In late July the Washington Post published an ambitious report on U.S. national security intelligence that we are told had taken the Post’s staff two years to complete. The project was led by two competent and experienced reporters, Dana Priest and William Arkin, and the report has received an enthusiastic press. Having written about national security intelligence in books like Countering Terrorism: Blurred Focus, Halting Steps (2007), I was looking forward to reading the Post’s report.
The report is, in fact, a disappointment. It is descriptive rather than analytic, and the description is based entirely on two types of data, neither of which contributes to an understanding of the nature and problems of the nation’s intelligence system. The two types are statistics indicating the size and organizational complexity of national security intelligence, and expressions of exasperation at that size and complexity by former or current insiders.
The statistics are not broken down by each of the principal domains of national security intelligence, and so the reader is given no sense of the actual structure of the intelligence system. Five aspects need to be distinguished. The first is routine military intelligence—military intelligence unrelated to ongoing combat. The military has to keep tabs on the capabilities, deployments, intentions, and so forth of the armed forces of foreign countries even when it is not fighting them. Second, there is combat intelligence, which at present is focused on Afghanistan but extends to other areas as well, such as Iraq, Yemen, and the Philippines. This second area of military intelligence overlaps the third and fourth domains of national security intelligence—counterterrorist intelligence conducted abroad and at home, the latter complicated by sensitivities to potential violations of privacy and civil liberties. Last, and overlapping all the others, is the traditional kind of foreign intelligence conducted by the CIA, which includes wide-ranging intelligence analysis, recruitment of foreign agents, counterintelligence, and paramilitary operations in support of U.S. foreign policy.
Merely counting the number of people, parking spaces, square feet of building space, and other countables lovingly recited in the Post‘s report conveys no useful information and will impress only naïve readers who have somehow failed to realize that the U.S. government and its major components are huge. The report conveys the impression of mindless growth in intelligence personnel, contractors, and facilities since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But that was a watershed event that justified expanding the intelligence system. Before the attacks there was little concern with terrorism, and after there was and there continues to be acute concern, along with virtually continuous warfare in central Asia and enhanced concern with the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran. The report, because it makes no effort at meaningful disaggregation of the statistics of expansion, does not indicate how much of the recent growth in our intelligence facilities and personnel is legitimately responsive to threats to national security that have emerged (or first been recognized) since 9/11 and how much is waste engendered by political, commercial, and bureaucratic exploitation of people’s fears.
Several of the “wow” statistics highlighted in the report are completely meaningless. One is the number of persons—more than 850,000—who have top-secret clearances. A top-secret clearance is required for all sorts of activities that have nothing to do with intelligence, such as advanced weapons research, high-level military command, and the management of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. (A cafeteria worker in a weapons factory might require such a clearance.) It is well known that overclassification is rampant, and so the number of top-secret clearances may well be excessive. But the figure casts no light on overclassification of intelligence.
Another meaningless figure is that more than 1,200 government organizations are involved in national security intelligence. The number was arrived at by dividing agencies that have intelligence duties into their constituent units. Any large organization contains a large number of organizational units. That doesn’t mean the organization is unmanageable, which is the inference that the study invites the reader to draw from the number of units.
Similarly meaningless is the large number (almost 2,000) of companies that have contracts with one or more intelligence agencies. They are suppliers of equipment, personnel, information, and expertise to the agencies. There is nothing unusual or untoward about a large enterprise—such as the conglomeration of U.S. intelligence agencies—having thousands of suppliers.
The overarching theme of the study is that the intelligence system is too large. But in emphasizing sheer size, the study reflects a lack of perspective. Although the national security state has about 100,000 employees and annual expenditures of $75 billion, IBM has four times as many employees and yearly costs approaching the same amount. Is IBM too large? Is $75 billion, which is roughly one-half of one percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, too much to spend on the full range of intelligence activities in which the world’s most powerful and globally committed nation—a nation at war and struggling against terrorism on many fronts, including the home front—is compelled to engage?
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Judge Posner's essay has a "don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain" quality to it. I suspect that reaction to his essay will be the opposite of what he intends. My overall take on the WP series is that, due to shear size, US intelligence lacks focus, focus not only by the intelligence assets but also by the consumers of it. Counting bodies, and computers and desks, may not tell us much about the substance of US intelligence, but it does paint a picture of an unmanagable operation.
Judge Posner's essay has a "don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain" quality to it. I suspect that reaction to his essay will be the opposite of what he intends. My overall take on the WP series is that, due to shear size, US intelligence lacks focus, focus not only by the intelligence assets but also by the consumers of it. Counting bodies, and computers and desks, may not tell us much about the substance of US intelligence, but it does paint a picture of an unmanagable operation.
Rayward: Exactly. And now I'm that more aware of how frightening and incompetent our "intelligence" is. The analysis can wait for an op ed.
Rayward: Exactly. And now I'm that more aware of how frightening and incompetent our "intelligence" is. The analysis can wait for an op ed.
As much as I respect Posner, he's wrong here. Sure, no one should be surprised that the U.S. intelligence agencies are huge, and the numbers may or may not reveal legitimate insights, but the Post's series provides a larger narrative that has been too much neglected - that size and complexity are often counterproductive. Indeed, the sheer variety and complexity of intelligence agencies has also led to a lack of accountability. Everyone is responsible for a particular form of intelligence when it's budgeting time and there are goodies to be distributed. But, when things go south, everybody has at least three other offices to point at.
As much as I respect Posner, he's wrong here. Sure, no one should be surprised that the U.S. intelligence agencies are huge, and the numbers may or may not reveal legitimate insights, but the Post's series provides a larger narrative that has been too much neglected - that size and complexity are often counterproductive. Indeed, the sheer variety and complexity of intelligence agencies has also led to a lack of accountability. Everyone is responsible for a particular form of intelligence when it's budgeting time and there are goodies to be distributed. But, when things go south, everybody has at least three other offices to point at.
What Judge Posner points out is that the Post series stopped before problem solving analysis could begin. It was reporting, and it wasn't inaccurate, and those attributes can't be dismissed. But more probing analysis and interviews with folks having alternative recommendations for remedies would surely be useful. Posner once again proves his value as a critic .
What Judge Posner points out is that the Post series stopped before problem solving analysis could begin. It was reporting, and it wasn't inaccurate, and those attributes can't be dismissed. But more probing analysis and interviews with folks having alternative recommendations for remedies would surely be useful. Posner once again proves his value as a critic .
I just read it, and I agree with His Honor. The first article is about the size/coordination thing, but size, as the judge says, isn't a problem per se -- for all I know, the apparatus should be much bigger than it is. And, yes, I get that coordination is a challenge. I get that the amount of information is a challenge. Nobody said it was easy, and they're working on it. The Post is hardly unmasking a giant boondoggle. That's the style of it, but it doesn't have the evidence to back that up. The second piece, about contractors, all has an ominous Blackwater-ish tone, but it doesn't really make the argument that contractors are bad, or that these contractors (like General Dynamics, for ... view full comment
I just read it, and I agree with His Honor. The first article is about the size/coordination thing, but size, as the judge says, isn't a problem per se -- for all I know, the apparatus should be much bigger than it is. And, yes, I get that coordination is a challenge. I get that the amount of information is a challenge. Nobody said it was easy, and they're working on it. The Post is hardly unmasking a giant boondoggle. That's the style of it, but it doesn't have the evidence to back that up. The second piece, about contractors, all has an ominous Blackwater-ish tone, but it doesn't really make the argument that contractors are bad, or that these contractors (like General Dynamics, for example) are bad. It makes noises that they're not cheaper, and bemoans one guy's Mercedes, but it may be that much of this is just what's available and how it's available, and amounts to the market price of the needed expertise and services. When the military needs an airplane, it doesn't hire government workers to build one. It buys one from Boeing. The article relies on a sense that doing that with intelligence-related services, like, say, running software or surveillance equipment, is somehow suspect in itself, but it's really a case-by-case issue that the article doesn't scratch the surface of. For example, can we get some pros and cons, some alternatives, some discussion of the options? No, because, after two years, the reporters don't really know what they're talking about. The third piece is total fluff. The series hardly has any stories, but that's okay. An in-depth look into a subject is always welcome -- giving a reader a sense of how the world operates. But thse pieces don't even do that. It amounts to saying that the intelligence apparatus is large (compared to what it was recently, I guess), faces coordination challenges, involves hiring contractors, and is largely centered in a particular area. Sorry, that ain't much!