THE ORIGINS OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 24, 2005
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 11, 1971
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
In the Beginning
THE ORIGINS OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATING
By Ludwell Lee Montague*
Most of what I have to say on this subject is a matter
of personal recollection. I was "present at the creation,"
though without power to control the event.
My story begins in October 1940, when I was ordered to
active duty in the Military Intelligence Division of the War
Department General Staff. At that time, now thirty years
ago, there was no common conception of any kind of an intel-
ligence estimate, much less of a national intelligence
estimate.
In our language, the word "intelligence" originally meant
communicated information: that is, information reported from
elsewhere, as distinguish from information known by personal
observation. You will find the word used in that sense by
This article is the text of an address delivered by Dr.
Montague, a retired member of the Board of National Estimates,
at the first meeting of the Intelligence Forum, 11 May 1971.
Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
 Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
Shakespeare. That was still the prevailing sense of the word
tn 1940. Indeed, public comment shows that, even today, most
laymen regard us only as gatherers of information. The Press,
which is itself a primitive intelligence organization, shows
almost no comprehension of the function of estimating the
meaning of the information gathered, apart from the expres-
sion of personal opinion by individual columnists whose
"authority" varies with their personal prestige.
In this primitive sense, the entire Department of State
was, in 1940, an intelligence organization. It had its own
network of reporters who sent it information from abroad --
but the evaluation of that information occurred only intui-
tively in the minds of the desk men who read it. The
Department had no conception of intelligence research, much
less of any organized process of estimating.
The Navy was one degree more sophisticated. It had an
Office of Naval Intelligence, the function of which was to
compile NIS-type information of Naval interest. Just the
facts, man! Navy doctrine strongly held that it was not a
function of Intelligence to estimate the meanin of the facts.
Only the Admiral could do that -- which may go some way to
explain Pearl Harbor.
Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
 Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
Only the Army conceived it to be a function of Intelligence
to estimate the capabilities and intentions of foreign powers.
That was Army doctrine, but the Military Intelligence Division
did little to practice that art. Like ONI, it spent the year
before Pearl Harbor producing "strategic handbooks," a primi-
tive, single-service, NIS.
During that year "Wild 3i-ll" Donovan burst upon the scene
as the President's Coordinator of Information. He was a man
of many pregnant ideas. Just one of them was that the President
should be better informed than the State, War, and Navy
Departments, acting separately, could possibly inform him.
Donovan assembled a group of eminent scholars, men knowledge-
able of foreign affairs and practiced in the techniques of
research and analysis in a way that regular Army, Navy, and
Foreign Service officers could not be. Donovan's Research and
Analysis Branch would assemble all of the information in the
possession of the Government, not only in the State, War, and
Navy Departments, but also in the Library of Congress and
other places, and would prepare for the President a fully
informed and thoughtful analysis of any situation of interest
to him.
Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
 Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
Let me observe at this Joint that the analyses actually
produced by this R & A Branci were not estimates. They were
academic studies, descriptive rather than estimative, more
like an NIS than an NIE.
Donovan had no idea of coordinating these studies with
anyone. He was responsible only to the President. One can
readily imagine how professional Army, Navy, and Foreign
Service officers reacted to the idea that a lot of johnny-
come-lately professors would be telling the President what
to think about political and strategic matters.
Gen. Raymond Lee, who had recently served as military
attache in London, proposes to head off Donovan's intrusion
into the mysteries of military intelligence by the creation
of a Joint (Army and Navy) Intelligence Committee
L
Significantly, the task of defining the functions of
this US JIC was assigned, not to the Chiefs of Intelligence,
but to the Chiefs of Army and Navy Plans. There arose at
once a doctrinal controversy between the Army and the Navy.
The Army wished the JIC to "collate, analyze, and interpret
information with its implications, and to estimate hostile
Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
 Approved For Release 2005/04/13 : CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020001-3
capabilities and probable n