NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00317A000100010001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 166
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 2, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 1, 1967
• Content Type: NIE

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This document must not be given further
dissemination without permission
of CIA/OTR
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
PRODUCED BY THE INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTION FACULTY,
SEPTEMBER 1967
NOTE: This document contains information affecting the national
defense of the US within the meaning of the espionage laws, Title
18, USC, Secs. 793 and 794, the transmission or revelation of
which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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FOREWORD
This volume is designed as a training aid to be used in the Intelligence
School, Office of Training. The volume also may be used as a ready ref-
erence for intelligence officers who may wish to review or reflect on
the charter, organization, and some of the philosophical concepts and
problems related to estimative intelligence.
Whether in the business of intelligence collection or intelligence pro-
duction, most professional intelligence officers probably have had the
opinion, at one time or another, that a given National Intelligence Esti-
mate (NIE) suffered because it did not reflect the best -- if any --
use of significant information known to the critic. All except the most
innocent in the intelligence community probably have heard the cliche
that if NIE's were rated for "runs, hits, and errors," the percentage in
the last category would be excessive.
In response to this charge, this volume presents some opinions of the
estimators themselves. It is clear from such comments that those most
closely associated with fashioning the ultimate intelligence product --
the National Intelligence Estimate and the Special Estimate -- probably
are more conscious than any of their critics that those who risk making
such estimates are "engaged in a hazardous occupation."
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 PAGE
NO.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
25X1 C
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Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
THE BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES AND THE OFFICE OF
NATIONAL ESTIMATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Post Mortems and Validity Studies . . . . . . . . . . 9
SELECTED READINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A. Intelligence and National Policy
Robert Cutler, "Intelligence as Foundation
for Policy" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
25X1A "On Estimating Reactions" . . . . . . 28
B. Problems of Estimative Intelligence
"Notes on 'Capabilities' in
a iona n e ligence" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
, "Notes on Some Aspects of
Intelligence Estimates" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
"Scientific Estimating" . . . . . 61
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PAGE
NO.
"The Role of the
Consultant in Intelligence
Estimates" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Sherman Kent, "Words of Estimative
Probability" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C. Coordination of Intelligence
Ray Cline, "Is Intelligence
Overcoordinated?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
R. J. Smith, "Coordinating and
Responsibility" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
25X1A
D. Estimative Intelligence and the Cuban Crisis
Sherman Kent, "A Crucial Estimate Relived" . . . . . 106
Fred Greene, "The Intelligence Arm: The
Cuban Missile Crisis" . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Roberta Wohlstetter, "Cuba and Pearl Harbor:
Hindsight and Foresight" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
A. NSCID No. 1 (New Series), "Basic Duties
and Responsibilities" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
C. DCID No. 1/1 (New Series), "Production
of National Intelligence Estimates" . . . . . . . 170
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PAGE
NO.
1. Structure of the United States
Intelligence Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Follows page 3
2. Types of USIB Agenda Items, 1964 . . . . . . . . Follows page 3
3. The Board of National Estimates and
Office of National Estimates . . . . . . . . . Follows page 5
4. Preparation of a National
Intelligence Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . Follows page 7
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INTRODUCTION
One authority on intelligence has written that:
"National Intelligence in the United States may be
distinguished by two features:
1. It is intended to serve the formulators of
national security policy.
2. Its content, transcending the exclusive
competence of a single department or agen-
cy, is presented as the consensus of the
intelligence community.
Since national policy is not designed to be a
shifting guide to action but rather to serve as a
standing precept over a considerable span of time,
intelligence is needed that will afford rather long-
range fore-knowledge of the capabilities, vulnerabil-
ities, and probable courses of action of foreign nations.
Such intelligence is usually presented in the form of a
'strategic estimate.' When prepared at the national level
as a composite of the views of the intelligence community,
it is produced as a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)."
In a crude analogy, the finishing machinery through which estimates are
processed to become the "consensus of the intelligence community" is
the United States Intelligence Board (USIB). The cutting, shaping, and
forming machinery for handling the host of input considerations on a
given problem is represented by the Board of National Estimates (BNE)
and the Office of National Estimates (ONE).
THE UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE BOARD
Authority
Statutory authority for the USIB is given in National Security Council
Intelligence Directive (NSCID) No. 1 (New Series). Included among the
Jack Zlotnick. National Intelligence (Washington: Industrial
College of the Armed Forces, 1964), p. 27.
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other responsibilities of the USIB and/or USIB members are the following
which are most pertinent to estimative intelligence: *
1. To support the Director of Central Intelligence in
the production of national intelligence and concur with
such intelligence, or, if not in concurrence, to provide
written dissent. (Par. 4a)
2. To provide information of impending crisis situa-
tions to the Director of Central Intelligence, to other
USIB members, and to the National Indications Center; and
to assist in preparation and dissemination of NIE's on such
crisis situations. (Par. 4e)
In addition to the authority spelled out in NSCID No. 1, each of the
other NSCID's issued to date (Nos. 2-8) makes quite clear the con-
currence/consultative responsibilities of the USIB vis-a-vis the Director
of Central Intelligence. In terms of the production of intelligence
estimates, the following paragraphs of NSCID No. 3 (New Series) are
noteworthy:
National Intelligence....relating to the national
security which has been produced as interdepartmental
or departmental intelligence may also, when appropriate,
be submitted through the U.S. Intelligence Board for
issuance by the Director of Central Intelligence as
provided by NSCID No. 1. (Par. 5)
Despite the above mentioned allocations of primary
production respons'__bilities (of CIA, State, and Defense),
there will be areas of common or overlapping interest
which will require continuing interagency liaison and
cooperation. In the event that a requirement for in-
telligence is established for which there is not exist-
ing production capability, the Director of Central Intelli-
gence, in consultation with the U.S. Intelligence Board,
shall determine wh:_ch of the departments and agencies of
the intelligence community can best undertake the primary
responsibility as a service of common concern. (Par. 8)
Membership
The membership of USIB as specified in NSCID No. 1 is constituted as
follows:
* For the full range of USIB responsibilities, the complete text
of NSCID No. 1 is reproduced as Appendix A to this volume.
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 25X1A
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The Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman
The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Central
Intelligence Agency
The Director of Intelligence and Research, Department
of State
The Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
The Director, National Security Agency
A Representative of the Atomic Energy Commission
A Representative of the Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (Par. 2b)
To further guarantee that USIB decisions shall be of the "consensus"
type:
"The _Director of Central Intelligence, as Chairman
[of USIBJ shall invite the chief of any other department
or agency having functions related to the national security
to sit with the U.S. Intelligence Board whenever matters
within the purview of his department or agency are to be
discussed." (NSCID No. 1, Par. 2b)
In addition to the statutory members and specially invited participants,
the chiefs of intelligence of the military services (Air, Army, Navy)
attend sessions of the USIB as observers.* Chart 1, "Structure of the
United States Intelligence Board," illustrates the USIB structure.**
Operations
Chart 2, "Types of USIB Agenda Items, Fy 1965," illustrates the nature
of the work load handled by the USIB during a single year.** The chart
makes obvious the importance of estimates and estimate-related items in
the continuing work of the USIB. Moreover, a considerable number of both
* Prior to March 1964 when the Director of DIA was named to
be a USIB member the military intelligence chiefs were USIB repre-
sentatives.
** Charts 1 and 2 follow page 3.
#3E# COMOR has since been replaced by COMIREX, Committee on Imagery
Requirements and Exploitation. (DCID No. 1/13)
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In addition to the discussions which take place at the formal meetings
of the USIB representatives as reflected in Chart 2, the USIB members
will have had informal discussions of terms of reference, substantive
questions, or specific problems with representatives of the Board of
National Estimates, with members of the ONE Staff, or with participants
on one or more of the 14 official USIB committees. The USIB committees,
committee chairmen, and committee vice-chairmen or secretaries (as of 1
March 1967) are identified in Appendix B in relation to the CIA component
with which they are most closely associated. All of the USIB committees
with the exception of the National Intelligence Survey Committee are
authorized by specific DCID's, and the NIS Committee follows from imple-
mentation of National Intelligence Survey Standard Instructions of Decem-
ber 1948 which were developed in implementation of NSCID No. 3. Although
all but two of the Committees currently are chaired by a CIA representative,
the DCID's make such chai:rmanshi s mandator onl in the c e of the
Economic Intelligence and almost
mandatory for the Int s Committee
-- the chairman of the last group "will normally be a senior official
of the (CIA) Clandestine Services."
The USIB Committees on Economics, Science, Guided Missiles and Astronau-
tics, and Joint Atomic Energy are directly involved in the preparation
of estimative intelligence; but at least five other Committees whose
responsibilities lie principally in areas of collection and indications
should be and are necessarily involved with the estimators in order to
make the best possible judgments on any given situation.* Before
estimates are submitted for the formal USIB seal of approval as National
Intelligence Estimates (NIE's) or Special National Intelligence Estimates
(SNIE's), however, there will have been a series of coordinations within
the Office of National Estimates and the Board of National Estimates.",
THE BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES AND THE OFFICE
OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES
Authority
Director of Central Intelligence Directive (DCID) No. 1/1 (New Series) ***
These five Committees are COMOR (now COMIREX), SIGINT, Critical
Collection Problems, Interagency Clandestine Collection Priorities, and
the Watch Committee.
* Additional comments on the coordination process follow in the
next section of this report on the BNE and ONE.
Effective 5 Aug 59. A copy is attached as Appendix C to this
report.
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STRUCTURE OF THE UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE BOARD
HEADS OF
OTHER
DEPARTMENTS
& AGENCIES
FOREIGN
INTELLIGENCE
DIVISIONS
8
SECRETARY
OF STATE
SECRETARY
OF DEFENSE
DIRECTOR OF
INTELLIGENCE
RESEARCH
3
DEPARTMENT
OF DEFENSE
JOINT CHIEFS
OF STAFF
DIRECTOR,
NAT'L
SECURITY
AGENCY
5
DIRECTOR
DEFENSE
INTELLI
GENCE
AGENCY
AS' CHIEF OF
STAFF -_: INTEf LIGENCE
DEPARTMENT
OF ARMY
DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
(Chairman of USIB)
1
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE
ADVISORY BOARD
ATTORNEY
GENERAL
DEPARTMENT
OF JUSTICE
AEC
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
AGENCY
ECTOR
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
F CIA
O
2
ON USIB
REPRESENTATIVE
OF DIRECTOR OF
FBI
7
1. DIRECTOR OF CIA (CHM)
2. DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CIA
(CIA REPRESENTATIVE)
3. DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE
RESEARCH (STATE)
4. DIRECTOR OF DIA
5. DIRECTOR OF NSA
6. AEC REPRESENTATIVE
7. FBI REPRESENTATIVE
8. OTHERS AS REQUESTED
DEPARTMENT
OF NAVY
ASST ,CHIEF
INTELLIGENCE
DEPARTMENT OF
AIR FORCE
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identifies the Board of National Estimates by that title. The refer-
enced DCID, other DCID's the NSCID's and CIA regulations which estab-
lish the proceedures for the production of national estimates fail,
however, to specify the manner of selection, the number of members, or
the duration of terms of members of the BNE. In practice, the members
of the BNE are selected by the Director of Central Intelligence in con-
sultation with the Director of the Office of National Estimates who, as
noted in Chart 3*, also is Chairman of the BNE. Membership on the BNE
generally has been limited to 12-15 individuals. Because of some con-
fusion in past years regarding the relationship of BNE and ONE in the
Agency's organizational structure, an official notice, issued early in
1966, clarified the situation. -The notice read as follows:
1. Effective immediately, the Board and Office of
National Estimates are established as a component report-
ing directly to the Director of Central Intelligence.
2. The Board of National Estimates continues as the
Director's instrument for the production of National Intelli-
gence Estimates, and the Director of National Estimates will
continue to be Chairman of the Board. The Chairman and the
Board will report directly to the Director on substantive
estimative matters. The Director of National Estimates will
maintain close and substantive consultation with the Deputy
Director for Intelligence, who will continue to serve as
advisor to the Director regarding the substance of all finished
intelligence. The Deputy Director for Intelligence will con-
tinue to ensure substantive and analytical support for the
work of the Board of National Estimates.
3. The members of the Office of National Estimates
will continue to be members of the Intelligence Career
Service. The Deputy Director for Intelligence, in consul-
tation with the Director of the Office of National Estimates,
will be responsible for meeting the staffing needs of the
Office of National Estimates. *
Mission
The principal tasks of the Board of National Estimates -- however
it is chosen -- are defined as follows:
* Chart 3 follows page 5.
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1. To present for USIB approval, on at least a
quarterly basis, a program of NIE's and SNIE's for
production during the forthcoming six months.
2. To develop and circulate terms of reference
for all NIE's and ENIE's; to prepare the drafts of
given NIE's and SNIE's; to discuss draft estimates
with representatives of USIB agencies and make such
revisions as necessary; and to submit final drafts of
national estimates to the USIB for approval.
(DCID No. 1/1, New Series effective 5 Aug 59, Pars.
1-3)
3. In addition to the specification of his duty
as Chairman of the Board of National Estimates, the
Director of the Office of National Estimates also is
charged with:
Membership
a. Directing the production of NIE's, including
the setting of priorities and assignment of
production responsibilities among components
of the CIA and among the intelligence agencies
of the government.
b. Preparing national intelligence estimates
for issuance by the Director of Central
Intelligence.
c. Providing CIA representation and intelligence
support at the Staff Assistants level of the
National Security Council Staff.
e. Giving appropriate guidance to both the in-
telligence collectin and intelligence research
agencies. revised 16 Aug 63)
Except for the DCI, the members of the Board of National Estimates
bear the heaviest burden within the intelligence community for the
adequacy and accuracy of estimates which are most likely to be of
importance to the formulation of the foreign policies of the U.S.
government. Since 1950, there have been fewer than 50 individuals
who have served or are se:^ving as members of the BNE. Almost without
exception, the BNE members have been involved in public service types
of activities -- civilians in government, career military officers,
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SECRET
THE BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES MEN
& THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES
DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
OFFICE OF
NATIONAL ESTIMATES
(DIRECTOR OF
NATIONAL ESTIMATES)
(Chairman of the Board
of National Estimates)
I ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER
CHIEF ESTIMATES STAFF
BOARD OF
NATIONAL ESTIMATES
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
FOR INTELLIGENCE
EXECUTIVE OFFICER
SECRET
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and academicians. They are articulate and have both the ability and
willingness to deal with a broad range of highly complex problems --
including some highly technical ones. Unlike their contemporaries
in other agencies of government, in business, or in academic research,
BNE members frequently are forced to make critical estimates on the
most fragmentary data base.
The membership of the present BNE reflects a high degree of formal
training in the fields of history and political science and long
experience in the intelligence community. Three of the present
Board members are career military officers of flag rank and another
is a former ambassador. Whether because of the speculative nature of
intelligence estimating or for other reasons, there has never been
a top-level scientist on the BNE. *
Operations
Chart 4, "Preparation of a National Estimate," ** illustrates how
the burden of producing an NIE or an SNIE falls on the BNE and on
the Estimates Staff of ONE. For each estimate -- recently the
production of NIE's and SNIE's has averaged 50-60 per year -- the
BNE/ONE will draw up, in consultation with the USIB representatives,
the terms of reference, the assignment of responsibilities among
USIB members for contributions, and the deadlines for submission of
contributions on given estimates. *** Even though a particular
agency may formally be assigned the task of responding only to a
very specific part of the problem being studied, such assignments
are not mutally exclusive -- each USIB member is free to make sub-
missions on any or all parts of a national estimate, regardless of
the areas of his charter responsibilities. (Obviously, this has
made and probably will continue to make for some confusion in
those areas of overlapping responsibilities -- e.g. both State
and CIA have competence on economic development in non-Communist
nations and both DIA and CIA have an interest in military develop-
ments in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.)
"Scientific Estimating," Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 9, No. 3, Summer
25X1A 1965. Mr. - is currently a member of the BNE.
The problem created by this omission is discussed in some detail
(see selected readings in this volume) in article, 25X1A
-_> Chart 4 follows page 7.
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In any event, responses from the USIB members to estimative problems
will be forwarded to one of the seven ONE Staffs (see Chart 3) for
use in preparing a draft estimate. For each estimate, a BNE member
is assigned responsibility as Chariman; and when the particular esti-
mate is to be discussed by the BNE, this member chairs the session
with his peers. Once agreed on by the BNE, the estimate is discussed
informally with the USIB representatives and such revisions as neces-
sary are made. The estimate is then formally submitted for USIB review
and approval. Following concurrence by the USIB, the NIE or SNIE is
forwarded to the National Security Council and/or such other consumers
as determined by the Director of Central Intelligence.
The foregoing represents an oversimplification of the production
of a national estimate and gives no hint of the stresses attendant
upon a process which necessitates such continuous coordination --
a subject of great controversy in any discussion of the estimative
process. To emphasize this coordination activity -- sometimes likened
to the spinning of wheels -- a circular pattern has been indicated in
Chart 4 between USIB and BNE, between BNE and ONE Staff, and between
ONE Staff and Intelligence Producers. Although the details are never
specified, corridor gossip has it that the efforts to achieve "in house"
coordination between the ONE Staff and the BNE sometimes impose a severe
strain on tempers. Similarly there are suggestions that the occasional
footnote which is "taken" in a final NIE or SNIE represents only the
surface ripple of the tempests buffetting BNE-USIB or USIB itself as
coordination and/or consensus are achieved. Some credence might be
given this view on the basis of a USIB memorandum in the late autumn
of 1965 which stated, among other things, that the following procedures
would be followed with reference to all NIE's and SNIE's:
1. The DCI will personally sign the orginal front
cover of each NIE or SNIE.
2. The list on the inside front cover showing the
actions taken by the other USIB Members will include, in
addition to the title as presently shown, the name of
each USIB Member or the Representative who acted for him.
3. Each dissenting footnote or statement in the
estimate will correspondingly show the name, as well as
title, of the USIB Member of Intelligence Chief of a
Military Department. *
* It should be remembered that although the Chiefs of the
military intelligence services are only observers insofar as final
approval of a USIB estimate is concerned, they are free to enter
dissenting footnotes or explanatory statements in footnotes.
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PREPARATION OF A NATIONAL ESTIMATE
1. Formulation of problem
2. Terms of reference
3. Assignment of responsibility
4. Preparation and submission
of individual contributions
5. Preparation of preliminary
draft
6. Discussion of preliminary
draft
7. Approval of draft by
Board of National Estimates
8. Informal discussion of
BNE draft
9. Concurrence on final
BNE draft (or dissent)
10. Transmittal
major responsibility
Ol PRESIDENT
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
10;
UNITED STATES
INTELLIGENCE BOARD
10
BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES
7
OFFICE OF NATIONAL
ESTIMATES STAFF
? I INTELLIGENCE PRODUCERS
minor responsibility
Approved
Revision and
Review;
discussion
and debate
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4. The Executive Secretary, U'SIB, will sign the front
cover as authentication.
(USIB-D-13.1/30, 18 Nov 65)
Whether obtained with or without blood, sweat, and tears, the NIE
represents the intelligence community's best judgment of given con-
ditions at a given time; and there is little question of its increas-
ingly important role in the policy planning councils of the U.S. govern-
ment. Additionally, there appears to be a growing flow of memorandums
from ONE so that questions of qualifications, interpretations, emphasis
on given NIE's, or suggestions regarding the need for additional NIE's
can be brought to the attention of policy makers or to representatives
of other government agencies. Whether dissenting views of an individ-
ual BNE or ONE member have ever been, or could be, more important than
an approved NIE in affecting decisions on national policy on a particular
problem is a question beyond the scope of this training aid or competence
of this office -- such a study could be prepared only by someone who had
been closely associated with estimative intelligence over a long period.
Post Mortems and Validity Studies
At the time an NIE is submitted for approval of the USIB representatives,
or at any time shortly following such approval, a Post Mortem (PM) may
be prepared on the report. The purpose of such PM's is to spell out the
problems, particularly the gaps in intelligence, which were revealed in
the course of preparing an NIE. There is no regulation requiring that
a PM be prepared, and the PM may be initiated by the contributors to the
NIE, by ONE Staff members who worked on the estimate, by BNE members, or
by the USIB representatives. At a recent meeting of the USIB, the rep-
resentatives agreed that in the future:
"In presenting each post-mortem to USIB, the Board
of National Estimates (BNE) in coordination with the
USIB representatives, should include a recommendation
that USIB member agencies be requested to take such
steps as may be deemed necessary to overcome the de-
ficiencies' noted in the post-mortem. If the deficien-
cies are considered critical and of sufficient priority,
an additional recommendation should be included to refer
the post-mortem to the CCPC L Critical Collection Problems
Committee/ for analysis and recommendations as to appropriate
actions deemed necessary to overcome the cited deficiencies." #
-` USIB-M-399, 26 Aug 65, "Draft Minutes of the 26 Aug 65
Intelligence Board Meeting." (S)
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PM's are prepared on roughly 10 per cent of the NIE's published during
any given year.
The Validity Study gives the estimators an opportunity to look backward
to determine the "accuracy" of an estimate or series of estimates. For
all practical purposes, the Validity Study as a formal tool has largly
disappeared. Requirements for evaluation of current estimates are pro-
bably best met by memorandums or discussions among principals; and, over
time, there would seem to be no useful purpose served by dredging up
points wherein old estimates would be labeled as accurate or inaccurate.
More to the point, for example, is the informal re-examination of a
controversial estimate in the manner of Sherman Kent's review of the
Cuban missile situation in Studies in Intelligence.'F
` "A Crucial Estimate Relived," Studies in Intelligence Vol. S,
No. 2, Spring 1964. This item is reproduced in this training aid
beginning on p. 106.
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SELECTED READINGS
The readings which follow represent the thinking of various individuals
who, with the exceptions of Professor Greene of Williams College and Mrs.
Wohlstetter of RAND Corporation, have played or continue to play impor-
tant roles in the business of national estimates. To indicate that the
relationship of intelligence to the formulation of national policy and
the problem of coordination of intelligence estimates are not problems
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A. INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL POLICY
INTELLIGENCE AS FOUNDATION FOR POLICY *
An integral and in fact basic element in the formation of national
security. policy is the latest and best intelligence bearing on the
substance of the policy to be determined. That statement is not a
theoretical truism, but a description of what has by and large actu-
ally been practiced in the Executive Branch under the administration
of President Eisenhower. It is based on first-hand observation: for
periods totaling almost four years I was in continuous touch with the
procedures for formulating, adopting, and coordinating the execution
of national security policies within the Executive Branch. I assisted
the President at 179 meetings of the National Security Council --
almost half of all the meetings it held in the first dozen years of
its existence. I presided at 504 meetings of the Council's Planning
Board (earlier called its Senior Staff). I was a member and for a
while Vice Chairman of its Operations Coordinating Board; I partici-
pated in meetings of the Council on Foreign Economic Policy; I repre-
sented the President on a small group which considered special oper-
ations. It is from this experience that the conclusions of this
article are drawn.l
NSC Operating Procedures
The function of the National Security Council, as defined by National
Security Act, is "to advise the President with respect to the integration
1-In 1951, in the early organizational stages of the Psychological
Strategy Board, the author served as its Deputy Director and repre-
sentative at meetings of the NSC Senior Staff, later to become the
Planning Board. In early 1953 President Eisenhower asked him to
study the organization and functioning of the NSC mechanism and make
recommendations to strengthen and vitalize its structure and operating
procedures. He then became the President's principal assistant with
reference to the operations of the Council. He was moved from the position
of Administrative Assistant (January-March 1953) to that of Special Assis-
tant for National Security Affairs, where he served from March 1953 to
April 1955 and from January 1957 to July 1958.
# Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 3, No. 4, Fall 1959, pp. 59-71.
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of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national
security, so as to enable the military services and other departments
and agencies of Government to cooperate more effectively in matters
affecting the national security." The Act also gives to the Council
the duty of "assessing and appraising the objectives, commitments, and
risks of the United States in relation to our actual and potential mili-
tary power." The Council advises the President both on policy and on
plans for its execution, but its primary statutory function thus lies
in the formation of policy. The role of the Council as a planning
body is subordinate to its policy function.
The Council and its subsidiary Planning Board2 and Operations Coordin-
ating Board3 constitute an apparatus available to the President to help
him reach policy decisions on national security. The National Security
Act is sufficiently flexible to allow each President to use this personal
aid as best suits his convenience. One President may use the Council
mechanism in one way, another in another. The best is made of it when
a President uses it in a way that satisfies his personal requirements.
It has never been felt necessary to test whether the Congress can
constitutionally require by statute that a President consult with
specified persons or follow specified procedures in coming to a policy
decision in this field.
Under President Eisenhower, the normal procedure for operating the
policy-making aspects of the NSC mechanism has involved three main
steps. First, the NSC Planning Board formulates recommendations as
to national security policy and circulates them to Council members
2The NSC Planning Board, chaired by the President's Special Assist-
ant for National Security Affairs, is composed of officials of the depart-
ments and agencies which are represented at the Council table with refer-
ence to a policy matter there under consideration. These officials have
a rank equivalent to Assistant Secretary or higher. Each is supported
by a departmental or agency staff. Each has direct access to his depart-
ment or agency chief and commands all the resources of his department or
agency for the performance of his duties.
3The NSC Operations Coordinating Board, of which the President's
Special Assistant for Security Operations Coordination is Vice Chairman,
is composed of officials of the departments and agencies concerned with
the policies referred to the Board by the President for assistance in
the coordination of planning. These officials have a rank equivalent
to Under Secretary or higher. Each is supported by a small departmental
or agency staff. Each has direct access to his department or agency
chief and commands all the resources of his department or agency for the
performance of his duties.
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and advisers well in advance of the Council meeting at which they are
scheduled to be considered. Then the Council considers and approves
or modifies or rejects these recommendations, and submits to the Pres-
ident such as it approves or modifies. Finally, the President approves,
modifies, or rejects the Council's recommendations, transmits those
policies which he approves to the departments and agencies responsible
for planning their execution, and -- as a rule where international
affairs are concerned -- requests the NSC Operations Coordinating
Board to assist these departments and agencies in coordinating their
respective planning for action under the approved policies.
Thus a policy is first determined by the President, and then the depart-
ments and agencies plan how to carry out their responsibilities to the
President under it, being assisted in the coordination of this planning
by the OCB. It is, of course, fundamental that the planning to execute
policy responsibilities be carried out by the respective departments and
agencies which are directly charged by the President with such responsibil-
ities. No person or body should intervene, at a lower level, between the
President and the department head directly responsible to him.
During the period 1953-1958, with which I am familiar, the great bulk
of national security policy determinations were made by the President
through the operations of the NSC mechanism just described. Because
this method of policy formulation was the usual one, such policies were
commonly but erroneously :referred to as "NSC policies." Since it is the
function of the President to determine policy in all areas under his
executive control and res:oonsibility, and national security may be formed
in any way which he finds convenient and appropriate, the policies so
formed, whatever body or :individual may submit the recommendations there-
for, are the President's ':.policies.
There were occasions during this period when national security policy
was determined by the President as a result of Cabinet deliberations
(though this was a rare occurence) or by his executive decision based on
conferences with one or more of his principal department or agency heads,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff., or others within whose special competence some
particular subject would naturally fall. There should always be complete
flexibility for every President to determine however he elects the matters
of high policy which it is his responsibility to decide. Because of the
utility and convenience of the NSC mechanism, however, and because the
present Chief Executive values the advantages of integrated recommendations
and joint deliberations based on them, it has been the more or less stand-
ard operating procedure du-ring his tenure to seek to form national security
policies through the procedures outlined above.
Factual Intelligence and Estimates
In this article the term "intelligence" is used to embrace both factual
intelligence and estimates based thereon. In forming national security
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policy both are of prime importance.
The gathering of intelligence facts is today a matter of enormous scope
and hardly conceivable complexity, bearing no resemblance to the simple
if hazardous personal mission of a Mata Hari. There are, indeed, many
individuals working in the field of intelligence, in and out of formal
government service, who must exhibit personal bravery and rare ingenuity,
taking risks beyond the ordinary call of duty. Because all is grist that
comes to the intelligence mill, one need not seek to measure the results
of these individual efforts against the results of the world-wide scien-
tific and technological operations employed in modern intelligence gather-
ing.
In our continuing confrontation by a power openly dedicated to swallow-
ing all mankind in the maw of Communism, the rapid gathering of germane
intelligence on the activities of other nations in every field of endeavor
has put the United States into an electronic business that is world-wide,
highly scientific, incredibly complicated, and extremely expensive. It
is staggering to realize the limitless ramifications of current technolog-
ical procedures, the almost overwhelming amount of raw material that comes
flooding in every hour of the day and night to be sifted, analyzed, codified,
and -- most urgent of all -- communicated clearly to the decision-makers.
For in the last analysis the valid use of intelligence is to build in-
tellectual platforms upon which decisions can be made. It is not gathered
to be stored away like a harvest. It must be delivered, succinct and
unequivocal, within the shortest time feasible to focal points of use.
This prompt delivery is essential both to those who conduct our foreign
affairs or direct our defensive military mechanisms and to those who
frame our decisions of high policy. The sound concept that the national
intelligence effort should be centralized is not inconsistent with a
demonstrable need that each of the several departments have its own intelli-
gence arm. The man who may have to dispatch a SAC bomber, an ICBM, a
Polaris submarine, or a Pentomic task force has a dual function with
regard to intelligence: he has a part in acquiring the latest intelligence
for use at central headquarters, all the way up to the President; he
also must himself have and use the latest intelligence in carrying out
his crucial responsibilities.
It is for these reasons that the National Security Act in 1947 created
a Central Intelligence Agency and a Director of Central Intelligence, who
at one and the same time is chief officer of the Central Intelligence
Agency, Chairman of the United States Intelligence Board, and Foreign
Intelligence Adviser to the President and National Security Council.
Through the series of NSC Intelligence Directives the President has
sought to make the gathering and dissemination of intelligence more
rapid and efficient. These Directives put emphasis on the centralization
of authority and responsibility in the intelligence field, on making the
separate intelligence organizations of the armed services and other
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departments and agencies contributory to, and not independent of, such
central authority, while still allowing them to meet their specialized
needs.
The President has shown a constant awareness of the urgency of perfect-
ing the national intelligence effort. He gave close attention to the
reports on this effort made by the committee under General James A.
Doolittle (October 1954) and by the Hoover Commission's Task Force on
Intelligence Activities under General Mark Clark (May 1955). In February
1956 he formally established a President's Board of Consultants on Foreign
Intelligence Activities, first chaired by Dr. James R. Killian and now
by General John E. Hull. He gave this Board the continuing mission of
reviewing the conduct of our foreign intelligence activities and report-
ing thereon periodically to the Chief Executive.
The operation of the many intelligence arms in the critical field of
intelligence gathering and dissemination at all levels involves a
truly vast annual expenditure. But in terms of national survival, the
prompt delivery of correct intelligence to the President, the ultimate
decision-maker, is an undebatable necessity.
Beyond this requirement for current factual intelligence there is an
additional requirement for intelligence estimates. These estimates
may be addressed to a particular country, area, situation, armament,
or function and set forth both the pertinent facts and the likely
future actions predicable thereon, or they may seek to arrange log-
ically and with precision the broadest spectrum of intelligence materials
into a considered appraisal of what over-all developments may be in future
time.
Both types of intelligence estimates can be of the greatest possible
help to policy-makers and planners. Their preparation requires expert
competence and their coordination calls for objective thinking by those
who have the authority to agree or differ on behalf of their organizations.
Because of the prophetic nature of any estimate, it is of great consequence
that the final text should seek not compromise but clarity. Many of the
coordinated national intelligence estimates with which I worked during
these four years clearly and fully set forth dissenting views held by
competent members of the U.S. Intelligence Board.
Intelligence Orientation :'or the Makers of High Policy
The prompt circulation of daily bulletins and special and national
estimates as basic orientation for those who make the recommendations
and decisions on high policy is an obvious necessity. The Planning
Board, responsible for doing the spade-work in forming policy, needs
to review the special and national estimates in detail, dissecting
them and arguing over them until they become familiar material. And
Security Council members need to get them in time to study and weigh
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them before the subjects to which they relate are taken up at the Council
level. Both Planning Board and Council members should be inseminated with
In the Planning Board this insemination has been a feature of its stand-
ard operating procedure since 1953, as I will illustrate in a moment. At
the Council level the education of the members is carried on in several
ways.
their contents,
In the NSC. The Council members receive daily, weekly, special, and
general intelligence publications, and their function requires that
they be familiar with this material. In 1953, moreover, in order to
insure that Council members are kept fully acquainted with current intelli-
gence, an innovation was introduced at their meetings. Until then, the
oral briefing on current intelligence was given each day in the President's
office to him alone. Now it became a part of the Council's established
procedure to make the first agenda item at each meeting a briefing by the
Director of Central Intelligence.
This oral briefing, assisted by the visual presentation of maps and charts
on easels behind the Director's seat, reviews the latest important intelli-
gence throughout the world but focuses on the areas which are to be taken
up later in the meeting. It normally consumes from fifteen to twenty-five
per cent of the meeting time, being frequently interrupted by specific
questions from the President and other Council members. These questions
often give rise to colloquies and extemporaneous expressions of views
which are of consequence to the policy recommendations that are to be
discussed. I have always believed this direct confrontation of the Council
each week with current and special intelligence to be an important aid
to policy consideration and formulation. Yet the British Cabinet and the
War Cabinet under Sir Winston Churchill, to the best of my knowledge, carried
on their policy deliberations without the benefit of this stimulating and
thought-focussing device.
There are other ways in which the Council, as the supervisory body to
which the Director of Central Intelligence reports, is kept informed
about intelligence problems. The Director submits annually to the
Council a summation of the problems that have faced the intelligence
community in the preceding period and the measures and means adopted for
dealing with them. The President and Council must also from time to
time review and revise the National Security Council Intelligence Direc-
tives, which constitute the charter for the operations of the intelligence
community.
The revision of one of these detailed and often complicated NSCID's,
especially in relation to the functional gathering and rapid dissemination
of intelligence, may require months of prior study by a panel of specialists
-- perhaps scientists, technologists, or communications experts, persons
of the highest intellectual and scientific standing -- brought together
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to advise on methods and procedures. Many of the panel studies necessary
for the purposes of the experts involve most carefully guarded secrets.
Yet it is important that the Council understand, in general terms, how
the vast intelligence community of modern days is organized, administered,
and operated. The principles which emerge from the findings and recom-
mendations of these highly classified studies are matters for action by
the Council, and especially by the President.
In times of particular crisis the function of intelligence is conspicuous
in its importance. In such historical crises as Indo-China in 1954, the
Chinese off-shore islands in 1954-1955, and Lebanon in'1958 -- to cite
a few at random -- the intelligence appraisal of the Director of Central
Intelligence, the foreign policy appraisal by the Secretary of State, and
the military appraisal by the Joint Chiefs of Staff were indispensable
ingredients in the deliberations held before the die was cast and the
policy set by the President.
In the Planning Board. The Planning Board necessarily probes deeply into
the latest intelligence on each subject that comes before it. A CIA Deputy
Director is in regular attendance at the Board table, bringing to its
deliberations an informed knowledge of the contents of special and general
intelligence estimates. lie participates from his point of view in the
debate on current matters, and it would be as unthinkable to overlook his
views as to overlook those of the representative of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, who is seated at the table as adviser on military issues.
The CIA Deputy Director and the Special Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs seek to coordinate the preparation of intelli-
gence estimates with the forward agenda of the Planning Board. To that
end the agenda is tentatively scheduled for a period of two months or
more ahead so that the flow of intelligence materials can be arranged
to meet the policy-makers' demands. Of course, history sometimes takes
a hand, and the scheduled forward agenda has to be suspended for the
immediate consideration of a special estimate that has been urgently
called for. There can be nothing static or cut-and-dried in scheduling
ahead the Planning Board's work-load (and consequently the Council's
forward agenda); it is entirely unpredictable how long a time may be
consumed in the preparation of particular policy recommendations or
what interruptions may be forced by extrinsic happenings. Whatever
the order of business, however, one factor is essential: a foundation
of the latest and best intelligence to build upon and a constant
rechecking of intelligence material as time marches on to the Council
deliberation and the Pres'__dential decision
In the OCB. Turning for a moment from policy formulation to the
coordination of plans for carrying out approved policy, we find that
in this work of the Operations Coordinating Board current intelligence is
again a necessary ingredient. At the weekly meetings of the OCB over
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which the Under Secretary of State presides, there are in regular
attendance senior representatives of Defense, Treasury, Budget, USIA,
AEC, and ICA, and the two cognizant Special Assistants to the President.
At the informal Wednesday luncheon which always precedes the 0CB meet-
ing the Director of Central Intelligence has an opportunity to thrash
out problems of a sensitive nature. At the more formal Board meetings
which follow he is a full participant. The coordination of planning
in the responsible departments and agencies for the execution of a
policy which the President has approved requires the same up-to-the-
minute intelligence that the making of the policy did.
The Annual Policy Review. The annual Estimate of the World Situation
produced by USIB member agencies is awaited each year with the greatest
interest -- and anxiety -- by those in the policy-making apparatus.
It is an invaluable production, presenting as it does a distillation
of the painstaking efforts of the entire community to state as of the
year-end the dimensions of the foreign threat to our national security.
It is written with scrupulous care, it is well documented, and it sets
forth with clear distinction, where differences of opinion occur, the
opposing views of the expperts who cannot agree with the majority
estimate. I conceive this annual basic estimate to be of great conse-
quence -- as a stimulant, as a guide, as a frank expression of differing
views on matters which may be of highest significance. It is this es-
timate which constitutes each spring the point of departure for the
recurring review of our basic national security policy.
The first step in this review is to schedule the Estimate of the World
Situation for discussion at two or three meetings of the NSC Planning
Board. At these meetings it is subjected to 7 to 10 hours of controver-
sial discussion in a search for better understanding. Its contents are
analyzed and dissected so that attention can be focussed upon its most
important conclusions. In some years distinguished consultants from
"outside of government," such men as General Gruenther, John J. McCloy,
Arthur W. Burns, Karl R. Bendetsen, and Robert R. Bowie, have been
invited to these Planning Board meetings. They have been asked, after
study and review of the high points in the Estimate, to discuss them
with the Planning Board at a meeting of several hours' duration. Then
these points, together with the consultants' and the Planning Board's
reaction to them, have been brought before the National Security Council
at several meetings wholly devoted to their consideration. Short papers
presenting the policy issues and their implications are prepared by the
Planning Board as a basis for Council discussion at these meetings.
The purpose of the procedure just described is not, of course, to
try at the Planning Board or Council level to change or modify any
part of the annual Estimate. The purpose is to sharpen understand-
ing of the important aspects of the Estimate and to study and discuss
in open meeting the policy implications thereof. Through this proced-
ure the Council members become sharply aware of the high points in the
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Estimate and the differe:oces in view regarding them, and can join in
a give-and-take discussion without feeling bound by the more formal
presentation of carefully prepared recommendations. Almost as impor-
tant as the ultimate policy decision itself is the intellectual contro-
versy which precedes it, the educative and consolidating effort of full
and frank discussion, the exposure of views which have not become fully
formed in departmental exercise, the emergence of novel and interesting
ideas at the highest level.
The way in which this prDduct of the intelligence community serves as
a regular precursor to tae Planning Board's annual review of basic policy
is a cogent illustration of the community's essential role in the shaping
of national security decisions.
A Model Case
It may be appropriate, at the close, to describe what in my view is the
ideal procedure for formulating a national security policy. Let us take
as an example not the annual broad policy review which may consume sever-
al months, but a national policy on the State of Ruritania.
First, the Ruritania item is scheduled far ahead on the Planning Board
agenda, with three to five or more sessions devoted to it. At the first
of these sessions the Board will have before it a national intelligence
estimate on Ruritania. It will also have before it a factual and analy-
tical statement, prepared by the responsible department or departments or
by an interdepartmental committee, on the military, economic, political,
and other germane aspects of the Ruritania policy problem. To this com-
pilation of factual data and analysis, whether supplied in separate
memoranda or as a staff study, have contributed the vast resources of
the informed departments and agencies of government, the brains and
experience of the operating personnel who work day after day in the
particular area of Ruritania and have learned at first hand the strengths
and limitations involved, the very persons who staff the departments and
agencies that will be called upon to implement this policy they are work-
ing on when and if it receives Presidential approval.
The intelligence estimate and the departmental material are explained,
discussed, and chewed over in one or more meetings of the Planning Board.
A senior representative of a responsible department is likely asked to
attend at the Board table and be questioned and cross-questioned about
the factual information and tentative policy recommendations submitted
by his department. The Board seeks to squeeze out of the material all
the juice that it contains.
After these proceedings, a draft policy statement is prepared by the
responsible department or by an interdepartmental or special committee.
This draft will consist of a set of "general considerations" (drawn from
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the intelligence estimate and the factual and analytical material as a
basis for policy recommendations), a statement of the "general objectives"
of the proposed U.S. policy toward Ruritania, a more detailed proposal for
"policy guidance" in the several areas of the U.S.-Ruritania relations,
and appendices covering anticipated financial costs of the proposed policy
and comparison of military and economic expenditures and other data for
past and future years.
At as many Planning Board meetings as required this draft statement is
discussed, torn apart, revised. In the intervals between the meetings
revised texts are drafted by the Planning Board assistants for consid-
eration at the next meeting. Finally, from this arduous intellectual
process emerges either full agreement on the correctness of the facts,
the validity of the recommendations, and the clarity and accuracy of
the text, or -- as is often the case -- sharp differences of opinion
on certain major statements or recommendations. In the latter case, the
draft policy statement will clearly and succinctly set forth, perhaps in
parallel columns, these opposing views.
When the draft policy has been thus shaped, reshaped, corrected, revised,
and finally stated, it is circulated to the Council at least ten days
before the meeting which is to take up policy on Ruritania. Council
members will thus have sufficient time to be briefed on the subject and
familiarize themselves with the contents of the draft, and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff will have time to express in writing and circulate to
Council members their formal military views on the exact text which
the Council is to consider.
That is my concept of how the integrating procedure of the NSC mechanism
should work when it is working at its best. Some such procedure is the
desired goal, a goal often approximated in actual performance. The views
of all who have a legitimate interest in the subject are heard, digested,
ahd combined, or in the case of disagreement stated separately. In a
good many instances the views of experts or knowledgeable people from
"outside of government" are sought and worked into the fabric at the
Planning Board level. The intelligence estimates, the military views,
the political views, the economic views, the fiscal views, views on the
psychological impact -- all are canvassed and integrated before the
President is asked to hear the case argued and comes to his decision.
It is certainly true that human beings are fallible and that the
instruments which they create are always susceptible of improvement.
The mechanism which I have described, and its operation, can and will
be improved as time goes on. But the main course of this integrative
process seems to me mechanically and operatively sound. And it must
be grounded on the firm base of the best and latest intelligence.
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The most fascinating and frustrating of the National Intelligence
Estimates which an estimates officer writes begin as follows:
To estimate Communist reactions to a U.S. course of
action involving . . .
These estimates form a quite distinct category. They originate in a
unique way; they pose special problems of organization; their coordin-
ation with the representatives of the USIB member agencies is exception-
ally difficult; and final USIB approval almost always requires more
than one meeting, often more than two. Herein reside the frustrations,
to which I shall devote the greater part of what follows. The fascination
lies in the assurance that the drafter is involved in major and immed-
iate decisions of U.S. policy. No other estimates can generate in his
breast quite such a sharp sense of relevance to action.
These papers are often miscalled "contingency estimates." Contingencies
figure in almost all NIEs. Sometimes they concern what one foreign
country may do if a neighbor takes certain steps, e.g., what Pakistan
will do if India embarks on a nuclear weapons program. Sometimes a
contingency lying in possible U.S. action is examined as part of a
wider study, e.g., in the course of a general estimate on South Korea,
ROK reactions to a reduction of U.S. military aid may be explored. To
avoid confusion with these, it will be useful to reserve the term
"reaction estimates" for those NIEs which are addressed exclusively to
the question of other countries' -- usually Communist powers' --
responses to a postulated U.S. course of action in a crisis situation.
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 9, No. 3, Summer, 1965,
pp. 1-6.
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Origination
Reaction estimates are never self-initiated. They are commissioned by
policy-making departments which are considering taking some specific
course of action and want an appraisal of how the enemy will probably
respond. They are invariably written against short deadlines and deal
with immediately critical problems. Those of the last few years have
dealt principally with three situations -- Berlin, Laos, and Vietnam.
The first were requested by the Berlin Task Force in the State Depart-
ment; the father of the other two sets is an alumnus of the Office of
National Estimates who migrated to policy-making posts and established
a practice -- now sustained by the White House, the Joint Chiefs, and
others -- of subjecting a great variety of Indochina policy proposals
to the estimative test.
After writing quite a number of reaction estimates, I'm still not
entirely sure why requesters keep on asking for them. The results,
as we shall see, are often of dubious value. Sometimes I suspect
that the commissions come from opponents of the policy proposal who
hope that the estimators will help them kill it. But the process
does reflect a fundamental principle of intelligence: that when early
enemy reactions are the critical test of a policy proposal, these
reactions should be estimated in advance, not by proponents or opponents,
but by someone uninvolved in the heat of policy contention. Full ob-
jectivity is of course a counsel of perfection, but I think it correct,
not merely charitable, to say that the policy makers should and do
feel better -- feel protected against the full force of bias -- when
they have an outside opinion. And since these matters are too sensitive
to be submitted to public opinion, they turn to intelligence as an
inside outsider.
Terms of Reference
And intelligence always bucks. We are never satisfied with the way
the questions are put. They are far too general; we need a clearer
idea of what the United States proposes to do; in particular we need
sharper distinctions among the various steps to be taken in a sequence.
Very well, responds the policy maker, and lists for us four major steps
and a dozen specific actions within each, including inter alia, say, the
exact inventory of implements to be used in each of three probes on the
Berlin autobahn. Now we are really outraged. Perhaps, we say, we can
provide some general guidance, but how do you expect us to distinguish
between reactions on the one hand to ten air sorties against troop
concentrations in Laos with high explosives and on the other to fifteen
sorties against lines of communication with napalm?
It would be nice to think that we eventually sort out with the requester
the proper level of detail and can proceed to answer questions which are
governed by the limits of professional intelligence and human judgment.
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Unfortunately, this is often not the case; the question of proper terms
of reference dogs us to the very end of the process. The reason, I am
sorry to say, is that we are not "outside" after all. Each of the intelli-
gence agencies works for a particular policy maker. Even the Director of
Central Intelligence is, under one of his hats, a senior policy advisor
to the President. And it is uncanny how the choice of a level of detail
will influence the estimated enemy reaction, and therefore the seeming
wisdom of the proposed pclicy. A proposal may appear to bloom with fair
prospects when viewed in a general way, yet prove to be studded with thorns
when examined in detail. Surely everyone can understand this; how many
bright ideas have we all had which might survive one or at most two levels
of detailed criticism but fell apart at the third? And when that third
level is reached, do we not insist that it's a good idea "in principle"
and plead for a reconsideration at the higher, more favorable level of
generalization?
Other Kinds of Bias
That was a fairly subtle point. A more obvious one is that the participa-
ting agencies may already, at their policy-making summits, have decided
what they think about the proposed U.S. course. Their intelligence arms
are then under pressure, of course, to bend the estimate toward these
conclusions. There are two barriers against this: the fortitude of the
drafter and the chairman, and the collective conscience -- a sense of
mutual responsibility, really -- which has grown up over the years in
the estimative community. The latter works surprisingly well most of
the time.
Another source of bias, again on the subtle side, lies in the fact that
the estimators are American citizens, rooting for their country. If the
policy proposal is not outrageously unreasonable, it is well-nigh imposs-
ible for us to bring ourselves to a firm estimate that the United States
is bound to lose. We can make differential judgments in which some parts
of the policy look more likely than others to produce the desired results.
But at some point the course of action will usually culminate in a sheer
test of will, and how can we bring ourselves to estimate that we will be
the first to falter?l
But having bared all these misgivings, I remain persuaded that the
policy maker is better off for having solicited an estimate of enemy
a-This irreducible element of bias probably saved us (the estimators,
not the United States) in a series of Berlin estimates. The USSR's local
advantages seemed overwhelming, and it was very hard to see how various
U.S. courses of action could surmount the crisis. Gritting our teeth,
we estimated some even che.nces. More important, the President gritted
his teeth and made us right.
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reactions from intelligence agencies which, bureaucratically tied
though they are to policy departments, are by training and inclination
and conscience freer from commitments to policy than he and his coll-
eagues are. And so we proceed with the drafting, knowing that we will
have to continue solving and re-solving the terms-of-reference question
as honestly as we can.
The Drafting
(Though the precepts which follow may all be golden truths, they are
not likely to be of much help to the next estimator who has to draft
a reaction estimate. This poor fellow will have to read the request,
negotiate its unclarities with some ill-informed representative of
the requester, exchange confusions with the newly appointed chairman
of the estimate, and produce a first draft -- all within 24 or ten
or even six hours. Theory is gray, Lenin remarked, but the tree of
life is ever green. Or, as Stalin put it, cadres decide everything.)
Through the bitter experience of many redrafts I have learned that it
is absolutely indispensable to begin a reaction estimate with an analysis
of the situation preceding the U.S. action proposed. Usually, in fact,
it is necessary to back up two steps: In many cases the U.S. policy pre-
supposes an enemy initiative which then sets us into motion along the
hypothesized line. What, then, did he mean by this action? Did he expect
our reaction, in which case he presumably has a preplanned counter-
reaction? Or would he be taken aback by what we did and discover him-
self in the midst of some major miscalculation, unready with a next
move and wholly uncertain about further U.S. intentions? These ques-
tions make a great deal of difference. Often no single answer can be
given, and instead there emerge alternative analyses which must then
be run out in parallel through the remainder of the estimate. Well why
not, you say, but I promise you that this plays hell with drafting a
paper simple and intelligible enough to be useful.
An ordinary NIE -- on Soviet military policy, say, or the outlook for
Brazil -- has a theme, a tone. A competent drafter will marshal his
facts and his ideas and construct an argument which leads to a single
or a few major conclusions. If he does not, there's no use writing the
estimate. If he does, and if he constructs well, then his betters2 may
tug and pull at his paragraphs, alter his adjectives, and qualify his
estimative passages, but his message still comes through.
2First the Board of National Estimates, then the representatives
of the USIB agencies, finally the USIB itself.
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It is fatal to approach a reaction estimate in this fashion. The
drafter will encounter a long succession of close judgments as he
works his way through the paper. Most of them will be near the 50-
50 mark; if they were not, the estimate would not have been requested.
He will make some of them in one direction, others in the opposite.
He will estimate "desirable" reactions to some U.S. moves, "undesirable"
ones to others. Out of the sum total of these, some general theme may
in the end emerge, but he had better let this happen rather than aim at
it. For his paper consists essentially of nothing but this succession
of judgments, and many of them will be changed before the USIB finally
signs off. If his draft is built around a theme, he will have to re-
structure, probably sooner rather than later.
But he can make his contribution. In thinking through the questions,
he can try to find the turning points, the stage or stages which con-
stitute, in Alsopian language, the "crunch." This, I think, is a real
service. It tells the policy maker, not what will happen, but what to
worry most or pray hardest about. It tells him about the moment of
truth -- what its content will be and where, as he gropes along an
uncertain path, he may expect to encounter it. To do this well is a
triumph.
If he is lucky enough to find a turning point, the wise drafter will
stop and point in both directions. He will give a scrupulously com-
plete list of arguments why the enemy might do what we want him to do.
Then he will give an exhaustive set of reasons why the enemy might do
just the opposite. This is another service. It gets the policy maker
to think about all the factors, the unpleasant as well as the pleasant
ones. And it insures that he cannot dismiss the conclusion which follows
on the grounds that the intelligence people forgot something important.
The Result
Once this is done, the drafter can be rather casual about which
direction he chooses. It doesn't much matter; the Director will
make up his mind, some USIB members will join him in the text, and
others will take footnoteE of dissent. But if the text has not laid
the proper groundwork for these decisions, the drafter will have to
endure an hour of confused. argument at the USIB table and then start
over again.
Nor, I would maintain, should it make very much difference what the
USIB decides. The President surely would be silly to let his decision
be determined by whether intelligence said the chances were "slightly
better than even" or "slightly worse than even." In the first place, the
policy proposal has probably been changed in two or three minor ways,
just enough to render the estimate slightly inapplicable, when he gets
it. In the second place, the policy would assuredly be modified in the
course of its implementation, enough to render the estimate more than
slightly inapplicable. In the third and resounding place, everyone from
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drafter to President knows that the future is plain unknowable.
Well then, why write a reaction estimate? Because it is always a
help to have the issues defined. Because the estimate may serve to
highlight a forgotten or glossed-over problem. Because it may dispose
of some wild, far-out ideas which heretofore had not been adequately
confronted. Because a sober and at least partially disinterested
accounting of risks and chances may not be available from any other
source. Because subsequent policy argument can perhaps be more real-
istic.
You will notice that I have been very sparing of examples. This is
because all reaction estimates are classified Top Secret and dis-
tributed to a small readership. In fact, they are not even accorded
a permanent printing. Garden-variety NIEs get their conclusions
distributed as.rapidly as possible, after USIB approval, in an informal
offset version. Subsequently the reader receives a handsome printed
version of the full text. Reaction estimates get the first treatment
but not the second. Thus their covers bear two of the finest, most
lucid sentences ever written in the U.S. Government:
"NOTE: This is the estimate. No further versions will
be published."
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B. PROBLEMS OF ESTIMATIVE INTELLIGENCE
When CIA was established with the mission of producing "national"
intelligence it perforce crew heavily for doctrine upon the military
intelligence agencies. Over the years, the intelligence organizations
of the armed forces had developed a well-tested routine. Formulas
were available to meet various requirements. Agreement had gradually
been reached on what needed to be known about the enemy, what data
were necessary for the estimate, why they were necessary, and how
they could most usefully be presented. CIA had no counterpart to
this doctrine. It therefore frequently borrowed from the military,
and in no instance was this borrowing more conspicuous than in the
matter of "capabilities."
The doctrine of enemy capabilities was one of the most character-
istic and useful that military intelligence has to offer. A capability
is a course of action or a faculty for development which lies within
the capacity of the person or thing concerned. More particularly, in
military intelligence, enemy capabilities are courses of action of
which the enemy is physically capable and which would, if adopted and
carried through, affect our own commander's mission.""' In short, a
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring, 1957, pp. 1-18.
1,- 11 11 "capabilities, enen -- Those courses of action of which the
enemy is physically capable and which if adopted will affect the accom-
plishment of our mission. The term "capabilities" includes not only
the general courses of action open to the enemy such as attack, defense,
or withdrawal but also al=_ the particular courses of action possible under
each general course of action. "Enemy capabilities" are considered in the
light of all known factors affecting military operations including time,
space, weather, terrain, and the strength and disposition of enemy forces..."
Dictionary of United States Military Terms for Joint Usag, issued by
the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
S-E-C-R-E-T
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list of enemy capabilities is a list of the things that the enemy can
do. It is therefore apt to be the most significant part of a military
intelligence officer's "Estimate of the Enemy Situation."
It is true, of course, that a military intelligence officer collects
and transmits to his commander a great deal of other information. He
reports on the weather, terrain, and communications in the zone of op-
erations. He may set forth the politics and economics of the area. He
collects and evaluates data on the enemy's order of battle, logistical
apparatus, equipment, weapons, morale, training and the like. All this
is made known to the commander, but it is still not a statement of enemy
capabilities. Only when the intelligence officer has acquired all this
information, and constructively brooded over it, can he set about describ-
ing the courses of action open to the enemy. It is this list of capabil-
ities that tells the commander what, under the conditions existing in the
area, the enemy can do with his troops, his weapons, and his equipment
to affect the commander's own mission. The enumeration and description
of enemy capabilities is the ulitmate, or at least the penultimate, goal
of military intelligence. It is one of the characteristic modes to which
the great mass of intelligence information available is bent, in order
to give the commander the knowledge of the enemy he needs to plan his
own operations.
Adaptation of this doctrine to the requirements of national intelli-
gence presents at first no real difficulty. Courses of action may be
attributed to persons, organizations, parties, nations, or groups of
nations as well as to military units, and to friendly or neutral, as
well as to enemy, powers. They may be political, economic, psychological,
diplomatic, and so on, as well as military. It is true that a national
intelligence estimate * is not made for a military commander with a
clearly defined mission, to which enemy capabilities may be referred to
ascertain if they do in fact "affect" the carrying-out of that mission.
An equivalent for the commander's mission is not far to seek, however,
since national intelligence is obviously concerned only with foreign
courses of action which may affect the policies or interests -- above
all the security interests -- of the United States. It is by no means
as easy to be clear about all the policies and interests of the United
States, and to perceive what might affect them, as it is to understand
the mission of a military commander, which is supposed to be unequivocally
stated in a directive from higher authority. But this is one of the
Throughout this paper the term "national intelligence estimate"
is used generally to mean not just the solemnly coordinated "National
Intelligence Estimates" approved by the Intelligence Advisory Committee,
but any estimate, great or small, made by any office or person producing
national intelligence.
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reasons why a national intelligence estimate is apt to be more difficult
to prepare than a military estimate of an enemy situation.
In national intelligence, then, capabilities may be defined as courses
of action within the power of a foreign nation or organization which
would, if carried out, affect the security interests of the United
States.
It is probably unnecessary to argue that statements of capabilities are
useful as a means of organizing and presenting national intelligence.
The parallel with military intelligence doctrine seems perfectly sound.
High policy-makers doubtless want to be supplied with authoritative des-
criptions and analyses of the politics, economics, and military establish-
ments of various foreign nations, together with explanations of the objec-
tives, policies, and habitual modes of action of these nations. They need
to have the best possible statistics, diagrams, pictures, and data in gen-
eral. But when all the labor and research has been finished, the results
collated and criticized, and the conclusions written down, it will still
be worthwhile to go on to a statement of what each foreign nation or or
ganization can do to affect the interests of the United States. This is
the statement of capabil'_ties.
In recognizing, f ormulat:_ng, testing, and presenting foreign capabilities
intelligence doctrine cones into its own. Apart from the special function
of intelligence operations in collecting data, most of the preliminary
spade-work for intelligence estimates is the province of other disciplines
than that specifically of intelligence. This spade-work of course takes
nine-tenths of the time, trouble, and space devoted to any estimate. Pol-
itical scientists analyze the structure of government and politics in a
foreign state; economists lay bare its economic situation; order-of-battle
men reveal the condition of the military establishment; sociologists, his-
torians, philosophers, natural scientists, and all manner of experts make
their contribution. When all this has been done it is the peculiar function
of intelligence itself to see that the learning and wisdom of experts is
directed towards determining what the foreign nation can do to affect US
interests. Thereby the major disciplines of social and natural science
are turned to the special requirements of intelligence estimates.
Let us be careful not to confuse this with the function of prophecy. To
predict what a foreign nation will do is a necessary and useful pursuit,
albeit dangerous; it rests on knowledge, judgment, experience, divination,
and luck. To set forth what a nation can do is a different matter. One
still needs judgment, experience and luck as well as knowledge, but
soothsaying is reduced to a minimum. There is an element of the scientific.
The job can be taught, and its techniques refined. It can be reduced
to doctrine.
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Generally speaking, in military usage an enemy capability is stated
without reference to the possible counteractions which one's own command-
er may devise to offset or prevent such action. The Navy's handbook
entitled Sound Military Decision puts it this way (italics added): "Cap-
abilities . . . indicate actions which the force concerned, unless fore-
stalled or prevented from taking such actions, has the capacity to carry
out." Here are three examples:
a. The Bloc has the capability to launch large-scale, short-
haul amphibious operations in the Baltic and Black Seas.
b. The USSR has the capability to launch general war.
c. The Chinese Communists have the capability to commit and
to support approximately 150,000 troops in Indochina.
These statements give no estimate of what the effects or results of
any of these courses of action might be. There is no indication for
example that the United States or some other power might be able to make
it difficult or impossible for the Chinese Communists to support 150,000
troops in Indochina, or that the West might possess such strength that
a Soviet decision to launch general war would be tantamount to suicide.
The statements simply lay down what the nations concerned could do, with-
out regard to any possible opposition or counteraction. Such unopposed
capabilities are frequently referred to as "gross" or "raw" capabilities.
They are the kind of enemy capabilities which are reported to a military
commander by his G-2, in the "Estimate of the Enemy Situation."
The high policy-makers for whom national intelligence is designed,
however, are not in the comparatively simple position of military
commanders facing an enemy. They have broader fields to cover, and
more numerous problems to face. They need to have a picture of the
security situation in the world as a whole and in various areas of the
world. This picture ought to show not only the multifarious forces which
exist, but also the probable resultants of these forces as they act upon
each other, or as they might act upon each other if they were set in motion.
The policy-makers need, in short, to know about net capabilities, not merely
about gross or raw capabilities.
This is well understood and accepted as long as the courses of action
of foreign nations alone are concerned. Nobody would think of enumer-
ating the capabilities of France, for example, without giving due con-
sideration to the frequently opposing capabilities of Germany, and to the
tangential capabilities of Great Britain and other powers. Even in the
purely military sphere, statements of net capabilities occur in national
estimates. For example:
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a. In Israel, an army of 49,000 . . . is capable of defeating
any of its immediate neighbors.
b. The Chinese Communists have the capability for conquering
Burma.
c. We believe that the Chinese Communists are capable of taking
the island of Quemoy if opposed by Chinese Nationalist forces
only.
It is an intricate and difficult operation even to attempt to work out
the probable resultants of the enormous forces actually or potentially
at work in the world -- political, economic, military, and the like.
Without such an operation, however -- sometimes called "war-gaming"
when limited strictly to the military sphere -- national intelligence
estimates of capabilities would lose much of their usefulness for the
particular purpose they are designed to serve.
Obviously no estimate of the security situation anywhere in the world
will be worth much unless the capabilities of the United States are
taken into account and their effect weighed. At this point, however,
grave practical difficulties arise. We of the intelligence community
are solemnly warned that we must not "G-2 our own policy." Military
authorities are shocked at the suggestion that we should indulge in
"war-gaming." We are told that it is the function of the commander,
not of the intelligence officer, to decide what counteraction to adopt
against enemy capabilities, and to judge what the success of such coun-
teraction may be. It is pointed out that no adequate estimate of net
military capabilities can be made without a full knowledge of US war
plans, and a long and highly technical exercise in war-gaming by large
numbers of qualified experts. Since intelligence agencies as such
quite properly have no knowledge of US war plans, and possess no elab-
orate machinery for war-gaming, they are estopped from making an esti-
mate of net capabilities ;where US forces are significantly involved. As
a result there is, for instance, no statement in any national intelli-
gence estimate of how the military security situation on the continent
of Europe really stands, i.e., of the probable net capabilities of Soviet
forces against the opposition they would be likely to meet if they attempted
an invasion of the continent.
This state of affairs is unfortunate, and the value of national intelli-
gence estimates is thereby reduced below what it ought to be. The dif-
ficulty is really not one of intelligence doctrine, however. Practically
nobody doubts that high policy-makers ought to be supplied with estimates
of net capabilities even in situations where the US is actively engaged.
It is agreed that they ought to have the best possible opinion on the
security situation on the continent of Europe, and that they must be
informed not merely of the gross capabilities of the USSR to launch air
and other attacks on the US (the subject of an annual National Intelligence
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Estimate) but of what the USSR could probably accomplish by such an
attack against the defenses that the US and its allies would put up.
In one way or another policy-makers get such estimates of net capabil-
ities, even if they have sometimes to make them themselves, off the
cuff.
The question is, then, not whether estimates of net capabilities are
legitimate requirements, but simply who shall make them. This problem
is outside the scope of a paper on intelligence doctrine. It may be
suggested, however, that the difficulty has probably been somewhat
exaggerated. The jealous prohibition of "war-gaming," on grounds that
to conduct it requires a knowledge of US war plans and an enormous
apparatus with numerous personnel, is overdone. In four out of five
situations where an estimate of net military capabilities is needed
the judgment of wise and experienced military men, based on only a
general knowledge of US war plans, is likely to be about as useful
as the most elaborate and protracted piece of war-gaming. Such ex-
ercises have too often given the wrong answer -- they are really no
more dependable as guides to the outcome of future wars than research
in economics is dependable as an indicator of the future behavior of the
stock market. This does not mean, of course, that economics and war-
gaming are useless pursuits.
Gradually, indeed, the difficulties respecting estimates of net
capabilities are disappearing. In the most critical situations --
air attack on the United States, for example, and perhaps the security
situation in Europe -- it may be necessary to establish special machin-
ery for the most careful playing-out of the problems and ascertainment of
net capabilities. In less critical situations the trouble is solving
itself. Military men are becoming a little less shy of making an educated
guess as to net capabilities, even when US forces are involved, and the
community is not as distressed as it used to be at the accusation of
"G-ling US policy." A doctrine is gradually being evolved by trial and
error, which is as it should be. Some day it may be desirable to commit
the evolved doctrine to writing, but the time has not yet arrived.
Of course any foreign nation of consequence is physically capable of
a vast number of courses of action which would affect the security inter-
ests of the United States. One task of intelligence (after the spade-
work is complete) is to recognize these capabilities; another is to test
them against known facts to make certain they are real and not imaginary;
a third is to test them one against another to see how many could be
carried out simultaneously, and how many may be mutually exclusive; a
fourth is to work out in reasonable detail the-implications, for the nation
concerned and for the United States, of the actual implementation of each
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important capability. I propose to pass over all these tasks without
further discussion, and to concentrate on the problem of selecting from
among the capabilities those which are to be included in the formal esti-
mate. For even after all the testing is finished there will still remain
far too many capabilities to put into any document of reasonable size.
Considerations of space, time, and the patience of readers make it imper-
ative that some principles of exclusion be adopted, so that the list of
capabilities presented will be useful rather than merely exhaustive.
Capabilities are excluded from national estimates for one of two reasons:
either because they are judged unlikely to be actually adopted and carried
through, or because they are considered to be so insignificant that they
could be implemented without more than minor effect on the security inter-
ests of the United States. For short we may say that they are excluded on
grounds either of improbability or of unimportance.
The second of these criteria does not require much discussion. Clearly
it would be a waste of time and paper to fill a national estimate with
lists of courses of action which, even if carried cut, would affect the
security interests of the United States only to an insignificant degree.
One applies common sense in this matter, and forthwith rejects a great
number of capabilities from further consideration. Along with common
sense, however, there ought always to be plenty of specialized knowledge
available. Everyone knows that an expert can sometimes point out major
significance in things which are to the uninformed view negligible, and
conversely that experts will sometimes inflate the importance of things
which common sense and general knowledge can see in juster proportion.
Out of discussion and argument on these matters comes the best verdict
at to the importance or unimportance of a given foreign capability, and
the best guidance as to whether it should be put into the formal estimate.
To reject any foreign capability because we judge it unlikely to be imp-
lemented is a more serious and difficult matter. Here indeed we part
company with military doctrine, which frowns upon the exclusion from an
estimate of any enemy capabilities whatever, and especially condemns any
exclusion on grounds of improbability. There has been much debate, among
the military, on whether an intelligence officer should presume to put
into his formal estimate an opinion as to which of the enemy capabilities
listed is most likely to be implemented. It has been said that such a
judgment is for the commander alone to make, and some have even held that
the commander himself must not make it, but must treat all enemy capabil-
ities as if they were sure to be carried through, and must prepare to deal
with them all. This latter doctrine is somewhat academic. It is doubtful
that any intelligence officer, or any commander worth his salt, has ever
acted strictly in accordance with it. Yet it remains that according to
the more rigorous teachings of military intelligence no enemy capability
of any consequence may be omitted from the list presented to the commander.
The disasters which can result from even a carefully considered exclusion
have been frequently pointed out.
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Nevertheless, in a national intelligence estimate we must for the
reasons already stated exclude many foreign capabilities because we
judge them unlikely to be carried out. The unlikelihood is in turn
generally established on one or more of three grounds, namely, that
implementation of the capability (a) would be unrelated to, or incom-
patible with, national objectives of the country under consideration;
(b) would run counter to the political, moral, or psychological compul-
sions under which the nation, or its rulers, operate; or (c) would en-
tail consequences so adverse as to be unprofitable.
The most obvious capabilities to exclude are those which, if imple-
mented, would serve no objective of the nation under consideration,
or would clearly run counter to some of that nation's objectives. Thus
we do not bother about the possibility that the British might conquer
Iceland, although they certainly could do so and if they did US security
interests would be affected. The conquest of Iceland, however would
serve no British objective that we know of, at least in time of peace.
Again, it is clearly within the power of the USSR to give up its Satel-
lites, renounce its connections with Communist China, and retire modestly
into isolation. Or the British might, in order to improve their economic
condition, abandon all armaments and cease to be a world power. We do
not give such capabilities serious consideration, however, because we
believe them manifestly contrary to the fundamental aims of the Soviets
and British respectively. By applying this sort of standard we can
immediately reject a great number of courses of action which lie within
the power of the nation concerned and which would affect US security
interests.
One must be careful in using this test, however, for national objectives
change, sometimes with changes in government, sometimes without. It is,
for example, impossible to be sure about the objectives which will deter-
mine West German policy in years to come. Even the Soviets do not always
appear to the Western view to act in such a fashion as to serve what we
estimate to be their real aims. Moreover, all nations have various objec-
tives, many of which are to some degree incompatible with each other. Some-
times one is governing, sometimes another. Nations can even prusue sim-
ultaneously several conflicting objectives, to the confusion of their own
citizenry as well as of foreign intelligence officers. We must be very
certain, before rejecting a foreign capability as incompatible with a
national objective, that the objective is genuine, deeply-felt and
virtually certain to govern the nation's courses of action.
The political, moral, or psychological compulsions which operate on a
nation, or on its rulers, make the implementation of some of that nation's
phsycial capabilities unlikely or even impossible. Thus, for example,
it would probably be judged that the US is unlikely to undertake a strictly
"preventive" war against the USSR because such an action, under any fore-
seeable US government, would be politically and morally unthinkable. It
may similarly be true that the Soviet rulers are psychologically unable
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to establish a genuine state of peaceful coexistence with capitalist
states even though they may proclaim their desire to do so and may
judge such a course of action conducive to the ultimate aims of Commun-
ism. There are some things that nations cannot do, despite the fact
that they are physically capable of doing them and might serve their
national objectives thereby.
To be sure, if a nation is politically, morally, or psychologically
incapable of pursuing a given course of action that course of action is
not a capability at all, and we need not worry about it. The trouble
is, however, that while physical incapabilities can generally be pretty
satisfactorily established the same is rarely true of political, moral,
or psychological incapabilities. One must depend more on judgment and
less upon demonstrable certainty for an estimate in the matter. Not
many would have estimated, before the fact, that Tito would be psychol-
ogically capable of turning against Stalin, or that the Germans would
be morally capable of supporting Hitler, or that the United States would
be politically capable of abandoning isolationism. Experience warns us
against undue confidence in our estimates of national character, and it
will be safer to consider as capabilities all courses of action which a
nation is physically able to carry through, rejecting many as improbable
but none as impossible.
Finally, we reject from cur estimate those capabilities which would,
if implemented, lead to such adverse consequences as to be unprofitable.
There are, curiously enough, very few foreign capabilities which will
pass the tests already mentioned, and then have to be excluded on this
ground. This is because most courses of action having indubitably dire
consequences will by reason of that fact alone run counter to the objec-
tives or to the political, moral, or psychological compulsions of the
nation. Those few which are left are generally military in nature and
are apt to be so important that we include them in the estimate anyway.
Thus it is clear that general war with the US would be hazardous and
perhaps disastrous for the USSR. It therefore seems highly improbable
that the Soviets will deliberately run grave risks of involving themselves
in such a war, yet no national estimate on the USSR would omit mention
of the capabilities of that nation for conducting war with the US. The
same holds true for the capabilities of the Nationalist Chinese to invade
the mainland, or of the South Koreans to attack North Korea. We may
judge such capabilities improbable of implementation, but we do not
exclude them from our estimate.
By applying the tests of importance and of probability, as described
above, the vast number of capabilities of any foreign nation will speedily
be reduced to manageable proportions. The process of exclusion will at
first be almost unconscious -- most capabilities will be rejected forth-
with, without doubt or debate. When this stage has been accomplished,
however, there will still remain a formidably long list which will require
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more serious consideration. Exclusion becomes more difficult, and
begins to require longer discussion and maturer judgment. The same
criteria of choice continue valid, but are applied with more delib-
eration. This is the point at which preparation of the estimate gets
interesting, for the choice of capabilities to include or exclude may
prove to be the most crucial decision made during the estimating process.
Though we have departed from the military doctrine in allowing a rejec-
tion of capabilities judged unlikely of implementation, we may still
return to it for an important lesson. Like the military commander,
the high policy-maker is entitled to something more than intelligence's
opinion of what foreign nations will probably do. He is entitled to
be informed of various reasonable alternative possibilities, and to
be given some discussion of these alternatives -- of their apparent ad-
vantages and disadvantages, and of the reasons why intelligence deems
them respectively to be less or more likely of implementation. National
estimates sometimes discuss only the particular foreign capabilities
which the intelligence community in its wisdom believes will actually
be carried through. This is going too far in exclusion. Intelligence
must winnow the mass of capabilities down to two or three or half a
dozen in each situation examined, but it is the responsibility of policy-
makers, not of intelligence agencies, to decide which among these few
last alternatives shall in fact constitute the intelligence basis for US
policy.
Looking back over old national estimates one is apt to feel that the
borrowing of military terminology was sometimes a little over-enthusiastic.
The world "capability," for example, offers an almost irrestible temptation
to all of us who compose governmental gobbledegook. It is a long, abstract
noun, of Latin derivation, and it has a pleasing air of technicality and
precision. It will appear to lend portentousness to an otherwise simple
statement. Perhaps this is why the word appears in estimates so frequently,
unnecessarily, and sometimes even incorrectly.
One trouble is that the word has a perfectly good, nontechnical meaning,
signifying a quality, capacity, or faculty capable of development. It is
commoner in the plural, when it usually denotes in a general way the poten-
tialities of the possessor, as when we say that a man "has good capabilities."
This usage is frequent in estimates:
a. The air defense capabilities of the Bloc have increased
substantially since 1945.
b. Chinese Communists and North Korean capabilities in North
Korea have increased substantially.
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c. The capabilities; of the new fighter aircraft are superior to
those of the olc..
No valid objection can be taken to these examples. Indeed, the usage is
virtually the same as that of the technical term, for the statements are
about the things that the possessors of the capabilities can do.
One can find, however, a good many examples of slipshod usage:
a. Satellite capabilities for attack on Greece and particularly
on Turkey are tco limited for conquest of those countries.
b. The Tudeh Party's capabilities for gaining control of Iran
by default are almost certain to increase if the oil dispute
is not settled.
There is no good reason for using the word "capabilities" in either of
these statements; in the first the word should probably be "resources,"
in the second, "chances" or "prospects." If one really insists on talk-
ing about capabilities then the statements ought to be rephrased: "The
Satellites are not capable of conquering Greece or Turkey," and "If the
oil dispute is not settled, conditions in Iran will be such that the Tudeh
Party may acquire the capability to gain control of the country."
It will be perceived that the immediately foregoing examples are state-
ments of net capabilities, and it is in connection with such statements
that imprecise drafting mast frequently occurs. It must be remembered
that in a relationship between two nations (or other organizations) the
gross capabilities of one side can be increased or decreased only by an
increase or decrease in tie strength, resources, skills, etc., of that
side; what happens on the other side is irrelevant. The net capabilities
of one side, however, may be altered either by a change in its own strengths
and resources or by a change in those of the other side. For example, sup-
pose that the strengths and resources of the United States and the USSR
both increase in the same proportion. Then the gross capabilities of each
side will have increased, but the net capabilities will have remained un-
changed. But, if the USSR should grow weaker, while the United States
made no change in its strength, then the net capabilities of the United
States would have increased although its gross capabilities remained
unchanged.
This is simple enough, but it needs to be understood if drafting is to
be accurate and clear. Consider the following example:
In South Korea and Taiwan where US commitments provide both
physical security and political support of the established
regimes, present Communist capabilities for political war-
fare are extremely small. If the US commitment and physical
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protection were withdrawn for any reason, substantial and
early Communist political warfare successes almost certainly
would occur.
The first of the two sentences in this quotation can only be understood
as a statement concerning gross capabilities, although to be sure the
word is used in its non-technical sense. But the second sentence reveals
that Communist gross capabilities, far from being "small," are in fact
very considerable. The two sentences together constitute a statement of
net capabilities, but the drafting is poor. Perhaps a rule to govern this
problem may be formulated in this way: when the word "capability" or "cap-
abilities" is used in its non-technical sense, signifying in a general way
the qualities, faculties, or potential of the possessor, it must be used
only to refer to gross, and never to net capabilities. If there is any
question, doubt or difficulty, the word ought to be avoided and a synonym
chosen.
Finally, even when using the word in its technical meaning of a specific
course of action, the drafter ought always to make clear whether he is
referring to gross or net capability. For example:
a. We estimate that the armed forces of the USSR have the capability
of overrunning continental Europe with a relatively short period.
b. The Party almost certainly lacks the capability for seizing
control of the Japanese government during the period of this
estimate.
The first of these statements is unclear because the word "overrunning"
does not indicate beyond doubt (as "conquer" or "defeat" do in some ex-
amples previously quoted) whether the statement is or is not one of net
capability. Does the sentence mean that the armies of the USSR can over-
run Europe against all the opposition that the West may put up? Or does
it mean only that the USSR has enough men and logistical apparatus to
spread into all of continental Europe within a relatively short period
if unopposed? The second example is clearer, but still it does not indi-
cate beyond doubt whether the Party is unable to seize power because the
Japanese government is strong enough to prevent it, or whether the Party
simply lacks the men and talent to take over the job of governing Japan
even if no one opposed its doing so.
Apart from such suggestions for clarity in drafting as those given above,
it would be premature to lay down rules for the statement of capabilities
in a national intelligence estimate. Sometimes it may be desirable to list
them seriatim, as the military generally do in their estimates of the enemy
situation. This might be a wholesome exercise while drafting an estimate
even if it were not retained in the final version, for it would tend to
promote precision, to reveal inter-relationships and produce groupings of
related capabilities, and thus to prevent the indiscriminate scattering
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through an estimate of statements of capabilities in bits and pieces. On
the other hand, the number and complexity of courses of action which have
to be presented may often be so great that extensive listing would be tedi-
ous, and attempts at grouping misleading. A connected essay (in which,
incidentally, the word capability or capabilities need never appear) may
convey the material far more adequately.
These matters will be improved by experimentation, and by the talent of
those who draft estimates. Improvement is worth trying for, in this as
in other aspects of estimating capabilities. It is a great and respon-
sible task to survey the whole political, economic, and military strengths
of a nation, to ascertain its objectives and the moral and political com-
pulsions that govern its conduct, to weigh all these matters in the light
of that nation's relation to other nations, to perceive what that nation
could do to affect the security interests of the United States, and to
select from among these manifold courses of action those sufficiently
important and feasible to be included in a national estimate. The tech-
niques of this task are still in a formative stage. They will develop
through experience, through trial and error, through discussion and argu-
ment, and perhaps, from time to time, through purely- theoretical and
doctrinal investigation.
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fay
Members of the intelligence community will obviously find useful reading
in the articles by *** These studies deserve
the attention of of er groups as we They are of particular value to
military commanders and planners and to their civilian counterparts in
both government and private life. The executive and the planner are the
prime consumers of the intelligence product. Furthermore, since they and
not the intelligence officer are ultimately responsible for action taken,
they are and should be the sharpest critics of that product.
These consumers, therefore, need to understand the various kinds of ap-
proaches which the intelligence officer can make to his problem. In con-
sultation with him, they should develop an agreed approach -- embodying
either as discussed in our military and other staff manuals or possibly
as modified by ideas developed in these papers.
Business executives and planners were mentioned above along with military
and government officials because study of modern business organization and
practice makes it quite clear that the more effective enterprises engage
in intelligence activities in one form or another.
To bring out the parallel with national and military intelligence, we may
note that business intelligence comprises evaluated information concerning
such matters as: the actual and potential users of the goods and services
the business produces; the actions and plans of competitors; related goods
and services; and other factors which bear on the production, marketing,
and use of the product. Among the "intelligence activities" in which most
business organizations engage we can include market analysis, research and
development, and the collection of general business information.
Market analysis is essentially an intelligence activity, for it covers
not only what the product may or might do but also what other firms and
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring, 1957, pp. 19-37.
as formerly an employee of the DD/P.
A review of a MSS on "The Hazards and Advantages of Estimates of
Enemy Intentions," by Jr. appeared in the same issue
of Studies in Intelligence as Mr article.
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products may do or are doing. Credit information on firms and individuals
is perhaps the most direct form of intelligence used by business.
Research and development is an intelligence activity in the sense that it
yields information on which to gauge the value of one's own product as
well as that of actual and potential competitors. Research and develop-
ment have become so important that investment analysts now consider the
size and quality of this effort an important factor in determining the
value of a security.
Finally, no business of any stature can plan without giving at least a
quick glance at political, economic, and sociological data. It is incon-
ceivable that either Ford or the UAW in 1954 planned for 1955 without
considering international affairs, the domestic political situation, and
the sociological "climate" which might make it propitious to raise the
issue of the guaranteed annual wage. The tremendous growth in the number
of trade and commercial publications is an indication of the interest in
business intelligence information.
This is not the proper place to pursue this matter further and discuss
whether or not business would improve its lot by openly recognizing its
intelligence requirement and organizing more specifically for it. It is
useful to note, however, that World War I taught business leaders the
value of the line and staff principle of organization and that World
War II has already given them clear object lessons in operations analysis
and on research and development. "Business intelligence," full-fledged,
may well be the next important step.
It has seemed worthwhile to mention this point because we want to go
along with Mr. who believes that military intelligence doctrine has
application in national policy processes. In fact, we want to go further
and assert that the basic concepts -- not necessarily all the detailed
precepts and procedures -- have application to any form of human activity:
political, economic, scientific, or sociological.
There is some reason to suspect that both Mr.
have misinterpreted or misunderstood some of ese basic concep s. we
propose to deal with these misunderstandings as they come up in our discus-
sion of the two papers. At this point, it is useful to cover one matter
which both seem to have failed to keep clearly in mind. It is the fact
that both the intelligence officer and the commander (or policy-maker)
are in the estimating business.
The Intelligence Function. and the Command Function
The intelligence officer is the "expert" on the enemy. Accordingly, he
is charged with giving the commander, the staff, and subordinate commands
the best information and estimates on the enemy situation. The end product
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of his estimate is enemy capabilities and -- let us not forget -- where
available information provides a basis for such judgment, the relative
probability of adoption of them.*
This is a full-time job, particularly when one considers that the intelli-
gence officer must also continuously provide his command -- and, in addi-
tion, assist in providing subordinate, adjacent, and senior commands --
with the information and intelligence they require for their day-to-day
operations as distinguished from that needed for estimates. It is for
this reason, rather than any slavish devotion to doctrine that, as Mr.
points out,3*31 some persons hold that the intelligence officer
s ou not deal in the capabilities and lines of action of his own side.
Mr. is correct in saying that some persons oppose this from wrong
motives, but that is not a fault peculiar to the military. It should
also be pointed out that many planners have a supercilious view of intelli-
gence and intelligence officers. They fancy themselves equally competent
in intelligence matters. Indeed, most of them are, but the reverse is
also true. Most intelligence officers are fully competent planners. Since
each has a full-time job, however, each needs to tend to his own knitting
to get the job done well. There needs to be, and in good commands there
is, continuous close liaison at all levels in the intelligence and plans
sections. Historically it is true that many commanders have leaned as
much or more on their intelligence officers in planning matters as they
have on their planners. In even more cases, after the whole staff was
thoroughly informed about the enemy, the role of the intelligence officer
appeared to be less prominent. It is noteworthy that this usually occurs
on the side that is winning or has a preponderance of force. When things
are tight, the intelligence officer is in great demand and, we might note,
his neck is way out.
We noted above that the commander also makes an estimate. His estimate
takes the enemy capabilities -- presumably as developed by the intelli-
gence officer -- and, in the light of each capability, studies each line
of action open to the command to determine the one that best accomplishes
the mission. He determines the lines of action open to him by having full
information about his own forces -- their position, condition, morale,
supplies, supporting forces available and so on. Just as the intelligence
* FM30-5 and Principles of Strategic Intelligence, AC of S, G-2 (Feb.
50).
** As- puts it: We are told that it is the function of the com-
mander, not of the intelligence officer, to decide what counteraction to
adopt against enemy capabilities and to judge what the success of such
counteraction may be."
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officer contributes the Information about the enemy, so many other staff
officers contribute this other information which the commander must have
to make a sound decision.
Let us then keep clearly in mind that, in military usage, the intelligence
estimate sets forth the enemy capabilities. The commander, for his part,
uses that estimate in conjunction with other information (there may be a
logistics estimate, an a_ ''_r estimate, etc.) and makes a final "policy"
estimate to determine the line of action which will best accomplish his
mission.
The Military Thgo of CELpabilities
Many of the difficulties which Mr. points out in the application
of military usage in the field of national policy stem from the fact
that in the national field we do not have the same common understanding
of staff and command functions that obtains in the military. This is
true both because the "staff" in national policy affairs, though to a
degree comparable, is not a close parallel to a military staff, and
because many of our policy-makers are not experienced in or familiar
with staff functioning.
Against this general background, we can now examine Mr. advocacy 25X1A
of the concept of "gross" and "net" capabilities and his contention that
war-gaming should be used to improve the usefulness of our intelligence.
In reference to the first matter Mr. points out the need to rec- 25X1A
ognize that enemy capabilities are one thing when we study them in the
light of one of our own actions and quite different when we consider them
in the light of another.
To indicate these differences he uses the expressions "gross capabilities"
and "net capabilities." Use of these terms brings to mind the idea of a
fixed measurable quantity like the gross income of General Motors and,
similarly, that a "net capability" is like GM's net income. It is quite
clear that such a concept is not accurate.
Pursued to the logical end, gross capabilities would be capabilities, as
it were, in a vacuum. Such capabilities have no practical meaning, both
because they are limitless (without opposition the Soviets can do almost
anything) and because there are no true vacuums in world affairs.
In a sense capabilities are always "net." But they are fixed only in
reference to one given set of conditions. As these conditions change,
the capabilities change. They are a moving picture, not a still photo-
graph. The Soviet "net capability" to induce a peripheral war in Thailand
is one thing if Thailand has the political and other support of Burma and
the SEATO states and quitEe a different thing if it does not have such
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support. Indeed, the timing and extent of such support changes the
"net capability." In military usage capabilities are always what Mr.
Smith calls "net." The intelligence officer determines the enemy's
capabilities as of a given time and in the light of given circumstances.*
This idea is readily applicable in national strategic intelligence.
What Mr. calls gross capabilities could perhaps better be thought
of as "basic" capabilities. For example, intelligence officers can
readily estimate that by 1959 the Soviets could have a stockpile of
X hydrogen bombs, Y rounds of atomic artillery ammunition, Z inter-
continental bombers, W army divisions, and V major naval craft, and
could still meet the industrial requirements of their civilian economy,
provided they give no more than the current level of military aid to
Red China and the Satellites. On the other hand, if they curtailed
production of equipment for the Red Army and Navy they could contribute
more to the armament of China and the Satellites. These are capabilities.
They are basic capabilities to produce or take general action not normally
subject to interference. Further analysis and research can develop what,
under various assumptions, the Soviets can do with these resources and
thus can determine their capabilities to act. Perhaps it is this dis-
tinction that Mr. has in mind when he speaks of "gross" and "net."
Even if this is the case we would still be loath to accept the concept
because, in the general sense of the term, even such "gross" capabilities
are "net." Rather than adopting misleading terms like "gross" and "net"
we seem to be better off if we stick just to "capabilities" and understand
it to apply, as in basic military doctrine, to a stated set of circumstances.
The second point in Mr. thesis that we wish to examine is the
matter of war-gaming. He laments the fact that accepted practice frowns
on having intelligence officers war-game the plans of their own side.
We do not concede that this "frowning" is a prohibitively effective as
- contends. To the extent that it does exist, it is directed
against the idea of having the intelligence officer play both sides. This
is logical. The intelligence officer cannot be "expert" on his own re-
sources and plans as well as on those of the enemy. As pointed out earlier,
the latter is a full-time job. To the extent that he thumps for joint
war-gaming by intelligence estimates, however, Mr. is emphatically
right.
* See quotations from Dictionary of US Military Terms for Joint
Usage, cited by Mr. also the description used at the Strategic
Intelligence School.
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War-gaming for this particular purpose is not used as widely in the
military as it might be. But the concept of war-gaming for other
purposes with all staff elements participating is well established.
It could easily be used in the more complex field of national esti-
mates.
War-gaming has been modified radically in recent years with the employ-
ment of advanced mathematics and electronic computers. These tech-
niques leave much to be -desired in the military field and many of them
could, at the current stage of development, be used to only a very
limited extent in reference to the "imponderables" of national policy
affairs. The more conventional type of war-gaming, on the other hand,
could certainly be used across the board and with every possibility of
making our intelligence estimates more useful.
Mr.- observation that national policy-makers have a more complex
problem than military leaders is valid, and it has an important bearing
on the activities of the intelligence services which support them. The
national policy-maker must consider a great variety of "capabilities"
which interact on each other. For example, a sociological change in
Germany may have an important repercussion in the political capabilities
of France. Furthermore, it is always difficult to determine the "facts"
in many areas of interest. The military leader usually knows how many
and what kinds of guided missile squadrons, atomic bombs, fleets, and
army troops he and his opponent have. The political leader is always
far less certain about his "forces" and those of his allies. There is
even more uncertainty about the resources the enemy can bring to bear.
To illustrate, we can be sure that Khrushchev's advisers have many a
headache estimating how effective the Satellites and Communist China
really are and what assets the West will actually apply in various
situations. In such a field, therefore, there can be no one "net"
capability. There are as many "net" capabilities as there are variant
situations. Mr.M a:?pears to think that intelligence officers
should compute these net" capabilities by their own efforts. It would
seem more logical that they should be worked out in conjunction -- and
we do not mean concurrence -- with the planners. Intelligence officers
and planners must sit down together and thrash out all the angles. This
is precisely what happens in an efficient military staff in time of war.
The formal estimates of capabilities appear only when a radical change
in one's own or the enemy situation takes place. For example, after
"The Bulge," 21st Army Group conducted an extended and more or less
"conventional" campaign to gain the Rhine. It was obvious that crossing
that formidable obstacle would call for different types of action and
support. An estimate of the situation was essential.* This, in turn,
Both US and Brit:Lsn strategic planners had long before been work-
ing on such plans. We are here considering the more nearly tactical planning.
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meant that intelligence forecasts and estimates had to be produced. At
such times a new "stock-taking" is in order. At other times, day-to-day
close coordination by the working intelligence officers and planners, with
a check on interpretations of major importance by the senior intelligence
and plans officers, is the best modus operandi. It keeps all concerned
aware of enemy capabilities applicable to the prevailing conditions.
In the national field, a similar condition could obtain. Unhappily the
lines of demarcation in staff organization are not as simple and clear
as in the military. Instead of overall planners like those in the Joint
Staff or in an international staff such as the Combined Staff Planners
of World War II, we have political planners in State, military in Defense,
economic in agencies like OES, propaganda in USIA, etc. Each of these
has some form of intelligence support of its own. These intelligence
agencies are tied together by CIA for national purposes and planning is
brought together in the NSC. However, there is still a vast amount of
"sprawling." Parenthetically, it should be noted that this statement
is a description of a condition; it is not to be construed as an unfavor-
able criticism. This is not the occasion for such criticism; and it is
by no means certain that highly centralized planning and intelligence
would be best, or even better, for the country. Here, we want simply
to note that close integration of intelligence into planning is difficult
because of the decentralized planning and operating mechanism in the US
government. A great deal of informal coordination on the working level
does take place. This is all to the good and should be encouraged. This
complexity of organization and operations in the national field results
in a greater need for formalized estimates and is, in itself, a justifi-
cation for the use of the war-gaming principle. However, with all due
respect for the skill, wisdom, and judgment of our intelligence community,
we should not leave war-gaming as a basis for decisions to them alone.
The danger here is at least as great as it is to have the planners do
it alone. We have suffered on both the military and the national plane
from an unwillingness (or inability) to accept and understand available
intelligence. We need not repeat such gross errors.
With little or no information of our own plans and resources, the intelli-
gence officer can still tell the planner what resources the enemy can have
at a future date and the general kinds of action he can initiate with them.
If the commander and planner want to know what results the enemy can achieve
with these resources and actions, the intelligence officer must have know-
ledge of his own resources and plans.
Applying this notion to the current situation, we can expect national
intelligence officers to tell us what resources the Soviets will have
for peripheral wars by 1959 without much guidance as to our own resources
and national plans and policies. But they can tell us where and with what
likelihood of success the Soviets can use those assets only if they know
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the opposition which the Soviet action is likely to meet. Joint war-
gaming would provide such interchange of information. It should make
for a healthy interplay between intelligence and planning and probably
result in improving both.
Estimating Enemy Intentions
In paper we have a more restricted and therefore
more specific subject for consideration. He objects to what he describes
as "unrealistic resistance" to the use of intentions-analysis as opposed
to capabilities-analysis in intelligence estimates. He holds that we
need to consider both. By inference, he is most directly concerned with
combat intelligence. He makes clear, however, that. his conclusions apply
to strategic intelligence as well.
After analyzing what has to say, we can agree with his
main thesis that both intentions and capabilities need to be considered.
However, he has not hedged his proposal with essential safeguards and
his arguments against the! "capabilities doctrine" contain very serious
weaknesses. We will review these arguments and then develop our own
conclusions.
In order to evaluate contentions, it is important
that we have a common uncerstan Ingo the meaning of "the capabilities
doctrine." The burden of this concept is that in a combat intelligence
estimate, the intelligence officer should present to the commander his
best estimate of the enemy's capabilities rather than the enemy's inten-
tions. The doctrine goes further: it holds that the commander in his
estimate should consider each of the lines of action open to him in the
light of each of the enemy capabilities in arriving at his final decision
on a course of action. It is important to keep in mind that the doctrine
has these two aspects: first, the intelligence officer is to determine
capabilities; and second, the commander should make his decision only
after considering all the capabilities.
An elaboration of this doctrine which is too often forgotten is that
the G-2 is expected to g:Lve the commander his conclusion as to the
relative probability of -;he exercise of any of the enemy capabilities,
where there is evidence ~o ~3upnort such a conclusion.*
Earlier doctrine had held that the task of the intelligence officer was
to estimate the mission of the enemy and, from that, deduce the lines of
action the enemy might take and then to determine their effect on the
courses open to his own side. This doctrine invited a refined form of
guessing as to the enemy mission and encouraged consideration of inten-
tions in the deduction of enemy lines of action.
* FM 30-5.
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The new capabilities doctrine was developed after World War I because
it was felt that earlier doctrine introduced too much clairvoyance into
military problem-solving (which is what decision-making really is), and
that it came too near urging officers to guess the worst the enemy could
do and to stake everything on that. It was believed that the "capabilities"
system was more "scientific" and more nearly in accord with the facts of
life. This conviction was illustrated at the Command and General Staff
School, just before World War II, when one of the instructors "clinched"
the argument in favor of basing estimates on capabilities by showing that
in World War I von Kluck had changed his mind four times in one day and
actually issued three different orders.
A concomitant of the acceptance of the capabilities doctrine has been
the growth of an attitude that anyone who advocates basing estimates on
enemy intentions just hasn't been brought up properly. To advocate the
use of intentions-analysis has come to be considered the equal of advocating
mind-readin or the use of a ouija board. Advocates of intentions-analysis
like object more to this anti-intentions prejudice than
to the capabilities doctrine per se.
In marshaling support for the thesis that our doctrine needs review and,
in particular, needs to give more consideration to intentions, the critics
tend to make some amazing misinterpretations and to neglect some crucial
facts. We agree that our doctrine needs recasting but we must, in fairness,
keep the record accurate and logical.
objection to current doctrine is based on three main
points: first, "a nation or a commander must have a preponderance of
force if he bases his decisions on capabilities alone;" second, "the
resulting decision is always conservative;" and third, the enemy's
potential capabilities are not adequately considered.* We will examine
each of these points in some detail.
The statement that the capabilities doctrine is useable only when you
have a preponderance of force is clearly erroneous. It is a very prac-
ticable doctrine when you are on the defensive and even when you are the
hunted in a pursuit. To hold otherwise is like saying you cannot use the
principles of arithmetic when you are in debt The capabilities doctrine
-- and, for that matter, any other doctrine -- gives you a discouraging
picture in such cases, but that is the picture you must face. In an adverse
The third point is paraphrased because the actual statement is
not very precise. However, subsequent explanation makes clear that it
means what has been said here.
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situation, the doctrine i designed to indicate which line of action
would have the least adverse result. In other words, it indicates the
course of action which would get your nose least bloody.
The second criticism, that application of the doctrine generally results
in conservative action, i to a large extent true; but it is true because,
in matters of life and death, leaders generally tend to be conservative.
Usually they should be. The criticism is justified only to the extent
that the going doctrine makes it easier for leaders to be conservative.
This is particularly true when officers take the view which an allegedly
bright and "successful" officer (he later got a star) expressed when he
said: "I teach my officers to select the line of action which gives them
the best chance against what they figure is the enemy's most dangerous
capability."
It is this use of the capabilities doctrine that brings on the criticism
of conservatism. Actually it is a reversion to the older doctrine. It
is, in fact, a form of intentions-analysis because the user assumes that
the enemy will exercise a given capability. Such use does not condemn
the doctrine itself, any more than the fact that some men get drunk
justifies the condemnation of all whiskey. Current doctrine holds that
the commander shall select the course of action which, in the face of all
the estimated enemy capabilities, insures the most effective accomplish-
ment of the mission. This is not the same thing as saying that he should
select the one that gives the greatest certainty of accomplishing the
mission. Clearly, the most certain course might be the most bloody while
a slightly more risky line of action would be less costly and might accom-
plish the mission in a shorter time or have some other advantage. The
selection of a line of action requires a balancing of costs and gains
under the various possibilities. It also calls for what is known as
"military character." No matter whether we use capabilities or intentions,
the decisions will reflect that character.
The third argument is that use of the doctrine prevents consideration of
potential capabilities, meaning those that develop between the time
the estimate is made and the action takes place. This, of course, is woven
of the very flimsiest cloth. The doctrine is based on the use of capabil-
ities which the enemy will have at the time of the action for which one
is planning -- not the capabilities at the time the decision is made.
It is the capabilities forecast for the action-time. If one accepts
the- argument, he must also accept the conclusion that if intentions
were used in the analysis, one could not use forecasts of intentions.
On this score, then, one would be as badly off under one system as under
the other.
One other serious error in paper that we must bring
out is the failure to show a Army oc rine has for years made clear
that in strategic intelligence -- as distinguished from combat intelligence
-- both intentions and capabilities are considered. Official doctrine and
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teaching at the Strategic Intelligence School and at Army schools have
emphasized this point at least since World War II.
The Role of Intentions in Intelligence Estimates
.So far we have been concerned with showing that the arguments presented
against the capabilities doctrine are not very good or conclusive. This
is not the same as saying that we are trying to build a case against
intentions-analysis. Actually, we do not intend to do so. We will
weasel but, we believe, with good reason. We agree that use should be
made of both capabilities and intentions in developing estimates, but
we hold that one must be equally objective and "scientific" in deter-
mining either of them.
Having noted that the common arguments against the capabilities concept
are not too decisive let us note a few of the weaknesses of that system
and indicate some of the strengths of the intentions approach.
The faults of the capability system are two-fold. First it tends, as
points out, to cause intelligence officers to include
remote possibilities as capabilities. They forget that the doctrine
calls for the consideration of only those capabilities which bear on
the accomplishment of one's own mission. Second, and despite strong
language to the contrary in Army training, the doctrine seems to justify
lazy intelligence officers to feel that they have done their bit when
they have made one forecast of capabilities. This is most unfortunate.
Intelligence officers must keep capabilities under continuing study to
narrow them down. For example, in September of 1943 the predicted cap-
abilities of the Germans vis-a-vis the Normandy landings were of a given
order. As time went on, the Allies developed certain techniques and
equipment and new forces became available. On the Axis side, Italy was
knocked out of the war, and the Germans committed some of their forces
in new areas. Consequently, the enemy capabilities changed continuously
so that by June 1944 they were far more limited than could possibly have
been predicted in September 1943. SHAEF intelligence kept a continuous
spotlight on these capabilities during this period. So it should be in
all operations. The good intelligence officer keeps on the ball as long
as there is time to influence his own side's line of action. In many
cases the situation develops so that at a point the enemy has only one
capability. This happened at Falaise and in the Ruhr. Eventually, the
Germans could no longer disengage their forces. They had to stay and
fight. This idea was also illustrated in General Eisenhower's statement
to the effect that after a given time he could no longer influence the
course of a Juggernaut that became the Normandy assault. For a consider-
able period he had only one capability. Just how long the German G-2 was
useful by keeping tabs on that has not been made clear. Our teaching
does not emphasize this concept as clearly and firmly as it should.
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As we have already noted, World War I provided a startlingly effective
case to bolster the capabilities doctrine. Similarly, the Civil War
and World War II give us particularly fine cases for defense of inten-
tions-analysis. In the Civil War, opposing commanders often knew each
other personally. They used this knowledge in their planning. They
knew the training, abilities, and personalities of their opponents and,
hence, could determine the line of action the enemy was most likely to
take. In a sense, of course, this too is an assessment of capabilities
but there is no point in splitting any unnecessary hairs. In ordinary
language, such an evaluation results in a prediction of intentions.
There is a grey zone where capabilities slide into intentions, but for
our purposes, we will lean to the conserative side and call the border-
line cases intentions.
The World War II support for intentions-analysis is in some ways even
stronger. It stems from the fact that the Japanese tendency to fight
to the death was so effectively ingrained that, to a very marked degree,
capabilities to take other lines of action were not meaningful. To a
lesser extent this same situation applied in the European war where
Hitlerism molded capabilities.
One can make a very good case for the contention that enemy intentions
should properly be considered under the capabilities doctrine because
they are a factor in the combat effciency of the enemy. To accept such
an interpretation without clearly labeling it, however, would simply be
a way of getting around t.ae intent of the doctrine and have the disad-
vantage of not calling intentions by their true name.
Experience in all walks of life shows clearly that a failure to make
a thorough study of one's opponent to determine his motivations and
his mental and psychological reactions as a basis fDr estimating his
future action is worse than unwise. The press is full of stories that
the USSR is very active in this field and has attained great successes,
perhaps as a concomitant of progress in brain-washing and psychological
matters generally. In our zeal to make sure that training will make
commanders and intelligence officers "objective" and "scientific," we
may have gone so far that we have tended to overlook the obvious.
Certainly, the mental makeup and attitude of the enemy is as much a
"fact" as is his training, his morale, his organization, or his weapons.
Surely then it is logical to consider intentions. Equally surely, it
is important to do so objectively and to know what you are doing. If
you are an intelligence officer, it is most important that you alert
your chief to the fact that you are considering intentions.
In the discussion so far we have used examples and applications in the
purely military field. The conclusions are valid in national intelligence
as well. In fact, intentions of a nation or a government can be deter-
mined with more accuracy then those of an individual commander. These
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we
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intentions are shaped by many clearly observable facts such as past
actions, sociological conditions, cultural characteristics, internal
political pressures, economic circumstances, and a host of others.
The British exploited their understanding of German intentions in
both World Wars and it was not uncommon to hear their intelligence
officers use such expressions as: "the Hun is sure to -- -- -- --,"
and "the German probably appreciates." They personified the enemy
government and high command. On the other hand, the Germans seem
consistently to have missed the boat. They clearly either did not
or could not evaluate US and Russian national intentions properly
in either of the World Wars. The evaluation of national intentions
involves a more comprehensive field of thought than does the eval-
uation of the intentions of an enemy commander. However, the task
is no more difficult. Even if it is, it must be done because the
rewards for success and the costs of failure are too great to permit
neglecting the job.
Where does all this get us? It seems to indicate that, as-
0e says, a proper doctrine would be to include both capabilities
an intentions in all estimates as we now do in the strategic estimate.
However, we should expand the principle to include insurance that staff
and command training will impress on all concerned that they need to
apply the most rigid tests to all evidence bearing on intentions and
that conclusions based upon them clearly show that this is the case.
Since all concepts and doctrines wind up in a "form" of some sort, we
might as well present a proposal on that score, too. In the military
field the solution is easy. All we need to do in the commander's
estimate" is to insert a paragraph on "enemy intentions." The intentions
paragraph need be only a brief statement, either to the effect that there
are no reliable indications of enemy intentions or that certain stated
evidence indicates an intention to exercise one or more of these capabil-
ities.
In the intelligence estimate, we need merely insert that "combat efficiency"
includes knowledge of enemy personal characteristics which shape or have
a major influence on his actions. In addition, we should add a paragraph
on enemy intentions similar to the one suggested for the commander's
estimate. This one should also present the critical evidence upon which
the estimate of intentions is founded.
Such a detailed analysis of combat intelligence doctrine is warranted
at this juncture because, as Mr. points out, so much of the concept
and procedure of combat intelligence has found its way into the national
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strategic intelligence process. The additions to military command and
intelligence estimates which we have proposed here could be paralleled
in our training for national strategic intelligence.
Our current doctrine probably goes too far in playing down intentions-
analysis. Going all out the other way would certainly be worse. It
would encourage clairvoyance and, in addition, might discourage the
continuous effort to seek for new indications of capabilities. The
stress on measurable physical facts is justified. While we are making
important strides in understanding and measuring motivation and mental
processes, we are not yet far enough along in that field to measure
intentions as precisely as we can capabilities and, as
notes, the danger of deception is a very real one. Even so, since
decision-making is so inevitably bound up with consideration of the
personal element, it is the better part of discretion, and of valor
as well, to consider intentions. They are so often the sparkplugs
of human action.
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Those of us in the estimating business have a troublesome time with
the problem of incorporating scientific or technical contributions
into a finished estimate. To make the point, a hypothetical case re-
lating to missiles and nuclear warheads is discussed below, but the
example might as well be any complicated piece of military hardware
or other technical subject.
Technical Possibility
An estimate on the advanced weapons program of Upper Volta is started.
In the normal routine a contribution is asked from the Guided Missiles
and Astronautics Intelligence Committee. In due course, the estimators
receive a contribution which concludes that, on the basis of an exam-
ination of the evidence, "Upper Volta could have an IRBM system ready
for production in 1967-68 and carry out deployment in 1965-69." The
economists submit a contribution saying that, given a high enough priority,
the economy of Upper Volta could support such a program. The political
analysts find that Upper Volta thinks it has an urgent requirement for
such a weapons system. So the estimate comes out saying that "Upper
Volta could start deploying an IRBM system in 1965-69."
The Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee also submits a contribution,
one on nuclear developments. Upper Volta has conducted a few atmospheric
tests of nuclear devices, something is known of its general level of
technical competence and production facilities; and so JAEIC states that
warheads compatible with the IRBM's could be produced by the time GMAIC
says the missiles could be ready for deployment. So the estimate adds
to its sentence on deployment of the missiles the words "with compatible
fission warheads." In the course of this exercise, what started out to
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 9, No. 3, Summer, 1965, pp. 7-11.
is a member of the Board of National Estimates.
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be very special statements of raw capabilities get transformed into
USIB-approved estimates that have an aura of probability. While the
word "could," in the estimating business, is understood to be purely
a statement of possibility, the mere fact that the possibility is
stated with no further qualification gives it something more of sub-
stance. The reader is apt to think, "if there is not a good chance
that the possibility will be realized, why mention it?"
Hypothesis on Thin Ice
It is possible that the estimate could be handled with so much emphasis
on its being a mere statement of potentialities that the reader would
not be confused into taking it as having any significant element of
probability. But it is doubtful if drafting could convey the tenuous-
ness of the many technical components of the estimate. For instance,
the estimate that Upper Volta could have compatible nuclear warheads
involves in itself at least two estimates, each based on a number of
subsidiary estimates. What is the maximum weight of the warheads --
including guidance, firing mechanism, etc. -- which the Upper Volta
missile can carry? What is the likely actual weight of each of these
components? What are the warhead's dimensions? It is highly unlikely
that anyone can make more than crude guesses on these questions, even
if we had seen a missile in the Army Day parade in Ougadougou.
Similarly, we probably know little about the probable size, weight,
and shape of the nuclear component of the postulated warhead, how
much fissionable material would be in it, its yield, or even its gen-
eral design. Yet some hypotheses on all these questions underlay the
estimate that a warhead compatible with the missile could be available.
The estimators ask the technicians for opinions, and they oblige. In-
deed, the estimators often ask for even more speculative data, as for
the CEP and reliability of missiles. Comparable estimative problems
arise in all technical suojects, e.g., capabilities for CW and BW,
specifications for most kinds of complicated hardware such as aircraft,
naval vessels, etc.
The intellectual philosop::iy of a scientist leads him to consider his
scientific statements, however couched in language, as hypotheses --
the most satisfactory synthesis that he can make of the available
data at hand. If and as evidence changes, he will adjust the hypothesis
accordingly, or even abandon it, without any feeling that he is chang-
ing previously established truth. Estimative intelligence judgments
are of a different kind, even though they are based in large part on
analysis of the known facts. The intelligence estimator feels in-
stinctively that he should state what he believes true, qualifying the
estimate to indicate his qualms about its validity. When it turns
out to have been wrong, even though it was the most reasonable one
he could make on the basis of available evidence (as on the missiles
in Cuba), he feels that he failed. The biological researcher is not
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much upset when his hypothesis doesn't work out in laboratory tests,
but the doctor is when the treatment he prescribes for his patient
doesn't work and the patient dies. This analysis or analogy cannot
be pressed too far, but it is part of the difference between scien-
tific and intelligence estimating.
Worst-Casing
The scientist, in making an intelligence estimate, must have in mind
the purpose for which he is making it -- as do all estimators. The
temptation to estimate the "worst case" is just as strong with him
as with anyone else. If U.S. security plans are to be made on the
basis of his estimate, it seems better that they be based on the worst
that is reasonably possible, not on hopes which may turn out to be
false. This is not necessarily the phenomenon of "Pearl Harbor in-
surance," wherein one estimates the worst, secure in the knowledge
that if his dire predictions do not turn out, no one will blame him
for an unexpectedly favorable course of events. It is rather a judg-
ment that when all hypotheses are shaky, the reader had best be pre-
pared for the worst. In respect of other nations' weapons, this worst
is often arrived at by taking the best skills, experience, and tech-
nology known to the estimator, discounting them by a relatively small
factor, and coming out with an estimate of raw capability.
The non-technical estimator is at a great disadvantage in dealing with
such technical contributions. He can be nowhere nearly as familiar
with the evidence as the technician or as well equipped to deal with
it. If he questions the hypothesis, he can often be silenced when his
ignorance is pointed out. (This pointing out of his lack of competence
to deal with tehcnical subjects is most often done by people who serve
on technical bodies but are at best amateur scientists. The vigor with
which hypotheses are defended as truth often seems inversely proportional
to the technical comptetence of the defender.) The non-technical inquirer
can unearth, without too much prodding, the vast areas of uncertainty
in our evidence on advanced weapons systems. But he is hard put to it
to offer a more defensible judgment.
Taking into account what we know (which is little enough) about Upper
Volta's experiments, technical and economic resources, and what we
believe to be its national objectives, attributing to it a fair amount
of the best technology we know (usually U.S. technology), and considering
that it is better to over-warn the U.S. policy maker than to engender
any degree of complacency by a judgment which cannot be documented, we
thus come up with the estimate that "it is possible that Upper Volta
could deploy IRBM's with nuclear warheads in three years."
Yet the estimator, technical or non-technical, feels in his bones that
this worst case is highly unlikely. Does he estimate as above and
add "but it might just as well be three or four years later, or even
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longer?" This hardly looks as if he's earning his living. He is also
affected by a conscious or unconscious desire to avoid the bias that
if it took the United States ten years to develop an IRBM it will take
those foreigners longer.
Ways Out
Does the calling in of a consulting panel help? In most cases it is
doubtful. The two- or three-day panel has not kept up with the evi-
dence, could not possibly have done so. Just the classification of
much of the evidence precludes this. The panel is briefed by the
technicians, who under the best of circumstances feed into the mech-
anism the same data which formed their own views. The panel has
many of the same compulsions as the original technical group and is
apt to produce some varia-~ion of the "worst case." The consultant
does not have to act or budget on the basis of the judgments he
makes, and while the government estimator doesn't either, he does
feel a longer-term responsibility for his advice to the budgeter.
A formal intelligence estimate should whenever possible give a judg-
ment as to the most likely contingency. The scientist often says
that there is no basis for determining the most likely. The estimator
is therefore in a dilemma for which there may be no solution. Perhaps
such estimates can only be so clothed with caveats and qualifications
as to make them seem ethereal, and certainly annoying to the reader
who craves certainty. (Incidentally, the use of footnotes to call
attention to uncertainties is of limited value. Especially when
numerical tables are given, the footnote, usually in microscopic
type, is easily overlooked or forgotten.)
Perhaps. it should be the rule that the non-technical estimator
ingest the scientific contribution, append it as an annex to his
estimate, and present his layman's best judgment with all the de-
precating language he can think of as to the difficulty of making
confident estimates. This is what sometimes happens. But in most
cases, those participating in the coordination meetings on an estimate
include the technicians, professional and amateur alike, and the pres-
sure they exert on the chairman of the coordinating group to accept the
scientific contribution's language is great. The chairman can, and
often does, retreat to a ;itrict interpretation of "could," "possible,11
'Imight" and not try to fight the experts. In this process the reader
is likely to be given an impression of probability and firmness which
is not warranted.
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THE ROLE OF THE CONSULTANT IN INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
Most consultants, at one time or another in their careers wonder what
excuse there is for their existence. They do not have continuing ac-
cess to all the sources of information available to the intelligence
community. They can spend only a few hours in pondering the signifi-
cance of events which require days or weeks for proper analysis. Yet
they are asked for advice about the most complicated problems and are
expected to give their opinion on five minutes' notice. They wonder
if the ritual of consultation has any more value than other forms of
divination. They fear that they often seem naive and ignorant and
they know that they can correct these deficiencies only by using up
the time of intelligence officers who presumably have something better
to do.
These feelings of guilt are made worse by the fact that the work is
interesting and enjoyable. The problems are important, even if the
consultant's opinion is not. However ignorant the consultant may be
at the start of his career, he will find himself enlightened during
his period of service. The intelligence community has not solved all
its problems of style and organization but it usually suceeds in pre-
senting essential facts in a clear, logical and compact form. There
is no better way to get an education in world affairs than to act as
a consultant. But these benefits only deepen the consultant's doubts.
What does he give one-half so precious as what he receives?
For some kinds of consultant the answer is fairly easy. These are
the men who have dined with dictators or haggled with desert sheikhs,
who understand the mysteries of international finance or the intricacies
of oriental politics. Such men have specialized knowledge and technical
proficiency, they add to the pool of information and skill available to
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 2, No. 4, Fall, 1958, pp. 1-5.
For many years has been a consultant to the Board
of National Estimates.
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the intelligence community instead of draining it. The need for this
type of consultant is too obvious to require explanation; intelligence
can always use expert knowledge of little-known areas or of highly tech-
nical problems.
But even these experts are often consulted on matters in which they
have no special competence, and intelligence often recruits consultants
who are not experts at a--l. They are ordinary, well-informed citizens,
with some interest in foreign affairs. What special knowledge they may
have is usually confined to Europe, an area on which practically every-
one in Washington is an expert. It is to be hoped that they also have
good sense and good judgment, but these qualities are certainly at least
as common in the intelligence community as in any group of outsiders.
What can such men contribute to the intelligence effort?
Since I belong to this group of consultants which has no particularly
valuable expertise, my answer to this question may be somewhat self-
serving. As far as-I can see, the chief value of these consultants
lies precisely in their lack of special knowledge. If nothing else,
this makes them fairly representative of a large number of the consumers
of intelligence products. Any text-book writer kncws that it is fatal
to ask an expert whether a particular chapter is clear and meaningful.
Either he will read all his own knowledge into it and pass over loose
organization and glaring omissions, or he will quarrel with every gen-
eralization and load it with unnecessary detail. The best critic of
the first draft of a text-book is an intelligent person who has only
a sophomore's knowledge in the field. In the same way, the best critic
of an intelligence paper is probably the consultant who has only a
general knowledge of the topic. If he misinterprets a key passage,
if he is not convinced by the reasoning, if he feels that some essential
information has been omitted, then the chances are that several consumers
will have the same reactions.
For example, consultants aave sometimes been troubled by the indiscrim-
inate use of the terms "left" or "leftist." Since "leftist" can mean
anything from a man who believes in universal suffrage to an ardent
supporter of Communism it does not help very much to be told that the
cabinet of country X has "four leftist members." Consultants have also
been critical of the use of technical phrases in places where non-
technical language would be just as effective. Why say "has optimum
capability" when all that is meant is "works best?" The war against
vagueness and jargon must be fought by all members of the intelligence
community, but consultants can sometimes be used as shock troops in the
struggle.
Lack of precision is not the only reason why a paper may fail to be con-
vincing. Sometimes the argument seems too precise, it places too much
weight on logic and reasonableness. Consultants may not be expert but
they have usually had enough experience to realize that human
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beings seldom solve their problems in a completely logical and sensible
way. A nice example of this clash of logic and experience occurred a
few years ago when the French Assembly was debating the ratification of
the ill-fated EDC agreements. The first draft of a paper shown to a
group of consultants predicted with some confidence that the agreements
would be ratified: The arguments for this belief were strong. They
were based on intensive investigation of the attitude of the government
and the deputies and they were presented with impeccable logic. But some
consultants distrusted the underlying assumption that the deputies would
be reasonable and follow a policy of enlightened self-interest. They
argued that these qualities are rare in any political group and especially
in a French political group. Their opposition may have helped to make
the final draft of the paper much less certain about ratification, even
though it still leaned to the wrong side.
Criticism of style and logic is an essentially negative function. The
consultant can also make some positive contributions. He should not
hesitate to ask obvious and even silly questions. The greatest danger
in intelligence work, as indeed in all intellectual activity, is that
of falling into a repetitive routine. We all know of cases in which
judgments have been repeated year after year simply because they were
once sanctioned by the highest authority. It does no harm to reexamine
what seems obvious or to question long-established generalizations. It
was, I believe, a consultant who first queried the standard passage about
the USSR being unwilling to conclude an Austrian State Treaty. It was
another consultant who cast doubt on the cliche' that Mohammedanism and
Communism are fundamentally incompatible. On the other hand, certain
consultants were demonstrably wrong when they urged that there was a
real possibility that the USSR would withdraw from East Germany in re-
turn for a neutralization of the reunited country. But their question
at least forced the intelligence community to examine with greater care
its basic assumptions about Soviet policy in Germany and so in the end
to have greater confidence in its estimate that the USSR considered it
essential to retain its hold on East Germany.
Most important of all, the consultant, simply because he stands a little
farther away from the trees, can sometimes see the first signs of the
storms which will destroy certain portions of the forest. The intelli-
gence community, like any other group, must assume that there will be
a certain amount of continuity in the phenomena with which it deals.
If it did not do so, it could not function. If precedents mean nothing,
if what a statesman does today has no bearing on what he does tomorrow,
then it becomes impossible to make estimates. Some of the most valuable
intelligence papers ever written -- those projecting the future economic
growth of the USSR -- were based on the assumption that existing trends
would continue. But, granting all this, quantum jumps do occur in human
affairs. Sudden changes can overthrow precedents and distort trends.
It is hard for anyone to foresee such changes; it is particularly hard
for men who have spent years watching a certain pattern of conduct emerge
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and apparently stabilize itself. The worst failures of intelligence
in recent years have been caused by this inability to anticipate the
possibility of drastic change.
I am not suggesting that greater reliance on consultants could have
prevented many, or indeed any, of these failures. Like most educated
men, consultants tend to overestimate the element of continuity. But
sometimes consultants do not know very well what it is that is supposed
to continue. Because they have fewer old facts in their minds they are
more receptive to the scattered new facts which indicate that a change
is coming. I can remember two incidents which illustrate this point.
The first came after the death of Stalin. Certainly no one could then
have predicted the exact nature of the changes which would occur. But
there was a tendency on the part of some members of the intelligence
community to deny that azy change would take place. Certain consultants,
on the other hand -- mostly those who knew little about the Soviet
Union -- felt that drastic change was inevitable, that no one but Stalin
could continue Stalin's system. Their arguments may have been weak,
but their hunch was right. A little more willingness to look for signs
of change in the months following Stalin's death might have prevented
some poor estimates.
The other case was more recent. When the Gaillard government fell in
France early this year, the generally accepted opinion was that this
was merely another episode in the lamentable history of the Fourth
Republic. Another weak government would be formed, which would limp
along until replaced by an even weaker successor. Some consultants,
however, felt that this was the last straw, that the French would no
longer tolerate a system which made them politically impotent. In spite
of their counsel, the possibility of a Gaullist regime was still being
denied by some elements of the intelligence community almost up to the
moment when de Gaulle took power.
One final moral: on both occasion the consultants deferred to the
greater knowledge of the experts whom they were advising and did not
press their point of view very strongly. This was an abnegation of
their proper function. Dissent leads to questioning of established
opinion, and only through questioning established opinion can we arrive
at the imperfect knowledge which is all that intelligence can ever
attain.
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WORDS OF ESTIMATIVE PROBABILITY #
The briefing officer was reporting a photo reconnaissance mission.'
Pointing to the map, he made three statements:
1. "And at this location there is a new airfield. (He
could have located it to the second on a larger map.)
Its longest runway is 10,000 feet."
2. "It is almost certainly a military airfield."
3. "The terrain is such that the Blanks could easily
lengthen the runways, otherwise improve the facilities,
and incorporate this field into their system of strategic
staging bases. It is possible that they will." Or,
more daringly, "It would be logical for them to do this
and sooner or later they probably will."
The above are typical of three kinds of statements which populate the
literature of all substantive intelligence. The first is as close as
one can come to a statement of indisputable fact. It describes some-
thing knowable and known with a high degree of certainty. The recon-
naissance aircraft's position was known with precision and its camera
reproduced almost exactly what was there.
Estimative Uncertainty
The second is a judgment or estimate. It describes something which is
knowable in terms of the human understanding but not precisely known
by the man who is talking about it. There is strong evidence to substain
his judgment: the only aircraft on the field are military aircraft, many
are parked in revetted hard-stands, the support area has all the character-
istics of similar known military installations, and so on. Convincing
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 8, No. 4, Fall, 1964, pp. 49-65.
Mr. Kent is Chairman of the Board of National Estimates and
Director of the Office of National Estimates.
1 This particular briefing officer was not the photo-interpreter.
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as it is, this evidence is circumstantial. It makes the case, say,
90 percent of the way. And some sort of verbal qualifer is necessary
to show that the case is a 90-percenter, not a, 100. This is why the
briefer said "almost certainly."
The third statement is another judgment or estimate, this one made
almost without any evidence direct or indirect. It may be an estimate
of something that no man alive can know, for the Blanks may not yet
have made up their minds whether to lengthen the runways and build up
the base. Still the logic of the situation as it appears to the briefer
permits him to launch himself into the area of the literally unknowable
and make this estimate. He can use possible to indicate that runway
extension is neither certain nor impossible, or he can be bolder and
use nrobablv_to designate more precisely a degree of liklihood, a
lower one than he had attached to his estimate regarding the character
of the airfield.
Generally speaking, the rr..ost important passages of the literature of
substantive intelligence contain far more statements of the estimative
types two and three than of the factual type one. This is the case
because many of the things you most wish to know about the other man
are the secrets of state he guards most jealously. To the extent his
security measures work, to that extent your knowledge must be imperfect
and your statements accordingly qualified by designators of your uncer-
tainty. Simple prudence requires the qualifier in any type-three state-
ment to.show a decent reticence before the unknowable.
Concern over these qualifiers is most characteristic of that part of
the intelligence production business known as estimates. This is no
small recondite compartment; it extends to almost every corner of all
intelligence research work, from the short appraisals or comments of
a reports officer to the full-dress research study of the political or
economic analyst. Practically all substantive intelligence people con-
stantly make estimates. The remarks that follow are generally addressed
to all these people and their readers, but most especially are they
addressed to that particular institution of the estimating business
known as the National Intelligence Estimate and its audience.
The NIE, taking into account the high echelon of its initiators, pro-
ducers, and consumers, should be the community's best effort to deal
with the relevant evidence imaginatively and judiciously. It should
set forth the community's findings in such a way as to make clear to
the reader what is certain knowledge and what is reasoned judgment,
and within this large realm of'judgment what varying degrees of cer-
titude lie behind each key statement. Ideally, once the community has
made up its mind in this matter, it should be able to choose a word
or a phrase which quite accurately describes the degree of its cer-
tainty; and ideally, exactly this message should get through to the
reader.
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It should not come as a surprise that the fact is far from the ideal,
that considerable difficulty attends both the fitting of a phrase to
the estimators' meaning and the extracting of that meaning by the con-
sumer. Indeed, from the vantage point of almost fourteen years of
experience, the difficulties seem practically insurmountable. The why
and wherefore of this particular area of semantics is the subject of this
essay.
Let me begin with a bit of history.2
Early Brush with Ambiguity
In March 1951 appeared NIE 20-51, "Probability of an Invasion of Yuggo-
slavia in 1951." The following was its key judgment, made in the final
paragraph of the Conclusions: "Although it is impossible to determine
which course the Kremlin is likely to adopt, we believe that the extent
of Satellite military and propaganda preparations indicates that an attack
on Yugoslavia in 1951 should be considered a serious possibility." (Em-
phasis added.) Clearly this statement is either of type two, a knowable
thing of which our knowledge was very imperfect, or of type three, a
thing literally unknowable for the reason that the Soviets themselves
had not yet reached a binding decision. Whichever it was, our duty was
to look hard at the situation, decide how likely or unlikely an attack
might be, and having reached that decision, draft some language than
would convey to the reader our exact judgment.
The process of producing NIEs then was almost identical to what it is
today. This means that a draft had been prepared in the Office of
National Estimates on the basis of written contributions from the IAC3
agencies, that a score or so of Soviet, Satellite, and Yugoslav experts
from the intelligence community labored over it, and that an all but
final text presided over by the Board of National Estimates had gone
to the Intelligence Advisory Committee. There the IAC members, with the
DCI in the chair, gave it its final review, revision, and approval.
As is quite obvious from the sentence quoted above, Soviet and Satellite
intentions with respect to Yugoslavia were a matter of grave concern in
the high policy echelons of our government. The State Department's Policy
Planning Staff was probably the most important group seized of the problem.
2 Harry H. Ransom's Central Intelligence and National S'an?ri+
(Cambridge, Mass., 1958) carries on pp. 196-7 a bob-tailed and somewhat
garbled version of it.
3 Intelligence Advisory Committee, USIB's predecessor.
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Its chairman and members read NIE 29-51 with the sort of concentration
intelligence producers can only hope their product will command.
A few days after the estimate appeared, I was in informal conversation
with the Policy Planning Staff's chairman. We spoke of Yugolsavia and
the estimate. Suddenly he said, "By the way, what did you people mean
by the expression 'serious possibility'? What kind of odds did you have
in mind?" I told him that my personal estimate was on the dark side,
namely that the odds were around 65 to 35 in favor of an attack. He was
somewhat jolted by this; he and his colleagues had read "serious possibil-
ity" to mean odds very considerably lower. Understandably troubled by
this want of communication, I began asking my own colleagues on the Board
of National Estimates whet odds they had had in mind when they agreed
to that wording. It was another jolt to find that each Board member had
had somewhat different odds in mind and the low man was thinking of about
20 to 80, the high of 80 to 20. The rest ranged in between.
Of my colleagues on the Board at least one -- maybe more -- shared my
concern. My most obvious co-worrier was He and I were
shaken perhaps more by the realization that Board members who had work-
ed over the estimate had failed to communicate with each other than by
the Board's failure to communicate with its audience. This NIE was,
after all, the twenty-ninth that had appeared since General Smith had
established the Office of National Estimates. Had Board members been
seeming to agree on five month's worth of estimative judgments with no
real agreement at all? Was this the case with all others who participated
-- ONE staffers and IAC :-epresentatives, and even IAC members themselves?
Were the NIEs dotted with "serious possibilities" and other expressions
that meant very differen things to both producers and readers? What
were we really trying to say when we wrote a sentence such as this?
What we were trying to do was just what my Policy Planning friend had
assumed, namely to quote odds on this or that being the case or taking
place in the future. There is a language for odds; in fact there are
two -- the precise mathematical language of the actuary or the race track
bookie and a less precis though useful verbal equivalent. We did not
use the numbers, however, and it appeared that we were misusing the
words.
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The No-Odds Possible
Our gross error in the Yugoslav estimate, and perhaps in its predecessors,
lay in our not having fully understood this particular part of our task.
25X1A Asnd I saw it the substantive stuff we had been dealing with had
as abou i certain elements of dead certainty: Stalin was in charge in the
USSR, for example. These, if relevant, we stated affirmatively or used
impliedly as fact. There were also elements of sheer impossibility (Yugo-
slavia was not going to crack off along its borders and disappear physically
from the face of the earth); these we did not bother to state at all.
In between these matters of certainty and impossibility lay the large area
of the possible. With respect to the elements herein we could perceive
some that were more likely to happen than not, some less likely. These
were the elements upon which we could make an estimate, choosing some
word or phrase to convey our judgment that the odds were such and such
for or against something coming to pass.
At the race track one might say:
There are ten horses in the starting gate. It is possible
that any one of them will win -- even the one with three
legs.
But the odds (or chances) against the three-legger are over-
whelming.
Here, as in estimating Yugoslav developments, there is evidence to justify
the citing of odds. But in the world that intelligence estimates try hard-
est to penetrate -- a world of closed convenants secretly arrived at, of
all but impenetrable security, of skillfully planned deceptions, and so
on -- such evidence is by no means invariably at hand. In a multitude
of the most important circumstances -- situations you are duty bound to
consider and report on -- about all you can say is that such and such is
neither certain to happen nor is its happening an impossibility. The short
and proper way out is to say that its happening is possible and stop there
without any expression of odds. If you reserve the use of "possible" for
this special purpose -- to signal something of high importance whose chances
of being or happening you cannot estimate with greater precision -- hope-
fully you will alert your reader to some necessary contingency planning.
(You may not if you have dulled him by citing a lot of "possibles" of
little real consequence.)
If our gross error lay in not perceiving the correctness -- or at any
rate the utility -- of the above formulation, our particular error lay
in using the word "possibility" with the modifier "serious." Foster
and I felt that it was going to be difficult enough for the estimators
to communicate a sense of odds even if they stuck to a fairly rigorous
vocabulary; it was going to be impossible if the vocabulary were permitted
to become as sloppily imprecise as in normal speech. We had to have a
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way of differentiating between those possible things about which we
could make a statement of likelihood and the other possible things
about which we could not. The first cardinal rule to emerge was
thus, "The word 'possible' (and its cognates / ) must not be modified."
The urge to drop into ordinary usage and write "just possible," "barely
possible," "a distinct ((Dr good) possibility," and so must be sup-
pressed. The whole concept of "passibility" as here developed must
stand naked of verbal modifiers. 6
An Odds Table
25X1A Once and I had decided upon this first cardinal rule we turned
to tee ements where likelihood could be estimated. We began to think
in terms of a chart which would show the mathematical odds equivalent
to words and phrases of probability. Our starter was a pretty compli-
cated affair. We approached its construction from the wrong end. Namely
we began with 11 words or phrases which seemed to convey a feeling of
11 different orders of probability and then attached numerical odds to
them. At once we perceived our folly. In the first place, given the
inexactness of the intelligence data we were working with, the distinc-
tions we made between one set of odds and its fellows above and below
were unjustificably sharp. And second, even if in rare cases you could
arrive at such exact mathematical odds, the verbal equivalent could
not. possibly convey that exactness. The laudable precision would be
lost on the reader.
5
See page 59.
6 This usage is wholly in accord with the findings of the lexico-
graphers, who almost invariably assign it the number one position. Further
it is readily understood and generally employed by statisticians, scientists,
and the like, who sometimes define it as "non-zero probability." This
is much to my taste.
At the same time there can be no question of the existence of a second
usage, especially in the ordinary spoken word. This meaning here is most
emphatically not the broad range of "non-zero probability," but a var-
iable low order of probability, say anywhere below 40 or 30 or 20 per-
cent. Thus it would fall last in a series that named descending odds:
certain, probable, possible. When people use it to signify very low
odds, for example below 5 percent, they may say "remotely possible" or
any of its many cognates. This of course is not to my liking, but the
intended meaning is clear. The serious trouble comes when another group
of users lifts the word out of its position in the cellar of odds and by
the addition of augmenting adjectives makes it do duty upstairs: "serious
possibility," "great possibility," "highly possible."
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So we tried again, this time with only five gradations, and beginning
with the numerical odds. The chart which emerged can be set down in
its classical simplicity thus:
100%
Certainty
The General
93%,
give or take about 6%
Almost certain
Area of
75%,
give or take about 12%
Probable
Possibility
50%,
give or take about 10%
Chances about even
30%,
give or take about 10%
Probably not
7%, give or take about 5%
Almost certainly not
0% Impossibility
Important note to consumers: You should be quite clear
that when we say "such and such is unlikely" we mean that
the chances of its NOT happening are in our judgment about
three to one. Another, and to you critically important,
way of saying the same thing is that the chances of its
HAPPENING are about one in four. Thus if we were to write,
We had some charts run up and had some discussions in the community.
There were those who thought the concept and the chart a very fine
thing. A retired intelligence professional thought well enough of
it to put it into a book.? CIA officers, addressing War College
7 Washington Platt, Strategic Intelligence Production (N.Y., 1957).
The chart appears on the inside cover and again on page 208 -- not
exactly as above but in full accord with my principles. The trouble
comes on pp. 209-210, where General Platt departs widely, and to me
regrettably, from my notion of legitimate synonyms.
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audiences and the like, would sometimes flash a slide and talk about
it. A few copies got pasted on the walls of estimates offices in
the community. Some people were sufficiently taken that they advo-
cated putting it on the inside back cover of every NIE as a sort of
sure-fire handy glossary.
There were also those who did not think about the idea at all, and
others in opposition to it. Some fairly important people who had
a professional stake in this kind of thinking never took the trouble
to learn what it was all about. A good many did take a little trou-
ble and laughed. Still 3, third group found out all they needed to
know and attacked the whDle proposition from a hard semantic base
point. Of these more later.
In the face of this inertia and opposition and with the early de-
25X1A parture of my only solid ally, I began backing away
from bold forward positions. did continue harassing actions
and in the course of making a nuisance of myself to associates and
colleagues did pick up some useful converts, but I dropped all
thought of getting an agreed air-tight vocabulary of estimative
expressions, let alone reproducing the chart in the rear of every
NIE. With the passage of time it has appeared that the guerrilla
strategy thrust upon me by circumstance was the only one holding
any chance of success. In almost fourteen years this article is
my first serious and systematic attempt to get the messa e across,
and it probably would not. have been written if had not
consulted me about his foray into the same semantic problem.
The Aesthete Opposition
What slowed me up in the first instance was the firm and reasoned
resistence of some of my colleagues. Quite figuratively I am
going to call them the "poets" -- as opposed to the "mathematicians"
-- in my circle of associates, and if the term conveys a modicum of
disapprobation on my part, that is what I want it to do. Their
attitude toward the problem of communication seems to be fundamentally
defeatist. They appear to believe the most a writer can achieve
when working in a speculative area of human affairs is communication
in only the broadest general sense. If he gets the wrong message
across or no message at all -- well, that is life.
Perhaps I overstate the poets' defeatism. In any case at least one
of them feels quite strongly that my brief for the "mathematicians"
is pretty much nonsense. He has said that my likening my side to
the mathematician's is a phoney; that I am in fact one with the
sociologists who try by artificial definitions to give language a
bogus precision. He has gone on to stress the function of rhetoric
and its importance. And he has been at some pains to point out how
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handy it would be to use expressions like "gust possible," "mom well,"
and "doubtless" as they are loosely used in conversation. Could there
not be an occasional relaxation of the rule?
Suppose one wrote a sentence: "Khrushchev may well have had in the
back of his mind such and such, or indeed it is distinctly possible
that somebody had just primed him..." Now suppose you delete the
"well" and the "distinctly;" has anything been lost? There will be
those who point out that "may well" and "distinctly possible" do
convey a flavor which is missing without them. Of course the flavor
in question is the flavor of odds, communicated without quoting them.
The poets would probably argue that in a sentence of this sort the
introduction of any of the terms for particular odds would make the
writer look silly. Everybody knows that you could not have the evi-
dence to sustain the use of, say, "probably" in these two instances.
Hence you can only suggest odds by the use of the "may well" and
"distinctly possible" and so say something without saying it, in
short fudge it. The poets wounded when urged to delete the whole
ambiguous sentence, arguing that this serves only to impoverish the
product. They grow impatient when you advocate dropping only the
"well" and the "distinctly." And as for your accusation of fudging,
they generally counterattack, inviting you to write something that
fudges nothing.
There is a point which the poets can make with telling effect. It
is that there are probably just as many reading poets as there are
writing poets, and these are going to be numb to the intended meaning
of the "mathematician" writer. If you write to give no more than
just the general idea or general feel you may get through with great
success. Per contra, if you break your heart in an endeavor to make
yourself fully precisely understood, you may not. I realize the truth
in the above; I am not reconciled to it; I deplore it.
The Growth of Variants
Even if there had been no poets it would have been an impractical
idea to print a chart on the inside of the back page of each NIE
as a sort of glossary. To have used the one on page 55 and stuck to
these words exclusively would have imposed intolerable restraints
upon the prose. Even if it had been desirable it would have been
impossible to enforce such rigidity. But this was really never at
issue: from the start a number of perfectly legitimate synonyms for
the concept of possibility and a number for each of the five orders
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of likelihood were generally recognized.S
For example:
conceivable
could 10
Possible 9 . . . . . . . . . . may
might
perhaps 11
S Some of these synonymous meanings are expressed in verb forms.
Thus it is syntactically possible to use them closely coupled to one
of the adverbial expressions of odds, e.g., "we believe it likely
that ..." or "we estimate it is almost certain that such and such
will not ..." If we really mean to assign an odds value to these
verb forms good usage wou:_d forbid this kind of doubling-up. Math-
ematically, the probabilities would have to undergo a quite ridiculous
multiplication. Thus "we believe" (751 percent) multiplied by "likely"
(75? percent) would yield odds worse than 3 to 2 instead of 3 to 1.
If we are not assigning an odds value to "we believe" and "we estimate"
the purist would say we should not use them. Yet on many occasions
a writer will feel uncomfortable -- and justifiably so -- with a bare
"It is likely that ..." Such a bald statement is seemingly more con-
fident than the situation would warrant. The writer will feel some-
thing akin to a compulsion towards modesty and a drive to soften the
"likely" by introducing it with a "we believe" or "we estimate."
Almost invariably he does not intend to change the odds with "likely."
If one could set himself up as the arbiter, one would, I believe, rule
that the "likely," of odds and that its message was unaffected by the
introducing verb.
Doubling up in the "possibly" category is a different matter. We
should avoid "it might (or may) be possible for the Blanks to ..."
The verb should be present or future indicative, normally "is"
and "will be."
9 These synonyms must not be modified; might well, could well,
just could, barely conceivable, etc. are as inadmissible as the original
sin.
10 "Could" is includes. here because of many years' duty as a synonym
for "possible." It has also served as a short way of noting a capability
as in "The Soviets could ievelop [for "have the capability to develop!']
such and such a radar though we have no evidence that they are doing so."
The two usages are close, to be sure, but not identical.
11 As in, "It is almost certain that such and such will occur in
the delta, perhaps in Saigon itself."
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virtually certain
all but certain
Almost certain . . . . . . . . . highly probable
highly_likely
odds or chances] overwhelming
likely
we believe
Probable . . . . . . . . . . . we estimate
chances about even
50-50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . chances a little better 1 or less]
than even
improbable
unlikely
Probably not 12 . . . . . . . . we believe that ... not
we estimate that ... not
we doubt, doubtful
almost impossible
Almost certainly not . . virtually impossible
some slight chance
highly doubtful
If the chart were expanded to take care of these, it probably would
not fit on the inside back cover of the NIE, and even if it could be
made to, its complexity would probably exasperate gentle reader more
than it would edify him. Still worse, he would be confused by changes
that would have to be made in it from time to time, always to accommodate
newcomers among the accepted expressions.
The table of synonyms above did not come into being all at once; it
has grown to its present size by accretion. "We believe" came in
rather early, and as I remember via General Smith himself. "We
12 This group of words poses at least one very vexing problem.
Suppose you wish to make a positive estimate that there is, say, about
a 30-percent chance that such and such thing is the case. Assuming that
the thing in question is important, a 30-percent chance of its being the
case is highly significant. If you stick with the chart and write "it
is improbable for unlikely etc.] that such and such is the case" you
will probably convey a much more negative attitude than you intend.
There are many ways around the problem; they will, however, require a
few more words.
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estimate" was a bit later; "we think," "we expect," and "we judge"
are part way in.13 If they make it all the way I trust they will
be used and understood in the "probably"/"we believe" bracket. "We
doubt" has been accepted within the last few years as a legitimate equiv-
alent of "probably not." There will be others -- I sincerely hope not
very many. Keeping them out will take some doing. In the past, what-
aver the rigor insisted upon at the working and drafting level, who was
there to tell a General Smith or a Mr. Dulles, as he presided over the
IAC or USIB, that the revision he had just written out on a piece of
yellow paper was not permissible?
Consistency in Usage
From my remarks about the poets, it should be clear that my sympathies
lie with their mathematical opponents. But we mathematically-inclined
are ourselves not in good array. You might almost say that some of us
are talking in the decimal, others in the binary, and still others in the
root five or seven systems.
for example, consider the letter-number device which has been standard
with attache' and other reporting services, A-2, C-3, F-6, etc. The
numbers 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 designating the quality of a report's content
stand for, respectively: (1) confirmed by other independent or reliable
sources; (2) probably true; (3) possibly true; (4) doubtful; (5) probably
false; and (6) cannot be judged. Note that the number 3, "possibly true,"
is in the middle of the scale of odds, doing the duty I have hoped it
should never be asked to c.o.
Or consider the findings of a distinguished intelligence research
project. The object was to identify certain military units with respect
to the chances of their existence or non-existence. One group of units
was called "firm," another "highly probable," a third "probable," and
a fourth general group "possible." Except for one important thing, this
kind of ordering was wholly to my taste. The word "firm" was unfortunately
not used, as one might expect, to describe a condition of 100 percent
certainty. Its begetters;, upon cross-examination, owned that it was
meant to indicate something like 90-95 percent -- roughly the equivalent
of my "almost certain." This usage puts the lower categories slightly
askew from the terminology of my chart -- "highly probable" and "probable"
to my "chances better than even." "Possible," however, was used exactly
as I have felt it should be used, to designate something in the range of
chances between the absolute barriers of "certainty" and "impossibility"
to which no numerical odds could be assigned.
13 "We anticipate," used regrettably as a synonym for "we expect,"
is also part way in. I hope it gets out.
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.There are other heresies among the mathematicians, if they can be so
proclaimed. for example, look at the way in which photo-interpreters
have defined their key evaluative words:
Suspect -- Evidence is insufficient to permit designation
of a function with any degree of certainty,
but photography or other information provides
some indications of what the function may be.
Possible -- Evidence indicates that the designated function
is reasonable and more likely than other functions
considered.
Probable -- Evidence for the designated function is strong and
other functions appear quite doubtful.
This kind of formulation shows that someone -- probably a number of
people -- had spent a good amount of time striving for a set of rigorous
definitions. If you pause long enough to realize that the photo-inter-
preter's first problem is identification and then take a hard look at
his word "suspect," you will see that it parallels my usage for "possible."
But the P/Is have preempted "possible" for other duty. Their "possible"
fits nicely into the slot of "probable" in my scale of values and their
"probable" into my "almost certain."
We are in disarray.
To Estimate or Not
The green language of ordinary conversation abounds with estimates
given lightly and with a high order of confidence: "You're a shoo-in,"
"Not a Chinaman's chance," "A million to one." When you hear one of these
expressions or read its more decorous counterpart you may realize that
the matter at issue and the related judgment required little soul-
searching on the part of the estimator. In the intelligence business,
too, there are many occasions when the obscurities of the unknown are
easily pierced and we can launch an estimative "probably" or an "almost
certainly not" with speed and conviction.
There are, however, estimates at the other end of the spectrum -- estimates
which are patently impossible to make. The green language is equally rich
in coping with these: "Search me," "I wouldn't have the foggiest," "Your
guess is as good as mine," and so on.
It is unfortunate that intelligence estimators are not allowed this kind
of freedom in brushing off requests for estimates of the totally impenetrable.
Some way or another a convention has been established by which we may not
write the sentence: "It is impossible to estimate such and such." If we
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try this maneuver our masters will often rudely ask, "Why can't you;
what are you paid for, anyway?" If they do not bludgeon us thus, they
employ a combination of blackmail and flattery before which even the
most righteous among us are likely to fall. The play goes like this:
"You say you cannot estimate the number, type, and performance charac-
teristics of Chinese Communist long-range missiles for mid-1970. This
is data which is absolutely essential for my planning. Obviously no
one expects you to be wholly accurate or very confident of your find-
ings. But you people are after all the experts, and it would be too
bad if I had to go to others for this stuff who know far less about it
than you. And that is exactly what I will do if you refuse my request."
At this point we do not invite our would-be consumer to seek out his
own crystal ball team. We accept his charge, but with grave reser-
vations. Sometimes we try to stay honest by introducing contingencies.
"This will probably continue to be the case but only if ..., if ...,
and if ...." Then without closing out the contingencies with firm esti-
mates (which we are plainly unable to make) we merely talk about "ifs."
hoping that he will keep them in mind as time unfolds and that when
sufficient returns are in he will himself make the estimate or ask us
to have a second look.
At other times again, when it is the whole subject rather than one of
its parts that cannot be estimated, we meet the impossible frontally.
We scrupulously avoid the word "estimate" in describing the document
and its findings. Rather, we proclaim these to be intelligence assump-
tions for planning. In our opening paragraphs we are likely to be quite
specific as to where our evidence begins and ends, how we are speculating
about quantities of things that the other man may produce without knowing
whether he has yet made the decision to produce so many as one. We acknow-
ledge our use of the crutch of U.S. analogy, and so on. We promise to
speak, not in discrete figures, but in ranges of figures and ranges of
our uncertainty regarding them.
Some years back we were obliged by force majeur to compose some tables
setting forth how the Blanks might divide up an all-but- undreamed-of
stockpile of fissionable material among an as-yet-unborn family of
weapons. There were of course the appropriate passages of verbal warn-
ing, and then, on the chance that the numerical tables should become
physically separated from the warning, the tables were over printed
in red. "This table is based on assumptions stated in .... Moreover,
it should not be used for any purpose whatever without inclusion, in
full, of the cautionary material in ...." More recently we have issued
a document which not only began with a fulsome caveat but was set off
by a format and color of paper that were new departures.
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The Lurking Weasel
Unhappily, making the easy estimate is not the commonplace of our trade;
making the impossible one is happily equally rare. What is the common-
place is the difficult but not impossible estimate. And how we, along
with all humanity, hate the task! How fertile the human mind in devising
ways of delaying if not avoiding the moment of decision! How rich the
spoken language in its vocabulary of issue-ducking! "I have a sneaker
that ...," "I'd drop dead of surprise if ..." -- expressions with sound
but upon reflection almost without meaning. How much conviction, for
example, do you have to have before you become possessed of a sneaker;
how much of the unexpected does it take to cause your heart to fail?
Even the well-disciplined intelligence brotherhood similarly quails
before the difficult but not impossible estimate and all too often resorts
to an expression of avoidance drawn from a more elegant lexicon. What
we consciously or subconsciously seek is an expression which conveys a
definite meaning but at the same time either absolves us completely of
the responsibility or makes the estimate at enough removes from ourselves
as not to implicate us. The "serious for distinct/ possibility" clan
of expressions is a case in point.
Look at our use of "apparently" and "seemingly" and the verbal "appears"
and "seems." We, the writers, are not the unique beings to whom such
and such "appears" or "seems" to be the case; with these words we have
become everybody or nobody at all. So also with "suggests" and "indicates."
Perhaps the "to us" is implicit, but we do not so state; and far more
importantly, we practically never say why our suggestibilities were aroused
or assess the weight of the reason that aroused them. So still again with
"presumably," "ostensibly," and -- most serious of all -- "reportedly"
otherwise unmodified. The latter taken literally and by itself carries
no evaluative weight whatsoever, and who should know this better than
we ourselves who each day handle scores of "reports" whose credibility
runs up and down the scale between almost certain truth and almost cer-
tain nonsense. It is a pleasure to report -- authoritatively -- that
you will find very few unmodified "reportedlys" in the NIEs.
We say "the Soviets probably fear that such and such action will cause
thus and so." What I think we mean is "The Soviets probably estimate
that if they do such and such the reaction will be disadvantageous to
them." If we say "they probably hope ..." we mean roughly the opposite.
We talk of another country's willingness "to risk such and such." This
is a shorthand, and probably an unconscious one, for the country's having
estimated the odds against the unwanted thing's happening as well as how
unacceptable the unwanted thing would be if it occured. Its "risking
the danger" removes the critical judgment a step or two from our personal
responsibility.
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Words and expressions like these are far too much a part of us and our
habits of communication to be banned by fiat. No matter what is said
of their impreciseness or of the timidity of soul that attends their
use, they will continue to play an important part in written expression.
If use them we must in NIEs, let us try to use them sparingly and in
places where they are least likely to obscure the thrust of our key
estimative passages.
Here may I return to the group to which I have especially addressed the
foregoing -- the brotherhood of the NIE. Let us meet these key estimates
head on. Let us isolate and seize upon exactly the thing that needs esti-
mating. Let us endeavor to make clear to the reader that the passage in
question is of critical '_mportance -- the gut estilate, as we call it
among ourselves. Let us talk of it in terms of odds or chances, and when
we have made our best judgment let us assign it a word or phrase that is
chosen from one of the five rough categories of likelihood on the chart.
Let the judgment be unmistakable and let it be unmistakably ours.
If the matter is important and cannot be assigned an order of likelihood,
but is plainly something which is neither certain to come about nor imposs-
ible, let us use the word "possible" or one of its stand-ins -- and with
no modifier.
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IS INTELLIGENCE OVER-COORDINATED? ?
Ray S. Cline
Being in favor of coordination in the US intelligence community has
come to be like being against sin; everyone lines up on the right
side of the question. In fact, coordination has become what- 25X1A
calls an "OK" word ?-- one which defies precise definition but
sounds good and brings prestige to the user. Now I do not want to
deny that coordination is a good thing, but I would like to suggest
that there can be too much of a good thing. I am afraid the intelli-
gence community is suffering from over-coordination.
Part of the trouble is that few who are zealous for coordination stop
to define what it is.. In one sense -- unfortunately not always under-
stood -- coordination is the main business of the Director of Central
Intelligence. The public law creating CIA establishes as its purpose
"coordinating the intelligence activities" of the departments and
agencies of the US Government, including the intelligence components
of'State, Army, Navy, and Air.
I am sure that in the absence of any technical definition by Congress
the public statute employed the word "coordinate" in its normal Webster's -
dictionary meaning of "to regulate and combine in harmonious action."
This kind of coordination is essential; I doubt that we have enough of
In the intelligence community, unfortunately, the "activity" that has
been coordinated tirelessly has not been the operational conduct of
business or the analytical procedures followed by the intelligence
agencies, which the language of the law would imply to a layman, but
purely their verbal product in the form of written reports and esti-
mates. Regardless of how inharmoniously the intelligence agencies may
engage in "action," they have all settled down to coordination in the
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 1, No. 4, Fall, 1957, pp. 11-18.
Mr. Cline was formerly Deputy Director for Intelligence.
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sense of prolonged and detailed joint examination of the words issuing
forth from the national intelligence machinery. The apparent objective
is to insure that every agency approves of all the language formulations
employed in intelligence estimates.
Because coordination is felt to be automatically a good thing, the long
and difficult path to unanimity on wording is pursued without regard for
the time wasted or ideas lost. The search for the happy cliche, accep-
table to all, shopworn but durable, frequently ambiguous but always defen-
sible, goes endlessly on. It is this particular "coordination" process
that is in a fair way of becoming a millstone around the neck of the
Washington intelligence community.
It is ironic that the word "coordination" came into the government lexicon
as the harbinger of a liberalizing and energizing influence at work in
a ponderous bureaucratic machine. "Coordination" was the term hit upon
by the Army to describe a system of staff consultation devised shortly
before World War II in order to escape from the hidebound staff "concur-
rence"system then saddling the War Department General Staff with an al-
most unworkable consultative procedure. Under this post-World War I
system, any Assistant Chief of Staff of the War Department General Staff
was obliged to get the "concurrence" of the other Assistant Chiefs of
Staff on any action affecting their mutual interests, whether the inter-
ests of the other Assistant Chiefs of Staff were of major or minor impor-
tance.
The difficulty of getting a fully concurred memorandum through the War
Department General Staff in the emergency years of the late 1930's was
so great that the more energetic staff officers began to despair of
ever being ready or able to fight World War II. It was in this atmos-
phere that the coordination system developed and the formal concurrence
concept was discarded.
The new procedure presumed that the officer proposing action was -- on
behalf of his Staff Division -- entirely responsible for presenting
information and making recommendations. He was obliged to show his
study and proposals to appropriate officers in other Staff Divisions
with overlapping interests to insure that they had no reasonable grounds,
deriving from other actions they were taking, for dissenting from the
proposed action. The ultimate objective was "harmonious action" and
prompt decision. Quibbling over phrases and details became unpopular
under the pressure of the need for speed.
The result was that officers consulted in this informal fashion could
initial a paper as having been "coordinated" with them without feeling
that they were taking full responsibility for the phrasing of the study
or the recommended course of action. Coordination merely proved that
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officers legitimately concerned had seen the paper and had interposed no
objection that dissuaded the action officer from proceeding.
This War Department General Staff coordination system was so successful
in World War II that it became a matter of doctrine. In the armed ser-
vices it became a truism that a paper not carefully "coordinated" was
not a good staff paper. There is much to be said for this point of view,
and this kind of coordination is surely the responsibility legally placed
on CIA in intelligence matters -- that is, the obligation to consult and
discover the views of other interested parties in order to insure "harmon-
ious action." I wish it carried with it the original connotation of per-
forming this essential consultative task with reasonable speed and with-
out sacrifice of individual responsibility for describing the situation
requiring action.
The intelligence community does not recommend action, of course, but it
does describe situations which ought to be meaningful in terms of actions
policymaking officials are considering. A good intelligence estimate is
not an abstract exercise in cerebration but is a pointed analysis of a
situation relating to national security. It ought to be as effectively
presented and phrased as a good staff action paper -- perhaps even better,
because the subject matter is likely to be more abstract and the nuances
and color in the author's choice of words is likely to be vital to a
subtle understanding of tie situation being described.
By some lower-level-of-co:asciousness reasoning, coordination in the
intelligence business has in practice come to mean word-by-word con-
currence of all the intelligence agencies.
This practice has not only slowed down the production of intelligence
estimates at the national security level but also has insured that when
fully coordinated estimates do emerge into the daylight they usually
reflect the carefully considered, carefully phrased views of nobody in
particular. They are the drab and soulless products of a bureaucratic
system which seems to have a life and a limping gait of its own.
These harsh remarks are not intended to suggest that our national intelli-
gence estimating machinery is of no value. To the contrary, I would like
to make clear at the outset that I think the initial organization of this
machinery in 1951 -- with which I am very proud to have helped -- is
one-of the major advances in the history of the US intelligence business.
It is obviously desirable for the government officials making national
security decisions to have available in written form the best composite
judgments of the interagency intelligence community on the main strategic
situations affecting US security.
Even with the deficiencies I have suggested, the coordinated national
estimates provide a sort of floor of common knowledge and common agreement
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under the policymaking process. At a minimum they serve the purpose of
preventing wild ideas from carrying the day in the absence of effective
confrontation with the agreed general view. In the old days it was per-
fectly possible for one agency to produce a little thinkpiece setting
forth some preposterous theory about Soviet intentions and, through the
agency staff channels, present it on the highest policy level without it
occurring to anyone to question whether or not this represented the best
intelligence views of equally well informed people in the intelligence
community. I trust this does not happen now, or at least that there are
a great many people who would stand up at some point during the policy
consideration to say that such a proposal should be checked out against
the national intelligence estimates. This is clearly a net gain of enor-
mous worth.
What I am suggesting, however, is that we have won that net gain at the
price of making our estimates much less timely, interesting, and useful
than they could be. If we had not allowed ourselves to become so devoted
to the concept of coordination of the written word at all costs and at
all lengths, I feel we could do a better job of presenting the best views
available in the intelligence community rather than the lowest common
denominator of agreed doctrine.
The first great defect of our coordination technique is merely the stale-
ness that passage of time brings to a long-disputed thesis. In principle,
of course, the national intelligence machinery can bring out an estimate
in short order. I believe that there are in history the recorded cases
of estimates written and agreed in two or three days. These were very
short estimates produced under circumstances of extraordinary urgency.
It is enough to say that what is usually called a "crash" estimate is
usually produced in about two weeks' time. A good solid national intelli-
gence estimate runs anywhere from six weeks to six months. Perhaps we
can afford the luxury of writing estimates at this pace, but I very much
doubt that the estimates so produced are as useful as they could be if
they were produced much more rapidly. In the present system, unhappily,
the estimates are bound to contain very few surprises and very little
of immediate interest to our policymakers.
Much worse than this out-of-date quality, however, is the second great
defect of the coordinated estimate -- the flatness of ideas agreed by
four or five contributing draftees. It is simply not true that the
more people and the more views represented in the drafting of a paper,
the better the paper is. Sometimes a brilliant paper slips relatively
unmarred through drafting sessions in which a large number of people
are involved. But too often papers which, although imperfectly phrased
and controversially put, make a contribution to knowledge at the begin-
ning of the coordination process emerge either so long afterward that all
of the sparkle of the basic idea is lost or so much watered-down and flat-
tened-out as to be virtually meaningless.
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The reason for the delay, the watering-down, and the flattening-out is
not hard to find. Any group of working-level government officers
brought together to "coordinate" a paper are under an enormous obli-
gation to their bureaucratic superiors to emasculate any sentence
which suggests, or might suggest, the contrary of a view held in
their particular part of the bureaucratic forest. This caution tends
to bring on a process of horse-trading in which every interested party
secures his privilege of excluding an objectionable phrase in return
for permitting the exclusion of some sentence which is anathema to
another representative, although it may not be at all objectionable
to the rest of the group. Add up four or five or six of these represent-
atives as parties to the proceedings -- and crank in the normal personal
vagaries in reacting to Eomeone else's prose -- and you speedily reduce
a paper to its lowest common denominator of meaningfulness.
After all, we are all familiar with the phenomenon whereby most people
feel that it is possible to express their own ideas only in their own
words. This factor alone poses an almost impossible situation for any-
one trying to draft a simple, cleancut view of a complex intelligence
problem.
I, too, happen to like my own prose better than the words used so clumsily
by other people. Unfortunately, I have discovered that my colleagues also
seem to prefer their own, even over mine. My way of solving this problem,
and the problem of many drafters representing multiple interests, is to
determine, on the basis of subject matter, whether a paper is mainly my
paper or my colleague's paper. If it is my paper I strongly believe
that the best way to get the main ideas across is for me to draft it in
my own words, presenting it in the way that seems to me to be most effec-
tive.
At that point in drafting I like to consult all of my colleagues, whoever
they may be and whatever agency they may work for, who know something
about the subject. Inevitably I get a considerable amount of comment,
both on the main ideas and on the words in which they are expressed.
This I think is healthy, and in many cases I am persuaded either that
I am wrong in what I was trying to say --- in which case I want to change
it by all means -- or that I have not presented it very effectively --
in which case I am anxious to rephrase it in the light of my failure to
put it across. It may be that I think my colleagues are simply dense,
but nevertheless I ought to adjust my verbal presentation of the problem
to carry them along with me in understanding the subject and my view.
All this consultation with the best minds of the community is desirable
even essential. It is what I consider to be coordination properly
understood.
In other words, coordination is ideally a process of consultation with
knowledgeable and interested members of the intelligence community for
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the purpose of getting new information, taking account of differing
views, and insuring the most effective presentation of an intelligence
analysis. I think it is true to say that in many cases a person draft-
ing a paper on a broad and complex subject is obligated to accept the
information supplied him and, in general, to adopt the interpretive
views held by the most expert and responsible people, wherever they
work. This sharing of knowledge is the whole reason for working as
an intelligence community.
On the other hand, if there is any function for a central and coordinating
group in the intelligence community, it is precisely in the sphere of
subjecting to careful inquiry the views of all members in the community
on situations cutting across specialized departmental interests, making
a valid synthesis, and presenting the general truth of the matter in an
effective. manner, even though it may not fully please any single member
of the group. If, when this purpose has been accomplished, a responsible
member of the community still feels that the paper makes a major substan-
tive error, as distinct from being badly expressed, then I think it would
be most proper for the dissenting person to express himself as effectively
as he can in language of his own choosing setting forth where he feels
the basic paper has erred.
This last point -- the right of major dissent -- is an important one.
I know from experience that in many complex intelligence problems the
most effective way to discover the essential outlines of a tricky sit-
uation is to have an analyst present his case and then to listen to the
views of any dissenting analyst. I submit that the net result of a
strong view of this sort with a substantive dissent is much more helpful
and meaningful to the person who actually needs to know something about
the situation than is a compromise set of general cliches which do not
indicate the difficulty and conflict of view inherent in the situation
as seen through the evidence the intelligence community possesses.
The sum and substance of what I have been saying is that the US national
security system would be better served if the intelligence community
took a less vigorous view of the meaning of coordination and substituted
more informal techniques of consultation. In this way the intelligence
community could share knowledge and wisdom without delaying or weakening
the product.
Such an arrangement would work like a consulting group of physicians,
one a general practitioner and the others specialists. If the disease
is complex and cuts across specialists' lines, the general practitioner
(CIA in intelligence) should take responsibility for the diagnosis and
treatment, consulting and using the skills of the specialists (State,
Army, Navy, Air, et al.). In no case should the doctors confuse the
diagnosis to disguise the fact that they could not agree among themselves
nor, of course, should they let the patient die while they argue.
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In discussing the coordination of national intelligence it seems to me
essential to recognize at the outset that coordination is certainly here
to stay and probably will continue to be conducted pretty much along
present lines. No amount of talk will either make it go away or alter
its basic nature. This is so not because those people presently respon-
sible for coordinating national intelligence are insensitive to visions
of an ideal world where gentleman scholars would discuss world problems
broadly and then retire to write individual appreciations. It is so
primarily because national intelligence has become an integral part of
the complex machinery for planning and policymaking of the US Government
and has thereby acquired. responsibilities not previously held by intelli-
gence.
In the earlier and possibly more light-hearted years of CIA it was al-
ways a matter of some speculation as to who the users of national intelli-
gence really were. We had a distribution list with names on it, but we
had little evidence as to what happened once the estimates were delivered.
We were in the position of shooting arrows into the air -- some of them
elegantly shaped and still bearing the tool marks of individual crafts-
men -- and having them land we knew not where. There was some fretting
over this uncertainty, but it was balanced to a degree by an accompanying
freedom in how we directed our effort. Coordination in those days varied
in its difficulty and its intensiveness almost with the moods and states
of health of the participants. On one occasion, a coordination meeting
would become almost a pro forma operation. On another, it might be the
scene of sharply personal bickering and bad feeling, illuminated with
sparks of verbal wit and showered with forensic displays.
Over the past five years this has changed. The broadening development
of the centralized planning and policymaking mechanism has brought sharp
changes in all governmental activities involved with problems of national
'E Studies in Intelligence, Vol 1, No. 4, Fall, 1957, pp. 19-26.
Mr. Smith is Deputy Director for Intelligence.
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security. National intelligence has been affected along with the rest.
At the same time, national intelligence has gained strikingly in pres-
tige and authority, partly as a consequence of its new responsibilities
in policy and planning but also as a result of growing maturity and tech-
nical improvement throughout the entire intelligence community.
We no longer are in any doubt as to what use is made of national esti-
mates. In a majority of cases, the customer (the National Security
Council, one of its major members such as the White House, or one of
its subordinate components such as the Planning Board) has given us
specifications for the task and has set a date for its completion. If
our customer discovers new specifications to be included, alterations are
made before the estimate is completed; if he discovers his need has great-
er or less urgency than originally thought, the timing is adjusted. In
all those cases where the policy and planning mechanism has originated
the request, we know from the outset that the finished estimate will be-
come the basis for a review of US policy toward the area or problem
under consideration. We know this will be true also of a substantial
number of other estimates which have been initiated through other aus-
pices, including our own.
It is not new for intelligence to serve as a basis for policy. To
greater or less degree, this has always been so and has provided intelli-
gence with its reason for being. What is new is that this relationship
has been formalized and institutionalized in such fashion as to make
the connection far more direct and effective than ever before. Recog-
nition throughout the intelligence community of the immediacy of this
connection has profoundly affected both the estimates themselves and
their coordination.
to one of its remote ancestors, the literary or scholarly essay. In
the days of our youth the resemblance was more apparent than it is Coda
The present day national estimate bears only an indistinct resemblance
vides before beginning work.) It is inevitable and proper that some
readers, bringing to bear primarily the standards for literary or scholar-
ly essays, should criticize the national estimates for general lack of
reader appeal. It is perhaps also inevitable but considerably less proper
that they should simultaneously place the blame for this condition entirely
on the process of coordination.
National estimates are not scholarly essays. They are primarily work
papers for planners and policymakers. This does not mean that these
papers need be unreadable, or that they cannot be more readable than
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they sometimes are, but it does mean that they must be the embodiment
of precise writing. Anyone who has ever tried to write really precisely
-- so presisely that several different groups of planners can get exact-
ly the same content from a statement of fact or a judgment -- knows that
in order to reach such precision one must boil off nearly all the esters
of personal flavor and strive for a flat objectivity. Also, in this
connection, one must bear in mind that the planners and policymakers in
question are high level and have neither the time nor the necessity to
master enormous quantities of detail. They need only that amount of
detail necessary to support the handful of key estimative judgments to
be made about the situat'__on before them.
Having said this much, let us look more narrowly at the impact of coor-
dination upon these national estimates. First of all, let there be no
mistake about the necessity for coordination. Many criticisms of the pre-
sent coordinated estimates represent an attempt, in one guise or another,
to squirm away from this necessity. It may be true that one individual,
or a small group of talented individuals, could on many occasions, write
estimates with sharper edges than coordinated estimates, but the diffi-
culty is that such estimates would not meet the need of the White House
and the National Security Council. What the highest levels of the nat-
ional government most emphatically do not need is a batch of estimates
on the same subject by separate intelligence organizations, each paper
out of key with the othe:^ in exposition, emphasis, and conclusion. This
situation would merely pass responsibility for the ultimate intelligence
judgment on to the policymakers. What they require instead is a single
document which contains the collective judgment of the intelligence com-
munity, an estimate which delineates the areas of general intelligence
agreement and identifies where necessary the points of major substantive
dissent, an estimate to which all the chief intelligence officers of
the national government will concur. Looked at from this perspective,
the coordination process becomes the heart of the matter, not an unnec-
essary evil. Its characteristic defects and its burdens become problems
to be worked with and to be eased, not avoided. In fact, looked at from
this angle, one can even recognize that the coordination process has
benefits and merits in its own right.
Knowing as they do that the finsihed national estimate will become the
basis for a policy which will vitally affect the mission and responsibil-
ities of their department, the representatives of the various intelli-
gence agencies take the coordinating sessions seriously. As their depart-
ments' spokesmen, they have a deep and responsible interest in seeing that
the final estimate does not ignore information available to their depart-
ment or does not arrive at judgments contrary to the views of their depart-
mental intelligence specialists and chiefs. At the same time, they must
avoid damaging the prestige and integrity of their department by pushing
departmental views in defiance of contrary evidence or by failing to in-
form their department of the extent to which its view stands in isolation
from the rest of the community.
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The CIA responsibility in this process is different in kind but equally
great. In the first place, the draft discussed by the coordination meet-
ing is a CIA draft based on written contributions from the several depart-
mental agencies. These contributions, frequently longer individually than
the finished estimate, are rich in detail and analysis and provide a broad
base for the estimate. The CIA drafters synthesize these departmental
papers into a single estimate, making such augmentations or changes in
analysis or emphasis as they think the objective situation requires.
When this draft, well-tested within CIA, is placed before the coordin-
ation meeting, it has its own inner cohesion and strength. Like all well-
constructed and ramified pieces of writing, its built-in inertia makes
it hard to move very far. It responds gently to nudges but resists hard
shoves. Moreover, it has the support and protection of the CIA repre-
sentatives, including the chairman, who, though ready to accept suggested
improvements and useful additions or corrections, are quick to challenge
estimative changes unsupported by sound evidence or objective reasoning.
The national estimate which emerges from this intensive coordination has
been thoroughly stretched and tested but most times has not been altered
fundamentally. On those occasions when deep-reaching changes have been
made, the CIA representatives have become convinced that these changes
would produce stronger, sounder estimates.
A common complaint about coordinated intelligence -- or coordinated
anything for that matter -- is that it merely represents the lowest
common denominator of opinion. In the light of the discussion above,
the only accurate rebuttal to this charge as it applies to national
estimates is that it is not true. It is true that some degree of com-
promise is nearly always involved in the effort to reach full agree-
ment. Short of going to war, no method other than compromise would
appear to be available for reaching written agreement on really com-
plicated matters. This is all the more true in the realms of judg-
ment and future projection where national estimates must necessarily op-
erate. Intelligent and responsible compromise is an essential tool
in the coordination process, but, by definition, intelligence compromise
does not include adding buckets of water to sound judgments merely to
obtain agreed positions. The avenue which enables us to avoid this un-
desirable result is the dissent.
Keeping in mind that the primary mission of national intelligence is
to provide the White House and the NSC with agreed estimates, it ought
to be apparent that a national estimate laden with dissents would not
fit the requirement. By the same token, however, an estimate which
glossed over, or compromised out of existence, legitimate and funda-
mental divergencies would not meet the requirement. One does not want
to confront the President or the Secretary of Defense at every turn
with unresolved differences which force him to make his own choice.
At the same time, one does not want to paper over substantial diver-
gences and let him believe no differences of view exist.
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One must realize, however, that dissents are not easily contrived. First,
the actual substantive difference must be isolated and the dissenter con-
vinced that his is the dissenting and not the majority view. Then he must
accustom himself to the notion of standing naked and alone in a footnote
with his peers arrayed against him in the main text. Each of these stages
is invariably accompanied by surges of new conviction on the part of the
dissenter that his position is the right one, after all, and that one more
try will convert the rest of the group. In short, the trickiest and most
vexing problems in coordination revolve around the point at which the quest
for agreement should be abandoned and a clearly defined dissent should be
prepared. But to say it '__s hard is not to say it cannot be done. To pre-
vent enforced coordination, statements of dissent are employed now as often
as the skill of the CIA coordinators can bring them about. Growing maturity
among the intelligence conLnunity will probably make this an easier result
to obtain as time goes on,
Another common complaint about coordination is that it takes so much
time the estimates are no longer fresh when they are produced. In actual
fact, this criticism has less validity than almost any other. No one
involved in producing national estimates would deny it takes time. Papers
involving special research problems or new techniques have taken as long
as ten months. Routine estimates commonly take six to eight weeks. On
the other hand, the IAC machinery has produced a coordinated national es-
timate in five hours and has on several occasions produced them in 36,48,
or 72 hours. At first glance, in a world where the daily newspaper is
regularly scooped by television, six to eight weeks, let along ten months,
seems an unconscionable amount of time. Even five or forty-eight hours
seems long. Viewed from the perspective of operational or current intelli-
gence, it probably is a long time. Viewed from the perspective of planning
national strategy, it is not. A number of our estimates project forward
five years because it is necessary for some kinds of policy planning to
look five years ahead. Nearly all the estimates project at least a year
ahead. Against this time span, the time taken to produce them does not
seem long. To put it another way, an estimate which could not withstand
the passing of a mere eight weeks could scarcely serve as the basis for
planning a year or five years ahead.
But whatever view one has about the right length of time to spend producing
a coordinated national estimate, the remarkable fact is that the coordination
itself -- the time spent in meetings resolving differences in views and
obtaining an agreed text -- takes only a small fraction of the total time
spent. A study of twenty-four planned and routine national estimates,
the longest taking 285 days to produce and the shortest 62 days, disclosed
that the average time actually required for coordination meetings was under
ten percent. The remainder was spent in the preparation of terms of ref-
erence, research, and preparation of agency contributions, and the writing
and reviewing of the draft within CIA. Even this low percentage figure
does not tell the full story because it includes estimates on such matters
as Soviet gross capabilities, where weeks of meetings were held to work
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over the complicated evidence underlying detailed strength figures and
capabilities estimates. A more representative figure for coordination
meetings would be between one and three days, most commonly two.
Is one led inevitably by this discussion to the conclusion that the
necessary art of coordinating national estimates is in a perfect state?
The answer is certainly no. As in all good-sized meetings, both within
government and without, progress in coordination sessions is frequently
slow and uncertain. Too frequently, those who know the least talk the
most. Even worse, on some occasions one of the participants may be vir-
tually devoid of substantive grasp. Sometimes, persons with a fair under-
standing of the substance under discussion come so rigidly instructed re-
garding a certain point that, discussion of it is futile. Almost always,
there is a tendency among the participants to commit that fundamental
but all-too-human semantic error, that of identifying the word inexorably
with the thought: Thought A can only be expressed by Word A.
What is the remedy for this state of affairs? What can be done, par-
ticularly when much of the difficulty is inherent in the method? Can
we overcome the fundamental inefficiency of the committee meeting, that
peculiarly American contribution to the arts of governing? Well, cer-
tainly not, but we can exploit fully our growing technique in running
meetings, extracting from them their maximum value as the creators of
new perspectives and holding to a minimum their nonproductive aspects.
Can we elevate semantic understanding and sophistication to such a level
as to remove this most frequent barrier to agreement? Again, no, at
least not all at once, but we can recognize this shortcoming in ourselves
and thus contribute to greater flexibility in achieving a solution.
In short, the path to improvement of the coordination process lies not
through the imposition of ideal solutions but through gradual, slow
advance by small adjustments here and there. We can obtain better qual-
ity of representation at the coordination meetings. There is, in fact,
perceptible progress in this respect over the past several years. The
advantages of sending representatives with substantive understanding and
empowering them with a fair degree of latitude in negotiation are already
apparent to most of the IAC agencies. We can achieve a higher degree of
group responsibility and freedom from partisan attitudes as maturity in-
creases. Moreover, we can adopt various innovations in procedure as
they seem desirable. We could, just for example, ask the IAC agencies
to send representatives to participate with us in the drafting sessions
on certain occasions in order to speed the process and facilitate agree-
ment. But whatever we do, we cannot -- as I hope I have made clear --
do away with the coordination process. It is the heart of national
intelligence. To make it tick strongly and surely is our problem.
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D. ESTIMATIVE INTELL
IGENCE AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
A CRUCIAL ESTIMATE RELIVED 'E
Sherman Kent **
Special National Intelligence Estimate 85-3-62, entitled "The Military
Buildup in Cuba," became the official pronouncemen of the United States
Intelligence Board on 19 September 1962. This estimate was undertaken
when reporting from Cuba began to indicate a steep acceleration in Soviet
deliveries of military supplies to Cuba. The tempo of its production
was more rapid than "rou-i,ine," but far less rapid than "crash." At the
time it was completed, those of us engaged in it felt that its conclusions
A and B represented a ba3ic analysis of the situation. Here they are:
A. We believe that the USSR values its position in Cuba
primarily for the political advantages to be derived from
it, and consequently that the main purpose of the present
military buildup in Cuba is to strengthen the Communist
regime there against what the Cubans and the Soviets con-
ceive to be a danger that the US may attempt by one means
or another to overthrow it. The Soviets evidently hope to deter
any such attempt by enhancing Castro's defensive capabilities
and by threatening Soviet military retaliation. At the same
time, they evidently recognize that the development of an
offensive military base in Cuba might provoke US military
intervention and thus defeat their present purpose.
B. In terms of military significance, the current Soviet
deliveries are substantially improving air defense and
costal defense capabilities in Cuba. Their political
significance is that, in conjunction with the Soviet
statement of 11 September, they are likely to be regarded
as ensuring the continuation of the Castro regime in
power, with consequent discouragement to the opposition
at home and in exile. The threat inherent in these devel-
opments is that, to the extent that the Castro regime
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring, 1964, pp. 1-l8.
Mr. Kent is chairman of the Board of National Estimates and
Director of the Office of National Estimates.
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thereby gains a sense of security at home, it will be
emboldened to become more aggressive in fomenting rev-
olutionary activity in Latin America.
And conclusions C and D were an attempt to predict what further develop-
ments might occur. They read:
C. As the buildup continues, the USSR may be tempted to
establish in Cuba other weapons represented to be defen-
sive in purpose, but of a more "offensive" character: e.g.,
light bombers, submarines, and additional types of short-
range surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs). A decision to
provide such weapons will continue to depend heavily on
the Soviet estimate as to whether they could be introduced
without provoking a US military reaction.
D. The USSR could derive considerable military advantage
from the establishment of Soviet medium and intermediate
range ballistic missiles in Cuba, or from the establishment
of a Soviet submarine base there. As between these two,
the establishment of a submarine base would be the more
likely. Either development, however, would be incompatible
with Soviet practice to date and with Soviet policy as we
presently estimate it. It would indicate a far greater
willingness to increase the level of risk in US-Soviet
relations than the USSR has displayed thus far, and con-
sequently would have important policy implications with
respect to other areas and other problems in East-West
relations.
As is quite apparent, the thrust of these paragraphs was that the Soviets
would be unlikely to introduce strategic offensive weapons into Cuba.
There is no blinking the fact that we came down on the wrong side. When
the photographic evidence of 14 October was in, there was the proof.
Soon after the consequent crisis had subsided, a number of investiga-
tions were set in train aiming to understand why the estimate came out
as it did. What follows are my own thoughts on the subject and some
philosophical generalizations about the business of intelligence esti-
mating. My central thought is that no intelligence mechanism imaginable
can be anything like one hundred percent sure of predicting correctly
the actions of a foreign government in a situation such as this one was.
If similar situations develop in the future and if their course must be
estimated from the same sort of evidentiary base, these situations too
are bound to be susceptible to the same sort of misjudgment.
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The Estimating Machine
Although many of our readers are aware of the process by which National
Intelligence Estimates are produced, it is perhaps desirable to set forth
again the general ground-rules.
When time allows (and it did in the case of the. Cuba estimate) the pro-
cess is fairly complicated; it involves a lot of thought and planning
at the outset, a lot of research and writing in the intelligence research
organizations of the military and the State Department, a drafting by the
ablest staff in the business, and a painstaking series of interagency
meetings devoted to review and coordination. Before it gets the final
USIB imprimatur a full-dress NIE goes down an assembly line of eight
or more stations. At each it is supposed to receive (and almost always
does) the attention of a highly knowledgeable group. The Cuba estimate
passed through all these stations.
The laborious procedure has seemed to me worth while if for no other
reason than that it is aimed at achieving three important goals: the
production of a paper tailored exactly to the requirements of the policy
consumer; the full deployment of every relevant intelligence resource
(documents and knowledgeable people) within the community; and the attain-
ment of a best agreed judgment about imponderables, or lacking unanimity
the isolation and identification of dissenting opinion.
In any of the major estimates it would not be difficult to demonstrate
that a thousand, perhaps thousands of, people in intelligence work scattered
all over the world had made their modest witting or unwitting contribution
to the finished job. Foreign service officers, attaches, clandestine
operators and their operatives, eavesdroppers, document procurers, inter-
rogators observers, "photographers" and the photo interpreters, reporters,
researchers, sorters, indexers, reference and technical specialists, and
so on have been gathering, forwarding, arranging, and sifting the factual
stuff upon which the estimate rests. Final responsibility for the form
and substance of the ultimate blue book rests with far fewer, but a good
number just the same. These are the estimators throughout the community,
including the staff of the Office of National Estimates, the DCI's Board
of National Estimates, and the USIB principals themselves.
So much for what might be. called the physique of the process: it has also
its purely intellectual aspects. Like any solid conceptual construction,
the National Intelligence Estimate is prepared in rough accordance with
the procedures of the scientific method.
In very general and, I fear, over-simplified terms, the process goes like
this. After a confrontation of the problem and some decisions as to how
it should be handled, there is a ransacking of files and minds for all
information relating to the problem; and an evaluation, analysis, and
digestion of this information. There are emergent hypotheses as to the
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possible aggregate meaning of the information; some emerged before,
some after its absorption. No one can say whence come these essential
yeasts of fruitful thought. Surely they grow best in a medium of know-
ledge, experience, and intutitive understanding. When they unfold, they
are checked back against the facts, weighed in the light of the specific
circumstances and the analysts' general knowledge and understanding of
the world scene. Those that cannot stand up fall; those that do stand
up are ordered in varying degrees of likelihood.
The Search into Uncertainty
As an NIE begins to take form it carries three kinds of statements. The
first is easily disposed of; it is the statement of indisputable fact
("The Soviets have a long-range heavy jet bomber, the Bison"). The
second and third kinds do not carry any such certainty; each rests upon
a varying degree of uncertainty. They relate respectively (a) to things
which are knowable but happen to be unknown to us, and (b) to things
which are not known to anyone at all.
As an example of the formers we have seen the Bison up close and from
afar, photographed it in the air and on the ground
s performance characteris-
though some Soviet official knows with perfect assurance how many Bisons
there are, we do not. Our calculation of Bison order of battle is an esti-
mate, an approximation.
Over the years our estimates of these knowable but unknown things have
probably come closer and closer to the objective fact, but it is sober-
ing to realize that there is still a notable discrepancy between the CIA
and Air Force estimates of operational Bisons, and that only last year
our seemingly solid estimate of Bear order of battle had to be revised
upwards some fifteen percent.
It is worth noting here that matters far less esoteric than Bear order
of battle can and often do present literally unsolvable problems. An
innocent might think that such knowable things as the population of Yemen,
the boundaries of Communist China, the geodetic locus of Russian cities,
and thousands of other obvious matters of fact could be had for the ask-
ing. Not only can they not be had for the asking, they cannot be had
at all. The reason is, of course, either that no one has ever tried to
find them out, or that those who have tried have approached the problem
from different angles with different methodologies and gotten different
answers, of which no single one can be cited as the objective fact.
The third kind of statement, in (b) above, represents an educated guess
at something literally unknowable by any man alive. Characteristically
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it often deals in futures and with matters well beyond human control:
Will Nkrumah be with us fo:^ the next two years? five years? Or it
deals with matters under human control but upon which no human decision
has been taken: How many -Blinders will the Soviets nave five years
hence? What kind of antimissile capability? What will be their stance
in Cuba next year? It may be that the Soviet leaders have temporized
with these issues, agreed to go planless for another six or eighteen
months. Or it may be that they have decided, but at this time next
year will drastically alter this year's decision. Ask almost anyone
what he plans to do with his 1965 holiday and see what you get. If you
do get anything, write it down and ask him the same question a year from
now.
If NIEs could be confined to statements of. indisputable fact the task
would be safe and easy. Of course the result could not then be called
an estimate. By definition, estimating is an excursion out beyond estab-
lished fact into the unkncwn -- a venture in which the estimator gets such
aid and comfort as he can from analogy, extrapolation, logic, and judgment.
In the nature of things he will upon occasion end up with a conclusion
which time will prove to to wrong. To recoganize this as inevitable does
not mean that we estimators are reconciled to our inadequacy; it only
means we fully realize that we are engaged in a hazardous occupation.
It has been murmured that a misjudgment such as occurred in the Cuba SNIE
warrants a complete overhaul of our method of producing estimates. In
one sense of the word "method," this cannot be done. As indicated earlier,
the method in question is the one which students reared in the Western
tradition have found to be best adopted to the search for truth. It is
the classical method of the natural sciences, retooled to serve the far
less exact disciplines of the so-called science of human activity --
strategy, politics, economics, sociology, etc. This is our method; we
are stuck with it, unless we choose to forsake it for the "programmer"
and his computer or go back to the medicine man and his mystical communion
with the All-Wise.
What can be done is to take a hard look at those stages of the method
where it is most vulnerable and where a relaxation of vigilance or an
undue inflexibility may lead to error in judgment. First consider the
so-called evaluation of the "facts."
The Matter of Mental Set
In our business we are as likely to be faced by the problem of a plethora
of raw intelligence as by one of its paucity. In many of our tasks we
have so large a volume of data that no single person can read, evaluate,
and mentally file it all. It gets used in a finished intelligence study
only through begin handled along the line by a group of people who divide
the labor. Obviously the individuals of this group are not identical in
talent or anything else, and each brings to the task his own character,
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personality, and outlook on life. There is no way of being sure that
as they read and evaluate they all maintain the same standards of crit-
icism or use common criteria of value and relevance.
Merely as an example of what I am saying: it could have been that half
a dozen such readers were inclined to believe that the Soviets would
put strategic weapons into Cuba and another half-dozen inclined to believe
the opposite. In some measure the subsequent use of a given document
depends upon who handles it first and gives it an evaluation. It could
be that a valuable piece of information falls into disrepute because its
early readers did not believe its story. The obverse is also possible --
that an incorrect story should gain great currency because of being
wholly believed by wishful critics. It is a melancholy fact of life
that neither case is a great rarity, that man will often blind himself
to truth by going for the comforting hypothesis, by eschewing the pain-
ful.
What is true of the evaluation of raw intelligence at the reporting or
desk officer level is generally true all along the line. The main dif-
ference between the early evaluation and that at the national estimates
level is the quantity evaluated, not necessarily the quality of the eval-
uation. The relatively few people on the national estimates staff and
board cannot, indeed do not try to, read all incoming reports. They
read and. appraise what survives the first few stages of the winnowing-
out process -- still a formidable amount of paper. For the rest they
rely upon the word of the specialists who have handled the material in
the first instance. The senior estimates people have had more experience
than the average and their skills are probably greater, but they are
still men with normal human fallibilities.
In last analysis these fallibilities lie in a man's habits of thought.
Some minds when challenged respond with a long-harbored prejudice, some
with an instantaneous cliche. Some minds are fertile in the generation
of new hypotheses and roam freely and widely among them. Other minds
not merely are sterile in this respect but actively resist the new
idea.
Any reputable and studious man knows the good and evil of the ways of
thought. No worthy soul consciously nourishes a prejudice or willfully
flashes a cliche; everyone knows the virtues of open-mindedness; no one
boasts imperviousness to a new thought. And yet even in the best minds
curious derelictions occur.
The Data on Cuba
I do not believe, however, that any such derelictions occurred in the
matter of evaluating the evidence on Cuba. What little data we had
prior to 19 September I am sure we weighed and measured with open minds.
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What was this evidence? TD begin with, there was of course no infor-
mation that the Soviets had decided to deploy strategic missiles to
Cuba and indeed no indication suggesting such a decision. Moreover,
months after that decision had been reached, and during the period
when the estimate was being drafted and discussed, there was still
no evidence that the missiles were in fact moving to their emplace-
ment. With the benefit of hindsight one can go back over the thou-
sand and more bits of information collected from human observers in
the six months ending 14 October and pick out a few -- a very few --
which indicated the possible presence of strategic missiles. The
report of CIA's Inspector General says: "It was not until shortly
after mid-September that a. few ground observer reports began coming
in which were specifically descriptive or suggestive of the introduc-
tion into Cuba of Soviet offensive weapons."
The IG goes on to list the "handful" which "can be related" to these
weapons. The list comes to eight. Of these I would agree that no
more than two or possibly three should have stopped the clock. None
of these was available before the crucial estimate was put to bed.
Even if they had been here in time and even if we had intuitively
felt (and a notable among us did so feel) that such weapons were on
the way, these three bits of evidence would probably not, taken in
the context of the other thousands, have been seized on as pointing
to the truth. In the mass of human observation and reporting there
were items to support or destroy almost any hypothesis one could gen-
erate.
Nor did the aerial photog:^aphy of September dissipate the uncertainty.
Not only did it fail to soot the ominous indicators of missile emplace-
ment but over and over again it made fools of ground observers by proving
their reports inaccurate Dr wrong. The moment of splendor for the U-2s,
cameras, film, and PIs wh=n finally the sites and associated equipment
were photographed and identified had not yet arrived with the close of
the business day of 19 September.
Thus of the two classical invitations to error in the estimating business,
we cannot be said to have fallen for the first: I refer of course to the
neglect or wishful misevaluation of evidence because it does not support
a preconceived hypothesis.
Though perhaps tempted, we also did L4.t kick the problem under the rug.
We did ask ourselves the big question, "Are the Soviets likely to use
Cuba as a strategic base?" We asked ourselves the next echelon of ques-
tions, "Are they likely to base submarines, light bombers (IL-28s),
heavier bombers, and long-range missiles there?" Our answers are
cited above.
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The Logic of Intent
How could we have misjudged? The short answer is that, lacking the
direct evidence, we went to the next best thing, namely information
which might indicate the true course of developments. We looked hard
at the fact of the Soviet military buildup in Cuba for indications of
its probable final scale and nature. We concluded that the military
supplies piling into Cuba indicated a Soviet intent to give Castro a
formidable defensive capability -- so formidable as to withstand any-
thing but a major effort on the part of an attacker. We felt that the
Soviet leaders believed the worldwide political consequences of such
an effort would be recognized in the United States and would be the
strongest possible deterrent to U.S. military moves to overthrow Castro.
Obviously we did not go on to argue that the Soviets might think they
could raise the deterrent still higher by supplying the Cubans with long-
range missiles, which they would still proclaim to be purely defensive.
As noted, however, we did consider the matter. And in answering the
questions that we posed ourselves on the likelihood of the Soviets'
building Cuba into what this country would have to regard as a stra-
tegic base, we called upon another range of indicators. These were
indicators derivable from precedents in Soviet foreign policy.
When we reviewed once again how cautiously the Soviet leadership had
threaded its way through other dangerous passages of the Cold War;
when we took stock of the sense of outrage and resolve evinced by the
American people and government since the establishment of a Communist
regime in Cuba; when we estimated that the Soviets must be aware of
these American attitudes; and when we then asked ourselves would the
Soviets undertake the great risks at the high odds -- and in Cuba of
all places -- the indicator, the pattern of Soviet foreign policy,
shouted out its negative.
With hindsight one may speculate that during the winter and early
spring of 1962, when the Soviets were making their big Cuba decisions,
they examined the posture of the United States and thought they perceived
a change in it. Is it possible that they viewed our acceptance of set-
backs in Cuba (the Bay of Pigs), in Berlin (the wall), and in Laos as
evidence of a softening of U.S. resolve? Perhaps they did, and on this
basis they estimated the risks of putting missiles into Cuba as acceptably
low. Perhaps, when they contemplated the large strategic gains which
would accrue if the operation succeeded, their estimate of the U.S. mood
was wishfully nudged in this direction. And perhaps again, to close the
circuit, they failed to estimate at all the consequences of being them-
selves faced down in a crisis. If all these speculations are correct --
and there is persuasive argument to sustain them -- even in hindsight
it is extremely difficult for many of us to follow their inner logic or
to blame ourselves for not having thought in parallel with them.
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On 15 October we realized that our estimate of the Soviets' under-
standing of the mood of the United States and its probable reaction
was wrong. On 28 October we realized that the Soviets had realized
they had misjudged the United States. In between we verified that
our own feeling for the mood of the United States and its probable
reaction had been correct. In a way our misestimate of Soviet inten-
tions got an ex post facto validation.
Ways Out We Did Not Take
In brooding over an imponderable -- like the probable intentions of
the Soviet Union in the context of Cuba -- there is a strong temptation
to make no estimate at al.l. In the absence of directly guiding evidence,
why not say the Soviets m=_ght do this, they might do that, or yet again
they might do the other --- and leave it at that? Or like the news com-
mentators, lay out the scenario as it has unwound to date and end with
a "time alone will tell"? This sort of thing has the attractions of
judicious caution and an unexposed neck, but it can scarcely be of use
to the policy man and planner who must prepare for future contingencies.
Even more tempting than no estimate is the "worst case" estimate. This
consists of racking up al__ the very worst things the adversary is capable
of doing and estimating that he may undertake them all, irrespective of
the consequences to his own larger objectives. If one estimates thus
and if one is believed by the planner, then it follows that the latter
need never be taken by unpleasant surprise.
Engaging in these worst-case exercises may momentarily cheer the estimator.
No one can accuse him of nonchalance to potential danger; he has signaled
its existence at each of the points of the compass; congressional inves-
tigators will have lean pickings with him. But in all likelihood a worse
fate awaits. Either his audience will tire of the cry of wolf and pay
him no heed when he has really bad news to impart, or it will be fright-
ened into immobility or a drastically wrong policy decision.
It was tempting in the matter of Cuba to go for the worst case: but in
the days before 19 September we knew that the evidence would not sustain
such an estimate, and our reading of the indicators led us in the opposite
direction.
Why No Revision?
If wrong as of 19 September, why did we not put things to rights before
the 14 October photographs? Why did we not recall and modify the esti-
mate when the early ground observer reports reached us or when we finally
got the photo of the inbound Soviet ship with its deck cargo of crated
IL-28s? Could we not have repaired the damage a week or so in advance
of 14 October and given the policy-maker the advantage of this precious
time?
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In the first place, these pre-14 October data almost certainly would
not, indeed should not, have caused the kind of shift of language in
the key paragraphs that would have sounded the tocsin. Of themselves
and in context they should not have overpowered all to the contrary
and dictated a one-hundred-eighty-degree change to "The Soviets are
almost certainly developing Cuba as a strategic base right now." The
most they should have contributed to a new version would have been
in the direction of softening the original "highly unlikely" and add-
ing a sentence or two to note the evidence, flag a new uncertainty,
and signal the possible emergence of a dangerous threat. If we had
recalled the estimate or issued a memo to its holders in early October
we would have had a better record on paper, but I very much doubt that
whatever in conscience we could have said would have galvanized high
echelons of government to crash action.
In the second place, it is not as if these new data had no egress to
the world of policy people except through National Intelligence Esti-
mates. The information was current intelligence when it came in and
it promptly went out to the key customers as such. This is of course
the route that most, if not all, important items of intelligence follow.
That constituent part of an NIE that I earlier referred to as the range
of knowable things that are known with a high degree of certainty is
often very largely made up of yesterday's current intelligence.
In the multi-compartmented intelligence business, two compartments are
at issue -- an estimates compartment and one for current intelligence.
They are peopled by two quite separate groups and follow quite different
lines of work. Nevertheless, there is the closest interrelationship
between them. The current intelligence people handle almost minute by
minute the enormous volume of incoming stuff, evaluate it, edit it, and
disseminate it with great speed. The estimates people work on a longer-
range subject matter, hopefully at a more deliberate pace, and make their
largest contributions in the area of judicious speculation. NIEs are
produced at the rate of 50 to 80 a year; individual current intelligence
items at that of some ten thousand a year. The current people look to
estimates as the correct medium for pulling together and projecting into
the future the materials that continuously flow in. The estimators for
their part rely on the current people to keep alert for news that will
modify extant estimates.
The estimators do themselves keep the keenest sort of watch for this kind
of news. Indeed the estimates board members and staff chiefs start every
working day with a consideration of new information that might require
revision of a standing NIE. But the board feels that certain criteria
should be met before it initiates a new estimate. These are: (1) The
subject matter of the estimate must be of considerable current impor-
tance. (The situation in Blanka was important at the time of our last
estimate on the subject, but it is not very important now; hence today's
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news, which may give the lie to major portions of the Blanka estimate,
will not occasion its formal revision.) (2) The new evidence must be
firm and must indicate a significant departure from what was previously
estimated. (We would not normally recall an estimate to raise a key
"probably" to an "almost certainly" nor to change an estimated quantity
by a few percentage points. Unless we adhere to these criteria and let
current intelligence carry its share of the burden, very few NIEs could
be definitely buttoned up, and those which had been would have to be re-
opened for almost daily revisions. Maybe this is the way we should direct
our future effort; some of our critics seem to imply as much. Myself, I
think not.)
The Enemy's Viewpoint
Some of our critics havE suggested that we would have avoided the error
if we had done a better job of putting ourselves in the place of the
Soviet leadership -- that if we had only looked out on the world scene
with their eyes and thought about it the way they did we would not have
misread indicators and all would have been clear. Upon occasion this
proposition is made in a way to suggest that its articulator feels that
he has given birth to a brand new idea. "Your trouble," he says, "is
that you do not seem to realize you are dealing with Russian Communists
and a Soviet government policy problem." As such statements are made,
I must confess to a quickening of pulse and a rise in temperature. I
have wondered if such people appear before pastry cooks to tell them
how useful they will find something called "wheat flour" in their trade.
If there is a first rule in estimating the probable behavior of the other
man, it is the rule to -:ry to cast yourself in his image and see the
world through his eyes. It is in pursuit of this goal that intelligence
services put the highes-~ premium on country-by-country expertise, that
they seek out and hire men who have deeply studied and experienced a
given nation's ways of :Life, that they procure for these men daily
installments of information on the latest developments in the area of
their specialty. To the extent that objectivity of judgment about the
other man's probable behavior is the crux of the intelligence business,
to that extent is the importance of living the other man's life recog-
nized and revered.
Since at least World War I intelligence services have from time to time
seta group of individuals apart and instructed them to think of them-
selves as the enemy's general staff. Their task as a red team is to
ponder and act out the way the enemy will respond to situations as they
develop. The idea seems to be that by the creation of an artificial
frame -- sometimes going to the lengths of letting the personnel in
question wear the enemy's uniform and speak his sort of broken English--
you will get a more realistic appreciation of the enemy's probable
behavior than without the frills. It does not necessarily follow.
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Consider the case of one intelligence service that created such a unit
to simulate a Kremlin staff. It not only assigned some of its own off-
icers but also employed the talents of some real one-time Communists.
This latter move was regarded as the new "something" to cap all simi-
lar previous games. In a short time all members of the group became
spirited dialecticians and as such were able to give Soviet problems
impeccable Marxist solutions -- to which, however, a Stalin, a Malen-
kov, or a Khrushchev would not have given the time of day. This par-
ticular exercise always seemed to me to have reached a new high in
human fatuity. Five James Burnhams may afford insights into the work-
ing of Communist minds, but by no means necessarily into those of par-
ticular minds that are in charge of Soviet policy.
Of course we did not go in for this sort of thing. We relied as usual
on our own Soviet experts. As normally, they did try to observe and
reason like the Soviet leadership. What they could not do was to work
out the propositions of an aberrant faction of the leadership to the
point of foreseeing that this faction's view would have its temporary
victory and subsequent defeat.
The Determinants of Action
Within certain limits there is nothing very difficult or esoteric about
estimating how the other man will probably behave in a given situation.
In hundreds of cases formal estimates (NIEs, for example) have quite
correctly -- and many times boldly and almost unequivocally -- called
the turn. Behind such judgments a large number of subjudgments are
implicit. The other man will act as diagnosed because (1) he is in
his right mind or at least he is not demonstrably unhinged; (2) he
cannot capriciously make the decision by himself -- at a minimum it
will have to be discussed with advisers, and in nondictatorial govern-
ments it will have to stand the test of governmental and popular scrutiny;
(3) he is aware of the power of traditional forces in his country, the
generally accepted notions of its broad national interests and objectives,
and the broad lines of policy which are calculated to protect the one
and forward the other; (4) he is well informed.
To the extent that the "other man's" diplomatic missions and intelligence
service can observe and report the things he must know prior to his
decision, they have done so. He has read and pondered. These and other
phenomena very considerably narrow the area of a foreign stateman's
choice, and once thus narrowed it is susceptible to fairly sure-footed
analysis by studious intelligence types. As long as all the discernible
constants in the equation are operative the estimator can be fairly con-
fident of making a sound judgment.
It is when these constants do not rule that the real trouble begins. It
is when the other man zigs violently out of the track of "normal" behavior
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that you are likely to lose him. If you lack hard evidence of the
prospective erratic tack and the zig is so far out of line as to seem
to you to be suicidal, you will probably misestimate him every time.
No estimating process can be expected to divine exactly when the enemy
is about to make adramatically wrong decision. We were not brought up
to underestimate our enemies.
We missed the Soviet decision to put the missiles into Cuba because we
could not believe that Khrushchev could make such a mistake. The fact
that he did suggests that he might do so again, and this in turn suggests
that perhaps we do not know some things about Soviet foreign policy decision-
making that we should. We can be reasonably sure that certain forces which
sometimes mislead Western foreign offices are seldom effective in the Soviet
government. It is hard to believe, for example, that a Soviet minister
has to pay much heed to an unreasonable press, or to domestic pressure
groups, or, in the clutch, to the tender feelings of allies and neutrals.
If these well-known phenomena are not operative, what things are pressing
a Soviet decision-maker towards a misestimate or an unfortunate policy
decision? Obviously there are the fundamental drives inherent in Comm-
unism itself, but for these and the many things that go with them we, as
diviners of Soviet policy, are braced. Are there perhaps other things
of a lesser but nevertheless important nature that we have not fully
understood and taken into account? I would like to suggest two that are
closely linked: the role and functioning of Soviet embassies; and the
role of intelligence and the philosophy of its collection, dissemination,
and use. I would like to suggest that if we were to study these more
deeply we might discover that many a Soviet misestimate and wrong-headed
policy is traceable to the peculiar way in which the Soviets regard the
mission of their ambassadors and the role they assign to their intelli-
gence service.
Whence the Decisive Intelligence?
Obviously you cannot divine the functions of Dcbrynin in Washington by
studying Kohler in Moscow. Obviously a Soviet foreign mission has a
quite different aura from other foreign missions we know a good deal
about. But just what does a Soviet ambassador's job description look
like? What does his government expect him to do beyond the normal dip-
lomatic functions all ambassadors perform? What are his reporting fun-
tions, for example, and what kind of reporting staff does he have? What
do he and they use as the raw materials for their purely informational
dispatches -- if indeed they write any?
Does the embassy staff proper compete with the KGB men in its report-
ing? We know that the tcp KGB dog in an embassy has a certain primacy
over locally-domiciled Soviet citizens -- including the ambassador.
Does this primacy extend to reporting? Does the ambassador check his
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reports out with the KGB boss before sending them off? One thing we
can be sure of -- the KGB boss does not check his out with the ambas-
sador. If ambassadorial reports are written and sent, who in Moscow
reads them? Does Khrushchev? Do the Presidium members? How do the
highest echelons of government regard them as against, say, KGB or GRU
clandestine reports and pilfered documents?
I find myself wondering a lot about Dobrynin. Suppose he had been
informed of Moscow's estimate that the U.S. resolve had softened.
Suppose he had agreed with this estimate in general. Is it possible
that he would have gone on to agree with Moscow that the risks of send-
ing strategic missiles to Cuba were entirely acceptable? It may be
that he was not informed of this second estimate. But if he was so
informed, I have great difficulty believing he would have agreed with
it. Dobrynin is not a stupid man, and presumably he must have sensed
that Castro's Cuba occupied some special place in American foreign
policy thinking. Is it possible that, sensing the U.S. mood, he did
not report it, and bolster his findings from what he read in the press
and Congressional Record, what he heard on the radio and TV? Is it not
more likely that he did send back such appraisals and that Moscow gave
them little notice because they were not picked up in a fancy clandestine
operation? Is it possible that the conspiratorial mind in the Kremlin,
when faced with a choice of interpretations, will not lean heavily to-
ward that which comes via the covert apparatus?
We have recently learned quite a lot about this apparatus and the
philosophy of its operation and use. We think we have valid test-
imony from defectors who have come out of the Soviet and Satellite
intelligence services that enormous importance is attached to clandes-
tine procurement of documents containing the other man's secrets of
state. We know that whatever overt research and analysis work is done
in the Soviet government is not associated with the intelligence serv-
ices. That the findings of this type of effort are denied the cachet
of "intelligence" may rob them of standing, perhaps even of credibility.
We know that the Soviet practice of evaluating raw reports prior to
dissemination is a pretty rough and ready affair (no alphabetical and
numerical scale of estimated reliability, for example) that leaves
the customer with a very free choice to believe or disbelieve. There
is evidence to indicate that a KGB resident abroad has the right to
address a report to a military chief of staff or to the foreign minis-
ter or to Khrushchev himself. His boss in Moscow is in the chain of
communication and can, of course, stop dissemination to the high-placed
addressee. But if the resident in question is known to be a friend of
the addressee the boss will think twice before he interferes. We are
reasonably certain that there is a hot wire between Semichastny, chief
of KGB, and Chairman Khrushchev and that it is used to carry current raw
intelligence between the two.
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It is tempting to hope that some research and systematic reinterrogation
of recent defectors, together with new requirements served on our own
intelligence services, might turn up new insights into the Soviet process
of decision-making. The odds are pretty strongly against it; and yet
the -- to us -- incredible wrongness of the Soviet decision to put the
missiles into Cuba all but compels an attempt to find out. Any light
that can be thrown on that particular decision might lessen the chances
of our misestimating the Soviets in a future case.
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 THE INTELLIGENCE ARM: THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
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We are all aware, after two decades of cold war, that foreign policy
poses difficult problems for the democratic process of government.
Traditional concerns about the need for secrecy, speed of action,
special information, and sensitivities of foreign governments place
foreign policy in a special category of governmental affairs under
any circumstances. These concerns apply with even greater emphasis
to intelligence, which has become a special arm within the realm of
American foreign policy in recent decades. This development has fur-
ther magnified the problems of exercising responsible controls over
the policy process, and bringing to bear adequate judgments concern-
ing operational effectiveness.
Even the most straightforward categories of military intelligence,
those that affect the national security directly and immediately,
including estimates of an opponent's preparations for a surprise
attack or a dangerous shift in the disposition of his strategic
forces, raise issues that are far from simple and clearcut. We
can all agree, for example, that information regarding Soviet missile
deployments is of the highest importance. But verification usually
takes considerable time, especially if previous information had been
proven incorrect after painstaking review. Or the political price
of collection might be very high, as was the case in the U-2 crisis
of 1960. Someone must measure at the outset the relative costs of
"not knowing" as against the price of finding out, all before an
incident has occurred or a particular fear is confirmed. Similarly,
it takes great wisdom to decide what degree of verification, short
of certainty, can justify a grave retaliatory or preventive measure.
Still more complex and elusive is the field of political intelligence
involving answers to such questions as: What policies and objectives
Fred Greene is professor of political science at Williams
College. He is the author of The Far East and Dynamics of Inter-
national Relations. This selection appeared in Foreign Policy in
the Sixties, Roger Hilsman and Robert C. Good (eds.) (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), pp. 127-140.
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are other states pursuing? Under given circumstances which of the par-
ticular options apparently open to them will they choose? And what
would their reactions be to the specific policies or proposals put for-
ward by the United States?
The Cuban missile crisis lends itself to detailed study of the complex
intelligence craft because the crisis was of limited duration, the maj-
or events of the drama were sharply etched in detail, and intelligence
played a central role in the formation of policy before and after the
discovery of the Soviet Strategic missiles in Cuba. From this incident,
many general principles of the intelligence function may be derived;
from it too we may see hcw intelligence serves (effectively or other-
wise) as an instrument of foreign policy. For this confrontation re-
quired of intelligence a general estimate of a basic political situation:
that of the Soviet-American power equation and of fundamental Soviet
security policy. Intelligence also had to look for specific signals
that would indicate important changes in Russian behavior patterns. The
policy stakes involved in effective collection and accurate evaluation
of evidence were high, but so were later decisions on how to sue and
disseminate this hard-won information. Throughout the crisis, intelli-
gence provided the decision makers greater leeway than otherwise would
have been the case, in such crucial choices as the timing of their reaction,
the diplomatic method and arena of response, and even the substance of the
policy adopted.
The political roots of the missile crisis lay in the decision of the
Castro government to throw Cuba into a deep socio-economic revolution
along what its leaders held to be Marxist lines. This was combined
with a diplomatic alignment with the Soviet Union, source of much aid
and favorable trade agreements during 1960-61. Among the more impor-
tant American reactions following the Bay of Pigs incident of April,
1961, was the determination to remove Cuba as a participant in the inter-
American system, an effort that bore fruit after considerable debate at
Punta del Este in January, 1962. There, by a bare two-thirds majority,
the O.A.S. went beyond its 1960 condemnation of Communist intervention
in hemispheric affairs to exclude, but not expel, Cuba from its system.
During the months that followed, the Cubans apparently sought the pro-
tection of a Russian alliance and treaty of guarantee but instead received
the Soviet offer to place surface-to-surface missiles (S.S.Ms.) on their
soil. A treaty between tie two states, announced on September 1, 1962,
promised Cuba arms and te3hnicians "to resist the imperialists' threats."
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CPYRGHT
American intelligence operations by the beginning of September had al-
ready discovered the presence of various defensive dispositions, the
most significant of which were anti-aircraft or surface-to-air missiles
(S.A.Ms.), and the presence of at least 3,500 Russians in Cuba. During
the first half of September, President Kennedy and other high officials
reported in detail on defensive weapons entering Cuba, said that no of-
fensive weapons (especially S.S.Ms. and bombers) had arrived, and re-
peatedly warned Moscow against placing such weapons in Cuba. The Soviet
Union stated somewhat ambiguously on September 11 that all dispositions
were defensive in purpose, stressing, that is, intent rather than type
of weapon. In retrospect, it appears that after the mid-summer decision
to place S.S.Ms. in Cuba, the Russians began to ship supportive materials
there in early September and the missiles began to arrive in the middle
or latter part of that month.
American responses in late September included a congressional authoriza-
tion on September 24 for the President to call up 150,000 reservists and
an effort by the U.S. Air Force to have its Tactical Command combat ready
in one month.1 Air reconnaissance was intensified though bad weather and
the elaborate nature of the effort delayed total coverage for a while.
However a U-2 flight on October 14 revealed the construction of S.S.M.
sites and later photographs enabled intelligence officers to estimate the
full scope of the Soviet effort. The week of October 16-22 was devoted
to reaching a decision as to the basic American response and the follow-
ing period, October 22-28, brought on the famous confrontation. The Pre-
sident revealed the crisis in a speech on October 22; the naval quarantine
on missile shipments to Cuba took effect on October 24; Mr. Khrushchev's
first letter arrived October 26; an American U-2 was destroyed October 27
in the only military engagement of the incident; and the Soviet Union
agreed to a withdrawal of its strategic weapons on October 28.
Although a brilliant success in the end, the Cuban missile crisis of
1962 also brought in its train many disagreeable surprises. The Russians
did manage to ship strategic weapons across the ocean in secrecy. They
also apparently operated with unexpected speed and efficiency. Compar-
isons with Pearl Harbor come to mind immediately: misreading the opponent's
intentions, misjudging his technical capacity, not crediting him with suf-
ficient audacity, and analyzing how he would act by imagining how we would
act in such a situation. Still we suceeded in 1962 in contrast to the
disaster of 1941, and end results still count importantly in evaluating
an intelligence effort.
Nonetheless, within the United States, the aftermath brought consider-
able criticism of the intelligence community. This criticism, which placed
1Henry M. Pachter, Collision Course (New York, 1963), p. 7.
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in sharp relief many of the issues and lessons of the crisis, fell into
two main categories -- those regarding basic concepts and those dealing
with particulars. Among the former or more philos,)phical issues is the
problem of weighing theory and fact as guides to an analytical effort.
This involves the eternal need to develop some working hypothesis that
enables an analyst to place masses of information in some meaningful
pattern; against this is the requirement to guard incessantly against
jumping prematurely to conclusions, by letting the facts speak for them-
selves, at least to a certain extent. A second conceptual issue concern
the intelligence official's approach -- should he emphasize the worst or
most dangerous interpretation of the facts or possible evolution of a
situation, if only to protect the harassed policy maker from experiencin
unpleasant and critical surprises? And what stress should intelligence
place upon intentions as against the capabilities of a given antagonist?
The second category of criticism underlines the specific inadequacies
of intelligence as a given situation unfolds. This involves an ability
to make accurate deductions from known facts -- in this case, for example
whether the presence of air defense missiles signified the presence of
other, strategic missiles. In other words, were the analysts too opti-
mistic in their interpretation of the facts on hand? Then there is the
matter of timing: did intelligence officers overlook critical evidence
regarding the presence of strategic missiles in the crucial twenty-four
days between September 21 and October 14, 1962? On a point not squarely
within the intelligence framework, can we distinguish between defensive
and offensive weapons in this instance; or does the effort to do so
mislead an opponent with regard to the nature of America's planned re-
sponse? How can one estimate whether, and to what degree, an opponent
was aware of the depth of America's emotional involvement in the Cuban
issue?2 In addition to this range of problems, we must also consider
the effect of the existing bureaucratic structure upon the ability of
the intelligence community to function properly.
I believe that our intelligence effort came out well with regard to
those issues raised by such critics as Senators Keating and Stennis
2 Klaus Knorr places special emphasis on this point in "Failures
in National Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Cuban Missiles,"
World Politics XVI (April, 1964), 464-65.
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CPYRGHT
(in his Preparedness Subcommittee report) and Mr. Hanson Baldwin. A
major point in the entire controversy centers upon the fact that the
United States intelligence community, because of its theoretical orien-
tation, was surprised by the Soviet effort to put strategic missiles
so far from its homeland. The Stennis Preparedness Subcommittee point-
ed out that there was a certain philosophical conviction in the intelli-
gence community that it would be incompatible with Soviet policy to
introduce strategic missiles into Cuba.113 This fundamental assumption
rested on the belief that the Soviet Union would not risk placing vul-
nerable and important weapons outside of the area in which it exercised
direct physical control. It had never done this before and, save for
the error of the Korean War -- a mistake that Khrushchev had acknow-
ledged indirectly many times -- the Soviet Union cautiously refrained
from risking a major and direct confrontation with the United States.
Building on this analysis, both Mr. Baldwin and the Senate report came
to the unwarranted conclusion that the intelligence community tried to
make the facts fit its preconceptions and pet theories, and so failed
to allow empirical evidence to call the tune.4
Actually, as of September, 1962, the intelligence analysis of Soviet
behavior patterns rested squarely on the then available facts gathered
with painstaking care. To assume a Russian strategic missile effort
in Cuba as late as mid-September would have been the theoretical flight
of fancy that the critics rightly consider so dangerous. The issue,
then, does not center upon a misguided effort to force reality to comply
with predetermined views. Rather, it is far more complex and agonizing,
especially because the analysts based their reasoning on the solid foun-
dation of prudence and experience. Since we know that nothing continues
on the same course forever, the question emerges: when does a situation
change and when do all precedents or existing patterns become dangerously
out of date? That is, when must an intelligence officer decide that a
foe is about to do something rash and novel, something that is quite dan-
gerous, and something for which hard evidence is lacking? This problem
more accurately reflects the issues that emerged in 1962 and deserves
further consideration and research. Past experiences involving both
3 U.S. Congress, Senate, Armed Services Committee, Preparedness
Investigation Subcommittee, Investigation of Preparedness Program, 88th
Cong., 1st Sess., 1963, S.R. 75. See the New York Times, May 10, 1963,
for the report's "Summary of Major Findings."
4 Hanson Baldwin, "The Growing Risks of Bureaucratic Intelligence,"
The Reporter, Aug. 15, 1963, pp. 48-52. Mr Baldwin quotes approvingly
the Senate report on this and other matters.
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strategic suprise and anticipations that never became reality (possibly
because of preventive measures) require careful investigation. This
involves an examination of the estimates made, their degree of accuracy,
and the significant patterns, if any, that emerged in those situations
marked by drastic and unexpected actions.
A related problem is whether an intelligence officer should emphasize
the worst situation that might develop in light of available evidence.
The Stennis report holds that "there seems to have been a disinclination
on the part of the intelligence community to accept and believe the omin-
ous portent of the information which had been gathered. In addition the
intelligence people apparently invariably adopted the most optimistic
estimate possible with respect to the information available. This is in
sharp contrast to the customary military practice of emphasizing the
worst situation which might be established by the accumulation of evi=
dente." As we shall soon note, there was absolutely no hard evidence
before September 21, 1962, concerning strategic missiles, so that be-
fore that date it would have taken a clairvoyant to "accept and believe"
anything of the sort. (One almost gets the impression from studying
criticisms that evidence is of a secondary nature, almost a mere verifca-
tion of overwhelming intu_tive knowledge that the missiles were already
there.)
When a situation is not c---ear-cut, and various interpretations are
possible, it is indeed the duty and tradition of intelligence to point
out the worst possibility, Yet this act does not suffice to guarantee
security in a given situation, since officials responsible for actual
plans and operations will discount a Cassandra who consistently emphasizes
the greatest danger. Their own experience tells them that less dangerous
and more likely developments in a spectrum of possibilities frequently
come to pass. They will discount new and dire intelligence warnings in
ambiguous situations if they have already had their fill of them. There
is, at the same time, an opposite danger that those who wish to alter an
existing policy radically will seize upon any anticipation of great dan-
ger, no matter how carefully qualified in an intelligence analysis, to
argue for the adoption of their position as the only escape from impend-
ing disaster.
A third conceptual problem, one repeatedly stressed by Mr. Baldwin is
that we must go by capabilities rather than by intentions. These words
connote a sharp contrast between reliance on the facts (capabilities)
as against trying to guess what is in the enemy's mind (intentions).
To stress intentions, Mr. Baldwin feels, is to give intelligence control
over policy makers, by compelling the latter to follow the single line
of action that best reflects the analysis of intentions. This is an
unfair criticism, if only oecause the alleged difference between capabil-
ities (inference: facts) and intentions (inference: guesses) is a myth.
aor do calculations based on intentions necessarily put a nation's security
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on more dangerous grounds than when we base estimates only on capabil-
ities. For example, we assumed that the Russians had the capability
of manufacturing X number of missiles in the late 1950's, based on our
knowledge of their physical plant and their technical capacity. Is this
a meaningful, hard fact if other information, a point argued vehemently
by Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, leads us to conclude that they in-
X
tend to produce, say only Y missiles?5 Is one not derelict in his duty
to stress only the larger sum if the other figure looks correct? If we
always went by capabilities, how would we ever keep our own arms below
our own maximum capability?
More fundamentally, evidence of an intention must rest on hard facts to
a degree sufficient to make capability -- another set of hard facts --
an unsure basis of analysis. Otherwise the uncertainty would not appear
in the first place. In short, we usually have two sets of competing hard
facts, making an estimate in either direction somewhat of a guess. Ana-
lysts therefore follow the more convincing evidence or the more frequent
or meaningful experience. Otherwise, to chain oneself to capabilities --
for example, the Russians can invade Iran or they can overturn the Finnish
government -- could lead to a harmful diplomatic and military posture at
a given moment, if other evidence regarding intentions indicates that these
are unlikely events. Would not an exclusive stress on capability also
mean control over policy makers by intelligence? Clearly, the problem
of capabilities and intentions is too subtle to resolve simply by iden-
tifying either one with "the facts."
The intelligence community has also been subjected to the criticism
that its thinking was influenced by wishful and optimistic interpre-
tations of the facts, thereby making its evaluations and estimates far
too sanguine. Thus, the Preparedness Subcommittee held that the intelli-
gence community was inclined to accept only those things which bolstered
an optimistic interpretation. Yet in the late summer of 1962 the intelli-
gence community was considerably disturbed, even though it had patiently
screened a tremendous amount of information without finding evidence that
5 See for example the Testimony of Secretary Gates in Department of
Defense Appropriations for 1961, Part l,esp. p. 23. Hearings, Subcommittee
of the Committee on Appropriations, 86th Gong., 2nd Sess., 1960.
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the Soviets had placed strategic missiles on the island. Because they
were worried, intelligence officials increased their efforts to make
certain that nothing was amiss. The critics themselves in different
contexts, have reported the considerable variety of efforts at intelli-
gence collection undertaken that September. No one held that a strategic
missile base on the island lay outside the realm of possibility; indeed,
because of the dangers involved, intensive efforts were made, leading to
the alert and rapid discovery of-the missile emplacements.
Before September 21, as Mr. Baldwin has noted, there was no evidence
that the Russians had strategic missiles in Cuba. Vet Mr. John McCone,
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, felt that the Russians
would install missiles of a strategic sort and he proved to be correct.
He based his view on a deduction that the emplacements of S.A.Ms. indi-
cated an intent to instal- S.S.Ms. on the island. Mr. McCone was proven
correct in the Cuban case.. However, the Russians have put S.A.Ms. in
Indonesia; Iraq had them before the 1963 coup; the L.A.R. was reported
in the press to have them in 1964; and India has been promised a sizable
number of S.A.Ms. It is quite possible that the Soviet Union will give
or promise surface to air missiles to other states since they bring large
political dividends at little economic cost. Some states will reject
these weapons as unnecessary or too expensive to maintain; others might
find the offer attractive., for prestige and security reasons.
This is not to say that the establishment of S.A.M. sites in Cuba in
mid-1962 was not of itself a politically and militarily serious develop-
ment. But though significant, this did not allow a firm conclusion that
S.S.Ms. were also present... without substantiating evidence. The existent
of S.A.Ms. did arouse suspicions, thereby adding to the intelligence com-
munity's determination to intensify its surveillance. To go beyond such
prudent responses and to argue that the presence of S.A.Ms. equals the
presence of S.S.Ms. does riot afford a reliable basis for analyzing the
significance of S.A.M. emplacements in other parts of the world.
There is also the question of timing. When was the evidence physically
there? When did we learn about it? When did we actually believe it?
6 See the letter by Congressman Samuel Stratton in The Reporter,
Oct. 10, 1963, defending the intelligence officials, and the editor's
response, quoting the Senate report, supporting the criticism made in
the report and by Mr. Baldwin, pp. 8, 10.
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Here we are dealing with what ultimately proved to be America's greatest
triumph. Mr. Baldwin has noted that "irrefutable evidence becomes avail-
aboe, commencing about September 2l."7 This statement contains an infer-
ence, albeit vague, that there was some degree of certainty in the evidence
during the twenty-four days between September 21 and October 14. Senator
Keating has stated that he was told early in October of evidence from
sources other than aerial reconnaissance; the latter, he observed, did
not "fully record the presence of strategic missile sites until October
Was irrefutable evidence obtained -- and overlooked -- in those twenty-
f our days? Was it new and strikingly different from the vast number of
false alarms, such as those reported in the press, of the previous two
years? Or are we again dealing with the clarity of 20-20 hindsight,
which made the evidence both irrefutable and clearcut after the aircraft
had done their job? Senator Keating himself has noted that via aviation
we recieved "fully recorded" evidence on October 14. That date was about
the earliest on which evidence of actual construction could have been
perceived through this medium. This remarkable achievement does not
mean that other evidence was not required or sought. But it does indi-
cate that we learned through air photography what the Russians were
doing just as they mounted a significant effort to build their missile
delivery structure in Cuba.
Was the evidence that came in earlier through different sources suffi-
cient to make a convincing case within the United States? Would it have
enabled the government to take the diplomatic and strategic offensive?
And how pressed were we for time? To take the last question first, we
should note that even after October 14, the President wanted eight more
days in which to prepare his program and his arguments, and then it took
five additional days to settle the issue. Hence we still had time --
almost two weeks -- after the Russian missile construction effort reach-
ed a sufficiently advanced state on October 14 to be photographed.
Even more important was the relationship between the type of evidence and
the diplomatic strategy that the President selected. Having decided on
open diplomacy and a direct confrontation rather than a covert effort to
force the Russians out, conclusive evidence presentable in an open forum
became pivotal to his endeavor. With this as national policy, decided
upon by the responsible officials (in accordance with the requirement
that intelligence should not control or direct policy), it seems only
7 Baldwin, "The Growing Risks of Bureaucratic Intelligence."
0 Letter by Senator Kenneth Keating in The Reporter, Sept. 12, 1963,
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reasonable to conclude that the evidence gathered by aerial reconnais-
sance was both essential and timely. It admirably suited the President's
basic objective of getting the missiles out of Cuba.
To be valuable, intelligence cannot operate in a vacuum; rather it must
help broaden the choices available to the prudent leader and make these
options more meaningful. It is of greatest service when it enhances
national policy in the diplomatic context within which it is employed.
In the effort to convince the diplomatic and public opinion of the world,
any evidence accumulated by the United States government by means other
than aerial photography during the last week in September and the first
two weeks in October, however important, would not have done this job.
Nor, as we have seen, did the time span in this situation have a signif-
icant negative effect on cur ability to respond. What does emerge is
that other types of firm information are difficult to acquire, take time
to verify, require the moot careful evaluation, and present formidable
problems as instruments of diplomacy. These handicaps will continue to
beset intelligence as an arm of foreign policy in the foreseeable future.
There remains the issue of whether a distinction can be made between
offensive and defensive wea ons. The administration carefully distin-
guished between them in September, stressing that only the former were
unacceptable. But did the administration's attitude, in accepting one
type of missile, lead the Soviet Union to feel that the United States
would take a less determined stand against the presence of strategic
missiles? Mr. Baldwin avers that the distinction is impossible because
defensive weapons (for example, S.A.Ms.) can protect offensive ones,
thus making the context of employment rather than physical properties
the key factors. Yet the administration did not appear confused on
this score in 1962; nor d'_d it believe as Senator Keating argues, that
it had blurred the issue by drawing such a distinction. It was in fact
issuing a last warning to the Russians against going beyond their sig-
nificant defensive build-up in Cuba. During the first half of September,
the President in his press conference on September 13 and Under Secretary
Ball in his testimony before the Congress on October 3 both stressed the
difference between offensive and defensive weapons in this vein.9 Mr.
Ball's testimony, detailing the presence of defensive weapons, was pub-
lished in full. Mr. Walter Lippmann in a long follow-up analysis care-
fully went over this presentation, pointing out the distinctions between
defensive and offensive weapons and warning about the consequences of
9 The Washington Post and Times-Herald, Sept. K and 14, 1962.
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the latter.10 The effect of these public statements and writings was
to clarify the differences between the two types of weapons and to
underline the danger that would follow if the Russians placed strategic
missiles or bombers in Cuba. It is difficult to see how any of this
could have left the Russians confused, because, unlike other situations
in the past, these signals from Washington came through quite distinctly.
The evidence thus reveals a fairly clear picture. The Russians simply
chose to disbelieve what was said, or concluded that Washington did not
mean what it said. Perhaps they felt that the United States would not
act before the missiles were in position and then would be afraid to act,
so that it did not matter what statements were made in September. Since
their calculations were made long before September, it seems only fair
to conclude that the Russians in their gamble were insensitive to all
American statements, rather than encouraged or confused by them. If such
is the case, then we should properly concentrate on how such a dangerous
condition came to pass.ll On the other hand, the Russians may well have
acted rationally in recognizing the large risk involved but felt that it
was worth taking because of the great benefits that success would bring.
Once launched on this course, they may have convinced themselves that
the risks were not so high, and so disregarded American warnings.
In the end, it was Russian thinking and analysis that was seriously
mistaken and the Soviet Union had to pay a very high price as a conse-
quence. We should recall that American intelligence credited Moscow
with a desire, based on the record of the past, to operate in a prudent,
non-provocative way. The intelligence community considered actions in
violation of such precepts to be out of character and foolish, and in
the end it was proven correct. Perhaps the critics who overlook this
fail to recognize that many actions on the part of foreign governments
are beyond our capacity to influence. Is this another variation of the
"illusion of American omnipotence"?
Each side apparently made the mistake of identifying its opponent's
mode of calculation with its own. Thus Russian estimates of American
lO Imo., Oct 9, 1962.
11 Knorr, in "Failures in National Intelligence Estimates," argues
that the Soviet leaders failed to grasp the depth of American feeling
against Cuba and so under-estimated the risks their action incurred.
However, in light of the audacity of the move, it is difficult to assume
that the Russians did not realize that this was a most risky enterprise.
Moreover, it was not emotionalism over Cuba but concentration on the
danger posed by Soviet power that sparked the American reaction, which
emphasized the bipolar nature of the confrontation.
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reactions to Russian initiatives were quite possibly colored by Moscow's
knowledge of how it itself would react. After all, the Kremlin stood by
while the United States ringed it with air and missile bases during the
1950's. Thus each side "plays all the roles" -- but calculates the other's
initiatives or responses from its own perspective. Overcoming this incli-
nation is a formidable task -- worthy of the most patient effort. Certain-
ly, at the time, the argument that our acceptance of defensive weapons
and our warnings against offensive ones blurred the issue would not have
been credible. We need only remember the shocked response of the American
public when the President spoke on October 22 in order to realize how
sharply the country distinguished between the two.
In addition to considering philosophic precepts, the question of timing
and type of intelligence, and the nature of the weapons involved, we
must also examine some comments made about the organizational setting
of the intelligence operation in Washington. Mr. Baldwin has noted
that it suffers from excessive bureaucratic centralization and from a
predisposition to follow administration policy objectives in a way that
prejudices its interpretation of data. Actually the component agencies
that comprise the intelligence community are independent and autonomous
bodies, somewhat removed from the policy effort. They come to their
own conclusions based on their own efforts. The rise of the Defense
Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.) as a centralizing body within the Defense
Department may reduce the voices of the three services, but it is also
possible that the Department of Defense will speak with four independ-
ent voices rather than three as in the past. Not only do the existnece
of D.I.A. and C.I.A as potential rivals make it clear that we are a long
way from centralized, monolithic control, but the other intelligence
groups in Washington retain their independence because they are compon-
ent parts of still other branches of the government involved in national
security matters.
These different bodies have their own sources of intelligence and their
own requirements, and each stresses differing aspects of this broad field.
This means that richness of sources is not necessarily mere duplication,
for different requirements elicit significantly different kinds of infor-
mation. One great marginal advantage is the wide scope this allows for
cross-checking. In any event, we must overcome the notion that duplica-
tion in government is the same "bad thing" as duplication in business.
The question of prof it-through-efficiency and singleness-of-effort are
not necessarily the criteria by which one can judge success in an enter-
prise so dangerous and tricky as national security. We find considerable
autonomy even within the defense establishment and C.I.A., let alone in
the relations between these two components or between one of them and
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other intelligence, bodies. As in other forms of political and social
organization, there are recurrent conflicts of view within an agency,
and serious disagreements often produce alignments that cut across
formal bureaucratic lines. All too often a finished product will
suffer from compromises among the interested parties, who water down
its content excessively. This is a far cry from the imposition of a
single viewpoint from a higher political or administrative authority.
This raises the question of how to balance vigorous autonomous efforts
in the research and evaluation field with a substantial final version
that gains community-wide acceptance. All one can arrange institution-
ally is a framework that allows for diversity and some method of objec-
tive appraisal and judgment. Even so, those in opposition to an adopted
position have every right and duty to take exception and they are quite
willing to do so when issues of national security are involved. Thus
intelligence is not made to fit a finished product or to coincide with
presidential viewpoints or statements. To argue that intelligence offic-
ials dare not disagree once the President says there is a certain number
of troops in Cuba is to ignore the fact that the statement is based on
the findings of the intelligence community. If a minority of the intelli-
gence officials holds a different view on this or any other point, what
is the President to do? Is he simply to base his statement on the minorit
position, because it is more ominous or more reassuring? All this should
not inhibit those in the minority from adhering to their position or try-
ing to prove themselves correct.
Finally the power of outside forces to investigate and police the intel-
ligence community is highly underrated. The Congress has great powers
in this field and if it does not exercise them, it is not because the
machinery of government prevents it from doing so. It may reflect an
unwillingness to bear the burden of dealing with vast amounts of sensi-
tive information. Yet when one looks at the performance of the Joint
Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, involving the most serious
and horrendous matters, as concerns both security sensitivity and de-
structive capacity, it seems that the Congress could logically play as
effective and constructive a role in the intelligence field as well.
A joint committee on intelligence would doubtless have a salutary effect
in both policy and administrative matters.
In conclusion, the Cuban missile crisis indicates that, though the
intelligence community was surprised at the start, it handled the situa-
tion fairly well. The careful nature of its effort in late summer and
early fall, and the manner and speed with which it uncovered evidence
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indicate that it was not entirely napping. At the same time, the
critics, by raising issues in public perform a valuable service in
requiring officials to re-examine and re-study their activities and
calculations during a crisis. Much has been done to clarify the
facts and illuminate problems in the public realm. All this is to
the good. In the course of this intellectual encounter we have
seen how certain basic p:^inciples of intelligence affect the form-
ulation and conduct of foreign policy. We have also seen how an
elemental objective of intelligence, to provide for a nation's
strategic security, encounters numerous and unexpected difficulties.
Research into earlier crises, evaluation of the impact of intelli-
gence upon events for good and for bad, and explanations of unan-
ticipated developments --- all admittedly with the aid of hindsight --
are essential for a broader understanding of the achievements and
limitations of intelligence as an instrument of foreign policy.
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To recall the atmosphere of September and October 1962 now seems almost
as difficult as to recreate the weeks, more than two decades earlier,
before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But if we are to understand the on-
set of the Cuban missile crisis, it is worth the effort. Indeed we may
learn something about the problems of foreseeing and forestalling or,
at any rate, diminishing the severity of such crises by examining side
by side the preludes to both these major turning points in American
history. In juxtaposing these temporally separate events, our interest
is in understanding rather than in drama. We would like to know not
only how we felt, but what we did and what we might have done, and in
particular what we knew or what we could have known before each crisis.
Afterthoughts come naturally following the first wave of relief and
jubilation at having weathered the missile crisis and forced the with-
drawal of the missiles. But it is good to keep in mind the obvious
contrast with Pearl Harbor. At the least, Pearl Harbor was a catas-
trophe, a great failure of warning and decision. At the very worst,
the missile crisis was a narrow escape. Taken as a whole, however,
its outcome must be counted as a success both for the intelligence
community and the decision-makers. But a comparison of the failure
at Pearl Harbor and the Cuban success reveals a good deal about the
basic uncertainties affecting the success and failure of intelligence.
It is true for both Pearl Harbor and Cuba that we had lots of infor-
mation about the approaching crisis. In discussing this information
it will perhaps be useful to distinguish again between signals and
noise. By the "signal" of an action is meant a sign, a clue, a piece
of evidence that points to the action or to an adversary's intention
to undertake it, and by "noise" is meant the background of irrelevant
or inconsistent signals, signs pointing in the wrong directions, that
tend always to obscure the signs pointing the right way. Pearl Harbor,
* Mrs. Wohlstetter is a member of the Social Science Division
of RAND and is the author of Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.
This article appeared in Foreign Affairs, July, 1965, pp. 691-707.
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looked at closely and objectively, shows how hard it is to hear a signal
against the prevailing noise, in particular when you are listening for
the wrong signal, and even when you have a wealth of information. (Or
perhaps especially then. There are clearly cases when riches can be em-
barrassing.)
After the event, of course, we know: like the detective-story reader
who turns to the last page first, we find it easy to pick out the clues.
And a close look at the historiography of Pearl Harbor suggests that in
most accounts, memories of the noise and background confusion have faded
quickly, leaving the actual signals of the crisis standing out in bold
relief, stark and preternaturally clear.
After the crisis, memoriss fade and recriminations take their place.
For a time the Cuban missile crisis figured as an outstanding triumph
for the United States -- in the swift discovery of "hard evidence,"
in the retention of American initiative, in the strict security main-
tained and in the taut control of power by the Executive Committee.
Today, some of these aspects of the Cuban crisis have been thrown
into doubt, and in particular, critics talk of a significant intelli-
gence failure in anticipating the crisis. In both Pearl Harbor and
Cuba the notion of a conspiracy of silence has been raised, the sugges-
tion that we knew all along and failed to act, that Kennedy, like Roos-
evelt, had some special :information which he withheld, or that information
was so obvious that even a layman could have interpreted it correctly.
New York's Senator Keating, for example, was explicit and articulate
in insisting that he believed long-range or medium-range missiles and
Soviet combat troops were in Cuba as early as August. On August 31 he
said in the Senate that he had reliable information on landings between
August 3 and August 15 a-L the Cuban port of Mariel of 1200 troops wearing
Soviet fatigue uniforms. He also reported that "other observers" had
noted "Soviet motor convoys moving on Cuban roads in military formation,"
the presence of landing craft, and of suspicious cylindrical objects
that had to be transported on two flatcars, and so on. He claimed that
his statements had been verified by official sources within the U.S.
Government. Between August 31 and October 12 he made ten Senate speeches
warning of the Soviet military build-up.
After the crisis, Congressmen naturally wondered why we had not listened
to Senator Keating, why it was possible to have had these warnings and
many others and still be surprised on October 15. But failures to foresee
and to forestall catastrophes are by no means abnormal. Military men and
statesmen have no monopoly on being taken by surprise. The example of
the Dallas police department springs to mind, and the murder of Oswald
which gave rise, like Pearl Harbor, to rumors of conspiracy in high places
and in local governments? Nor are American businessmen and financiers
immune. Witness the $1500 million DeAngelis vegetable-oil scandal, where
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normally cautious bankers suddenly found they were holding empty stor-
age tanks as security for their loans.
Conspiracy with the culprit, however, is hardly a universal line of
explanation, as is suggested by a recent natural catastrophe -- the
earthquake in and near Alaska that sent a tidal wave to shatter the
northern shore of California and caught some towns unprepared in spite
of timely warnings. For the warnings sounded just like many others
in the past that had not been followed by tidal waves. These are all
American examples, but Singapore, "Barbarossa" (the German attack on
Russia) and many others suggest that we are not dealing with a purely
national susceptibility to surprise.
Defense departments and intelligence agencies, of course, continually
estimate what an opponent can do, may do, intends to do. They try to
gauge the technical limits within which he is operating, to determine
his usual ways of behavior, under what conditions he will probe, push
or withdraw. They try to measure what risks he will take, and how he
might estimate the risks to us of countering him. Much of this work
by American analysts is sound, thorough, intelligent, frequently in-
genious and sometimes brilliant -- but not infallible. Unhappily,
any of these estimates may be partly, but critically, wrong. A wealth
of information is never enough.
To get a rapid idea of the mass of data available for predicting the
Cuban crisis and the Pearl Harbor attack, let us run through the main
intelligence sources. In the case of Cuba, there was first of all mag-
nificent photographic coverage as well as visual reconnaissance. The
Navy ran air reconnaissance of all ships going in and out of Cuba, es-
pecially ships originating in Soviet or satellite ports during the
summer of 1962, and intensified this sort of coverage during September.
High-level photographic reconnaissance by U-2s over the island of Cuba
was taking place at the rate of one flight every two weeks until the
month of September, when it increased to once a week.l Low-level photo-
graphic reconnaissance began only after the President's speech of October
22- the first being on October 23. In addition to photography, we had
Cpyk ...ous accounts from Cuban refugees who were leaving the island in
1 Flights over the island took place on September 5, 17, 26,
29, October 5, 7 and 14.. The irregularity is attributed to bad
weather.
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a steady stream. We had agents stationed on the island who were report-
ing, and we were listening to radio broadcasts from Cuba. The Cuban press,
while carefully controlled, was making some announcements which are inter-
esting in retrospect. A number of European correspondents stationed on
the island were reporting to their newspapers, though the American press
was not welcome.
Finally, but by no means least, we had Castro's pronouncements. His cas-
ual interviews with reporters, debates with students, interrogations of
prisoners, and nearly interminable television speeches offer a rich fount
of information. If you wait long enough, it seems, Castro will tell you
everything. The only problem in a crisis is that you may not be able to
wait that long. Castro is noted for his slyness, and he is perhaps better
able than most Cubans tc keep a secret. But sometimes he cannot resist
hints that may reveal a trap before his victim falls into it. And often
in real rather than calculated anger he will show his hand.
For predicting the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Government had
an equally impressive array of intelligence sources. Though aerial sur-
veillance of the Japanese fleet was limited, the Navy had developed a
system of pinpointing the location of ships and deducing their types by
radio-traffic analysis. This was accomplished by analyzing the call
signs of various ships, even though we could not read the content of
the messages. Any change in call signs was in itself a cause for alarm,
and it took usually several weeks of close listening to an enormous amount
of traffic to re-identify the call signs. Call signs were changed on Novem-
ber 1, 1941, and again on December 1. We had not identified the new ones
by December 7.
While we had not broken any military codes, we did have one superlative
source that is perhaps comparable to the evidence provided by U-2 photog-
raphy. That was the breaking of the top-priority Japanese diplomatic
code, known as MAGIC, as well as some less complicated codes used by
Japanese consular observers. We were listening in on diplomatic mess-
ages on all the major Tokyo circuits -- to Rome, Berlin, London, Wash-
ington and so on. Colonel Friedman, an Army cryptographer, had devised
a machine for rapidly decoding these messages, so that, in general, we
knew what a message said before its intended Japanese recipients. Our
ground observers, stationed in key ports along the coast of China and
Southeast Asia, were reporting in by radio.
Ambassador Grew and his Embassy staff in Tokyo were experienced ob-
servers of local economic; and political activities. Grew himself had
a very sound estimate of Japanese character and diplomacy, but as
Japanese censorship closed in during the last few weeks before the
attack, Grew had to warn Washington that he was unable to report acc-
urately on any military preparations then under way. American news-
paper correspondents in Japan were also quite well informed and shrewd
in their reporting. In addition to our own sources, we exchanged
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information with British intelligence. At that date, our own intelli-
gence officers did not trust British intelligence fully. They expressed
a certain amount of unease over British methods of picking up information,
which they regarded as sophisticated but underhanded. As General Sherman
Miles put it, U.S. intelligence preferred to be "above board." However,
the British provided us with some good leads and lots of corroborative
information. And there was, of course, the Japanese press, which pro-
claimed Japan's undying hostility to the American presence in Asia, and
announced with increasing violence the Japanese intention to expand to
the south.
In sum, for each of the two crises there was plenty of information
suggesting its advent. Even though Cuba is a closed society, and even
though Japan, in the last weeks, was under heavy censorship and tight
security, the data provided by U.S. intelligence agencies were excellent.
Once more, then, we come to the question, what went wrong? With all
these data, why didn't we know that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor on
December 7? Why, when it seems so clear in retrospect, didn't we anti-
cipate that Khrushchev might put medium-range missiles into Cuba? Why
didn't we seize the first indications that such installations were on
the way? Weren't these early signs clear enough?
Unfortunately, they were not, and almost never are. Even with hind-
sight, we are not able to reconstruct the exact sequence of events that
led to the Cuban missile crisis. Most of our sources are alive, and
some of them are talking. But what can we say with certainty about
Cuban and Soviet motives? Castro, for example, has spoken on many
occasions about why missiles were put into Cuba. But he swings between
the view that he requested them and the view that Khrushchev suggested
the idea and that he, Castro, felt so indebted economically he had to
accept. He has mentioned two motives -- one, defense against an Amer-
ican invasion that he believed was imminent, and the other, the need to
advance the international cause of socialism, which implied that the
missiles were for offense as well as defense. Khrushchev's story is
more consistent, but also more "offical": he cites only the need to
help Cuba prepare against an American invasion. But of course for
active Cuban defense, long-range missiles are not necessary. Speculation
on Soviet and Cuban motives still continues.
With hindsight, we can look back now and see that during the crisis there
were naturally many confusions embedded in the mass of intelligence reports.
A report of a "missile" might refer to a surface-to-air missile which is
approximately 30 feet long, to the nose cone of a surface-to-surface missile
which is about 14 feet long, to its body which is almost 60 feet long, or
to a fuel storage tank. Or perhaps it might just represent the imagination
of an excited Cuban refugee. Most of these objects were seen at night
through closed shutters and in motion. Visual observation, except by a
highly trained observer, was not likely to be accurate even as to the
length of the object. And Senator Keating did not act altogether respon-
sibly in perpetuating this confusion centering around the word "missile."
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He was right when he described the total build-up as alarming, but he
was proceeding beyond the evidence in suggesting, as he did, that he
had positive proof of the presence of medium-range missiles,2 and of
the capability for rapid transformation of surface-to-air missiles
into medium-range surface-to-surface missiles.
Or take the presence of Soviet combat troops. President Kennedy's
critics noted after the crisis that in his October 22 speech he made
no mention of combat troops in Cuba, although the American public was
later informed of their presence. Actually, Soviet troops, organized
into four regimental units, totaled approximately 5,000 men. They
were located at four different spots, two near Havana, one in Central
Cuba and one in Eastern Cuba. They were equipped with modern Soviet
ground-force fighting equipment, including battlefield rocket launchers
similar to the American "Honest John." This equipment, along with the
accompanying barracks and tent installations, was not identifiable, or
at least was not identified, until we started photographing at low level.
For this reason, President Kennedy made no demand about removal of troops
on October 22, but kept to the colorless term; "Soviet technicians."
While U-2 photography is almost as magical as the MAGIC code at the time
of Pearl Harbor, like the code, it is limited; it cannot reveal all.
For the layman, the feeling persists that there must be some marvelous
source that will provide a single signal, a clear tip-off that will
alert the American forces and tell them exactly what to do. Unfortunately,
there is no instance where such a tip-off arrived in time, except perhaps
in the Philippines in l91%l, when General MacArthur had a minimum of nine
hours' warning between his knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and the
initial Japanese assault on his own forces. The news of the attack on
Pearl Harbor clearly did not tell him what alert posture to take, since
his planes were found by the Japanese attackers in formation, wing-tip to
wing-tip on their bases.
Instead we must wait for a number of signals to converge in the formation
of a single hypothesis about the intentions and actions of an opponent.
2 See testimony, September 17, 1962: United States Senate, Committee
on Foreign Relations and Committee on Armed Services, Situation in Cuba,
87th Cong., 2d Sess., 1962, p. 7, 12; U.S. News and World Report, November
19, 1962 (distributed week of November 12), p. 87; and speech to the Senate,
October 12, 1962.
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This is a necessary but slow process. In 1962, for example, General
Carroll, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, became suspicious of
Soviet activities on the basis of several pieces of data from different
sources. According to Secretary McNamara's testimony,
.L Carroll had had thousands of reports like this. What
gradually formed in his mind was a hypothesis based on the
integration of three or four pieces of evidence, one of which
was not a report at all, one of which was a recognition through
photographic analysis that a SAM (surface-to-air missile) site
appeared to be in a rather unusual place. . . . Gradually over
a period of time -- I do not know over what period of time --
but sometime between the 18th of September and the 14th of
October, there was formulated in his mind a hypothesis specif-
ically that there was the possibility of a Soviet ballistic
missile installation in a, particular area, a hypothesis that
had been formulated previously and had been tested previously
and found to be in error with respect to other locations.
His only action here -- I think quite properly his only action
here -- was to test that hypothesis, to submit it to the tar-
geting group that targets the reconnaissance missions, and
place that target on the track for the next reconnaissance
mission, which was the October 14 mission.3
This period of time from September 18 to October 14 is not long for the
crystallization of a hypothesis.! It is long only in relation to the
speed of the missile installation. This sort of time difference isa
perpetually agonizing aspect of intelligence interpretation. Collection,
checking of sources and interpreting all take time. There is always delay
between the intelligence source and the evaluation center, and between the
center and the final report to the decision-maker. Even then, the decision-
maker may merely request more information before taking action. In the
meantime, the opponent moves forward.
3 U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Department
of Defense Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations for 1964,
88th Cong., 1st Sess., 1963, p. 45-46. These hearings contain most of the
intelligence data cited in this article.
4 According to Roger Hilsman, the request for a U-2 flight covering
the western end of the island was made on October 4 -- ten days before the
flight was actually made. "The Cuban Crisis: How Close We Were to War,"
Look, August 25, 1964, p. 18.
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In the Cuban missile crisis, for example, there were delays in the
identification of surface-to-air missiles. From July 29 to August 5,
Cuban refugees reported that "an unusual number of ships" unloaded
cargo and passengers at the ports of Havana and Mariel. All Cubans
were excluded from the dock. By August 14 these reports reached U.S.
intelligence agencies, which the next day requested U-2 photo coverage
of the suspect areas. On August 29 the flight was made. From the
first visual observation on July 29 to the over-flight on August 29
a full month passed.
This August 29 flight turned up the first hard evidence of surface-
to-air missiles in Cuba. During September, surveillance flights seem
to have been stepped up: the U-2 flew on September 5, 17, 26, 29, and
on October 5, 7 and 14. Cn the September 5 flight, which took in the
San Cristobal area a hundred miles east of Havana, the photographs
showed no evidence of medium-range missiles. A flight scheduled for
September 10 was canceled, perhaps because a U-2 had been shot down
over Red China the previous day. According to the American press,
all U-2 flights stopped w.aile the United States waited for the world
reaction.
Secretary McNamara testified that available evidence indicated the
first landing of mobile M.R.B.M.s occurred on September 8, and that
construction of the sites did not begin before September 15 to 20.
It is possible that September 10 photography might have shown some
activity at the San Cristobal site. The September 17 flight was of
little use because cloud cover obscured the areas photographed. How-
ever, between September 18 and 21 further Cuban reports came to U.S.
intelligence, and these were evaluated on September 27. They even-
tually led to the flight on October 14, again over San Cristobal.
This flight produced the first reliable evidence of medium-range
missiles on the island.
In spite of the frequency of the U-2 flights, there is a lag of 33
days from the first visua:_ observation made by a Cuban exile on Sep-
tember 8, and reported on September 9, to October 14, the day that
hard evidence was obtained. There is a lag of 39 days between Sep-
tember 5 and October 14, during which no flights covered the San
Cristobal area. This gap in coverage was not apparent until some
inquiring Congressmen pressed their cross-examination. When William
Minshall of Ohio asserted that the U-2 flights had been covering the
wrong end of the island, General Carroll pointed out that it was
necessary to cover the eastern and central portions also. Secretary
McNamara supported him by pointing out that the September 5 flight
over San Cristobal "showed. absolutely no activity whatsoever." He
also recalled that this was the hurricane season, "and the weather in
that part of the Caribbean is very bad. We had a number of flights
canceled during that period." Mr. Minshall then produced the offical
weather report showing clear days in the vicinity of Havana, and said
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that "the weather from September 25 to October 2, at least at 7:00
in the morning, was-generally clear." No one pointed out at that
time that weather forecasts, not actual weather, determined the
schedule of U-2 flights.
Photographic coverage, then, was apparently being scheduled on the
assumption that any Soviet construction would proceed at a pace which
might be considered rapid according to our own experience in installing
similar equipment. Secretary McNamara repeated several times that
there was no missile construction activity in the Havana area on
September 5, as if this, coupled with the pressing need to get clear
pictures of other parts of the island, were sufficient reason for not
covering the area again until October 14. This judgment, with hind-
sight, may have been correct, but in the absence of the full intelli-
gence picture the layman can only wonder why it was not possible to
cover more than one section of the island on a single U-2 sortie, or
why it was not possible to make several simultaneous sorties when
good weather prevailed. Perhaps Secretary McNamara's statement, made
under pressure of Mr. Minshall's criticism, to the effect that "we
were facing surface-to-air missile systems that might be coming into
operation," indicates that the flight schedule was sensitive to the
political atmosphere. The fact is that there were increasing dangers
to our pilots as the SAM sites became operational. With the Repub-
licans now in opposition, it was easy for some of them to forget the
extreme embarrassment of the Eisenhower regime at the shooting down
of the U-2 over the Soviet Union in 1960 and the collapse of the Paris
summit that followed. Certainly after the publicity given to the U-2
shot down over Red China on September 9, the United States would not
want to lose such a plane over Cuba. U-2 planes are never armed; and
the August 29 flight had showed surface-to-air missile installations
in western Cuba.
Naval photography shows a somewhat similar gap. Photographs of the
crates containing IL-28 bombers were taken on September 2S but not
evaluated until October 9, and not disseminated until October 10.
This identification of bombers capable of carrying a nuclear or non-
nuclear payload of 6,000 pounds and with a combat radius of about
700 nautical miles5 came together with a report of October 15 eval-
uating the U-2 photographs of M.R.B.M.s.
5 According to U.U. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, Harper & Row,
1964, p. 270. According to John Hughes, Special Assistant to General
Carroll, "about 600 nautical miles," Hearin-as, p. 15.
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This sort of delay can ee.sily be paralleled in the Pearl Harbor intelli-
gence picture. In the handling of the coded messages, there was inevi-
tably a delay -- from interception of the message at the intercept station
through transmission to the decoding center in Washington, determination
of priority in handling, assignment for full decoding, assignment for
translation and the actual translation, to final delivery to the approved
list of recipients. The longest delay recorded in the Congressional hear-
ings is 54 days between interception and translation. Part of the delay
is a function of the time, necessary for transmission. Part of the delay
comes from checking the accuracy of the reports, which is necessary for
responsible decision. BL.t these delays in response must all be seen
against the forward march of events.
In Cuba, the rapidity of the Russians' installation was in effect a
logistical surprise comparable to the technological surprise at the
time of Pearl Harbor. Before September 1962 we were scheduling U-2
flights approximately two weeks apart, because we couldn't believe
that capabilities could change significantly within a shorter period.
But Secretary McNamara testified in his first background briefing (October
22) that the medium-range mobile missiles were planned to have a capabil-
ity to be de-activated, moved, reactivated on a new site and ready for
operation within a period of about six days. The Stennis Report, which
reviewed the entire intelligence operation, refers to "a matter of hours."6
In one instance, between two sets of photographs separated by less than
24 hours, there was an increase of 50 percent in the amount of equipment
visible. On the date of withdrawal, October 28, the medium-range missiles
were fully operational. Intelligence estimates set December 15 as the
outside date for the non-mobile I.R.B.M.s to be operational.
This kind of technological or logistical surprise may be either a secret
so carefully guarded that it doesn't reach our intelligence agencies until
after the event; or it may happen too swiftly, too near the outbreak of
the crisis, to be transmitted and evaluated in time. In the case of Pearl
Harbor, there were two technological changes that failed to reach either
the intelli ence agencies or the commanding officers who needed the infor-
mation: (1) that the Japanese had fitted fins to their torpedoes which
would permit bombing in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor; and (2) that
the combat radius of the Zero fighter plane had been stretched to 500
statute miles, making possible aerial attack on the Philippines from
Formosa. Both of these developments came to fruition only a few weeks
before Pearl Harbor.
6 U.S., Congress, Committee on Armed Services, Preparedness Investi-
gating Subcommittee, Inve;3tieations of the Preparedness Program, Interim
Report on Cuban Military 3uild-Up, 88th Cong., 1st Sees.. 1963. D. 3.
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Besides technological surprise and the inevitable physical delays
involved in transmission and checking, there are more subtle obstacles
to accurate perception of signals. First, there is the "cry-wolf"
phenomenon. Admiral Stark actually used this phrase in deciding not
to send Admiral Kimmel any further warnings about the Japanese. An
excess of warnings which turn out to be false alarms always induces
a kind of fatigue, a lessening of sensitivity. Admiral Kimmel and
his staff were tired of checking out Japanese submarine reports in
the vicinity of Pearl Harbor. In the week preceding the attack they
had checked out seven, all of which were false.
General Carroll had the same problem with missiles in Cuba. Refugee
reports of missiles had been coming in for a year and a half and the
first San Cristobal report of September 9 describing that suspect area,
later confirmed as harboring medium-range missiles, was comparable to
many other reports ... similarly recieved and checked out," and found to
reveal not surface-to-surface missiles, but surface-to-air or nothing
at all. This history of mistaken observations by the refugees tended to
reinforce the feelings of fatigue and disbelief. There was also a
justifiable reaction to the fact that refugee exaggerations of anti-
Castro ferment in Cuba had not been properly discounted at the time
of the Bay of Pigs, and that their self-interest in wanting to return
to Cuba had not been properly weighed. This background increased the
reluctance of the intelligence agencies to credit their reports without
careful verification. Besides the refugees, members of the Congressional
opposition were also using exaggeration and pressure, because they had
an interest in overstating provocation in order to indicate laxness on
the Administration's part. Senator Keating claimed to have hard evidence
at a time when it seems, such evidence did not exist. Opposition pressure
tended to evoke a natural counter-pressure from the Administration, which
responded by charging irresponsibility in its critics, and which insisted
on caution and the necessity for special evidence before entering on such
serious action. In this way the opposition served in some respects as
rein rather than simply as spur.
Another obstacle to objective evaluation is the human tendency to see
what we want to see or expect to see. The Administration did not want
open conflict with the Soviet Union. It was working on a program of
trying to relax tensions, of which a test-ban agreement was one impor-
tant though distant goal. It most definitely did not want an offensive
Soviet base in Cuba, in the same way that Zermatt, the famous Swiss ski
resort, did not want typhoid fever and refused to acknowledge its existence
until epidemic proportions had been reached. Just as President Roosevelt
wanted no war in the Far East -- no war on two fronts -- and didn't want
to believe that it could happen, so we didn't want to believe that the
Soviets were doing what they were doing.
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When this is the background of expectation, it is only natural to ignore
small clues that might, in a review of the whole or on a simple count,
add up to something significant. For example, the large ships that
turned out to be the villains in the Cuban case had especially large
covered hatches. They were unloaded at night by Soviet personnel, and
all Cubans were excluded from docks. The contents, whatever they were,
were moved at night. The decks were loaded with 21- and 5-ton trucks
and cars. But these ships, in transit, had been noted to be riding
high in the water. If intelligence analysts in the American community
had been more ready to suspect the introduction of strategic missiles,
would this information have led them to surmise, before as well as after
October 14, that these ships carried "space-consuming (i.e. large volume,
low density) cargo such as an M.R.B.M." rather than a bulk cargo? Roger
Hilsman points out that these vessels had been specially designed for
carrying lumber, and "our shipping intelligence experts presumably deduced
that lumbering ships could be more easily spared than others." "We knew,"
Hilsman writes, "that the Soviets had had some trouble finding the ships
they needed to send their aid to Cuba."8 This is a good illustration of
the way we can adjust (without doing violence to the facts) a disturbing
or unusual observation to "save" a theory -- in this case that the Soviets
would not send strategic missiles to Cuba.
Our estimate of Soviet behavior included, of course, some expectation
of how the Russians would react to what we were telling them, to our
warnings in words and acts. However, we overestimated the clarity of
our signals. General Maxwell Taylor had visited Florida bases on August
25 with a great deal of pablicity. Naval reconnaissance of ships approach-
ing Cuba had been stepped up to the point where U.S. planes were shot at
by nervous Cubans on September 2. Castro reacted with great restraint
in commenting on this incident -- a fact which might in itself have been
thought suspicious. But above all, on September 4, President Kennedy
announced the installation of surface-to-air missiles in Cuba which had
been confirmed by the photographs of August 29. He said with the greatest
care that we would not tolerate an offensive base or the installation of
missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory. He made the distinction
between offensive and defensive weapons, and he did this publicly in a
way that put him on the s.Dot. To anyone familiar with the workings of
the American political system, this should have indicated that we were
"contracting- in." The President was deliberately engaging his own prestige
7 "Department of Defense, Special Cuba Briefing by the Honorable
Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, State Department Auditorium,
5:00 p.m., February 6, 1963." A verbatim transcript of a presentation
actually made by General Carroll's assistant, John Hughes.
8 Op, cit., p. 18.
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and that of the country. He was reacting to the Republicans as well as
to Castro. He was justifying not acting up to a certain point, but mak-
ing it more likely that he would act beyond that point. In other words,
he was drawing a line, and he was making it extremely unlikely that we
would back down if that line were crossed. Again on September 13, the
President called attention to the firmness of his commitment.
To the official Administration statements, we must add the formal an-
nouncements by the opposition party. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illi-
nois and Charles Halleck of Indiana, the Republican Congressional lead-
ers, both issued statements on Cuba on September 7. Halleck warned that
the increases in armaments and numbers of military technicians supplied
by the Soviet Union to Cuba made the situation there "worse from the
point of view of our own vital interests and the security of this coun-
try." Senator Dirksen invoked the Monroe Doctrine and defined current
Soviet military aid to Cuba as a violation of that doctrine. He pointed
out that, in view of our treaty commitments, either the Organization of
American States should immediately agree on a course of action or, quot-
ing President Kennedy's speech of April 20, 1961, the United States should
act on its own, "if the nations of this hemisphere should fail to meet
their commitments against outside Communist penetration."
American elections and their accompanying distractions have been the
subject of world-wide speculation and concern. Yet they are not always
easy for an outsider to understand. These protests from the opposition
were taking place in a setting of pre-election debate, and Khrushchev
may have hoped to exploit that fact. He may not have been aware that
the alarm expressed by the Republicans was something President Kennedy
could not ignore. In addition to explicit proposals and resolutions
about the Monroe Doctrine, there was the President's request for Con-
gressional authorization to call up 150,000 reserves. This action too
should have been a warning signal;'it did trigger a Soviet reassurance
that Moscow had no need for an offensive base in Cuba. However, the
Soviets did not find these warnings weighty enough to reverse their
plans for installation.
Another major barrier to an objective U.S. evaluation of the data was
our own estimate of Soviet behavior. The Stennis Report isolated as
one "substantial" error in evaluation "the predisposition of the intelli-
gence community to the philosophical conviction that it would be incom-
patible with Soviet policy to introduce strategic missiles into Cuba."9
9 Op. cit., p. 3.
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Khrushchev had never put medium- or long-range missiles in any satellite
country and therefore, it was reasoned, he certainly would not put them
on an island 9,000 miles away from the Soviet Union, and only 90 miles
away from the United States, when this was bound to provoke a sharp Ameri-
can reaction.
In considering this estimate of Soviet behavior, let us remember that the
intelligence community was not alone. It had plenty of support from Soviet
experts, inside and outside the Government. At any rate, no articulate ex-
pert now claims the role of Cassandra. Once a predisposition about the
opponent's behavior becomes settled, it is very hard to shake. In this
case, it was reinforced not only by expert authority but also by the know-
ledge both conscious and unconscious that the White House had set down a
policy for relaxation of tension with the East,. This policy background
was much more subtle in its influence than documents or diplomatic exper-
ience. For when an official policy or hypothesis is laid down, it tends
to obscure alternative hypotheses, and to lead to overemphasis of the data
that support it, particularly in a situation of increasing tension, when
it is important not to "rock the boat."
In the case of Pearl Harbor, there was a concentration on Atlantic and
European affairs, which led to a kind of neglect of, or tendency to ig-
nore, Far Eastern signals, and to a policy of staving off the outbreak
of a Pacific war as long as possible. In the last months especially,
this tendency was combined with a desire to avoid incidents. The word-
ing of the final warning messages to the Army and Navy reflected this
concern:
If hostilities cannot repeat not be avoided the United
States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.
This policy should not repeat not be construed as re-
stricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize
your defense. Prior to hostile Japanese action you are
directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other meas-
ures as you deem necessary but these measures should be
carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population
or disclose intent . . . Undertake no offensive action
until Japan has committed an overt act.l0
These directives have been frequently characterized as "do-don't."
10 U.S., Congress, Joint Committee on the Investigation of the
Pearl Harbor Attack, Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 1946,
Part 14, p. 1407.
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Another attempt to avoid incidents was the Navy order of October 17 to
re-route all trans-Pacific shipping to and from the Far East through
the Torres Straits (between New Guinea and Australia), thus clearing
the sea lanes to the north and northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. This
order followed a warning of possible hostile action by Japan against
U.S. merchant shipping. We avoided any incidents in these sea lanes,
and at the same time we cut off the possibility of visual observation
of the Japanese task force bound for Pearl Harbor.
In the autumn of 1962, pursuing a policy of reducing tension, the Kennedy
Administration made very little allowance for deception in Soviet state-
ments, for false reassurances that would quiet justifiable American fears.
On September 2, TASS published a joint communique on Soviet military aid
to Cuba, referring to the August 27 visit to Moscow of Che Guevara and
Emilio Aragones. The Soviet Government announced assistance in metal-
lurgical work and the sending of technical specialists in agriculture
to Cuba. They added that
views were also exchanged in connection with threats of
aggressive imperialist quarters with regard to Cuba. In
view of these threats the government of the Cuban Republic
addressed the Soviet government with a request for help by
delivering armaments and sending technical specialists for
training Cuban servicemen.
The Soviet government tentatively considered this request of
the government of Cuba. An agreement was reached on this
question. As long as the above-mentioned quarters continue
threatening Cuba, the Cuban Republic has every justification
for taking necessary measures to insure its security and
safeguard its sovereignty and independence, while all Cuba's
true frignds have every right to respond to this legitimate
request.
This was reassuring in a negative understated way: it limited military
aid to vague "armaments" and "technical specialists." On September 11,
in response to the President's request to call up reserves, a higher-
keyed, if not hysterical, pronouncement was issued by TASS. This started
with an attack on "bellicose-minded reactionary elements" and "the provo-
cations the United States Government is now staging, provocations which
might plunge the world into disaster of a universal world war with the
use of thermonuclear weapons." In the U.S. Congress and in the American
press, the Soviet Government claimed, an unbridled propaganda campaign
11 The New York Times, September 3, 1962.
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was calling for an attack on Cuba and on Soviet ships "carrying the nec-
essary commodities and food to the Cuban people." "Little heroic Cuba"
was pictured as at the mercy of American imperialists, who were alarmed
by the failure of their economic blockade and calling for measures to
strangle her. Particularly serious was the President's action in asking
Congress' permission to call up 150,000 reservists. The statement then
embarked on a series of jeers at the ridiculous fears of the American
imperialists. The peace-loving Soviet Union was sending agronomists,
machine-operators, trac-;or-drivers and livestock experts to Cuba to
share their experience and knowledge and to help the Cubans master
Soviet farm machinery.
What could have alarmed the American leaders? What is the
reason for this Devil's Sabbath? . . . Gentlemen, you are
evidently so frightened you're afraid of your own shadow
. . . It seems to you some hordes are moving to Cuba when
potatoes or oil, tractors, harvesters, combines, and other
farming industrial machinery are carried to Cuba to maintain
the Cuban economy. We can say to these people that these
are our ships and that what we carry in them is no business
of theirs . . . We can say, quoting a popular saying: "Don't
butt your noses where you oughtn't." But we do not hide
from the world public that we really are supplying Cuba
with industrial equipment and goods which are helping to
strengthen her economy.12
A bit farther on, having had its fun, TASS recalled that "a certain
amount of armaments is also being shipped from the Soviet Union to
Cuba" and that Soviet military specialists had also been requested by
the Government of Cuba. However, the number of Soviet military specialists
sent to Cuba "can in no way be compared to the number of workers in agri-
culture and industry sent there. The armaments and military equipment
sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes and the Pre-
sident of the United States and the American military just like' the
military of any country know what means of defense are." The statement
went on to imply that any threat to the United States was a figment of
the American imagination. The major reassurance then followed:
The Government of the Soviet Union also authorized TASS to
state that there is no need for the Soviet Union to shift its
weapons for the repulsion of aggression, for a retaliatory
blow, to any other country, for instance Cuba. Our nuclear
weapons are so powerful in their explosive force and the Soviet
Union has so powerful rockets to carry these nuclear warheads,
12 T-axt. of S'nviat. ct.at.rmnnt. Tha Nair Ynrlr Timm .. c +.rrnhPr l7 l9 2
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 that there is no need to search for sites for them beyond
the boundaries of the Soviet Union. We have said and we
do repeat that if war is unleashed, if the aggressor makes
an attack on one state or another and this state asks for
assistance, the Soviet Union has the possibility from its
own territory to render assistance to any peace-loving state
and not only to Cuba. And let no one doubt that the Soviet
Union will render such assistance just as it was ready in
1956 to render military assistance to Egypt at the time of
the Anglo-French-Israeli aggression in the Suez Canal region.
This sort of reassurance had also been privately delivered to the Presi-
dent, and the misuse of the private channel apparently shocked President
Kennedy as much as the creation of the strategic base in Cuba.
President Kennedy and his staff had believed the Soviet reassurances.
Their reaction to what they regarded as deception was one of genuine
outrage, for one of the President's basic tenets had been that a state
of mutual trust between the great powers was an important part of the
problem of relaxing tension. And there is a considerable body of lit-
erature which goes farther and isolates the attitude of mutual suspicion
itself as the central danger today in international relations.
It is a permanent problem of diplomacy to know where to draw the line
in extending trust to unfriendly states. A certain amount of healthy
suspicion of the opponent's public statements is in order. The Presi-
dent deliberately tested the willingness of Gromyko to lie, after the
President knew the truth, but before the Russians knew that he knew.
The trap set by the President aroused the indignation of some of those very
Americans who urge mutual trust. But the President of the United States
would be simple indeed if he did not build trust cautiously on the basis
of many such probings. The Russian performance in the fall and winter of
1962 made it perfectly clear that we cannot take at face value Russian
statements -- even those made only to the top American leadership in privacy
and without those constraints that might be imposed by having the Chinese
or other Communist powers or the non-aligned or our own allies listening.
In periods of high tension it is commonly accepted that deception will be
an enemy tactic. Before the Pearl Harbor attack Japanese deception was
very refined and ingenious. It involved, among other things, giving
shore leave to large numbers of Japanese sailors, reinforcing garrisons
on the northern border of Manchuria to give an impression of a thrust to
the north, issuing false war plans to Japanese commanders and substituting
true ones only days before the attack, and on the diplomatic side continu-
ing the appearance of negotiation. For deception is not confined to state-
ments, but must also be translated into actions.
It is important for the enemy's security that he keep his signals quiet.
On the Soviet side this meant that all movement on the island of Cuba
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must take place at night. The Cubans were excluded from the docks and
from many of the missile construction areas. Troops were kept below
decks, and unloaded equipment was camouflaged or hidden under the trees.
On our own side, in the period before October 22, tight security was im-
portant to preserve the initiative. And this tight security was main-
tained through the next few weeks. The members of the group close to the
President, known as the Executive Committee or EXCOM, were directly super-
vising decisions normally left to lower command levels and were doing
paper work normally handled by their staffs. This sort of procedure is
fine for a couple of weeks, but it means the neglect of other areas of
government and, in particular, other areas of foreign policy.l3 Richard
Neustadt, a keen observer, reminds us that the Sino-Indian conflict was
in progress at the same time, and offers a "lay impression" that "at
least one side effect of Cuba" was to tighten the time and narrow the
frame of reference of the decision-- then in the making -- on Skybolt.14
Under conditions of tight security, there is also a danger that we may
keep signals not only from the enemy but also from ourselves. There are
a good many who feel that careful study by a wider range of experts might
have been useful at the time and would be useful now, particularly with
regard to the Kennedy-Khrushchev communications. These, like MAGIC,
were very closely held during the crisis and had to be read and inter-
preted swiftly at the time.
Another set of signs we may have misread or missed were those appearing
in official Cuban statements. Castro is so verbose and temperamental
that we tend not to listen carefully to his speeches. And his controlled
press is so dull that we are equally careless about that. In addition,
the policy of embargo and explicit isolation of the island tends to
carry over in a curious way to ignoring the voice of Cuban officialdom.
It is interesting now to review the Cuban press of 1962 for clues we
might have picked up. After Raul Castro's July visit to Moscow, the warmth
of the references to the Soviet Union increased noticeably. Thanks and
praise became the order of the day. On September 11, the day of the falsel
reassuring TASS statement, the Cuban newspaper Revolucion underlined the
threat of thermonuclear war invoked by TASS. The front page was printed
13 According to Secretary Rusk, "Senior officers did their own typing;
some of my own basic papers were done in my own handwriting, in order to
limit the possibility of further spread . . . ." C.B.S. Reports, televised
interview of Secretary Rusk by David Schoenbrun, November 28, 1962.
14 U.S. Congress, Senate Subcommittee on National Security Staffing
and Operations of the Committee on Government Operations, Administration
of National Security, 88th Congress, 1st Session, 1963, Part I, p. 97,
testimony of March 2~. 1a63.
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with a single white headline on a black background, and it said:
"Rockets Over the United States if Cuba is Invaded." Forcing the
Soviet Union's hand in this way had been Cuban policy for some time,
so that it was natural for our experts to take this as another in-
stance of Cuban wishful thinking.
Finally, in intelligence work the role of chance, accident and bad
luck is always with us. It was bad luck that September-October is
the hurricane season in the Caribbean, so that some reconnaissance
photography was unclear and certain flights were canceled. It was
bad luck that the Red Chinese shot down a U-2 on September 9. In
1941 it was bad luck that we had cut all traffic on the Northwest
Passage to Russia, and thereby made visual observation of the Pearl
Harbor task force impossible. It was bad luck that there was a radio
blackout in the Hawaiian Islands on the morning of December 7, and
that Colonel French of the Communications Room then decided to use
commercial wire instead of recommending the scrambler telephone for
the last alert message.
To sum up then, in both the Pearl Harbor and Cuban crises there was
lots of information. But in both cases, regardless of what the Monday
morning quarterbacks have to say, the data were ambiguous and incom-
plete. There was never a single, definitive signal that said, "Get
ready, get set, go'" but rather a number of signals which, when put
together, tended to crystallize suspicion. The true signals were al-
ways embedded in the noise or irrelevance of false ones. Some of this
noise was created deliberately by our adversaries, some by chance and
some we made ourselves. In addition, our adversary was interested in
suppressing the signs of his intent and did what he could to keep his
movements quiet. In both cases the element of time also played against
us. There were delays between the time information came in, was checked
for accuracy, evaluated for its meaning, and made the basis for appro-
priate action. Many of these delays were only prudent, given the ambig-
uities and risks of response.
The interpretation of data depends on a lot of things, including our
estimate of the adversary and of his willingness to take risks. To
make our lives more complicated, this depends on what he thinks the
risks are, which in turn depends on his interpretation of us. We
underestimated the risks that the Japanese were willing to take in
1941, and the risks that Khrushchev was willing to take in the summer
and fall of 1962. Both the Japanese and the Russians, in turn, under-
estimated our ultimate willingness to respond.
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It is important to understand that the difficulties described are
intrinsic. By focusing on misestimated capabilities, disposition
and intentions, we obscure the fact that, without a very large and
complex body of assumptions and estimates, the data collected would
not speak to us at all. If there were no technological constraints
whatsoever -- if, for example, a large missile installation could
be put in place in an instant, -- no reconnaissance, no matter how
frequent, could provide assurance that we would not at any moment
face a massive new adversary. The complex inferences involved in
the act of interpreting photographs are made possible only by a large
body of assumptions of varying degrees of uncertainty, ranging from
principles of optics and Euclidean geometry through technological,
economic and political judgments. The inferences from the inter-
pretations themselves in turn are based on an even wider range of
uncertain beliefs. But just because a very large body of partially
confirmed beliefs and guesses is involved in interpreting a recon-
naissance photograph or the observations of a Cuban refugee or in-
telligence agent, it is possible to interpret the photograph or
observations in many differing ways. Our beliefs, as Willard Van
Orman Quine has put it, are "underdetermined" by our experience,
and they do not face experience separately, statement by statement,
but always in mass, as a collection. We have a good deal of freedom
as to what statements to adjust in the light of any new and seemingly
disturbing report.
An observation or its report does not seize us, then, and force any
specific interpretation. This relatively free situation of hypotheses
in intelligence is no different in kind from that of hypotheses in the
more exact sciences such as physics. A more naive empiricism once
suggested that statements in physics could be refuted definitively by
observation, by the result of a crucial experiment. But a great many
physicists and students of the logic of science, at least since Pierre
Duhem,, have shown that even the interpretation of the simplest experi-
ment depends implicitly on comprehensive theories about the measuring
instruments and a great deal else. It is always possible therefore
to "save" a theory or hypothesis by altering some other one of the
large set of our beliefs that connects it with any given observation.
If this is true in the more exact sciences it is most obviously true
for the role of observations and their interpretation in such spheres
of practical activity as the operation of an intelligence agency, and
the inferences and decisions of an executive. Here the assumptions
that shape interpretation are likely to be more multifarious and also
less explicit and therefore often less tentatively held. This puts it
midly. Some of the relevant assumptions may be held passionately. They
are likely to include wishful or self-flattering beliefs, items of nat-
ional pride or claims at issue in partisan debate. In the case of Japan,
some of the critical assumptions concerned technology -- the range, speed
and manoeuvrability of the Zero plane, the supposed inability of the
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Japanese to do any better than the Americans in launching torpedoes
in shallow water. In the case of Cuba again some critical assumptions
were technological; for example, the minimum time required to put into
place and make operational a medium-range ballistic missile. Others
concerned the politics and character of the Soviet, Cuban and American
leadership and their estimates of each other's willingness to take a
chance. Our expectations and prior hypotheses guide our observations
and affect their interpretation. It is this prior frame of mind, now
changed, that we forget most easily in retrospect. And it is this
above all that makes every past surprise nearly unintelligible -- and
inexplicable except perhaps as criminal folly or conspiracy.
The genuine analogies between Pearl Harbor and Cuba should not obscure
the important differences. A study of the Pearl Harbor case makes clear
that the problem of getting warning of an impending nuclear raid today
is much harder than the problem of detecting the Japanese attack some
20 years ago. It is against this increased difficulty that we must
balance improvements in intelligence techniques and organization. But
the missile crisis illustrates something else, namely that there are
other acts very much short of nuclear war of which we want to be apprised,
and here our improved techniques and organization can put us ahead of the
game. Action was taken during the missile crisis and taken in time to
forestall Soviet plans. For while we can never ensure the complete
elimination of ambiguity in the signals that come our way, we can ener-
getically take action to reduce their ambiguity, by acquiring information
as we did with the U-2. And we can tailor our response to the uncertain-
ties and dangers that remain.
In the Cuban missile crisis action could be taken on ambiguous warning
because the action was sliced very thin. After reconnaissance reduced
the ambiguity, the response chosen kept to a minimum the actual contact
with Russian forces, but a minimum compatible with assuring Khrushchev that
we meant business: quarantine, the threat of boarding, the actual boarding
of one Lebanese vessel chartered to the Soviet Union. Further, it was a
response planned in great detail as the first in a sequence of graded
actions that ranged from a build-up of U.S. Army, Marine and Tactical
Air Forces in Florida and our southeastern bases to a world-wide alert of
the Strategic Air Command. We had been partially prepared for such sequence
of action short of nuclear war by the Berlin contingency planning, and this
put us in a position to use the warning we had accumulated. If we had had
to choose only among much more drastic actions, our hesitation would have
been greater.
The problem of warning, then, is inseparable from the problem of decision.
We cannot guarantee foresight. But we can improve the chance of acting on
signals in time to avert or moderate a disaster. We can do this by a more
thorough and sophisticated analysis of observers' reports, by making more
explicit and tentative the framework of assumptions into which we must fit
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any new observations, and by refining, subdividing and making more
selective the range of responses we prepare, so that, our response
may fit the ambiguities of our information and minimize the risks
both of error and of inaction. Since the future doubtless holds
many shocks and attempts at surprise, it is comforting to know that
we do learn from one crisis to the next.
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APPENDIXES
DIRECTIVE NO. 11
BASIC DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
(Revised 4 March 1964)
The intelligence effort of the United States is a national respon-
sibility, and must be so organized and managed as to exploit to the
maximum the available resources of the Government and to satisfy the
intelligence requirements of the National Security Council and of the
departments and agencies of the Government. For the purpose of coor-
dinating the intelligence activities of the several Government depart-
ments and agencies in the interest of national security and pursuant
to the provisions of Section 102 of the National Security Act of 1947,
as amended, the National Security Council hereby authorizes and directs
that:
1. Over-all Coordination
The Director of Central Intelligence shall coordinate the foreign in-
telligence activities of the United States in accordance with existing
law and applicable National Security Council directives. Such coor-
dination shall include both special and other forms of intelligence
which together constitute the foreign intelligence activities of the
United States.
1 This Directive supersedes NSCID No. 1, dated 18 January
1961.
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2. The United States Intelligence Board (USIB)
a. To maintain the relationship necessary fc~r a fully coordinated
intelligence community,2 and to provide for a more effective integra-
tion of and guidance to the national intelligence effort, a United
States Intelligence Board (USIB) is hereby established under the dir-
ectives of the National Security Council and under the chairmanship
of the Director of Central Intelligence. The Board shall advise and
assist the Director of Central Intelligence as he may require in the
discharge of his statutory responsibilities and pursuant to paragraph
1 above. Subject to other established responsibilities under existing
law and to the provisions of National Security Council directives, the
Board shall also:
(1) Establish policies and develop programs for the guidance
of all departments and agencies concerned.
(2) Establish appropriate intelligence objectives, require-
ments and priorities.
(3) Review and report to the National Security Council on the
national foreign -intelligence effort as a whole.
(4) Make recommendations on foreign -intelligence matters to
appropriate United States officials, including particularly
recommendations to the Secretary of Defense on intelligence
matters'within the jurisdiction of the Director of the National
Security Agency.
(5) Develop and review security standards and practices as
they relate to the protection of intelligence and of intelligence
sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.
(6) Formulate, as appropriate, policies with respect to arrange-
ments with foreign governments on intelligence matters.
2 The intelligence community includes the Central Intelligence
Agency, the intelligence components of the Departments of State,
Defense (Defense Intelligence Agency, Army, Navy, and Air Force),
National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the Atomic Energy Commission. Other components of the departments
and agencies of the Government are included to the extent of their
agreed participation in regularly established interdepartmental
intelligence activities.
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b. The membership of the U.S. Intelligence Board shall consist
of the following:
(1) The Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman.
(2) The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Central
Intelligence Agency.
(3) The Director of Intelligence and Research, Department
of State.
The Director, Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Director, National Security Agency.
A representative of the Atomic Energy Commission.
(7) A representative of the Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
The Director of Central Intelligence, as Chairman, shall invite the
chief of any other department or agency having functions related to
the national security to sit with the U.S. Intelligence Board whenever
matters within the purview of his department or agency are to be discussed.
c. The Board shall determine its own procedures and shall establish
subordinate committees and working groups, as appropriate. It shall
be provided with a Secretariat staff, which shall be under the direc-
tion of an Executive Secretary appointed by the Director of Central
Intelligence in consultation with the members of the Board.
d. The U.S. Intelligence Board shall reach its decisions by
agreement. When the Chairman determines that a given position on
a matter under consideration represents the consensus of the Board
it shall be considered as agreed unless a dissenting member requests
that the issue be referred to the National Security Council. Upon
such request, the Director of Central Intelligence, as Chairman,
shall refer the matter, together with the dissenting brief, to the
National Security Council for decision.
Provided: That such appeals to the National Security Council by
the Director, Defense Intelligence Agency or the Director, National
Security Agency, shall be taken only after review by the Secretary
of Defense.
Whenever matters of concern to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and/or the Atomic Energy Commission are referred to the National
Security Council, the Attorney General and/or the Chairman of the
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Atomic Energy Commission respectively, shall sit with the Council.
The Board may recommend through its Chairman that a sensitive in-
telligence matter requiring the attention of higher authority be
dealt with by the Council in a restricted meeting; including only
those officials who have substantive interest in the matter, or
directly by the President.
e. Decisions and recommendations of the Board shall, as appropri-
ate, be transmitted by t.ae Director of Central Intelligence, as Chair-
man, to the departments or agencies concerned, or to the National
Security Council when higher approval is required, or for information.
f. In making recommendations to the National Security Council
in matters concerning such intelligence activities of the departments
and agencies of the Government as relate to the national security, the
Director of Central Inte:_ligence, as Chairman, shall transmit there-
with a statement indicat'_ng the concurrence or non-concurring views
of those members of the U.S. Intelligence Board concerned. Such
recommendations when approved by the National Security Council shall,
as appropriate, be issued as National Security Council Intelligence
Directives or as other Council directives and, as applicable, shall
be promulgated and implemented by the departments and agencies of
the Government.
g. Decisions of the Board arrived at under the authority and pro-
cedures of this paragraph shall be binding, as applicable, on all depart-
ments and agencies of the Government.
3. The Director of Central Intelligence
a. The Director of Central Intelligence shall act for the National
Security Council to provide for detailed implementation of National
Security Council Intelligence Directives by issuing with the concur-
rence of the U.S. Intelligence Board such supplementary Director of
Central Intelligence Directives as may be required (see par. 2d above).
Such directives shall, as applicable, be promulgated and implemented
within the normal command channels of the departments and agencies
concerned.
b. Director of Central Intelligence Directives to be issued in
accordance with the provisions of sub-paragraph a above shall include:
(1) General guidance and the establishment of specific priorities
for the production of national and other intelligence and for col-
lection and other activities in support thereof, including: (a)
establishment of comprehensive National Intelligence Objectives
generally applicable to foreign countries and areas; (b) iden-
tification from time to time, and on a current basis of Priority
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National Intelligence Objectives with reference to specific
countries and subjects; and (c) issuance of such comprehensive
and priority objectives, for general intelligence guidance, and
their formal transmission to the National Security Counci.
(2) Establishment of policy, procedures and practices for the
maintenance, by the individual components of the intelligence
community, of a continuing interchange of intelligence, intelli-
gence information, and other information with utility for intelli-
gence purposes.
(3) Establishment of policy, procedures and practices for the
production or procurement, by the individual components of the
intelligence community within the limits of their capabilities,
of such intelligence, intelligence information and other infor-
mation with utility for intelligence purposes relating to the
national security, as may be requested by one of the departments
or agencies.
c. The Director of Central Intelligence, or representatives
designated by him, in consultation with the head of the intelli-
gence or other appropriate component of the department or agency
concerned, shall make such surveys of departmental intelligence
activities of the various departments and agencies as he may deem
necessary in connection with his duty to advise the National Secur-
ity Council and to coordinate the intelligence effort of the United
States.
4. National Intelligence
a. National intelligence is that intelligence which is required
for the formulation of national security policy, concerns more than
one department or agency, and transcends the exclusive competence of
a single department or agency. The Director of Central Intelligence
shall produce3 national intelligence with the support of the U.S.
Intelligence Board. Intelligence so produced shall have the con-
currence, as appropriate, of the members of the U.S. Intelligence
Board or shall carry a statement of any substantially differing
opinion of such a member or of the Intelligence Chief of a Military
Department.
3 By "produce" is meant "to correlate and evaluate intelligence
relating to the national security" as provided in the National Security
Act of 1947, as amended, Section 102 (d) (3).
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b. Departmental intelligence is that intelligence which any
department or agency requires to execute its own mission.
c. Interdepartmental intelligence is integrated departmental
intelligence which is required by departments and agencies of the
Government for the execution of their missions, but which transcends
the exclusive competence of a single department or agency to produce.
The subcommittee structure of the U.S. Intelligence Board may be
utilized for the production and dissemination of interdepartmental
intelligence.
d. The Director of Central Intelligence shall disseminate
national intelligence to the President, members of the National
Security Council, as appropriate, members of the U.S. Intelligence
Board and, subject to existing statutes, to such other components
of the Government as the National Security Council may from time
to time designate or the U.S. Intelligence Board may recommend.
He is further authorized to disseminate national intelligence and
interdepartmental intelligence produced within the U.S. Intelligence
Board structure on a strictly controlled basis to foreign govern-
ments and international bodies upon his determination, with the
concurrence of the U.S. Intelligence Board, that such action would
substantially promote the security of the United States: Provided,
That such dissemination is consistent with existing statutes and
Presidental policy inclucing that reflected in international agree-
ments; and provided further that any disclosure of FBI intelligence
information shall be cleared with that agency prior to dissemination.
Departmental intelligence and interdepartmental intelligence produced
outside the U.S. Intelligence Board subcommittee structure may be
disseminated in accordance with existing statutes and Presidential
policy including that reflected in international agreements.
e. Whenever any member of the U.S. Intelligence Board obtains
information which indicates an impending crisis situation which
affects the security of the United States to such an extent that
immediate action or decision by the President or the National Secur-
ity Council may be required, he shall immediately transmit the infor-
mation to the Director of Central Intelligence and the other members
of the U.S. Intelligence .3oard as well as to the National Indications
Center and to other officials or agencies as may be indicated by the
circumstances. The Director of Central Intelligence shall, in con-
sultation with the U.S. Intelligence Board, immediately prepare and
disseminate as appropriate the national intelligence estimate of the
situation, in accordance with the procedures outlined above.
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5. Protection of Intelligence and of Intelligence Sources and Methods
The Director of Central Intelligence, with the assistance and support
of the members of the U.S. Intelligence Board, shall ensure the devel-
opment of policies and procedures for the protection of intelligence
and of intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.
Each department and agency, however, shall remain responsible for the
protection of intelligence and of intelligence sources and methods
within its own organization. Each shall also establish appropriate
internal policies and procedures to prevent the unauthorized disclosure
from within that agency of intelligence information or activity. The
Director of Central Intelligence shall call upon the departments and
agencies as appropriate, to investigate within their department or agen-
cy any unauthorized disclosure of intelligence or of intelligence sources
or methods. A report of these investigations, including corrective meas-
ures taken or. recommended within the departments and agencies involved,
shall be transmitted to the Director of Central Intelligence for review
and such further action as may be appropriate, including reports to the
National Security Council or the President.
6. Community Responsibilities
a. In implementation of, and in conformity with, approved National
Security Council policy, the Director of Central Intelligence in con-
sultation with and supported by the other members of the U.S. Intelli-
gence Board and by other appropriate offices, shall:
(1) Call upon the other departments and agencies as appropriate
to ensure that on intelligence matters affecting the national secu-
rity the intelligence community is supported by the full knowledge
and technical talent available in or to the Government;
(2) Ensure that the pertinence, extent and quality of the avail-
able foreign intelligence and intelligence information relating to
the national security is continually reviewed as a basis for im-
proving the quality of intelligence and the correction of deficien-
cies;
(3) Take appropriate measures to facilitate the coordinated
development of compatible referencing systems within the depart-
ments and agencies engaged in foreign intelligence activities.
Central reference facilities as a service of common concern shall
be provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and/or other depart-
ments and agencies, as appropriate; and
(4) Make arrangements with the departments and agencies for
the assignment to, or exchange with, the Central Intelligence
Agency of such experienced and qualified personnel as may be of
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advantage for advisory, operational, or other purposes. In order
to facilitate the performance of their respective intelligence
missions, the departments and agencies concerned shall, by agree-
ment, provide each other with such mutual assistance as may be
within their capabilities and as may be required in the interests
of the intelligence community for reasons of economy, efficiency,
or operational necessity. In this connection primary departmental
interests shall be recognized and shall receive mutual cooperation
and support.
b. In so far as practicable, in the fulfillment of their respective
responsibilities for the production of intelligence, the several depart-
ments and agencies. shall not duplicate the intelligence activities and
research of other departments and agencies and shall make full use of
existing capabilities of the other elements of the intelligence com-
munity.
c. The departments and agencies of the Government shall establish
appropriate policies and procedures to control and limit undesirable
publicity relating to intelligence activities.
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APPENDIX C
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTIVE NO. 1/1 1
PRODUCTION OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
(Effective 5 August 1959)
Pursuant to the provisions of paragraphs 3 and 4, NSCID No. 1, and in
order to facilitate department participation in the production of national
intelligence estimates, the following operating procedures are established:
1. Programming
Periodically, but not less than quarterly, the Board of National Esti-
mates, Central Intelligence Agency, will present to the United States
Intelligence Board (Intelligence Board) for approval a program of Na-
tional Intelligence Estimates and Special National Intelligence Estimates
(NIE's and SNIE's) for production during the following ;ix months. In
preparing this program, the Board of National Estimates will consult
with the NSC Planning Board and appropriate committees of the Intelli-
gence Board, and will coordinate with the Intelligence Board agencies.
2. Initiation
Requests for estimates other than those programmed will be trans-
mitted to the Intelligence Board via the Board of National Estimates.
This Board will take such action as is indicated by the circumstances
prior to transmitting the request to the Intelligence Board for action;
e.g., comment, initiate immediate action subject to subsequent Intelli-
gence Board ratification., car attach draft terms of reference to its recom-
mendation that the estimate be approved for production.
1 This Directive supersedes DCID No. 1/1, effective 21 April 1958,
which in turn had superseded DCID No. 3/5, of 1 September 1953.
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3. Normal Preparation
Estimates will normally be prepared in four stages:
a. Terms of Reference and Contributions -- The Board of National
Estimates, after consultation with the Intelligence Board agencies,
will circulate terms of reference indicating the scope of the esti-
mate and the intelligence material needed. The Agencies, or an Intelli-
gence Board Subcommittee or other appropriate group, will then prepare
contributions and submit them to the Board of National Estimates.
b. Drafting and Board of National Estimates Consideration --
After considering the contributions, and such consultation with any
contributing agency which may be appropriate, the Board of National
Estimates will prepare a draft.
c. Consideration by Representatives of the Intelligence Board
Agencies -- Representatives of the Intelligence Board agencies will
meet with the Board of National Estimates to review, comment on,
and revise the draft as necessary.
d. Intelligence Board Consideration -- The final draft will then
be submitted to the Intelligence Board for approval.
Preparation under Exceptional Circumstances
Any of the steps listed in 3a, b, and c above may be omitted under
exceptional or unusually urgent circumstances.
5. Dissents
Any agency may dissent to any feature of an estimate. Such dissents
identify the dissenter and will state the dissenter's position on the
matter.
6. Publication and Dissemination
Finished estimates will be published by CIA and disseminated by the
DCI according to established procedures. Published estimates will carry
a note indicating the extent of coordination within the intelligence com-
munity.
Director of Central Intelligence
Approved
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