Los angeles Times
July 22, 2004
America's intelligence system failed to see terrorist threats coming from Al
Qaeda that should have been evident before 9/11, and then, after 9/11, saw
terrorist threats coming from Iraq that didn't exist. A system that doesn't
warn of real threats and does warn of unreal ones is a broken system.
A unanimous and bipartisan report of the commission established by Congress to
investigate intelligence mistakes leading up to 9/11 is expected to conclude
that when its report is released today. Meanwhile, a unanimous and bipartisan
Senate Intelligence Committee has discredited the CIA's prewar assessments that
Iraq possessed banned chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear
arms. Those assessments "either overstated or were not supported by the
underlying intelligence," according to the committee. The senators blamed "a
series of failures" of intelligence, such as taking circumstantial evidence as
definitive proof, ignoring contrary information and relying on discredited or
dubious sources. The failures occurred because of "shoddy work," faulty
management, outmoded procedures, "groupthink" and a "flawed culture."
What to do? The White House, Congress and the Kerry campaign are all sorting
through several proposals. One would create a Cabinet-level intelligence "czar"
with more control over the nation's sprawling $40-billion system for collecting
and analyzing information about security threats. A second would do just the
opposite — remove the CIA director from any control over other
intelligence agencies and hence install a better system of checks and balances.
A third proposal would fix the length of the director's term at five to seven
years, removing that position from the whim of politics. A fourth, and
contrary, proposal would make the director more politically accountable to the
president and Congress. Almost all the proposals would beef up American
intelligence with more resources.
Some of these ideas have merit, but
they don't respond to the core lesson we should hav e learned: When American
foreign policy is based primarily on what our spy agencies say, we run huge
risks of getting it disastrously wrong.
The lesson isn't new.
American intelligence failed to foresee the split between China and the Soviet
Union in 1960 and 1961 and thereafter never fully comprehended it — right
up through Vietnam. Had U.S. policy been based on more direct diplomacy and
less on covert operations we might have avoided that shameful and costly war.
The CIA was also notoriously wrong when it told John F. Kennedy that
its plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs "could not fail," and it misread
Soviet intentions before the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy managed to
avoid a nuclear war only by instigating direct communication with Nikita
Khrushchev.
American intelligence wildly exaggerated Soviet defense
capabilities in the 1980s, leading the U.S. to spend billions of dollars for no
reason. President Reagan's military buildup didn't bring the Soviets to their
kn ees; the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight.
By all means,
let's have better intelligence. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that
better intelligence is a substitute for better policy. This is especially true
when the threat comes in the form of terrorism.
Terrorism is a tactic.
It is not itself our enemy. There is no finite number of terrorists in the
world. At any given time, their number depends on how many people are driven by
anger and hate to join their ranks. Hence, "smoking out," imprisoning or
killing terrorists, based on information supplied by our intelligence agencies,
cannot be the prime means of preventing future terrorist attacks against us. It
is more important to deal with the anger and hate. This means, among other
things, restarting the Middle East peace process rather than, as President Bush
has done, run away from it. It requires shoring up the economies of the Middle
East, now suffering from dwindling direct investment from abroad because of the
violence and uncertainty in the region. And it means strengthening the
legitimacy of moderate Muslim leaders, instead of encouraging extremism —
as the current administration's policies have undoubtedly done.
Equally fatuous is the notion that "preemptive war," based on what our
intelligence agencies say a potential foreign adversary is likely to do to us,
will offer us protection. Terrorists aren't dependent on a few rogue nations.
They recruit and train in unstable parts of the world and can move their bases
and camps easily, wherever governments are weak.
The United States
cannot control or police the world. Instead, we will have to depend on strong
treaties and determined alliances to prevent illegal distribution of thousands
of nuclear weapons already in existence in Russia, Pakistan, India and other
nuclear powers, and of biological or chemical weapons capable of mass
destruction. The administration's "go-it-alone" diplomacy takes us in precisely
the wrong direction. That the United State s suffers from a failure of
intelligence is indisputable. The calamitous state of our spy agencies is only
one part of that failure.