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VOL. XIV, NO. 1

Intelligence Reform: Problems and Prospects Robert Vickers, Jr.

3 10 22 31 38

Intelligence Failure and Reform: Evaluating the 9/11 Commission Report Joshua Rovner and Austin Long

The UNs Global Effort to Disarm Civilians: Wisdom or Folly? Joyce Lee Malcolm

Canada: Crossing the Line Harvey M. Sapolsky

Also in this issue: Op-Eds by Michael Schrage and Cindy Williams; SSP Conferences; Recent Publications

MITSSP
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Security Studies Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology

BREAKTHROUGHS

Publishers Note
hile many in the Boston area are singing the now tiresome We are the Champions, thanks to the recent Red Sox and Patriot victories, the MIT Security Studies Program will seem to some to be singing the yet to be written, and never likely to be popular, We are the Cranks. Taking on the anti-small arms lobby, the Canadians, and the advocates of post-9/11 intelligence reform does, I must admit, appear at rst glance to be a bit nutty. But if wise policy is to be found, syllabi need to be challenged. The claim to virtuous purpose does not make a policy virtuous. It may be high-minded to want to protect peasants from landmines, to stop the trade in the instruments of death, to demand the prevention of terrorist attacks, and to wish that war criminals would be brought to the dock, but none of this is likely to be achieved by adopting badly conceived policies. High mindedness does not always mark the policy high ground. Worse, it can lead to what the sage Clausewitz once called the fog of policy thinking. Not all policy problems have solutions, but nearly all policy solutions have problems. The creation of a Director of National Intelligence (DNI), for example, supposedly to solve the information coordination problem, promises that more attention will be diverted to jurisdictional ghts as the DNI tries to nd a role amidst the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the FBI, the Under Secretary for Intelligence, the National Security Advisor, and dozens of other ofcials all charged with preventing another 9/11. And one should worry that the closing off of the trade in weapons gives the dictators with guns a fatal advantage. I like the idea that solutions have to run a gauntlet of criticism before adoption. Here we take our whack at several of them. Given the failure rate among policies, being able to say that you were against a policy does give one a high batting average, or, if you prefer, a terric passcompletion to pass ratio. A bit nutty may mean being mostly right.

Security Studies Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

MITSSP

Faculty:
Harvey M. Sapolsky, Director; Professor of Public Policy and Organization Owen R. Cot, Jr., Associate Director, Principal Research Scientist Taylor Fravel, Assistant Professor of Political Science George Lewis, Associate Director; Principal Research Scientist Allison Macfarlane, Research Associate Barry R. Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science Richard Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science Stephen Van Evera, Associate Professor of Political Science Cindy Williams, Principal Research Scientist

Staff:
Lynne Levine Harlene Miller Magdalena Rieb, Assistant Director Brandi Sladek, Designer of Breakthroughs

Security Studies Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology 292 Main Street (E38-600) Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 258-7608; mit-ssp@mit.edu http://web.mit.edu/ssp/

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BREAKTHROUGHS

Intelligence Reform: Problems and Prospects

Robert Vickers, Jr.

ow that the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 has become law, political attention in Washington is likely to focus elsewhere, especially once the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Negroponte, is nominated and conrmed. It would be a serious mistake not to continue to monitor the consequences of the legislation, however, because it represents the most signicant change in our intelligence and national security structure since the National Security Act of 1947. Just as the beginning of the Cold War spawned the 1947 legislation, the 9/11 attack spawned the new reform bill. It remains to be seen whether the 2004 act will be as successful in helping to wage the war on terrorism as was the 1947 act in helping to win the Cold War.

The 2004 reform bill was passed and signed under considerable political pressure, brought about by the release of the 9/11 Commission Report and by a presidential election campaign. Critics of the bill claim it was passed too hastily and without sufcient debate. In fact, many of the key issues contained in the legislation, such as the need for a new intelligence czar, the relationship between the intelligence and defense communities, and whether we need a domestic intelligence service, have been debated long before 9/11. These issues remain controversial, however, and it remains to be seen how they will work in practice once the new reforms begin to take hold. A more fundamental concern raised by the reform act is whether its heavy emphasis on terrorism as the primary national security threat and the main motivation for intelligence reform is overblown. The full title of the legislation is the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004, and except for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it gives scant attention to other threats to U.S. national security. It may take several decades before this question can be answered in full, but there is some risk that

September 11, 2001.

excessive focus on the terrorist threat will leave us unprepared to deal with a major new national security crisis in the coming years. This article will look at the new reform act in some detail particularly at the elements related to the intelligence community and try to address potential problems as well as prospects for real improvement in how the community performs in the future, particularly as it relates to terrorism. It will conclude with some warnings about excessive intelligence focus on terrorism prevention. A More Efcient Intelligence Community? Will the new act result in a more unied, streamlined, and effective intelligence community? First of all, the bill was designed to focus increased attention and resources on the terrorist threat, and on strengthening the intelligence communitys abilities

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to work together more effectively to counter the threat. Thus, the new bill is likely to increase the intelligence and national security budget considerably. First of all, it adds a whole new layer of intelligence bureaucracy, it creates new intelligence and terrorism prevention structures, and it abolishes no existing intelligence agency. It also mandates rapid growth in some existing organizations. Finally, while it authorizes the new DNI to ensure the elimination of waste and unnecessary duplication within the intelligence community, it gives no specic guidance on how this should be done, and few powers to accomplish it. The creation of the new position of the Director of National Intelligence is designed to elevate the overseer of the intelligence community to a higher level. The argument in favor of the position was that 9/11 might have been prevented if the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) had had more power and authority over an intelligence structure that had grown to 15 members. In particular, many believed the intelligence chief needed more authority over the defense portion of the national intelligence budget, which represents over 80 percent of the total, as well as more power to oversee the collection and use of domestic intelligence, which was within the realm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In addition, it was argued that the new DNI needed to be separate and above the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), because running the CIA would divert him from his primary duties of overseeing the community and being the principal intelligence advisor to the President, and because it might lead to charges of favoritism in resource allocation. Opponents of creating a new DNI position argued that creating a new intelligence czar would not resolve the conicts between national and defense intelligence priorities, but merely make the conict more intense. They also argued that the barriers between foreign and domestic intelligence sharing cannot be broken without creating a whole new domestic intelligence agency under the 4

DNI, rather than leaving the mission to the FBI, which is primarily a law enforcement agency. Finally, they worried that separating the DNI from the CIA would downgrade the only major national intelligence agency not in the Department of Defense (DOD) to a lower level and leave the DNI less informed on foreign intelligence matters. While it remains to be seen whether proponents or critics of the reform act prove correct in the long run, I have some observations on the bill itself. First, you need to understand that the overall intelligence budget consists of three separate components: the National Intelligence Program (NIP), the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP), and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA). The NIP includes the budgets of the CIA and the other smaller civilian members of the intelligence community that reside in other government departments (i.e. State, FBI, Energy, Treasury, Homeland Security), as well as large members of the community that reside in the DOD (i.e. the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Ofce). The NIP accounts for well over half of the overall intelligence budget, and most of these funds support the relatively expensive technical collection and processing activities of the DOD members. The JMIP funds various other Defense Department intelligence activities, and TIARA funds the intelligence activities of the military services. Together, they constitute the rest of the overall intelligence budget. When one looks at the reform act for the DNIs budget authorities, you can see that he has the power to develop the NIP, but the Secretary of Defense retains the authority to develop budgets and transfer funds for the JMIP and TIARA, albeit with the guidance and participation of the DNI. Furthermore, if the DNI wants to transfer or reprogram funds within the NIP, he can only do so on his own if the amount is less than $150 million in a single year and less than 5 percent of the budget of any single member of the community. In fact, the DNI is specically instructed to ensure that the NIP budgets for the Defense elements are BREAKTHROUGHS

[The 2004 reform bill] adds a whole new layer of intelligence bureaucracy, it creates new intelligence and terrorism prevention structures, and it abolishes no existing intelligence agency.

adequate for the needs of the Secretary, the Joint Chiefs and the major military commands. Finally, the transfer or reprogramming of funds cannot terminate an intelligence acquisition program, and the DNI can only make milestone decisions on major defense acquisition programs jointly with the Secretary. Only the President has the authority to resolve any conicts. In other words, the DNIs powers over the Defense portion of the overall intelligence budget, which comprises the big dollar programs, appear limited indeed. The limitations on the DNIs power attest to the strength of the defense lobby in Congress, which is reluctant to give the new DNI authority to reduce or terminate major defense acquisitions programs related to intelligence. In fact, Congress failed to streamline its oversight of intelligence and homeland security, despite the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. In particular, this leaves the powerful Senate and House Armed Services Committees in charge of overseeing all aspects of defense intelligence. The reform act also leaves the intelligence budget classied and hidden within the defense budget. This has led some powerful Congressmen to argue that their inability to argue the merits or faults of

major intelligence programs in public is a disservice to everyone. The real test of the budget powers of the new DNI will likely come when he seeks to cut a major intelligence program or greatly reduce or eliminate a major intelligence organization. This may not happen as long as the President and Congress keep throwing money at intelligence. But sooner or later someone will have to pay the bills for the increased cost of preventing terrorism. The Focus on Counterterrorism Given that the reform bill is heavily based on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, its major thrust is on improving intelligence and national security efforts against the threat of terrorism. The act creates a new National Counterterrorism Center within the ofce of the DNI, primarily by elevating the former Terrorist Threat Integration Center to a higher level. This new center, like its predecessor, is designed to be staffed by personnel from throughout the intelligence community, and the DNI is given the authority to transfer up to 100 personnel to any national center for a period of not more than two years.

USS Cole damaged after attack in Yemen.

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It also remains to be seen whether putting the FBI on equal footing with the CIA in the war on terrorism will promote better intelligence sharing and cooperation.

I am a big fan of joint intelligence centers, and I think the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center is certain to enhance community effectiveness. The joint center model in the CIA dates back to the 1980s, when DCIs William Casey and William Webster created the Counterterrorist Center and the Counterintelligence Center respectively, and Counter Narcotics and Counterproliferation Centers were added soon after. These centers were jointly staffed by analysts from the Directorate of Intelligence and case ofcers from the Directorate of Operations. The close collaboration of the analysts and operators was very effective in bringing greater focus and resources to bear on these important intelligence threat issues. In particular, drug interdictions and interdictions of crucial material for weapons of mass destruction increased signicantly as more was learned about the international networks supporting such operations. Increased cooperation with other government agencies, such as the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Navy, was also evident. Nevertheless, there were some problems in the centers, particularly with personnel. One of the problems of any center is getting adequate stafng in both quantity and quality. The tendency in most intelligence bureaucracies has been to keep the best and the brightest for ones own operational needs, and staff new joint centers with new or less qualied personnel. Furthermore, without a separate personnel career service for each center, members of centers are often left to the mercies of their home ofce for promotions and reassignment. By design, the new national center is similar to major joint commands in the armed forces, which are staffed by members of the various military services. In order to promote rotations to the new center, the reform bill requires rotational assignments for promotion within the intelligence community and creates specic incentives for service in national intelligence centers. In fact, the DNI is instructed to use the Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganization Act of 1986 as a model for encouraging rotational and joint assignments. The disadvantage of this model is that too much emphasis on rotations often results in lack of expertise and analysts who are generalists, rather than

specialists. Besides the creation of the new National Counterterrorism Center, the bill leaves intact the various other counterterrorism units that have sprung up in the intelligence community before and since 9/11. Thus, there is no streamlining of the system, but a clear hierarchy has been established. The reform bill also devotes specic attention to improving the capabilities of the CIA and FBI to help wage the war on terrorism by foreign and domestic intelligence collection and analysis, respectively. In the case of the CIA, which has primary responsibility for foreign human intelligence collection, the bill notes that such capabilities have suffered relative to technical collection means. It also notes that human intelligence is becoming increasingly important as a means of providing information on asymmetric (terrorist) threats to U.S. national security. Thus, the CIA is specically instructed to enhance its analytic and human intelligence capabilities. Even before the bill was passed, the President ordered the CIA to increase the number of analysts and human operations ofcers by 50 percent as soon as possible to meet the intelligence challenges presented by international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It remains to be seen how quickly and effectively the CIA can implement this directive, but dont expect any rapid improvements in penetrating terrorist networks. It takes time to recruit, investigate, train and deploy new analysts and clandestine ofcers, particularly ones with the diverse backgrounds and relevant language skills necessary to operate effectively in the Muslim world. The task is further complicated by the risks involved in giving security clearances to citizens with close relatives living abroad. Traditionally, this in itself was sufcient reason to deny a clearance, not only because of the risks but also because of the extended time and costs of a thorough security investigation. Furthermore, it is riskier, more costly, and more time-consuming to put clandestine ofcers under the type of deep cover required to improve recruitment of terrorist informants and agents. Rather than create a new domestic intelligence service, the reform bill followed BREAKTHROUGHS

the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and established a Directorate of Intelligence within the FBI to focus on domestic intelligence collection and analysis. It also dened the major missions of the FBI as intelligence, counterterrorism and counterintelligence, criminal enterprises/federal crimes, and criminal justice services, with each having a separate budget and career track. Again, it remains to be seen how quickly and effectively the new intelligence directorate can come up to speed, but it is likely to take an extended period. It also remains to be seen whether putting the FBI on equal footing with the CIA in the war on terrorism will promote better intelligence sharing and cooperation. One would certainly expect so, despite the historical rivalry between the two organizations, particularly on counterintelligence matters. There are other sections of the act designed to improve the overall performance of the intelligence community, and these are certainly welcome and in some cases long overdue. Many of them were promulgated in response to criticisms and shortcomings growing out of the much maligned national intelligence estimate on Iraqs weapons of mass destruction, which was used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq. For example, the bill creates a SPRING 05

National Counter Proliferation Center, but implementation is contingent on the recommendations of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction that the President established in early 2004. The act also creates separate entities under the DNI to ensure that key intelligence products are subject to alternative analysis; to ensure that intelligence products are timely, objective, and independent of political considerations; and to hear and investigate any complaints that analytic integrity has been compromised. There are also provisions in the bill aimed at promoting and assisting the widespread sharing of intelligence information across the community. This includes standardizing classication at the lowest possible level, while still protecting sources and methods and safeguarding sensitive intelligence programs and operations. There are other sections aimed at improving training and education of intelligence ofcers, promoting rotational assignments, setting up an intelligence reserve corps, and creating an open source center to make better use of unclassied information in intelligence products. All these are worthy measures, but it will take time to implement them and make them effective across the intelligence community.

Secretary Rumsfeld facing the 9/11 Commission.

Cleaning up after 9/11.

In the past, a major impediment to creating a more unied intelligence community has been the lack of a standard security clearance process, not only within the community, but across the government.

In the past, a major impediment to creating a more unied intelligence community has been the lack of a standard security clearance process, not only within the community, but across the government. The CIA and some other agencies have had their own security clearance process, and they did not always accept the clearances of other agencies in granting access to classied information. This greatly hindered data sharing and the rotation of personnel across the community. As a result, the reform act contains a separate section directing the President to select a single entity to oversee, standardize, simplify, and quicken the security investigation and clearance process. While a single agency may not conduct all investigations, there will be complete reciprocity of clearances and access to sensitive information. If these measures are successful, they may do more than any other single section of the reform act to improve the unity and performance of the entire intelligence community. Too Much Focus on Counterterrorism? In addition to intelligence reform, the vast majority of the new legislation contains numerous provisions aimed at preventing terrorism and improving domestic security. These include detailed sections on transportation security; border protection, immigration and visa matters; specic terrorism prevention measures; and implementation

of other 9/11 Commission recommendations related to terrorism. There is also a long section on the creation of an integrated terrorism database that can be widely shared with all appropriate federal, state and local entities and the private sector, as well as a section on the creation of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to provide some checks and balances on the expanded powers of the federal government to wage the war on terrorism. I will not address these various measures here, but rather discuss the issue of whether the U.S. is putting too much attention and resources toward the threat of terrorism, and thus risking strategic surprise down the road should other threats arise. The reform act says very little about major threats to U.S. national security other than terrorism and weapons proliferation. It gives the DNI the authority to establish objectives, priorities and guidance for the community to ensure timely and effective tasking, collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of intelligence, but says little about how the process should work. It also gives the DNI the authority to establish and abolishother national intelligence centers to address intelligence community priorities, but does not recommend any particular centers other than potential regional ones. The 9/11 Commission suggested national centers for counter proliferation, crime and narcotics, China/East Asia, the Middle East, and Russia/Eurasia, but did not specically recommend any center other than the one for counterterrorism. When the President directed the CIA to increase its strength by 50 percent in November 2004, he gave top priority to the terrorism threat. He also mentioned the BREAKTHROUGHS

need to strengthen analysis on proliferation of WMD, the near East and South Asia, and other key strategic areas in Asia, while maintaining substantial analytical capabilities focused on other issues and regions. But he mentioned no specic threats in these regions or other issues to address. This gives some hope that the new DNI will not ignore other potential threats to national security, and the creation of additional national intelligence centers focused on both functional and regional threats is likely over the next few years. Nevertheless, terrorism is clearly the most compelling immediate threat to U.S. security, and it will require considerable additional resources. It requires sifting through a massive volume of often dubious information, looking for links, patterns and clues of specic attacks. The collection and analysis challenges are enormous, as is the counterintelligence problem. Counterintelligence is particularly frustrating in an environment where it is almost impossible to check the credibility of sources and information, and the process is both expensive and time-consuming. It takes skills that are not in the mainstream of intelligence priorities for decades, despite some spectacular counterintelligence failures such as the Ames and Hansen spy cases. My problem is that it is also very difcult to determine how many intelligence and security resources against terrorism are enough, and what particular measures are most effective. There is no real yardstick of success, only of failure. It is like the old joke about the man snapping his ngers on a street corner. When a friend asks what he is doing, he answers scaring away elephants. When the friend comments there are no elephants within a thousand miles, the man says works pretty well, doesnt it? In sum, it will likely take considerable time and substantial cost to see how well the intelligence reform and terrorist prevention act works in practice. The prospects for greater cooperation, coordination, and joint efforts within the intelligence community are good, particularly as more national intelligence centers are created, the clearance process is standardized and simplied, and intelligence data is more widely shared. Nevertheless, whether or not there is another major terrorist attack on the U.S. may be the only widely accepted measure of the SPRING 05

success or failure of the act. Thus, I worry that because we focus so much attention and resources on counterterrorism, we will fail to take adequate account of major threats to our national security until it is too late. Such threats could include, for example, a conict with China over Taiwan, a fundamentalist takeover in Saudi Arabia, a worldwide economic crisis, or a new and as yet foreseen health pandemic.

Robert Vickers, Jr. is a senior intelligence ofcer and a former member of the National Intelligence Council. He currently is teaching a graduate course on Intelligence at MIT under the auspices of the MIT Security Studies Program, where he is also a Fellow. The views expressed in the article are his own.

Intelligence Failure and Reform: Evaluating the 9/11 Commission Report

Joshua Rovner and Austin Long

he 9/11 Commission Report has been uniquely inuential in the debate about the organization of intelligence in the United States. Many of its recommendations were incorporated into the recently passed legislation that will enact the most sweeping changes to the intelligence community since 1947. In this paper, we examine the theories of intelligence failure presented by the Commission, and assess how closely the proposed reforms are linked to those theories. We make two principal arguments. First, the theories of failure are underdeveloped at best. Second, the proposed reforms are mostly unrelated to the postulated causes of failure. For these reasons, the large organizational reforms currently underway are unlikely to improve intelligence performance signicantly. We conclude by offering a few practical alternatives. on terrorist operatives might have brought much more attention to the need for permanent changes in domestic airport and airline security procedures.2 Although some agencies were concerned about a possible hijacking before September 11, they did not undertake standard procedures developed over the years to guard against a surprise attack. Specically, they did not analyze how terrorists might use an aircraft as a weapon, or describe the telltale indicators that would have revealed planning for such an operation. The intelligence community did not, for instance, assign analytical teams to play the role of terrorists. These red teams might have stimulated creative thinking and alerted the community to the nature of the threat.3 Surprisingly, the Commission did not explicitly link any of its proposals to this theory of failure, despite the emphasis on imagination in the Commissions explanation of what went wrong. Chapter 8 of the report goes into great detail about how BREAKTHROUGHS

Imagination The 9/11 Commission found that the intelligence community suffered from a lack of institutional imagination before the September 11 attacks. This made it impossible for most analysts and policymakers to gauge the terrorist threat accurately. Had they better understood the danger of al Qaeda, they could have taken steps to improve warning intelligence. More imagination also might have helped analysts reveal the crucial network of terrorists that planned and executed the attacks. In other words, the intelligence community could not connect the dots, because it was not sufciently imaginative.1 Finally, according to the Commission, more imagination could have stimulated more aggressive counter-terror policies and more vigilant homeland security. The halting of efforts to combat terrorists abroad during the Clinton and Bush administrations suggests that the threat was never fully understood. In terms of homeland security, wider distribution of CIA threat reporting 10

the intelligence community did not fully understand the warning signs, even though the system was blinking red with them in the summer of 2001. Chapter 11 describes the many missed opportunities to disrupt al Qaeda operations. The community had critical information at its disposal, but it could not sense the importance of what it was seeing. Still, none of the 9/11 Commission proposals offer clear suggestions about how to institutionalize imagination. It never indicates which proposals could help the intelligence community foresee threats to national security. Five proposals, however, are indirectly related to the issue. National Intelligence Centers. The Commission proposed the creation of an expanded National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), as well as a number of smaller issue-specic analytic centers. This recommendation was included as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Modeled after the militarys combatant commands, these national intelligence centers would focus on specic issues and regions. The primary purpose of

the centers would be to help policymakers coordinate information by pooling intelligence and streamlining information channels. They would also help institutionalize imagination, because dedicated centers would allow analysts to probe more deeply into specic issues. The NCTC would build upon the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), increasing the number of analysts working on the problem. Presumably, analysts would enjoy more time to implement the threat assessment and warning techniques that were neglected before September 11. This logic is hard to follow. The Commission observed, Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies, yet it recommended enlarging the bureaucracy by substantially expanding TTIC.4 This recommendation is not consistent with a theory of failure based on imagination, because adding analysts does not ensure analytical creativity. Without rigorous hiring procedures and improved professional training programs, an increase in the size of the counterterrorism center may lower the quality of its work. In the 1990s, by comparison, the workforce at the CIAs Directorate of

The 9/11 Commission.

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Policymakers suffer the same psychological biases as anyone else: they develop worldviews that frame how they perceive world events, and lean toward analyses that support their own predispositions.

Intelligence was reduced by 22%. Near the end of the decade, DI chiefs came to the radical admission that their work needed to become more rigorous and relevant to policymakers.5 They created the Career Analyst Program to train new employees, the Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis, and the Senior Analyst Service to retain top analysts at higher pay grades without having to move them to management roles.6 In short, the reduction in the size of the bureaucracy forced a reconsideration of its methods. A large, unstructured increase in NCTC resources will remove its incentive to do likewise. To be clear, we are not in principal opposed to adding intelligence resources to the counterterrorism effort. But any increase must be accompanied by complimentary professional training initiatives and incentive-laden retention programs. Another problem is that agency managers have little incentive to send their best analysts to the new intelligence centers. The Commission approves of the GoldwaterNichols legislation of 1986, which required military ofcers to serve joint tours in order to win promotion.7 We assume that the Commission supported such an arrangement for stafng decisions with respect to the national intelligence centers. Indeed, the nal reform bill gives the DNI the authority to offer incentives for service in his staff, the NCTC, or any of the centers.8 This is certainly a good idea, but managers will still be reluctant to part with their best and brightest. The problem is compounded by the Commissions recommendation that the director of NCTC perform personnel evaluations. In theory, he could monitor the performance of his staff and blow the whistle on agency managers for assigning sub-par analysts to the center. But the perils of organizational self-evaluation are well known: honest assessment is unlikely, because it threatens the status of the existing hierarchy.9 The upshot of all of this is that agency managers will send lesser analysts to the NCTC, and the NCTC will be inclined to overrate their performance. It remains to be seen whether the nancial and career incentives for joint intelligence tours will be enough to overcome these problems. If not, then the creation of national intelligence centers will do little to institutionalize imagination.

The Commission also argued that the centers would present a straightforward way for policymakers to receive alternative analyses. By providing a benchmark for issue-specic intelligence, the Commission hopes that the White House will learn to balance the advice of these intelligence chiefs against the contrasting viewpoints that may be offered by department heads at State, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and other agencies.10 This hopeful outcome, however, is predicated on an unrealistic faith in policymakers. It assumes that they will conduct a thorough and objective review of competing views, rather than rely on analyses that support preferred policy positions. Policymakers suffer the same psychological biases as anyone else: they develop worldviews that frame how they perceive world events, and lean toward analyses that support their own predispositions.11 Moreover, policymakers are subjective consumers of intelligence, with strong political incentives to disregard unsettling estimates. Not surprisingly, leaders have a long history of ignoring such intelligence.12 In any case, leaders already have the opportunity to weigh competing analyses from the intelligence community and request specic products. Unsatised policymakers can even create ad hoc bodies to review intelligence and explore alternative hypotheses. (This was the purpose of the Ofce of Special Plans, the Pentagon working group that challenged existing estimates on Iraq and al Qaeda before the war.) If the 9/11 Commission was truly interested in fostering imagination, it made little sense to propose consolidating intelligence in national intelligence centers. Such consolidation is likely to decrease the number of competing analyses that make it to the White House. Director of National Intelligence.13 The second proposal to improve imagination relates to the creation of a director of national intelligence. The Commission argued that DNI would allow the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) to focus on rebuilding analytic capabilities in the CIA. The DCI has traditionally served as the head of CIA, the principal intelligence advisor to the president, and the nominal leader of the entire intelligence community. By stripping the DCI of his advisory and coordinating duties, the Commission concluded that he could concentrate on improving CIA analyses. 14 BREAKTHROUGHS

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FBI intelligence. The Commission recommended building a special national security workforce within the FBI. The Bureaus traditional focus has been criminal justice, which the Commission notes is a wholly different discipline from national security. As a law enforcement agency, its evidentiary standards are far higher than those of intelligence agencies that work abroad. Intelligence agencies need only provide reasonably actionable intelThe congressional ligence for policyreform bill is unclear makers; law enforceabout the future role ment must provide of the DCI. Breaking evidence that can from the 9/11 Commisstand up in a court of sion, it places primary law. The legal and responsibility for instidoctrinal gap between tutionalizing imaginathe FBI and national tion with the DNI.16 intelligence agencies The legislation also inhibits cooperation includes provisions that within the intelligence direct the DNI to ensure community, and the high-quality analytic proposal to bolster methods and protect the the FBIs intelligence objectivity of analysis.17 apparatus is primarBut the real authority of ily concerned with the DNI is ambiguous. improving coordinaAlthough given broad tion.20 But it may also President Bush and DNI appointee nominal control over improve imagination John Negroponte. budgets, personnel, and by adding analysts tasking, there is no guarantee that the DNI with domestic intelligence experience. This will have the bureaucratic inuence to imrecommendation is sound, even though it is pose his will over the community, especially only tangential to the theory of insufcient because the reform bill states that the DNI imagination. Congress acted on the proposal cannot abrogate the statutory responsibiliby expanding the renamed FBI Directorate ties of the Secretary of Defense.18 Meanof Intelligence to include both oversight of while, the DCI will ght to retain control FBI eld operations and strategic analysis.21 over the CIA after being stripped of other Threat and readiness assessments. responsibilities. Under these conditions, it Finally, the Commission recommended that is hard to imagine how the DNI will be able the Departments of Homeland Security and to force the community to become more Defense conduct regular threat and readiness imaginative. assessments.22 It criticized North American Declassifying the intelligence budget. The Commission recommended declassifying intelligence spending, which is currently hidden in the defense budget. It correctly argues that no informed public debate over priorities can occur as long as the public is SPRING 05 Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for ignoring the threat posed by planes taking off from domestic runways before September 11. This was implicitly a failure of imagination, and regular DOD threat assessments will take steps to avoid tunnel

While this sounds reasonable, the Commission is vague about how this will actually take place. One section of the report encourages the DCI to increase diversity at the CIA. This makes some sense in terms of institutionalizing imagination, because analysts with diverse backgrounds bring different language skills and perspectives to the job. But it also raises important questions. When the Agency is making hiring decisions, for example, will diversity trump analytical skill? If so, then analysis may become unfocused or misguided. The Commission assumes that diversity is a good in itself. This may be true, but there is no supporting discussion in the report.15

kept unaware of the total spending and basic distribution of funds in the intelligence community. This proposal is both sensible and long overdue. Unfortunately, Congress did not include it in the nal reform package.19

. . . the report encourages the DCI to increase diversity at the CIA . . . because analysts with diverse backgrounds bring different language skills and perspectives to the job.

13

Pentagon, Sept. 14, 2001.

vision in the future. The DHS readiness checks serve a similar purpose, even though they are geared mainly toward improving the efciency and reliability of rst responders. Both of these proposals were incorporated into the congressional reform bill.23 Summary. There is a signicant gap between the Commissions theory of insufcient imagination and its proposed solutions. It is unlikely that any of the major changes will help generate analytical imagination. The creation of national intelligence centers is a costly enterprise that rests on unrealistic faith in policymakers objectivity. The call for a larger and more diverse community of analysts may, perversely, drive down the quality of its work. And there is no reason to expect that the DCI will be more able to stimulate imagination after he is stripped of his title as principal intelligence advisor. More sensible proposals in the Commission report are only peripheral to the imagination problem. These include expanding the FBIs intelligence capabilities and mandating regular DOD and DHS threat and readiness assessments. These plans build upon existing resources and should offer some gain. One recommendation, declassifying the intelligence budget, was both logical and clearly relevant to the theory

of failure. Ironically, this was the proposal Congress chose to reject. Management and Coordination The 9/11 Commission detailed a second theory of intelligence failure: failure of management, or more precisely, failure of coordination. The Commissions report notes that information was not shared, sometimes inadvertently or because of legal misunderstandings. Analysis was not pooled. Effective operations were not launched.24 The report goes on to make an analogy of the intelligence community as a hospital full of specialists with no attending physician to ensure unity of effort. The intelligence community was therefore unable to connect the dots not only due to a failure of imagination, but also a failure of coordination. If only Agency X had known what Agency Y knew, they could have done more or better. The report labels this a failure of operational management, with the primary example used being the relationship of the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA and FBI regarding the entry of 9/11 hijackers Mihdhar and Hazmi into the United States.25 In addition to failures of operational management, the 9/11 Commission identies failures of institutional BREAKTHROUGHS

14

management. In contrast to operational management, which deals with day-to-day issues of coordination and tactics, institutional management is strategic. The Commission denes institutional management as dealing with the broader management issues pertaining to how the top leaders of the government set priorities and allocate resources.26 The primary example given is the failure of a 1998 memo from DCI George Tenet declaring that the U.S. intelligence community was at war with terrorists to generate a substantial reprioritization of resources.27 The Commission further argues that the DCI did not generate a management strategy for a war against Islamist terrorism before 9/11.28 Two of the Commissions specic recommendations related to failures of management are worth addressing in detail. Creation of a Trusted Information Network/Shared Information Environment. The Commission report recommends that the President lead an effort to create a decentralized network that would allow all national security agencies to access one anothers databases. This network would be highly secure and allow some retention of information rights by specic agencies, but its overall purpose would be to break down barriers between agencies. In theory, this would allow the intelligence community to utilize the benets of the information revolution to prevent failures of operational coordination, such as the NSA/CIA/FBI problem with Mihdhar and Hazmi. This recommendation is problematic for at least two reasons. First, it mirrors the argument of revolution in military affairs supporters in the defense community that networks of sensors can lift the fog of war, to use Vice Admiral Bill Owenss term.29 This belief that information technology can remove most if not all of the uncertainty from warfare has been dealt a serious blow by the conict in Iraq. Despite a major investment in information technology by the Defense Department, the fog of war was not lifted even during the relatively straightforward period of major combat operations culminating in the fall of Baghdad. This technology has also proved insufcient to deal with the ongoing insurgency in Iraq as well.30 The problem of uncertainty in an environment in which a responsive adversary SPRING 05

is actively attempting deception cannot be dispelled by information technology, either for the military or the intelligence community. Second, apart from the inherent uncertainty of military and intelligence activity, total sharing of information can lead to a very real danger of data overload. This data deluge is compounded by the often fragmentary nature of intelligence reporting, as it may be unclear whether an al-Hazmi intercepted talking to Osama Bin Laden on a cell phone is Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds friend Nawaf or a different individual entirely. The foregoing is not to argue that information technology and data sharing are inherently bad, but that they should instead be viewed with at least a healthy skepticism. Many of the problems of coordination between agencies can be (and in some cases already have been) overcome by the simpler expedient of analysts cultivating relationships with colleagues in the community. An analyst at CIA who forms a relationship with colleagues at NSA will receive more than just data; they will also benet from the colleagues expertise, experience and opinion. Convincing individual analysts to take the initiative to form relationships with colleagues is both less sexy and more difcult to mandate than the congressional intelligence reform bills Information Sharing Environment.31 However, it is both cheaper and more likely to produce longterm benets. The Director of National Intelligence. While the DNI has been discussed in the previous section on imagination, it is in the realm of management/coordination that the DNI is meant to have the largest impact. Having one individual to oversee all budgets, coordinate action, and, if necessary, force compliance seems like an ideal solution to fractious inghting between government agencies. Yet the history of the United States government is littered with coordinators and czars who have made little difference, the drug czar of the Ofce of National Drug Control Policy and the Director of Central Intelligence being two among many. The difference with a DNI, supporters argue, is that he will have budgetary and personnel authority, enabling him to reward compliance and punish non-compliance. Even ignoring the previously noted limitations on the DNIs authority with regard to other 15

Many of the problems of coordination between agencies can be (and in some cases already have been) overcome by the simpler expedient of analysts cultivating relationships with colleagues in the community.

cabinet ofcials, there is little reason to think that mere centralization and budget authority can tame unruly agencies.32 Again, the forgoing is not to argue that attempting centralization or improving jointness are inherently bad ideas. Instead, the point is to highlight the enduring nature of interagency disputes and indicate that a quick x though centralization is unlikely at best. Further, centralization is not without consequence, as discussed in more detail below. Shallow Theories The 9/11 Commission Report is problematic on its own terms because of the conspicuous gap between its posited theories of failure and the recommended reforms. The 9/11 Commission Report is problematic on its own terms because of the conspicuous gap between its posited theories of failure and the recommended reforms. But there are also serious problems with the theories themselves. Both are badly underdeveloped, neglecting most of the literature on warning intelligence and strategic surprise. Thus, it is no surprise that many of the Commissions recommendations are not logical solutions for improving intelligence. The theory of insufcient imagination is especially vague. It seems to refer only to the ability to anticipate spectacular attacks by transnational terrorist organizations. But individuals and intelligence agencies can imagine any number of possible scenarios.33 In this light, it becomes clear that the 9/11 Commission left important questions unasked: Is there such a thing as too much imagination? How much is enough? And how can we evaluate institutional imagination before something actually happens? In other words, how can the intelligence community ensure that it is being appropriately imaginative? Imagination comes at a cost, because unchecked scenario building gets in the way of setting priorities. In the 1990s, defense analysts criticized how concepts like capability-based planning justied military investment wholly disproportionate to genuine threats. Freed from what James Winnefeld called the tyranny of scenario plausibility, the Pentagon could spend lavishly on new technologies without regard to their real utility. Today it is trying to reign in these costs, partly because it has to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.34 The intelligence community needs to set priorities for the same reason. It cannot entertain all 16

possibilities without diverting its attention from more realistic threats. Intelligence critics commonly decry the effects of psychological mindsets, which blind analysts to alternative possibilities.35 But without the benet of hindsight, it is very difcult to distinguish a mindset from a rational appreciation of existing data. Indeed, analysts would be irresponsible if they failed to focus on the most likely risks. The 9/11 Commission Report does not explore the fuzzy line between analytical tunnel vision and a healthy evaluation of the best available information.36 The two variants on the theory of managerial failure are also awed. The theory of failure resulting from poor operational management is not without some merit. Many of the agencies comprising the intelligence community have historically not interacted well. The derogatory rendering of the acronym DIA as Da Idiot Agency, has been used at CIAs Langley campus, while DIA analysts at Bolling Air Force Base respond with Clowns In Action.37 Even within the CIA, a cultural divide exists between the spies of the Directorate of Operations and the analysts of the Directorate of Intelligence.38 However, to make the argument that poor centralization was the cause of 9/11 requires a number of what-ifs. Taking the Commissions main example, suppose perfect coordination existed and Hazmi and Mihdhar had been watchlisted. Would this have stopped 9/11? The Commissions report acknowledges that watchlisting alone was unlikely to have stopped the attack.39 So it is unclear whether this failure materially resulted in the outcomes of 9/11. Further, the argument that NSA should have done more to research the identities of Hazmi and Mihdhar without being asked reveals a misunderstanding of the role of specic agencies in the community. Agencies like the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Ofce (NRO), and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) are primarily producers of raw intelligence from national technical means. They are extremely procient at their primary functions, but have relatively small, highly specialized analytic components. When the Commission argues that NSA saw itself as an agency to support intelligence consumers, it seems to indicate that NSA was mistaken in this belief.40 In BREAKTHROUGHS

fact, this is exactly the role given to the NSA in Executive Order 12333, which denes the NSAs role as the collection, processing, and dissemination of signals intelligence in accordance with direction from the DCI.41 In other words, NSA collects what other agencies task it to collect. Otherwise, the potentially innite realm of signals to intercept or images to acquire would rapidly overwhelm the NSA or any of the other technical agencies. The second managerial theory, weak institutional management, is more tenuous than the rst. The primary reason that DCI Tenets memo had little impact is that, for obvious reasons, the DCI does not have the power to declare war. When the memo was issued, the Clinton Administration had spent much of the previous six years ignoring the intelligence community and was distracted by domestic scandal and other crises abroad. Even after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the administration only launched a desultory military response. In light of this obvious ambivalence about terrorism in the Oval Ofce, it mattered little what DCI Tenet or any other ofcial stated. Congress was equally uninterested.42 The responsibility for the failure to develop a strategy for war with Islamic terror before 9/11 must be shouldered primarily by policymakers. It is not the role of the intelligence community to create national strategy. Instead, intelligence agencies, like the military, are advisors on and implementers of national strategy.43 Conicting Reforms The 9/11 Commission Report assumes that imagination and coordination are symbiotic. Coordination, it argues, is only possible when analysts can accurately foresee the nature of future threats. With sufcient imagination, analysts can efciently search through an avalanche of data to untangle the important signal from the background noise. Others have made the related point that consulting outside experts will help the community recognize previously hidden patterns. To protect the U.S., argue Gregory Treverton and Peter Wilson, every agency controls its own information, with access SPRING 05

granted on a need to know basis. Yet creativity in analysis will come precisely from having people with no need to know look at data, because they may see patterns that current experts do not.44 But what if the opposite is also true? What if efforts to increase institutional imagination end up conicting with efforts to increase coordination? The Commission did not consider the possibility that its two core recommendations are at odds. A

more comprehensive theoretical treatment would have at least addressed the latent tension between imagination and coordination. Imagination involves unconventional thinking; it means paying heed to alternative analyses and developing working scenarios from speculation. Coordination, on the other hand, involves getting analysts to focus on the same threats and scenarios. Here creativity gets in the way of the Commissions call for a unity of effort. For example, consider the tension between seeking a decentralized approach to operational management (in the form of the Information Sharing Environment and institutionalized alternative analysis) and a centralized approach to institutional management under the DNI. Centralized priorities and budgets may help the community

Osama Bin Laden propoganda poster.

17

effectively mine the data for relevant patterns. On the other hand, centralization may also lead to increased levels of consensusseeking in the intelligence community, with all the perils of least common denominator analysis and groupthink. We suspect that the Commission overlooks these trade-offs because it conates coordination with data sharing, lumping them together under the rubric of management. Data sharing means making information more accessible to a wider number of analysts. Coordination means directing analysts, collectors, and operators to focus on the same issue. The Commission implicitly assumes that making information more transparent will lead to coordination, because important patterns will be revealed.45 But there is no reason that this will automatically occur; experts often come to very different conclusions even when data is completely unrestricted.46 What does this mean in terms of the recently passed intelligence bill? One consequence is that reforms cannot simultaneously improve institutional imagination as well as coordination. If they enhance coordination, the community will become less imaginative. More likely, however, is that the sweeping organizational changes will not do much for either problem. This is because in each case, the reforms are logically 18

disconnected from the theorized causes of failure. Without specically tying them to convincing theories, the reforms are nothing more than an expensive and time-consuming bureaucratic reshufe. Practical Recommendations This is not to say that the intelligence community cannot improve its performance by implementing more practical recommendations. Such reforms will probably never be front-page news, but they may have a positive and lasting effect on community performance. The 9/11 Commission included some of these ideas in its report. Declassifying the top line intelligence budget and standardizing clearance procedures, for example, would be welcome if unspectacular changes. To those recommendations we add a few of our own. One of the great ironies of intelligence is that those with the broadest and most relevant experience are the most likely to be denied clearance. Arabic speakers, for instance, usually have family and friends in the Arab world; this sets off alarm bells among counterintelligence ofcers. If the DNI is to implement the intelligence reform bills call for diversity, he must address this paradox. The current clearance process BREAKTHROUGHS

Is this the solution?

does not allow for much managerial input or appeal. If the counterintelligence staff denies clearance to a qualied applicant, managers have almost no power to appeal the decision. Due to privacy concerns, managers are often not even informed of the reason clearance was denied. Reforming the clearance process to allow applicants the opportunity to waive their right to privacy would allow managers greater ability to appeal if they believe the risk is acceptable. Second, any increase in hiring should be accompanied by new professional training courses and eld tours. Additional hiring would make it easier for analysts to develop professional expertise away from the ofce, because more full-time analysts can pick up the slack while they are away. For example, only one or two analysts currently cover many accounts at the CIA. The unrelenting demand for day-to-day reporting makes it difcult for them to nd the time for area-specic and language training. Any additional slack in the system to alleviate this problem would be useful. But without establishing complementary training programs, the net result of expanded hiring will be to dilute the talent base. Coordination will also become more difcult as more people are brought on board.

Third, the community must come to grips with the problem of retaining good analysts. Improving intelligence depends critically on the long process of cultivating professional experts. Unfortunately, it is no secret that many analysts can make more money in the private sector, both because of their specialized knowledge and because they hold security clearances. They may also leave government service to escape from policy and media scrutiny. Overcoming the retention problem will require solutions that insulate analysts from external pressure while demanding internal accountability. One possibility would be to expand the Senior Analyst Service and create more openings for dedicated analysts at higher pay grades. This would allow the community to isolate top analysts and provide personal and nancial incentives for them to remain in government service. Absent such programs, the community is vulnerable to unstructured cycles of binge hiring and general purges. Conclusion Although many of the 9/11 Commissions recommendations are now written into law, the story of intelligence reform is far from complete. The legislative language is vague, meaning that the process of implementation 19

SPRING 05

will be critically important. An informed debate on the theories of intelligence failure will be essential to ensuring that reform leads to improvement. The current high prole organizational changes offer a sense that the community is taking action. This is comforting, perhaps, but unlikely to do much good.
NOTES: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), pp. 339-348.
1 2 3 4 5

talent pool. But we must be very clear about the goals of diversity and the trade-offs involved. Past discussions have argued for diversity on legal and moral grounds, while remaining quite vague on the substantive impact of diversication. See, for example, Alton Dunham, Leading a Diverse Workforce into the 21st Century, Defense Intelligence Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1998), pp. 89-105. The DNI shall establish a process and assign an individual or entity the responsibility for ensuring that, as appropriate, elements of the intelligence community conduct alternative analysisof the information and conclusions in intelligence products. Intelligence Reform Act, sec. 1017.
16 17 18 19 20

Intelligence Reform Act, secs. 1019-1020. Intelligence Reform Act, sec. 1018. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 416.

9/11 Commission Report, p. 344. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 346. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 344.

Roger Z. George, Fixing the Problem of Analytical Mind-Sets: Alternative Analysis, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn 2004), pp. 385-404, at 391. George, Fixing the Problem, and Stephen Marrin, CIAs Kent School: Improving Training for New Analysts, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 609-637.
6 7 8

Gregory F. Treverton, Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 167-176. Intelligence Reform Act, sec. 2002. 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 427-428. Intelligence Reform Act, secs. 7306-7307. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 353.

21 22 23 24 25

9/11 Commission Report, pp. 408-409.

Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, S.2845, sec. 102A; http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ query/C?c108:./temp/~c108Lpf8R0. Aaron Wildavsky, The Self-Evaluating Organization, Public Administration Review, Vol. 32, No. 5 (September/October 1972), pp. 509-520.
9 10 11

9/11 Commission Report, p. 353-354. The NSA had some information on the two terrorists in late 1999, but did little to follow up, as it was not asked to by any of its customers in the intelligence community. The CIA failed to appreciate the signicance of the two names and did not launch a major effort to track them prior to their entry into the U.S., though some efforts were made. This failure was compounded when the FBI was not informed that the two might attempt to enter the U.S. and therefore failed to place the names on a watchlist. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 357.

9/11 Commission Report, p. 411.

26 27

Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 117-202.
12 For an excellent history of intelligence-policy relations, see Christopher Andrew, For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). For discussions of why policymakers ignore intelligence, see Richard Betts, Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable, World Politics, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1978), pp. 61-89; Michael Handel, The Politics of Intelligence, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 2, No. 4 (October 1987), pp. 546; Thomas L. Hughes, The Fate of Facts in a World of Men (New York: Foreign Policy Association, Headline Series No. 233, 1976); and Hans Heymann, Intelligence/Policy Relationships, in Alfred C. Maurer, Marion D. Tunstall, and James M. Keagle, eds., Intelligence: Policy and Process (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 57-66. 13

Tenet specically designated Osama bin Laden a Tier 0 priority, the highest tier in the prioritization matrix then in use. See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan to September 10, 2001 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), p. 435.
28 29

9/11 Commission Report, p. 357-358.

See Bill Owens with Ed Ofey, Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2000). See David Talbot, How Technology Failed in Iraq, MIT Technology Review, November 2004.

30

On the Myers-Briggs personality test administered by the CIA to new personnel, many analysts score as highly introverted, making the formation of these interagency relationships difcult apart from any bureaucratic restrictions.
31

The Commission actually called for a National Intelligence Director (NID), while the nal legislation designated a Director of National Intelligence (DNI). For the sake of clarity we use only the latter title. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 415. Diversity is a laudable goal because the intelligence community badly needs an injection of professional analysts with linguistic and area-specic expertise. Broader outreach efforts will also increase the available

14 15

The best example of the failure of centralization to solve inghting is provided by the history of the Secretary of Defense (SecDef). The SecDef was originally intended to coordinate the budget and actions of the Army, Air Force and Navy Departments. Yet after nearly four decades and several strong-willed SecDefs such as Robert McNamara, Congress concluded that the services were still just as fractious as ever. This led to the oft-heralded Goldwater-Nichols reform of 1986, promoting jointness between the services. Nearly twenty years after its passage, Goldwater-Nichols has not ended tension between services over priorities. At best, it has mutated erce competition between services
32

20

BREAKTHROUGHS

into an exercise in log-rolling, so that each service gets its piece of the budgetary pie to spend as it wishes. The Air Forces continued pursuit of the expensive F/A-22 despite its unclear role in supporting near-term joint operations such as counterinsurgency is one example of this continuing problem.
33

tion could have been changed by the President and/or Congress and that Tenets attempts to get more money for the war on terror were denied by both the White House and Congress. This point is not a new one. The 1996 Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community chaired by Harold Brown notes: Intelligence agencies cannot operate in a vacuum. Like any other service organization, intelligence agencies must have guidance from the people they serve. They exist as a tool of government to gather and assess information, and if they do not receive direction, chances are greater that resources will be misdirected and wasted. Intelligence agencies need to know what information to collect and when it is needed. They need to know if their products are useful and how they might be improved to better serve policymakers. Guidance must come from the top. Policymaker direction should be both the foundation and the catalyst for the work of the Intelligence Community. Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofce, 1996), p. 29.
43

I can look at a knot in a piece of wood, said poet William Blake, until it frightens me.

Winnefeld is quoted in Carl Connetta and Charles Knight, Dealing with Uncertainty: The New Logic of American Military Planning, Project on Defense Alternatives, February 1998; http://www.comw.org/pda/ bullyweb.html. Futuristic weapons systems are also up against generous military pay and benet policies. See James Flanigan, Troop Costs Take Bigger Bite out of Defense-Contract Pie, Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2005, p. C1; and Cindy Williams, Making the Cuts, Keeping the Benets, New York Times, January 11, 2005, p. 19.
34

Post-hoc reviews of Pearl Harbor, the Yom Kippur War, and the 1998 Indian nuclear test all emphasize this problem. On Congresss 1946 review of Pearl Harbor, see Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1962). On Israels post-mortem, see Ephraim Kahana, Early Warning Versus Concept: The Case of the Yom Kippur War, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer 2002), pp. 81-104, and Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (New York: Free Press, 1990), pp. 95-132. On the Jeremiah Commission report that examined the U.S. failure to anticipate Indias nuclear test, see Walter Pincus, Spy Agencies Faulted for Missing Indian Tests, Washington Post, June 3, 1998, p. A18. For a more general description of analytical tunnel vision, see Richard S. Heuer, Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999); ww.cia.gov/csi/ books/19104/art3.html.
35

Gregory F. Treverton and Peter A. Wilson, True Intelligence Reform is Cultural, Not Just Organizational Chart Shift, Christian Science Monitor, January 13, 2005; http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/0113/ p09s02-coop.html.
44

The basic response to 9/11 has been to increase the size and funding of the intelligence community. Its budget has risen by an estimated $10 billion since the attacks, and President Bush has called for a substantial increase in the number of analysts. Along with calls for more imagination, this heady expansion may undermine efforts to prioritize among threats. Stephen Daggett, The U.S. Intelligence Budget: A Basic Overview, Congressional Research Service, September 24, 2004; http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21945.pdf.
36

It has become almost axiomatic to call for greater coordination since September 11. But this is nothing new. Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and head of the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research, best summed up the attitude of many to intelligence coordination: 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 Stephen Potter calls an OK word - one which dees precise denition but sounds good and brings prestige to the user. Yet Cline added, 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 intelligence community is suffering from over-coordination. Cline was writing in 1957, yet the same automatic belief in the absolute good of coordination is still held by many. Ray S. Cline, Is Intelligence Over-Coordinated? Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 1, No.4 (Fall 1957).
45

Terms taken from conversations with intelligence community personnel. For additional examples of historic DIA-CIA tension, see Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1979), p. 160-161, 173-176, and 212-213.
37 38

Jonathan Kirshner, Rationalist Explanations for War? Security Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn 2000), pp. 143-150.
46

On the differences between the operational and analytic components of the CIA, see Powers, Man Who Kept the Secrets, p. 35-37. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 354. 9/11 Commission Report., pg. 353.

Joshua Rovner and Austin Long are Doctoral students in the MIT Political Science department.

39 40 41

Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities, December 4, 1981, section 1.12(b). Text available online at: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/speeches/1981/120481d.htm. For more detailed discussion of Tenets memo and the lack of response in the community, see Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 435-436. Coll argues that resource alloca42

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21

The UNs Global Effort to Disarm Civilians: Wisdom or Folly?

Joyce Lee Malcolm
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. - The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations

merican and UN weapons inspectors may have failed to nd weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but in April 2003 Kuniko Inoguchi, Japans ambassador to the UN Conference on Disarmament, informed a 20-nation conference at Oslo that she had found them everywhere. Inoguchis weapons of mass destruction are small arms a category the conference referenced as including everything from handguns to shoulder-red anti-tank weapons.1 These have been dubbed de facto WMD because, at UN reckoning, they kill 57 people an hour and at least 500,000 people a year.2 Of this number, 300,000 deaths are estimated to occur in military conicts, the remaining 200,000 in civilian murders, accidents or suicides. As if creating all this mayhem were not bad enough, Inoguchi and her colleagues point out that illicit trafcking in small arms is linked to other kinds of trade, in drugs, human beings its linked to all types of criminal organizations and to terrorism. Inoguchi went on to chair the Vienna-based Conference on Disarmament, an institution dedicated to implementing the UNs 2001 Firearms Protocol, a global action plan passed by the General Assembly to outlaw trafcking in weapons ranging from machine guns to pistols.3 By 2003, sixteen nations had signed on to the plan, and the European Union is expected to ratify it shortly. The Campaign for a Global Small Arms Treaty It is only recently that those aiming to control small arms have taken to referring to them as weapons of mass destruction,

Sierra Lione child soldier.

but the global campaign to curb trafcking in small arms is now ten years old and counting. With the collapse of the Cold War, much arms control effort has been diverted from nuclear to conventional weapons weapons ranging from military equipment right down to the pistol on the bedside table. The goal is far more ambitious than merely curbing illicit international trade in small arms, or even illicit national trade, ambitious as those aims are. The agenda of the various UN agencies and the international NGOs working with them is to pass an international treaty to control possession of small arms throughout the world, both between and within nations. In the process, the treaty would, by determining what is illicit, of necessity determine which individuals, groups and entities should be trusted to be armed.4 Although the numbers of military and civilian deaths from small arms are lumped together, much of the real focus is on privately-owned weapons, and not merely those in the hands of criminals and terrorists, but those belonging to law-abiding civilians. The Executive Director of the UN Ofce for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Pino Arlachhi, reminded delegates at a UN workshop on small arms and crime in New Delhi, that they were to deal with problems with BREAKTHROUGHS

22

civilian-owned rearms. One of four such regional workshops, its agenda included the link between rearm availability and crime, rearm-related homicides, suicides and accidents and national practices relevant to rearm regulation.5 The 1995 UN Crime Congress, alarmed that small, illegally owned rearms were killing more people than major weapons, had urged the UN Centre for International Crime Prevention to take up the issue of civilian-owned rearms. The Crime Congress was also parent to the rst-ever international survey of rearms ownership and regulation. A preliminary report was published in Vienna in 1997. Coming from these two directions, disarmament and crime, the UN has sponsored regular biennial meetings since 1995 to monitor progress on a small arms agreement and hosted a series of regional meetings around the world to further that agenda. Reports and recommendations have been duly produced. A 16-member panel of experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General and chaired by ambassador Mitsuro Donowaki of Japan, produced a 37-page report in 1998 that, according to Ambassador Donowaki, contained the best available wisdom of our times. It urged that steps be taken to reduce and prevent problems caused by accumulations of small arms. A UN conference in New York in 2001 produced a Programme of Action.6 The huge documents cautious approach disappointed many proponents with its failure to address transfers to non-state actors, restrictions on civilian possession.7 Worries about civilianowned rearms also have been echoed by regional groups. In January 2005 under the headline, Millions of Small Arms in Civilian Hands Pose a Danger to Public Security, the Gambia Daily News reported that subSaharan Africa had some 30 million small arms and light weapons, of which 79 per cent were in the hands of civilians, 19 percent with the police and military and 2 percent with insurgents.8 Gambias permanent secretary at the Department of State for Defence described the situation as potentially dangerous and looked forward to SPRING 05

collaborating fully with the new small arms control program of the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS). East African states have already acted. In April 2004, eleven East African nations signed the Nairobi Firearms Protocol. Its contents reveal the sorts of measures the small arms controllers are advocating: - a ban on civilian ownership of automatic and semi-automatic ries - registration of all guns - regulation of gun storage and competency testing for prospective owners - restrictions on the number of guns a person can own - a ban on pawning of guns - uniform minimum standards regulating manufacture, control, possessionof small arms - uniform tough sentencing for unlicensed gun possession9 These restrictions will reduce, and could eliminate, the ability of law-abiding citizens of these countries to be armed, while doing nothing to restrict or reduce the weapons in the hands of their military or police. South Africas new gun licensing law, for example, is being used to reduce drastically the number of guns in private hands, leaving thousands of people, many living in areas where the police are unable to protect them,

Running some guns in Sadr City, Iraq.

23

unable to protect themselves.10 Andrew Soutar, chairman of the South African Arms and Ammunition Dealers Association, complained: Not a single license has been issued for a rearm that the association is aware of.11 In Botswana, the government will only process 400 applications for guns each year. The successful applicants are chosen by lottery.12 Non-Governmental Organizations and Small Arms International non-governmental organizations, buoyed up by their great success in the drafting and passage of the 1997 Ottawa Convention to Ban Antipersonnel Landmines, have been deeply involved in these UN meetings and conferences200 NGOs attended the July 2001 UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspectsand are busy with their own campaigns to promote civilian disarmament. In December 2004 the Million Faces Petition was unveiled in Tokyo.13 Makoto Teranaka, secretary general of Amnesty International Japan, one of the organizers, explained that this visual petition of photos is intended to show concern about the proliferation and misuse of arms around the world and urge governments to take action on tougher arms control.14 It is to be presented to world leaders in July 2006 when a UN conference on small arms convenes. The petition is part of the Control Arms campaign launched in October 2003 by Amnesty International, Oxfam International, and The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a global campaign to curb rampant use of small arms.15 Amnesty International Japan is leading the campaign in Japan with four other groups: Oxfam Japan, Network Earth Village, Terra Renaissance and InterBand Network Earth Village. The latter two are members of IANSA. By late December 2004 the Million Faces Petitions had 209,564 signatories, including photos of celebrities such as lm director Michael Moore.16 * * * Every right-thinking individual deplores deaths in warfare or from criminal violence, whether caused by so-called small arms or by any other means. And certainly there are civilians who misuse guns. But in 24

Are the governments that will be the signatories to the hoped-for global treaty to be trusted not to harm their citizens once they, their armies and police, have a monopoly on weapons?

their zeal to institute world-wide small arms controls, proponents of the campaign are ignoring important issues, indeed the most basic issues. The rst question should be whether the strict control, and perhaps complete removal, of the law-abiding citizens access to rearms is the best, or even a good way, to reduce violence against civilians. Are the governments that will be the signatories to the hoped-for global treaty to be trusted not to harm their citizens once they, their armies and police, have a monopoly on weapons? Is access to rearms for personal protection necessary, or would the public be safer without it? Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations insists that Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations. Should the UN apply different standards to the people it is meant to protect than it does to the governments that are its members? Small Arms Deaths: Statistics and Denitions Before we turn to these questions, it is worth briey examining the basis for the number of small arms victims, some 500,000 annually, cited repeatedly by the UN and NGOs active in the arms control campaign. In a painstaking analysis, David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisen found the toll of 500,000 killed by small arms annually, 300,000 in military conicts, 200,000 in homicides, suicides and accidents, a wild exaggeration of the number of both military and non-military deaths.17 The gure for war deaths assumes that all military fatalities are from small arms and light weapons. The actual gure for military deaths from rearms is closer to 115,000 than to 300,000.18 There is also a scrambling of categories of weapons. The Small Arms Survey denes small arms as revolvers and selfloading pistols, ries and carbines, assault ries, sub-machine guns and light machine guns. It denes light weapons as heavy machine guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers, portable anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft missile systems and some mortars. The UN refers to small arms as weapons designed for personal use.19 But the small arm label is often stretched to include both personal small arms and military light arms.20 The authors BREAKTHROUGHS

of the Small Arms Survey 2002 admit that this issue was deliberately avoided at the 2001 UN Small Arms Conference. They concede the Small Arms Survey, uses the terms `small arms, `rearms, and `weapons interchangeably. Unless the context dictates otherwise, no distinction is intended between commercial rearms (e.g. hunting ries) and small arms and light weapons designed for military use (e.g. assault ries).21 This approach of mixing weapon types, then focusing exclusively on small arms, was the practice from early in the campaign. In his Prologue to the 1997 report of the Secretary Generals Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, Mitsuro Donowaki referred to the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, moved on to small arms made to military specications and the widespread proliferation of light weapons that victimized millions of civilians and had led the UN General Assembly to request a report, not on light weapons, or military style small arms, but on ways and means to deal with the particular dangers and challenges posed by small arms.22 The report was placed on the UN agenda as General and Complete Disarmament: Small Arms,23 As for civilian-caused rearms fatalities, the UNs gure of 200,000 annually is also dubious. The World Report on Violence and Health (2002), the latest data on the subject, found 44,862 rearm-related homicides annually, based on the 45 countries that had good records on the subject. But the WHO could not explain how it arrived at its nal gure of 200,000 rearms deaths in peaceful countries. As Kopel, Gallant and Eisen note, since the 45 countries the WHO has used include those with the highest rates of civilian rearms ownership, it seems unreasonable that countries whose citizens own only a tiny proportion of civilian-owned rearms would account for over three times as many non-war rearms deaths as the countries possessing the great majority of civilian rearms.

Further, some 57.1 percent of the civilian rearms deaths reported by the WHO were suicides. Including these deaths assumes the suicides would not have occurred had rearms not been available, a doubtful assumption. An editorial in the British Medical Journal found that given the absence of one means of suicide, someone wanting to take his own life will simply use another.24 A comparison of the American and Japanese rates of suicide illustrates the relative unimportance of rearms as a factor in suicide. Japan boasts the strictest gun control of any democracy, while Americans own an estimated 200 million rearms. Yet the overall Japanese suicide rate is nearly twice as high as the American rate.25 Combined military and non-military deaths from small arms are probably less than 200,000.26 While far less than the much-touted 500,000 fatalities, the more accurate gure, of which some 80,000 are non-military casualties, is still a very serious toll. The question is whether a global treaty restricting civilian access to rearms would reduce or increase it. Is a Government Monopoly of Small Arms Wise? Proponents of a global small arms treaty assume it is civilian ownership of rearms that threatens ordinary people. A brief examination of the past century, however, reveals

Weapons conscated from the Muqtada Militia in Najaf, Iraq.

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25

that, on average for each year of the 20th century, governments took at least 20 times more lives than civilian gun murderers.27 The calculation is simple. If you assume an average of some 80,000 civilian-perpetrated murders per year world-wide, there would have been some eight million ordinary gun murders for the century.28 However, as Don B. Kates points out in his essay, Human Rights and Genocidethe Misguided International Public Health Effort to Disarm Civilian Populations, individuals acting for governmentsmilitary, police, groups armed by governmentsmurdered over 170 million non-combatant civilians during the 20th century. This number does not include accidental civilian deaths in wars. Rather than diminishing that appalling gure, disarming civilians may actually increase government-perpetrated murders by removing a basic deterrent to state-sponsored violence. Governments intent on terrorizing or slaughtering specic groups of citizens nearly always take the precaution of disarming their intended victims rst. The most notorious case is the Holocaust, where the Nazis disarmed Jews before launching their nal solution.29 But there have been many other examples. The Khmer Rouge, after taking power in Cambodia, conducted a house-to-house search for weapons throughout the country. As one witness reported, they would knock on the door and ask the

Not a Yankees rally.

people inside if they had any weapons. We are here now to protect you, the soldiers said, and no one has a need for a weapon any more. Even when people replied that they had no weapons, their huts were searched. Once the soldiers felt sure the people had no weapons, the killing began.30 With the people disarmed, the 100,000 member Khmer Rouge army was able to kill some 2.5 million Cambodians. The 30,000 men of Idi Amins death squads slaughtered 300,000 unarmed Ugandans. In testimony before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, 2003, Kates also cited government violence against unarmed civilians in the war between Ethiopians and Eritreans when Eritrea seceded. To terrorize the citizens of the breakaway region, Ethiopias army exterminated 300,000 unarmed Eritreans. Then there are the massacres carried out by the Serbian government during the 1990s. The well-armed Serbs attacked the Bosnian Muslims, who were unarmed and unable to get weapons to defend themselves because of a UN embargo. The UN had told the Bosnian Muslims they didnt need their own weapons because UN and NATO peacekeeping forces would protect them. Some 100,000 Bosnians were killed before enough weapons were smuggled to them, in violation of the UN embargo, to make the war more costly for the Serbs. While it is well-understood that a trained army can almost always defeat a far larger group of

26

BREAKTHROUGHS

unorganized civilians, armed civilians can ensure that any attempt at wide-scale slaughter becomes sufciently costly to serve as a serious deterrent. Will the UN and the International Community Protect Disarmed Civilians? If the UN and the NGOs active in the campaign for a small arms treaty succeed, and people in many nations are disarmed, can the UN and the international community be relied upon to protect those people from government massacres or even genocide? Sadly, the record argues otherwise. United Nations Peacekeepers assured the unarmed people of Rwanda and Srebrenica that they would protect them, then failed to act when the men, women and children gathered in UN designated safe areas were massacred. Thousands of Rwandans, disarmed by laws passed in 1964 and 1979, ed to UN troop bases when the genocide began in 1994. Contrary to their promises, the UN troops withdrew, leaving the Rwandan refugees to their fate. The Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda concluded: The manner in which troops left, including attempts to pretend to the refugees that they were not, in fact, leaving, was disgraceful.31 The following year, Srebrenica, a UN-designated safe area, was packed with Bosnian Muslim refugees as Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic began a week-long rampage there. The Dutch peacekeepers, charged with protecting the refugees, stood aside as the Serbs entered. Not a shot was red. Krstic and his troops separated 7500 men and boys from the women, drove them off and shot them. A former United Nations commander in Bosnia told a Dutch parliamentary inquiry into the massacre that it was clear to him that Dutch authorities would not sacrice its (sic) soldiers for the enclave.32 As I write, black Africans of the Darfur region of Sudan have been under attack for months by Arab militias armed by the Sudanese government. Sudanese Arab nomads SPRING 05

have been persecuting black Muslims in the Darfur region for years. Although rearms were difcult to procure, some black self-defense groups had obtained weapons on the black marketillicit weaponswith which they were protecting black farming communities. Then in mid-2003 the Sudanese government began arming the Arab Janjaweed militias. The government bombed the black villages and has been permitting the Arab militias to attack the blacks at will. The United Nations has repeatedly failed to act to protect the Darfur population. Instead, as in Bosnia, it has authorized an arms embargo.33 The BBC News reported that U.N. Secretary General Ko Annan refused to use the term genocide [about this situation], which would carry a legal obligation to act.34 While the UN has dithered, 70,000 people have been killed. Thousands of others are threatened with murder and starvation. Although Sudans gun laws are severe, international small arms control groups argue that these laws are not strict enough. Stricter laws would not prevent the government of Sudan from arming its allies, the Arab militias, while keeping their intended victims defenseless. Bearing this history in mind, it is easy to understand why many of the worlds tyrannical governments would be only too happy to sign the UN rearms protocol and any future global treaty meant to help them disarm their civilians. Samuel Wheeler writes: It is hard to see how a United Nations interested in the safety of persons rather than nations could hold that disarming the citizenry is a good idea. In none of the deadly sequence of genocides and citizen-slaughters that

Death and life in Rwanda and Bosnia.

United Nations Peacekeepers assured the unarmed people of Rwanda and Srebrenica that they would protect them, than failed to act when the men, women and children gathered in UN designated safe areas were massacred.

27

have characterized the Third World in the eighties and nineties have ordinary citizens been better off for having been helpless before the assaults of government agents. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the United Nations initiative is concerned with the interests of nation-states rather than the interests of people.35 Will Disarming Citizens Reduce Crime? A fundamental principle of the global arms control campaign is the belief that restricting civilian access to rearms will reduce crime.36 Peaceful citizens could expect to lead safer lives. But since the focus of the arms control agreement is not on removing weapons from criminals and terrorists, but on the far easier task of removing them from the citizenry, it is unlikely that legislation of this sort will succeed. The policy of disarming the public in order to deprive lawless individuals of weapons has been a dramatic failure in Great Britain and other countries where it has been tried. When the British government embarked upon a policy of gun controls in 1920, armed crime was almost non-existent, and violent crime very low.37 In 1904, before Britain had rearms

restrictions, there were only four armed robberies in London, then one of the largest cities in the world.38 Seventy years and many gun control laws later, armed robbery in Britain had increased 400 times to 1600 cases.39 The BBC commented that Britains rearms restrictions seem to have had little impact on the criminal underworld, but that is not exactly true.40 Disarming law-abiding people has emboldened criminals, who have less to fear from potential victims. From 1989 through 1996, armed crime in England and Wales increased by 500 percent, at the very time that the number of rearms certicate holders decreased by 20 percent. And in the ve years after passage of the sweeping 1997 handgun ban and conscation of registered handguns, handgun crime had doubled. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in Englands inner cities increased 91 percent, and in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled.41 Figures just released for January to September 2004 reported 10,670 rearms offenses recorded by the police, up 500 from the previous year.42 As British rates of violent crime and gun crime have been rising, they have been falling in America, where there are some 200 million privately-owned rearms. The latest surveys

Gary Mauser, The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, Public Policy Sources, No. 71, The Fraser Institute, Vancouver, BC., November 2003

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by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found rearms-related crime in America had declined to record levels, while the violent crime rate had fallen 54% since 1993.43 * * * Time to Reconsider Those laboring to enact a global treaty restricting small arms are well-intentioned, but the problem of making the world safer for individuals, rather than for governments, is a more complex matter than merely ratcheting down civilian-owned guns. As Aaron Karp, no opponent of the effort, points out: unlike other weapons issues, small arms are not primarily about states. More so than almost any other problem of peace and security, small arms direct attention to the rights and practices of individuals.44 Those who believe a more peaceful world can be achieved by restricting private rearms need to consider the basic premises of their campaignthat the public is safer when governments and their agents have a monopoly on rearms. If Oxfam truly intends, as its mission statement claims, to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives; if Amnesty International really wants to promote internationally recognized human rights; if the United Nations takes seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights afrmation that Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person, individual citizens must be permitted the means to defend themselves.45
NOTES: Alister Doyle, Action urged on deadly small arms trafcking, Reuters, April 24, 2003. The article refers to small arms as including machine guns and shoulder red anti-tank weapons, but according to the UN Small Arms Survey, small arms do not include anti-tank weapons. They are dened as revolvers and self-loading pistols, ries and carbines, assault ries, sub-machine guns, and light machine guns. Light weapons are heavy machine guns, hand-held grenade launchers, portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, recoilless ries, portable launchers of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile systems, and mortars of less than 1-mm caliber. Small Arms Survey, 2002: Counting the Human Cost, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva (Oxford, 2002), p. 10. And see UN Report, General and Complete Disarmament: Small Arms, August, 1997, especially pp. 11-12.
1

Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs. But these tallies for military deaths from small arms and for civilian deaths are wildly exaggerated as I explain below. On December 24, 2001 the UN General Assembly adopted without vote Resolution 56/24 V on The illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects. Two journals have devoted issues in 2002 to essays on the UN Small Arms Conference held in New York in July 2001. Nearly all the authors are supporters of disarmament. See The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Spring 2002, vol. IX, issue 1 and SAIS Review, WinterSpring, 2002.
3

Some 200 NGOs attended the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects held in New York July 9-20, 2001. On the notion that there is little important distinction between illicit and licit weapons see Nicholas Marsh, Two Sides of the Same Coin? The Legal and Illegal Trade in Small Arms, The Brown Journal, Spring 2002, vol. IX, issue 1, p. 217.
4 5 6

Ibid.

The full title is the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. Dhanapala, Multilateral Cooperation on Small Arms and Light Weapons, p. 168.
7

Millions of Small Arms in Civilian Hands Pose a Danger to Public Security, Gambia Daily News, Banjul, January 10, 2005, posted to the web January 10, 2005.
8

Nairobi Firearms Protocol, International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) summary, April 23, 2004.
9

Michael Wines, In South Africa, Licensing Law Poses Hurdles for Gun Buyers, The New York Times, January 3, 2005.
10 11

Ibid. The South African law requires that the police interview three acquaintances of the applicant, each applicant must pass a rearms course, install a safe or strongbox that meets police specications, and nally have a good reason to have a gun. The police refuse to explain what might be a good reason for fear, a rearms specialist explains, that it would come to be like a templateSo theyre being very subjective. The backlog of applications is immense with the police agency wrestling with shortages of items as basic as printed explanations of the law. Ibid. `Face signature campaign on arms control to be launched, EDS: Updating with Press Conference, Tokyo, December 17, 2004. Ibid.

12 13

14 15

These gures are widely cited. See for example, Jayantya Dhanapala, Multilateral Cooperation on Small Arms and Light Weapons: From Crisis to Collective Response, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Spring 2002, vol. IX, issue 1, p. 163. Dhanapala is the UN
2

The leading role of NGOs Oxfam International and Amnesty International in promoting civilian disarmament would seem to y in the face of the mission statements of these organizations. Oxfam International, for example, proclaims, In all our actions Oxfams goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives. Amnesty International describes itself as a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights. Despite the work of Amnesty International to protect such rights as free speech, it seems it does not recognize self-defense as a legitimate human right.

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29

The Japanese government has taken the lead in the push to control small arms. In 1995 it was Japan that introduced Resolution 9 at the UN calling for the international study of small arms laws and use. It has also sponsored and taken a leading part in the many meetings that have followed. Japan has the strictest gun control of any democracy. Its history with rearms is peculiar, having long banned possession of rearms, swords and other weapons to anyone under the noble class. Weapons were collected from the rest of the population on the pretence that they would be made into a large statute of Buddha. One historian has argued that this policy that deprived the peasants of their weapons reversed the growing social mobility of that class and put it into reverse. The popular attitude toward government and authority is also distinct from that of Americans and Western Europeans. Kopel concludes in his study of Japanese rearms regulation: More than the people of any other democracy, the Japanese accept the authority of their police and trust their government. See David B. Kopel, The Samurai the Mountie, and the Cowboy (Buffalo, New York, 1992), p. 39. For a summary of the Japanese history of rearms regulations see Kopel, pp. 20-58.
16

Nazis imposing total rearm bans in countries they invaded and using existing gun registration lists to disarm the people they conquered. John Gleeson, Recoil from Evil: U.S. Spurned Gun Registration as Hitlers Handy Tool, The Winnipeg Sun, August 20, 2004. Don B. Kates, Human Rights and Genocide: The Misguided International Public Health Effort to Disarm Civilian Populations, paper presented at the WFSA Symposium, London, May 2, 2003. Also see Don B. Kates, Democide and Disarmament, SAIS Review, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (2003), p. 308.
30 31

Cited by Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant and Joanne Eisen, The right to bear arms could have saved Sudan, National Review Online, August 18, 2004.

Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant and Joanne Eisen, When Policy Kills, National Review online, January 27, 2002.
32 33

Sudan won considerable sympathy at the UN with its insistence that any international action to protect the Darfur blacks would be an unwarranted interference with its national sovereignty. BBC News, June 30, 2004 cited by Kopel, Gallant and Eisen, The right to bear arms could have saved Sudan. Samuel C. Wheeler, III, Arms as Insurance, Public Affairs Quarterly, vol. XIII, no. 1 (April, 1999), p. 121. See for example Jayantha Dhanapala, Multilateral Cooperation on Small Arms, p. 163-164.

34

David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant, Joanne D. Eisen, Global Deaths from Firearms: Searching for Plausible Estimates, presented to The Legal, Economic and Human Rights Implications of Civilian Firearms Ownership and Regulation, international symposium, May 1-2, 2003, London.
17 18 Kopel, Gallant and Eisen, Global Deaths from Firearms, pp. 3, 11.

35

36

See Joyce L. Malcolm, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
37 38 39 40

At Gunpoint: The Small Arms and Light Weapons Trade: Introduction, Brown Journal, Spring 2002, vol. IX, issue 1, p. 159.
19 20 21 22

Ibid., p. 209. Ibid.

Ibid., note 1. Kopel et. al., note 1 citing Small Arms Survey, p. 65.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, Gun Controls Twisted Outcome, Reason Magazine, November 2002, p. 22. Ibid. BBC News, Violent crime increases by 6%, BBC News online, January 25, 2005. Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, August 17, 2004.

41 42

Mitsuro Donowaki, Prologue, Report presented to the UN General Assembly, 27 August 1997. And see the articles in The Brown Journal, Spring 2002 and SAIS Review, Winter-Spring, 2002 where authors easily switch from the reference to small arms and light weapons (SALW) to small arms alone.
23

43 44

Fifty-second Session, Item 71(b) of provisional agenda, United Nations General Assembly.

Aaron Karp, The Small Arms Challenge: Back to the Future, The Brown Review, Spring, 2002, vol. IX, issue 1, p. 189. See the websites of Oxfam, Amnesty International and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
45

Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, British Medical Journal, vol. 318, 8 May, 1999, 1225-1226.
24

Kopel, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy, p. 43. American suicide rates are also lower than European countries with lower rates of gun ownership. See Gary Kleck and Don B. Kates, Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control (Amherst, New York, 2001), pp. 58-61.
25 26

Joyce Lee Malcolm is Professor of History at Bentley College and a Senior Advisor at the MIT Security Studies Program.

See Kopel, Gallant and Eisen, Global Deaths from Firearms. WHO Small Arms (c. 79,000 deaths annually), compare with the slightly higher gure given by a CDC Report for a different year in the 1990s given in E.G. Krug, et. al., World Report on Violence and Health, Geneva, 2002). Cited by Don B. Kates in testimony at the UN Human Rights Commission, Geneva, 2003.

27

28

29

American opposition to gun registration dates to the Second World War when Americans witnessed the

30

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Canada: Crossing the Line

Harvey M. Sapolsky

anada is a security threat to the United States. It is shocking to be told that because Americans are used to thinking that Canadians are our friends, and that Canada is the source of nothing more dangerous than some of our winter weather and most of our hockey players. It is not that Canada possesses great military power. We know that Canada barely bothers these days to maintain an army. On the contrary, it is precisely because Canada is so weak militarily and culturally that it acts to harm Americas security interests. Anti-Americanism is the unstated essence of the Canadian identity. Of course, security threats can go both ways. Canada has long lived in mortal fear of the United States, and justiably so. As Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent American but Canadian born sociologist, has pointed out, Canada is the home of the losers of the American Revolution because it remained loyal to Great Britain and offered refuge to the many thousands of American colonialists who ed or were driven out of the United States by the victors. The American rebels openly harbored designs on the British territory to the north. The U. S. Marine Corps traces its origins to a Continental Congressnote the nameauthorization for the mustering of marines for a never held invasion of Nova Scotia. The War of 1812 did include attempts to wrest Canada from Britain that failed only because of the stout resistance offered by outnumbered Canadian forces. The guns in Canadian forts understandably point toward the United States. American interest in Canada was slow to fade. In the decades after the 1812 War, American expansion took place in the South and the West, but Canada was not forgotten. At the end of our Civil War, when we had a battle-tested army that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, there was talk about heading North and ridding the continent entirely of British inuence. When you are strong, old scores come to mind. In 1867, Britain gave Canada its independence in dominion form in order to reduce the temptation for union on both sides of the border. The urge for action receded. Sewards purchase of Alaska in the same year had to satisfy any Washington desire to own lots of tundra. More importantly, the West beckoned. Independent though it might have been, Canada clung to the British Empire. The focus of Canadian culture, commerce and defense relationships remained with Great Britain for nearly the entire next century despite the growing resentment of its French citizens and the growing attractions of the American colossus to the South. It was their unwillingness to share power with the French among them and their fears of American absorption that made Canadians such loyal subjects of the British Empire. And loyal they were. When the British went to war, the Canadians always followed. In World War I, Canada, then a nation of only 8 million people, mobilized a force of 600,000, of whom a tenth lost their lives in France and Belgium serving with the British. Although a Canadian general said of the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, the rst time that the full Canadian expeditionary force fought under Canadian command, In those 31

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rst few minutes [of the ght] I witnessed the birth of a nation, Canada did not break its paternal bonds. Two decades later it was again back in Europe ghting under British direction. Again the sacrice was disproportionally high. More than ten thousand Canadians died serving in the Royal Air Forces Bomber Command, about a quarter of the Commands overall losses. World War II sapped much of what remained of British power and set in motion the rapid disintegration of the British Empire and big changes for Canada. Canada did participate in the Korean War, contributing a brigade to a Commonwealth Division led by Britain, but that was both its last tag-along with the British and essentially its last shooting war. Living next to the United States protected Canada from the Soviet threat for free. And because without the existence of the British Empire it was impossible even to conceive of a defense against the American threat, Canada began in the 1960s to reduce drastically its military. Canadas NATO contribution, never large, faded to insignicant long before the Berlin Wall was

down. It withdrew its soldiers and airmen entirely from Europe at the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s, while continuing to cut its armed forces, Canada briey sought an international reputation in peacekeeping, but greatly tempered this initiative after disastrous experiences in Somalia where its troops misbehaved and in Rwanda where its leadership was ignored. Today the Canadian Army numbers 20,700 and Canada spends less than one percent of GDP on defense. Having lost its role of being the British Empires North American outpost, Canada had to nd another identity. National unity is hard to achieve in Canada, in part because of the unassimilation of the French who resented Canadas British years and who often threaten separation, and even more so because of the powerful draw to the south, the American giant, which is ten times more populous than Canada and irresistible to its young and ambitious. Appeasing Quebec alienates the Canadian West, where much of the nations riches lie and most of its red-staters live. Once freed from the British bond, Canadian commerce and culture

When Canada thought war was a good thing.

Reproduced with the permission of Veterans Affairs Canada, 2004

32

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reoriented entirely southward. Currently, more than 80 percent of Canadian exports are sold to the United States. And even with a government subsidy, there is little Canadian content in Canadian media. A ag and a constitution do not a country make. The Maple Leaf did replace the Cross of St Andrew, and the constitution was repatriated with a Bill of Rights soon added, but Canada still has to worry about the big identity thief to the south. A Canadian idol has become a Canadian who succeeded in America. Many professional and industrial associations have blended between the nations with the really big prizes almost always located in the south. Although very few Americans know or care who the Prime Minister of Canada is, most Canadians not only know the names of several American politicians, but have strong preference among them. It is no wonder that Canada reveres its problem-laden health care system, because Canada is very close to being America with but one distinctionuniversal health care. Canadas search for additional national distinction has led it to adopt an anti-American foreign policy. The Vietnam War coincided with attempts to solidify a non-British identity in Canada. Its abstention from the war made the harboring of American draft avoiders possible, as did the division over the war in the United States. Canadian politicians learned that opposing American foreign policy was popular at home and carried little risk to Canada of American retaliation. Unlike Britain, America has the resources to ght its own wars. It mostly seeks symbolic assistance so as to convince domestic audiences that its policies have foreign support and that burdens will be shared even if they are not. When Canada helped some Americans to get out of Tehran during the Iran Hostage Crisis, it bought a decade of American goodwill. The token dispatch of two warships and a squadron of ghter aircraft was enough to give it full Gulf War credit. But being an American foreign policy opponent has more advantages than being an American partner. Without costs, many around the world shake a st at America. The American public barely notices and holds few grudges. But opposing America can seem like standing up to Goliath at home. It can give the appearance of independence to nations that are hopelessly dependent.

Low grade anti-Americanism on Canadas part is surely tolerable. It is probably the glue that holds Canada together, and we should want Canada to stick together; otherwise we might be paying for the Maritime Provinces and trying to gure out what to do with Quebec. Moreover, antiAmericanism of this variety may well be the international norm these days, given the disparities in power that exist and our own unilateralist tendencies. If it makes most Canadians, or perhaps just most Canadian ofcials, feel good about themselves for Canada to cultivate an image of the kinder, gentler, more nuanced North American country, then so what? Canadas refusal to support Americas invasion of Iraq may be in this mode. Calls by Canada for the United States to give more time for inspections to work or to take no action without United Nations approval, may have been totally annoying to senior administration ofcials, but were understandable Canadian positions. Canada was not going to contribute anyway, and we were going to go ahead whether or not Canada agreed. No one much cared what Canada said or did. The more reprehensible Canadian behavior has been that which has potential for harmfully constraining our military actions and putting our soldiers permanently at risk. One example is the Ottawa Treaty Banning Landmines which the Canadian Foreign Minister orchestrated in 1997. The Treaty, whose formulation involved unusually extensive participation by non-government organizations including various humanitarian relief and anti-war groups, bans the manufacture, possession, transfer, and use of

Korea remembered in Korean monument-style.

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seek coalition partners, because it is unlawful for signatory nations to join in warfare with landmine users. Because American forces do nearly all of the ghting these days done by Western militaries, it will be American soldiers who will be most often unprotected by defensive mineelds. American soldiers, of course, will still face the dangers of landmines. The treaty has little effect on ghting in the poorer regions of the world, because few local participants pay attention to the ban, and because unsophisticated mines are cheap to make and easy to plant. Another example of Canada working against our security interests and potentially placing American soldiers in jeopardy is Canadas promotion of the International Criminal Court. A Canadian diplomat presided over the negotiations that produced the treaty creating the court, which Canada championed as the rightful legacy of the Nuremberg trials and the forum where the perpetrators of evils like that which occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia will be brought to justice. President Bush renounced the accepting signature that President Clinton gave the International Criminal Court treaty in his last days in ofce but never forwarded to the Senate, saying that the treaty would give license to politically-driven prosecutors to indict Americans serving in oversea stability and peacekeeping operations. With America taking the initiative to bring order to so many different parts of the world, it needed to protect its soldiers from the easy retaliation that an International Criminal Court trial would offer those who sympathize with our enemies. Canada has strongly opposed U.S. attempts to gain an extended exemption for U.S. forces from the courts jurisdiction. It seems likely that one day soon an American soldier will be heading to the Hague for judgment with all the political consequences that will involve. Canadas role in drafting these treaties is not the result of Prime Minister Chrtiens obvious and, at times, crudely expressed dislike for President George W. Bush and his administration. The treaties were initiated well before President Bush took ofce when Chrtiens good friend Bill Clinton was the President. Because they intentionally undermine signicant Americas military equities, the treaties seem to represent a deeper and more dangerous decision by Canadas foreign policy establishment to lead the BREAKTHROUGHS

Searching for banned mines.

anti-personnel devices that explode on contact or in proximity with a person so as to incapacitate, injure or kill. Banned also are so-called anti-handling devices often used with anti-vehicle mines. The argument was that the dangers of mines persist long after wars, with these weapons lying in wait most often in unmarked or forgotten locations to kill and maim the innocent who pass by or try to work the land. The United States has refused to sign the treaty, in part because it maintains marked and fenced mine elds along the inter-Korean border to hinder possible North Korean attacks, but also because it has developed and equipped its forces with replacement mines that are scattered rather than emplaced, and that are set with timers to self-destruct after a battle, thus posing no risk to returning civilians. These devices were not exempt in formulating the ban because, as one organizer put it, we didnt want to give the United States any advantage. At Canadas urging, most of our allies, including nearly all of our NATO partners, have signed the Treaty, which means essentially that we can never deploy mines if we

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international effort to hobble the American military. Canada appears not to be just searching for a virtuous image or opportunistically expressing a mild brand of antiAmericanism. It seems to be on a Lilliputian quest to bind our power. Because the threat comes from a friend, and a weak one at that, it is largely ignored. American Military to Military relations with Canada are extensive, with Canada receiving a lot more than it gives in return. Hundreds of Canadian ofcers and enlisted personnel are embedded in American units, given training at American military facilities and exposed to American military staff planning procedures. Canadian ships often sail as part of U.S. battle groups. Canadian air force

squadrons make exchange ights to U.S. bases. The deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command is a Canadian general, but so too is the deputy commander of the U.S. Armys III Corps. Ironically, even though Canada opposes our role in Iraq, III Corps recently deployed to Iraq with the Canada general still serving as the deputy commander and issuing orders to American forces. More such deals for Canada are being cooked under the banner of homeland defense. Canadian defense rms are included in the U.S. defense industrial base and therefore get privileged access to U.S. defense procurement dollars. But when Canada buys defense equipment from U.S. defense rms, Canada appears not to be just searching for a virtuous image or opportunistically expressing a mild brand of antiAmericanism. It seems to be on a Lilliputian quest to bind our power.

Photo source: ::neonyme.photo (neo@null.net)

Canadian political humor.

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it demands offsets, which is equivalent to double dipping. However, Canada mostly sells, not buys. Billions of dollars in U.S. weapon purchases ow toward Canada. Two-thirds of the Stryker vehicles, the Armys new combat troop carrier, are made in Canada. So, too, is a signicant portion of our ammunition. Canadas free riding is both impossible to stop and ultimately limited. We are going to protect the continent with or without Canadas help. We are going ght wars whether or not Canadian forces accompany our own. Given the likely effect of another terrorist attack on the nearly indistinguishable Canadian and U.S. economies, Canada can have no problem in working cooperatively with U.S. authorities to prevent inltration by al Qaeda members. Canada does not have to spend much on its military and it knows it, but Canada also is not suicidal. From a physical security/military assistance point perspective, we have what we need from Canada and always will. But we should be concerned about and not tolerate Canada seeking a leading role in the global coalition to thwart American power. Canada has given up on warfare; it can afford to though we cannot. When Canada calls for a ban on the instruments of warfare or wants to put in criminal jeopardy those who ght, it knowingly handicaps American action. There is nothing friendly or neighborly about placing deployed U.S. forces at additional risk. There has to be a line that Canadian foreign policy cannot cross. Canadas anti-Americanism, so necessary for its independence, should not nd an international stage. Subsidizing cultural events to reinforce a weak national identity is one thing; constraining American military advantage is another. The recent decision by Prime Minister Paul Martin not to have Canada participate in the U.S. missile ballistic defense program demonstrates how insensitive the Canadian government has become toward U.S. politics. The Left in America has all but given up ghting ballistic missile defense, which is a sacred component of the Republican Party creed. Security fears, real or ginned up, govern American presidential politics post-9/11, as do Republicans. Lulled by the Clinton Administrations apparent unwillingness to assert Americas military equities against Canadian diplomatic adventures, Canadian 36

politicians think they have only to contend with their own domestic pressures when thinking about defense. Confrontation surely lies ahead unless Canada recognizes both its growing dependency on its neighbor to the south and the renewed intensity of Americas security concerns. It is time to give Canada some attention and a bit of a warning. Canada is easy to squeeze. The military trade preferences should end. The tag-along trips and the

When Canada calls for a ban on the instruments of warfare or wants to put in criminal jeopardy those who ght, it knowingly handicaps American action.

The new prime minister follows the old line.

combat observation opportunities should stop. The Canadian military surely carries little weight in Canadian politics and these are small steps, but signals should be sent saying that there can be even greater costs ahead for Canada if it continues its international meddling at our expense and forgets its geography. The Canadian economy is highly vulnerable. Just as we know where Arctic blasts come from, Canada should know where economic prosperity originates.
SUGGESTED READINGS: Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (London: Routledge, 1990). Claire Trean, Washington Versus International Justice, Le Monde, July 2, 2002.

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Credit: Dave Chan, Canadian Prime Ministers Ofce

John Stanton, Uncertainty Remains About U.S. Landmine Policy, National Defense, January 2004, pp 40-41. Mark F. Proudman, A Story of Decline: The Tory Interpretation of History, H-Canada review of J.L. Granatatein, Who Killed the Canadian Military? Hcanada@h-net.msu.edu (September, 2004). Doug Struck, Forecast Frosty for U.S.-Canadian Ties, Washington Post, November 24, 2004, P.A24. Jonathan Gatehouse, Are We Having Fun Yet? Macleans, December 10, 2004. The Great, Blue North, This Week, December 10, 2004. Mathew Engel, Is Canada One? The Guardian, December 16, 2004. http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/gblec)2a.htm http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/providers/sub. cfm?source=links#First Albert Legault and Joel Sokolsky, eds., The Soldier and the State in the Post Cold War Era (Kingston Ont.: Queens Quarterly Press, 2002). Joel Sokolsky, Glued to Its Seat: Canada and Its Alliances in the Post Cold War Era, in Bernd Horn, ed., Forging a Nation: Perspectives on the Canadian Military Experience (St. Catherines, Ont.: Vanwell Publishing, 2002).

Harvey M. Sapolsky is Professor of Public Policy and Organization and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program.

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The Washington Post, Sunday, February 20, 2005

Editorial/Opinion
What Percent Is Slam Dunk?; Give Us Odds on Those Estimates
By MICHAEL SCHRAGE The controversial decision to reorganize Americas sprawling intelligence establishment has set in motion the most sweeping bureaucratic change for sensors, spies and satellites since the end of World War II. Unfortunately, the odds are excellent that this multibillion dollar structural shufe -- capped last week by the appointment of veteran diplomat John Negroponte as the new national intelligence director -- will do little to improve the quality of intelligence analysis for this country. Why? Because Americas intelligence community doesnt like odds. Yet the simplest and most cost-effective innovation that community could adopt would be to embrace them. Its time to require national security analysts to assign numerical probabilities to their professional estimates and assessments as both a matter of rigor and of record. Policymakers cant weigh the risks associated with their decisions if they cant see how condent analysts are in the evidence and conclusions used to justify those decisions. The notion of imposing intelligence accountability without intelligent counting -- without numbers -- is a fools errand. World-class investment banks, insurance companies and public health practitioners are increasingly bringing greater quantitative sophistication to their risk analyses. For reasons having chiey to do with custom, culture and practice -- not competence or cost -- the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI and the federal governments other analytic agencies have shied away from simple mathematical tools that would let them better weigh conicting evidence and data. That bureaucratic shortsightedness undermines our ability to even see the dots, let alone connect them. Consider the National Intelligence Estimates, the Presidential Daily Briengs or many of the critical classied and unclassied analyses owing through Washingtons national security establishment. Key estimates and analytic insights rarely come with explicit probabilities attached. The nations most knowledgeable experts on the Middle East, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, etc., are seldom asked to quantify, in writing, precisely how much condence they have in their evidence or their conclusions. Your personal nancial planner does a better job, on average, of quantitative risk assessment for your investments than the typical intelligence analyst does for our national security. For example, when the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research predicted terrorism and insurgency in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, its forecasts avoided explicit probabilities. But precisely how condent were the bureaus experts in their assessments of the breadth and intensity of the projected opposition? Did they believe that there was a 60 percent or a 40 percent chance that Sunni Triangle violence would spread north? Did they foresee a 20 percent or a 75 percent chance that car bombings of Shiite mosques would provoke widespread retaliation against Sunnis? The cultural bias against numbers deprives congressional and White House decision-makers of essential metrics to weigh the analytical communitys own credibility. Naming a national intelligence director doesnt change that. More than 40 years ago, Sherman Kent -- the godfather of the vital National Intelligence Estimates and the man for whom the CIAs analyst school is named -- penned a classied memo attempting to describe how vague words like probable and serious probability could be translated into meaningful numbers. His Words of Estimative Probability proved a rhetorically awkward and ultimately futile exercise in encouraging more disciplined discussions of probability in the analytic community. Passive-aggressive organizational resistance to quantitative rigor continues to this day. Former acting CIA director and longtime analyst John McLaughlin tried to promote greater internal efforts at assigning probabilities to intelligence assessments during the 1990s, but they never took. Intelligence analysts would rather use words than numbers to describe how condent we are in our analysis, a senior CIA ofcer whos served for more than 20 years told me. Moreover, most consumers of intelligence arent particularly sophisticated when it comes to probabilistic analysis. They like words and pictures, too. My experience is that [they] prefer briengs that dont center on numerical calculation. Thats not to say we cant do it, but theres really not that much demand for it. That doesnt mean it shouldnt happen. Fortunately, theres no need for a dramatic revolution; subtler measures will do. Heres a suggestion: The simplest, easiest, cheapest and most powerful way to transform the quality of intelligence would be to insist that analysts attach two little numbers to every report they le. The rst number would state their condence in the quality of the evidence theyve used for their analysis: 0.1 would be the lowest level of personal/professional condence; 1.0 would be -- former CIA director George Tenet should pardon the expression -- a slam dunk, an absolute certainty. 38 BREAKTHROUGHS

Michael Schrage is a senior advisor at the MIT Security Studies Program

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Reprinted by permission of the author.

The second number would represent the analysts own condence in his or her conclusions. Is the analyst 0.5 -- the courage of a coin toss condent -- or a bolder 0.75 condent in his or her analysis? Or is the evidence and environment so befogged with uncertainty that the best analysts can offer the National Security Council is a 0.3 level of condence? These two little numbers would provoke intelligence analysts and intelligence consumers alike to think extra hard about analytical quality, creativity and accountability. Policymakers could swiftly determine where their analysts had both the greatest -- and the least -- condence in their data and conclusions. Decision-makers could quickly assess where high condence interpretations were based on low-condence evidence and vice versa. Thats important information for decision-makers to have. Then their ability to push, prod and poke the intelligence community would be rmly grounded in their own perception of the strength and weakness of the work coming out of it. Seeing the areas in which top analysts consistently rate their condence in evidence below a 0.5 might evoke new thinking from the covert operations and sigint crowds in Langley and Fort Meade as to what data they should be procuring. More signicantly, these two numbers would build a record -- an ongoing audit trail of probabilities and odds -- to revisit and review. Pushing analysts to weight their intelligence assessments creates a less ambiguous standard of accountability, which might explain why the consensus in the analytical community is to avoid disclosing their odds. But House and Senate intelligence committees seeking greater accountability and better quality from the newly reorganized intelligence bureaucracies should insist that analyses brought in for congressional review -- classied or not, publicly disclosed or not -- include condence rankings. Yes, analysts and their agencies will attempt to game the numbers. Yes, policymakers will apply political pressure for analysts and agencies to alter their declared odds. All risk- assessment methods are corruptible. But these mechanisms can self- correct. Too many risk analyses that hover uselessly below 0.5 or provide too few assessments of 0.7 and higher that later turn out to be accurate tend to create their own pressures for fundamental change. Better accountability promotes better analysis. And better analysis comes from the explicit explanations and conversations around probability and risk. But even greater analytical accountability isnt good enough. A growing number of elds ranging from medical diagnostics to Internet spam ltering, for example, increasingly rely upon Bayesian analysis -- a probability theory that predicts the likelihood of future events based on knowledge of prior events -- as a powerful tool to weigh new evidence. Bruce Blair, director of the non-partisan Center for Defense Information, argues convincingly on the CDI Web site that Bayesian analysis goes a long way toward explaining the seemingly awed risk assessments made by the intelligence community during the run-up to 9/11 and the Iraq war. Nonetheless, although the CIA is familiar with Bayesian analysis and its computational cousins, these techniques havent seeped into the national security communitys analytical mainstream. Medical doctors and Wall Street traders today do a better job of challenging themselves to explore the growing diversity of analytic options. Even Major League Baseball teams, as Michael Lewis documents in his best-selling book Moneyball, are grasping that data-driven analyses can lead to better talent acquisition and management decisions. Why should professional baseball executives be doing more innovative statistical analyses than professional intelligence analysts? Mathematics is not a substitute for judgment, nor do equations dene analysis. But analyzing risk without probabilities is akin to discussing art without colors. You can do it, but dont be surprised at the sterility of the results. Unfortunately, with evidence Id weight at 0.8 and a conclusion to which Id assign a condence rating of 1.0, I predict that until the intelligence community overcomes its reluctance to go the probability route, it will continue to compromise its ability to adequately assess national security risks and threats.

The New York Times Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Editorial/Opinion
Making the Cuts, Keeping the Benets
By CINDY WILLIAMS Cambridge, Mass. IN an effort to reduce the growth of the military budget, the Bush administration is poised to cut back a wide array of Pentagon programs, from jet ghters to a missile defense system. Pentagon leaders say the cuts will save more than $55 billion over six years. Whether these reductions herald the end of the rapid rise in military spending that began in 1999, however, is open to question. While fewer weapons systems than planned will be purchased during the next six years, in nancial terms, putting an end to the buildup will require cutting far more than what is now on the chopping block. One reason is that much of the recent rise in spending has been fueled not by new tanks or missiles, but by new costs associated with military personnel - especially retirees. These costs amount to a permanent increase in the military budget. Unlike spending on equipment, they cannot be canceled or deferred. Since the start of the buildup, the rising costs of military pay, retiree benets, health care and family housing have greatly outstripped ination and added more than $40 billion to annual Pentagon budgets, even though the number of active-duty troops has essentially stayed the same. Moreover, the annual costs continue to grow rapidly. The program reductions that are reported to be under consideration would not be enough to offset the growth in spending for military pay and benets anticipated during the next several years. Even holding the increases in the military budget to the level of ination would require tens of billions of dollars in annual reductions. To the extent that added pay and benets ensure the nation does right by the men and women who ght for it, these increases would seem worthwhile. Unfortunately, a large share of new spending is devoted not to helping soldiers serving today, but to improving the benets for military retirees - that is, the small minority of veterans who stay in the military for 20 years or more and are eligible for immediate benets upon their retirements. In recent years, Congress has expanded retiree benets substantially, making them the fastest-growing category of entitlements for military personnel. In 1999, Congress reversed a 1986 law that would have trimmed pensions for retirees who joined the military after 1986. That change costs the Defense Department some $1 billion annually. A health care entitlement granted by Congress in 2000 pays virtually all medical expenses for older retirees and their spouses - including the cost of prescription drugs - that are not covered by Medicare. That entitlement costs the Defense Department nearly $4 billion now and its costs will rise over the coming years. Another benet, granted by Congress last year and scheduled to be phased in over a decade, will permit retirees who depart the military with moderate to severe disabilities to collect retirement pensions in addition to their disability payments. Its cost, about $500 million this year, will rise to some $2.5 billion a year in six years. In addition, a change authorized in October 2004 will enrich the pensions of spouses who outlive retired service members, at a cost of about $200 million this year and nearly $1 billion in 2011. As expensive as these new benets are, advocates are pressing Congress for more. These deferred entitlements do nothing to help men and women now in uniform. These members of the military face long and frequent family separations, deployment to distant lands, ghting in a dangerous counter-insurgency and more. Cash bonuses, improved family services, modern and well-maintained equipment and increases in troop strength (which would mean less frequent call-ups and deployments) are far more likely to serve their needs. In fact, most active-duty military will never get anything - because they will leave the service before they are eligible to retire with benets. Fewer than one in 12 of todays living veterans qualify for retiree benets, and fewer than one in ve of todays active-duty service members are expected to stay for the 20 years it takes to receive them. Moreover, deferred benets will not help the Army or the National Guard overcome the recruitment and retention problems they face as a result of the war in Iraq. The prospect of receiving such benets in the distant future is virtually worthless in helping the military to persuade an 18-year-old to join the military or encourage a 23-year-old to re-enlist. The rapid growth of retiree benets has already greatly complicated the budget picture for military leaders. Even if Congress decides against further expansion of such benets, the ones it has already granted will make it hard to slow budget growth without further reducing the size of the military. Giving in to pressure for another round of entitlements, in the face of the challenges facing the troops serving in Iraq and elsewhere, would be irresponsible.
Cindy Williams is Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Security Studies Program, and editor of Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System.

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Copyright 2005, The New York Times. Reprinted by permission.

SSP Conferences
Diplomatic and Military History Conference April 29, 2004 Hotel@MIT, Cambridge, MA This conference examined the status of diplomatic and military history in academia. Organizers Professors Harvey Sapolsky, Steve Van Evera and Michael Desch (University of Kentucky) presented three panels of distinguished historians from educational institutions across the country. Two of the panels considered the state of military and diplomatic history, and the third focused on where do we go from here? Finally, participants discussed ways to ensure the status of diplomatic and military history after the current generation retires. The Eleventh Annual General James H. Doolittle Conference: Air, Land and Naval Warfare in the Second World War A Reconsideration April 29, 2004 Yale University, New Haven, CT Each year, SSP hosts an aerospace powerrelated conference in honor of General Jimmy Doolittle, a great aviation pioneer and MIT graduate. This year, our dinner speaker was Professor Paul Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, and Director of International Security Studies, Yale University. Prof. Kennedy spoke on the topic Doolittle After 62 years: Air, Land and Naval Warfare in the Second World War. Prof. Kennedy argued that the Allies victory in World War II was largely based on technological and industrial prowess, and that despite remarkable courage shown by soldiers, the war ultimately turned on the ability to produce vast amounts of military hardware and overwhelm the Axis powers. Prof. Kennedy was presented with the General James H. Doolittle Award by SSP Director Harvey Sapolsky for his contribution to the eld of security studies.

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Recent SSP Publications

SSP Annual Report 2003-2004

SSPs Early Warning newsletter (published monthly during the academic year)

Working Paper 04-2 on command and control of the 2nd Infantry Division.

Working Paper 04-1 on the evolution of postwar airborne forces.

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g n i m o c p U ^ SSP Summer 2005 Courses

17.40s Military Innovation: Technology, Strategy and the Security Future June 13-15, 2005
In a security environment that promises increasing stress, the United States seeks to gain advantage by utilizing its signicant technological and organizational strengths. The course, taught by the faculty of the MIT Security Studies Program and other experts, examines the opportunities for signicant innovation in all aspects of warfare. The sources of likely conict and the system requirements that they may generate are also explored. The sessions involve discussion of service, joint, and coalition-based solutions.hjhjhjhjhh k

17.50s Promoting Innovation: The Dynamics of Technology and Organizations July 11-14, 2005
Both public and private organizations are concerned with keeping pace with a fast-changing environment. This usually requires a constant effort to be innovative. Yet, attempts to innovate are usually disruptive, cause internal dissension, and often fail. This course, taught by MIT afliates, explores organizational strategies that can sustain signicant innovation. The focus is on the environmental and internal incentives for change. Comparisons between public and private experience and successful and failed innovations are examined. jlkj;lkjkjkjkkkjjjjj p://web.mit.edu/ssp/1750s. h t m l k j ; l k j ; l k j l ; k j k k

MIT SUMMER
SESSION

17.60s Combating Bioterrorism: Implementing Policies for Biosecurity July 25-27, 2005
The threat of bioterrorism poses new challenges for agencies that now have the added responsibility of ensuring biosecurity. Public health, law enforcement and national security agencies all face new priorities, including learning to collaborate with each other. Implementing these new priorities will require signicant organizational change. But agencies have deeply imbedded professional norms and organizational cultures, which resist change. MIT Security Studies Program afliates and other experts in public health and law enforcement explore the obstacles to effective implementation, and strategies to overcome them. mkjkjk For more information about these courses, visit our website (http://web.mit.edu/ssp/summer_courses.html) or contact Magdalena Rieb at 617-258-7608/mrieb@mit.edu. SPRING 05 43

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program 292 Main Street (E38-600) Cambridge, MA 02139

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