FAILURES IN NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES THE CASE OF THE CUBAN MISSILES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300280009-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 1999
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: April 1, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Sanitized,- Approved For Release
WORLD POLITICS APRIL 1961
FAILURES IN NATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
The Case of the Cuban Missiles.
By KLAUS KNORR
CPYRGHT
INUP_ World at 11, two interrelated events have transformed the
scope and character of foreign intelligence operations. Governments
have become heavily dependent on intelligence estimates in choosing
and implementing foreign and military policies. At the same time, in-
telligence work has become modernized, bureaucratized, and profes-
sionalized. The procurement of information has come to depend rela-
tively less on cloak-and-dagger methods and more on the systematic
gathering of data from essentially public sources. The professional in-
telligence bureaucracies-or the "intelligence community," as these
services are called in Washington-have accordingly benefited from
the infusion of both skilled personnel and conceptualization from a
variety of professions, including notably history and the social sciences.
The social science literature on problems of foreign intelligence is
nevertheless extremely small.' This is regrettable because historians and
social scientists have developed and are developing skills that should
permit substantial contributions to the theory and even to the practice
of intelligence. However, since the work of the intelligence services is
necessarily classified, very little material appears in the public domaip ' _
and academic scholars are deprived of the information on which to base
relevant researches.
Occasionally, an interesting document does reach the public. This is.
the case with the recent Stennis Report on the failure of the U.S. intelli-
gence community to predict the deployment of Soviet intermediate and
' Roger I-Iilsman, Strategic 1nt:dligence and National Decisions (Glencoe, III., 1956);;
Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (Princeton 1949);
George 'S. Pettee, The Future of American Secret Intelligence (Washington 1946);
Washington Platt, Strategic Intelligence Production (New York 1957); Harry Howe
Ransom, Central Intelligence and National Security (Cambridge, Mass., '1958).. There
arc also the following papers: Max F. Millikan, "Inquiry and Policy: The Relation of
Knowledge to Action," in TI..- Human Meaning of the Social Sciences, ed. by Daniel
Lcrncr (New York 1959), 15S-5;,: Harold D. Lasswell, "Strategies of Inquiry: The Ra.
tional Use of Observation," in ibid., 89.113; Benno Wasserman, "The Failure of In-
telligence Prediction," Political Studies, viii (June 1960), 15669; Allan Evans, "Intelli.
gene and Policy Formation," World Politics, xu (October 1959), 84.91; Willmoore
Kendall, 'The Function of Intelligence," ibid., 1 (July 1949), 54
Continued
Sanitized - Approved For Release': CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300280009-6