Why U.S. Intelligence is Inadequate, and How to Fix It

Analysis and Groupthink

As regards terrorism as well as during the Cold war, scarcity of hard information combined with political prejudice to produce Groupthink at CIA.  During the 1960s and 70s CIA analysts distorted reality concerning Soviet missiles even more radically than they did regarding Iraq in 1993 – 2003. Just as in Iraq, CIA’s human collectors did not know with what characteristics the other side intended to endow its weapons. And our technical devices were able to discern only indirect indications of what these might be. Nevertheless to maintain their prejudices CIA analysts had to ignore the plainest facts – just like in Iraq.  Beginning in the mid 1960s the Soviet Union began a massive buildup of its missile force, and of warheads with the combination of power and accuracy for disarming “first strikes.” But CIA’s dogma had it that the Soviets would not try to match the number of US missiles or seek that capacity. When the Soviets’ numbers did, CIA analysts judged that they would not exceed them. When their missiles exceeded ours in number, CIA judged that the Soviets would not endow them with accuracy. When they did that, CIA judged that this would not matter because the Soviets just had to know that it would be unreasonable to use the force they had built. This line of reasoning developed over a decade, and involved countless redefinitions of what technical evidence was and was not acceptable. Each redefinition prejudiced conclusions in favor of CIA’s dogma.  Only in 1977, when an independent commission was given access to all data available to CIA, did this intellectual house of cards fall.

Similarly, CIA dogma held that the Soviet Union was not spending a greater proportion of its GDP on military matters than was the US – in those days, some 5 to 6%.

To support this prejudice, CIA built an elaborate econometric model, complete with its own valuation of the ruble. It turned out of course that the soviets had been spending on the order of 40% of GDP on their military. A glance at the Statistical Abstract of the United States for the 1980s, compiled with CIA data, shows even more egregious prejudice. According to CIA, you see, the per capita GDP of East Germany and West Germany were roughly equal. This was news to all but the CIA analysts who made up the econometric models.

There is no reason then to be surprised at CIA analysts’ judgment that Iraq was virtually uninvolved with terrorism and full of Weapons of Mass Destruction. To reach the first part of that judgment, they only had to term “inconclusive” the existence of the training camp for foreign terrorists at Salman Pak, the financing of terrorism in Israel (which CIA does not admit is really terrorism ), the reported meeting of 9/11 captain Mohammed Atta with Iraqi case officer al Ani (al Ani’s denial of the meeting beats Czech intelligence’s affirmation of it, you see), the overlap of personnel between the first and second attack on the World Trade Center, Yousef’s possession of identity documents doctored by Iraqi intelligence, and much more. To affirm Iraq’s possession of WMDs, CIA analysts only had to go with the flow of legalistic argument: The UN had required Iraq to submit to inspections. Iraq had not done so. It had to be hiding WMDs. Easy.  Besides, focusing on WMDs averted America’s attention from the role that Arab regimes play in terrorism. CIA wanted to make sure of that.