Broken Still

by Eric Martin

Reading over this interview Chas Freeman gave to Jim Lobe really drives home the point that in letting Freeman go, the Obama administration missed a golden opportunity to implement much needed reforms in an intelligence community that is, as Alex Rossmiller argued quite persuasively, Still Broken.

Q: What sorts of procedural changes were you thinking about implementing?

A: In general, I would’ve tried very hard to encourage members of the intelligence community to use classified information as a form of corroboration for information that is not classified, or is not terribly sensitive even if it is classified. In other words, I would urge analysts to write down rather than write up terms of levels of classification. The theory here is that, whereas many people in the (NIC) have tended to see the value of intelligence as directly proportional to its level of classification, this, in fact, misunderstands the nature of intelligence. Intelligence is simply information that is relevant to statecraft or decision-making. If it’s on the front page of the (Financial Times) or Inter Press or has been stolen out of the Kremlin safe, the key question is what is its reliability and how much can you rely upon it in understanding the situation you confront and in forming policies to deal with that situation.

In other words, I would have liked to have tried to change the culture to value lower levels of classification rather than higher in terms of output – obviously, to take advantage of all of the secret information one has, but to use it basically to corroborate (or test) what alert minds in the open-source world have been able to figure out. The purpose of this would be to build some checks and balances into the system and reduce the chances of sycophancy and the trimming of intelligence to fit the politically correct or politically convenient conclusions.

I must say much of the criticism of my appointment focused on the apparently horrifying possibility that I might actually produce intelligence that might not conform to political convenience or correctness but reached some other conclusion – intelligence that wouldn’t fit the preconceptions or policy preferences of its consumers. And that would be unacceptable. In other words, instead of being simply a supply of ammunition for political polemics and argumentation in favor of policies that have been cooked up without regard to the facts, intelligence might actually be a guide to decision-making. This notion is apparently very threatening.

Q: What about the approach to gathering and assessing intelligence?

A: The tendency has been very much to focus on the short-term, on current intelligence – for example, how many tunnels collapsed in Gaza under Israeli bombs yesterday? — and not to think about longer-term issues. What does it mean that tunnels are collapsing under Israeli bombs? What does it mean for Israel? What does it mean for Egypt? What does it mean for Palestinians in Gaza? What does it mean for the international community? Most importantly, what does it mean for U.S. interests and U.S. policy? What are the longer-term consequences of the absence of peace for Israelis and the continued squeeze on Palestinians for them?

I would’ve tried to shift toward a more consistently medium- or long-range focus. I would’ve hoped that the material provided to the president could include feature writing, to use a journalistic analogy, as well as reporting on current events…. […]

I came to believe that I could improve the quality of the process; I could build in checks and balances against sycophancy; I could reestablish the credibility of the product. I could produce things that were sufficiently low in classification or maybe unclassified that they would really be useful to the Congress and others participating in a national discussion about what to do. But when it became apparent that this little gang of Likudniks who were after me were going to stay on my case and continue their defamatory activities and use me as an excuse to discredit any judgment from the intelligence community that they found uncongenial, I concluded I could do everything I intended except restore the credibility of the product. The only consolation I have to offset the viciousness of their attacks is that I think they rather overplayed their hand. Instead of reinforcing the suffocation of debate, they may have opened it up.

Freeman's position on letting the intelligence speak for itself, and not for some pre-ordained political preference, is exactly the right approach.  Although providing intelligence products in an objective manner seems like common sense if the goal is to get the most accurate read on a given situation, the pressure felt in the intelligence community to please superiors by crafting intelligence products that support the party line has continued to dog the process since the days of the OSS – with a recent example being the run-up to the Iraq war. 

This skewed dynamic is impervious to change, and will only be righted through concerted effort from a politically fearless actor such as Freeman.  It was precisely that courage – the willingness to say and consider ideas that fall outside of the consensus – that his critics pounced on, but those traits are what would have made him invaluable as Dennis Blair's advisor.

Freeman is also 100% correct about the need to rollback the classification fetish.  As a former defense department intelligence officer confided in me, even intelligence reports culled from the media and other non-classified sources were tagged as classified as a matter of course because no one would read the report unless it was classified.  This pattern helped to create an insular, self-reinforcing loop that failed to take advantage of public vetting (not to mention kept the polity in the dark which is less than ideal in a democracy).  Freeman's concept of using classified material to corroborate or disprove open source intelligence would do much to improve the overall quality of the intelligence by subjecting more to public scrutiny which would, in turn, limit the gerrymandering of intelligence to suit a political purpose. 

One can only hope that the ignominious character assassination of Chas Freeman does, in fact, have the opposite of the intended effect, pushing the debate on these issues to the forefront.

(edited for clarity)