THE ADEQUACY OF CERTAIN US INTELLIGENCE REPORTING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79R00904A001500010018-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 5, 2005
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: May 22, 1969
• Content Type: MF

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C E N T R A L I N T E L L I G E N C E A G E N C Y
22 May 1969
SUBJECT: The Adequacy of Certain US Intelligence Reporting
This memorandum responds to your request for the Board's
judgments about political, economic, and military reporting on
countries which do not constantly preoccupy Washington but in
which unanticipated political or social explosions could
seriously affect United States interests.
Our assessment is presented in two parts: the body of this
memorandum discusses problems common to the task of reporting
and analysis about a wide range of countries; an Annex contains
more specific assessments of coverage on five regions -- West
Europe, the non-Communist Far East, near East/South Asia, Latin
America and Africa. In the Annex, a commentary on overall
coverage of each region is followed by more detailed critiques
of the reporting on certain selected countries in that region.
The countries selected include those mentioned in your memorandum
of request, together with several others which we consider of at
least equal relevance.
Two caveats are in order. The first is that intelligence
warning and estimating are as much problems of analysis in
Washington as of reporting from the field; this memorandum
concentrates on the latter, as requested, but no one should
GROUP 1
Excluded from automatic
downgrading and
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infer from the emphasis any inclination to blame the field for
all deficiencies. The second caveat is that the relative value
of various kinds of intelligence reporting will necessarily be
judged differently by users with different interests, responsi-
bilities and specialties. One man's meat may offer little
nourishment to another, and what one specialist considers a
serious deficiency in reporting may not look important to another.
The observations and judgments below reflect the needs and point
of view of the intelligence generalist, and to suggest that one
kind of reporting could usefully be given greater emphasis than
another is not to argue that the second kind is useless.
1. The best conceivable system of reporting and analysis
cannot guarantee against occasional surprise. No amount of money
and talent spent on intelligence would enable it to foresee every
interplay of chance, accident, and personality by which events are
often determined. Mass psychology, sometimes a critical factor in
social and political upheavals, often operates on mysterious
schedules, even in societies most familiar to us, including our
own. The apparently improbable sometimes occurs and the apparently
probable quite often does not. This is nowhere more true than in
the field of social and political prognosis; and it has never been
more true than in our era of constant and accelerating change -- one in
which a few years have seen more new states come into existence
and more peoples lives altered in more profound and rapid fashion
than in decades or even centuries before.
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2. The present question is whether there is room for
improvement in reporting from the field which would help producers
of finished intelligence -- current and estimative -- do a better
job of anticipating political and social change in this turbulent
environment. We believe that there is room for such improvement.
The following paragraphs avoid specific administrative or institu-
tional recommendations, but do seek to identify certain general
ways in which we think the present process could be strengthened.
It should be noted that none of the problems addressed here is
wholly new,, and none of the suggestions for meeting them is radical.
What may be new is the accelerating pace of change in much of the
world, and what may be needed are some adjustments in our approach
to take account of this fact.
(a) The most frequent criticism of present reporting is
not directed at factual reporting of hard information but at the
scarcity of interpretative coverage of local atmospherics -- nuances
and trends in the political, social, and psychological climate
which are often quite intangible and usually unprovable at the
time of writing. Such reporting is necessarily a matter of con-
jecture and even of intuition, but it can often be more to the
point than more objective data. Particularly in less open societies
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outside Western Europe, a feel-for-the situation is hard enough to
pick up on the spot; it is even herder to acquire in Washington.
(b) A second frequent criticism of current coverage is
that insufficient attention is given to examination in depth of
key institutions and long-range trends in certain countries; that
research and analysis of this sort is too often slighted under
pressure of daily reporting requirements on events of immediate
importance.
(c) One obstacle to both adequate atmospheric reporting
and integrated studies in depth is bureaucratic compartmentaliza-
tion in the field. Even when the political, economic and military
parts are well covered, and conscientiously added together in
Washington, the sum may not equal the whole. Well-defined areas
of collection and reporting responsibility between agencies are
no doubt necessary, but interpretative reporting on intangibles,
speculative analysis of trends, and studies in depth of local
institutions are too often no one's top priority.
(d) Traditional interests of government agencies tend
to focus the attention of collectors on political stability, eco-
nomic growth, and military capabilities -- all too often conceived
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of in Western terms. What the analysts increasingly need today is
often what the collectors are not accustomed to look for or trained
to evaluate,, namely revolutionary change in societies, the relation-
ships between economic change and political and social change, and
the political and social role of the military.
(e) on occasion, the well-.established concept of the
country team with the Ambassador as responsible head and spokes-
man can (and has) worked to discourage reporting which does not
parallel or support the Ambassador's views. While the concept is
no doubt a sound one in administrative and policy terms, and no
doubt often discourages irresponsible reporting, an adequate report-
ing system should nonetheless offer some means for expressing in-
formed opinion not necessarily agreed to by all the mission.
(f) The breadth and comprehensiveness of reporting are,
of course, determined in great degree by the spectrum of contacts
and sources available. Particularly where authoritarian govern-
ments make it difficult or risky for Americans to establish contacts
with the opposition, the result can be over-reliance on government
or pro-government sources (including the local security services),
a pro-establishment bias in reporting, a consequent over-confidence
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in the durability of the status quo, and ignorance about forces
and factors making for change, Occasionally, the opposite is
true, particularly in countries where government policies are
hostile to the US and where easy access to disgruntled opposition
sources can distort reporting to magnify the weaknesses of a regime.
These observations should not be construed as an agrument for
vastly increased intelligence efforts against difficult or denied
targets in all such cases; in many instances, the gain probably
does not warrant the cost and risk.
(g) Relatively open societies with a reasonably free
press provide analysts with means to compensate for such inadequa-
cies or biases in official reporting, and such sources can be usedT
in the field and in Washington, to refine or enrich official re-
porting. However, for budgetary or other reasons,, timely acquisi-
tion of these open sources is more difficult now than it used to
be. In any case, open sources are simply not available or not
informative in many countries of concern to us. In such cases,
the FBIS publications are of some help in making up the deficiency,
and indeed these publications are of considerable value to analysts
working on virtually all countries.
6-
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(h) Military reporting represents a special problem --
especially in the many countries where the local military play a
key role in promoting or resisting social and political change.
The Defense attaches tend to restrict themselves to filling con-
ventional military intelligence requirements,, while civilian
observers in the embassies may, for jurisdictional reasons, fail
to assess and report on the broader implications of local military
attitudes and activities.
(i) Overall economic reporting also deserves special
mention. Political and social upheavals may seldom be immediately
and directly triggered by economic causes, but these are usually
conditioning factors which help set the stage. In any case,
economic reporting, especially on the less developed states, is
criticized by many general analysts for insufficient emphasis on
broad interpretation of economic trends and their political and
social implications. Professional economic analysts are less
concerned with this need, their chief criticism of economic intel-
ligence collection and reporting being that it does not probe
deeply enough into varied sources for information and judgment.
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B. GENERAL RECOMENDATIONS
3. There is no panacea for the problems and deficiencies
outlined above. Certainly the cure does not lie in adding further
detailed specifications to already extensive lists of intelligence
requirements. Our central suggestion would be to encourage freer,,
more frequent and more informal communications between collectors
in the field and analysts and estimators in Washington. The proc-
ess could take any number of forms: (a) it should include more
frequent travel,, both ways, within feasible budgetary and work-
load limits; (b) arrangements for selected senior analysts and
estimators to attend the periodic regional conferences of chiefs
of mission in the field would be useful; (c) more frequent, in-
formal written exchanges between Washington agencies and field
should be encouraged, particularly when important estimates or
research studies are initiated in the intelligence community;
(d) analysts would be helped in gaining a feel for the situation
if there were periodic, coordinated situation reports, with empha-
sis on how things are changing, and more reporting of the CIA
II
type; (e) increased contact between Washington and the
field should help in tapping several sources of information which,
for one reason or another, have not been exploited or at least not
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enough; these include a number of the MAAG's, AID missions., and
1i. Such steps should benefit both Washington and the
field. They would help producers of finished intelligence to
define and make known their needs and encourage them to check out
their questions., misgivings' hunches., and hypotheses as and when
they arise. They would help those in the field to look for the
answers needed in Washington and give the field assurance that
its efforts are in fact being used. In short., any improvement
in the ease of communication., and in mutual acquaintance with
problems (and people) at both ends., should be conducive to more
sensitive and more sophisticated performance by both.
FOR THE BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES:
25X1
ABBOT SMITH
Chairman
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