'DISTORTION' OF INTELLIGENCE FOR POLICY PURPOSES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP77M00144R001200080006-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 24, 2006
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: November 11, 1975
• Content Type: MF

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MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence \\ v~Yl b
NV
SUBJECT "Distortion" of Intelligence for Policy
Purposes
1. Problem
How should the Intelligence Community respond to
allegations that policy-level pressures result in "distortion"
of substantive intelligence products to fit policy purposes.
2. Position of the Congressional Committees
The Senate Select Committee has not raised any
questions in this field. The House Select Committee, however,
is actively pursuing a thesis that (1) policy-level pressure is
exerted to influence intelligence judgments (the Sam Adams
public testimony before the HSC relates to this), or that (2)
intelligence estimates are drafted with a view toward being
responsive toward what are viewed as the desires of the policy
makers.
3. Discussion
A. Allegations that intelligence has been distorted
to suit particular policies or policy makers are substantially
untrue. With limited qualifications noted later, there have
been remarkably few attempts from the policy side over the
years to dictate intelligence judgments. And the few times
it has been tried, it has been resisted, and at worst some
acrimonious debate over contentious issues has occasionally
led to solutions which satisfied no one entirely, but were
as good as could be arrived at in the current state of
information. Thus, even those who believe the worst case
charges leveled against intelligence for
example) have to acknowledge that th the
dissident view a hearing, right up to the top.
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b. The single most important reason for this
record is personal and subjective. Most professional
intelligence officers know (or soon learn) that credibility
is their most precious stock in trade, and most policy
officials come to appreciate this and to live with it.
Those on either side who do not, soon become discounted by
their colleagues. If these intrinsic disciplines are ever
weakened in the profession, no amount of institutional
tinkering could guarantee objectivity; and if this self-
regulating spirit remains strong, almost any reasonable
institutional system can produce objective results. Thus,
the overriding need for intelligence is to have competent
and dedicated professionals.
c. These people can be helped by procedural and
bureaucratic safeguards. A number of these have been
used over the years, often repeatedly. For example:
(1) The process of coordination of national
intelligence carries, with it the right and obligation
of dissent. Time and again, National Intelligence
Estimates and similar assessments have recorded
differences of Judgment on particular issues or
even broad points of view. The vast majority of
these have been honest and legitimate differences
of opinion on the evidence. A small number, aimed
at supporting particular policies, have been few
and far between. Those stand on the record for
all to see, and they fooled no one at the time or
since. The process which encourages and even-
requires dissents thus serves not only as a badge
against enforced conformity, but also forces both
the majority and minority to lay their views on the
line, identified as such. This is a good inducement
to responsibility.
(2) The Community has engaged in frequent
retrospective assessments, post mortems of various
kinds, in which past performance is carefully weighed
in hindsight and reviewed among other things for
conscious or unconscious policy biases. Indeed,
the Intelligence Community probably does more of
this than any other area of Government operations.
And this too serves as a deterrent against irresponsibility.
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(3) A large and active program of dialogue
with the scholarly community, carried on by all
production offices in CIA, State/INR and DIA
assures that outside perceptions and insights of
both specialist and generalists are brought to
bear both to review past production and to suggest
further approaches.
d.' When all this has been said, the record must be
discussed with certain realistic qualifications in mind.
(1) First, intelligence is not prepared in an
ivory tower and is not prepared primarily to provide
the stuff of post mortems. It is prepared in the
real world for the real use of real policy makers. It
is also prepared constantly--daily, weekly, monthly,
and yearly--from a stream of incomplete, fragmentary,
and often conflicting evidence. It must try to provide
answers--repertorial, analytical or estimative--to
questions which are sometimes known only to a few
leaders in closed societies, and sometimes are literally
unknowable to anyone anywhere at the time of writing.
(2) Secondly, it must help the policy officer
make intelligence choices. If it tells him only what
he wants to hear, it fails. But if it addresses
only irrelevant or easy questions, or the right questions
at the wrong time, it loses in usefulness whatever it
might gain in a kind of accuracy.
(3) Thirdly, the more important the question,
especially in areas where knowledge is incomplete,
the more closely and critically will decision makers
look at intelligence reports and estimates. And while
it may be argued that here is where pressures to distort
or suppress are most likely to arise, it is also true
that precisely here is where competent professionals
will be most jealous of their credibility. If they
are unable to stick to objective standards in dialogue
with the policy side, they do not belong in the profession
and will probably soon learn-or be told as much.
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(4) Finally, unless there is effective
communication between policy and intelligence, the
one will be ill-informed and the other academic.
And close communication between them inevitably
produces some tensions, some clashes of perspective,
some divergences of aim. Policy makers have objectives
and preferences, and it is only human of them to
value what helps them toward their goals and to be
irritated at what hinders them. Presidential memoirs
and especially contemporary documents allude with
greater or less irritation to the inconvenient voice
of intelligence getting in the way of what leaders
wanted to do. Sometimes intelligence prevailed,
sometimes it was overridden by other considerations.
e. The Intelligence Community has learned, over the years,
that intelligence cannot compel national. leaders to."read,
mark, learn and inwardly digest" its every pronouncement.
These leaders are their own men, possessed of powers and
seized of problems in operational situations, often having
to factor into their decisions matters which are well beyond
the province of foreign intelligence. But intelligence does
have a right, and this right has been observed almost without
exception over 25 or more years, to be heard. In the last
analysis, policy makers cannot be forced to heed intelligence,
but we and they know that they can ignore it only at their
peril. The Community cannot hope for more.
4. ? Recommendations
This is a problem area on which initiative action
should be taken by the DCI. The House Select Committee hearing
schedule, as presently known, does not suggest an occasion on
which DCI comments could be appropriately introduced. It is
recommended, therefore, that a letter to Congressman Pike be
prepared for signature by the DCI, generally reflecting the
comments outlined in the foregoing discussion. Prior to its
dispatch, it is suggested the letter be discussed with the
ICG.
Sam el V. Wilson
Lieut nant General, USA
Chair `n, Ad Hoc Task Group
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