KISSINGER'S VIEW ABOUT SOVIET GRAIN PURCHASES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R000300050034-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2007
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: July 20, 1973
• Content Type: NOTES

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Soviet Grain Purchas
SUBJECT : K is s finger's View About
NOTE FOR: Mr, Colby
FROM Ed Proctor
Duckett reported this morning -that
at yesterday's SALT VP meeting Kissinger
made some very categorical statements
reflecting his view that intelligence failed
with regard to the Soviet grain deal last
year, Duckett expressed the view that
you would probably want us to start working
on yet-another post mortem on this matter.
After this Morning's Meeting I called
Andy Marshall to discuss this problem with
him, I told him:
- that to prepare another complete post
mortem on this subject would take a ~`~
lot of our time. He agreed.
that anything on this subject prepared
by CIA would be considered suspect
a priori by those for whom it was
prepared, He agreed,
that since much of the problem was
outside the Intelligence Community''
(Agriculture) he probably was in~
better position to advise Kissinger
on this matter.
NSC review
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Andy said he would talk to Odeen
(who was at the SALT VP meeting) and
~
get what was said first hand. Andy ho es ,s'~
to be re ared to discuss this wi~ tz~o u V
s
when he sees you this afternoon.
0
^~
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 MEMORANDUM `~ ~
NA'I`IQNAL 5LCU1tI'TY CQUNCIL
SECRET 1 March 1973
I)DI-3wq~`1.w
SUBJECT: What are the Roles and Missions of Intelligence?
I believe that now is a good time for a thorough review of the Agency's
perceptions of the roles and missions of intelligence. It would be
useful in clarifying objectives. It might also provide a morale boost
if we were to focus attexition clearly an more achievable objectives
There is now a major contrast between what intelligence people some-
times tell themselves that their. role and rxiission is (to provide a
camprchensive basis for decision) and the limited nature of their
products. The community, and especially CIA, are plagued with an
overblown stated objective, while they pursue very cautious and
timid operational goals.
How mi.~ht one~et af~thc~ r. oles_a.nd missions? Tay an analysis of the
markets for intelligexzce. There are several ways in which this
market analysis might be structured.- One way would be to focus on
various customer groups and study what they need for their many
activities." Another way, which T prefer,? would be to structure
market in terms of: the separate decision processes ?that intelligence
is an input into. Of course, some intelligence publications now
mainly supply a general background and information service. They
are not: at al.l closely connected with decision processes, but perhaps
if we construed decision processes broadly enough one would not
entirely neglect this function of intelligence. Tn any case, it is a
gLlestion of how much priority intelligence producers ought to give
to providing general baelcground to a very broad. and diffuse market.
UnfortunatLly, ton much of the product aplaears tailored. solely for
that purpose. Intelligence producers have Hover analyzed what
f.heir aZZarkets are, let alone finding out what th.e specific needs in
any particular market were.
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In any case, to illustrate I believe that one could factor the high level
decision processes that intelligence supports in the following way:
-- _Current and day-to-day operations. Here the functions
involved are, at ].east at the upper levels, the providing of input to
the day-ta-day operating decisions and also a current intelligence
situation monitoring and alerting function.
-- Sta_nclarcl toy-level~ali.cy rocesses; e, g. , the 1VSSPv1 process
and other deliberative processes where there is a systematic effort
to elaborate options and develop policies and positions.
-- Event driven situations; e, g. , major political-military
crises, negotiations such as S-A.LT, etc. , although the latter could
also be placed in the category above.
One could probably do a similar job at the major departmental levels.
I believe the advantage of this approach is that you can more easily
answer the question of what is needed. Intelligence, is primarily an
input to some sort of decision process; once ane focuses on it in that
way, ane can see more clearly precisely what is wdnic;ci. it also
clarifies, as I paint out below, one's view of what can intelligence do:
--where the intelligence producers' comparative advantage lies as
compared with other sources of information relevant to the decision-
maki.ng process? ?
A Characterization of the Current Situation
Intelligence often claims that it ought to be the basis of decision. It
should, therefore, be comprehensive, an all encompassing wrapping-
up of all relevant information. Clearly, this is an ambitious goal, and
one that it is clearly not going to attain. For one thing it is not, or
cannot compete with other sources of information in some areas. The
President, or Henry Kissinger, have alternative sources of information
on foreign government attitudes via their contact with ambassadors.
There are newspapers and books they read, and th.e people who write
them. xnay be talked to occasionally.
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In any case, the actual behavior of intelligence is very remote from
the purported ideal, In fact intelligence confines itself largely to
the rate of the purveyor of special information, especially that
obtained from sources that it controls, Intelligence reports 1i:nlit
themselves to very limited inferences beyond the data that they have.
If they ?see a hale going into the ground, they are willing.to tell you
that in eighteen months it will probably be a. silo,> because they have
seen three hundred of them start that particular way.. .But if you ask
far hypotheses about why the Soviets program is what it appears to be,
how. programs relate to Soviet goals, or th.e goals of specific parts of
the Soviet bureaucracy, likely future trends, you get either an evasive
and ineffectual answer, or a very low grade set of speculations that
you could just as well get from a rnan off the street. The fact is that
after watching, studying, and analyzing the Soviet Union for twenty-
five years they have na answers, no really interesting hypotheses
about many of the key questions that interest top-level people, They
would like to have first rate analysis, interesting hypotheses about the
Soviet developments they receive a constant stream of reports on. The
community has made essentially no progress in providing the approp-
riate analysis,
There is little effort made to answer the key,quesf:ions, Moreover,
there is a lack of the research tradition within the community that
would allow it progressively, aver a period of years or decades, to
produce more and nxare refined, accurate, insightful analyses of
the behavior of the Soviet military, of the design bureaus, of the
relevant governmental decision. as processes, Indeed, one has the
impression that analysts are swamped by the flood of data produced
by the new collectian systems that came on line during the sixties.
They don't really have time to work on the basic questions, nor do
L-hey appear to have the incentive to do so. There is a constant overload
problem, with both an excess supply of some sorts of data and our ex-
cess demand from consumers for whom intelligence is a free good, The
production treadmill is the result.
The point I want to snake is the striking contrast between a stated
objective and the actual performance, .A better formulation of
intelligence roles and missions ti~ould be less ambitious and focus
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on areas of intelligence producers' comparative advantage. BuL- these
new roles and missions would clearly call far more ambitious products
than those produced today,
The NSC staff 'interviews show a desire to have the intelligence products
do many of the following things:
-- Provide a context for the flow of cable material. They say
they want an antidote or counterbalance to the hot news bias of the
cables and the current intelligence reporting, Indeed, there is a
strong suggestion that the CIB ought to be redesigned as to its objectives,
-- They want much more analysis of major trends, In part this
a matter of providing context, but in particular the kind of context
people want are an understanding of major trends, their relevance
to policy.
-- They want more speculative analysis that will provide
hVbotheses that exnl.ain naSt hPha.vinr hvrtini-hageG 4-}~,a,t c?crcYr~a+ the
directions of future events. In a word they would like same help in
thinlting about the situations that they have to focus on in making policy.
The Indo-17'ak and Jordanian Civil War studies have provided some
special insights as to the failings of the intelligence cornxnunity to
provide assistance to top-level decisionmalcers. T-Here were some
structural problems unveiled about the communication between the
analysts and the deeisionmakers and their staffs, but far more
significant were revealed differences in the perspective of the decison-
iYiakers and the typical intelligence analyst. There are many considera-
tions that the top-level people focus on that the analysts appear to be
unaware of, or run counter to their views as to the nature of the
international game, or perhaps their views as to how it ought to be
played. .A.n example is the role of power and the use of nii.litary
forces in periods 'of crisis to influence the behavior of '~oth.er governments,
I feel that intelligence organization have not made an energetic effort to
find OLlt what their C11StOlYlers r. Bally want. .Same of their leac}ers appear
to have a very cyxi.ical view of the willingness of customers to accept
really goad intelligence analysis. Some may not, but this view can
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easily cripple any desire to be of service to decisionmakers. It also
leads to a view that tlxe quality of the product is adequate, and lessens
efforts to improve quality.
Despite the prevalence of the view that the Agency is objective (which in
some ways it is since it doffs not have an immediate operational stake
in an estimate in most cases), in some ways its estimates are highly
politicized. `L here has 17een a tendency to take a very political view
of the decisionrnalcing process into which products go. Hence, a
tendency to see the' statement of particular views as counter-biasing
against what are viewed as wrong headed positions coming out of
Defense. There is little attempt tivithin the community as a whole to
try to understand what the sources of the cli.fferences are and to under-
take collection and analysis that might stand some chance of resolving
them. .Some Agency views, I believe, have been based on the notion
that they supply a liberal interpretation as contrasted to a military or
conservative i.nterpretati.on of events, with no effort at analysis that
could assist a decisionmaker in sorting out the problems he has when
faced with these different estimates. I am all far having differences
surfaced, but this ought to be done in a way that provides insights as
~-
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ought to clarify the sif,uation rather than simply be a hearing fr. om all
of the different points of views.
Finally let me just note that another reason why a review of the role
and mission of intelligence may be useful. at this time. I believe we
are in a period of. ver~r major structural change-with regard to our
relations with the world, with the development of new basic political,
economic, and. military strategies. It is likely to be a period com-
parable to that just Following World War II. As far as I can see, the
intelligence people; have not taken this as a serious challenge to
rethinking whore their efforts ought to go. Far example, they have
been very slaw and unimaginative in their efforts to expand and some-
what change the focus of what they are doing in the economic intel-
li~+;ence area. T also have the impression they Have not at all considered
wlia:t sort of changes`in the requirements for intelligence might come
about because of i:he increased number of negotiations that we might lae
involved in the whole range of issues. One of the things that is clearly
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going to be different about the next period is that we as a government
are going to be engaged in a much wider range of relationships,
negotiations, with both the Soviets and the Chinese. 13ow can intel-
ligence really help and participate in this'? Clearly, there have been '
a number of problems thus far because real insight as to what is going
on has been confined to a very small group at the top. This should
change over the next while and perhaps intelligence aught to be getting
ready for that.
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