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Journal Article
Intelligence and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
2016
Overview
Commenting in 1950 on the accuracy of intelligence reports and assessments that the U.S. public expected the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to produce, newly appointed director Walter Bedell Smith purportedly remarked that Americans “expect you to be on a communing level with God and Joe Stalin, and I’m not sure they are so much interested in God.” Smith exaggerated, but not by much. Americans’ expectations (both within and beyond the Beltway) about the value of intelligence for conducting foreign policy and promoting national security are uniformly unrealistic. Collecting intelligence is hard, and analyzing it is even harder. The most one can expect from intelligence, in the words of a veteran official, is to “reduce uncertainty, identify risks and opportunities, and by doing so, deepen understanding so that those with policymaking responsibilities will make ‘better’ decisions.” Done right, intelligence can provide policymakers with a “decision advantage.”
Publisher
Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Academy of Political Science,Oxford University Press
