Does Proximity Between Intelligence Producers and Consumers Matter?

:
The Case of Iraqi WMD Intelligence

Stephen Marrin
PhD Candidate
University of Virginia
spm8p@virginia.edu

International Studies Association Conference

March 1-5, 2005
Honolulu, Hawaii
Intelligence regarding pre-war Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
has become central to the debate over the US war in Iraq because of the importance that
the Bush Administration gave to it in the run-up to the war, and then the subsequent
failure to find WMD once in country. As a result, much attention has focused on the
quality of the intelligence and the possible causes of intelligence failure. However, any
assessment of intelligence failure should also address the proximity between intelligence
producers and consumers because that relationship can affect both the accuracy of the
intelligence and its incorporation into decisionmaking. Yet very little attention has been
focused on the proximity between intelligence producers and consumers and the effect of
that proximity on decisionmaking.

The intelligence literature indicates that proximity between intelligence producers and
consumers can vary, and that this variance can affect both the content and utility of the
resulting finished intelligence. For example of variance in proximity, the British Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC) is close to British national security decisionmakers, the US
National Intelligence Council (NIC) is distant from US national security decisionmakers,
and CIA's Directorate of Intelligence (DI) is somewhere in between. In and of itself this
kind of variation in proximity between intelligence producers and consumers would not
be of interest to intelligence scholars, but the intelligence literature also contains a
‘proximity hypothesis’ that indicates relative proximity may affect both the content and
utility of finished intelligence. Specifically, the proximity hypothesis states that
intelligence agencies that are close to policymakers tend to produce analysis that is useful
for improving decisionmaking but potentially distorted due to incorporation of
policymaker biases and preferences, while intelligence agencies that are distant from
policymakers tend to produce ‘objective’ analysis containing less distortion, but of little
use in improving policymaker judgment. Accordingly, if the proximity hypothesis is true,
the JIC should have more of an influence on policymaker judgment with a corresponding
increase in distortion, the DCI’s NIC should produce analysis that is unbiased by
policymaker preferences but minimally influential on their judgments, and the CIA’s DI
should be somewhere in between.

This paper evaluates the impact of proximity between intelligence producers and
consumers on pre-war Iraqi WMD intelligence and concludes that proximity matters,
although not necessarily in the way predicted by the proximity hypothesis. A preliminary
assessment of pre-war Iraq WMD intelligence indicates that proximity between
intelligence producers and consumers appears to have affected the influence of
intelligence on decisionmaking in a way consistent with the proximity hypothesis.
Specifically, the British JIC effectively influenced decisionmaker judgment, the NIC did
not, and CIA was somewhere in between. However, the proximity of intelligence to
decisionmaking does not appear to have affected the distortion of the intelligence
provided to decisionmakers because in the broadest sense all intelligence agencies were
wrong in their assessments of Iraq WMD possession. In addition, two formal studies of
Iraq WMD intelligence concluded that there was no distortion in the intelligence analysis
resulting from incorporation of decisionmaker preferences. This outcome is inconsistent
with expectations resulting from application of the proximity hypothesis.

2
In the end, this assessment of pre-war Iraqi WMD intelligence indicates that the
proximity hypothesis may not hold true in all circumstances and this may have policy
ramifications in terms of designing an organization with optimal proximity between
intelligence producers and consumers. More broadly, this assessment also contributes to
an effort to re-conceptualize the relationship between intelligence producers and
consumers to integrate the intelligence literature into a broader foreign policy
decisionmaking framework entailing two-way information flows between intelligence
agencies and policymakers.

Effects of Proximity on Decisionmaking: Existing Knowledge

Intelligence agencies play a key role in the foreign policymaking and implementation
process, yet there is little research on the effects of variations in organizational structure
or process across intelligence agencies. This study will address one particular variation
much discussed in the literature—the relative proximity between intelligence and
policymaking—and its effects on decisionmaking.

The existing literature does not, for the most part, describe or evaluate the information
flow between intelligence agencies and policymakers in ways that will be useful for this
study. The topic lies on the border of multiple academic disciplines, including foreign
policy analysis and organizational theory. The most obvious theoretical foundation for
this study is the organizational process school of international relations theory, which
focuses on the impact that organizational processes--including those that facilitate or
impede the quantity or accuracy of information in decisionmaking--have on state
behavior. However, while the organizational process school has touched on the
1

intelligence input to foreign policy and national security decisionmaking, no study has 2

comprehensively addressed the factors that affect the transaction of information between
intelligence and policy or the effects of variations in intelligence agency organization or
processes on the information transferred. As a result, this study will rely on the
intelligence literature that contains the bulk of information and concepts useful for the
study of any intelligence-related issue.

The intelligence literature makes up a niche subfield of history and political science that
developed in the United States along with the peacetime institutionalization of
intelligence as a governmental function after World War II. Implicit in the intelligence
literature, the ideal intelligence delivery process consists of minimal organizational

1
Organization-level theories—including bureaucratic politics and organizational process theories--relax the
unitary rational actor and perfect information assumptions applied by many international relations theorists
and look at the independent impact that organizations have on state behavior. Graham Allison’s study of
the decisionmaking during the Cuban Missile Crisis provided the most structured approach to modeling the
impact of organizations and remains the foundational work in international relations organizational theory.
See: Allison, Graham T. “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” American Foreign Policy:
Theoretical Essays. (Ed. G. John Ikenberry). HarperCollins, 1996. 415-459.
2
See section on organizational intelligence regarding the US blockade of Cuba in: Allison, Graham T.
“Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays. (Ed. G.
John Ikenberry). HarperCollins, 1996. 415-459

3
complexity, a policymaking process inhabited by objective rational actors with unlimited
capability to process information and evaluate alternatives, and an interaction between
the two that integrated information seamlessly with minimal transaction costs. However,
the ideal intelligence production and delivery process does not exist. According to
intelligence scholar Michael Handel,
“it has often … been assumed that intelligence work can be pursued by
professional, detached experts working within an objective environment,
and that they will be able to present the truth, as best they can determine it,
to the policymakers. The policymakers in this scenario will of course
recognize the quality and relevance of the data provided them, and will
use this information in the best interest of their country (as they identify
it). This ‘purely rational decision-making model’ and belief in the viability
of a ‘strictly professional intelligence process’ is nothing but an idealized
normative fiction.”3

Studies of strategic surprise and intelligence failure have demonstrated that the nexus
between intelligence and policy involve numerous obstacles such as real-world frictions,
transaction costs, constraints, tradeoffs, and complexities that prevent the flow of
information between intelligence agencies and policymakers.4

A long-standing debate in the intelligence literature over how ‘close’ intelligence should
be to policy describes a relationship between an intelligence agency’s proximity to
decisionmaking and the effect on the information it provides to decisionmakers.
According to Arthur Hulnick:
“early writers about intelligence understood that defining the role of
intelligence in policy would inevitably run across a serious dichotomy:
intelligence must be close to policy so that it can provide the informational
base necessary for decision-making, but if it is close to policy, it may
become corrupted by the very process it seeks to serve. This led to a
variety of attempts to define the limits of closeness. Some early writers
believed that intelligence must distance itself from policy-making, reach
independent judgments about world affairs, and avoid tailoring
intelligence judgments to satisfy the ideologic drives or policy preferences
of decision-makers. These writers and practitioners might be thought of as
traditionalists, since their writings reflect early views about the need for a
certain level of separation.” Hulnick contrasted this traditionalist approach
with an activist approach whose adherents “believed that there was a kind

3
Handel, Michael I. “Intelligence and the Problem of Strategic Surprise.” Journal of Strategic Studies. 7,
no. 3 (Sep. 1984): 1984. 235.
4
For the primary article on intelligence failure, see: Betts, Richard K. “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why
Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable.” World Politics. 31, no. 2 (Oct. 1978): 61-89. Also see: Ben-Zvi,
Abraham. “Hindsight and Foresight: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Surprise Attacks.”
World Politics, Vol. 28, issue 3, (Apr 1976). 381- 395; Poteat, George. “The Intelligence Gap: Hypotheses
on the Process of Surprise.” International Studies Notes. No. 3 (Fall 1976). 14-18. Chan, Steve. ‘The
Intelligence of Stupidity: Understanding Failures in Strategic Warning.’ The American Political Science
Review. Vol. 73. No. 1 (Mar. 1979). 171-180.

4
 of symbiotic relationship between intelligence and policy and that they
were and should be closely tied together.” 56

This relationship—the “proximity hypothesis”--states that intelligence agencies that are

close to policymakers tend to produce analysis that is useful for improving
decisionmaking but potentially distorted due to incorporation of policymaker biases and
preferences, while intelligence agencies that are distant from policymakers tend to
produce ‘objective’ analysis containing less distortion, but of little use in improving
policymaker judgment. However, many other outcomes are theoretically possible. For
example, distortion could change with changes in proximity while influence on judgment
remains constant, or vice versa. Or proximity could have either a direct or inverse
relationship with both distortion and influence on judgment. Or proximity could have a
direct relationship with distortion, and an inverse relationship with influence on
judgment. In fact, an outcome that describes anything other than the causal relationships
described in the proximity hypothesis will require an explanation to replace or limit the
proximity hypothesis.

Testing the proximity hypothesis requires rank-ordering intelligence agencies by

proximity to decisionmaking, and measuring the effects of the proximity on
decisionmaking requires that the influence of extraneous independent variables be
reduced or eliminated. As a result, this paper will evaluate three comparable national-
level intelligence agencies that are independent of policymakers and other national
security departments and provide strategic intelligence to national decisionmakers: the
Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) Directorate of Intelligence (DI), the Director of
Central Intelligence’s (DCI’s) National Intelligence Council (NIC), and the British Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC):

• The CIA’s DI—which is geographically and organizationally separated from

decisionmakers—produces intelligence representing the views of a single
organization. It develops finished intelligence products with minimal input from
consumers and provides them to decisionmakers via information push primarily in
the form of written products that pass through multiple levels of managerial
review before being released through bureaucratic standard operating procedures.
However, there is a process in place for decisionmakers to request follow-up
intelligence products to be written on a short turnaround basis, or provided via
briefings.

• The DCI’s NIC—which is also geographically and organizationally separated

from decisionmakers—produces intelligence representing the coordinated views
5
Hulnick, Arthur S. “The Intelligence Producer-Policy Consumer Linkage: A Theoretical Approach.”
Intelligence and National Security Vol. 1. No. 2 (May 1986): 212-214.
6
For an analysis of the positions of Sherman Kent and Willmoore Kendall—two early proponents of each
approach—see: Davis, Jack. “The Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949.” Studies in Intelligence. Vol. 36. No. 5
(1992). 91-103. Also see: Hilsman, Roger. “Intelligence and Policy-Making in Foreign Affairs.” World
Politics. April 1953. 1-45; Kendall, Willmoore. “The Function of Intelligence.” World Politics. Vol. 1. No.
4. (July 1949). 542-552; and Kent, Sherman. Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. Archon
Books, Hamden CT. 1965

5
 of multiple intelligence organizations. The NIC is a small organization
subordinate to the Director of Central Intelligence that spans the breadth of the
intelligence community and produces—again, with minimal input from
consumers--reports known as National Intelligence Estimates by aggregating the
views of multiple intelligence agencies through a consensual process, and
provides them via information push primarily in the form of written products.

• The British JIC is an interdepartmental Cabinet Office staff made up of officials

from other intelligence and policy departments that integrates intelligence into
decisionmaking at national/strategic level primarily through weekly meetings
and other forms of personal interaction.

The relative proximity between intelligence agencies and decisionmaking is determined

by comparing the methods used to transfer information between intelligence agencies and
decisionmakers. Intelligence delivery methods can shift intelligence agency location
along the proximity scale that ranges from complete independence to complete
integration. In terms of proximity, the JIC is closest to strategic national security
decisionmakers because it integrates intelligence into decisionmaking at the highest
levels via frequent personal interaction, and the DCI’s NIC is furthest from
decisionmakers because it has infrequent interaction with decisionmaking and delivers its
products in primarily paper format. The CIA’s DI is somewhere in between because
while it delivers its products in primarily paper format, it also has a process in place for
more frequent interaction such as briefings or follow-up questions.

Effects of Proximity on Decisionmaking: Iraq WMD Case Study

A preliminary assessment of the pre-war intelligence regarding Iraqi possession of WMD

indicates that relative proximity between intelligence producers and consumers mattered
in terms of national security decisionmaking. Specifically, proximity appears to have
mattered in terms of influencing policymaker judgment but does not appear to have
influenced the distortion of finished intelligence analysis.

Measuring the effects of proximity on decisionmaking requires using the criteria

specified in the proximity hypothesis to assess whether the effects of proximity matched
those predicted by the proximity hypothesis. The proximity hypothesis states that
intelligence agencies that are close to policymakers tend to produce analysis that is useful
for improving decisionmaking but potentially distorted due to incorporation of
policymaker biases and preferences, while intelligence agencies that are distant from
policymakers tend to produce ‘objective’ analysis containing less distortion, but of little
use in improving policymaker judgment. As a result, determining whether proximity
matters required assessing whether proximity between intelligence agencies and
policymakers improved policymaker judgment or led to politicization.

6
Measuring Influence on Policymaker Judgment
In the case of Iraqi WMD intelligence, proximity appears to have mattered in terms of
influencing policymaker judgment. Increased distance between intelligence producers
and consumers can lead to insufficient communication between them. When
policymakers do not provide intelligence agencies with their informational requirements
or information about their current policy planning efforts, it degrades the ability of
intelligence agencies to meet the needs of policymakers. In the absence of policymaker
priorities, collection and analysis resources are targeted at subjects of lesser concern to
policymakers and the subjects of highest concern may not have sufficient coverage. As a
result, distance can prevent sufficient communication and cause intelligence agencies to
produce analysis that may not influence policymaker judgment.

On a deeper level, distance between intelligence agencies and policymakers can prevent
the sharing of assumptions that underlie intelligence analysis or policy planning and this
can minimize the potential influence that intelligence analysis can have on decisionmaker
judgment. A tentative explanation for this dynamic posits that decisionmaking is a
complicated task involving a combination of information and judgment. In many cases,
the process is an iterative one, where learning takes place as new information arrives and
changes the policymaker’s interpretation of the situation and what should be done about
it. The data provided in current intelligence can support the decisionmaking process by
informing the decisionmaker of what is going on, but the analysis and evaluation telling
the policymaker what it means--which includes assessments, conclusions and argument--
has the potential to trigger changes in decisionmaker judgment by providing
policymakers with a more sophisticated conceptual framework to use in interpreting the
data.

In addition to addressing the facts and their implications, intelligence analysts must also
implicitly address causation by asking ‘why’ because accurate implications of an event
cannot be drawn unless there is an understanding for why that event took place.
Unfortunately, answers to causal questions in international relations are usually tentative
and rely on assumptions regarding the forces that drive state behavior. Given the
uncertain nature of causation in international relations, it is entirely possible for
intelligence analysts and policymakers to possess two entirely different sets of
assumptions regarding the sources and consequences of state behavior, which leads them
to use two different conceptual frameworks to interpret the significance of particular
events. The closer that intelligence is to policymaking the greater the chance that the sets
of assumptions can be aligned or made explicit and their implications evaluated.
However, as distance between intelligence agencies and policymakers increases, a gap in
understanding and interpretation can appear. If the resulting intelligence analysis
contradicts policymaker perceptions and there is no procedural mechanism in place for
explaining to them the reason for the disagreement, busy policymakers would most
probably ignore the intelligence even if the information is accurate and the analysis is
well-thought out.

In the case of Iraqi WMD intelligence, measuring the extent to which intelligence
analysis influenced the judgment of policymakers requires acquiring information

7
regarding national security decisionmaking processes and the sources of information used
to make decisions. Unfortunately, the definitive assessment of the precise decisionmaking
process that led to the 2003 Iraq War has yet to be written. However, a circumstantial
case can be made that JIC assessments were used to provide the foundational context for
subsequent decisionmaking, the NIC’s products—specifically the October 2002 NIE—
was not used for decisionmaking purposes, and CIA’s products were somewhere in
between in terms of influence on policy.

JIC: The British JIC was influential on decisionmaking because, according to the Butler
Committee Report, the JIC assessments “formed part of the (decisionmaking)
background.”7 The Report goes on to state that:
“by early 2002…readers of JIC assessments will have had an impression
of: (a) the continuing clear strategic intent on the part of the Iraqi regime
to pursue its nuclear, biological, chemical and ballistic missile
programmes; (b) continuing efforts by the Iraqi regime to sustain and
where possible develop its indigenous capabilities, including through
procurement of necessary materiel; and (c) the development, drawing on
those capabilities, of Iraq’s ‘break-out’ potential in the chemical,
biological and ballistic missile fields, coupled with the proven ability to
weaponise onto some delivery systems chemical and biological agent. …
It is right to remember, too, the international context within which those
making and reading the JIC assessments were working. For the small
group of policy-makers with access to the most sensitive JIC assessments,
there were increasing concerns about proliferation elsewhere.” ”8

Apparently the JIC assessments had influence because these were the very concerns that
decisionmakers had in the run up to the Iraq war. The Butler Report goes on to observe
that “intelligence on Iraqi nuclear, biological, chemical, and ballistic missile programmes
was used in support of” a stronger British policy towards Iraq that began to be executed
in early 2002.9 However, the report goes on to say that the actual British Government
decision to support the Iraq War “was not influenced so much by changing intelligence
on Iraq as by two other factors” including “a general concern about proliferation…(and)
fears about what the Iraqi regime might be able to achieve in terms of building up its
prohibited weapons programmes if left unchecked.”10 According to British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, “what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein’s WMD
programs but our tolerance of them post 11 September.”11 Nonetheless, the broad context
for this stronger, more muscular British policy on Iraq was educated, as the Butler Report
observes, by many previous years of JIC assessments.

NIC: In contrast to the JIC’s influence on British policy towards Iraq, there are no
indications that the NIC—and specifically its October 2002 NIE regarding Iraqi WMD
7
Butler Report: Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Report of a Committee of Privy
Counsellors. London. July 2004.70.
8
Butler, 63.
9
Butler, 105.
10
Butler, 70.
11
Butler, 70.

8
capabilities--had any influence on US policy towards Iraq. According to former National
Security Council staffer Richard Clarke, the possible invasion of Iraq entered into the
policy debate immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As he observed, “I realized …
that (Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld and (Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul)
Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their
agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they
had been pressing for a war with Iraq.”12

In fact, despite this interest on the part of senior national security decisionmakers, no one
in the executive branch requested an NIE detailing Iraq’s WMD capabilities. According
to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI”s) report evaluating the U.S.
Intelligence Community’s prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq, by September 2002
“the IC had not drafted an NIE on the status of Iraq’s WMD program,” and a variety of
Senators began to request “that the DCI ‘direct the production’ of such an NIE—
expressing the belief that ‘policymakers in both the executive branch and the Congress
will benefit from the production of a coordinated, consensus document produced by all
relevant components of the Intelligence Community’ on this topic.”13 However, as Bob
Woodward observes, “this intelligence work was undertaken in the wake of (President)
Bush’s and (Vice President) Cheney’s high-profile conclusions on the subject—the vice
president’s August 26 (2002) declaration that, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that
Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” and the president’s remark a
month later that, “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.”14 The
October 2002 NIE has received a huge amount of attention—and the executive summary
has since been declassified--but there are no indications in the public record that it was
actually used in the Bush Administration’s decisionmaking process regarding the
subsequent Iraq War.

CIA/DI: The intelligence produced by the CIA’s DI was probably more influential than
that produced by the NIC, and less influential than that produced by the JIC. Like the
JIC’s assessments, the CIA’s analysis was probably used for decisionmaking context,
although there is no direct evidence that it was instrumental in the Bush Administration’s
deliberations regarding war against Iraq. The SSCI report indicates that the foundational
material for the October 2002 NIE came from previously released finished intelligence
including much that had been put together by the CIA. In addition, according to the SSCI
report, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) said that “there was regular
interaction with policymakers coming back to certain points or issues repeatedly.”15 The
report went on to note that “the DDI told Committee staff that the Vice President had
visited CIA about five to eight times total between September 2001 and February 2003.
… She said usually a group of analysts and their collection counterparts would brief the

12
Clarke, Richard A. Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. Free Press; New York. 2004.
30.
13
Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Select Committee
on Intelligence (SSCI). United States Senate. 108th Congress.July 7, 2004. 12.
14
Woodward, Bob. Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq. New York;
Simon and Schuster. 2004. 195
15
SSCI, 274.

9
Vice President on key findings on a particular issue. … (and) “they were really good
exchanges. I think the analysts felt that he was listening.””16

Accordingly, and as expected, the JIC’s intelligence products were most influential in
terms of policymaker judgment, the NIC’s products were least influential, and the CIA’s
products were somewhere in between.

Measuring Distortion
In the case of Iraqi WMD intelligence, proximity between intelligence producers and
consumers does not appear to have influenced the distortion of finished intelligence
analysis. Each of the intelligence agencies studied provided assessments of Iraqi
possession of WMD that in hindsight appear to have arrived at conclusions unwarranted
by the raw data, leading to concerns that these conclusions were shaped by policymaker
preferences. However, a preliminary examination of the available data17 indicates that
these assessments were not shaped by the incorporation of policymaker biases or
preferences derived from a presumed desire for a reason to go to war with Iraq, but rather
due to failures in both the collection and analysis of the raw intelligence.

The proximity hypothesis notes that the closer intelligence is to policymaking the greater
the risk distortion due to incorporation of policymaker biases and preferences. The
incorporation of policymaker preferences is sometimes called “politicization” which—
according to intelligence expert Jack Davis--is “the distortion of analysis by setting aside
or otherwise failing to meet the standards of objectivity in setting forth information and
judgments—in order to support a world view or policy preference.”18 However,
measuring distortion entails understanding the potential for policymaker judgment to
influence intelligence analysis, which can be the flip side of the influence of intelligence
on policymaker judgment.

As noted above, sometimes intelligence analysts have more accurate understandings of

causation in international relations, and these understandings can improve policymaking
if they are incorporated into it. However, the flip side is also true. Sometimes
policymakers have more accurate understandings of international relations than
intelligence analysts do due to their expertise, knowledge and alternative sources of
information, and the incorporation of these understanding into intelligence analysis can
improve its content. Unfortunately, sometimes policymakers have biases or preferences
resulting from ideological or political commitments, and the adoption of these biases can
influence intelligence analysis negatively.

In the case of Iraqi WMD intelligence, measuring distortion due to the incorporation of
decisionmaker preferences or biases cannot be done directly because of classification
issues. As a result, measurement must be done by proxy through official government

16
SSCI, 276.
17
This examination is preliminary because not all relevant information has been released. Additional
information—especially from the Iraq WMD Commission—is likely to be released in the future.
18
Davis, Jack. “Facts, Findings, Forecasts, and Fortune-telling: Defining the Analytic Mission.” Studies in
Intelligence. Fall 1995.

10
assessments and evaluations. Over the past couple of years there has been a raging debate
over the possibility that pre-war Iraq WMD intelligence was distorted through the
incorporation of policymaker preferences, and as a result both the US and UK have
created committees and commissions to assess this question, among others. Specifically,
these reports have highlighted the importance of conveying ambiguity via caveats, and
that the most likely way to identify the incorporation of policy preferences is to assess
whether or not the intelligence producer removed ambiguity in a way consistent with the
policy preferences of the consumer. If so, a circumstantial case could be made that the
intelligence was shaped to fit policy preferences. Interestingly, preliminary study of the
issue provides no indications that this kind of distortion actually took place.

JIC: The proximity hypothesis would predict that the JIC, which is closest to
policymakers, would have the greatest distortion. Yet, according to the Butler Report:
“in general, we found that the original intelligence material was correctly
reported in JIC assessments. … In general, we also found that the
reliability of the original intelligence reports was fairly represented by the
use of accompanying qualifications. We should record in particular that
we have found no evidence of deliberate distortion or of culpable
negligence. … We examined JIC assessments to see whether there was
evidence that the judgments inside them were systematically distorted by
non-intelligence factors, in particular the influence of policy positions of
departments. We found no evidence of JIC assessments and the judgments
inside them being pulled in any particular direction to meet the policy
concerns of senior officials on the JIC.”19

NIC: Similarly, the SSCI report--which examined “the objectivity and independence of
the judgments reached by the (IC regarding Iraqi WMD) and whether any influence was
brought to bear on IC analysts to shape their assessments to support policy objectives”—
did not find any “evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result
of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with
Administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure
analysts to do so.”20

CIA/DI: Finally, the SSCI report also indicated that there was no distortion in CIA
products due to the incorporation of decisionmaker preferences. The SSCI report’s
general conclusions that there was no politicization applied to CIA as well. The report
cites the CIA’s DDI as saying that even with repeated visits by the Vice President to CIA
Headquarters—sometimes interpreted as an attempt to politicize the analysis—“no
analysts had ever said that they (took repeated questioning) as pressure, nor did she
believe that analysts ever changed their assessments as a result of this questioning.”21 In
addition, the report quotes a CIA WMD delivery analyst as saying that he thought the
purpose of the Vice President’s trips was “factfinding” and that they only “wanted to
know what our analysis was. They listened and that was it. There was no pressure back

19
Butler, 110.
20
SSCI, 272-273.
21
SSCI, 275.

11
on us to change it or to manipulate it in any way. They just wanted to know what our
analysis was, and we told them and that was it.”22

While both of the official US and UK reports—the SSCI and Butler reports, respectively
—deny that there was any distortion in the intelligence due to incorporation of
decisionmaker preferences, these conclusions are disputed by others. For example,
according to the Council of Foreign Relations website, John Rockefeller, vice chairman
of the SSCI, said “that while policy-makers did not appear to have directly intervened in
the NIE writing process, the NIE was assembled in a general "environment of intense
pressure" that encouraged caveat-free assertions about Iraq's WMD. By October 2002,
when the NIE was released, "the most senior officials in the Bush administration had
already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions [that Iraq had WMD] publicly,"
Rockefeller said.”23 Nonetheless, this kind of pressure does not necessarily mean that
intelligence was distorted. Further study may be required to address this kind of implicit
incorporation of decisionmaker preferences, however.

Rather than distortion due to the incorporation of decisionmaker preferences, both the
SSCI report and Butler report attributed errors in fact and interpretation to problems in
intelligence production unrelated to politicization. For example, the Butler Report—
which in general was less critical of intelligence production than the SSCI report
—“detected a tendency for (JIC) assessments to be coloured by over-reaction to previous
errors. Past under-estimates had a more lasting impact on the assessment process than
past over-estimates. … There was (also) a risk of over-cautious or worst case estimates,
shorn of their caveats, becoming the ‘prevailing wisdom.’”24 In addition, the SSCI report
concluded that many of the key judgments in the October 2002 Iraq WMD NIE were
over-stated or not supported by the underlying intelligence due to errors resulting from
tradecraft flaws. Specifically:
“intelligence analysts, in many cases, based their analysis more on their
expectations than on an objective evaluation of the information in the
intelligence reporting. Analysts expected to see evidence that Iraq had
retained prohibited weapons and that Iraq would resume prohibited WMD
activities once United Nations’ (UN) inspections ended. This bias that
pervaded both the IC’s analytic and collection communities represents
“group think.” … IC personnel involved in the Iraq WMD issue
demonstrated several aspects of group think: examining few alternatives,
selective gathering of information, pressure to conform within the group
or withhold criticism, and collective rationalization.”25

In the end, it appears that proximity between intelligence producers and consumers did
not matter in terms of distortion or politicization; all intelligence producers were equally
incorrect, although the US and UK official reports differ on their explanations for the
22
SSCI, 276.
23
Council on Foreign Relations Website. National Intelligence Estimates. Accessed February
23, 2005.
http://www.cfr.org/pub7758/sharon_otterman/intelligence_national_intelligence_estimates.php
24
Butler, 112.
25
SSCI, 18.

12
inaccuracies. Yet no official report has identified a case where inaccuracy resulted from
the intentional—or even unintentional—incorporation of policymaker preference or bias.
Accordingly, the Iraqi WMD intelligence case study appears to indicate that the
proximity hypothesis may not hold in all cases, and this has both policy and conceptual
ramifications.

Implications Resulting from Finding that Proximity Matters

This preliminary evaluation of the importance of proximity between intelligence

producers and consumers has determined that proximity matters but does not have the
effects one would expect given the prevalence of the proximity hypothesis in the
literature. A result consistent with the proximity hypothesis would have resulted in the
JIC having a large influence on policymaker judgment with corresponding distortion, the
DCI’s NIC producing analysis that is unbiased by policymaker preferences but minimally
influential on their judgments, and the CIA’s DI somewhere in between. However, this
outcome does not appear to have occurred in the case of pre-war Iraq WMD intelligence.
Rather, the influence on policymaker judgment appears to be consistent with the
proximity hypothesis, but distortion due to incorporation of policymaker preferences did
not occur.

These findings provide insight into the effectiveness of various organizational structures
used to support foreign policy decisionmaking. In the end, this paper tackles one of the
fundamental questions of intelligence agency organization: how should intelligence
agencies be organized to interact with policymakers for purposes of optimal national
security decisionmaking? At a time of intense debate over the specific organizational
arrangements of national security agencies with new or refocused intelligence
responsibilities, the relative proximity between intelligence producers and consumers is a
key issue. Specifically, if the British JIC has greater influence on decisionmaking but its
intelligence is no more distorted due to incorporation of decisionmaker preferences,
perhaps a similar structure might be effective in the US context as well.

But beyond the paper’s policy ramifications are its possible conceptual contributions. As
described here, the proximity hypothesis consists of two-way information flows between
intelligence producers and consumers. However, many contributions to the intelligence
literature that address the intersection of intelligence and decisionmaking do so from the
perspective of intelligence analysts who provide their policymaking ‘customer’ with
intelligence analysis. Assessments of the intelligence delivery process tend to use static
models, driven by flow charts and assumptions of linear decisionmaking processes. For
example, the intelligence cycle--a heuristic device to portray the flow of information
between intelligence agencies and policymakers—applies a linear flow chart mentality to
the process even though the reality of information flows between intelligence agencies
and policymakers is much more chaotic with many different kinds of formal and informal
feedback loops that approximates governmental learning in action.

The prevalent but false vision of a predominantly uni-directional information flow places
conceptual blinders on scholars who have produced accurate descriptions of the inherent

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complexity of the intelligence production procession but have subsequently failed to
integrate the intelligence literature into that of foreign policymaking more generally. As a
result, the literature that describes and evaluates the information flow between
intelligence and decisionmaking has for the most part not adequately incorporated
policymaker information needs into the subsequent analysis of the process. A side effect
of this conceptual failure is an emphasis on the accuracy of the intelligence product with
correspondingly less emphasis on assessing whether that product is actually useful to the
policymaker. Removing the conceptual blinders requires that intelligence scholars replace
the intelligence production model with one that more accurately reflects the role of
intelligence in policymaking; an interaction entailing continuous two-way
communication to facilitate decisionmaking. An examination of the interaction between
intelligence and policymaking that integrates the two provides the opportunity to
legitimize the study of intelligence and possibly even bring it into the academic
mainstream.

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