HAL FORD'S PAPER, THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00885R000400480003-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 3, 2009
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 30, 1984
• Content Type: MEMO

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30 May 1984
NOTE FOR: DCI
SUBJECT: Hal Ford's Paper, "The Future of National
Estimates"
Some points have merit. Most do not.
The more emotional would claim it as outrageous and tantamount to
establishing the NIC as an independent agency. On the whole I take issue
with most of Hal's comments, except those suggesting the NIC do better.
Hal speaks to the coordination of national estimates as an outdated
art form. This is a key, basic charter of the Central Intelligence
Agency and although it is complex and may require the NIOs to move around
town, the NIEs deserve a Community cut, not one fashioned in the narrow
corridors of the NIC/AG.
As far as the NIC's Analytic Group (AG) goes, I have always feared
the establishment of this entity within the NIC. It provides an
independence without data base and sows the seed of developing an
independent though narrow organization. That organization can run
contrary, counter and independent of the DDI. Frankly it is an abortion
and we can best serve our intelligence process by reducing it
dramatically or doing away with it completely. There is no need to
upgrade the size, stature and recruitment base of the AG but rather the
NIC ought to look with vigor to the DDI and other organizations of the
Intelligence Community to input into national level intelligence.
It should come as no surprise to you that I believe there is
considerable merit in the ODI and Chairman/NIC being one and the same. I
won't bore you with old rationale.
To say that there is going to be no automatic market of expectant
consumers of our estimates runs completely counter to recent history.
The policy makers have never been better served by our estimative process
nor have they been timid themselves in expressing their requirements to
satisfy their insatiable needs.
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The reference to the White House and Richard Beal's operation to me
are not an added argument in favor of what Hal proposes but an argument
of what I feared from Beal's operation to start with. True it is the
intent of some quarters in the White House to set up an independent
analytical capability within the White House, something again which my
gut says will produce hal f-assed information to the White House as well
as step on DCI responsibilities and prerogatives. In any event why would
the NIC even think about a relationship with a crisis operations room?
The suggestion that there will be more disorder in tomorrow's world
should cause us to bifurcate our present in-house intelligence process
makes no sense at all.
If there is any gap between theory and practices of the coordination
process then that fault rests with the NIOs doing their basic job. And
that is an individual responsibility of each NIO. Enlarging the AG will
not solve that obvious deficiency. The suggestion that the NIC serve the
pol icymakers by conceiving themselves as national estimators and
increasing their sophistication and size is what was done in 1947 and
they called the organization at that time CIA.
The farming out of drafts is just what was intended in trying to
develop Community participation in the national estimate process. To
look upon this as a problem as opposed to an accomplishment just boggles
my mind.
In short, I can give no truck to any of Hal's rationale for expanding
the AG. It would be nice simply to see the NIC function as it ought to.
As far as a full-time Chairman/NIC, again I differ with Hal. The
thought that a scholar or an official of national reputation will bring
substance to the job as opposed to awe is without merit. A good many
scholars have their own bag and their own view of life. What we are
trying to produce here is unbiased intelligence and not a mechanism for
someone with their own agenda to push or promulgate. I also feel that
the responsibility for scholarship and national reputation starts with
the DCI.
As far as evaluation of estimates, the SRP seems to be doing that job
quite well and Helene Boatner's work in evaluating the overall DDI
product has been extremely helpful. Maybe this should be expanded.
Collection of the Third World has been a large item now for the last
two years. Obviously more is to be done but the problem of getting State
and other embassy officials to play an intelligence role has been very
much on the front burner of the HUMINT Committee) the "Focus Reports" as
well as the collection plans which the IC Staff circulates in your
behalf. Larry Eagleburger's message to all embassies a few months ago
was a gig to prompt the embassies into more reporting.
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The complaint to have the estimators receive more U.S. Blue
information is old hat and it's a problem that is not going to be solved
with or without the NIC. It's inherent in operators not to want to
provide anyone operational information. That goes for submarine ops,
destroyer ops and DDO ops.
The final paragraph which suggests that the estimators tell the truth
and tell it like it is is a lousy and bum rap. The identification of
Vietnam, Iran or Lebanon as examples of where we spent taxpayer's money
to help pol icymakers deceive themselves is not only factually incorrect
but outrageous in the inference.
Needless to say my emotion runs high with Hal's step into the past.
John N. McMahon
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 rr~vm: Hal Ford, NIO At Large
M N . BUILDING EXTENSION
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STATRO,1m 241 I WHIICCH C MAYOBEMUSEEDD. (47)
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The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
National Intelligence Council
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Chairman, National Intelligence Council
FROM: Hal Ford
National Intelligence Officer At Large
SUBJECT: The Future of National Estimates
NIC 02989-84
18 May 1984
1. As a practictioner, observer, and critic of the national estimates
business since 1951, in and out of CIA, I believe strongly that certain
fairly substantial additional changes have become necessary in this business
if national estimating is to make the impact it deserves in tomorrow's
world. This memo examines problems which will increasingly beset the
estimate-policymaker relationship, and offers certain recommendations to
meet that more troubled future environment.
2. My chief observations/recommendations, as spelled out in the body of
this memo, are in brie :
-fwv
That in some respects the coordinated national estimate has become ~C "
an outdated artform in the heavy competition for consumers' ib a~ 19 G V
attention -- in a world and a policymaking milieu increasingly D
affected by pressures of complexity, time, and disorder. ~T tie w
That certain types of coordinated national estimates remain highly necessary and should be produced, but that the NIOs, the A/NIOs,
and the NIC's Analytic Group (AG) can better serve the interests of -o
policymakers by continuing to increase that proportion of national
estimating which takes the form of less formal memos, think-pieces, v)
face-to-face encounters, new methods of communicating estimative
judgments, and so on.
That the key to the quality of written estimates is -- and will
continue to be -- the quality of the drafters; that the practice of
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CL BY SIGNER
DECL OADR
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borrowing drafters on an ad hoc basis from other offices has proved
a mixed blessing; that the best system yet devised for producing
the bulk of estimates is a cadre of elite, experienced estimates J
officers concentrated in the estimates office staff (NIC, at P-
present); and that to these ends something like the present AG
should be substantially upgraded in size, stature, and recruitment
base.
With no disrespect to Bob Gates' heroic dual performance, that the
production and impact of estimates can be best maximized where the
chief estimates officer (C/NIC, or however titled) holds that
position as a full-time job, and is himself/herself a figure of
national reputation who is a hard-headed thinker/doer.
That many additional changes -- spelled out below -- are also
needed to improve the utility of future national estimating. These
encompass matters of purpose, format, procedure, media, and
marketing.
3. An increasingly difficult future market for national estimates:
-- The always difficult market for estimates is going to get worse.
The producers of estimates, up and down the chain of command, must
recognize more clearly that their efforts will face heavy
competition indeed for the time and attention of senior
policymaking consumers. These key targets of ours are the very
officers who have the least time and energy to absorb our wisdom.
They carry their own NIEs around in their heads. They often feel that they do not need us, especially in fields where general cq knowledge is plentiful, but unique augmenting intelligence is thin. ~f
just waiting for our estimative insights before they proceed to '.'
policy decision. Dispassionate estimates are going to be up
against advocacy, with the latter having the advantage of always
being simpler and more seductive. And in particular, our estimates
will not encounter a ready market on those occasions where their
portraits of the world are not congenial with policymakers' own
images or commitments.
-- The expanding hazards to estimates' impact will be both foreign and
home-grown. Tomorrow's world will bring not only the growing
weight of the Soviet global challenge, but increasingly more
volatile threats to US interests from instabilities in the Third
World and elsewhere. Such rising disorder will create a more
difficult policymaking milieu. The demands of meeting pressing
crises has always produced what past evaluations have correctly
termed a "stranglehold" by current intelligence, to the deteriment
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-- For many reasons, hence, there will be more disorder in tomorrow's
world and tomorrow's policymaking -- and, consequently, a greater
gap between the very rational purposed theory of national
estimating on the one hand, and the more haphazard practice of
policymaking on the other. This means that tomorrow's national
estimating will have to be damn good in quality and utility, on and
beyond recent improvements, if it is to justify the time, talent,
energy, and taxpayers' money spent on its preparation.
4. The case for fewer interagency national estimates and more national
estimating:
much more on the run. The best step the estimates business has
taken to meet this changed circumstance is the creation and
*IAC-M-1, 30 October 1950.
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of sufficient consumer or producer attention to longer-term -- and
often more serious -- problems. This situation will intensify as
policymakers are beset by a rise in the number, complexity,
insistence, and time-squeeze of world problems.
Accompanying this trend will be certain new hazards to estimates
arising from improved White House and other operations centers such as that of Richard Beal's. These efforts will be good/bad: they
~6
will tie intelligence to policy on a more immediate basis
,
but at
1
the same time may damage decision making by surrounding senior f y V
policy officers with facts and judgments which in some instance .,~' 1,0
,p
are more high-impact than accurate or meaningful.
N '
The case still exists -- more than three decades since the creation
of the NIE art form -- for the traditional purposes of certain
~`~
v
national estimates. Those purposes, as expressed by then DCI
Bedell Smith,* sought in the national estimates an authoritative
~(
interpretation and appraisal that would serve as a firm guide to ,
policymakers and planners, a disinterestedness above question, the V- d
intelligence agencies -- hence commanding respect throughout the
government as the best available and most authoritative body of /
estimative judgments. These considerations still apply for many of _ ,/
the basic studies, such as the NIE 11-3/8 series, where an NIE
serves as an agreed reference point for key planning; and for
evaluations of certain other crisis or troubling situations of
pressing importance to the United States where authoritative,
dispassionate basic assessments may be in short supply.
But in the case of many of other types of national estimates, the
institutions of orderly policymaking for which estimates were
designed originally to serve have long since disappeared. Apart
largely from long-range military planning, policymaking takes place
U) I
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strengthening of the NIO system. Well and good: through various
means the NIOs have moved out smartly into this policymaking
scene. But the ties of estimates and policymaking are still
somewhat hit-and-miss, with no systematic match-up, and with the
time and talent of senior NIC officers overly drained off in often
feckless coordination.
There continues to be a sizable gap between the theory and the fl Gtr'"
practice of the coordination process. At the representatives'
level there is often a lack of individual candlepower, geniune
expertise, and actual authority to represent the Principal. With
some exceptions, representatives tend to defend prior established
positions, or just insure that nothing too objectionable gets in
the text, or just pass the buck along to the Principals. There is
strong reluctance at many representatives' meetings to take clear
dissents, or to undertake new kinds of inquiry or lines of march,
or to venture out beyond demonstrated intelligence at hand, or to
judge the possible consequences of possible future developments.
These drawbacks are reduced, the better and stronger the texts, and
the stronger and better the NIO Chairman. Often the coordination
process improves an estimate's precision and introduces new
subtleties into the text. Drawbacks nonetheless persist, and so
create many other situations where the final coordinated draft that
emerges is essentially that which entered the reps' arena, only
less sharp, less clear, of less utility -- and much delayed.
There have been worthwhile efforts to increase the participation of
Principals in the estimative process. Again, well and good, and
the more such continuing pressure on them the better. But,
realistically speaking, the fact that most Principals are
essentially managers is always going to make the outcome of NFIB
meetings largely the result of given DCI's and whatever assorted
creative personalities happen to attend the particular session,
rather than the collective wisdom foreseen by General Beedle Smith
and his original IAC.
Given all these limitations on national estimates, there is a
strong case to be made that the NIC (and future central estimative
offices, whatever their title) can best serve policymakers by
conceiving of themselves more as national estimators rather than as
t national estimates. This means (1) that the
nd should be manned y the most sophisticated,
rienced officers that can be gathered together; and (2)
th)t these NIC officers not dilute their contribution to national
imating by having to spend too great a proportion of their time
grinding out coordinated NIE packages.
CA-
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-- Constructive critics have long warned estimators of the dangers of
over-coordination.* What have been often the most valuable
inputs made by senior estimative officers over the years have been
sharp ad hoc or in-house studies which break new ground, point out
new developing world threats or opportunities, question
conventional wisdom, examine the consequences of contingent
developments, or otherwise give policymakers more direct, focussed
assistance than can the necessarily more ponderous estimates --
even the recently improved fast-track variety. NIOs, A/NIOs, and
AG members are in the best possible spot to contribute such
insights, and should be encouraged to continue to enlarge the
proportion of such efforts, checking carefully in each instance
with DDI or other appropriate specialists, and indicating clearly
to the readers the status of the views being presented.
-- Policymakers would be well served also if, on occasion, memos of
comment were offered on such think pieces by individual NFIB
Principals or other senior intelligence and policymaking officers.
-- NIOs, A/NIOs, and AG officers, if freed somewhat from the sizable
paper-shuffling demands of coordinating and producing formal
estimates, would have more time also to assist other senior
intelligence officers in guiding collection and in devising new
means of communicating estimative findings, in addition to that of
the printed page. Impact on the faster-moving policymaking world
will require much more in the way of video, graphics, face-to-face,
and other measures. Also more emphasis, see below, on marketing
and follow-up.
-- In all such cases of estimating by means additional to national
estimates, the payoff must of course remain on the quality and
utility of estimative assistance to policymakers, not on the
quantity of NIEs or other estimative pieces being produced.
5. The key importance of an estimate's drafter:
-- Another clear fact which three decades of US estimates experience
has demonstrated is the absolutely primary importance of the
particular drafter to that finished estimate's quality and
usefulness. Where initial concept and drafts are only so-so, or
worse, they not only clog up the estimates schedule but often
*For example, this ancient but still apt recommendation, from a senior
CIA officer, 1957: "The sum and substance of what I have been saying is
that the US national security system would be better served if the
Intelligence Community took a less vigorous view of the meaning of
coordination and substituted more informal techniques of consultation."
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remain relatively impervious to subsequent tinkering and
re-drafting.
-- Where drafters are top-rate there is no problem. But the record is
not one of unblemished success, now or in the past. Traditionally
the toughest cases exist where the drafter proves mediocre or
poor. It is not always easy to know in advance whether an untested
drafter will do a good job of preparing an estimate: some good
current intelligence officers, for example, have put facts and
chronology together in an "estimate," but one which to the consumer
has no so-what. The writing of estimates calls for distinctive
experience and breadth, as well as distinctive skills in
conceptualizing, organizing, and presenting an estimate's findings.
-- The 1974-1980 experiment which required NIOs to scrounge estimates
drafters as best they could proved a failure -- one recognized in
the decision to reorganize the NIOs into a NIC, supported by its
own AG. Since that time the drafting situation has improved
-(1 somewhat, but because of the AG's small size and the many demands
on the time of the NIOs and A/NIOs, the majority of-estimates still
~?~ - \,~ / has to be farmed out to other offices.*
This farming out of drafting assignments invol various
problems. Outsi draft zCo not be the NIOs. They are
not answerable NIC discipline or standards. They are sometimes
physically separate e#a even across town. NIOs
don't always get the drafting stars they seek, but have to settle
for those the parent offices make available. In some host offices
the drafting of national estimates is not treated as part of a
career-enhancing pattern, but an external chore. Drafters are
caught between the demands and views of their own offices and those
of the NIO. In result, enthusiasm, priority, quality, and an
estimate's usefulness all suffer.
Some farming out of estimates must of course continue. This
certainly applies for many of the complex military estimates where
outside-the-NIC analytic offices have produced many good drafting
teams. The same applies for those particular occasions where the
dimensions of a given estimative chore happen to fit the analytic
culture well, and where the host offices do ante up first-team
drafting talent. But there are limits to such practice, including
distinct limits on how much burden NIC projects should exert
especially on DDI production offices' own responsibilities.
The answer: an increasing proportion of coordinated estimates and
in-house pieces can best be done by an experienced AG of ? A A) C t..
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strengthened proportions, the best type of system yet devised for
developing creative estimates drafters. A group encompassing such
breadth, intellectual leadership, and skills can also constitute a
high-class drafting pool for special ad hoc DCI and C/NIC chores.
This cannot be done well, however, by the present AG. As initially
i~ or anized by D/NFAC in early 1980,* this group was to consist "of
officers;" those officers were to draft "the bulk" of
coordinated estimates; they were in addition to "initiate ad hoc
estimative memoranda for NIC discussion and futher disposition;"
~~ nD and rotational tours in the AG were to be an "important element in
U ~ -1
exists at the present time. The AG now has professional
ti0 / ` slots. Its members draft only coordinated estimates, not think
.~ papers as well. CIA chiefs do not willingly provide the AG their
best officers for rotation tours but understandably husband them
J
for their own offices' purposes. Nor, except for military hardware
questions, is there much sophisticated drafting talent available in
the Intelligence Community -- we have had one such tour in the AG
which was successful (NSA), one which proved mis-cast, and one
(DIA) up-coming. The record has also been mixed in drawing top
talent into the AG from academia, etc., where this path also
entails s
ecial bureaucrati
haz
d
p
ar
c
s.
In short, if intelligence is to offer the maximum possible support
to policymaking, it must have an estimates cadre of the best brains
and effectiveness in town. This did obtain at certain times in the
past, witness the wealth of talent represented by such former
estimates staffers as
hand many others. T e principal
reason suc a en a een made available was that the estimates
office was initially conceived to be the heart of the CIA and of
the national intelligence machinery,"* and early DCI's made sure
that the estimates office got assigned the elite drafters it
required. I submit that something like this concept of an
estimates drafting group is required, or at least something
approaching the AG as initially envisaged in early 1980, if the
estimates business is not to continue bumping along, doing a fairly
good job, but not living up to the potential it could contribute.
6. The need for a full-time C/NIC:
-- The C/NIC is a more than full-time job in itself. The Chairman
must furnish intellectual leadership, get the most out of his/her
*NFAC Notice No. 1-19, "Responsibilities and Structure of the NIC
Analytic Group," of 30 January 1980.
*IAC-M-1, 20 October 1950.
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officers, administer the office, and relate actively to senior
members of the intelligence and policymaking communities. This
latter requirement is of paramount importance inasmuch as
estimates, being somewhat free-will offerings, will always have
greater impact the more the estimators are known commodities to the
policymakers, not faceless officers somewhere across town. To
important degree the regard in which given estimates are held rests
on the personal respect in which their producers are held. This
applies of course to all the members of the NIC, but in particular
to C/NIC. He/she must have the opportunity to spend needed time
with senior officers around town (and with the country's best
brains, wherever) before, during, and following the preparation of
estimative support -- and so multiply the impact of the estimates
effort.
-- Although there have been excellent chiefs of the estimates office
who came there from CIA careers, there will generally be an edge in
stature, contacts, and impact -- all other things being equal --
where C/NIC is a scholar or official of national reputation. In
short, future NIC's can be most effective when they-have something
like latter-day Bill Langer's in charge.
7. Additional recommendations for im rovin the quality and impact of
estimative products. Here I purposely avoid familiar criticisms many others
have made, and confine my points to capsule presentations. In brief, there
is need for the DCI to direct that much greater attention be devoted to:
-- The marketing of estimates -- by the DCI, C/NIC, and NIOs alike.
The most rewarding measures involve personalized intervention at
various stages of key exercises, before and after their
production. There is some of this now, from time to time, but
unless pressed much more, our finished products will continue to
tend just to pile up, undifferentiated from other mail, on the
desks of special assistants and other filters. There needs to be
much greater consciousness that our work is not completed at NFIB.
Otherwise we short-circuit the process and the purpose of
estimating.
More regularized evaluation of estimates. To date this has been
confined to sporadic ad hoc efforts, aimed generally at examining
% "failures." Fuller and more regular evaluations, conducted by
senior, objective groups, could transmit back much-needed guidance
as to what has and has not been accurate, useful, etc. This cannot
be done by just reading stacks of old papers, but must involve
considerable interviewing, the building of personal contacts with
consumers, and demonstrated evidence to them of the worth of such
inquiry. Some estimates could benefit by making a review of
previous judgments on the same topic an explicit part of their
content.
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 More attention to collection re Third World developments. Here is
where most of the action is, and where the prime detonators to
world peace are. The Intelligence Community (especially State)
\ must be prodded from on high to get US missions out of their
Cocktail cocoons and into their host societies, so that blindsided
analyses and estimates do not inflict more self-harm on US
policymaking.
More attention in estimates to factoring out the respective
indigenous - external Communist in re ients in Third World hot
spo_t_s. Such crises are of course of enormously greater anger to
lterests where Soviet or other hostile elements are at work in
Fthe picture. But US policymakers have paid dearly in the past for
their relative ignorance of those basic forces in certain world
settings which create the local pro-Communist and without whose
remedy many US well-intentioned policies will go unavailing.
Less emphasis on predicting events, more on depicting forces and
trends at work in given estimative situations.
More estimative emphasis on giving policymakers handles: that is,
pointing up opportunities as well as threats, and differentiating
between those forces in a given picture which seem inexorable, and
those others that may to x degree be amenable to US or other
friendly remedy.
Bein less shy, in estimates, in suggesting opportunity handles to
with oic ma ers. Not trying to make policy, but not stopping either
just telling the consumer that he/she faces a hell of a
situation in Ruritania.
More contact by estimators with the country's best brains outside
of professional intelligence ranks. Contact with outside experts
and consultants nts remains sporadic. More is needed, and on a fuller,
more systematic basis, to avoid certain stultifying effects
Washington localitis can involve.
Much more effort by and on behalf of the estimators to know the US
,Blue element much better -- and making sure that such knowledge of
the ingredient is ground into analyses and estimates of foreign
situations.
Better appreciation among analysts and estimators that they, too,
not only t e policymakers, must keep alert to the distorting
influences of prior belief.
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NJ"' //.,---
CnNFInFITTAI , _ AA-t&""'
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Finally, applicable in relation to all the above, a fierce
determination by estimators to tell it like it is: that is, the (tJ`
necessity to give our consumers the fullest and most objective
analysis/judgment possible -- without regard to the policymakers'
particular preconceptions, commitments, or sensibilities. It is
the job of estimators to tell the truth, not to make our customers
happy. Otherwise we will just be spending taxpayers' money to help
policymakers deceive themselves, on occasion, about how well things
are going in Vietnam, or Iran, or Lebanon, or wherever.
8. I will be pleased to learn your reactions to this memo's
observations/recommendations, and to discuss these matters further.
lfl'-4?-*~
Hal Ford
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SUBJECT: The Future of National Estimates
DCI/NIC/NIO/AL/HFord:ps
Distribution:
Orig - DCI
1 - DDCI
1 - EXDIR
1 - SA/DCI
1 - ER
1 - C/NIC
1 - ADDI
1 - VC/NIC
1 - SRP
1 - Each NIO
1 - AG
1 - Ford Chrono
(18 May 84)
11
CONFIDENTIAL
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2009/12/03: CIA-RDP86B00885R000400480003-8