessment room. Ensure that all intelligence programs and policies have an assessment process using metrics to determine if they are achieving their stated goals.
3. Review and standardize integration and information sharing across all levels of government to include city, county, and national for terrorist related information. The recent events in New York indicate that this is an area that has experienced rapid improvement in the last few years. Regardless, this issue is so important it needs to be established with standardized doctrine and disclosure procedures. Google and Amazon.com provide very effective models of creating communities of interests and concern. While Secret Internet Protocol Routing Network (SIPRNET) and the Joint World-wide Information and Communication System (JWICS) have some of those tools, they need to be expanded and exported across the entire Intelligence Community to include appropriately cleared city, county, and state police.
4. Develop greater use of data-mining and open source data. The DNI’s recent efforts to establish an Open Source Center is clearly an excellent first step. Additionally, a large percentage of existing job descriptions should be rewritten at regional intelligence centers to reflect that at least a portion of an analyst’s job is to read local newspapers, websites, and academic journals.
5. Establish the principle that the Director of National Intelligence should be a political appointee with the full faith and trust of the President. However, just as the Joint Chief of Staff and Office of Secretary of Defense require a core of professionals, both the Deputy DNI and Director Central Intelligence should be career intelligence professionals. This precedent alone would be a significant step toward the professionalization of the intelligence community at senior levels.
6. Review intelligence systems procurement. Given the rapid level of change in the civilian market, especially in information technology, nano-technology, quantum science, and other fields; it is extremely unlikely that our current Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP) appropriations process can keep up.
7. Consider shifting significant intelligence resources to the J5 or plans branch of the Unified Commands. This will facilitate long term planning and the development of inter-related war plans similar to the Rainbow Plans of the interwar period in scope and detail.   Likewise, this would develop competing analysis and opinions ultimately allowing the commander to pick the best products.
8. Paradoxically the modern world requires a real time analytical and warning capability at the same time it requires a deep and mid capability. This will require an integrated information system on both a push forward and pull forward basis and a level of openness about information which has never before existed across all the stove-pipes of the intelligence community. Intelligence Community leaders should consider whether the President’s daily brief should be redesigned to reflect this more complex and more interrelated world. The President should also evaluate establishing a pattern of regular monthly three hour strategic planning and assessment sessions in which the senior leadership rigorously avoids talking about current events and looks to the future. This would revive the strategic planning President Eisenhower brought into the system.
9. Since the current conflict in Iraq is perhaps the most single pressing national security issue facing our country, we should consider standing up a special interagency analytical cell to focus on Iraq. This cell should be headed by a SES and report directly to the DNI.  
10. Develop a government-wide, to include appropriately cleared city, county, state police, lessons learned database modeled after DOD’s Joint Universal Lessons Learned database.   This database should be capable of operating at multiple security levels; unclassified, confidential, secret, top secret, and codeword; and should be available via the web or via CD-ROM at each of those security levels. As one step toward better understanding how to wage the Long War should be a very high level no holds barred review of the mistakes made in Iraq. There are two ‘what if” campaigns worth exploring to see if we could do dramatically better the next time we have to liberate a people from a criminal dictator threatening his neighbors, his own people, and America and her allies. First, what would have happened if we had followed the Afghan model of a conference within three weeks of victory and the creation of an Iraq interim government with an Iraqi leader as the public figure by June 2003? Could it have been done and if so how could it have been done? Second, what doctrine, technology and system would be necessary for the United States to impose its will in a setting like Iraq in May 2003?   What kind of intelligence preparation of the total battlefield (including societal analysis and knowledge and economic analysis and knowledge) which in retrospect we wish could have been brought to bear to allow us to dominate the transition after winning the war against the regime? What would be the nature of the integrated system which could bring all aspects of national power to bear?   Since the United States is 82% non-federal government what is the nature of the system which could bring all aspects of national power to bear (note the Iraqi immigrants, other Arab speakers, other American Muslims, etc as one area to explore)?   It is important to do a real lessons learned that explores what failed to work rather than focusing on marginally improving already successful systems.
11. Winning the Long War and containing the Gray World of international crime (see description in Attachment 1) will require an extraordinary improvement in urban policing and urban warfare capabilities. The currently unacceptable fact is that urban environments are vastly more complex and fluid than the battlefields we prefer to focus on. We have made massive investments in dominating warfare in the air and at sea. We have made substantial investments in dominating campaigns in relatively open areas involving heavy forces. We have made pathetically small investments in the human and technical capabilities needed to dominate urban environments for either policing or warfare. The gap between World War II fighters and submarines and their 2005 successors is extraordinary. The gap between urban policing and warfare in 1945 and 2005 is dramatically narrower. This is THE dominant battlefield of the 21st century and we must have a strategic commitment of intelligence resources to enable us to achieve the same certainty of dominance in cities that we already have in other environments.
12. Establish an intelligence board of directors to conduct critical and rigorous review of the Intelligence Community. This board of directors should consist of first class intellectuals from sources external to the intelligence community. Likewise, it might be useful to establish a Global Intelligence Advisory Board in the office of the DNI made up of officials from several nations that will meet periodically and begin to develop processes for the sharing of information. The approach CENTCOM took to coalition planning and management would be an excellent model for this concept.
13. Develop a policy of providing operational military units and government agencies great flexibility in hiring local translators and informants while overseas. For example, if a crewman from a drug smuggling dhow wants to “turn state witness” and help, the flexibility to consider this option should be available and at the lowest possible level.
14. Develop a policy of hiring first and second generation immigrants who speak a second language at or near native proficiency. This will have the further advantage of increasing cultural awareness in the intelligence agencies.
15. Consider hiring first and second generation immigrants as independent contractors or part-time employees. They would be ideal at data-mining and open source collection via the internet as well as document translation. Many could telecommute and thus alleviate concerns about “uncleared” persons working in a secure area. After a year or two of part-time work history for the government, it should be slightly easier for these employees to get security clearances. Regardless, new and innovative ways of granting first and second generation linguists security clearances needs to be aggressively explored.
16. Provide funding and resources for career intelligence personal to take language training.   This could be done part-time or via immersion training at an overseas location. While immersion training will be expensive, it is the best way to provide analysts meaningful linguistic and cultural training.
17. Task the Defense Intelligence University at DIA and/or the National Defense University to prepare historical analysis of intelligence trends and issues. At the strategic level, one such study would be to analyze China’s energy investment strategy. One tactical level recommendation would be to develop in depth studies of the most bombed roads in Iraq to determine tools and techniques to avoid or defeat enemy attacks. Additionally, the National Intelligence University (NIU) System proposed by the DNI should be formally chartered to not only train the next generation of intelligence leaders but to use the best of its faculty and students to provide the core of academic debate and analysis to continually develop and reshape the intellectual framework of the Intelligence Community role in supporting and implementing National Security Strategy. The National Intelligence University (NIU) System should have a main campus that provides an education resource and structure to ensure lifetime and pre-promotional, pre-transfer, and pre-positioning education with periodic recertification, for all existing and future intelligence leaders. The NIU should specifically include representatives from the FBI and DEA and address the specific notion of the Gray World as a part of its apparatus. NIU should develop, nurture, and build leaders with community-wide vision and culture for all promotion candidates for any and all of the fifteen federal intelligence agencies. Failure at the Intelligence Institute could serve as a fail-safe roadblock to those unprepared to be intelligence leaders.
18. Conduct detailed analysis of the Saddam Regime ties to trans-regional terrorists to learn insights useful to understanding other terror organizations, state sponsors, methodologies and the tactics, techniques, and procedures used to mask their operations. This could be useful in focusing collection and analysis in regard to Iran, Syria, or others.
19. Replacing the current civil service rules with a new model of hiring and leading people including part time employees and consultants, the ability to shift to other jobs in the intelligence system, the ability to do training and educating on an individualized 24/7 internet based system.
20. Empower leaders to set metrics for performance and reward and punish according to the achievement level of the employees.
21. Within appropriate safeguards create the opportunity for leaders to suspend and when necessary fire people who fail to do their jobs and fail to meet the standards and metrics. Conversely, allow leaders more authority to promote people who are performing exceptionally well.
22. Providing a means for analysts and collectors to visit, study, and work in the country or region that they specialize in.
23. Allow members of the military and government from non-intelligence jobs with recent “in country” experience to work at the appropriate analytical center. The Army is using ten men advisor teams attached to Iraqi battalions. These people would be ideal candidates to provide cultural perspective on analytic issues at the regional intelligence centers.
24. Creating a single system of security clearances so once people are cleared at a particular level (e.g., Secret, Top Secret, code word) they are cleared throughout the general government and do not have to go through multiple clearances. Part of this process would be developing and enforcing a government-wide web-based security clearance system such as the DOD’s Joint Personnel Adjudication System (JPAS) as a work reduction tool. This web based tool could be used to facilitate clearing police at the local level.
25. Investigate placing space-based assets under the management and control of the Joint Task Force and Unified Commander. A quick launch satellite capability should be given consideration as part of the solution.

This collection of changes will set the stage for needed transformation in intelligence. The world has moved on to the speed, productivity, and power of the information age. Our large industrial age intelligence system no longer provides the intelligence and analysis that we need in a 21st Century world. Admittedly, tools such as satellites and signals intelligence equipment are extremely useful and need continued development and improvement. However, to win the Long War against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam we will need a level of linguistic and cultural understanding that has been almost unprecedented in our history. We will need analysts and collectors who know what the enemy will do before he has reached a decision himself.
# # #

Appendix 4

Four Inside Assessments of Intelligence Reform

In preparation for this testimony, input was solicited from a number of intelligence professionals for their unvarnished and confidential views about what is required to radically improve our nation’s intelligence system. Set forth below are four of the most insightful assessments that were received.   

I. Intelligence Reform Assessment of a Career Military Intelligence Officer

We have had great success in improving technological, software and database solutions to our intelligence challenge.   We are effectively moving forward with costly techy solutions (Starlight, Information Dominance) and integrating with organizational changes (Joint Intelligence Operation Centers).   These are things we are culturally inclined to do. Unfortunately, we have lacked the focus and will to fix shortfalls in analysis.  

These shortfalls are primarily in three parts.

A. Human Capital.

We lack the number and quality of analysts to do this incredibly difficult and complex analytical work. The specialized knowledge, experience and critical thinking skills are rarely found and are equally hard to develop. The challenges of Islamic Fascism, extremism, irregular warfare and terrorism require new approaches to recruiting, developing, managing and promoting analysts. Personnel rules and assignment policies undermine common sense approaches to keeping the "best and brightest" on these difficult targets. Incentives push good people away from analysis to other intelligence career tracks or promote changing jobs rather than developing experience and longevity on a region or problem.

Other Human Capital issues are: lack of interrogators, tactical HUMINT teams, translators and analytical support teams. We need the Foreign Area Officers and similar programs to be more aggressively funded/supported and integrated into a wider range of activities/missions (e.g. Information Operations, at division level etc). We do not have the analytical support available to do document exploitation (DOCEX) and direct support to interrogation teams; and those that we do have, for the most part are of the "shake and bake" variety. Good people, hard working but severe deficits in capacity to make the contributions necessary.

B. Processes.

We need to strengthen the intelligence production process and improve integration. The lack of expertise and poorly resourced (analytically) intelligence organizations drives intelligence production to current "headline" news that lacks depth, complexity and understanding of the enemy (e.g. capabilities, composition, leadership, strategy, goals, tactics, finances, vulnerabilities etc). The focus on immediate situation awareness combined with leadership/consumer "ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER" leads to presentation formats that are only a PowerPoint deep slide with little to no context and real meaning. There simply is NO time committed to understanding the "enemy" by far too many senior policy and military leaders.

Most intelligence organizations are producing shallow current news/situation awareness in large part because that is easy to produce, it avoids controversy and leaders only commit so much time to the problems. After the London bombings nearly every organization responsible for producing terrorist related intelligence produced "quickfire" assessments looking at the bombing and what it means to the US. They were all chasing the same soccer ball, writing essentially the same thing. Duplication of effort by multiple organizations. This highlights the lack of synchronization and coordination in the Intelligence Community on terrorism. A successful briefing or product is one that says little and causes no questions to be asked. It is a check the block mentality that says the mission is accomplished because a product was produced.

We need to do BETTER at building knowledge. There may not be an immediate payoff to a target but it is necessary to understand the many dimensions of our enemy/potential adversaries. The Intelligence Community looks at DOCEX in regard to Iraq as only about history at this point. I would suggest that detailed analysis of DOCEX concerning the Saddam Regime ties to trans-regional terrorists would provide insights useful to understanding other terror organizations, state sponsors, methodologies and Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures used to mask their operations. This could be useful in focusing collection and analysis in regard to Iran, Syria or others.  

Integration and Information Sharing: This is still broke. It is broke on the key issues of terrorist information threatening the US directly, and is also broke in theater. In fact, despite words and briefings to the contrary this remains a fundamental problem.  

Intelligence Leaders: Intelligence leaders are too often produced who have little to no appreciation or understanding of analysis, critical thinking and investigative techniques required in today's world. They are disconnected from reality because of their experience and development tied to the Cold War where technological solutions, sensor to shooter approaches were the answer to targeting.

In fact, the path to the top was through the organization focused on command and operational positions that rewarded understanding architecture and technology rather than analysis. The reward and focus of the intelligence leaders is on the Commander and most times only the Commander. This focus comes at the expense of having intelligence support a wider range of functions/missions, leaders and staff. In addition, there is no real path to success in intelligence by being the best G2 or through the analytical arena on the civilian side. We have lost balance in this regard. In addition, we have had no real requirement to understand culture, motivation, the human terrain when intelligence focused on force on force issues.

C. Leadership.

Leadership is another issue. We have a deficit of leadership because these same leaders want to avoid controversy in analytical production. Leaders only have episodic engagement, even on the war in Iraq. There is great pressure to homogenize intelligence (also a process/coordination issue. If we all say the same thing, find the lowest common denominator, then we will not get into trouble or have more work. This undercuts ground breaking analysis, predictive analysis, inferential connections, critical thinking; and it promotes the culture that led to group think on Iraq's WMD. The leaders I observe tend to be cautious, careful and political; particularly when it comes to interpreting intelligence. We highlight the good news but simply do not produce things that are uncomfortable or risk dissent. We face the same problem today. The DNI office is simply another layer forcing homogeneity into analytical products; and on some issues (e.g. Iraq) could be shaping assessments. Building more layers of bureaucracy has not solved the integration and synchronization problem. We have failed to prioritize and resource the more costly elements. We spend billions on point of defense protection against IEDs and inadequately address focusing intelligence on the networks, financiers and leaders supporting the IEDs. Old think still lives and the people who were part of the problem are still there in far too many cases.

Leadership - Civilian and Military - need to be MORE DEMANDING and critical of assessments and analysis. They need to demand more and challenge assumptions and fault shallow analytical judgments. However, leaders are hesitant to demand or be critical because of the "Bolton Effect" and the lingering effect of criticism related to charges of ideologues shaping intelligence. There is a fine line here; but we have too many leaders that DO NOT demand more substantive and in-depth assessments. This takes a commitment of time on their part; requires understanding of what intelligence should be able to provide; and a willingness to push the system by asking more questions that drive the process. Until leaders demand more, prioritize intelligence and are willing to commit more time we will continue to spin.

II. Intelligence Reform Assessment of a Defense and Intelligence Contractor

Part I.   Organization and Structure

1. A Single Leader at the Top and Bloodletting on the Floor
             
The 2004 statute creates the office of Director of National Intelligence (“DNI”) who has the potential to take charge of the entire U.S. federal government intelligence community and its fifteen different agencies. The DNI, aided by his deputies, is not moving aggressively to do precisely that.  

The reorganization is getting hijacked by turf battles and personal agendas.

The DNI must streamline all of these agencies and eliminate overlap or conflicts in their functions and strategic initiatives. Budgets and manpower for unfocused and unproductive technology initiatives should be slashed then refocused as appropriate, while improving efficiency and effectiveness. The DNI should expect bitter pitched battles, but the statute provides the authority, responsibility and tools to ensure success. The DNI reports directly to the President. There are no excuses left to explain-away that “no one is in charge.”

2. Communications

Although there are glimmers of progress, most U.S. federal agencies in the intelligence community haves not really begun to share information in a meaningful way to assist each other’s work, nor do they collaborate sufficiently with each other or state and local agencies.   The CIA may have an entire file on an individual, but that is not made available to others with the talent and the need to know for “cold searches” or when the targeted individual pops up on their radar screen. Intelligence gathering and retention systems differ from agency to agency, and analyst to analyst in the same agency. Some are incredibly antiquated and some literally involve maintaining handwritten ledgers in inaccessible storage facilities. Too many analysts from too many agencies cannot, or do not want, to communicate with each other. The improvement here must be technological, in terms of data, data searching and retrieval, telecommunications, hardware, software, networks and artificial intelligence focused on anomaly detection for threat assessment and prediction. Technology must be pragmatic, reliable, and it can be available today.

3. Training  

We have our spy schools; we have our military academies; we have our special ops training. We don’t have the analyst and intelligence executive institution of higher learning. We need to possess the ability to attract, shape, and nurture educated and disciplined intelligence officers. We need to be able to develop intelligences officials capable of assuming critical leadership roles throughout the community with a shared vision, competence, and capacity to be team players. We would greatly benefit from an education resource and structure to ensure lifetime and pre-promotional, pre-transfer, and pre-positioning education with periodic recertification, for all existing and future intelligence leaders. An Intelligence Institute should be established to achieve these goals roughly following the military model of academies and higher course work, but unlike the military, be “purple suit” all the time. The Intelligence Institute should be focused on pre- and post-employment and promotion graduate level education. On a single campus, the Intelligence Institute should develop, nurture, and build leaders with community-wide vision and culture   for all new professional hires and promotion candidates for any and all of the fifteen federal intelligence agencies.   Failure at the Intelligence Institute becomes a fail-safe roadblock to those unprepared to be intelligence leaders.

4. An Intelligence Reserve Corps

Traditionally, wars and extraordinary global events force the redeployment of intelligence personnel and resources from pre-existing vital intelligence concerns. For example, even though countless intelligence professionals went to 24/7 service, many sleeping in hallways, the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq diverted vital intelligence resources from potentially dangerous situations in other areas of the world. The intelligence community must possess the flexibility and capacity to respond quickly to emerging intelligence needs without depleting personnel and resources in critical focus areas. An Intelligence Reserve Corps should be established to ensure a ready and capable pool of intelligence professionals, with active security clearances, to respond to emerging intelligence needs. This can be achieved by utilizing intelligence professional retirees from the military, federal agencies, state and local government intelligence groups, and intelligence contractors and corporate entities, who will agree to respond to active duty when called to serve on an as needed basis in their field of expertise and will stay current and competent one weekend each month, with summer assignments . . . following today’s military model for reservists.  

5. One Community Wide Security Clearance Process

It is inconceivable that an individual who was granted separate security clearances by two U.S. federal intelligence agencies was denied clearance by a third. Yet, this is precisely what happens today. Most agencies maintain their own security clearance office. This practice serves to create isolation and a practical firewall between agencies. Moreover, most of the agencies have antiquated procedures for granting security clearances based on interviews by employees or contractors rather than utilizing modern technology. As a result, it often takes many months for security clearances to be granted. This means that talented individuals cannot be brought to work in real time, and many are discouraged from even applying for potentially rewarding intelligence positions.  

6. Competent Eyes and Ears on the Ground
            
Twenty-five hundred years ago, Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of eyes and ears on the ground in his chapter about spies and foreknowledge. In the same vein, Joshua sent out spies before he launched his battle of Jericho. Somehow, the CIA has lost its way in the human intelligence sphere. We should be recruiting and deploying native speaking intelligence professionals (AKA spies) to operate in areas of concern. For example, native Farsi speakers should be deployed to Iran and native Chinese speakers to China. Legions of these people are available in the United States. Instead, we dispatch Caucasian, Princeton and Yale graduates, assign them to an embassy and ask them to report on developments in their host country. A new directorate should be devoted to recruiting, developing, deploying, and nurturing native-speaking professionals in human intelligence.  

7. Separating gathering and analyzing

Not a new idea, of course, but the largest turf battle ahead. It is critical that a different agency analyze intelligence than the one that gathers it. Given the sensitive function of intelligence analysis, this should be performed in the office of the DNI. Today, the Department of Defense has extraordinary professionals competent in “Special Operations.” DOD special ops professionals should be engaged, “tasked” in Intel-speak, to operate at the request and direction of the DNI. The concept here is to obtain valuable intelligence, streamline its analysis and permit effective “special operations” where appropriate. The CIA should reduce itself to HUMINT recruiting, training, retraining and deploying based on DNI tasking.

8. Re-refocus the FBI

Intelligence gathering, even after 9/11 is still a stepchild at the FBI, primarily a law enforcement agency. The FBI is focused on dealing with threats after they occur. They must also be competent and available to identify, mitigate, and prevent threats. After 9/11, loud noises were made about changing this fact. The reality is that it hasn’t happened; and it won’t happen. Culture change requires structure change. Another agency must be created to do the job. One of the deputies at the DNI should be charged with evaluating and revising the domestic intelligence function with a solution-goal in mind . . . strengthen intelligence effectiveness to ensure Americans are safe and secure. Relevant models exist within the UK and Israel, which should be carefully analyzed, and if appropriate used as exemplars.  

In addition, the new agency should have the role of developing improved coordination between and among state and local law enforcement agencies around the country and with the formidable intelligence resources financed today in the corporate, private sector.  

9. Spies and Lawyers Are Not Managers
                
In an application of the Peter Principle, intelligence professionals (AKA spies), are routinely promoted to management positions where they too often fail because they lack interest, experience, leadership or management training. The personality types to do both jobs are rarely found in the same individual. Likewise, leadership responsibilities have too often been left to lawyers without intelligence mission or management expertise. In fact, top positions in the intelligence community require passionate, pragmatic, and tenacious visionaries–individuals who possess fresh perspectives, strong leadership capabilities, toughness, and solid track records of management success. Leaders should have the ability to implement change, transform organizational culture, and “fix” broken organizations and missions–today and tomorrow, not in the next fiscal year or next decade. There may be individuals outside of the intelligence community who possess such skills. To start, current intelligence leaders with a clear track record for designing and implementing sustainable change should be identified, nurtured, developed and promoted . . . quickly and aggressively.

10. Guidance and Oversight
                
One weakness in the country’s intelligence operation is that those reviewing plans and decisions are either lawyers, government staff, or they come from a narrow base of current or former intelligence professionals. Private corporations require effective outside directors who bring an experience-grounded, fresh perspective and, in today’s post Sarbanes-Oxley reality; they have clear and personal fiduciary accountability for sound decision-making by operating managers.   This same approach could be priceless in the intelligence area. The office of the DNI could have an advisory board, functioning as a corporate board of directors, which would meet at least monthly to represent the President, the Congress and the American people, provide a review function and sound and practical guidance. These directors could include individuals with a national reputation as successful managers in government or the private sector. They might include a former mayor or state governor, a corporate CEO, or someone who has effectively run a governmental program in an area outside of intelligence.  

11. Globalization Has a Role
                  
The United States has staunch allies around the world. We differ with many from time to time on specific issues, including our current war with Iraq. But, there are a number of critical issues for which we share a strong, common purpose, such as thwarting the threat posed by radical fundamentalists, the availability of oil and water, and impending natural disasters as typified by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or the 2005 U.S. hurricane Katrina and its horrible aftermath.   Coordination and information sharing among the United States and its allies is critical because our enemies–individuals, nations, or nature–don’t recognize national borders. Currently the exchange of information among nations is erratic and incomplete at best. As an example, a month ago, an Air France flight from Paris to Washington was forced to turn back, two hours over the Atlantic, when American security officials finally were able to check the passenger manifest and find the name of a suspicious individual. The process must be more effective . . . orders of magnitude more effective. One possibility is to create a Global Intelligence Advisory Board in the office of the DNI made up of officials from several nations that will meet periodically and begin to develop processes for the sharing of information . . . when and where needed and to fund global initiatives focused on strengthening intelligence effectiveness.   (Similar to Tommy Franks’ planning operation in CENTCOM.)

Part II. Special Operations
               
We are not even close to thinking correctly about special operations.

1. Setting a new goal.

We need set the goal of imposing costs on the enemy, not just tracking it. We need to hunt them down and kill the hard core. Without setting this goal, the rest is 19th century playing at being modern.

2. We need to build new capacity.

We need to build a man hunting capability. We need to develop better technology to help them. We need to invest in local communities to help. We need to multiply, perhaps by a factor of 5 or more, the capability of sensitive, deep penetration HUMINT and unconventional warfare.   And we need to do it in a new unified entity, combining military and civilian to train and work together.

3. Local Balance of Power

Without investing in indigenous forces around the world to help tip the local balance of power in favor of civilized behavior; we can never hope to help with the internal struggle within Islam. We need to expand our paramilitary training capabilities.

4. Structure

If analysis is removed from the CIA, perhaps it can handle special operations. Probably not, as the institution is too inbred and without competition for too long.
 
We probably need a new structure altogether – combining Spec Ops Command and CIA special forces. Culture change doesn’t come easily.
 
III. Intelligence Reform Assessment of a Career Military Intelligence Officer

The insurgency in Iraq is America’s top national security problem.   If it succeeds in frustrating our objectives we will suffer a major defeat in Iraq, the Middle East, and the GWOT. Intelligence is key to successful counter insurgency operations and global counter-terrorism operations. And we have not used our intelligence capability to the best advantage. The Iraq insurgency is a complex and adaptive phenomenon. It uses internal and external information operations, resources (personnel, money, logistics etc.), and business networks, similar to AQ networks. Our inadequate intelligence effort allows terrorist and Iraqi networks outside Iraq to intermingle, fueling the Iraqi insurgency. The national community – FBI, Treasury, DIA and CIA all-source efforts - are not doing enough to identify the networks that are moving foreign fighters/suicide bombers to Iraq and haven’t identified the specific components of the insurgent networks within and external to Iraq, including key nodes, leadership, facilitators, bomb-makers and financial support systems. Despite progress, we need to address shortcomings and energize efforts to retool, reorient and resource intelligence for the counter-insurgency in Iraq. The key to defeating the insurgency is deep and clinical understanding of the insurgent phenomenon leading to actionable intelligence and effective counter-insurgents operations and programs. A new intelligence approach to Iraq will pay-off globally.   It is still our war to win, but we need the intelligence to do it while there is still time.

The Problem:   Old Think vs. Demands for Counter Insurgency (COIN)

We have not adequately redesigned and resourced our intelligence architecture from Operation Iraqi Freedom major combat to COIN. The Iraq COIN problem requires a dedicated architecture significantly more complex and difficult than that established for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The problems that have been only partially addressed through incomplete measures and actions over three years are as follows:

• Ineffective organization, inadequate resources, and dysfunctional processes…disparate and often divergent efforts that do not optimize