PIKE RESPONSE PRODUCTION OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP77M00144R000400010011-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 42
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 30, 2004
• Sequence Number: 11
• Content Type: REPORT

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Pike Response
Production of National Intelligence
[Salutation appropriate to circumstances].
Your purpose, Mr. Chairman, is to assess the
effectiveness of national intelligence. The thrust
of your hearings is that intelligence has failed on
occasion to predict specific events, therefore that
the American F le is not getting its money's worth
from the funds spent on intelligence. A k1biJo T arknt3w
1- e--that-, -#-ailures,-and imp=t-ant _ones--h_.ve
oee-erred, I most respectfully submit, Mr. Chairman, that-
you are using the wrong measure for intelligence effec
tiveness. I hope to show here that the American.-ple
is getting its money's worth, and that it has an intelli-
gence system second to none.
I will make two major points this morning.
--First, the,primary function of intelligence
is not-simply-to predict event -, but to
provide the policymaker with the deepest
possible understanding of the foreign
environment in which he must pursue our
national goals and protect our national
interests. Here our record is excellent.'
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--Second, one important aspect of this task
is Irevent the policy-maker from being taken
by surprise by an event, to which our interests
require that he immediately respond. Please
note that this is quite different from the
prediction of such an event. Here our record n_
is far from perfect, but still very goo '
) '
0I
/
The traditional--or pre--?1;39--view of intelligence
was one of the spy seeking the enemy's war plans, of the
single nugget of information which, if.placed in the
hands of the national leadership, could make the difference
between peace and war. This concept is totally out of da4.e.
in today's complex world intelligence plays a continuous,
major, and essential role in the formulation and conduct
of foreign policy and in the foreign aspects of national
economic policy, as well as in the equipping and deploy-
ment of our military forces.
Few would argue that there have been no fundamental
changes in the world over the past three decades. So
much has been written about these changes that many of the
descriptive phrases have become cliches--the fragmentation
of Stalin's monolithic communism, nuclear parity, an era
of negotiation replacing an era of confrontation, the shift
from a bipolar to a multipolar world, increased conscious-
ness of the third world, the growth of-the nuclear club,
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international economic competition replacing the threat
of nuclear war, the food-population problem, the growing
power of the oil-rich nations, and international terrorism.
Hackneyed as these expressions may be, they evoke the images
of change that have occurred in the last quarter century.
Against this backdrop of a changing world, this nation
needs the best information and'judgments about what is going
on abroad so that it can survive and prosper--and its
intelligence structure should be in a position to satisfy
this need. This nation needs a basic understanding of-
the factors and trends that affect developments in the
world abroad. This must be based on research and analysis of
information from all sources, not just from secret and
official sources of information but also from the cornucopia
of open literature and academic research available on much of
the developed world. Much of this information is highly frag-
mentary and much of the academic research is highly
specialized. UThe task for intelligence is to analyze and
integrate. this material into assessments and judgments
relevant to our nation's concerns abroad.
Let me digress for a moment to illustrate the
complexity of this process by tracing one thread through
it. The potential effectiveness of Soviet ICBM forces
against our defense installations is obviously a matter
of vital national interest. The most important single
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of
Of
factor in assessing effectiveness is the accuracy of
each type of ICBM. One factor in accuracy is the
Answering the effectiveness question involves
tracing a myriad of similar threads. It requires
coordinating the work of hundreds, even thousands, of
specialists in subjects as narrow as the method of
suspending Soviet accelerometers. It requires aggre-
gating their work into ever broader assessments, until
finally a coherent answer to a crucial national question
can be given.
From such assessments of the past and present must
flow projections as far into the future as may be needed
to permit policy formulation and planning for negotiation
and action. And, a continuous flow of timely information
and analyses is needed to update these assessments and
projections and to alert our policy makers to new oppor-
tunities or potential crises so that they can plan
accordingly.
Who are these policy makers? In the first instance
they are the President and the other members of the
National Security Council--the Vice President, the Secretary
of State, and the Secretary of Defense. They include the
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members of the Staff of the National Security Council
and the appropriate staffs of the various members of
the Council itself. They include the Secretary of the
Treasury and other senior economic officers. Members of
i-rr committees of the Congress are ~, Lw4,iag informed
ofh gn developments on a regu?.lar basis. These committees
include Subcornmiteess of the Armed Services and Appropriations
Committees of the Senate and the House, and the Foreign
ations Committee of the Senate and the International
,-i Committee of the House. Other Committees and
Members of the Congress are prow (led with intelligence
1 \3aA C~ t
on foreign developments 3:rr-rte
The subject matter of intelligence has expanded from
its older focus on.foreign military capabilities to in-
elude foreign political dynamics, economic trends,
scientific capabilities, and sociological pressures. Today's
intelligence deals with foreign policy problems ranging
from the law of the seas to the oil boycott, from defense
policy to arms control.
Along with this expansion of the scope and role of
intelligence.has come an increase in reliance on informa-
tion acquired by sophisticated technical devices on the one
hand and. on open literature on the other, there has thus
been a relative decrease in reliance on traditional
clandestine collection. Clandestine collection or espionage
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nevertheless remains essential., but it is now reserved
for the most important information- which cannot be ac-
quired by other means. It is focused largely on the
major closed societies that could threaten our security,
that do not have a free press, and that screen their
military capabilities and much of their government process
even from their own citizens.
The forms intelligence may take in giving the policy-
maker the information he needs to do his job will vary.
They range from the dissemination of single raw intelligence
reports to complex analytical memoranda or national
intelligence reports. They may include oral briefings or
daily publications on world-wide developments. In fast-
moving situations intelligence seeks to. distill from the
mass of fragmentary information that pours into Washington.
From the process come coherent situation reports that enable
the policy maker to keep track of and to anticipate events.
In meeting these needs the Intelligence Community
must measure up to a number of demanding standards:-
--If intelligence is to provide meaningful and
timely support, its reporting and analysis
must cover and integrate all facets of foreign
developments--military, political, economic,
scientific, and sociological.
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--Intelligence must also be responsible--clear
cut; sharp; neither alarmist nor complacent---
if it is to serve as a reliable basis for
decision.
--Effective intelligence must also avoid the
bureaucratic penchant for ambiguities or
delphic generalities which by anticipating
all possible eventualities frustrate meaningful
retrospective examination.
--Intelligence must be relevant. It must be
responsive to the policy-maker's concerns, and
it must go beyond and answer the questions
he perhaps should have asked and did not.
--Finally, and most important, intelligence must
be responsible. It must be independent of
partisan preference or loyalty to preconceived
judgments. It must never be distorted to
support of budgetary desires.
Mr. Chairman, I would now like to illustrate in some
detail the kinds of problems that we consider important
and the kinds of substantive services that national
intelligence provides. I hope these examples will make
clear the breadth and complexity of our work and the
close relationship it bears to the making of national
policy. For convenience I will discuss these topics by
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discipline--political, economic, and so forth--in fact,
however, no topic is purely military or purely economic
and we bring all the necessary disciplines to bear on each.
What we seek is a synthesis of all the information, ex-
pertise, and wisdom available to the US government on
whatever matter is at hand.
I will begin with the aolitical field, because it
is the most important. Virtually every matter abroad that
concerns the US policy official stems ultimately from
someone's political decision, whether it is to build anew
weapons system or to raise the price of oil.
--This point comes clear in the work we do
when the President is to meet another national
leader; as for the President's meeting with
Chairman Brezhnev in Vladivostok last November.
Before the President left, our analysts prepared
background papers on subjects likely to come up
in the talks. Since the President was also
visiting Japan and South Korea and the meeting
was being held in the Soviet Far East, we
concentrated on Soviet policy in that part of
the world. As this was Mr. Ford's first meeting
as President with Brezhnev, we reviewed
Brezhnev's political position, the political-
military position so important to strategic
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arms limitation dicussions, and the general
trends of the Soviet economy. But the major
order of business at Vladivostok was to give
impetus to the Salt negotiations. A projec-
tion of Soviet strategic missile programs as
they might develop with a further SALT agree-
ment played an important role in determining
the ceilings agreed to at Vladivostok. Finally,
we provided a kind of tourist's guide to Vladi-
vostok---personalized to concentrate on the routes
and buildings the President would see [and
illustrated with some remarkable statellite
photography. Classification?]
--Another political task is the continuing effort
to make sense out of the obscure politics of
closed societies, such as the upheavals in China
since 1966. We cannot claim to have anticipated
every event in this rapidly shifting struggle.
Our analysts early recognized the magnitude of
/the struggle, however, and correctly antici-
pated the political demise of Mao's then heir-
apparent, Liu Shao-chi. Years later CIA traced
an increase in Chou En-lai's power and the
gradual erosion of Lin Piao's strength. We
recognized that obscure events in the autumn
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of 1971 indicated that Lin's demise was at
hand. Lateer still, our analysis enabled us
to determine the significance of the anti-
Confucius campaign in 1974 and to see a year
in advance the general shape of the leadership
alignments that emerged at the National People's
Congress last January.
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--Some of our political and sociological
work is much longer range. The world and its
constituent societies are constantly changing;
yet very often inertia keeps a particular politi-
cal group in office or customary policies and
practices in operation when support for them
has in fact all but disappeared. Intelligence
analysis tries to spot changes while they are
in process by studying---through in-depth
research and analysis--global issues, countries
or particular groups. Thus, we may try to
develop a profile of the next generation of
Soviet rulers, men whose politically formative
years came in the nationalist period of WW II
rather than in the years of Stalin's purges.
Or we may examine "the Arabs" and conclude that
Egypt's bourgeois tradition seems to have
survived Nasir's great effort to change it, that
in Syria small town and rural people have
destroyed and replaced a big-city merchant-
landowner class, and that in. Morocco extensive
educational and structural changes are underway
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in
short that "the Arabs" covers many different
groups, changing in different ways, at different
rates. We may examine--through case studies--the
characteristics of authoritarian regimes,
analyze their strengths and weaknesses and the
constraints on such regimes in developing
democratic practices. In these and in other
cases, the purpose is to present policy making
elements with a means of seeing behind the
facade they deal with and to alert them to
future change.
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China and the USSR do not publish directories of their
government or party officials. These officials are only iden-
tified in public announcements of their activities. We
monitor these announcements systematically and publish
periodically unclassified directories. One such is The
Directory of Officials of the PRC. This Directory,
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which is 671 pages long, is one of the most valuable
reference aids available to analysts of the PRC in
Peking, Hong Kong and'Washington and is avidly sought
by foreign service officers .of other nations stationed
in Peking.
It is for economic intelligence that the greatest
increase in the demands placed upon us has come. over
the last decade international economics has become an
important, perhaps th' most important, consideration in
our foreign policy and it is extremely important for our
domestic economic policy as well. As you know, the energy
crisis and the high price of meat and bread are due
largely to events abroad.
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--Another major cause of concern to policymaker_s
has been the huge petrodo7_lar flows created by
the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973-74.
OPEC member states have a huge surplus to
invest, primarily in Western Europe and the
United. States. Such investments--over $40
billion this year alone--give them the ability
to exert political and economic influence and to
create disruption, either intentionally or in-
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--The success and. failure of Soviet agriculture
has an'enormous impact on world grain markets,
and, in turn, on the prices US consumers pay
for food. Soviet crop shortfalls have accounted
for most of the instability in world grain
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markets during the past several years; the United
States, as the largest grain exporter, has
been affected most.' The fortunes of the
Soviet farm sector are of key importance to
the Brezhnev government, which has staked its
prestige on giving the consumer more meat.
Soviet secrecy makes crop forecasting a
demanding intelligence problem. We use all.
the techniques available to the intelligence
are used to evaluate crop developments in Eastern
Europe and Communist China. To help determine
likely global supply and demand of key crops,
we also keep a watch on countries like India when
the success or failure of the monsoon can have
a major impact on world supplies.
--For a number of years CIA has followed East-West
trade. We try to monitor Soviet and East
European imports of equipment and technology
that could contribute to economic and military
capabilities. We report such activity prini-
pally through the export control structure
of the US government, and we make important
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inputs to other government agencies concerned
with monitoring controls. As many as 200
export control cases are analyzed in CIA each
month.
--We also assess the capability of the Soviets
and East Europeans to finance imports from the
West. Since this ability depends mainly on
earnings from exports, we analyze Soviet and
East European export capacity in detail.
Considerable work has been done on their potential
to export oil, gold, coal, metals, and other
commodities. These studies help us estimate
communist financial strength and ability to
buy sophisticated Western technology and equip-
ment.
Intelligence has had to take on all these political,
economic, and sociological tasks without decreasing its
attention to its more traditional military concerns.
Indeed, the impact of technology upon warfare since 1945
has made these concerns vital to our survival. US
intelligence must detect new weapons systems, for instance
if we are to protect ourselves against them. Here too our
record has been excellent.
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A
and costly. We are determined to learn
things---vital to the survival of the United
States--that the Soviet Union is determined
to keep secret. Our opposite numbers
have it much easier. The Soviets can and
do acquire from a subscription to Aviation
Week information which may take us several
years and many millions to obtain.
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--Another extremely important aspect of our
work in the military field is our responsi-
bility under the Strategic Arms Limitation
agreements. Our government entered into
these agreements only when it was satisfied
that they could be "verified", that is,
that we could detect---through our own means--
any significant violation of an agreement
by the other party. This is clearly a job
for intelligence. By monitoring Soviet
performance in keeping these agreements
intelligence is playing a new and quite
unforeseen role, helping to keep the peace
and restrain the arms race. (As it is
also doing, I might add, in the Middle East).
--Another discipline is Scientific intelligence,
which follows many topics besides those of
direct military interest.
--We are of course interested
and in potential
epidemics or natural calamities that might
require US action. In 1968, for instance,
we alerted policy officials to an impending
desert locust plague which was threatening
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the crop lands of about 45 countries from
the West coast of Africa to Last Pakistan.
Based on our assessment of the magnitude
of the threat and the major areas of
infestation, the US Air Force and the
Departments of State and Agriculture det'eloped
a contingency assistance plan. A few months
later, at the invitation of Saudi Arabia--
a key country in the anti-locust effort--
the plan was implemented. Spraying operatior5s
halted the threat of a major plague that
could have caused massive crop destruction.
-Computer technology has long been an area
of special concern. In 1972 we reported
that the Soviets would experience serious
installation and maintenance problems with
their third-generation RYAN computer series.
This estimate had important implications
for US bilateral and multilateral export
control policies and for our assessments
of Soviet military capabilities. For the
Soviets,, the RYAD was the first series of
computing machines designed to satisfy
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the data processing requirements of an
advanced command-and-control communications
system. The problems that we forecast for
the RYAD program were a major consideration
in the policy decision to continue restraints
on computer exports.
--More recently, our knowledge of the capabilities
and shortcomings of Soviet technology allowed
us to alert NASA to several potential dangers
facing American astronauts selected to partic '-
pate in the joint Apollo-Soyuz space mission.
Based on these alerts, technological modifications
were employed which helped bring that joint
effort and a safe and successful conclusion.
An even less known part of our work is geographic
intelligence. [Our geographers and cartographers have
played an important part in the tortuous Arab-Israeli
negotiations, one I cannot go into here. Sensitivity?]
Two less sensitive examples, however, are these.
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--The normalization of relations with the People's
Republic of China (PRC.) brought a surge of
travel to that country by U. S. officials
for whom the PRC is relatively a terra
incognito. At the request of the Department
of State, we are completing a series of 13
descriptive city briefs for inclusion in
State's briefing packets for official travellers
(including Members of Congress). A 14th brief
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will provide advice on weather conditions
across the country. The. series represents
a uniquely useful if undramatic resource,
and we have with State's approval taken steps
to make the series available to the public
through the DOCEX Program of the Library
of Congress.
All of the activities I have been discussing are
positive ones. That is, we are developing new knowledge
and insight. But we-also perform a number of important..
but less obvious services that are essentially negative
in character.
--One of these is the "contingency estimate":
What would country X do if the US did Y?
We did a series of these during the Vietnam
war, and correctly estimated that the Soviets
and Chinese would not intervene militarily
in any signficant way.
Another is the negative estimate. These
can be as useful to the policy official as
any positive judgment. Notable examples
were the judgments that there would not be
a Sino-Soviet war in 1968-70 and that the
North Vietnamese would not launch a major
offensive in the South in 1973-74.
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--Yet another. kind of action is the disproving
of allegations against the US. When the
US was accused of bombing the North Vietnamese
dike systems, we undertook a massive effort
to examine, by aerial photography; every foot
of major dike in the Red River Delta. We
were thus able to demonstrate conclusively
that no such campaign had been mounted, and
that the
seasonal
--Finally,
provides
At least
dike system was threatened only by
floods.
there is the intelligence that
a basis for action to prevent something.
one foreign leader, no particular friend
of the US,
alive today because CTA T.~?arned
him of a plot against his life. A number
of hijackings and other terrorist actions
abroad have been thwarted because we were
able to give timely and accurate intelligence
to the local. authorities. And we have been
instrumental in bringing about the arrest of
narcotics traffickers abroad and the seizure
of.major narcotics shipments.
I believe these examples make my point: national
intelligence is far more than the prediction of specific
events; it is an integral part of the process by which
we shape national policy in today's complicated,
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I
I would now like to turn to the problem of
prediction. As I noted in my earlier remarks, we view
our responsibility in this area as the prevention of
surprise. For intelligence to make its primary goal the
prediction of specific events would in fact be a dis-
service to the policy officer. For we would often be
quite wrong and almost never exactly right, for a number
of reasons that I will. go into in a few minutes. Such
a record would to say the least shake his confidence in
our work, and destroy the usefulness of the very important
service we can actually render.
That service is simply this. We should be able to
prevent his being surprised by any event of major importance.
When we cannot do this, we have failed. Let me acknowledge
here that the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 was such a failure,
our worst in many years. I will discuss the reasons for
this later.
What can the policy officer reasonably expect? In
.essence, he can expect that we will put him in the context
of events as they occur; that we will help him understand
the dynamics of a situation; that we will lay out a range
of possible outcomes, especially those that damage US
interests or present an opportunity to the US; that we will
seek by further collection and analysis to narrow this
range, to reduce many possibilities to a few, and to rank
them; and that we will of course warn him at the earliest
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is increasing. But we must not cry wolf too often.
Sooner or later one is sure to be right that way, but
the policy officer will have long since ceased to listen.
The India-Pakistan War of December 1971 is a good
example of what intelligence at its best can do, We
reported early in 1971. that the victory of the East
Pakistanis in a national election would be unacceptable
to the West and could provoke a West Pakistani military
crackdown in the East. We warned of the Indian reaction
to such a move, and pointed out that Pakistan's internal
crisis might well become an international one. After
the West Pakistanis cracked down in March we were able
to assess the Indian reaction, and by June to warn that
events were moving toward war. As the year progressed
we described Indian military preparations and later the
Indian military incursions in the East that eventually
precipitated war. At no point did we forecast a specific
event on a specific date, but our customers were fully
aware of the imminence of war, of its causes, of the role
of the Soviets and Chinese, of the high probability of
Indian victory and East Pakistani independence, and of
the international consequdnces that might flow from the
weakness of the new state of Bangla Desh.
Of course,. there are occasions, unfortunately rare,
when we can do better, when we can say correctly that
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event A will occur on date I3, as with the
e
Such occasions
are gratifying for the intelligence officer, but he must
set his sights lower. For the fact is that events take
place through human decisions, through the action and
inter-action of human beings, and human beings are
reluctant to behave in predictable ways.
The more we can draw a prediction from physical
events or evidence, the more confident we can be.
The movement of crack North Vietnamese reserve divisions
to the DMZ in early 1972 we correctly interpreted as
preparation for a major offensive. (Yet it still took a
political decision, several weeks later then we expected
it, before that offensive was launched.) When the
Cambodian Communists began to interdict the Mekong last
winter, we were able to predict--from physical evidence--
that the government's position would begin to come apart
in late March or early April; Phnom Penh fell on 17 April.
Because construction takes time we can project
accurately from physical evidence Soviet ICBM strength
as much as two years hence. Our longer range projections
are necessarily less accuzate. In fact, hindsight shows
they were consistently too high in the early '60's--
lacking hard evidence, we felt it only prudent to go
high. They were too low in the late '60's because we
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could see no military need Moscow would have for a
larger force; we did not give enough weight to Moscow's
psychological need for equality---or perhaps a little more--
vis-a-vis the US, however militarily irrelevant the additional
missiles might be. I mention these particular estimates
to illustrate the pitfalls in this kind of forecasting,
and to show that we do try to ].earn from our mistakes.
I have emphasized that events usually stem fro?rm
political decisions, and these in turn from the personal
relationships of men. Some men act rationally, some act
by a logic that is not immediately apparent to others,
and some act on occasion quite irrationally. Some are
volatile, some steady. Some are persuadable, some stubborn.
Some are eloquent persuaders, some, inarticulate followers.
All are subject to extraneous influnces. All have moods.
Judging the outcome, thus, when a single man or a
group of men seeks to make a political decision, is a
dicey business. And the more important that decision
to them, the more intensely they feel and the less likely
one can foresee how their deliberations will result. You
know only too well how true this is for Congress; it is
equally true in other political systems, closed or open,
democratic or authoritarian.
I dwell on the human factor because it is central
to my earlier statement that too much attempted prediction
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is*a disservice. Consider the many ways in which it
can affect our forecasts:
--The Deci.si_oii Not~yetmade. Nations
often take contingency preparations
for action, reserving until the last moment
the final decision whether to act. When
the Soviet leaders took alarm at the
direction Czechoslovakia was heading in
the summer of 1968, they mobilized. We
reported in early August that they had
assembled the forces necessary for military
intervention. There followed a series of
indecisive meetings among the Soviet leaders,
and between them and the Czechs. Onlya few
hours before the invasion was launched on
22 August was the decision taken. (We understand
in hindsight that the Politburo vote was close.)
Thus we had warned the US government that
preparations, had been made, and that at least
some of the Soviet leadership were in favor
of intervention. But we could not say whether
they would in fact intervene--they did not know
themselves.
--The Problem of Clandestine Plotting_. The
coup d'etat is the hair shirt of the
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intelligence officer.
Successful coups are
usually made by small, cliques of military
troop commanders, well-known to and loyal to
one another, operating in total secrecy.
Intelligence can virtually always identify a
political. situation that is ripe for a coup--
discredited leadership, factionalism, dis"
order, economic disruption. It can usually
identify interest groups that would profit
from a coup. It can often identify likely
plotters and sometimes penetrate their
circle. But it can only rarely predict with
confidence precisely who will act, how and
when. Sometimes, of course, the plotters choose
to tell us because they seek our support or
acquiescence.
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d
---The Fortui.ti.ous Opportunity. Plotters may
plot for years and never, act, perhaps because
they are inveterate plotters and not doers,
perhaps because everyone--and especially the
local security service--knows they are plotting,
or perhaps because they can never find the right
opportunity. On the-other hand, the potential
for action may fester for years unknown to anyone
in one man's mind, and when an opportunity comes
he will seize it. In 1958 an Iraqi brigade
was being transferred from one frontier to
another, passing through Baghdad. Because it
was on active service it carried live ammunition,
which Nuri. Said wisely did not permit to units
permanently stationed in the capital. The
brigade commander, Col. Qasim, was such a man.
He saw his opportunity and, acting entirely
on the spur of the moment, brought Nuri
Said's government down. There was, obviously,
no intelligence warning.
--The self-defeating prediction. One can find
on the intelligence record many warnings of
events that never took place because the warn-
ing stimulated policy action to forestall them.
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This is really intelligence doing its job.
For instance, we warned in the summer of
1974 that Lon Nol's Cambodian government
was going tobe voted out of its United Nations
seat. This triggered a major US diplomatic
effort to change some votes and the spat
was---for the moment---saved.
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My point, Mr. Chairman is that we intelligence
officers are also men, and fallible as all mortals. We
assess the likely future actions of other men with caution
and we hope without arrogance. For we lay no claim to
being soothsayers, to knowing more about how foreign leaders
will act than they do themselves. Our judgments of the
future can only be probabilistic. We have made errors
in the past and will make them in the future, but our
record overall is extremely good.
And lastly, Mr. Chairman, I would like to discuss
briefly the two matters on which this Committee has so
far focused its hearings, Mr. Adams' charges and the Arab-
Israeli War of 1973.
In Mr. Adams' case, I will not rake over the sub-
stantive details of a complicated argument some years
past and now irrelevant. But Mr. Adams' charges reflect
on our honor as well as on our performance, and it is that
aspect that I wish to address.
Mr. Adams contends that the intelligence Community
seriously underestimated Communist strength in Vietnam,
and that, when the Communists sought to raise its estimate,
senior intelligence officers caved in to politically-
motivated pressure from military commanders. I should
note that'Mr. Adams is a good deal more critical of CIA
than'CIA is of his work on Vietnam.
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I
In fact, his work had a real impact. He became
convinced that the estimates were too low and persuaded
his colleagues in CIA of this fact. They did not give
unquestioning acceptance to all of his methodologies or
all of the numbers he derived from them, but they did
give meaningful support to his position.
Moreover Mr. Adams' work was than carried forward
into the Community arena. As a GS-12 (check?) he was able
to achieve a hearing at senior levels, and ultimately
to force the convening of a conference in Saigon to recon-
sider enemy strength figures. The conference resulted in
figures higher than those proposed by military intelligence,
but lower than those of CIA. But nevertheless he had
succeeded in forcing the figure up.
Mr. Adams now represents this as a capitulation to
the military a betrayal of the truth if not the nation.
We see it as a compromise reached among men who have
differing views on a matter on which no one has precise
knowledge. When the House goes into conference with the
Senate over a bill, neither side expects that the result
will be totally to its satisfaction. Intelligence esti-
mating in the face of the unknown is no different.
So CIA accepted figures that had been raised less
than it believed desirable. At the same time it took
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to further steps. It notified the White House that
it believed the figures were still too low and it
initiated new collection and analysis to back up its
argument. With this ammunition CIA was able in subse-
quent estimates to raise the figures further.
This was a most notable achievement for a junior
analyst. Had it stopped there Mr. Adams' future in CIA
would have been bright:. But unfortunately Mr. Adams
would not be satisfied with his accomplishment. He
insisted that his figures, and only his figures, were
the correct ones, and impugned the motives of those who-
differed with him. (And let me say that to this day we
do not know what the true numbers were at that time; it
is doubtful that the enemy high command itself know). This
unwillingness to accept the unanimous judgment of his seniors
and his peers set in motion the train of circumstances that
brought him before you. Since that time Mr. Adams has
sought by all possible means to be vindicated; that is,
to have his figures for enemy strength in 1967 universally
accepted. His single-minded pursuit of this goal
ultimately destroyed his usefulness to the Agency. I
deeply regret this. We have lost an intelligence officer
of great potential, and much time has been spent by busy
men ona long dead issue.
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Let me now turn to the 1973 war. I have said
that by any standard this was a failure for American
intelligence, as it was for many other intelligence
services and most particularly the Israeli. But we
do not take comfort from having company. Rather we have
exhaustively examined the record--and our souls--to see
what went wrong and to ensure that we do better should
there be a next time.
We believe our fundamental error was this. We had
estimated--correctly---th.at if war broke out the Israelis
would win, barring Soviet military intervention. We had
estimated---correctly---that the Soviets would not inter-
vene. We believed---incorrectly--that Sadat under these
circumstances would not start a war; we would not have.
But we failed to see clearly what Sadat evidently saw:
that military stallmate or even defeat might be fashioned
into political gains or even victory.
With this set of premises, our analysts were unwill-
ing to interprete the evidence that came to them as indi-
cative of an intent to initiate hostilities. Rather, they
were worried over the action-reaction syndrome. Side A
runs a maneuver. Side B is not sure it is a maneuver
and concentrates some troops as a precaution. Side A,
again as.a precaution, responds by going on alert.
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Side B, now thoroughly alarmed, mobilizes. Side A again
matches the move. And in such a situation, with both
armies at hair-trigger, one exchange of fire between patrols
can precipitate war. It is in this contexst that our analysts
interpreted the events of October 5 and 6. They were con-
cerned that war was breaking out by inadvertence.
Until the final few hours, evidence of Arab
intentions was sparse. I noted earlier that movement of
forces to a frontier is a possible indicator of intent
to go to war. In this case the Arab armies were on the
frontier, and had been for months. There had been plan
and yet more plans, exercises and alerts, alarms and ex-
cursions, movements of troops and aircraft, until the
pattern had become blurred. Arab troops had only the very
last minute preparations yet to make. in other words, the
"voice level" was high.
What evidence did we have? We knew the Arab armies
were in a state of high alert. They were doing a number
of.things that were unusual for them, although some were
things we had long expected to see as training became more
sophisticated. But against the noise level that had been
established this was not'necessarily significant. And no
analyst likes to cry wolf.
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Finally, we had ambiguous evidence about the Soviets.
Early in October, they became alarmed. (They then had
network of advisers with the Egyptian forces and were
in a position to scnc_>e last-minute preparations). They
began rapidly to withdraw their people, a movement which
we were able to identify for what it was only on October
5th. But we did not know the reason, and gave as much weight
to the possibility that it indicated a further deterioration
in Soviet-Egyptian relations as to the possibility that the
Soviets knew something we did not.
I have said that the policy officer should expect
from our analysis an understanding of the forces at work
in a situation and an appreciation of the unpleasant
possibilities therein. With this background, he should
expect that we will highlight any evidence pointing to
one of these possibilities. In September and October
1973 our analysis broke down, and we thus were blinded
to a common denominator possibility in the fragments
of evidence we had.
Had. our mind-set been different, had we been
better able to see the situation through Arab eyes,
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fi
we would still have believed an Arab attack unlikely.
But we would have said something different to the
policy officer--and to ourselves. "We put the odds
against an Arab attack, but we by no means exclude the
possibility". In that atmosphere we might, repeat might,
have interpreted the fragments differently.
All this is now over the dam. We are taking our
lumps for it and deserve them. And we have done every-
thing we can think of to ensure that it does not happen
again. We would welcome fresh, serious suggestions from
any source.
This has been a gloomy recital. I would not like
to leave this Committee, or the American people, with
the impression that it is typical of our performance.
So, for balance, I will close by listing some of the
wars of the last twenty years for which we provided good
intelligence warning.
--The Arab-Israeli Wars of 1955 (including
the British-French intervention) and
1967, and the Israeli-Egyptian war of
attrition in 1969-70.
--The Indo-Pakistani. Wars of 1965 and 1971.
--The Sino-Indian hostilities of 1962.
.--Communist reopening of guerilla war in
South Vietnam in 1959-60.
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--Direct North Vietnamese military
intervention in 1964-6.5
--The Kurdish civil war of 1974-75
--The Egyptian military intervention in
Yemen 1963--1967.
- -Izoth Turkish military operations in
Cyprus, July and August 1974.
--The Nigerian Civil War of 1967-
and the present war in . Angola.
--The Salvador-Ilonduras War of 1969.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I think this makes my point.
The American people have a damn good intelligence service.
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