SURVEYING INTELLIGENCE CONSUMERS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 00621334
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: March 8, 2023
• Document Release Date: May 31, 2019
• Case Number: F-2018-02472
• Publication Date: September 1, 1989

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TITLE:
AUTHOR:
VOLUME:
Surveying Intelligence Consumers
33 ISSUE: Fall YEAR: 1989
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STU
DIES
INTELLIGENCE
A collection of articles on the historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of intelligence. �
All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are those of
the authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Central
Intelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing in the
contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement of an
article's factual statements and interpretations.
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Lessons for producers
SURVEYING INTELLIGENCE CONSUMERS
The recently published Intelligence Consumer Survey, 1988 provides important, new
information on the views of senior consumers toward intelligence. The 234 officials of the
Reagan administration who responded to the survey were broadly representative of consumers
at the deputy assistant secretary and above levels at the National Security Council, State,
Defense, and at other departments chiefly concerned with international economic issues.
Respondents included Vernon Walters and Elliott Abrams at State, Donald Gregg and Robert
Oakley at the White House, Caspar Weinberger and Fred Ikle at Defense, and Alan Greenspan
at the Federal Reserve. The attitudes of such officials toward intelligence can be compared with
those expressed by 133 former Carter administration officials of equivalent rank in a 1980
survey also undertaken by the Intelligence Producers' Council.'
There are at least four reasons to pay attention to the survey data.
� The responses of the officials surveyed, both as a group and along agency lines, are
credible because they are consistent with much of our anecdotal or case-specific
knowledge of senior consumer attitudes towards intelligence. As a result, the survey
provides a much broader, yet still believable baseline of knowledge about what senior
consumers think of intelligence than do the random set of anecdotes on which most of
us normally rely.
� Analysis of the data indicates that officials from all agencies provide very similar
responses on most questions. Where differences do appear, the 1988 data can be broken
out into the agency groupings indicated in Table 1 for closer analysis.
� The 1980 and 1988 results are very consistent with each other. This indicates that the
surveys have tapped policymaker concerns and satisfactions about intelligence that
persist over time and political admininistrations.
� The 1988 survey indicates areas where intelligence producers need to improve the
services provided to their principal consumers. If consumers were giving intelligence
producers a letter grade, a "gentleman's B- would come to mind after perusing the
survey data. This suggests room for improvement, and in some areas more serious
deficiencies appear to exist.
Table 1
The 1980 and 1988 Survey Populations
1980 Survey
1988 Survey
Number of
Percent
Number of
Percent
Agency Grouping
Respondents
of Sample
Respondents
of Sample
Dept. of Defense
42
32%
113
48%
Dept. of State
35
26%
58
25%
White House
19
14%
19
8%
Economic Agencies
37
28%
35
15%
Other Agencies
0
�
9
4%
Totals
133
100%
234
100%
I See Intelligence Consumer Survey (IPC 82-10002, September 1982, Confidential).
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This article focuses on what I believe are the four key findings of the 1988 survey and,
where possible, compares them with data from the 1980 survey to indicate any trends over
time. The implications of all of these findings indicate that intelligence producers should make
changes in the way they do business, if they are to serve policymakers effectively in the 1990s.
Key Finding #1: All Forms of Intelligence Are Equally Useful
Both surveys asked consumers to indicate the usefulness of five basic kinds of information:
nonintelligence materials, such as newspapers or academic research; basic intelligence, such as
biographic, order of battle or other factual data; current intelligence, such as the National
Intelligence Daily (NID) or the State Department's Morning Summary; in-depth analytic
studies, such as CIA Intelligence Assessments or National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs); and
raw or uninterpreted reporting, such as State cables or attache reports. Unfortunately, the two
surveys gave respondents a different range of possible answers, with the 1980 survey offering
more negative choices and the 1988 survey offering more positive choices on the issue of utility.
This has naturally skewed each survey's results in the indicated direction. To minimize this
bias, the responses from each survey have been reorganized into three basic categories:
useful," "not very useful," and "not used.- 2 Table 2 summarizes consumer responses along
these lines.
Table 2
Percent of Policymakers Indicating
Usefulness of Different Types of Information
1981 Survey
1988 Survey
Type of
Not Very Not Very
% Spending at Least
Information
Useful Useful Not Used Useful Useful Not Used
An Hourly/Wkly
Current Intel
84% 8%
8%
78%
12%
10%
67%
In-depth Intel
72% 20%
8%
74%
16%
10%
39%
Non-intel Info
71% 15%
14%
73%
18%
9%
63%
Basic Intel
75% 11%
14%
70%
21%
9%
38%
Raw Reports
66% 22%
12%
66%
20%
14%
50%
The responses are notable both for the high proportion of senior officials who cite each
type of information as useful and for the consistency of the figures across the two surveys.
Two-thirds or more of our consumers find each type of information useful. The small sample
size in both surveys makes differences of less than 10 percent of negligible significance. This
means, for example, that nonintelligence information was about as useful as any form of
intelligence for Reagan administration officials. It also means that the comparative utility
2 The following chart indicates how the responses available on the two surveys were reorganized into the
categories used in this study.
New Category
1981 Responses 1988 Responses
Useful Very + Fairly Useful = Essential + Very Useful +
Somewhat Useful/2
Not Very Not Particularly Useful = Somewhat Useful/2 + Of No Use
Useful + Not Useful
Not Used Did Not Receive + Have No Experience + No Answer
No Answer
Analysis of each survey using its original range of responses produces the same findings, but it does not allow
comparisons over time.
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advantage held by current intelligence over all other information sources in 1980 virtually
disappears in 1988; only raw reporting remains less useful than current intelligence for senior
officials.
These aggregate survey results hold up across three of the four agency groupings in the
1988 survey. Consumers at Defense, State and the other, mostly economic agencies display no
strong preference for one form of information over another. However, nearly 90 percent of the
officials from the Reagan White House cited current and in-depth intelligence as useful, a
higher proportion than at the other agencies. NSC officials, with their broadranging and rapidly
changing focus of responsibilities, probably have a greater need for these finished forms of
intelligence. Departmental officials are somewhat more specialized and experienced in their
respective areas.
As the last column in Table 2 reveals, there are sharp differences in the amount of time
senior officials spend on various types of information. The survey results, however, allow us to
estimate that senior officials spend between two and eight hours a week reviewing intelligence
of any form.
There are apparent inconsistencies between how much time consumers say they spend on
various types of information and how useful they say each type is. Fewer consumers spend at
least an hour a week on in-depth intelligence (39 percent) than on raw reports (50 percent) and
nonintelligence sources (63 percent), even though in-depth studies are rated useful by at least
as many consumers. Current intelligence and nonintelligence sources receive significantly more
time than the other sources, but do not get significantly higher marks for their utility.
This time-utility contradiction can be explained by two conditions confronting most
policymakers. First, incentives are high for senior officials to focus on immediate problems.
They fear the consequences of not spending as much time as other players in the policy game
searching for currently relevant material. The substantial amount of rapidly and widely
disseminated raw reporting that flows to senior officials puts an additional time burden on the
consumer's daily encounters with intelligence. Ironically, the surveys suggest that when
consumers take the time to read more in-depth analyses, they find them equally useful. But this
does not reduce the policymaker's near obsession with keeping current.
The second reason consumers spend as much time on nonintelligence sources as on
intelligence material is, in my view, the crucial importance of the domestic and bureaucratic
political context of American foreign policy. Awareness of what issues and events are receiving
public or Congressional attention and of what one's competitors in the policy game are doing
is at least as important to senior officials as knowledge of foreign developments.
The initial message for the Intelligence Community is gratifying: a lrge majority of senior
consumers find all forms of intelligence useful in one way or another. A future survey would
help producers even more if it asked for consumer feedback on what is more or less useful in
different types of intelligence, when each type of intelligence is most useful, and what sort of
packaging or presentation makes written intelligence more or less useful.
The implication for producers of current and in-depth finished intelligence is less
encouraging. Such material is cited as no more useful than are newspapers and raw reporting.
The basic message here should not be missed: the information marketplace is highly
competitive, with consumers picking out whatever is most relevant and available at the time
needed. The surveys indicate that finished intelligence does not have a built-in comparative
advantage in these terms.
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There are three lessons for finished intelligence producers to draw from this finding. First,
producers must place a premium on conciseness and on a format that highlights what is
important. The current policy peg also should be identified and emphasized at the outset.
Additionally, intelligence producers need to consider more frequently what the compar-
ative advantage of finished intelligence is in any given situation. Many times we cannot "beat"
our competitors to the consumer, even if we want to. Do policvmakers benefit and does the
credibility of intelligence increase if a story containing no unique intelligence is published just
to get it on the record? Alternatively, if producers decide they have something of value to offer
the consumer that is not already available from other sources, the survey indicates that simply
dropping the product in the consumer's mailbox is not a strategy for success in a competitive
marketplace. Time and energy have to be devoted to marketing finished intelligence.
Finally, newspapers and raw reporting may be as useful as finished intelligence because
their style and approach to interpreting events are often more in line with the way policy
officials think about or approach events. These sources tend to be conversational in style,
anecdotal in their treatment of events, and often focused on personalities. Finished intelligence
tends toward a denser style, seeks to highlight generalizations about events, and 'focuses on
abstract forces, thereby reducing its potential utility.
Key Finding #2: Personal Staffs Play a Pivotal Role
Both surveys confirmed that most senior officials rely on their personal staffs to screen or
summarize the intelligence they receive. Over 80 percent of the Carter consumers said that
their staffs screened some or all of their intelligence; nearly 65 percent of the Reagan consumers
said their staffs summarized or otherwise edited some or all of the intelligence they saw. The
drop in the proportion of officials acknowledging such staff interventions presumably reflects
the narrower question wording in the 1988 survey and not a drop in policymaker reliance on
gatekeepers. Such a drop would run contrary to much of our anecdotal evidence.
Evidence of the increasing role of the personal staffs is found in the answers provided to
survey questions on the channels used to request intelligence. Table 3 indicates the percentage
of consumers who indicated they requested intelligence either -daily or weekly- or -not at all"
via five possible tasking channels: personal staff, intelligence liaison officers, directly to other
intelligence officers, via formal requirements, or via the directors or deputy directors of an
intelligence agency.
Table 3
Percent of Senior Officials Indicating
Use of Various Channels to Request Intelligence
1981 Survey
1988 Survey
Daily or
Not
Daily or
Not
Daily/Weekly Use at
Channel
Weekly
At All
Weekly
At All
DoD
State
VVHse
Other
Personal Staff
55%
18%
65%
14%
66%
65%
83%
59%
Via Intel Liaison Off.
65%
15%
40%
25%
41%
24%
44%
55%
Directly to an Intel Off.
44%
15%
21%
28%
21%
12%
56%
18%
Via Formal Requirements
NA
NA
19%
44%
23%
7%
22%
20%
Via Agency Director/DD
16%
31%
3%
61%
3%
2%
22%
0%
% Citing Any Intel Channel
75%
15%
55%
25%
55%
45%
70%
55%
Note: Table excludes consumers who indicated they used a tasking channel less than weekly.
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The change between the two surveys in the proportion of policymakers requesting
intelligence via each channel is striking. The proportion of consumers who used any of the
direct channels to the Intelligence Community on a daily or weekly basis declined by about 30
percent. The proportion who indicated that they did not use a direct channel rose in every
instance. In contrast, the percentage of consumers asking their personal staffs to obtain needed
information rose between the two surveys. The bright spot in the data is the equal significance
of the intelligence liaison officer and personal staff channels at the other, mostly economic
agencies. The minimal use made of intelligence agency directors, except by the White House,
is not surprising; most consumers in the survey would not have frequent access to this high-level
channel. The limited use made of formal requirements systems confirms longstanding concerns
that consumers are largely ignorant of how to use such systems and, when knowledgeable, find
them confusing, rigid, and often too slow to meet their needs.
The evidence of a decline in the frequency of direct tasking of the Intelligence
Community is troubling. Personal staffs may usually come to Community components to fulfill
the needs of their principals, but they may also be filling those needs themselves by tasking
components in the policy agency itself. Interviews with policy officials or other research are
needed to confirm exactly what has happened and why.
Whatever the case, the prominent role of senior staffs has two significant implications for
intelligence producers. First, intelligence production managers should be in frequent personal
contact with the personal staffs of the senior consumers that they are trying to serve. In many
cases, such staffers should be seen as the firstline, or even primary, consumers. Infrequent
contact with senior staffs increases the risk of not being in on the action when intelligence is
needed or of providing intelligence that is not focused on the actual needs of the policymaker.
The challenge is often seen by producers as one of trying to get past these gatekeepers. The real
challenge is providing gatekeepers with the appropriate assistance at the appropriate time in
serving their principals.
Second, the continuing importance of intelligence liaison officer channels at the Depart-
ments of Treasury, Commerce, and Energy appears to provide a model worth building on
elsewhere. Every military commander of a unit of battalion or squadron size or larger benefits
from a full-time intelligence officer looking out for his needs. It would seem useful to extend
the same service to every assistant secretary or higher-level official in our key foreign
policymaking agencies. Such liaison officers would help particular producers to stay close to
consumer needs and to protect consumers from being swamped with calls by many producing
units trying to market their services or be of help. Rotational service as a liaison officer would
also increase any intelligence officer's awareness of how his or her self-initiated intelligence can
better serve consumers upon return to a production component.
Key Finding #3: Oral Briefings Preferred
The 1988 survey asked consumers about their preferences for various mediums for
receiving intelligence. Between 50 and 60 percent said that they liked getting intelligence via
every medium�written, oral, or electronic. This is consistent with the Carter-era survey,
which found that 60 percent of consumers liked to get intelligence in a combination of written
and oral forms. As Table 4 indicates, however, the 1988 survey revealed some differences in the
propOrtion of senior officials who had stronger likes or dislikes for the various forms of delivery.
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Table 4
Percent of Policymakers Indicating Strong
Likes or Dislikes for Different Intelligence Mediums
% Who % Who Have Used Medium &
Medium
Haven't
Used
Like Very
Much
Dislike Very
Much/Dislike
% Who Like Very Much at
DoD State White H. Others
Oral Intel Briefings
8%
37%
5%
37% 30% 41% 43%
Formal Intel Pubs
4%
28%
6%
24% 35% 47% 23%
Written Intel
Done for You
11%
27%
7%
23% 24% 41% 34%
To Who Have Not Used at
DoD State White H. Others
Videotape Intel
65%
17%
20%
63% 82% 56% 55%
Intel on Computer Terminal
81%
16%
26%
80% 89% 72% 82%
The strong preference for oral briefings is not surprising. Oral presentations, when done
well, are more focused on a particular policymaker's concerns, and there is a chance for
followup discussion. In some ways, it is surprising that the number of consumers preferring oral
briefings is not higher and that only consumers at Defense and the economic agencies displayed
such a relative preference in the survey. This probably reflects the situational element that is
missing from the survey question: sometimes oral briefings are preferred; sometimes written
intelligence is wanted.
In contrast to these marginal differences, the response to intelligence via videotape or
computer terminal is much less positive. Our conclusions have to be tempered by the fact that
two-thirds or more of our senior consumers have yet to sample these mediums. Of those who
have, however, fewer like them very much, and more disliked the electronic mediums than for
either written or oral intelligence.
The heavy investment of time by at least some producers of finished intelligence in the
preparation of formal current and in-depth intelligence publications appears to be out of line
with the marginal preferences of consumers. For example, Table 5 provides evidence on how
production branches in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence (DI) allocate their production effort
and on the frequency with which various product types have been requested.
The pattern is clear. Over 60 percent of the DI's effort is put into preparing the NID and
the President's Daily Brief (PDB), hardcover publications, and its periodicals. These products
are the least requested by consumers. In contrast, oral briefings and shorter written products are
frequently requested, but they receive the least amount of the DI's effoA. While a continuing
investment in basic research by intelligence producers is necessary to make subsequent oral
briefings or talking points both credible and useful, the evidence indicates that we could
provide better service to key consumers by making changes in two areas. At the margins, more
effort in preparing, marketing, and presenting intelligence orally and less effort in preparing
and reviewing NID items and hardcovers would respond to consumer preferences on how to
deliver intelligence. Also, better mechanisms are needed to determine whether a policymaker
wants a written report of some kind of whether he or she really wants to pose a few questions
to an intelligence expert. More personal contact with policymaker staffs and more extensive use
of intelligence liaison officers would improve the ability of producers to provide the right type
of product at the right time.
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Table 5
How Do Production Branches in the CIA'S Directorate of
Intelligence Allocate Their Production Effort?
Branch Average in
Branch Average in
Branch
Estimated To of Product Type
Type of
Five Regional
Four Functional
Average For
Done at Request
Production
Offices
Offices
Directorate
Of a Consumer
Oral Briefings
10%
10%
.10%
80%+
Typescripts,
Talking Points,
Short Memos
18%
12%
15%
60%+
Periodical
Publications
15%
15%
15%
3% �
NID/PDB
25%
10%
18%
10%
Hardcovers
25%
35%
30%
20%
Bios, Maps,
Databases,
Other
7%
18%
12%
35%
Total
100%
100%
100%
Note: Based on data collected from 95 DI branch chiefs and experienced analysts who took the Supervision of
Analysis, Workshop on-Reviewing Analytical Papers, or Reaching Policymakers courses in 1988-89. Excludes
time spent on travel, training, administrative, or housekeeping matters.
Producers need to find out more about the reasons for consumer resistance to the electronic
delivery of intelligence. Is it mostly reflective of a generational gap between those who gained
their professional success before the information revolution and those who began their
professional lives in a multimedia world? Or do the new mediums fail to provide something
that is valued in the traditional formats: a computer screen cannot be taken to a meeting or
highlighted by magic marker; a videotape lacks the authoritative credibility of an expert
briefing, and it cannot answer your followup questions on the spot. The expense of new
electronic delivery systems will be justified only if they are used.
Key Finding #4: A Need for Better Policy-Support Intelligence
The 1988 survey also recognized the importance of discovering consumer perceptions of
the quality of intelligence. Even unsatisfactory or low-quality support may be useful, or at least
better than no support at all: Table 6 provides the responses of consumers to the question, -How
satisfied have you been with the performance of the Intelligence Community in providing you
with information that keeps you generally informed about world affairs, that keeps you
informed about your specific areas of responsibility, or that addresses policy objectives of the
current administration?" While the meaning of the last category could have been made clearer,
other evidence in the survey indicates that it at least partially taps consumer perceptions of how
well the Community does in preparing intelligence that directly supports decisionmaking, as
opposed to intelligence that provides background facts or analysis. The first two information
categories in this question clearly fall into this latter area.
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Table 6
Policymaker Satisfaction
With Different Types of Intelligence
Type of Intelligence
Satisfaction Rating
Intelligence Intelligence on Intelligence
on Official's Areas To Support
World Affairs of Responsibility Decision making
Very Satisfied 24% 28% 9%
Satisfied 69% 61% 64%
Dissatisfied 6% 10% 21%
Very Dissatisfied 1% 1% 6%
% Indicating Such
Intelligence Is:
Essential
Very Useful
8% 71% 15%
52% 24% 37%
Over 90 percent of senior officials indicated satisfaction with intelligence that essentially
provided background on world affairs, although only 8 percent said that such intelligence was
essential. Small pockets of dissatisfaction existed only among officials at State and Defense.
These responses validate the high proportion of consumers citing current intelligence publica-
tions as useful: 65 percent of all consumers said so about the widely disseminated NID; 75
percent of DoD consumers said DIA's Defense Intelligence Summary was useful, and 71
percent of State consumers said the same about the State Morning Summary.
Eigthy-nine percent of the policymakers expressed satisfaction with intelligence received
on their areas of concern. This is gratifying, in light of the 71 percent of consumers who
indicated that such intelligence was essential to their jobs. At the margins, dissatisfaction is
slightly higher with this type of intelligence in comparison with background on world affairs.
Twenty-three officials, including some at the White House and the economic agencies, were
dissatisfied with intelligence on their areas of concern. This is 11 percent of the total.
These responses are consistent with the significant proportion of consumers who cite
various in-depth intelligence publications as useful. For example, 58 percent of all consumers
said they found CIA Intelligence Assessments and Research Papers useful; 67 percent at State
said INR's Intelligence Reports were useful; and 46 percent of DoD consumers cited DIA
Appraisals as useful.
Consumer satisfaction drops significantly concerning intelligence meant to support
decisionmaking and policy implementation. While about one-fourth of all consumers were
very satisfied with the first two categories of intelligence, less than 10 percent said the same
here. The rise of dissatisfaction to 27 percent of the total is of greater concern. Results vary
somewhat when they are broken down along agency lines. Only 7 percent of officials at the
mostly economic agencies were dissatisfied with such policy-support intelligence, but 17
percent of the officials surveyed at the White House, 30 percent at Defense, and 38 percent at
State were dissatisfied.
These responses on the 1988 survey are consistent with comments by senior Carter
administration officials in the earlier survey. Over 40 percent of the Carter officials said that
they received an insufficient quantity of -intelligence analyses specifically prepared to support
the development of policy options or operational planning.- Over half of the Carter survey
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respondents said that the quality of the policy-support intelligence actually received was only
-fair- or -poor.- The consistency of the data across the two surveys indicates a deep-rooted and
continuing area of deficiency in such Intelligence Community work.
Neither survey asked directly for the reasons why consumers were dissatisfied with
policy-support intelligence. Some consumer dissatisfaction probably reflects unhappiness with
the judgments provided by intelligence. Answers to three questions on the 1988 survey provide
some clues about other sources of dissatisfaction. They also suggest that while 73 percent of
consumers said that they were satisfied with intelligence to support decisionmaking, many of
these respondents almost certainly were providing at best a soft endorsement of such
intelligence work.
Policymaker staffs frequently are forced to modify or repackage intelligence to make it
focus on their principals' concerns. Listed below are the percentage of policymakers in the 1988
survey giving various reasons for the editing done by their staff before they receive intelligence
material. Many cited more than one reason. The responses indicate that producers of finished
intelligence are too often unaware of what policy officials need.
Reason For Staff Editing Percent Citing Reason
To reduce the length 66%
To remove irrelevant material 62%
To integrate other intelligence information 50%
To identify or emphasize support for current policy concerns 50%
To improve the clarity of presentation 47%
Another question on the 1988 survey indicates that senior officials sometimes either do not
request intelligence support before acting or request it and fail to receive it. Less than half of
our senior consumers said that they always sought intelligence before acting, even though
nearly all of them said that they believed intelligence might have helped. About 40 percent said
that they failed to do so because time pressures precluded making a request. This also means,
however, that intelligence producers have not been close enough to senior officials on some
occasions to know that intelligence would have been helpful. The same is true for the 20
percent who said that they did not request intelligence because they thought it was either
unobtainable or would not be useful. Roughly 30 percent of all consumers said that they
sometimes requested intelligence support and either never got it or got it too late to be used.
This answer was given most frequently by White House officials; over half of them said so,
twice the proportion at other agencies.
An open-ended question at the end of the 1988 survey provides striong evidence that many
senior officials want more intelligence that is tailored to their particular needs. When asked to
write in -ways that intelligence producers can improve the usefulness and Quality of their
support,- nearly half of the Reagan officials wrote -be more responsive to specific needs,"
"respond more quickly,- -make tasking easier,- -establish more personal contact,- or -develop
a rifle rather than a shotgun approach to providing intelligence.- This collection of responses
far overshadowed the roughly 15 percent who said that they thought the substantive content
or Quality of intelligence needed improvement or the 5 percent who wrote in -I'm satisfied."
The strength and breadth across agency lines of the evidence that better intelligence to
support policymaking is needed indicates the one aspect of our work that is deficient in more
than a marginal way. This judgment based on the survey data is supported by a growing body
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of case-study material and by recent public criticisms of the performance of the Intelligence
Community by members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a number
of former Reagan administration officials.3
The judgment that producers are deficient in providing policy-support intelligence must
be tempered by the evidence in the surveys and in our personal experiences that wide
variations exist across cases. Some consumers have gotten just what they needed to make
decisionmaking easier or more informed. The senior officials in the economic agencies appear
to stand out in the survey data in this regard. Within every producing agency, some production
units are more or less dedicated to the publication of basic intelligence. They should not be held
to an unfair performance standard that may indicate a need for substantially improved
policy-support work by others. Nonetheless, the basic judgment still stands: the policy-support
work of intelligence producers is more problematic than their other types of production.
How can the problem be fixed? Part of it is caused by policymakers themselves. Sherman
Kent was among the first intelligence producers to complain publicly about the failure of policy
officials to give intelligence analysts questions to address and about the tendency' of policy
officials to ask questions only at the last minute, thereby guaranteeing a hasty intelligence
response to often tough questions. Kent also complained about the failure of the policy agencies
to keep intelligence producers informed about their changing agendas and policies. Unfortu-
nately, policymaker culpability for a lot of what is irrelevant or unfocused in intelligence was
diagnosed in 1948, and it has since received serious comment a number of times. This suggests
that policymakers are not about to make great strides in helping us better serve their needs in
the 1990s. The ball is in the intelligence producers' court.
My own experience, reinforced by the pattern discerned in much of the survey data,
indicates that shifts are necessary in how intelligence producers make three tradeoffs that have
always confronted them. First, intelligence analysts have to work harder to increase their
expertise and knowledge about the US policy process and agenda and less on developing it on
foreign lands. This means spending more time studying the US foreign policy process, the
shifting legislative and budgetary agendas that set the tempo for much decisionmaking, and the
interests and personalities of consumers. Analysts should try to obtain such knowledge firsthand
by talking with officials in policy agencies, by attending significant Congressional hearings as
observers, and by participating in public conferences on foreign affairs issues. Infrequent
-parish calls- or feverish running about are not the cure. Time spent out of the office has to be
guided by specific purposes and be subjected to some division of labor. Although we will still
need to devote the bulk of our time to building and maintaining the intellectual capital that
makes our work credible, we should be spending close to one-third of our time on staying
attuned to the policy process.
Second, the consumer surveys show that our self-initiated work is useful and appreciated,
but the deficiencies in the area of policy-support work boil down to what intelligence producers
are not doing. To do more of such work and to get better at the support we provide, some of
the effort now devoted to getting out scheduled research has to be shifted to the area where
senior officials are telling us they need more help.
Nearly all the case studies developed by the Program in Intelligence Assessment and Policy at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government illustrate variations of the problem of intelligence - policy disconnect, for example.
Recent public criticisms of the deficiencies of intelligence producers in providing policy-support intelligence can be
found in Roy Godson, ed. Intelligence Requirements for the 1990s (Lexington Books, 1989) and in articles by Robert
Gates and Anne Armstrong in The Washington Quarterly (Winter, 1989).
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Third, intelligence production managers need to spend more time and effort out of the
office staying in touch with consumers at their appropriate level and less time and effort in the
office reviewing paper products and attending to internal bureaucratic concerns. Adjustments
in the first two tradeoff areas will not occur, unless managers display their own commitment to
meeting more of the particular needs of consumers. Equally important, as managers or their
liaison officers learn what is needed, the message has to be relayed quickly and clearly to the
production units for action so that relevant products are available when needed.
Some Final Thoughts
If senior officials from at least the last two administrations have been asking for more and
better intelligence tailored to their decisionmaking and policy implementation needs, why has
the Intelligence Community been slow to respond? Reforms in these directions will not be easy
to make because they run counter to how the intelligence culture operates and because such
changes entail real risks.
� It would be harder for intelligence producers to avoid being co-opted into the
policymaking process itself.
� All intelligence producers would be likely to have less freedom of activity, as the
customer's agenda controlled increasing amounts of our time.
� All DI managers would be less aware of intelligence production activity, and thus less
able to control it.
� Consumers' judgments of the Quality of our work would become more important and
would loom much larger in career development.
Nonetheless, the risks seem to be worth taking. The margin for policymaking error for the
US Government is declining as the relative power and influence of the US over international
affairs declines. When high-quality policy-support intelligence is unavailable, the result will be
more damaging in the future than it has been in the past. The US will increasingly lack the
luxury of being able to make repeated or serious mistakes and still protect its interests.
Moreover, only the Intelligence Community has the capability and mission to serve all the
policymaker's information needs, including professionally tailored support of the decisionmak-
ing and policy implementation process. Providing useful but often not essential background
analysis and facts is not where the challenge lies for intelligence producers in the next decade.
At the level of policy implementation, actionable intelligence and other kinds of support for
operational activity are the growth industry. At the level of policy formulation, -opportunities
and vulnerabilities- analysis and evaluation of the likely foreign impact of, or responses to, US
policy options are the areas for major improvements in intelligence; This is the essence of what
consumers tried to tell us in the survey.
This article is classified CONFIDENTIAL.
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