In the years prior to 9/11, the CIA was credited will all manner of wetwork in foreign streets, but in truth the agency’s bloody reputation far exceeded the cool, analytic reality. In the decade since however, the Company has made a rapid transition from intelligence to operations, according to this WaPo report:
(Those) directly involved in building the agency’s lethal capacity say the changes to the CIA since Sept. 11 are so profound that they sometimes marvel at the result. One former senior U.S. intelligence official described the agency’s paramilitary transformation as “nothing short of a wonderment.”
“You’ve taken an agency that was chugging along and turned it into one hell of a killing machine,” said the former official, who, like many people interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. Blanching at his choice of words, he quickly offered a revision: “Instead, say ‘one hell of an operational tool.’ ”
Much has been made of serial intelligence failures prior to 9/11 and agency operatives today may comfortably bask in the glow of kinetic successes, however much they might decline to acknowledge them publicly. The agency’s newly forged “operational tool” helped bury 30 al Qaeda militants just over the last two days in combined operations with the Yemeni government in the south of the country. (American Civil Liberty Union activists, predictably, are concerned about the level of scrutiny and oversight applied by Congress to covert operations overseas. Those apparently having some tenuous connection to American civil liberties.)
But the real struggle may soon take place within the bureaucratic halls of Langley, with analysts having fired a shot across the bow of their incoming director:
When David Petraeus takes over as CIA director next week, he will confront a tricky problem: CIA analysts who will be working for him concluded in a recent assessment that the war in Afghanistan is heading toward a “stalemate” — a view with which Petraeus disagrees.
The analysts made their judgment in “District Assessment on Afghanistan,” completed in July, the same month Petraeus quit his post as U.S. commander there. He disagrees with the analysts’ pessimistic reading, as does Gen. John Allen, the new commander in Kabul; Gen. James Mattis, the Centcom commander; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The CIA assessment is “pretty harsh,” said a military official who is familiar with its contents. He noted that the document used the word “stalemate” several times to describe the standoff between NATO-led forces and Taliban insurgents. Even in areas where the United States has surged troops over the past 18 months to clear insurgents, the CIA analysts weren’t optimistic that the Taliban’s momentum had been reversed, as President Obama and his military commanders have argued.
The position of CIA director is a political appointment in much the same way that the Secretary of Defense is. But when then-SecDef Robert Gates felt like he wasn’t getting the USAF’s attention on the F-22 Raptor buy – and the Air Force helpfully lost track of a few loose nukes – the secretary felt at liberty to chop off heads until morale (and obedience) improved. Petraeus – no slack when it comes to managing bureaucracies – will not have the same liberty if crossed.
General Petraeus routinely denies political aspirations, which is probably a good thing: He may well be fighting on two fronts over the next few years, with bugs to stomp in Yemen and the AfPak, and bureaucratic enemies in his rear. Some of whom – for no better reason than job security – may not wish to see the military strategy succeed, even if they believed it could.
Lex:
In future, please call the ACLU by their proper name, i.e.- American Communist Lawyers Union.
Paul
I prefer AsCLU, the American (some) Civil Liberties Union. After all, they never seem to be terribly interested in my right to defend my life and property. Plus, if you sound it out it tells you where their heads are and what they’re looking for.
General Petraeus will need all of his infighting skills as Director. Good luck.
“one hell of a killing machine”
It’s said that the first words out of our mouth are usually the most honest ones.
And I’ve got to dissent a little here; while these guys are doing this for us, and fighting to take out people that want to kill us, it’s still kind of disturbing that CIA has mainly become a mass, secret para-military force that brags about how good they are at rubbing people out. This stuff should be done by uniformed servicemen, and CIA should be an analysis shop, period. We’ll always need an ops side, but make it small, make it separate from the analysts, and keep a very tight leash on it. Secret armies are, in the long run, bad news for free countries. I realize that we’re always going to need to keep some secrets, and that we’re always going to do thing that not everyone should know about it, but this is just the latest story I’ve seen about our intel services essentially becoming combat armies, only secretive ones. I’m not questioning the bravery or dedication of these men, only arguing that history teaches that we should be very very careful about this kind of stuff.
My husband and I have been having some pretty lengthy discussions on this appointment. My gut, first blush, instinct is that it was a bad fit, to which my better half said, “Worse than Leon Panetta?” He won that point.
Let’s see, are these the same analysts who “concluded” in 2007 that Iran had given up its nuke program? And let the NIE leak to pressure Bush to prevent him from moving on Iran? Are this the same analysts who, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and access to all of E. Germany’s files, etc., had concluded that the economy of E. Germany was the fastest growing in the world when it was actually a basket-case in a state of collapse with 1/3 of the entire population spying on the other 2/3rds in one form or another? Are these the same analysts that, prior to the collapse of the old SU, “concluded” with their great analytical powers that the general populace of the SU was content and popular support for Communism and the CPSU so strong and deep that it was utter folly to believe that the leadership of SU would EVER lose support of the people? Is the WaPo talking about THOSE guys, Lex?
Petraeus is obviously surrounded by some really smart–the very best–of people over at Langley–what could possibly EVER go wrong?
PS: And how could I have POSSIBLY omitted the CIA analysts’ “analysis” of that huge BEMEWS radar site just outside Moscow (NATO designation “Dog House”) which concluded that it was NOT a “battle-management” radar, but agreed, along with Ted Kennedy, that it was a strictly defensive early-warning radar? And who had egg on their face when, with the fall of the SU, former Soviet scientists and military officials said: “Of COURSE it was a battle-management radar–we couldn’t believe you were that stupid!” Yes, by all means, let’s not EVER forget THAT prime example of superior CIA analytic work!
From what little I know of the Agency and its people, the Anal-ists do their thing, rather poorly, while the Covert Operations types, following in the traditions of the OSS and Wild Bill Donovan, do a magnificant job at the nasty but essential stuff that has probably done as much to protect us and freedom as have our Armed Forces.
The covert ops people play a different game from the military, with different rules, in different leagues and with different umpires, sort of like the difference between American football and Australian Rugby.
I am grateful we have teams in both places, doing their best to win.
And, I wish GEN Petraus the best of luck and support from the White House in draining the swamp while fighting the alligators. I am sure he can oversee the covert ops stuff with great success, but tilting at the Anal-ists may be too difficult for even him. With a strong pro-American (as opposed to incumbent Anti-American) President he could do a lot better, and perhaps be the best Director in 50 years.
Interesting times necessitate difficult choices, and he is the guy to make them.
Just for the sake of discussion – not to carry any water for any USG bu-rock-a-see, but consider:
“from what little I know” (John) and VX’s mention of publicly triumphed ‘failures’ … perhaps few people know what they get right. They must get something right? [who identifies the targets for the kinetic actions? betcha analysts do that. ] Analysis is difficult; formal analysis for policy makers must be even tougher. “Analysts” in the media often offer conclusions caveated with “I guess…” Senior policy makers don’t want ‘i guess’. In business, The Boss doesn’t want to here ‘i guess’. At sea, the div head etc don’t want to hear ‘I guess’. We all engage in analysis every day. Analysis is based on the info available, the veracity of that, and so forth. Interpretations of that info can differ – just as happens in any boardroom in any office complex. Someone has to prevail and has to carry the message to the CEO. Sometimes the msg is incomplete or flat wrong – based on the info available at the time. Who accurately predicts stock market performance? Who accurately predicts elections ( winner/loser … maybe … Truman being an example of ‘not so much even that’ but how about margins?). What male always accurately predicted the outcome of any given date with any given girl back in the day? Complex questions, complex answers that are strong functions of time (what we knew yesterday isn’t what we know today).
And – what we know publicly often is influenced by politics. Believe Bush the 2nd saw politics in the selective leaking of ‘analysis’ that undercut public positions [shame on them]; the infamous slam dunk based on a single source (later shown to be a fabricator)… based on what was ‘known’ at the time… tough problems.
Would analysts sabotage a war simply for personal job security? That is a harsh prediction, sir. I hope the answer is “not NO but **** NO” but I fear the WDC environment might argue in favor of your prediction.
We all engage in analysis at some level every day – assess your performance, then determine how many rocks to throw. But – if analysis is influenced by politics [how much 'analysis' in the paper or the cable IS influenced by politics? answer: most], then load up a dump truck and fire at will !!
EXCELLENT post, OldSchool! Simply excellent.
I would just add (my MA and PhD being on Decision-Making theory, concentrating on the bureaucratic organizational kind)that by the time a policy recommendation reaches a “decision-maker” for action, often years of analysis and volumes of studies have been distilled down to a couple of paragraphs or even a single sentence. A lot that is vital can be left out in that winnowing process–often because those preparing the brief mistakenly assume that the decision-maker is more familiar with the “atmospherics” surrounding the subject than he actually is. At other times, when it is plain that the decision-maker is totally unfamiliar with a given subject, it is all too easy to convince him that the recommendation offered is the only plausible one when there are actually several equally valid competing alternatives.
I haven’t studied the CIA as much as I have the Pentagon and the State Dept, but I’d wager that the CIA falls somewhere in between in terms of “efficient” processing of information in a timely manner insofar as the shape and length of the path (the “winnowing”) it takes to reach the decision-maker. As one individual with long experience as a senior staffer at the WH in several Administrations once put it: “The Pentagon has a natural advantage over State in policy recommendations. When the President requests a brief on a given subject the Pentagon usually has a hard-backed binder in his hands in 24-48 hrs with a one page summation cover sheet, a three page overview and a 2 para page of policy recommendations plus single separate action sign-off signature page–complete with an index with 26 tabs. State, by contrast will be two weeks late and send over a staffer stumbling in with a card-board box full of books, briefing papers, university lectures, mono-graphs by area/regional experts and a few college texts thrown in. The correct answer to the problem is usually in there somewhere, but my God!”
[...] CIA, not the Culinary Institute of America [...]
Great post, just linked. . .
But does he have the balls?
Not a lot of wetwork involved in firing from drones manned from far, far away, at targets decided upon in cubicles in Virginia. And those “paid” HUMINT sources? First rule of HUMINT, you don’t pay for it. No, this isn’t really as savvy an “operational” CIA as this drooling press release makes it out to be.
As for that long list of stars disagreeing with the analysis, isn’t that just a rhetorical appeal to authority? And when, ever, have you seen a three or four star say publicly that something they are in charge of is a) not doable and b) contrary to our national interest? That applies to Saint Petraeus as well.
Yes, at that level there is a lot of political pressure applied to intelligence, but the pressure applied by Petraeus is no different than anyone else’s pressure. Sometimes it helps to get out of the forest in order to see it.
The other person who lives under this roof, who has been proud to display his Army collar badge showing the Rose and Dagger, and to admit to having worked for An Agency, would be the first to tell y’all that one’s position in the bureaucracy comes first, then the interests of one’s interest groups, and then just a sad last, the interest of one’s country, in this kind of thing.
Both he and I drink more than is good for us.