Threats and Warnings – Part 2
Is America’s threat and warnings intelligence (referred to as “strategic intelligence”) working, or is it increasingly broken, divorced from reality? And how can that question even be asked at a time when national technical collections themselves are arguably so sophisticated, so pervasive and pragmatically so effective that they frighten some citizens? There is simply no doubt that intelligence collections are at an unprecedented level. If you want to dig into the true scope and reach of technical collections I can only refer you to Jeffrey Richelson’s most recent work on the US. Intelligence Community (it’s some 600 pages, and that’s really just a good overview).
The good news is that those capabilities allow us an unprecedented ability to monitor what foreign actors such as North Korea, Iran, Russia and China are actually doing. The question is whether or not the same confidence can be found in the overall intelligence “system” – “a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network”.
Modern strategic intelligence began with the onset of the Cold War, focused on assessing the Soviet Union and the likelihood and potential timing of preemptive warfare against the West. By January, 1948 a newly formed Joint Intelligence Committee was forecasting that open war with the Soviets could commence within a year. In its early years “warnings” intelligence was devoted almost entirely to the anticipation of military action by Communist bloc countries against the United States and its allies, or against other nations nominally part of the Western bloc – it was being developed to serve as a key decision making element for the President.
Cynthia Grabo, one of the earliest post-war practitioners of the specialty, wrote that President Truman was an avid reader of intelligence reports, yet he became confounded by conflicting opinions and assessments regarding the possibility that Stalin would move to take control of Berlin. At that point Truman pointedly asked who it was that was monitoring and consolidating all the intelligence being produced. He wanted someone to reconcile them all and give him a single, intelligence assessment. When told there was no mechanism to provide a unified opinion he became adamant that would change – and change quickly.
Given the challenge of inter-agency rivalry, it took several days – and some strong words from President Truman – for the committee to reach an estimate they could all accept. The ensuing Soviet blockade of Berlin kept the new committee at work updating their estimate for the remainder of 1948. After the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency an internal weekly Situation Summary began to be compiled; it was used by the CIA Director in personal briefings of President Truman. With the establishment of the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence, that office began creating a daily summary which evolved into the Current Intelligence Bulletin, first issued in 1951.
President’s Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were all avid consumers of intelligence materials, following his election President Kennedy requested that a new format for the daily report be developed, condensed to a smaller number of pages so that he could carry it with him for quick reference in discussions and decision making. President Johnson was also an avid consumer of intelligence and also directed revisions in the format, which continued virtually unchanged into contemporary times – the one obvious change being that President Obama request an electronic version that could be carried on a personal tablet device, giving him a form of portable reference similar to President Kennedy’s.
Samples of the intelligence checklists provided to President’s Kennedy and Johnson have now been released and are available for public review:
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005992097.pdf
While the PDB is highly classified, portions of it have historically gone to the Secretaries of State, Defense and the president’s national security advisor. A more limited version (the National Intelligence Daily) is distributed more broadly including to select members of Congress. The material in the PDB represents the consolidation of thousands of intelligence professional’s work – with today’s resources this represents an almost unimaginable amount of intelligence collections.
The goal of the PDB briefings is not only to make the President aware of new intelligence regarding sensitive situations but to provide an opportunity for detailed discussion, and presidential direction on intelligence focus and priorities. Without a doubt, the president’s engagement with the PDB and with his intelligence briefs (historically conducted by the CIA director and now available from the Director of National Intelligence) provide a measure of how actively the Commander in Chief is involved with the intelligence community.
Of course each president has their own style as a consumer of intelligence, some prefer to spend extensive time reading while others want the active give an take of dialog in extended sessions – both President’s Kennedy and Obama appear to have been oriented towards reading while Johnson wanted a lively intelligence dialog. Presidents such as Nixon, Carter, and Reagan George W. Bush appear to have relied heavily on their National Security Advisors to research and filter the intelligence product for them – as well as establishing the priorities for follow-on briefings related to outstanding threats and warnings.
When a president is actively engaged with threats and warnings intelligence – and makes the right decisions on priorities – the process works well. In Surprise Attack (Chapter 16; “Shadow Boxing”), I describe how in two separate instances President Clinton and his national security staff engaged with new types of emerging terror threats, in both instances quick engagement and proactive changes in priorities neutralized actual threats – in the Bojinka Airlines bombing and the Millennium bombing plots of 1995 and 99.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-05-28-1995148047-story.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/trail/inside/
Unfortunately, in 2001, with the intelligence community sounding alarms about impending attacks, the engagement process failed at both the level of the presidential briefings and the priority setting for staff dialogs on imminent threats and warnings. That story is far more complex than can be detailed here but ultimately the PDB which was involved in its earliest stages was released to the public – as was a White House response on the PDB itself.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/Fact%20Sheet.htm
What was not released in the White House statement were the failed efforts of the President’s special advisor on counter terrorism to gain access to raise the visibility of impending attacks or a special briefing given to President Bush at his ranch in Texas on August 6, 1961 (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States”).
The upshot of it all was that there was “no formal tasking” coming out of the intelligence briefings, no elevation of threat levels, no change in priorities or special White House pressure on the FBI or the CIA field offices (as there had been with the threat related to the Millennium plot of 1999) – and no new national security directives from the President’s office.
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch8.htm
The attacks on America in 2001 illustrate the critical nature of threat and warnings intelligence as a total “closed loop” system. The first stage is collecting, analyzing and compiling extremely current information to provide to the decision makers. Completing the loop relies on the decision makers allocating the time and focus to engage with the intelligence on a daily basis, to change their priorities as it changes and to ensure that their own political priorities and concerns to not override the facts that are being provided to them. Which leads us back to the question of current threat and warnings intelligence in the United States.
If the reporting is accurate, President Trump is not an eager consumer of professional intelligence. Unlike the majority of his predecessors he rarely (if ever) reads the full President’s Daily Brief, relying only on oral briefings on selected topics.
On the other hand, some past presidents – LBJ and Richard Nixon being a prime examples – were not enthusiastic readers either, and reading does not translate into engagement. A more positive view of Trump’s engagement comes from CIA Director Pompeo:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/presidential-intelligence-briefings-process-working-trump-listening
You can read these articles and reach your own opinion in regard to the level of the president’s intelligence community engagement.
But beyond that there are much more objective measurements of how well the overall process is working – leading us to actual work products such as national security directives, presidential decision and study directives and White House proposals for security related legislation. Those are things that most definitely can be measured, and not only measured but matched to the threats being reported to the President and to Congress by the intelligence community. That should give us an indication of whether the full intelligence cycle is working – or whether there is evidence of the sorts of failures that, in retrospect, can now be seen to have begun to emerge during 2001.
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Assessing threats and warning intelligence is certainly a challenge - I'm a huge fan of Cynthia Grabo's work and she does give some classic illustrations of how the process works. As well as concrete examples of when it did and did not in the past. Of course in most instances those illustrations have to wait for decades for enough data to become public for an effective evaluation. However when the system totally fails, there are generally investigations which disclose at least a level of primary data, enough to see how threat warnings were processed and what the response was - I tackled several such incidents in Surprise Attack.
As you note, its virtually impossible to determine when the threat/warning system is working correctly....although there incidents where attacks are preempted (like the Bojinka plot and the Millennium plot) which generate limited insights as to how successful a given administration is in regard to supporting and responding to threat and warning's intelligence.
In any event, I have some thoughts about an approach which would expose what I've come to see as a particular window of vulnerability which exists under certain circumstances - and which has had major consequences for the nation. Only time and a lot of work will determine if I can develop those thoughts into something of substantive value.
If the leading question is not "Does the intelligence cycle work regarding indications and warning?" but reads "What are specific circumstances under which warning the indications and warning process is likely to fail?" operationalization of the question was easier. As this would mainly analysze failures no comprehensive approach was necessary but an anaylsis of selected examples could lead to convincing arguments. Nevertheless such an approach could not rule out the possibility of a successful warning under similar circumstances that never went public.A quite similar approach was taken by Robert Jervis with "Why Intelligence Fails" only he analyzed the NIE concerning Iran and Iraq. Covering recent failures of indications and warning might be a good addition to Cynthia Grabo's classic, which is still very valuable. Some people might argue Grabo's work to be outdated due to today's reconnaissence and survaillence capabilities, but I do not think so, and an in-depth analysis of recent warning failures may be good to underline this.
Whether there was enough detailed material on successes of indications and warning to contrast them with failures would have to be determined.
By the way, I wondered whether you ever asked the Center for the Study of Intelligence to review one of your books? I guess that is kind of a gamble. A positive review of them would likely elevate the book in the eyes of the Intelligence Community, whereas a bad review might have a lasting effect. Then again I doubt the reviews had an effect on the sales numbers of Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes".
You have definitely hit on the key - "What are specific circumstances under which warning the indications and warning process is likely to fail?" operationalization of the question was easier."Basically what I've found (or think I've found) is a very specific pattern of events which leads to the failure of warnings presented from within the intelligence community to recently elected presidents. Its not a failure of intelligence per se and its not anything conceptually unique; Grabo covers the basic problem in more than one place, including her cautions on the "acceptance of new data".
However what I think I'm seeing is something so specific that it could actually serve as a warning indicator for the overall system - specifically a warning as to behaviors which lead newly elected presidents to fail on national security issues. There is certainly no doubt that the examples can be spelled out in great detail, now possibly more than ever before.
On your question as to reviews, no I haven't - but up to now my national security books have done quite well in making into into military and intelligence libraries including the staff colleges. The one exception being my newest, Creating Chaos, on political warfare. I'm not sure whether it is too politically controversial but its not having the same success, even though it is as heavily documented. Perhaps its too historical, perhaps too contemporary, possibly a little too direct...hard to say.
This sounds interesting. Questions coming to mind here were: Is not the transition process of the outgoing government designed to prevent people dropping the ball like that? Should not there be enough authority within the professional national security bureaucracy to identify a crucial warning and distribute a FLASH message to initialize standard reactions or push through the red tape to brief the chain of command? There is much criticism about the “deep state” but professional middle tier of the national security architecture should be able to provide some continuation of government in such cases in my opinion.Concerning your books it is good they are doing well and I hope people actually read them and take something away from that. My first idea was the average reader does not relate well to “covert political warfare”. The concept is alien and no image comes to mind. It was easier with the other books: “undeclared wars”, “political assassination”, “surprise attack”. You immediately belief you understand the concept and have an image in mind (which might be Jason Bourne but an image nevertheless). Ask a random group of people to explain “covert political warfare”, “psychological operations” or “information operations” and you will hardly get anything useful I guess. The general population has a major blind spot there not just concerning operations by foreign powers, but by professional influencers, lobbyists and corporations as well. I guess, if the book had only concerned itself with current Russian operations since 2000, it would have sold better, although I liked the broader scope you took better.
Your first question is excellent - "Is not the transition process of the outgoing government designed to prevent people dropping the ball like that? Should not there be enough authority within the professional national security bureaucracy to identify a crucial warning and distribute a FLASH message to initialize standard reactions or push through the red tape to brief the chain of command?" As it turns out the answer appears to be a solid "no", in fact transitions now emerge as one of our major national securioty exposures - one that was largely not a factor (or at least not seriously threatening) until after World War II. I know that's a strong statement, it will probably take another book for me to provide enough solid examples to illustrate and attempt to prove it.
My view is that In the last 60 years, such transitions have failed in this regard at least four times, with potentially disastrous consequences each time. Whether or not a fifth failure is in progress remains to be seen.
As to political warfare and Creating Chaos, no doubt you are correct. If I had focused strictly on current events rather than trying to show larger patterns it might well have been more successful. It is absolutely true that a public blind spot has developed, but as one reviewer noted, I might have done better to reverse the order of the book - deal with the contemporary events and then try to show the larger context.
That sort of structural decision is always a gamble, any teacher knows a roomful of students will benefit from the subject being presented in multiple ways. With a book you just have to toss the dice and take your shot.
I do not think that to be a strong statement at all. Thinking about the U.S. strategic position in 1938 how many international crisis were there around able to develop into a threat to the national security? Not many and those, which were around were pretty straight forward like Japanese fleet expansion. After 1945 the U.S. actually acted like a global power and thus suddenly had national security interests all over the world, which might develop into threats to national security interests but not national security itself (e.g. access to the oil of the Persian Gulf). Also these interests in obscure and far away places were not always so straight forward to understand and decide upon.Apart from any political decisions, the high turnover rate of key political posts like White House Chief of Staff, National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA appears to be a failure by itself with hopefully containable consequences.
Concerning the structure of your book, I doubt reveersing the content would have made a major difference. Having bought the book the reader can skip what he does not like or read it backwards, if he wants to, but he has bought all the content nevertheless. I think the scope and content of the book with "covert political warfare from Truman to Putin" simply draws a different crowd than a book focussing on current events like "How Russian disinformation manipulates America" or something in that direction.
A good insight on the readership for Creating Chaos, it also points out the difference between doing a history book that does reasonably well in getting into University libraries (which Creating Chaos has) as compared to a really broad readership which pleases the publisher (as happened with Shadow Warfare),There is a obviously a fine line - it will be interesting to see if I can come up with an approach to an exploration of the national security risks that increasingly come out of national political campaigns and presidential transitions. The story is clear as are the examples, the challenge will be in making it as interesting as possible in order to get it published.
I am unsure, whether this was actually such a fine line overall. Sure there will be such cases, but there also will be examples squarley in one corner or the other. The three topics to consider here, in my humble opinion, but I never wrote a book, would be the topic, the approach and the style. There are many topics in the area of national security history which are of historical interest, relevant to ongoing events but nevertheless not interesting for the general public (e.g. the n-th documented analysis of how the Johnson administration ended up in the Vietnam War'). Next there is the approach to the topic as in scope, use of documents or witnesses and detail of description of the book (e.g. xou can either state the embassy and CIA station were of different opinions over months or you can excessively cite correspondence and interviews tracing discussions over months). Finally an interested and involved style of writing can impress the urgency of memos exchanged on the reader, whereas a detached and impassionate style can take make even the fiercest firefight apear quite boring. Another style component especially journalists exhibit is the moral indignation apparent in their wording when writing about intelligence operations.For example consider John Prados' "The Blood Road", which takes on a relevant historical topic, I think many people are still interested in. Prados writes very good and covers it comprehensively and well but I think the description of the gradual enlargement of the trail system by North Vietnam and the retracing of memos, meetings and opinions in Washington makes a boring read for the average reader.
If I may ask, do you have a designated target audience in mind when writing a book?
I do indeed have target audiences in mind, the first view of the potential audience can be pretty broad since I write on a very varied range of topics. The common factor in all of them is that the subject can be both politically and historically controversial. Given that my first priority is to go for balance in content and commentary I cite extensive sources not only in the copy but in end notes - and that can be a drag for some readers.
That approach gets me nice comments from the professional reviews for being balanced, but I also get trounced for being too clinical.
There is not doubt that the text can get complex at points, especially when I'm trying to show different agencies or elements in the government acting at cross purposes or even against each other. To make that view stick I have to go into quite a bit of detail.
Readers deeply into my subjects enjoy that, those that want the "quick notes" and sound bytes version don't. The same goes for those who prefer "attitude" in writing - of the sort found in talk radio or sports channel commentary.
A long winded answer - but yes I do consider the reader. But to be perfectly honest I probably give the subject more conscious thought (my editors are not at all bashful about pointing that out when we are working on a book).
This approach gets me review comments like "A grim yet trenchant portrait of American Reach" from Publishers Weekly and "Extensive research wrapped in politically neutral prose" from Booklist.
It also gets me rude comments from my wife asking exactly who is buying "trenchant" these days...
I do not think your use of endnotes to be a drag. Especially in the academic community there are researchers actually putting the dicsussion of sources or content into the notes, so they end up as important parts of the content. In contrast your notes mainly cite the source. A reader may thus choose to read them or not without missing any part of the content.Your books do acommodate the average reader I think as the reader does not need much prior knowledge of the subject and is able to follow the argument. Other authors do make these assumptions and only aim for a professional audience.
I do not know whether "trenchant" was the problem these days or whether it was to cover a politically or historically controversial topics without an attitude or clear ideological preferance. Although I firmly believe in the necessity to analyze historical events unbiased it does not seem to be en vogue with the general public at the moment. Hopefully this will change again soon.
I suspect you are exactly right with the "en vogue" comment, and my wife made it pretty clear that was what she was suggesting as well. One of the things that has changed - from my point of view - is that even publishers who are "contrarian" are increasingly challenged to bring forth books (ones that sell enough to be profitable) without some sort of message for a particular base.
It seems you not only have to write for a target audience but for them to buy in quantity you have to say what they want to hear. Of course the media has experienced the same problem, and it reaches its apex in talk radio.
I would love to see it change but in the interim blogging and podcasts may prove to be my only venue....
Well, the open marketplace of ideas works like a marketplace and if your product is not bought you may end up in a side street to the marketplace between yesterdays newspaper and the guy who thinks the world is flat.While the internet does provide a plattfrorm to publish ideas and blogs and podcasts should not be underestimated (which makes information warfare so much more complicated today) the audience reached by that without having built up a following over time is miniscule.
If the primary objective of one of your books was to be profitable staying objective in the analysis might be a tough spot for some time. On the other hand, if you wanted to write a book anyhow and were not dependent on a profit, you might consider self-publishing it as an e-book via amazon. True the normal adjustments a good lector made were not available and there was no public promotion of the book, but it could be published and at that point sent to reviewers as published and generally available. Just an idea.
Self publishing or even publishing with a specialty publisher certainly can work; I self published by first book some 19 years ago. What I've found is that such venues work very well with niche reader markets and specialty subjects. However self published paperbacks and eBooks just don't get the reach into mainstream reviews, into public and University libraries or into professional/agency government venues. Self and eBook publishing certainly is an option for some of the subjects I'm interested in and for that matter eBook type monographs are also an option, especially if you have access into Web sites and podcasts where they can get broader attention.
However to do something serious in mainstream history and especially in national security, a well placed publishing house is still by far the best option - if they can be convinced the market will justify their commitment. Which takes us back over the last few exchanges in this thread. I'll leave it at that and simply bow to reality.
As long as the bow to reality is still in line with what topics you want people to know about and how you want to tell them, that is of course the best course of action. The self-publishing option was interesting as an alternative to not being able to publish at all.
National Security Directives, Presidential Decision and Study Directives or proposed legislation will only be necessary, if currently implemented regulations, priorities or legislative capabilities are deemed insufficient and need to be corrected. Thus the president may receive hundreds of intelligence reports without officially reacting to any of them, because the executive does not need additional tasking or authority to react on the intelligence. Also there are several possibilities a decision maker can react to an intelligence estimate:
- The decision maker agrees to the estimate and acts in accordance.
- The decision maker agrees to the estimate but does not act.
- The decision maker does not agree to the estimate but acts on his own.
- The decision maker does not agree to the estimate and does not act.
Thus by utilizing actual work products coming from the White House what is measured may be the reaction of the White House to intelligence reports but not the intelligence cycle, which may have run smoothly up until the White House was briefed or may have run badly but the White House disregarded the product anyway.
Also when talking about indications and warning it needs to remembered that neither is the president the sole consumer of such intelligence nor is the complete intelligence community producing products for the president. Actually it is rather the opposite, as the vast majority of operations and products will never reach the president. One of the main critique points of the U.S. intelligence community is the number of separate intelligence services and the lacking coordination thereof. Actually each of these services has a different operational scope and certain main consumers of their intelligence and most of them do not provide products for the president. The current situation in Venezuela will likely be a CIA briefing point in the PDB of a few paragraphs. The responsible desk officer at the State Department, the U.S. embassy in the country and USSOUTHCOM will likely have received more detailed reports on the situation from DIA or other reporting channels. The responsible personnel in these organizations may take precautionary actions within their authority or make recommendations to their chain of command and thus react to indications and warning intelligence without the president ever being aware of it.
As a second example technical intelligence assets in Europe may have a standing task to monitor the actions of certain Russian installations in the Baltics. Having obtained information indicating several Russian fleet assets to deploy into the Baltic Sea, the information is forwarded to the responsible HQ, which in turn reacts by formulating intelligence requirements on the action and initiating an ELINT reconnaissance mission. The mission is conducted, data is gathered with in turn answers all intelligence requirements and it is determined the fleet assets are on a routine training mission and act according to an established pattern. The intelligence cycle just went through two rotations with products being provided at decision makers acting on indications and warning. As every part of this process is conducted in secret, there is no way to publicly assess, how many such operations were conducted every year and whether the intelligence process was in fact broken or just running so smoothly you only heard about it, when it failed.