Reflections of a retired Baby Boomer
Topic: Obama and the Intelligence Community
On Thursday, President Obama and his staff discussed the findings of their internal review of the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack. They concluded there was not a failure to share information such as was seen in the pre 9/11 days; but a failure to “connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had”. The President announced he was issuing a directive to the “relevant agencies on the corrective actions he has decided on”. In a follow on statement, John Brennan, the President’s Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor, said the changes would cover four areas:
– The intelligence community will “immediately begin assigning responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively..”
– “intelligence reports, especially those involving potential threats to the United States, be distributed more rapidly and more widely.”
– “Strengthen the analytic process.”
– “…strengthen the criteria used to add individual to our terrorist watchlists…so that we do a better job keeping dangerous people off airplanes.”
I was encouraged by the press conference but still can’t help but wonder if the President and his staff have gained a better understanding of the complexity of the intelligence community. Because intelligence plays such a key role in national security, this is no small thing. As I said in my blog on this topic last week, how can you fix what you don’t understand? When the politicians and media talk about intelligence the focus is usually on the CIA, which is just one intelligence agency out of 16. By no means am I attempting to down play that organization’s role or past and current achievements. They are Super Stars and have done great things, most of which can’t be discussed in detail. My point is simply they are one organization. When there’s an intelligence failure and you say you’re going to reform the community, you’d best understand how all of it operates.
Something like 85% of the nation’s intelligence community resides within the Department of Defense; yet I cannot recall one President who has ever visited a military intelligence command. I did some informal checking and found every President has visited the CIA. I wonder if any of the three men who have served as Director of National Intelligence have visited military intelligence commands during their tenure. I know they did earlier in their careers, Admiral McConnell for one, had been a brilliant Naval Intelligence Officer in an earlier life; but did he ever visit a military intelligence command while in the Director job? I hope so.
It’s not just the President and his staff but many of the media pundits as well seem uninformed. I’ve found the print media does a pretty good job reporting on intelligence issues; but the TV media folks continue to talk in sound bites that fail to give the average listener an understanding of the real issues. I don’t believe the media is deliberately misleading the public; they simply are not as familiar with some, and note I say “some” of the issues as they would have you believe.
Case in point last week Major General Mike Flynn, the Director of Intelligence in Afghanistan, commonly referred to as the J2, published a paper criticizing the intelligence community in an unclassified think tank publication. He had two co-authors, Paul Batchelor a senior executive assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency and Captain Matt Pottinger an advisor to the General and a recent winner of a Marine Corps Intelligence Officer of the Year award.
There’s been very little reported on this remarkable event by the media, probably again because they don’t understand the significance. For any military intelligence officer to publish a criticism of the community in a civilian publication without “formally” first going through the military chain of command while at war is unprecedented in my experience. The military has court marshaled and jailed many for much less offenses. He must have at a minimum had permission from the head of United States Central Command, General Petraeus and his boss in Afghanistan, General McChrystal. Since one of his co-authors works for the Defense Intelligence Agency, they must have at least informally approved of the publication as well. It also tells me he might be having trouble getting the DC crowd to respond to his problems.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell says Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who saw the report only after it came out, “has real reservations” about the decision to have it published by a private group. But, Morell says, Gates a former intelligence official himself, “found the analysis ‘brillant’ and the findings ‘spot on’.”
Major General Flynn doesn’t mince words, in his opening paragraph he states: “Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy. Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade…U.S. intelligence officers and analyst can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis, and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency.”
Major General Flynn goes on to states the intelligence community “is also culture that is emphatic about secrecy but regrettable less concerned about mission effectiveness.” He goes on to quote: “General McChrystal in a recent meeting, “Our Senior leaders – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States – are not getting the right information to make decisions with. We must get this right. The media is driving the issues. We need to build a process from the sensor all the way to the political decision makers.”
If these organizations are not able to provide the military decision makers, with the data they need, in the time and format need, that’s a major problem. I don’t believe Major General Flynn and his co-authors were attacking all of his military intelligence support. I believe he is standing up for them. He says the conclusions and recommendations made in the paper were based on discussions with hundreds of people inside and outside the intelligence community. I suspect members of the military intelligence side of the house have been complaining for some time and probably have not felt they were being heard or understood hence the unconventional approach.
Major General Flynn gives several examples of what’s working and what’s not. I’ll cover more of what’s in the report and the significance in my next blog.
Why should the President, the media, and the public care about the military intelligence side of the house? These are the men and woman, many in their late teens and early 20’s who provide the bulk of the support for military operations. You cannot win a war without good intelligence support. At its best, intelligence provides the decision maker with information on potential adversaries that allows them to make decisions to avoid a war or crisis. In a war time environment it provides the decision makers with the knowledge enabling them to craft a winning strategy. In their excellent book The Admiral’s Advantage, Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg discuss intelligence support to military operations. The Navy calls this OPINTEL. Ford and Rosenberg state:
“World War II was the crucible in which modern OPINTEL first began to take shape. Numerous historical accounts – now available due to the gradual declassification of records shrouded in history for many ears after the war – attest to the vital role that intelligence played in making possible the Allie’s overwhelming victory in 1945. For example, Gen. Thomas Handy reportedly believed that Allied intelligence triumphs shortened the war in Europe by at least a year, and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower estimated that it saved thousands of British and American lives. Similarly, Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in Chief (CINC) of Allied forces in the Pacific theater, believed that the good intelligence he received was worth as much as an entire additional fleet.’
As always, my views are my own.
