thedrifter
08-03-05, 04:20 AM
An Open Memo to the Homeland Security Secretary
August 2nd, 2005
Herbert E. Meyer
A few weeks ago, when you announced your long-awaited reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security – including creation of a new Intelligence Division – the general reaction was a great big yawn. But the deadly terrorist attack in London on July 7, followed by that second (and mercifully failed) attack on July 21, have jolted Americans awake to the very real possibility of similar or even more deadly bombings here in the US. Now they understand why a new Homeland Intelligence Division is precisely what we need.
This memo is designed to help get the intelligence division going by outlining how to develop and “turn on” a Homeland Threat Profile that you and your key officials can use, both to monitor threats and to decide how best to allocate the Department’s people and money.
Why Intelligence Fails
There are two parts to every intelligence service: collection and analysis. But when an intelligence service fails, it’s because one of three things went wrong. First, the collectors fail to collect what’s needed, in which case the analysts have nothing to work with. This, of course, is a collection failure. Second, the collectors do their jobs well, but the information they collect fails to reach the analysts. This would be a management failure. Third, the collectors do their jobs well and their information does indeed reach the analysts – who are unable to connect the dots and spot the pattern they form. This would be an analytic failure. Of course, there are variations of all this, and sometimes even combinations. But all intelligence failures fall into one of these three categories. (It’s unfortunate that the 9-11 Commission never got to the core of it, and was content to conclude that our intelligence service suffered a “systemic failure” without ever figuring out precisely which kind of failure took place.)
Most managers, when faced with the prospect of starting up an intelligence service, believe that the first step is to get the collectors collecting. In fact, this guarantees eventual failure because the collectors don’t know what to collect. Without specific guidance, they will guess at what’s wanted, or use their own judgment – sometimes very good, sometimes not – or just collect more of whatever it is they already are collecting and thus know how to collect.
In fact, it’s the analysts who must take the first step. More precisely, the analysts must answer the question: What do we want to know about? In other words, they must tell the collectors what to collect. The document through which this is done is called an Intelligence Profile. Every organization has its unique Intelligence Profile – its unique outline of what its leaders need to know to accomplish their objectives -- and the more specific is this Profile, the more likely are the collectors to understand precisely what’s wanted from them and thus to get it.
The Homeland Threat Profile
Start by listing those governments which pose a threat to our Homeland – e.g. North Korea and Iran. Then list those non-government organizations which pose a threat – e.g. al Qaeda. Add to this list any other entities, or individuals, who comprise a threat. The objective is to compile one list of all those governments, organizations and individuals which, if they ceased to exist, would leave no threat to our Homeland except natural disaster and invasion by aliens.
Then, as precisely as possible outline the specific kind of threat each of these governments, organizations and individuals pose. For instance, the threat from North Korea might be a nuclear-tipped missile lobbed across the Pacific into San Francisco or Seattle. The threat from al Qaeda might be another 9-11 type attack, a Madrid/London type attack, or the setting off of a radioactive device in one of our major cities.
The first trick is to separate capability from intention. For example, France has enough nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, to wipe out much of our Homeland. So a French nuclear attack is a theoretical possibility. But while Mark Twain had it absolutely correct – he said that “mankind is halfway between the angels and the French” -- this sort of attack just isn’t going to happen, so France wouldn’t be part of the Profile. On the other hand, North Korea and Iran may currently lack the operational capacity to hit us with nuclear weapons. But they are moving toward this capability, and nuking us is just the sort of thing these governments might do when they can. So these governments would be on the Profile.
The second trick is to separate imagination from intelligence. During the Reagan years, I doubt a week went by without some geo-strategic genius showing up in my office to outline some deviously brilliant move the Kremlin could make that would floor us – a diplomatic or military maneuver, for instance, or a covert action. My first response was to call an emergency meeting to figure out how to block or counter this brilliant move. But over time I learned to think it through more carefully. Just because one of our geniuses can think up some deviously brilliant move by the Kremlin, doesn’t mean one of the Kremlin’s geniuses will think of it. More important, very often the deviously brilliant move, which really would be devastating to us, just wasn’t the sort of thing that Kremlin leaders did. In other words, based on our knowledge of their past actions, of their nature and character, and of the incoming intelligence, it was highly unlikely, or just plain implausible, that the Kremlin actually would do what the genius was imagining they would do. Of course, this is always a judgment call and sometimes you really must prepare for the unexpected. (I had on my office wall a framed quote from President Eisenhower that should be plastered all over the Department of Homeland Security’s offices: “The surest way to achieve strategic surprise is to do something absolutely stupid.” It’s true, and worth keeping in mind.) Still, the Profile should be based more on judgment, and on intelligence, than on imagination.
This Homeland Threat Profile should be as specific as possible, and while of course it will be modified over time the final draft is worth quite a bit of intellectual effort. It should be approved at the Department’s highest level and perhaps even by the White House.
Turning it On
With the Profile in hand, the next step is to bring the collectors on-board and get them moving. Intelligence collectors are among the hardest-working and most effective group of people I’ve ever known. But they hate it when you say to them, in effect: “You go collect, and if we’re all lucky whatever you collect also happens to be what we analysts want to know.” The Homeland Threat Profile outlines precisely what’s needed, which means the collectors now have the road-map they always want but so rarely are given. The problem arises when the collectors read the Profile and discover that what’s now wanted is different from what they have been collecting. Like all human beings, intelligence collectors don’t like changing course. They just want to keep going; to keep collecting what they’ve been trained to collect, what they know how to collect, and what they are confident they can collect. When you ask them to change course, they tend to blow you off.
During the Reagan years this happened all the time. For decades the CIA’s Directorate of Operations had – very properly – focused on the Soviet Union’s strengths. They collected all they could on missiles, warheads, tanks, troops and so forth. But because we held a radically-different view of the Soviet economy, we wanted to know about Soviet vulnerabilities, such as that country’s collapsing health-care system. (I’ve described all this in a series of essays published on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and elsewhere, all available at my company’s website)
Ask a spook who has risked his life time and again sneaking onto missile launch-sites to start looting files from the Ministry of Health and you are lucky not to wind up head-first in your own burn basket. I often had to get help from Bill Casey himself, President Reagan’s great Director of Central Intelligence, to re-orient the spooks’ activities.
And even Bill, with all his “oomph,” couldn’t always make it work. Some collectors dug in their heels and resisted, hoping to outlast the current regime. And others simply weren’t capable of learning a new skill-set, in which case we had to recruit a whole new team of spooks who knew how to loot medical reports but probably wouldn’t know an ICBM from a cruise missile.
Getting the collectors going will be a special problem for the Department of Homeland Security, because the Department doesn’t control the primary collectors. They are at the FBI and at the CIA. (Or whatever our foreign intelligence service is called these days; even I cannot figure it out.) This means the issue will need to be dealt with at the highest levels, which is another reason the Homeland Threat Profile should be approved at the top.
The objective is to match each specific item on the Profile with a specific collection unit, or even with a specific individual. For example, it’s probably the FBI that will monitor terrorist groups within the US, while the CIA or one of those new counter-terrorism threat centers will monitor al Qaeda overseas. If the Profile requires intelligence about North Korea’s nuclear capability, whatever unit and individuals will be doing that also need to be identified, or assigned to the task. And if there is an item on the Profile for which no unit or individual in our government is currently gathering intelligence, this will become apparent so the gap can be filled by whichever official in whichever department or agency is responsible.
Do this right, and you have a Homeland Threat Profile that outlines what the Department needs to know, along with a very precise match of each item to its assigned collectors, along with a detailed grasp of where the gaps may lie.
continued...
August 2nd, 2005
Herbert E. Meyer
A few weeks ago, when you announced your long-awaited reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security – including creation of a new Intelligence Division – the general reaction was a great big yawn. But the deadly terrorist attack in London on July 7, followed by that second (and mercifully failed) attack on July 21, have jolted Americans awake to the very real possibility of similar or even more deadly bombings here in the US. Now they understand why a new Homeland Intelligence Division is precisely what we need.
This memo is designed to help get the intelligence division going by outlining how to develop and “turn on” a Homeland Threat Profile that you and your key officials can use, both to monitor threats and to decide how best to allocate the Department’s people and money.
Why Intelligence Fails
There are two parts to every intelligence service: collection and analysis. But when an intelligence service fails, it’s because one of three things went wrong. First, the collectors fail to collect what’s needed, in which case the analysts have nothing to work with. This, of course, is a collection failure. Second, the collectors do their jobs well, but the information they collect fails to reach the analysts. This would be a management failure. Third, the collectors do their jobs well and their information does indeed reach the analysts – who are unable to connect the dots and spot the pattern they form. This would be an analytic failure. Of course, there are variations of all this, and sometimes even combinations. But all intelligence failures fall into one of these three categories. (It’s unfortunate that the 9-11 Commission never got to the core of it, and was content to conclude that our intelligence service suffered a “systemic failure” without ever figuring out precisely which kind of failure took place.)
Most managers, when faced with the prospect of starting up an intelligence service, believe that the first step is to get the collectors collecting. In fact, this guarantees eventual failure because the collectors don’t know what to collect. Without specific guidance, they will guess at what’s wanted, or use their own judgment – sometimes very good, sometimes not – or just collect more of whatever it is they already are collecting and thus know how to collect.
In fact, it’s the analysts who must take the first step. More precisely, the analysts must answer the question: What do we want to know about? In other words, they must tell the collectors what to collect. The document through which this is done is called an Intelligence Profile. Every organization has its unique Intelligence Profile – its unique outline of what its leaders need to know to accomplish their objectives -- and the more specific is this Profile, the more likely are the collectors to understand precisely what’s wanted from them and thus to get it.
The Homeland Threat Profile
Start by listing those governments which pose a threat to our Homeland – e.g. North Korea and Iran. Then list those non-government organizations which pose a threat – e.g. al Qaeda. Add to this list any other entities, or individuals, who comprise a threat. The objective is to compile one list of all those governments, organizations and individuals which, if they ceased to exist, would leave no threat to our Homeland except natural disaster and invasion by aliens.
Then, as precisely as possible outline the specific kind of threat each of these governments, organizations and individuals pose. For instance, the threat from North Korea might be a nuclear-tipped missile lobbed across the Pacific into San Francisco or Seattle. The threat from al Qaeda might be another 9-11 type attack, a Madrid/London type attack, or the setting off of a radioactive device in one of our major cities.
The first trick is to separate capability from intention. For example, France has enough nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, to wipe out much of our Homeland. So a French nuclear attack is a theoretical possibility. But while Mark Twain had it absolutely correct – he said that “mankind is halfway between the angels and the French” -- this sort of attack just isn’t going to happen, so France wouldn’t be part of the Profile. On the other hand, North Korea and Iran may currently lack the operational capacity to hit us with nuclear weapons. But they are moving toward this capability, and nuking us is just the sort of thing these governments might do when they can. So these governments would be on the Profile.
The second trick is to separate imagination from intelligence. During the Reagan years, I doubt a week went by without some geo-strategic genius showing up in my office to outline some deviously brilliant move the Kremlin could make that would floor us – a diplomatic or military maneuver, for instance, or a covert action. My first response was to call an emergency meeting to figure out how to block or counter this brilliant move. But over time I learned to think it through more carefully. Just because one of our geniuses can think up some deviously brilliant move by the Kremlin, doesn’t mean one of the Kremlin’s geniuses will think of it. More important, very often the deviously brilliant move, which really would be devastating to us, just wasn’t the sort of thing that Kremlin leaders did. In other words, based on our knowledge of their past actions, of their nature and character, and of the incoming intelligence, it was highly unlikely, or just plain implausible, that the Kremlin actually would do what the genius was imagining they would do. Of course, this is always a judgment call and sometimes you really must prepare for the unexpected. (I had on my office wall a framed quote from President Eisenhower that should be plastered all over the Department of Homeland Security’s offices: “The surest way to achieve strategic surprise is to do something absolutely stupid.” It’s true, and worth keeping in mind.) Still, the Profile should be based more on judgment, and on intelligence, than on imagination.
This Homeland Threat Profile should be as specific as possible, and while of course it will be modified over time the final draft is worth quite a bit of intellectual effort. It should be approved at the Department’s highest level and perhaps even by the White House.
Turning it On
With the Profile in hand, the next step is to bring the collectors on-board and get them moving. Intelligence collectors are among the hardest-working and most effective group of people I’ve ever known. But they hate it when you say to them, in effect: “You go collect, and if we’re all lucky whatever you collect also happens to be what we analysts want to know.” The Homeland Threat Profile outlines precisely what’s needed, which means the collectors now have the road-map they always want but so rarely are given. The problem arises when the collectors read the Profile and discover that what’s now wanted is different from what they have been collecting. Like all human beings, intelligence collectors don’t like changing course. They just want to keep going; to keep collecting what they’ve been trained to collect, what they know how to collect, and what they are confident they can collect. When you ask them to change course, they tend to blow you off.
During the Reagan years this happened all the time. For decades the CIA’s Directorate of Operations had – very properly – focused on the Soviet Union’s strengths. They collected all they could on missiles, warheads, tanks, troops and so forth. But because we held a radically-different view of the Soviet economy, we wanted to know about Soviet vulnerabilities, such as that country’s collapsing health-care system. (I’ve described all this in a series of essays published on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and elsewhere, all available at my company’s website)
Ask a spook who has risked his life time and again sneaking onto missile launch-sites to start looting files from the Ministry of Health and you are lucky not to wind up head-first in your own burn basket. I often had to get help from Bill Casey himself, President Reagan’s great Director of Central Intelligence, to re-orient the spooks’ activities.
And even Bill, with all his “oomph,” couldn’t always make it work. Some collectors dug in their heels and resisted, hoping to outlast the current regime. And others simply weren’t capable of learning a new skill-set, in which case we had to recruit a whole new team of spooks who knew how to loot medical reports but probably wouldn’t know an ICBM from a cruise missile.
Getting the collectors going will be a special problem for the Department of Homeland Security, because the Department doesn’t control the primary collectors. They are at the FBI and at the CIA. (Or whatever our foreign intelligence service is called these days; even I cannot figure it out.) This means the issue will need to be dealt with at the highest levels, which is another reason the Homeland Threat Profile should be approved at the top.
The objective is to match each specific item on the Profile with a specific collection unit, or even with a specific individual. For example, it’s probably the FBI that will monitor terrorist groups within the US, while the CIA or one of those new counter-terrorism threat centers will monitor al Qaeda overseas. If the Profile requires intelligence about North Korea’s nuclear capability, whatever unit and individuals will be doing that also need to be identified, or assigned to the task. And if there is an item on the Profile for which no unit or individual in our government is currently gathering intelligence, this will become apparent so the gap can be filled by whichever official in whichever department or agency is responsible.
Do this right, and you have a Homeland Threat Profile that outlines what the Department needs to know, along with a very precise match of each item to its assigned collectors, along with a detailed grasp of where the gaps may lie.
continued...