Iraq and Afghanistan

In all the discussion of the reform of the intelligence services, based in part on the 9/11 report, there is simply not enough realization that the agency has repeatedly failed the country. Today there is yet another report about how immediately before and in the early stages of the war in Iraq, the Central Intelligence Agency in its capacity as advisor to the government and as advisor to various commanders on the ground in Iraq, repeatedly “had it wrong”. They really did think that the people would welcome us with open arms. They really thought that insurgency after we had conquered the country would be a minor problem. They evidently had no idea of the state of Iraq’s infrastructure before the war. With this kind of advice coming in it is no wonder that the Bush Administration so badly judged the requirements of the commitment. The Agency has also been responsible in part for the egregious violations of the right of prisoners in a largely futile search for information.

This, we should remember not the first time that the Agency has failed us. I remember that when I was visiting Vietnam as an advisor to DOD, that the CIA had become something of a joke because in a recent election it had predicted the victory of a faction that in fact came in about eighth when the votes were counted.

The fact is the CIA is lost in a world of its own making. Its analysts believe what they want to believe, and hire secret agents that will feed their fantasies. It seems to me that we need a complete redo, not just a rearrangement at the top. We need an analytic agency that begins de novo, based on the best and most knowledgeable people our universities can provide. We will need to incorporate into the agency some of the truly secret investigative parts of the agency, while keeping the analysts in charge. The analytic agency will operate in the clear without secrecy. The investigative branch will operate in a classified manner. But we must develop a working relationship by which the analysts can both use the clandestine service as a source of information and direct this service in the kind of information that they try to obtain. In the end, the analysts with the broader picture should be the channel through which information from the Agency is provided to actors in government and the military.