A REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE ALERT MEMORANDA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M01133A000800060010-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 7, 2004
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: September 5, 1975
• Content Type: MF

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UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE BOARD
USIB-D-28. 5/9
5 September 1975
MEMORANDUM FOR THE UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE BOARS=
SUBJECT A Report on Intelligence Alert Memoranda
REFERENCE USIB-D-28.5/8, 9 January 1975
The Director of Central Intelligence has requested that
the attached draft report on the subject be placed on the USIB agenda
for discussion at the meeting of 11 September 1975.
xecu ive Secretary
Exempt from general declassification sche13le
of E. O. 11652, exemption category 5B(2).
Automatically declassified on: date impossible
to determine.
Warning Notice
Sensitive Intelligence Sources
and Methods Involved
I
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
KEY FINDINGS 1
INTRODUCTION 5
DISCUSSION 9
The Threshold: A Fundamental Issue 10
Too Many or Too Few? lz
Community Involvement 14
Terminating the Warning 17
Toward More Standardization? 18
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 20
Annex A - Review of the Production Process for
Individual Alert Memoranda
Annex B - USIB-D-28. 5/8, dated 9 January 1975
"Procedures for Alert Memoranda"
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A REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE ALERT MEMORANDA
1 September 1975
Prepared by the
Product Review Division, Intelligence Community Staff
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D B_ A F T
A REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE ALERT MEMORANDA
1 September 1975
This study, prepared by the Product Review
Division of the Intelligence Community Staff, responds
to a request by the Director of Central Intelligence
for a review of Intelligence Alert Memoranda produced
to date. He wished to know both how well the system
has served him and the community and how well it has
served the high-level consumer.
KEY FINDINGS
In view of the numbers of persons who either were important
recipients or had some role in producing Alert Memoranda, a
unanimity of views on all aspects of this intelligence medium was
neither expected nor achieved. There was, however, substantial
agreement among both producers and senior-level consumers on
the following key points:
-- The basic concept of the Alert Memorandum (AM) is
sound. Those that have been produced to date have by and
large done what they were designed to do.
-- Alert Memoranda are being seen--and their message
noted--by principals and senior aides in the national security
decision process; they are not being short-stopped by lower-
level staff mechanisms.
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-- The system is not being seriously abused by over-
use. Given the circumstances which led to their preparation,
few of the fifteen Alert Memoranda so far produced are
judged to have been hasty or ill-advised. In general, those
consulted judged this on the whole to be a good record.
-- Conversely, no serious charges have been leveled
at the community for neglecting the AM form when it might
have been used. (One possible such case--the Mayaguez
incident--was mentioned by one respondent, and this point is
discussed later in the paper. )
-- There was general recognition among most of those
interviewed that the production process has evolved--and
improved--with the passage of time and as experience in
this form has been gained.
Nevertheless, differences of view--some fundamental in nature--
surfaced on a number of points of form and substance. The more
important of these are:
-- There are varying perceptions of the appropriate
criteria for selecting particular situations to be handled
by Alert Memoranda. This reflects a lack of consensus
on the relative weights that should be placed on how
important the subject is to US interests, how quickly it
needs to be addressed by policy councils, and how likely
it is to occur.
-- Some respondents suggested that it would be helpful
to have a more standardized format--one that had better
attention-getting qualities and that ensured each AM
uniformly addressed certain questions. Others emphasized
the values of an unconstrained form and style.
-- Although the AM was designed as a community
mechanism--and the NIOs have sought the views of other
agencies when time permitted--the Alert Memorandum is
still viewed by many to be either a CIA product or as
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reflecting a personal concern of the DCI rather than of the
community. Close involvement by other agencies in recom-
mending or participating in producing Alert Memoranda has
been minimal--far less than we judge to have been the goal
of the DCI and the USIB in establishing the system.
The findings are covered in greater detail in following sections,
and recommendations are set forth beginning on page 20. The
recommendations themselves are relatively minor. Indeed, the
flexibility of the process has been important to its evolution and
we see little need to introduce major new restrictive or prescriptive
provisions.
An exception involves a few practices that have grown out of
experience in producing Alert Memoranda and that now have become
normative to the process. They should--in our view--be codified in
the "Procedures for Alert Memoranda" (see Annex B). There are
three of these:
-- The practice of speedily notifying Washington area
intelligence operations centers as soon as a decision has
been made to produce an Alert Memorandum.
-- The practice--when time permits--of promptly
notifying US embassies and other appropriate field elements
in the geographic area discussed that an Alert Memorandum
is in process, with an invitation for comments and suggestions.
-- The practice of electrically disseminating the finished
paper to those same embassies and field elements.
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In addition, we believe community participation would be made
easier if--following close behind notification of other agencies
that an AM is being prepared--the responsible NIO would forward
to those same agencies an LDX statement briefly covering the
salient facts of the case, including critical source references
and a statement of the intended thrust of the paper.
The remaining recommendations for the most part can be met
if the DCI and USIB place heavier emphasis on existing procedures
to try to meet problems seen by some of our respondents. USIB
discussion, for example, might help to clarify some of these
issues. This particularly applies to the question of how to achieve
greater community involvement in initiating and producing Alert
Memoranda.
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