THE POLITICIZED C.I.A.: THE REAL PROBLEM HAS BEEN UNDER — NOT OVER — ESTIMATING MOSCOW’S WEAPONRY

Precis: The U.S. intelligence
community is under siege. Ironically, to no small extent,
the attack is coming from within — from the senior
leadership of the CIA. A troubling case in point involves
charges that the Agency was tricked into overestimating
the magnitude of the Soviet threat. In fact, the problem
appears to be that the CIA was most misled by planted
information concerning Soviet political affairs, not
military capabilities. Under Clinton Administration
leadership, U.S. intelligence may be making the same
mistake today — a dangerous possibility that requires
urgent attention and corrective action.

(Washington, D.C.): If it were not so serious, it
would be funny: The new Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI), John Deutch, has proven to have a bigger appetite
for currying favorable reviews in the press and on
Capitol Hill than even Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary.
Toward this transparent end, Dr. Deutch has recently been
much in evidence, for example, in: reorganizing his
agency (putting in charge a gaggle of left-leaning
congressional staffers); quantifying and assigning blame
for the Aldrich Ames debacle; and decrying and forbidding
the CIA’s use of unsavory characters as foreign espionage
resources in Guatemala and elsewhere. Judging by the
positive treatment he has received in a Parade
Magazine cover story this past weekend, in myriad news
coverage and in generally favorable op.ed. articles, the
DCI’s P.R. campaign is succeeding.

Far less clear is whether the net effect of such
self-promotion will be the reliable acquisition and
timely, accurate analysis of intelligence on behalf of
the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the early
indicators suggest that the CIA and, to varying degrees,
its sister agencies in the intelligence community are
suffering under a steady diet of heavy-handed,
politically correct micro-management. Morale is
plummeting (the DCI was recently booed by his
employees at a large agency function); sources are
drying up (even those agents deemed pristine enough
to meet Deutch’s standards are understandably growing
increasingly reluctant to share information with the
current Agency team), sensitive collection methods are
being compromised (not least by the indiscriminate
sharing of classified data with the United Nations and
other undisciplined multilateral “users” of
U.S. intelligence); critical counter-intelligence
techniques are being selectively applied (Clinton
political appointees are being excused from routine
polygraphing); and analyses appear to be increasingly
slanted to tell Administration policy-makers what they
want to hear (assuming, that is, they are willing to
listen at all).

A Sign of the Times

A worrisome example of the problem with the new
politicized CIA can be found in Dr. Deutch’s trumpeting
of the allegedly deleterious impact of Soviet
disinformation passed through agents compromised by
Aldrich Ames. As the attached
editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal
notes, the DCI recently told Congress that Soviet double
agents duped the Pentagon into spending billions of
dollars on unduly sophisticated and wildly expensive
weapon systems. Thanks to what Director Deutch called
“inexcusable” and “devastating”
failures to identify reports from such agents as suspect,
the Cold War was won at a vastly higher price than would
otherwise have been required.

The Journal correctly observes that:

“There’s just one thing wrong with this
picture: It was a blueprint for Cold War victory not
by the Russians but by the U.S. It would have
been nonsensical for the KGB to have thought up such
a screwy plot. Yet some in Washington put forward
this preposterous scenario as Cold War history.”

Whether by design or not, this assertion would have
served a clear domestic political purpose. In the
words of the Journal, it would have “prove[d]
that, as liberals wailed at the time, the famous
Reagan-Weinberger defense build-up was
‘unnecessary.'” This purpose was (perhaps
inadvertently) acknowledged in a headline accompanying a
17 November article by Washington Post reporter
Walter Pincus: “Tainted Intelligence Issue Blunted;
Review Can’t Find a Pentagon Decision Based on Soviet
Disinformation.”

The Real Scandal

The truth of the matter is that the most dangerous
disinformation passed on by these double agents was
designed to overstate the secure hold on power and benign
intentions of Mikhail Gorbachev, not to overstate
the capability of his military hardware. Such data
encouraged the West to lower its guard — something it
was all too inclined to do anyway in the thrall of glasnost
and perestroika. The Bush Administration, which
was determined to prop up Gorbachev and preserve the
“territorial integrity” of the USSR, was
uncritical in accepting and acting upon this
disinformation.

An even more serious problem — which seems to
persist to this day — is the failure of U.S.
intelligence accurately to understand that the Kremlin’s
weapons development and procurement program was actually
far larger and more dynamic than the Intelligence
Community (IC) generally believed. According to
working level analysts, many scores of Soviet military
activities escaped detection or were significantly
underestimated. Some of these were even operational systems.
The latter reportedly included a strategic missile that
could travel intercontinental distances underwater until
making, with little warning, its terminal aerial
maneuver.

The Bottom Line

To paraphrase a cliche, those who fail to
understand the Cold War may be doomed to repeat it — or
something worse. If anything, the United States needs
a more competent, aggressive and apolitical intelligence
operation in the present strategic environment. Dr.
Deutch and his cohorts may prove to be a serious
impediment to fielding such a national asset, rather than
a catalyst to doing so.

The problem represented by an IC leadership seemingly
more concerned with good press than good intelligence is
not, unfortunately limited to the present Administration.
As the Ames case demonstrates, damage done to the
integrity and quality of an intelligence service can take
many years to correct. Those interested in ensuring that
the next President is well served in this area
have a powerful interest in limiting the damage being
done by this President and his appointees at the
CIA.