Challenges in the US Intelligence Community - Research Paper Example

Introduction The intelligence community of the United States is confronted with new challenges as its most pressing targets, predominantly terrorist organizations, are prepared to evade various tools of information-gathering that have been established successful formerly. There is the existence of weaknesses in every tread of the intelligence cycle, from planning and direction up until the gathering, processing, investigation, and distribution.1The mobilization of the intelligence of the United States against these new-fangled threats necessitates not just redirected resources en route for improved human intelligence but also a repositioning of attitudes inside as well as among the intelligence administrations. The apparatus of the United States intelligence is controlled by miscommunication involving analysts and the policymakers which results from packaging, sourcing, and from time to time the distortion of information. The shortcomings of the intelligence in advance of the September 11 tragedy as well as the war in Iraq presented several lessons for reform. The investments in fresh sources of human intelligence as well as data-mining could assist in boosting U.S. information- gathering facilities, although genuine intelligence reform would only be probable given that the national director of intelligence is endowed with the power to supersede the bureaucratic turf wars amongst the agencies of U.S. intelligence. Background The Intelligence Cycle The planning along with the direction phase ought to account for a world having 191 states and a surplus of groups, factions, gangs, as well factions, a number of of which have adversarial relations with the United States. Following the conclusion of the Cold War, Woolsey, who is the director of central intelligence (DCI) throughout the Clinton administration pointed out that: people live at present in a jungle that is filled with a confusing assortment of venomous snakes.2To a certain extent the degree of danger rendered by an opponent could turn out to be painfully apparent, similar to the case of al-Qaeda terrorists attacks against New York City as well as Washington, D.C., during September 11, 2001. Regrettably, no one could forecast precisely when and where danger would hit, in part since people live in a world that is full of secrets and mysteries. By secrets, intelligence experts pertain to the information that the United States may be capable to recognize despite being concealed in another country or group. For instance, the numbers of Chinese tanks along with the number of nuclear submarines could be determined despite being hidden by the Chinese government. On the contrary, mysteries refer to events that no one could distinguish about until they take place since they lie past the restricted human aptitude to foretell. For instance, no one knows who would be the next president of a particular country. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk has constantly pointed out that: Fate has not provided mankind the capability to penetrate the fog of the future.3 In this environment, agencies under the intelligence division are confronted with the task of recognizing intelligence priorities, a procedure recognized as threat evaluation. Experts together with policymakers collect occasionally to assess the dangers that face the United States and set up a ladder of priorities from the most treacherous (Tiers 1A and 1B) to the least (Tier 4). Prejudice and deduction come in the picture, along with the restrictions caused by the doubt that surrounds the future. Where should one position China in the threat evaluation? What about other countries for that matter? The result of these debates constructs and determines the priorities for some $44 billion value of intelligence costs annually. It also identifies the areas U.S. spies would penetrate, determines the orbits for surveillance satellites, along with the establishment of the flight guides of exploration aircrafts . To develop the threat appraisal process, the United States has taken on nine key inquiries into its intelligence tools since the conclusion of the Cold War. Every one of these has concluded that policymakers were unsuccessful to elucidate at the time of the 118 planning-and-direction stage of the intelligence cycle precisely what types of information they require. Accordingly, intelligence officers stay ignorant about the data preferred by policy officials, who in turn have a propensity to suppose that the intelligence agencies would divine the issues that wait for action at the State Department, the White House, as well as other significant offices in Washington.4 Amongst policy officials, the president together with his top aides is considered as the most essential consumers of intelligence particularly in the executive division. These aides take in members of the cabinet who handle foreign as well as national security issues, and the station of the National Security Council (NSC). These people are pulled in several different directions depending on the necessities of their every day schedules. In turn, they are hesitant to dedicate much time, if any, to bringing up to date their intelligence priorities. In addition to this problem are problems with communication involving analysts and decision makers. From time to time NSC staffs, on the job for about a year or more, have by no means talked with skilled intelligence analysts on the National Intelligence Council who takes over and are assigned in the same areas. This collapse in communication could be rooted from insufficient liaison relations involving the government’s policy departments along with the intelligence agencies. The inadequate synchronization leads to aggravation on both sides. All too often policymakers scribble “inappropriate” or “OBE” (overhauled by events) in ink across intelligence information. The gathering phase, which comes after the planning and direction during the intelligence cycle, is also confronted with challenges. Even a powerful entity such as the United States is not capable of covering the globe with costly surveillance platforms (hardware), like that of reconnaissance aircrafts, satellites, along with ground-based listening posts. At the time of the Cold War, satellite photography checked the missiles as well as armies of enemies, making a surprise attack like Pearl Harbor improbable. At present nonetheless, cameras on satellites as well as airplanes are powerless to look closely inside al-Qaeda tents or into the subterranean underground caves where North Korea builds up nuclear weapons. Although they consist of a high percentage of the funds billed in the yearly intelligence budget, expensive hardware is of dubious value in tracking countless current U.S. safety concerns. A lot of the best contributions from spy machines could traced from a comparatively cheap unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly the Predator, which has demonstrated efficiency at searching the Iraqi and Afghan landscape in looking for insurgents. On occasion, the far more expensive surveillance satellites have established their worth by intercepting informative telephone conversations between terrorists and other enemies (a process recognized as signals intelligence, the capture of communications from one individual or faction to another).5 Furthermore, satellite images of Russian along with Chinese missile sites, or North Korean troop movements, continue to be important to the defense of the United States. Just as in the case of terrorism, it would be further beneficial to have a human agent well positioned inside the higher reaches of al-Qaeda. Provided with such an agent, or talent, would be equivalent to a dozen multibillion-dollar satellites. Nevertheless human intelligence has its boundaries too. Against closed civilizations like Iran, North Korea, as well as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, local assets are hard to employ. This is particularly because the United States focused for countless of years on the communist world and fundamentally overlooked the study of the history, languages, and culture essential to work in such places as the Middle East as well as Asia. Hardly any U.S. citizens have mastered the degrees of Arabic, Pashto, or Farsi; fewer still are eager to work in dangerous locations abroad for government wages. Although productively recruited, aboriginal assets could be unpredictable. They are identified to manufacture reports, trade information to the highest bidder, and plan as fake defectors or double-agents. Furthermore, intelligence assets could not be taken into account as boy scouts or nuns; they are most of the time motivated by greediness and travel devoid of moral compasses. “Curveball,” who is known to be the prophetically codenamed German agent, gives a characteristic picture of the dangers concerned in human intelligence. Serving as a spy inside Iraq during the year 2002, Curveball influenced the German intelligence service that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were present in Saddam’s regime.6 In the meantime, the Central Intelligence Agency, took the lure through its connection with the Germans. Nonetheless, not each human intelligence asset becomes as deceiving as Curveball. At present and then a foreign spy gives extremely helpful information to the United States, just in the case of the Soviet military intelligence officer Oleg Penkosky at the time of the Cold War. Information provided by Col. Penkosky, together with the photographs captured by U-2 reconnaissance aircraft assisted the CIA in identifying the company of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba during the year 1962. With sporadic successes like Penkosky into consideration, the United States and the majority of other countries continue to look for dependable and prolific assets, even though the cost-benefit ratio has been unsatisfactory. The heart of the intelligence cycle is attributed to the analysis stage, where the job is to carry insight to the information that has been gathered and processed. The method is clear-cut: employ competent people to sit through all the accessible information in an effort to calculate what events could take place next in the world. Impacts The 9/11 Intelligence Failure U.S. intelligence agencies acted in a more convincing way to notify the nation of the terrorist danger prior to September 11, 2001, than is frequently recognized. As early as 1995, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) warmed the White House that “aerial terror campaign seems possible to a certain extent, filling an airplane with explosives as well as dive-bombing a target,”7. Analysts in the CTC had good motive to be worried about aerial terrorism all through the 1990s. Recurrent reports had persisted in the media concerning terrorist plans to fly an airplane into the CIA headquarters or the Eiffel Tower. The CTC’s catuions on this subject surfaced in high policy circles with reliability between 1995 and 2001. Nevertheless the CTC never supplied officials with accurate information concerning the timing or place of the expected high jacking, the type of actionable intelligence that would have permitted U.S. authorities to seize the terrorists before they got on the airplanes. Furthermore, the intelligence agencies persistently gave officials with ominous warnings about other likely threats, from trucks equipped with dynamite setting off in urban tunnels to attacks against the country’s railroad scheme, livestock, crops, computer infrastructure, as well as water supplies. What is missing in these accounts was a sense of precedence or likelihood among the threats, together with the degree of specificity essential to take opportune defensive measures. Nevertheless September 11 could also be considered an intelligence failure just as it could be considered as a policy failure as well. In spite of the CIA’s warnings concerning aerial terrorism, for instance, neither the Clinton nor the next Bush administrations took consequential procedures to tighten airport safety measures, caution pilots, or even warn top officials in the Department of Transportation concerning the terrorist danger. Solutions and Conclusion Proposals for Reform The American public have got to come to recognize that intelligence agencies, just as in the same manner as any human enterprise, would constantly have their share of shortcomings. Nonetheless, much could be done to lessen the possibility of mistakes. During the planning as well as direction phase, policy officials should describe information needs with better accuracy. Collection has been too extensive and necessitates a sharper focus. The tasking of intelligence agencies is most of the time indistinctly spelled out, if at all, and the consequence is an excessively diffuse global intelligence compilation effort. The president ought to issue a periodical National Security Council Intelligence Directive that gives updates on the administration’s threat evaluation as well as present intelligence needs. The president ought to maintain on specific directives. In the collection stage, transformed concentration on human intelligence proves to be significant. From the year 1947, technical intelligence like that of signals intelligence and satellite imagery has conquered the U.S. intelligence finances at the cost of human intelligence. The intelligence budget is presently starting to transfer funds in the direction of human intelligence. Funding, on the other hand, is only the initial step. Spy rings are comparatively cheap to set up; the more tricky challenge is to build up among intelligence officers the language skills as well as knowledge of foreign cultures essential for the efficient recruitment of assets overseas. This effort would not be successful overnight; it is bound to take more than a decade. The formation of government scholarships to draw top students into the intelligence agencies, like that of Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, is a stride in the correct direction. As a reward for service in an intelligence agency for a span of time, regularly two to three years, the government takes responsibility for the college tuition for students studying foreign languages as well as cultures. Along with this, the intelligence agencies should also do more to employ U.S. citizens with ethnic heritages relevant to tactical areas like that of the Middle East, South Asia, together with other regions fundamentally overlooked at the time of the Cold War. Notes: 1. Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 2. “Indiana Jim and the Temple of Spooks,” The Economist, 20 March 1993, 34. 3. Dean Rusk, interview with author, Athens, Georgia, 21 February 1988. 4. See National Commission on Terrorist A􀄴 acks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist A􀄴 acks upon the United States (New York: Norton, 2004). 5. Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 6. Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 7. Loch K. Johnson, “The Aspin-Brown Intelligence Inquiry: Behind the Closed Doors of a Blue Ribbon Commission,” Studies in Intelligence 48 (Winter 2004): 12. References: Johnson, L. K. Secret Agencies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Johnson,J. K. “The Aspin-Brown Intelligence Inquiry: Behind the Closed Doors of a Blue Ribbon Commission,” Studies in Intelligence 48 Winter, 2004. National Commission on Terrorist A􀄴 acks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist A􀄴 acks upon the United States. New York: Norton, 2004. “Indiana Jim and the Temple of Spooks,” The Economist, 20 March 1993, 34. Rusk, D. interview with author, Athens, Georgia, 21 February 1988. Read More