THE ORIGINS OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79R00971A000100020003-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 24, 2005
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 11, 1971
• Content Type: SPEECH

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In the Beginning.
THE ORIGINS OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
ESTIMATING
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 con-
ception of any kind of an intelligence estimate, much less of a national
intelligence estimate.
In our language, the word "intelligence" originally meant communi-
cated information: that is, information reported from elsewhere, as
distinguished from information known by personal observation. You
will find the word used in that sense by Shakespeare. That was still
the prevailing sense of the word in 1940. Indeed, public comment shows
that, even today, most laymen regard us only as gatherers of informa-
tion. 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 expression 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 informa-
tion occurred only intuitively 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
meaning of the facts. Only the Admiral could do that-which may go
some way to explain Pearl Harbor.
This article is the text of an address delivered by the late Dr. Montague, a retired
member of the Board of National Estimates, at the first meeting of the Intelligence
Forum, 11 May 1971.
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Estimating
Only the Army conceived it to be a function of Intelligence to esti-
mate 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 primitive, single-service, NIS.
During that year "Wild Bill" Donovan burst upon the scene as
the President's Coordinator of Information. Ile 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 knowledgeable 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.
Let me observe at this point that the analyses actually produced by
this R&A Branch were not estimates. They were academic studies,
descriptive rather than estimative, more like an NIS than NIE.
Donovan had no idea of coordinating these studies with anyone. Ile
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, proposed to head off Donovan's intrusion into the mysteries
of military intelligence by the creation of a Joint (Army and Navy)
Intelligence Committee
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 esti-
mate hostile capabilities and probable intentions." The Navy wished it
to present such factual evidence as might be available, but to make
no "estimate or other form of prediction." Inasmuch as the Army
desired to have a joint committee, for which the Navy's agreement was
indispensable, the Navy's view prevailed. Thus the first US inter-
departmental intelligence organization came into existence expressly
forbidden to make estimates!
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Estimating
I dwell upon this episode because it has contemporary relevance.
Now, thirty years later, we hear again that in certain high quarters
the idea prevails that the function of Intelligence is to produce evi-
dence, not estimates. Conclusions as to the meaning of the evidence
will be drawn by the interested policymakers to suit their policy
predilections.
There was, of course, a scuffle between the Army and the Navy for
control of this new joint committee. Before the war, normal promotion
was faster in the Navy than in the Army. The Army was shocked to
learn that the senior Naval officer assigned to the joint committee,
a youngish commander, actually outranked the older lieutenant colonel
assigned by the Army. And that commander's mission was to see to
it that the joint committee did nothing except by direction, particu-
larly that it did no estimating. But the Army, in the midst of a massive
mobilization, had developed a faster system than the Navy's for
making spot promotions. The Army made the lieutenant colonel a
colonel before the Navy could make the commander a captain. And
the first thing that the new colonel did, on taking over from the
commander, was to order the immediate preparation of the first US
joint intelligence estimate, in flagrant violation of the JIC's charter!
The subject of that first US interdepartmental intelligence estimate
was the strategic consequences if the Japanese were permitted to seize
control of the Netherlands East Indies. (Singapore and Bataan were
then under attack, but had not yet fallen.) The answer was obvious:
that would be a Bad Thing. The policy implication was also clear: it
should be prevented. Since that policy implication suited the Navy,
it did not protest the illegality of making that estimate.
At this point, Mr. Winston Churchill came to town with two pur-
poses in mind. The first was to commit the United States to give the
war with Germany priority over the war with Japan, not an easy
proposition in the face of the US reaction to Pearl Harbor and Bataan:
The second was to establish the Combined Chiefs of Staff in order to
insure for Britain a more or less equal voice in the conduct of both
wars.
The Combined Chiefs of Staff organization included a Combined
Intelligence Committee
t e US JIC, the US side
of the CIC, had to be enlarged to include representatives of the State
Department, the Board of Economic Warfare, and the Office of
Strategic Services. Since the sole function of the CIC was to produce
combined "appreciations" as a basis for combined war planning, it
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Estimating
automatically became the primary function of the US JIC to produce
US joint intelligence estimates. Thus it was the Prime Minister of
Great Britain who created the wartime US JIC and put it into the
The situation was somewhat different in the US JIC
The St
t
.
a
e
Department was incapable of making any contribution, but felt free
to criticize the political contributions of OSS. The Foreign Economic
Administration (formerly BEW) generally deferred to OSS in economic
matters. The Air Force and the Navy generally stuck to their
technical specialties, although the Navy was ever ready to defend the
interests of Admiral Nimitz against any supposed Army favor toward
General MacArthur. But the Army and OSS both claimed a
universal competence: they would argue with anybody about any-
thing, and chiefly with each other. The Army had no hesitation about
contradicting an OSS political or economic estimate. OSS delighted
to expose deficiencies in the Army's order of battle.
In these circumstances, the Joint Intelligence Staff, the full-time
working staff of the JIC, performed a real service in working out an
agreed joint text from conflicting contributions, particularly those
of the Army and OSS. These were not split-the-difference com-
promises. Despite their different departmental origins, the members
of the JIS were a band of brothers who lived and worked together; they
could reach agreement amongst themselves on the basis of reasoned
consideration of the evidence. The estimates that they prepared were
truly joint estimates.
The trick then was, of course, to obtain the concurrence of the
nienibers of the JI(`, who were surrounded by advisers who had never
participated in joint consideration of the subject. But the members
of the JIS were the personal representatives of the members of the
.JIC for this purpose. They had equal access to them, and could
generally persuade them to adopt the joint view.
The defect of the JIC system was that the Committee was
composed of six sovereign powers. No one represented the national
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Estimating CONFIDENTIAL
interest, as distinguished from departmental interests. No one held
a power of decision in case of disagreement. Since there was no
acceptable way of registering a divergent view, unanimous agreement
was required. In the case of a real controversy, that could be
obtained only if someone backed down, or, as happened more often, if
someone could devise an ambiguous formulation acceptable to both
sides in the controversy. Thus, joint estimates tended to become vague
or meaningless precisely at points of critical importance.
The members of the JIS agreed that a headless joint committee
was the worst way of producing national intelligence estimates.
During the autumn of 1944 they developed their idea of a more
effective interdepartmental intelligence system. Since every depart-
ment would require its own intelligence organization to meet its
specialized departmental needs, there would have to be an inter-
departmental committee to bring together the heads of those
departmental organizations to deal with common (that is, national)
problems. But that committee should have an independent chairman,
appointed by the President and responsible only to him. And, in the
case of estimates, that chairman, having heard all of the evidence
and argument bearing on a disputed issue, should have the power to
decide what the text of the estimate would say, subject only to the
notation of the dissenting opinion of any chief of a departmental
intelligence agency. That idea, developed by the men who then had
the most personal experience in the coordination of interdepartmental
intelligence estimates, is the key to the present system for producing
national intelligence estimates.
In the autumn of 1944 others were thinking of a postwar
intelligence system. The Department of State had a plan. It was
premised upon the exclusive responsibility and authority of the
Secretary of State for the conduct of foreign relations, subject only to
the direction of the President. It assumed that the military intelligence
services would be interested only in technical military matters. It
contemplated the creation of an "American (i.e., National) Intelligence
Service" within the Department of State. This Service would
maintain "close liaison" with the military intelligence services and
would obtain through liaison whatever military inputs it required for
its own estimates. The military, however, would have no voice in
those estimates. Produced under the exclusive authority of the
Secretary of State, they would provide the intelligence foundation
for national policy.
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CONFIDENTIAL Estimating
Somehow, a working copy of this State Department plan came
into the possession of General Donovan, the Director of Strategic
Services. Ile moved to forestall State by proposing to the President
the creation of a "Central Intelligence Service" in the Executive
Office of the President. His point wa# that departmental intelligence
estimates were by their nature self-serving. The President should
have in his service an intelligence organization wholly free of the
influence of departmental policy advocacy and special pleading. It
would make full use of departmental intelligence resources, but would
produce its own independent intelligence estimates, as the basis for
national policy and strategy.
Let me stress that neither the State Department Plan nor the
Donovan Plan contemplated any int ,rdcpartmental coordination of
these "national policy intelligence" estimates. The military intelligence
.services would contribute "factual" data to them, but would have
no voice in their estimative judgments. They would be produced
under the sole authority of the Secretary of State, in the first case,
or of the Director of the Central Intelligence Service in the second.
The Donovan Plan was referred to the JIC for comment and the
fat was in the fire. After a month of fierce contention, the JIS
worked out a compromise plan, JIC 239/5, 1 January 1945. In that
paper the JIC recommended the establishment of a Central Intel-
ligence Agency which, among other things, would produce national
intelligence estimates. With regard to such estimates, however, the
Director of Central Intelligence was roquired to consult with a board
composed of the heads of the departmental intelligence agencies and
to report their individual concurrence or dissent. In short, this was
the scheme developed by the members of the JIS during the autumn
of 1944, to which reference was made above.
After a year of vicissitudes that I shall not take time to relate,
President Truman adopted the plan set forth in JIC 23915. In January
1946 he established the Central Intelligence Group which, in Sep-
tember 1947, became the Central Intelligence Agency.
It is true to say that without William Donovan's initiative, in 1941
and again in 1944, there would have been no Central Intelligence
Agency. All honor to him for that. But it is a mistake to suppose, as
is commonly done, that CIA was based on the Donovan Plan of 1944.
General Donovan himself knew better than that. Instead, CIA is
based on JIC 239/5, which General Donovan stubbornly opposed.
The Central Intelligence Group set out to produce national intel-
ligence estimates in accordance with the concept embodied in JIC
23915. It was frustrated in that intention by the departmental agencies.
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For reasons that I shall not take time to explain, they refused to con-
tribute to CIG estimates, or even to meet with CIG to discuss them.
The result was that CIG, later CIA, produced estimates based solely
or primarily upon its own research and sent them to the heads of the
departmental agencies for concurrence or dissent on a take it or leave
it basis. The IAC (the predecessor of USIB) never met to consider
an estimate.
That certainly was not what had been intended. In 1949 the Dulles
Committee blamed CIA for it.
This matter was not straightened out until General Walter Bedell
Smith became DCI, in October 1950. Through positive leadership,
he then developed a cooperative relationship with the IAC. He estab-
lished also the Office of National Estimates with the sole mission of
producing national intelligence estimates in the manner that had been
intended in JIC 239/5-that is, on the basis of departmental contribu-
tions, independent evaluation of those contributions, working level
consultation with the contributors, and final consideration by the
IAC (USIB).
In this context, the specialized research offices of CIA should be
regarded as contributors on the same basis as the departmental
agencies. ONE, working solely for the DCI as the Chairman of USIB,
has no more commitment to them than to, say, DIA. They are repre-
sented in USIB by the DDCI.
This system has now worked well for 20 years, which proves that
it is soundly conceived. Let me close by pointing out its particular
virtues from the point of view of the user of the NIE.
First, it assures him that all of the intelligence resources of the
Government have been brought to bear on the problem, and that
every intelligence authority in the Government has been consulted.
Nevertheless, the power of decision with regard to the content of
an estimate resides in one man, the DCI. This is, or should be, a pro-
tection against the evasions and obfuscations that characterize joint
estimates. It should work to clarify any real differences that may
exist among well informed men.
Third, any dissenter is forced to dissent within the context of a
generally agreed discussion-not in an ex pane paper circulated
separately.
Finally, the user has consequent assurance that all of the intelli-
gence considerations bearing on his problem are contained in this one
paper, under one cover.
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After 20 years, these virtues may seem commonplace --but some-
times I sense that they are not fully understood and appreciated nowa-
days. To appreciate them fully, one has to know what it. was like 30,
or even 20, years ago. I have endeavored to give you some feeling for
the difference between the present system and what went before.
It is written that those who disregard past experience are con-
demned to repeat it.
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