Gregory F. Treverton

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey

The new relation of air power to strategy presents one of the distinguishing contrasts between this war and the last. Air power in the last war was in its infancy. The new role of three-dimensional warfare was even then foreseen by a few farsighted men, but planes were insufficient in quality and quantity to permit much more than occasional brilliant assistance to the ground forces.

Terrorism, Intelligence and Law Enforcement: Learning the Right Lessons

More than a generation ago, in the wake of investigations by the US Congress into improprieties carried out by US intelligence agencies, the United States, in effect, raised the wall between intelligence and law enforcement in order to protect the liberties of Americans. For similar reasons, its Cold War institutions enshrined distinctions between foreign and domestic, and public and private. The CIA was and is, for instance, enjoined from law enforcement and domestic activity. Those distinctions served the country tolerably well during the Cold War but set it up to fail on September 11. Now, a rethinking of them is underway, as the balance between security and liberty is re-struck. It is imperative, though, to learn the right lessons on September 11. That means thinking carefully and proceeding slowly as changes are made. It also means carefully evaluating the effects of proposed changes, especially to avoid ‘pain for no gain’ measures that do inconvenience people, or even affect their liberties, for little or no gain in the war on terrorism.

Information Sharing for Infrastructure Risk Management: Barriers and Solutions

Abstract There is a public interest in ensuring that infrastructure systems are appropriately protected and prepared for disruptions. While infrastructure protection is usually viewed as a public responsibility, infrastructure risk management actually requires a high degree of cooperation between the public and private sectors, particularly in the sharing of information about risks to infrastructure. Discussions with Chief Security Officers across sectors of the US economy reveal the complexity of the task, as they describe at length the private sectors requirements of multiples types of information about a range of potential threats. While the US government has established many mechanisms for sharing information, barriers remain that inhibit both the private and public partners from obtaining the information needed to protect infrastructure. Overcoming these barriers requires new thinking about the intelligence generation process, the mechanisms and practices upon which the process relies, and the responsibilities of those in the private sector who participate in it.

The Political Consequences of Climate Change

Over the medium term, climate change and security are not likely to involve simple causality and a stark, one-to-one correspondence. The more intangible third-order socio-political and institutional effects have not been fully appreciated. Only by adding in an accounting of these indirect effects can a full evaluation of global climate change and appropriate responses be made. The scale and scope of remedial actions needs to be commensurate with the problem. Even mitigation strategies well beyond ones that can be imagined now would still leave the world warming for decades. As a result, thinking about the security implications of global warming means thinking about how groups, nations and institutions adapt to the fact of climate change. The climate dimension needs to be integral to all policy considerations from foreign aid, nation building and border controls, to food and energy security, technology transfer and trade policy, international law, and multilateral diplomacy. Not to recognise the climate angle behind a range of critical issues in security policy will put prospective policy actions at risk of failure.

Intelligence: The Achilles' Heel of the Bush Doctrine

There is not yet a clearly articulated “Bush doctrine” of national security. Yet the pointers so far, especially the victory in Iraq, suggest the shape of one that is stunning in its ambition. Focused on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the emerging Bush doctrine is anticipatory, preemptive, and, if need be, unilateral. Yet the emerging doctrine is bedeviled at its core by legitimacy and capacity, including, critically, the capability of U.S. intelligence. Although the United States has the military power to take out whatever miscreant state it chooses, it still lacks the ability to precisely locate and pre-emptively target WMD, despite all the technical wizardry of its intelligence. Indeed, even determining whether a potential adversary, such as Iraq, is developing and deploying nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons will continue to prove difficult. Taking out a foe’s real or suspected WMD is likely to continue to require taking out the foe.

National Intelligence Systems : Current Research and Future Prospects

1. Introduction Gregory F. Treverton and Wilhelm Agrell Part I. Defining the Field, Its Theory, Historiography and Changes after the Cold War: 2. Building a theory of intelligence systems Michael Warner 3. Reflections on intelligence historiography since 1939 Christopher Andrew 4. A theory of intelligence and international politics Jennifer Sims 5. Intelligence analysis after the Cold War - new paradigm or old anomalies? Wilhelm Agrell Part II. Research on New Challenges, Methods and Threats: 6. On counterterrorism and intelligence Neal Pollard 7. Technical collection in the post-9/11 world Jeffrey T. Richelson Part III. Intelligence, Politics and Oversight: 8. The intelligence-policymaker relationship, and the politicization of intelligence Olav Riste 9. Oversight of intelligence: a comparative approach Wolfgang Krieger 10. The limits of avowal: secret intelligence in an age of public scrutiny Sir David Omand 11. The science of intelligence: reflections on a field that never was Wilhelm Agrell and Gregory F. Treverton.

National Intelligence Systems: The Science of Intelligence: Reflections on a Field That Never Was

In May 1939, a young British Ph.D. in physics from Oxford, R. V. Jones, was approached by a staff member of Sir Henry Tizard’s Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence. Britain was, in this period, ahead of most other nations in integrating the academic scientific community and defense research and development (R&D), as illustrated by the lead that the Royal Air Force enjoyed in radar technology over the main adversary, Germany. However, as war drew closer, the Committee had experienced a problem regarding intelligence or, rather, the lack of intelligence: the British services simply were unable to collect material that might provide any insight into German efforts to apply science in aerial warfare. Jones was offered the task of looking into this problem and he accepted – by coincidence, agreeing to start his new job on September 1, the fateful day that Germany invaded Poland.1 Jones’s experience underscores the central theme of this book. Our purpose in surveying the state of research on intelligence is not only to suggest promising topics or even to promote better understanding by academics and others of what intelligence does – although later in the chapter we assemble some of the research suggestions that derive from the assessments of the book’s chapters. Rather, our ultimate purpose is also to improve the practice of intelligence. The theme of this chapter as well as the book is that in the threat circumstances of the 21st century, intelligence needs to move beyond “established” practice to become an authentic profession. To do that, it needs to find ways to open itself to and ultimately embrace the importance of empirical studies and methodological self-reflection – not

Unheeded warning of war: why policymakers ignored the 1990 Yugoslavia estimate*

Abstract This article examines the lack of policy response to the 1990 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that predicted the collapse of Yugoslavia. Contrary to common criticisms of estimative intelligence, the NIE was accurate and unambiguous. Why was good intelligence unheeded? For some policymakers, the analysis was not closely tied to their interests and competed with other priorities for attention; for those who were substantive experts, the NIE’s grim message was hard to accept. Moreover, policymakers read intelligence reports in the context of popular concepts – a lingering Cold War lens distorted more than it clarified. Finally, while the NIE made hard-hitting judgments, it did not include any analysis of opportunities to influence the outcome. Rather than pushing an already difficult estimate to the breaking point, including opportunities would likely have increased the odds of policymakers taking action. These lessons have broader implications for analytical tradecraft and the often-challenging relationship between intelligence and policy.

National Intelligence Systems: Frontmatter

1. Introduction Gregory F. Treverton and Wilhelm Agrell Part I. Defining the Field, Its Theory, Historiography and Changes after the Cold War: 2. Building a theory of intelligence systems Michael Warner 3. Reflections on intelligence historiography since 1939 Christopher Andrew 4. A theory of intelligence and international politics Jennifer Sims 5. Intelligence analysis after the Cold War - new paradigm or old anomalies? Wilhelm Agrell Part II. Research on New Challenges, Methods and Threats: 6. On counterterrorism and intelligence Neal Pollard 7. Technical collection in the post-9/11 world Jeffrey T. Richelson Part III. Intelligence, Politics and Oversight: 8. The intelligence-policymaker relationship, and the politicization of intelligence Olav Riste 9. Oversight of intelligence: a comparative approach Wolfgang Krieger 10. The limits of avowal: secret intelligence in an age of public scrutiny Sir David Omand 11. The science of intelligence: reflections on a field that never was Wilhelm Agrell and Gregory F. Treverton.

National Intelligence Systems: Index

1. Introduction Gregory F. Treverton and Wilhelm Agrell Part I. Defining the Field, Its Theory, Historiography and Changes after the Cold War: 2. Building a theory of intelligence systems Michael Warner 3. Reflections on intelligence historiography since 1939 Christopher Andrew 4. A theory of intelligence and international politics Jennifer Sims 5. Intelligence analysis after the Cold War - new paradigm or old anomalies? Wilhelm Agrell Part II. Research on New Challenges, Methods and Threats: 6. On counterterrorism and intelligence Neal Pollard 7. Technical collection in the post-9/11 world Jeffrey T. Richelson Part III. Intelligence, Politics and Oversight: 8. The intelligence-policymaker relationship, and the politicization of intelligence Olav Riste 9. Oversight of intelligence: a comparative approach Wolfgang Krieger 10. The limits of avowal: secret intelligence in an age of public scrutiny Sir David Omand 11. The science of intelligence: reflections on a field that never was Wilhelm Agrell and Gregory F. Treverton.