Abstract
Orbis, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Winter 2006.
It's practically a tradition. Following a U.S. intelligence crisis, there is introspection and investigation. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, after the “family jewels” revelations, after the uncovering of turncoat Aldrich Ames, and after many other incidents, there was scrutiny. Each look into the wide world of spooks sheds a little more light on the shadowy realm of intelligence culture.
Keeping with custom, many of the postmortems that have followed the intelligence failures of 9/11 and Iraq have touched on typically unseen ways in which the intelligence community functions–or malfunctions–on a day-today basis. (See, for example, the reports completed by an internal CIA review panel and by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.) To the uninitiated, such discussion can sound obscure, if not downright boring. But in “It's a Cultural Thing,” published in the Winter 2006 Orbis, former CIA case officer Garrett Jones gives readers a lively inside account of how intelligence culture has contributed to failures and how sensible changes could make the country safer.
For starters, Jones (who was station chief in Somalia during the 1993 crisis) believes CIA analysts too often feel the need to provide extensive answers in response to questions from intelligence consumers (such as Congress and the White House) and end up providing information with so many caveats that it is “effectively without value.” ‘”We don't know,’ can be a valuable answer,” he says. To remedy this fault, Jones recommends that analysts be required to show that there is sufficient reporting to make “a meaningful analytical” judgment. The language of analysis should also be standardized, Jones says, so that one analyst's definition of “likely” equates with another's.
Another point of friction within the CIA is that the roles of intelligence collectors, who are based in the Directorate of Operations, and analysts, who work for the Directorate of Intelligence, overlap too often. Analysts sometimes direct intelligence collection and then analyze what is collected. “This is a fundamental error and may be at least partially responsible for the failures surrounding the Iraqi WMD question,” he says. “[These analysts'] opinions should be one data-point among many, not the first draft of a National Intelligence Estimate.”
A number of ills that Jones sees center on CIA personnel policies. The promotion system ensures that management advances careers of like-minded employees, says Jones, which fosters not reform, but “more of the same.” He cautions that “toxic” people–those who damage morale and colleagues' careers but are tolerated for their supposedly brilliant contributions–worsen workplace atmosphere. And the agency's policy of hiring retired staffers and contractors when workloads surge, though helpful, can contribute to morale problems (contractors and staff employees get paid significantly different amounts to do the same work) and “impact the hiring and training of tomorrow's leaders,” Jones says. CIA management, he argues, should institute solely merit-based promotions and more carefully weigh the benefits of using contractors.
For all of his insights, Jones's assertion that the CIA is as close to “termination” as it ever has been is a stretch. Outside the secretive corridors of CIA headquarters, the agency appears to be in the throes of a serious crisis, but there is little reason to think it won't emerge–imperfect intelligence culture mostly intact.