MEETING ON FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST 1979

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83B01027R000200150010-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 16, 2006
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 6, 1979
• Content Type: MF

Approved For Release 2006/06/1gFC9-RDP83B01027R000200150010-9
NFA04079-79
6 August 1979
MEMORANDUM FOR: Warninq Working Group
SUBJECT : fleeting on Friday, 17 August 1979
1. Attached is a copy of the draft Terms of Reference for the
SWS. Please LDX any comments/changes you may have to me by Friday,
10 August.
2. We will meet at 1315, Friday, 17 August, in Room 7E62 with
representatives from the military services. Doug MacEachin will brief
on the TOR and manning requirements to support it. This will be in
preparation for an early September NFIB meeting which will consider the
same subjects.
c ing
National Intelligence Officer
for Warning
This memo may be downgraded to
UNCLASSIFIED when separated from
attachment
MOR0
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SUBJECT: Next WWG Meeting on Friday, 17 August 1979 (NFAC #4079-79)
Distribution:
1 - Each WWG Member (copies LDX'ed)
1 - A/NI0/W Chrono
~~- WWG File
NFAC Registry
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DIA F T: 6 Aug 79
Terms of Reference for Director/SWS
1. Director/SWS serves as principal assistant to NIO/W (and
ANIO/W) on strategic warning matters. Strategic warning is defined in
DCID 1/5, for SWS purposes this means concentration on those situations
which contain the potential for use of military force by the USSR,
China, or North Korea.
2. The Staff should have three main functions:
a. To serve as the conscience of the Community
with regard to strategic warning.
b. To provide synthesis of military and political
intelligence related to strategic warning.
c. To conduct research on strategic warning
matters and provide leadership for the Community
intelligence production effort in this field.
3. The task as "conscience" can be defined as follows. With regard
to strategic warning, SWS should:
Alert NIO/W to:
-- Important developments or larger implications
of developments that are being overlooked or
not fully brought out in current publications.
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Analytic presentation in these publications
that does not call attention to reasonable, but
less likely, alternate short-term outcomes of
a threatening nature.
-- Situations that justify consideration of an
Develop for NIO/W alternate hypotheses on the course of major
developments. This does not mean devil's advocacy, or taking the con-
trary line for its own sake. It does mean speculation, and carrying
analysis further than evidence can fully sustain it. It also means
bringing out the less probably but more worrisome potentials in an
emerging situation. And it means aggressive skepticism in the face of
too comfortable an acceptance of conventional wisdom.
The objective is to give NIO/W an independent capability to force line
analytic consideration of unconventional interpretations. A useful model
is the SWS performance on Indochina in the last six months of 1978.
4. The second task, "synthesis," is closely related to, and under-
pins, the first. There are two kinds of political strategic warning
intelligence, recognition of developing situations that might lead to
strategic confrontation, and analysis of indications within such a situ-
ation that help to measure an opponent's intentions and readiness. SWS
should build links with State/INR and CIA political analysis organi-
zations whereby a systematic flow of such intelligence comes to the
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Staff, the second type perhaps on a stand-by basis only. (The Staff
should also be linked, of course, with the economic and military elementT
of these agencies.)
5. As part of the process, SWS should stimulate and monitor a con-
tinuous dialogue among the Washington agencies and the major U&S Commands.
The Weekly Alert List exercise should be reassessed; are there better
ways to maintain such a dialogue? SWS should be sensitive to the needs
of the field for information on what Washington is worrying about; the
J-2's usually have the individual items of raw intelligence.
6. Between the exchanges with the field, its inputs of political
analysis from State and CIA, the structural military-oriented products
of NMIC, and its own scanning of selected raw and finished intelligence
from all agencies, SWS should be in a position to recognize early the
potential for confrontation, to activate at an appropriate time indi-
cations mechanisms in the non-DoD agencies, and to integrate the product
of these mechanisms with that of NMIC. Thus in a crisis situation SWS
should issue a periodic national warning product. SWS planning should
also take into account the possibility that WISP may be adopted as a
national system. In general, SWS should look for ways to make political
products more compatible with indications analysis. (The emphasis here
on political does not mean that SWS should think of itself as a political
analysis organization. Rather, its internal strength should be somewhat
more on the military side.)
7. The research activities of SWS should largely be in the military
field. Here it should look on itself as the only military research
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organi?ation dedicated to the warning problem. While it cannot with a
limited staff do all the research that is required, it can take the
lead in the Community effort. It should therefore be staffed not only to
do research but to coordinate the national program, and to draft NIE's
and other major products. Initially, it should make a contribution to
this effort to revalidate NIE 4-1-78 (strategy against NIT II.1), and
if possible eventually take over the drafting of the final product.
In this connection, SWS should reassess the need for its present Monthly.
8. SWS will also be called upon to carry out various tasks sup-
porting the above missions. Amont these are:
-- Maintenance of the General Indicator List.
-- Detailed evaluation, for the Warning Working
Group, of proposed warning methodologies and
of the warning contribution of individual
collection systems.
9. Of these tasks, the first is obviously the highest priority,
the third the lowest. In normal times, however, most of the SWS effort
in man-hours should be applied to research. As a crisis arises, the
balance should be changed, and arrangements should be in existence
that will permit augmentation and in full crisis 24-hour manning. This
will permit an efficient use of manpower, one that will prevent the work
of the Staff from becoming rote. Each officer should always have a
challenging task in front of him, either current on research.
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10. For manangerial matters, SWS's chain-of-command is from the
DDCI and his Committee to the NIO/W and the Warning Working Group to
SWS. For substantive ones, the chain runs from the DCI (NFIB for
estimates) to NIO/W to SWS in accordance with DCID 1/5. It is clear
that SWS should have some relationship with the NIO's, in particular
NIO/CF, NIO/SP, and NI0/USSR-EE, but these are yet to be defined.. It
may be desirable for them to constitute an informal steering group,
with NIO/W, to review SWS substantive work.
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