President George Bush vowed to correct flaws in intelligence gathering exposed by a bipartisan presidential commission concluding that US intelligence was “dead wrong’’ on Iraq and that flaws were still all too common among America’s intelligence community.
The report outlined 74 recommendations for improving information sharing among the agencies and fostering dissent.
In the case of Iraq’s alleged WMDs (weapons of mass destruction), sources of intelligence were Iraqi opposition who were interested in a war to unseat Saddam Hussein.
Unlike journalists, US intelligence agencies became complacent when analyzing raw intelligence and in case of Iraq there was dysfunctional analysis.
In 1990, there were hardly any human intelligence gathering agents on the ground. Instead they relied on high technology and satellites, which was of little use to help analysts determine whether Saddam was planning to occupy Kuwait or was just saber rattling. Egyptian Intelligence, Almukhabart, with scores of agents working as drivers fretting goods and passengers between Basra and Kuwait, estimated that Iraqi troops would cross Kuwait’s borders.
President George Bush Sr. disagreed with President Hosni Mubarak’s warning opting instead for National Security Council (NSC) advice agreeing with Ambassador April Glespie’s assessment that Saddam was only saber rattling. They didn’t consult Middle East experts who knew that annexing Kuwait as the 19th province had been a long— standing national demand of all Iraqis. In comparison, Arabists at the Foreign Office in 1961 made the correct assessment with Britain swiftly intervening stopping another Iraqi dictator, Gen. Abdel Karim Qasim invading Kuwait.
The nature of intelligence, how it is collected, processed and analyzed then evaluated should develop and change with the needs of the age and what the political masters — the elected decision-makers — need. A cold War threat to the free world is different from today’s requirement in the war against terror. Not only America’s intelligence community failed to anticipate 9/11 attacks, but also failed to give security agencies a useful brief that would enable them to take appropriate action on the day. Both were still working according to the Cold War doctrine. The Americans should have evolved their cold war collaboration of the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan with intelligences services like Egyptian and Saudi. Both were watching Islamist extremists for a decade and understood that they were suicidal maniacs not afraid of death.
Confusing their intelligence gathering and analysis role with that of security agencies wasted valuable resources and energy. It also invalidated the nonpartisan neutrality essential to reach a correct, rather than pro-government analysis of the situation at hand.
Training an analyst to evaluate raw intelligence is an art that takes generations to develop. “If you train people on analyzing oranges only, ‘’ said a seasoned British intelligence official, “they would interpret a lemon as a yellow orange.’’
Mixing intelligence and counterespionage with counter terrorism, covert operations to decapitate regimes, not only wasted resources, but also severely affected intelligence-gathering abilities and damaged reputation or even made the CIA a laughing stock. The “orange only” analytical approach pigeonholed Fidel Castro as an enemy who must be got at. This explains the CIA’s comic attempts to burn his beard with an explosive cigar or to poison his ice cream, instead of gathering comprehensive intelligence on Cuba to consider a variety of options like attracting it away from the Soviet camp through generous economic aid or other carrots.
You would expect the CIA to avoid errors by Middle Eastern services — playing more of a security role suppressing descent or assassinating opponents instead of providing useful intelligence enabling politicians to make informed decisions.
Israeli Mossad’s dogma of pre-emptive action led to its disastrous 1998 assassination attempt against Khalid Mishaal, Hamas representative in Amman, where its operatives were caught red-handed. To repair political damage, Israel released Hamas’ leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who returned to a hero’s welcome strengthening the group’s hand in increasing violence and a hostile public opinion in Israel that reversed Oslo’s peace gains.
Israeli intelligence failed to learn the importance of neutral analysis of intelligence — when their dogma blinded them to a growing peace trend in Egypt in 1970s and was surprised by President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel. Had they made a more realistic analysis a decade later, they could have supported the liberal pro-peace trend in the Palestinian camp instead of the ill-advised attempt on Mishaal’s life
Post-9/11 Intelligence mission should be holistic with a neutral analytical approach to raw information, while cooperating with other services and consulting experts and area specialists and applying journalistic skills and healthy skepticism toward sources. Keeping an open mind in collecting intelligence would enable agents to get information on the positive aspects in the enemy’ camp and recognize peace trends. It might be useful to know the location of enemy’s lethal weapons in order to destroy them, but it is certainly wiser to devise a way to avoid war altogether. Neutral correct analysis of intelligence about a growing peace movement “on the other side,” finding similarities and positive trends to “correct” the negative picture in the politicians minds about an “adversary” and showing the enemy to be human preferring peace “like us” would sure help the media prepare the public opinion for the brave decision the political leadership could make toward peace, once it had the accurate intelligence needed.
— Adel Darwish is a reporter, author and broadcaster based in London.
