A FRESH LOOK AT COLLECTION REQUIREMENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82R00129R000100070030-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2003
• Sequence Number: 30
• Content Type: REPORT

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An unsolved problem analyzed
in depth and some approaches
recommended to solution.
A FRESH LOOK AT COLLECTION REQUIREMENTS
In the immediate post-war period, the word "requirement"
was seldom heard in intelligence circles, and what we now
know as collection requirements were managed in a very off-
hand way. Today this subject is well to the fore, its impor-
tance acknowledged by everyone. Looking back, it is possible
to see certain steps by which this reversal of things came
about.
First there was a time when many people, both collectors
and consumers, saw no need for requirements at all?when
information was believed to be there for the plucking, and the
field intelligence officer was considered to need no help in de-
ciding what to pluck. This period overlapped and merged
quickly into a second one in which requirements were recog-
nized as desirable but were not thought to present any spe-
cial problem. Perhaps the man in the field did, after all, need
some guidance; if so, the expert in Washington had only to
jot down a list of questions and all would be well.
A third phase began when it was recognized that require-
ments were an integral and necessary part of the intelligence
process and that they needed to be fostered and systematized.
Committees were set up, priorities authorized, channels es-
tablished, forms devised, control numbers assigned. Thus by
the early 1950's the formal requirements machinery of today
was mostly in place.
The fourth and most interesting phase, which is still with
us, might be called the phase of specialized methodologies.
The harsh difficulties of intelligence collection against the
Sino-Soviet Bloc have driven home the realization that the
way a requirement is conceived and drawn, the way it gets
at its ultimate objective, the details it includes, the alterna-
tives it provides, the discretion it permits, and a dozen other
features may largely predetermine its chances of fulfilment.
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Specialists in many fields, intent on solving immediate, con-
crete problems, have created new types of requirements pe-
culiarly adapted to their own aims and circumstances. One
If we turn from the past and speculate on the future, we can
hardly doubt that it will be one of intensified effort. For it is
more and more evident that the answers we get are intimately
conditioned by the questions we ask, and that asking the right
questions?the business of requirements?is no spare-time job.
But what direction should this intensified effort take?
Undoubtedly the healthy specialization and experimental-.
ism of the present should and will continue. But by itself this
i3 not an adequate program. The problems of requirements
are not all special problems. Some of them are central to the
very nature of the requirements process. One cannot help
1'.eling that too little of the best thinking of the community
has gone into these central problems?into the development
in a word, of an adequate theory of requirements.
It, would be untrue to imply that nobody has been concern-
ing himself with the broad questions. Much expert thought
has gone into the revisions of guidance papers for the com-
munity at large or for major segments of it. But there is
often a conspicuous hiatus between these high-level docu-
ments and the requirements produced on the working level.
Ocaling with general matters has itself become a specialty.
We lack a vigorous exchange of views between generalists and
specialists, requirements officers and administrators, members
of all agencies, analysts in all intelligence fields, practitioners
of all collection methods, which might lead at least to a clarifi-
cation of ideas and at best to a solution of some common prob-
lems.
ft is the aim of this paper to incite, if possible, such an ex-
change of views. It offers as candidate for the title of Num-
ber One Requirements Problem the problem of priorities.
More exactly, it is the problem of how to formulate needs and
priorities in such a way as to facilitate the satisfaction of
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needs in a degree roughly proportionate to their priorities,
through the most effective use of the collection means avail-
able.
This problem is one which deserves and will probably re-
ward the most searching study that can be given it. The
present paper cannot claim to be such a study. Among its
limitations is the fact that the writer's personal experience
is confined to the clandestine collection field. It seeks, how-
ever, to demonstrate that there is such a general problem;
that it is amenable to general analysis; that it must be ex-
amined not merely as a problem in administration but as one
in analytical method; and finally that it is one with which the
individual intelligence officer can effectively concern himself.
The few specific proposals in the following pages are incidental
to these general aims.
We may begin with a provisional definition of a collection
requirement as simply "a statement of information to be col-
lected." Our next step is to examine the most important va-
rieties of such statements.
Kinds of Requirement
In the management of collection requirements there are
certain persistent tendencies that reflect the divergent in-
terests of the participants. There is the tendency of the
analyst to publish a list of all his needs in the hope that some-
body will satisfy them. There is the tendency of the theorist
and the administrator to want a closely knit system whereby
all requirements can be fed into a single machine, integrated,
ranged by priorities, and allocated as directives to all parts of
the collection apparatus. And there is the tendency of the
collector to demand specific, well-defined requests for informa-
tion, keyed to his special capabilities.
These tendencies are capable of complementing each other
usefully if brought into reasonable balance, but their co-
existence has more often been marked with friction.
It will be useful at this point to take a look at the word
"requirement" in ordinary English usage. For the divergent
tendencies just mentioned have a remarkable parallel in cer-
tain divergent but thoroughly ingrained connotations of the
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word itself. It is highly likely that these connotations, jum-
bled together loosely in the backs of our minds, help to create
our notions of what a requirement "really ought to be."
Though not mutually exclusive, they are sufficiently different
that as one or the other predominates, the character of the
resultant concept varies appreciably.
The first connotation is that of need. A requirement is
something needed, or a statement of that need. This mean-
ing does not necessarily involve the idea of authority. The
need is objective; it is determined by the facts of the case.
Thus food, water, and oxygen are requirements of the human
organism. And thus information on various subjects is a re-
quirement of the analyst, the intelligence organization, and
the Government itself. When we think of the intelligence re-
quirements of the Government, we are thinking not merely
of what has been authoritatively determined to be needed,
but of what actually is needed. This way of regarding require-
ments, which is basic and which we all share to some extent,
adds dignity to our conception of our work. To the analyst,
who thinks in terms of what he needs in order to do his job, it
is the dominant connotation, and in fact the only one he
cares about until experience forces him to look farther.
The second connotation for most people is that of compul-
sion or command, stemming from authority. As children we
are "required" to go to school. In college we must take cer-
tain "required- courses. In intelligence, many of us regard
a requirement as essentially a directive from a higher echelon
to a lower one. In this view, the key question is not whether
the information is objectively needed but whether its procure-
ment has been directed by competent authority. It is a view
which commends itself to the administrator, who would, of
course, contend that certification by competent authority pro-
vides the best assurance that a valid need exists. This con-
notation, like the first, exists in varying degrees for everyone.
Where it dominates, it leads to an emphasis on machinery,
systems, channels, committees.
Finally, there is the connotation of request. Though "re-
quest" is no longer an active meaning of "require," both come
from the same root, along with "inquire," "question," and
-query." In intelligence this meaning has again come into its
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RE?
own. Under this interpretation, one equal (the -customer")
makes a request or puts a question to another (the collector) ,
who fulfills or answers it as best he can. There is a sort of
honor system on both sides?with a dash of mutual suspicion.
The requester vouches for the validity of the requirement,
though the collector is free to reject it. If he accepts it, the
collector gives an implied assurance that he will do his best
on it, and this the requester is free to doubt. In any event
the relationship is a mutual one, and in its pure form is free
from compulsion. The use of direct requests appeals particu-
larly to the collector, who finds that it provides him with more
viable, collectible requirements than any other method. It
sometimes appeals also to the requester-analyst, who if he
finds a receptive collector is able by this means to get more
requirements accepted than would be possible otherwise.
Again, it is sometimes disillusioning to both, if the collector
comes to feel overburdened or the analyst to feel neglected.
These three connotations of need, compulsion, and request
are embodied in three kinds of collection requirement, to
which we shall arbitrarily give names?the inventory of needs,
addressed to the community at large and to nobody in par-
ticular; the directive, addressed by a higher to a lower eche-
lon; and the request, addressed by a customer to a collector.
The Requirement as Inventory of Needs
An example of the inventory of needs is the series of
Periodic Requirements (recently relabeled Reporting) Lists
issued by the CIA Office of Current Intelligence. No collector
is directed ("required") to collect against these lists; the lists
are not addressed to any single collector. Some responsible
vide. In most cases, however, the PRL's are selectively utilized
for guidance despite their character as inventories. There are
several reasons for this. Revised three times a year, they are
the most up-to-date of requirements. Their main subject, cur-
rent affairs of chiefly political significance, is one which engages
the interest and competence of nearly all collectors and which
presents opportunities to nearly all. Many such opportuni-
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ties are sudden and gratuitous; they divert no effort from
other requirements, hence raise no issue of priorities.
Generally speaking, however, the inventory of needs does
not appeal to the busy collector. When he accepts it, it is a
sign that adequate requirements addressed to his particular
capabilities are lacking. But the collector's viewpoint is not
the only pertinent one. The inventory of needs can have great
value as an instrument of analysis within the intelligence pro-
duction office that originates it. The one thing it can not do
is to contribute significantly to the resolution of the priori-
ties problem.
The Requirement as Directive
The most broadly controlling document in the field of re-
quirements is the list of Priority National Intelligence Objec-
tives issued an:aually as a Director of Central Intelligence Di-
rective to which attention is given in the NSC itself. Tech-
nically not requirements, and certainly not collection require-.
inents, the PNIO's establish general guidelines for both col-
lection and research. They are ranged in three priorities and
contained in four pages. They are comprehensive, authorita-
tive, and community-wide in their application. But because of
their extreme generality, the PNIO's provide no practical guid-.
:ince in settling issues of specific collection priorities. They
form a constitution which requires both laws and courts to
interpret it. To only a limited extent do present collection di-
rectives provide such "laws" or the USIB committee structure
.such "courts." It is still common practice for individual cus-
tomer requirements (chiefly of the "request" variety) to
claim a priority derived directly from the master document.
If conscientiously applied, this practice is sound as a discipline
to the requester. But it has no more value in judging the
relative urgency of two specific collection requests than cita-
tion of the U.S. Constitution would have in settling a subur-
ban zoning dispute.
On the level of collection requirements proper, the directive
occurs in several situations. The clearest example is where
there is a command channel, as between a collection organi-
zation's headquarters and its field representatives. Any re-
quirement sent through such a channel is a directive if the
higher echelon chooses to make it one. (Paradoxically, by
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euphemism, the fact that command authority is being exer-
cised will often be indicated by the word "request.")
For purposes of this discussion, the most significant type
of directive is that which emanates directly or indirectly from
the authority of the DCI, or is issued in consequence of agree-
ments between two or more agencies. Typically, such require-
ments originate outside the collection organization?often
through the mechanism of an inter-agency committee?and
represent the coordinated interests of major customers.
Where requirements of this kind are traditionally and with-
out question accepted by the collection organization and is-
sued with command force to its components, it is reasonable
to classify them as directives without looking into the precise
authority of the committee concerned.
Directives are most practicable in the following circum-
stances: (a) where a command relationship exists; (b) where
there is only one customer, or where one customer is incom-
parably more important than the others; (c) where a single
method of collection is involved, and where this method has
very precise, limited, and knowable capabilities. The last of
these circumstances is most likely to occur in collection by
technical methods. In such collection, especially on the Sino-
Soviet Bloc, directives have been relatively successful. For
when it is perfectly clear, as it often is in technical subjects,
that it is possible to have this or that but not both, it becomes
both feasible and necessary to reach a binding decision. In
these circumstances, priorities have real meaning.
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The Requirement as Request
Examples of the requirement as request can be found every-
where. Most requirements fall in this category, including a
a..r,ge majority of those bearing RD numbers in the commu-
uity-wide numbering system administered by the CIA Office
Central Reference. The fact that RD stands for Require-
ment Directive is historically interesting but not currently
;;ignfficant.
A request may range from a twenty-word question to a
fifty-page questionnaire. It may ask for a single fact or a
thousand related facts. Its essence is not in its form or con-
tent but in the relationship between requester and collector.
An important variant on the request is the solicited require-
ment. Here the request is itself requested, by the collector.
'I'he collector, possessing a capability on an existing general
requirement (of any of the types discussed), informs the ap-
propriate customer of the capability and asks for specific n
quirements "tailored" to it. The resulting requirement is
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drawn up with an eye to the nature of the particular sources
to be used, rather than merely to the presumed over-all capaci-
ties of the collecting organization. Through this interaction
of consumer and collector, requirements of great precision and
;? m-m-d-ipqi value are developed.
The solicited requirement blends into the jointly developed.
requirement. Here collector and consumer work out the re-
quirement jointly, usually on a subject of broad scope and
usually on the initiative of the collector. This too is a prac-
tical device of often considerable merit.
The possible variations on the request are innumerable.
The unsolicited or "spontaneous" request is the basic require-
ments tool of the community, the means by which all can
seek help from those they think able to help them. The so-
licited request is a precision tool for relating needs and capa-
bilities. If capabilities were ample enough to fulfill all needs,
no other form of collection requirement would be necessary.
But needs are infinite, capabilities limited, priorities therefore
essential, and some form of directive indispensable.
The Study of Priority
If this description of the lands of requirement is valid, it is
evident that each of the three kinds answers a deep-felt need,
has a life of its own, and plays a role of its own in the
total complex of intelligence guidance. Since the focus of
this paper is on the problem of priorities, it must concern it-
self chiefly with the directive. But while the directive is the
only practical vehicle for priorities, requests are also very
much in the picture since priorities must govern their fulfil-
ment.
In approaching the priorities question, it is natural to think
first in terms of administration and system. Adequate ad-
ministrative arrangements are in fact essential, and will be
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discussed in some fullness. In themselves, however, they are
powerless to do more than make the wheels go round. If the
wheels are also to mesh, the question must be studied further
-1.s a problem in intellectual discipline, involving analytical
method and an appropriate language. Finally, it must be
viewed in relation to the training and responsibilities of the
Individual intelligence officer. Each of these approaches will
be examined in turn.
System and Administration
There exists no single, general requirements system. What
might be called the requirements situation has previously
been well described in this journal,' but a brief recapitulation
will be useful here.
A department or agency which engages in collection pri-
marily to satisfy its own requirements generally maintains
an independent requirements system for internal use, with
its own terminology, categories, and priorities, and with a
:Jingle requirements office to direct its collection elements on
behalf of its consumer elements. This pattern is characteris-
tic of the military departments. The same requirements of-
fice that performs these internal functions (or perhaps a
eparate branch of it) represents both the collector and the
consumer elements in dealing with other agencies.
Where, as in CIA, the consumer components are dependent
many collectors and the collection components are in the
ervice of consumers throughout the community, no such
;)ne-to-one system is possible. Each major component (col-
lector or consumer) has its own requirements office. There
may also be requirements officers at division and branch
levels, as in the Clandestine Services.
Requirements offices differ in many respects, but in all cases
they are the official channels for the movement of require-
ments between agencies. Their personnel are middlemen, and
must have some understanding of the problems not only of
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those whom they represent but of those whom they deal with
on the outside. The consumer requirements officer must find
the best collection bargain he can for his analyst client; the
collector requirements officer must find the best possible use
for the resources he represents, while protecting them from
unreasonable demands; each must restrain his own side from
ill-advised intransigence.
Between agencies (or between major components of CIA)
the typical requirement moves officially from analyst to con-
sumer requirements office to the CIA Office of Central Ref er-
ence to collector requirements office to collector. (Even this
is a simplified statement.) OCR's community-wide system
whereby such requirements are numbered and recorded makes
for convenient reference. In some cases OCR also performs
other functions normally performed by requirements offices,
such as checking to make sure that readily available sources
have been canvassed before levying a requirement on an ex-
pensive collection system.
Although the vast majority of requirements move offi-
cially through the channel just described, many of these move-
ments are merely in confirmation of advance copies which
have previously passed directly between the two requirements
offices concerned. Matters of substance are regularly dis-
cussed by one requirements officer with another. And beyond
this there are many instances where one or both of the re-
quirements offices are unaware that a requirement has been
agreed upon between analyst and individual collector until a
confirmation copy comes through channels.
From the standpoint of the "free market," of bringing
analyst and collector together, this way of doing things works
well. Where the collection situation is such that effort on a
low-priority target does not actually detract from the effort
that can be made on a high-priority target, little harm can
be done. Or where analyst and collector are both highly
knowledgeable and responsible, the results can be excellent.
The former condition still prevails in some areas outside the
iron curtain; the latter has been attained in certain compo-
nents. But neither analyst nor collector nor yet require-
ments officer is competent to set priorities.
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Hitherto we have spoken of requests and directives as clear-
cut categories. But it is necessary to take account of a spe-
cial variety, the request-cum-persuasion, and its still more
vigorous relative, the request-cum-pressure. The intense ef-
forts which are often made informally to induce individuals
in the collection offices to give special emphasis to particular
requirements are a clear sign that there is a felt need for
priorities. But priorities are slippery. Let us see how a typi-
cal collection priority is handled on the working level.
The OCR form used for RD's has a place for the requester to
check "degree of need" as "standard," "great," or "urgent."
Ti the analyst checks this in a way that is grossly out of line,
his own requirements office will probably catch him up; if it
does not, the collector's requirements office will balk. But al-
though it may be assumed that the requesting requirements
office would not approve an "urgent" rating unless the re-
quirement deserved it in relation to other requirements
p raced by that office on the same collection organization, no
such assumption can be made as to its priority relative to re-
quirements from other consumers. And it would be a very
self-confident collector who would try to settle the question
unaided.
If the collector should show no interest in a requirement
marked "urgent," the requester may try proof, persuasion, or
pressure. He may indeed, in anticipation of resistance, have
originally indicated a relationship between his requirement
and one of the Priority National Intelligence Objectives. He
almost certainly right that a relationship exists, but there
may be question of its cogency. It is possible to tie a very
small requirement to a very big objective. Early warning is
important, but not everything described as early warning is
equally important. The collector may still be unimpressed.
There is no impartial arbiter, short of the USIB itself, for the
requester to appeal to.
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I.
The chief reason for the paucity of citations seems to be
that only a small proportion of requirements received as re-
quests are actually on subjects specifically covered in the IPC
Lists. The Lists are not cited for the simple reason that they
contain nothing suitable to cite. On non-Bloc areas this is
not surprising, since the IPC Lists have scarcely begun to
touch them. But on Bloc areas it is astonishing, all the more
since the Lists are composed of requirements and targets origi-
nally submitted by the very analysts who now make these re-
quests for information. Is it possible that the preparation of
IPC Lists is regarded by some analysts as a formal, academic
exercise unrelated to the real expression of their keenest in-
terests? Or do the Lists contain only items of such rarity
and difficulty that on ordinary workdays nobody really hopes
to get them? Or is it that the day-to-day requirements deal
with matters so current that the IPC Lists have not caught
up with them? Or with matters too unimportant to merit
inclusion in the Lists?
Be the answer what it may, the fact is that the analyst in
our hypothetical situation would probably appeal to a different
source of authority in his effort to show the collector the im-
portance of his requirement. The chances are good that, if
he had a case capable of being pressed at all, he would draw
support from positions taken by one of the substantive USIB
committees that concern themselves with requirements.
Among these committees are the Economic Intelligence Com-
mittee, the Scientific Intelligence Committee, the Joint Atomic
Energy Intelligence Committee, and the Guided Missile and
Astronautics Intelligence Committee. Each of them is au-
thorized, among its other duties, "to recommend . . . intelli-
gence objectives within the over-all national intelligence objec-
tives, establish relative priorities on substantive needs, review
the scope and effectiveness of collection and production efforts
to meet these objectives, and make the necessary substantive
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recommendations to the departments and agencies concerned."
Each is also authorized "to determine the deficiencies" in its
own category of intelligence, "to take appropriate remedial ac-
tions, and to recommend to the Intelligence Board remedial
actions" beyond its own cognizance. Such recommendations
have from time to time been made and approved, with the
result that priorities on very specific matters have been estab-
lished by the USIB. Priorities so established have, of course,
the force Of directives. And such priorities have frequently
been cited effectively in the levying of requirements, although
the exact applicability of the priority in the context of a given
collector's responsibilities has not always been clear beyond
doubt.
It is the intent of this paper to illustrate rather than to
exhaust the questions it raises. The requirements situation
has many other significant systems and phenomena: the spe-
cial, closed requirements systems governing technical meth-
ods of collection; the Watch Committee with its General Indi-
cator List; and, to name but one more, the Critical Collection
Problems Committee, whose recommendations on specified
critical collection questions carry great weight with the In-
telligence Board. But enough has been said to give a sense
of the administrative question.
It would seem to involve at least the following aspects: (a)
a vast number of requests with no consistently effective way
of relating them to established directives and hence to pri-
orities; (b) directives all of which emanate directly or in-
directly from the USIB, but through different channels and
without sufficient coordination, so that their impact is often
disconcerting.
One sometimes encounters the view that all requirements
should be fed into a single mechanism, where the marginal
ones would be eliminated and the others properly related, sub-
ordinated, formulated, and allocated. The appeal of this
dream is that such a procedure would, at least theoretically,
deal head-on with the problems of priorities and capabilities,
and would ensure that all relevant considerations and in-
terests were taken into account simultaneously by a single re-
sponsible authority.
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There are a dozen reasons why such a scheme is impractical.
The group charged with this function would have to be dele-
gated an unprecedented amount of the authority of the USIB.
It would be unwieldy in size. Its staff would have to consist
mainly of substantive experts and experts on capabilities, yet
neither of these could be extensively spared from regular ana-
lytical or collection duties, and if away from such duties long
would lose their expertise. Such a group could not keep
abreast of current developments, and much of its output
would be stillborn. It is inconceivable that it should take over
direction of the self-contained collection systems, or that it
could do so successfully. If charged with processing all re-
quirements, its machinery would whir meaninglessly over the
many that present no problem and find it difficult to pause
for those that do. The priority system would probably be too
standardized to help with the really hard and painful deci-
sions. There would be a strong tendency to ratify the ob-
vious and sidestep the prickly.
To encounter these faults and dangers, to be sure, it is not
necessary to create this gigantic requirements mechanism.
We face most of them already; they are the hazards of all
centralized systems, whether large-scale or small-scale. But
since we have still so much to learn about how to make priori-
ties work, it would seem sensible to do our experimentation
on a scale where the strains are tolerable.
One such experiment might confine itself to requirements
for clandestine collection by CIA. These might be divided into
directives and requests. The directives would be issued?pos-
sibly by a strengthened IPC?under new procedures to be es-
tablished by the USIB. The issuing body would take advan-
tage of the specialized competence of the substantive intelli-
gence committees, and the latter would coordinate with the
issuing body any recommendations to the USIB affecting clan-
destine collection priorities. All directives and priorities pre-
sented to the Clandestine Services (except those received di-
rectly from the DCI) would reach them through a single chan-
nel and would constitute a single, interrelated body of guid-
ance. Frequency of revision would be essential. Special emer-
gency priorities established through command channels would
be possible as they are today. As for requirements of the
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Cenidction Requirements
request type, they would be served in much the present man-
ner except that on challenge they would have to be justified
by a demonstrable relationship with a directive.
Discipline: Method and Language
The more one reflects on it, the more one sees that the set-
ting of priorities is a singularly subtle and elusive task. Use-
ful priorities simply cannot be caught in the coarse nets of
authority, information, channels, and the division of labor.
These things are needed, but so also are a disciplined intellec-
tual approach to the subject, comprising a delicate analytical
method and, derhaps most important, an adequate language.
'Co illustrate problems in method, we may draw once more
on the experience of the IPC. That committee, as was noted
earlier, derives its priority system from the PNIO's. The sys-
tem consists cif three priorities, based on the degree to which
the United States could be benefited by the achievement of
an objective or harmed by the failure to achieve it. All IPC
requirements and targets (the latter being institutions or in-
stallations on which information is needed) bear the same pri-
ority as the PNIO to which they are related. Since the PNIO's
on the Sino-Soviet Bloc are all of First or Second Priority, the
(PC requirements on those areas are too. The result is that
a list of 300 Bloc targets may have 100 of First Priority and
200 of Second Priority.
There are several difficulties here. One, which the IPC has
for some time recognized and tried to overcome, is that two
priorities simply do not provide enough span. By various de-
vices?arranging certain related targets in an internal order
of importance; describing certain targets as substitutes for
others; treating targets as subordinate to "basic require-
ments" which are sometimes expanded into several para-
graphs?the IPC manages to convey a somewhat more 'dis-
criminating sense of priority.
A second difficulty is that a requirement related to a First
Priority objective is really not necessarily more important in
itself than another requirement related only to a Second Pri-
ority objective. Everything depends on how significantly each
requirement is related to its objective--how far its fulfilment
would go towards achieving the objective. It is illogical to
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suppose that every item of information (or every target) has
an importance strictly proportionate to the importance of the
objective on which it bears, however minutely. Here again the
IPC has recognized the difficulty and has tried to compensate
for it to the extent compatible with its system. Where a re-
quirement or target bears on both a First and a Second Pri-
ority objective, it is ranged under the objective to which it
would contribute more significantly. This still leaves a tre-
mendous unevenness in the importance of targets assigned
the same priority.
Still a third difficulty is that a requirement meriting a given
priority in the context of total U.S. security interests does
not necessarily merit the same priority in the context of a
particular collection method. The economic stability of a cer-
tain friendly country may be of great importance (Second Pri-
ority in the PNIO's), yet may not require clandestine collec-
tion at all. This difficulty also has been recognized, and where
it is agreed that a requirement can be satisfied by other meth-
ods it is omitted from the List.
Unquestionably the difficulties of the priority-allocating
process could be illustrated equally well from the experience
of other bodies, though perhaps none faces so baffling a task.
And the difficulties cited are only a few among many. These
are the kinds of matters which appear much simpler before
studying them than afterwards. The fact that they are no-
where near solution is one reason for keeping our experiments
in priority administration on a medium scale, rather than
magnify the problem by creating more grandiose structures.
In order to clarify and refine our method we need a better
language. Here the most pressing need is for a common vo-
cabulary in which such indispensable words as objective, re-
quirement, target, and request can be relied on to mean at
least approximately the same thing to everybody. This happy
state can not be attained by promulgating official glossaries,
but only through continued, careful discussion of common
problems by persons from all parts of the community.
As we probe the more subtle aspects of requirements theory,
we may find that language itself is putting blinders on us in
our search for method. For instance, in the parlance of intel-
ligence direction specific requirements are said to be "derived"
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c...ectron Kequirements
from general ones which in turn are "derived" from the
PNIO's or a similar authority. Is it possible that this con-
cept of "derivation" is really no more than a convenient but
misleading fiction; that the specifics are actually thought up
independently and, at best, are then matched with the gen-
eralities? The same process is often described as "translat-
ing" requirements or as "breaking them down." It is not sug-
gested that we discard such expressions but that we analyze
their implications and limitations. Nobody literally believes
that a PNIO of fifty words somehow contains within itself
the hundreds of thousands of specific questions that will be
asked somewhere, sometime, in the effort to fulfill it. We
know that many of those specific questions are not inevitable.
Others could be substituted for them, perhaps advantageously.
There is indeed a relationship between the fifty-word PNIO
and the innumerable small questions, one which admittedly
an never be fully charted; but has it been adequately ex-
plored? In looking into this particular matter?and here we
are momentarily returning from the question of language to
the question of method?it would be useful to consider the
history of the recently suspended specialized annexes to the
PNIO's as well as of a stillborn experiment several years ago
by the Office of Current Intelligence in the articulation of a
body of intelligence requirements at a middle level of abstrac-
tion between the PNIO's and collection requirements.
The final aspect of the language question, and perhaps the
most important, is the skill with which requirements them-
etves are expressed. What is needed here is not different
words from those now used, but surer ways of communicat-
ing the essence of a matter from one mind (or set of minds)
to another. There is no formula for this but a trained alert-
ness to the perils of misunderstanding.
Training and Personal Responsibility
In the last analysis every action is performed by an indi-
vidual; and in :Intelligence it is clear that the individual cannot
expect to be helped more than half way by systems and meth-
ods. This is true in the field of requirements as elsewhere.
To adapt a hoary but still valid epigram, requirements are far
too important to be left to the requirements officers. In types
of collection requiring individual initiative and judgment,
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Collection Requirdffients
these qualities must be applied to ends no less than to means.
It is pertinent, therefore, to add a word about the role of the
intelligence officer through whom requirements are finally put
to work.
In the training of new case officers?the second lieutenants
of clandestine collection?substantial attention must continue
to be given to the interpreting, tailoring, questioning, solicit-
ing, and developing of requirements suited to their sources,
as well as to the training, briefing, debriefing, directing and
redirecting of sources in response to requirements. The case
officer must learn to study carefully the requirement which
comes from far-away Washington, to grasp its purpose as
well as its letter, to flesh it out with all the knowledge he has
or can get, to cable for clarification when necessary, to adapt
it to the understanding and the access of his sources. He
must also learn to study the reporting as it comes in from
the source, and from it to develop his own immediate feed-
back of further questions without waiting for the customer's
reaction.
To illustrate the case officer's strategic position at the cross-
roads of outflowing direction and inflowing product, the usual
image of the intelligence cycle might be twisted into a figure 8,
the upper part representing all the paraphernalia of higher
echelons, the lower the collection situation for which the case
officer is responsible. He himself appears, not on the outer
periphery of a vast, impersonal, revolving wheel, but where he
feels himself to be?at the center, receiving and giving direc-
tion downward, receiving and submitting reports upward,
himself deriving and feeding back direction from the reports
he receives.
The symbolic crossroads of the figure 8 is equally applicable
to the analyst in a consumer office. He too is at the center;
he too must communicate upwards and downwards; he too is
no cog in a machine, but a mind at work. When the systems
and doctrines have been perfected, the job will still have to be
done by these two.
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