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 OSS '97 Opening Presentation
Mr. Robert D. Steele, OSS CEO
I Intelligence in the Balance: The Strategic View

1 Slow to grasp concepts of smart nations and intelligence organizations

2 Must extend concept of national intelligence to embrace rest of
government including state and local governments and the rich resources
of the private sector—business, media, academic, and individual citizens
3 Must strike a better balance between:
• national, commercial, and tactical systems
• collection and processing
• secrets and open sources
• technology and human expertise
• counterintelligence inside of and outside of government
4 We cannot do this without a national information strategy and the
investment of at least one billion dollars a year in a national open source
intelligence architecture, and one billion dollars a year in an electronic
security and counterintelligence architecture which protects our
intellectual seed corn.

II The End of Bureaucracy & The Rise of the Intelligence Organization

1 Bureaucracy is the anti-thesis of organizational intelligence

2 Organizational intelligence requires voluntary, self-organizing teams of
committed intrapreneurs, each able to access global rnulti-lingual, multi-
media information essential to achieving new insights
3 Only free-spirited volunteers linked in a loose network, have the staying
power to see through major intellectual and cultural change
4 The intelligent organization harnesses both the knowledge of its sources
and the knowledge of its consumers—it creates a larger community
5 Facing reality depends on full access to the truth—and truth is not, as our
keynote speaker notes in his book—always kind. Although truth is
liberating, it is also destructive, for it destroys olds myths and old habits.
6 Ultimately, we must combine open-minded visions with the strength of
character to abandon and dismantle that whose time is past.

III For the President's Eyes Only

1 Who is the consumer? President? Congress? Public? Allies?

2 Are we in the business of collecting secrets? Or informing governance?
3 Is the intelligence process secret? Or can it be shared?
4 What role—what urgency and what funding levels—should we be seeking
for unclassified intelligence support to diplomatic operations, to coalition
operations, to combating transnational crime, and to national economic
competitiveness as well as global environmental sustainability?
IV Improving National Security and National Competitiveness

1 Virtual Intelligence Community

• Majority of expertise in the private sector
• Majority of expert knowledge is neither published nor online
• Acme of skill is to "know who knows" and to be able to create "just
enough just in time" tailored intelligence to answer the question
• Data is raw text, image, or signal
• Information is data collated and of generic broadcast interest
• Intelligence is information tailored to support a specific decision
• Most "intelligence" is not and need not be classified
• Secrecy is like caviar—a little bit is wonderful, too much smells

2 Information Merchant Banking

• Extends process of intelligence to rest of government and the private
sector—requirements analysis, collection management, source
validation, action-inducing presentation
• Distinguishes between roles of the analyst and of the searcher—
dramatically empowers librarians with the resources to discover,
discriminate, distill, and deliver open source information
• Institutionalizes the process of "knowing who knows" by creating an
international open source "Moody's" guide, with appropriate
evaluative reliability
• Extends and assures government levels of electronic security to the
private sector, to include anonymity—complete security is the
foundation for complete openness.

3 Information Peacekeeping
• It is the active exploitation of information and information technology
to achieve one's policy objectives
• It's three elements are intelligence, information technology or "tools
for truth", and electronic home defense to protect intellectual property
• It is not standard information technology in support of conventional
diplomatic or military operations; it is not traditional psychological
operations relying on deception; it is not covert action operations; and
it is not clandestine operations.
• Information peacekeeping relies on providing low cost unrestricted
access to truthful information, and on assuring open connectivity
between all interested individuals.
• Information peacekeeping and open source intelligence operations
require reliable electronic security that is not handicapped by imposed
government "back doors".

4 Information Strategy
• Connectivity, Content, Coordination, Communications Security
V Miscellaneous Thoughts
Open source intelligence is not a discipline. It is a sub-discipline within each of the
major disciplines, providing commercial imagery, foreign broadcast monitoring, and
overt human intelligence as tip-off, context, and cover in support of the all-source
process.

Open source intelligence can be all-source in the sense that finished intelligence
production which is unclassified can be used to meet critical needs in support of
diplomatic and coalition operations, law enforcement, and business.

We must distinguish between open source intelligence (OSINT) and validated open
source intelligence (OSINT-V), the latter being unclassified intelligence that has been
validated by all-source analysts will full access to all pertinent classified sources.

Intelligence is not synonymous with secrecy. Data is collated into information that is of
generic interest and generally broadcast—intelligence is information that has been
tailored to support a specific decision by a specific person at a specific time and place. [I
realize that all will not agree, but it's time we got away from classified encyclopedic
broadcasting and more into day to day decision-support.]

The open source revolution begun in 1992 in the aftermath of the first Open Source Task
Force has failed. Although both the U.S. and several allied communities have toyed with
open source initiatives, all are a strategic failure and generally only lip-service has been
paid to the need to give analysts improved access to open sources.

The exclusion of the librarians from the open source planning process, and its dominance,
at least in the U.S., by a technical infrastructure, has been one reason for the failure. We
must distinguish between human analysis expertise, human search & retrieval expertise
(the librarians' forte), and technical support.

The most promising technical solutions are now not in collection, but rather in
processing. The technologies for discovering, discriminating, distilling, and delivering
information that has been clustered, weighted, mapped, and visualized, are the next
frontier and not properly pursued despite a decade of lip service.

Electronically available information (both the Internet and the far more substantial
commercial online sources) comprises less than 20% of what we need to know.

The center of gravity for intelligence analysis is the human expert, and the vast majority
of those experts is in the private sector and wants nothing to do with either the
intelligence or the defense communities. We must rapidly develop new means of
interacting with this expertise, to include a dramatic increase in our expectations
regarding academic training, private sector accomplishments prior to hiring, and foreign
language skills proven in the host country environment, also prior to hiring.
 Open Source Intelligence: CONFERENCE Proceedings, 1997 Volume IV 6th
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 Tuesday, 20 July 1993

TALKING POINTS FOR THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

Subj: REINVENTING INTELLIGENCE IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION

1. The Age of Information has radically altered the balance of power, both
between nations, and between institutions. As AJvin Toffler articulated in is
his book PowerSoft: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the £dge of the 21st
Century (Bantam, 1992), information is a substitute for time, space, cjpital,
and labor.

2. Your intelligence community, and indeed all your counterpart intelligence

communities around the world, are in a state of shock, whether they realize it
or not. The major nations have intelligence capabilities oriented toward the
industrial age and the Cold War; the minor nations have intelligence
capabilities oriented toward the agricultural age and internal security. Around
them has exploded a robust commercial capability to collection, process,
analyze, and dissemination unclassified information, or open source intelligence
(OSCINT). This commercial capability is often superior to classified
capabilities, and sometime the only capability available for specific targ6tS or
topics.

3. Your immediate challenge, within the intelligence community, is to

"reinvent" the entire community, and make major changes in the relationships
between the disciplines (HUMINT, IMINT, SIGINT, and OSC1NT), between
the organizations stove-piped around those disciplines, and between the analysts
and the consumers of intelligence. Radical changes are required-it should be
of grave concern to you that 90% of what your consumer reads is unclassified
and unanaiyTed. To deal with these challenges you will have to instill a sense
of adaptability of mind unfi adaptability pf Q.rgaft'7^rJOP throughout the
community. Attached is a list of nine steps you could take immediately.
4. There is a grander vision, however, which we believe you should discuss
with the President and the Vice-President, and that pertains to the role of the
intelligence conmiyilfv. and its cofl^derable 8f|||lU8l budgetf in the context of
the National Information Infrastructure, the national "information commons",

17*1
and the urgent requirement for a national knowledge strategy. Attached is a
list of five areas for your consideration

5. Your counterparts, at least in Sweden, France, England, and Italy, are

interested in creative discussions about the possibility of using NATO as the
basis for an JntgPV^ft113! encyclopedic intelligence e,x,c,frffflg? pgreerpent witb
clear burden-sharing arrangements regarding unclassified maps, orders of
battle, and economic matters. You should consider sponsoring a NATO or at
least a UK/US summit on "reinventing intelligence".

6. The is prepared to support you in bringing together two

small working groups focused respectively on the internal and the external
vision, and to report to you within 30 days the recommendations of these
individuals. Access to classified materials will not be required.

a. Among the individuals we could invite, in addition to anyone whose

advice you particularly desire, are Richard Helms, William Colby, ....

b. For the external working group, we would recommend, at a minimum,

Alvin Toffler, Harlan Cleveland, Paul Strassmann, Peter Drucker, Vint Cerf,
Bob Kahn, Jay Keyworth, Steven Adriole, and Robert Steele.

7. We would also like to draw on selected members of the intelligence

community. Among those that we particularly desire to include are Gordon
Oebler, Jack Devine, Boyd Sutton, Ross Stapleton, Andy Sbepard, Francisco
Fernandez, and Greg Treverton. We propose dress rehearsal briefings be
delivered to Joe Nye.
 INTERNAL CHANGES

1) Expand your consumer base to include all Departments of government

/

MONEYMAKER: Approach other Departments first, offering to bring to

bear intelligence sources and methods.
2) Redefine national security to provide for integrated examination of
domestic policies
MONEYMAKER: Target the Vice-President, the Economic Council, and
selected Congressional committees with proposals to bring intelligence
sources A methods to bear on domestic issues using unclassified data
fulfy releasable to public.
3) Shift to gap-driven collection and eliminate priority-driven collection
which leads to repetitive collection against the same targets day after
day while ignoring major gaps in Third World encyclopedic intelligence
MONEYMAKER: Conduct rapid IR&D survey of gaps among
consumers in various Departments and in Theaters (perhaps even
include selected Ambassadors), then develop White Paper proposals to
rapidly resolve gaps using unclassified sources.
4) Integrate analysts and consumers, analysts from different disciplines,
and analysts and operators-this could be a "virtual" integration, using
encrypted electronic mail and file transfer
MONEYMAKER: Using existing assets, develop a prototype'virtual
Embassy 'focused on a specific country, or a "virtual NSC" focused on
a specific topic, and demonstrate how your team can reach out and pull
in anyone, any information, in near-real-time.
5) Recapitalize the infrastructure-CIA's "capture" by IBM, and its
decision to "modernize into the 1970's", is the talk of the town. Get
Paul Strassmann to serve as your Chief Information Officer for a year
MONEYMAKER: Ensure you have a "campaign plan "for ongoing
recapitalization of your own infrastructure, have a White Paper showing
 how you can serve as an interim "core" service supplier and model as
specific agencies move away from mainframes and toward distributed
model. Demonstrate that pushing information out to the private sector
and letting them maintain it is actually cost effective aM contributes to
national competitiveness.
6) Establish a Deputy Director for Open Sources, someone with real
authority, and create a Center for the Exploitation of Open Sources
(CEOS) where all new analysts must master OSCINT before going on
to classified sources. Admiral Shaefer has 75,000 square feet of empty
space in the new building at Surtland, and is ideally suited as your
Executive Agent in this arena.
MONEYMAKER: Put forward a White Paper on how you can create
CEOS, funded by the private sector. What you get: first shot at new
analysts, first shot at existing unclassified databases in government.
7) Demand an accelerated security review-most senior observers around
town agree that 90 days should be enough. Did you know mat the
Office of Security is threatening to cancel clearances of industry
analysts who travel to the Soviet Union to exploit open sources?
MONEYMAKER: Put forward a White Paper, with a press release and
copies to Congressional staff and the Presidential Inter-Agency Task
Force on National Security Information, articulating a proposed new
security strategy for national security information, to include a
redefinition of what constitutes national security information, and a
change of focus from unauthorized dissemination of secrets to "missed
opportunities" and interruption of services (fragility of system). Become
the "duty expert".
8) Encourage Joe Nye in his plan to nurture competitive public analysis;
the F Street facility could hold both a "forward" element of the
National Intelligence Council, and an Office of External Liaison
specifically charged with managing (and funding) the external element
of the open source program in coordination with other non-intelligence
agencies which have major investments in external research facilities
 MONEYMAKER: Establish a corporate "tiger team* to mirror the
National Intelligence Council person for person, god. a very tight
support staff responsible far outreach to each of the major information
sectors: universities, libraries, business, private investigators &
information brokers, media, government fmcluding state A local),
defense, and intelligence. Their outreach should be international.
9) Accept responsibility for all intelligence, and seriously study why
military intelligence manning and training is so mediocre. Jim Clapper,
if be does replace Adm Studeman as DDCI, is the man for the job.
MONEYMAKER: None. Avoid like the plague.
 EXTERNAL CHANGES

1) Abandon all thoughts of industrial espionage. The brightest minds from

your community met at Harvard for the Intelligence Policy Seminar in
December 1991 (Greg Treverton was one of their instructors) and
concluded that a) there is no such thing as an American corporation; b)
if provided with industrial espionage corporations would tend to reduce
their investment in research & development; and c) the best thing you
could do for businesses and individuals in the U.S. is to invest heavily
in open sources.
MONEYMAKER: Do a White Paper on corporate open source
intelligence requirements, interviewing selected Chief Executive Officers
in major industries including the aircraft building industry, automobiles,
textiles, andphamacueticals. Inventory existing U.S. government
holdings, identifying data conversion and release obstacles. Work with
Congressional staff to include legislation and earmarked funding for a
$250 million prototype collection!dissemination effort.
2) Along those lines, consider having your Deputy Director for Open
Sources sit as an observer to the National Economic Council, and
manage a one billion dollar a year OSCINT program intended to both
meet the needs of the intelligence community and the policy-maker, and
be releasable to the public "information commons" of such interest to
the President and the Vice-President.
MONEYMAKER: if and when Congress actually starts to consider a
National Knowledge Foundation, or the DC1 gives the Open Source
Coordinator some serious power, be ready to use your team to show
how you can serve as a bridge between the community and the
information commons, but bringing in information on any topic without
leaving an audit trail to the requirement, and discreetly disseminating
the information collected by the community without showing its origin
(i.e. that it was of interest to the community when collected).
3) In keeping with your tacit responsibility to aid the Vice-President in
developing the National Information Infrastructure (Nil), improve your
representation to those working groups, and designate your Chief
Information Officer (who should be of Deputy Director status) as the
 senior intelligence community point of contact for Nil.
MONEYMAKER: Follow the Nil, and establish a reputation as the
"duty expert' on the content of the information commons, and on
innovative proposals for increasing the content of the commons by
expanding the notion of burden sharing to include unclassified
information collected and held by other governments, and by facilitating
a WAIS-like distributed architecture which integrates universities around
the world, corporations, private libraries and so on-in other words,
build on the Nil concept by identifying "firstphase' and "second
phase " content holders that should be given priority attention by the
Nil. \) Recognize that the content of the 'information commons" will have a

great deal to do with the competitiveness of the Nation, and that

Secretary of Labor Reich is correct when be points out that we should
support individuals who work within our borders, regardless of
nationality. You should take the lead is freeing unclassified information
from the "cement overcoat" of intelligence, and in working with other
government agencies to radically reduce classification and radically
increase the dissemination of information collected and produced by the
government, to the "information commons.
MONEYMAKER: Best to avoid, unless you have a good handle on what
unclassified information is in each of the compartments. If that is the
case, then snowing the compartment owner how to "clean" the
unclassified information and put it back into the commons could be
profitable.
5) Recognize that in the age of distributed processing, it is vital that you
harness and nurture the full power of the "information continuum" of
the Nation: K-12, universities, libraries, businesses, the increasingly
capable private investigative and media communities, government at the
federal, state, and local levels, and the national security sector. Yjm
can help the Vice-President "reinvent* intelligence by providing funding
and leadership to break down the iron curtain between the sectors, the
bamboo curtains between institutions within the sectors, and the plastic
curtains between individuals within institutions. "Central" intelligence
will not survive this era. Accept t^e fac{ th^t the academi^ and business

/YO
 never trust fte intelligence gnn)RVnity Agree to the
realignment of $1 billion a year from the National Foreign Intelligence
Program to the National Infrastructure Initiative to fund the National
Knowledge Foundation, in independent agency responsive to the
intelligence community but completely open to the external
organizations whom the Vice President must harness if he is to nurture
our Nation's "information commons".
MONEYMAKER: Consider the possibility that the DCI may not want to
release the money entirety to a separate entity, but would be satisfied is
a major corporation already trusted by the community were selected to
manage the National Knowledge Foundation. Consider a White Paper
showing how you would staff the Foundation and possible allocations of
the funds to distributed centers of excellence. If possible, include cost-
benefit analysis with suggestive figures for increases in employment,
profits, trade, competitiveness, etcetera, which would result from the
efforts of the Foundation and its supported network of de facto external
intelligence research nodes.

ist
 SECOND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
COMPETITIVENESS: OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Proceedings, 1993 Volume I
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 Page 1 of 1

Gordon Lederman

From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele Local Broadband [oss.net@cox.net]

Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 4:31 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Subject: last one....on common mistakes well known in 1993

another one, I forget where this was published, but the bottom line is that a number of us were very public, very
specific, very articulate, and no one in the US 1C wanted to hear it.

I think the 1C especially, and the USG more generally, TUNES OUT TRUTH and "blocks* iconoclasts from a
hearing. It has become the *anti-thesis* of an intelligence community--! am even seeing articles starting to
emerge that suggest that the classified world makes one certifiably insane and out of touch-there is actually
some truth to that, my own Directorate of Operations having been obscenely proud in the 1980's of having the
highest alcoholism, adultury, divorce, and suicide rates in the USG.

In any event, the bottom line is that the 1C is not committed to knowing the truth, it is not committed to "Global
Coverage", it is not commited to ethics of intelligence, and it is not committed to the public interest.

3/22/2004
What is the Secretary of Labor trying to tell us that the Director of
Central Intelligence needs to help his staff to understand?

CORPORATE ROLE IN NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS:

SMART PEOPLE + GOOD TOOLS + INFORMATION = PROFIT

by Robert David Steele-Vivas

Vice-President Al Gore, totally best information handling tools

loyal to President Bill Clinton and
discreetly avoiding the limelight, is
never-the-less the "core" performer
in the Clinton Administration. Our
national competitiveness-and the
profits of many corporations
managed and owned by U.S.
citizens—depend heavily on the
outcome of Al Gore's efforts to
"reinvent government", and to
create a National Information
Infrastructure (Nil). Both of these
efforts depend in turn on many
players, both in and out of
government, but two of the players
could have an especially substantive
impact on how America does
business as we enter the era of
information warfare: the Secretary
of Labor, and the Director of
Central Intelligence (DCI).
Secretary of Labor Robert Reich,
whose thoughts on this matter are
presented in his recent book, Ihs
Work of Nations (Vintage, 1991)
has it right: the only way to
increase our competitiveness is to
invest in our people, providing
them with continuing education, the
money can buy, ready connectivity
to other experts, and virtually
unlimited access to information.
Product, market sector, the
nationality of the individual
employee, even the activities of
"Friendly Spies", are distractors.
Alvin Toffler, Peter Drucker,
and others have clearly established
that in the age of information
warfare, information is not only the
ultimate source of power, but is
also, as Toffler illustrates so well in
PowerShift (Bantam, 1992), a
substitute for time, space, labor,
and capital. Information, or better
stated, information tailored to a
corporation's specific requirements,
Robert David Steele-Vivas is
founding President & Owner of
OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS, Inc.,
an organization dedicated to
increasing the quality of content in
our "information commons" as a
means of improving both the
effectiveness of government and the
efficiency of the private sector.
i.e. intelligence, is both the core
input and the core output of the
successful and hence sustainable
corporation .
The Director of Central
Intelligence, James Woolsey, is
under pressure to find ways to
increase direct support to the U.S.
business community by national
intelligence agencies.
He is however being led down
the wrong trail by his staff,
focusing on how to provide
industrial espionage services
overseas and on how to disseminate
classified information on foreign
threats to our businesses. Instead,
he should be focusing on what
national intelligence can do to
radically increase—in full
partnership with the private sector-
the robustness of our "information
commons".
There are those who believe that
no less than one billion dollars a
year should be realigned from
within the intelligence community
budget, in order to fund this critical
element of the Nil.
Avoid the Cold War Mistakes of
the Intelligence Community
Mistake #1: Ignore the Rest of
the World ((Little People, Other
Industries, Pollution, Etcetera)
One of the reasons the U.S.
Intelligence Community finds itself
in such turmoil, unable to satisfy
many demands for its services, is
because it was formed in 1947, and
added to its capabilities in
increments in the 40 years since
then, with just one serious target:
the Soviet Union. From satellites
optimized for repetitive looks at
Soviet missile silos, to a clandestine
service and an analysis community
geared largely to chasing Soviets
and writing about Soviets, the
existing U.S. intelligence
community is simply not trained,
equipped, or organized to deal with
the kaleidoscope of fleeting threats
and opportunities, many in the
Third World, some in Europe,
which can no longer be ignored.
Many corporations are in a
similar situation, structured and
staffed to build a specific product,
for a specific market, relying on a
specific natural resource. Most of
these corporations to do not treat
information as a corporate asset, do
not have a Chief Information
Officer (CIO), do not have a long-
range strategic intelligence plan,
and have committed themselves to
"no win" situations, trying to keep
short-term costs down and short-
term returns up, against foreign
competitors who are fleeter of foot
when it comes to substituting labor
or capital from one country for
another's.
Where the intelligence community
has failed-as has the private sector
—is in laying down a global
unclassified information collection,
processing, and dissemination grid
which can be used to produce
economic intelligence that is timely,
easily disseminable, and actionable.
The practical outcome of this
failure is that senior U.S.
government policy-makers--and
their corporate counter-parts-are
making decisions based on less than
2% of the available information.
A simple illustration will lend
credence to this statement. Imagine
Country "X" as having a typical
Embassy or corporate office. That
office, for bureaucratic, resource,
and other reasons, is unlikely to
collect more than 10% of the
available information which might
be of interest to a wide variety of
consumers with distinct interests
throughout the entire government or
the corporation. Worse, of that
10%, roughly 80% is "spilled"
enroute to corporate headquarters,
either by being classified, by being
sent to only one recipient with no
capabilities for central filing, or by
being put into a medium (e.g. hard-
copy with many attachments) which
does not lend itself to electronic
broadcast.
Governments and corporations
which do not optimize their field
collection, and digitize their field
reporting, are violating the first
principal of Paul Strassmann's
"Corporate Information
Management" (C1M) concept: one-
time data entry, corporate-wide
accessibility. Where the U.S.
Intelligence Community can make a
contribution, in partnership with the
private sector and, indeed, with the
intelligence services of other
countries, is by helping establish a
"National Information
Management" (N1M) approach to
unclassified multi-media (imagery
and signals as well as print) multi-
lingual information.
In brief, U.S. government and
the U.S. private sector should
cooperate to the maximum extent
possible in securing for our national
"information commons" the
maximum possible amount of
unclassified multi-media multi-
lingual information. This means
avoiding redundant collection and
processing, and it means much
improved electronic connectivity
between unclassified government
databases and non-proprietary
corporate databases. It probably
means a totally new approach to
data structure and data security by
all organizations in government and
in the private sector.
Mistake 92: Assume Your
Chosen Consumers Are Happy
There is anther mistake made by
the intelligence community which
may also be found in those
corporations that do make an
investment in "competitor
intelligence". That is, to assume,
without any basis, that the "pearls"
of intelligence will be recognized
and appreciated by the managers
whom intelligence has chosen to
smile upon.
The reality is that classified or
competitor intelligence is less than
ten percent-some would say less
than one percent—of the daily
information intake of a senior
government or corporate executive.
What does this mean? // means
that fully 90% of the information
reaching a senior executive is both
unclassified and unanalyzed.
The intelligence community,
preoccupied with producing
"secrets", has over the years
abdicated its originally envisioned
role, that of "informing policy".
As "open sources" (what most
people call public information) have
exploded in richness and
accessibility, the intelligence
community has been left behind,
locked in its vaults, smug in a
"virtual uBreality" of its own
making. Competitor intelligence in
the private sector, in part because
of the weakness of many
corporations in the strategic
planning arenas, appears to reflect a
similar myopia, and does not make
as strong a contribution to strategic
vision and corporate reengineering
as it might.
Mistake #3: Assume the
President's Happiness is the
Only Measure of Success
Finally, in addition to assuming
that its "hand-picked" consumers
would pay attention to its
intelligence products, the
intelligence community has failed
over the years to recognize new
consumers or new priorities
between consumers. This has in
part been caused by, and validated
by, a continuing emphasis on the
President as the ultimate consumer
of the multi-billion dollar U.S.
Intelligence Community.
The President, however, does not
implement policy, and more often
than not the President does not even
realize a policy opportunity has
come and gone. It is the individual
action officers in the scattered
departments of government (or, in
industry, the individual customer
representatives and product
engineers) who are on the firing
line day in and day out. They have
no "standing" with the U.S.
Intelligence Community, and one
suspects that their "gold collar"
knowledge counterparts in industry
don't get much day to day support
from such competitor intelligence
operations as might exist.
"Intelligence", whether national
or corporate, must support decision-
making throughout the
organization, at every level and at
every location, not only at the top.
Why National Intelligence
Should NOT Provide Industrial
Espionage Services
Some of the brightest minds in
the U.S. Intelligence Community
met at Harvard on 14 December
1991, in the context of an
Intelligence Policy Seminar, to
discuss "National Intelligence and
the American Enterprise: Exploring
the Possibilities". Although a
general consensus could not be
established, here are four
observations from one participant:
1) There is no such thing as an
"American" enterprise, and
therefore classified information
cannot be conveyed to private
sector enterprises with any justice
or consistency;
2) The most important use of
classified information is to
illuminate the playing field for
policy-makers, keeping them
appraised of the economic warfare
practices of other nations and non-
government groups including
conglomerates;
3) A routine provision of
intelligence information from the
government to the private sector
would in all likelihood lead to a
reduction of private sector
investment in research &
development, and a consequently
unhealthy dependence on the
government for "leads" from other
nations' efforts—nations which have
historically not been as effective as
ours at creative thinking (and often
much better than ours at
implementation and exploitation);
and
4) The best thing we could do for
"national" competitiveness,
irrespective of the nationality of
owners, managers, or workers in
specific enterprises, is to have a
national knowledge strategy, one
which creates a government-private
sector partnership that radically
increases the availability of open
source information to every citizen,
entrepreneur, and indeed, every
foreigner fortunate enough to have
access to the American data
"supermarket". Bottom line:
government needs to focus on
providing information not services.
Information Continuum: "From
School House to White House"
The information continuum of
the Nation, every element of which
should be in the constant service of
national competitiveness, runs
"from school house to White
House". Our national information
continuum includes K-12; the
universities; the libraries (public
and private); businesses large and
small; the media; the "rest of
government", including not only the
departments of the federal
government long ignored by the
national intelligence community,
but also state and local
governments, many of which have
representatives in foreign countries;
and of course the national security
community as traditionally defined,
including the Department of State,
the Department of State, the
National Security Council, and the
President of the United States.
Secretary Reich, in The Work of
Nations, dismembers existing fiscal
and monetary policy myths, and
with them many of the myths of
corporate competitiveness. He
focuses instead on the importance
of transitioning from high-volume
low-cost mass production, to high-
value tailored production. The
following quotations are instructive:
/ft
"The new barrier to entry is not
volume or price; it is skill at
finding the right fit between
particular technologies and
particular markets. Core
corporations no longer focus on
products as such; their business
strategies increasingly center upon
specialized knowledge."
"In the high-value enterprise,
profits derive not from scale and
volume, but from continuous
discovery of new linkages between
solutions and needs." (Emphasis
added).
When Secretary Reich talks about
the new web of enterprise, and the
web of knowledge, he is really
talking about corporate and
national intelligence-intelligence as
an and process, rather than
intelligence as 1. Q.
This is what Secretary Reich is
trying to tell us that the Director of
Central Intelligence is having
difficulty understanding: in the age
of information warfare, it is the
organization with the widest web
for gathering information, with the
most skilled and knowledgeable
employees, with the best means of
communicating, and with the most
efficient capacity for acting on
information and taking advantage of
new information, that will be
competitive-and by being
competitive, raise the
competitiveness of the Nation.
Nowhere is it written that
intelligence must be classified. In
fact, what we have learned from 40
years of secrecy is that the
classification of information is
fraught with danger, for it protects
ignorance, misleads policy, and
often costs far more money than
anyone had every anticipated.
Openness, by contrast, is profitable.
The coffee houses in Silicon
Valley, where competing engineers
meet unencumbered by their
lawyers, are living proof of the
power of openness in creating win-
win corporate advances in
information technology, and
commensurate profits.
Where we have failed as a
Nation is in establishing a national
knowledge strategy. Alvin Toffler
addresses this in his forthcoming
book, War and Anti'WarT which
includes a special chapter on this
specific topic. Vice-President
Gore's efforts with the Nil are a
good beginning, but they are, at
least at this time, nothing more than
a telecommunications architecture.
What we put over those lines, how
we collect it, and how we manage
it (e.g. changing copyright and
patent law, using security software
to ensure compensation to
intellectual property owners)~these
lit
are policy matters that are not yet
on the "official" Nil table.
They are, however, of vital
interest to U.S. corporations, and
urgently require a joint government-
private sector campaign plan. The
plan should include our schools.
An essential premise of any NIM
plan must be that all individuals in
this Nation produce as well as
consume information, and that
many of them are capable of
producing intelligence, not just data
or information.
One can define data as the raw
elements of information, isolated
pieces of information. Information
one can define as collated data, of
generic value. Intelligence, in
contrast to information, is tailoigd
to the needs of the specific
consumer for whom the data was
collected and the information
collated. Intelligence, in contrast to
information, is immediately
actionable because it has been
tailored to the interests, objectives,
and actual resources or capabilities
of the consumer.
If the information continuum is
our lever, then national
competitiveness appears to turn on
two fulcrum points, one internal,
one external.
 Internally, we appear to require a
national connectivity plan and a
national information exchange
system which enables every person
having access to that system both to
consume information, and to
produce and disseminate
information. Corporations must be
able to tap in easily to the diverse
talents contained in our universities,
and indeed in some of our high
schools. There is a quid pro quo
here: the universities can collect
some information and process some
information (e.g. graduate student
translations of selected competitor
nation technical publications), but
our corporations must also
contribute collected and processed
information to the "information
commons".
Externally, the U.S. Intelligence
Community, and all elements of the
federal government represented
overseas, have an obligation to
enter into the "information
commons" all unclassified
information which has been
collected at taxpayers expense.
The failure to introduce this
information into the commons,
which by definition is electronic-
digital--may force the issue of
whether or not a substantial portion
of the U.S. intelligence community
should be privatized.
**?
Again, the corporate world
has a responsibility here as well. If
we understand and accept the N1M
concept, then foreign multi-media
multi-lingual information collected
and processed (e.g. translated) by
U.S. corporations and citizens must
also be entered into the commons.
One can only speculate as to the
enormous redundancy between
corporations, and between the
private sector and the government,
with respect to what the U.S.
Intelligence Community calls
"encyclopedic intelligence", i.e.
basic information about foreign
countries, companies, personalities,
systems, and conditions.
On the Matter of Openness
There have been many articles,
and many speeches, equating
business with warfare, competition
with combat, sales personnel with
"front line troops". There has also
been a natural tendency in the
business community to adopt the
traditional military-industrial
perspective on secrecy, on
maintaining high barriers to entry,
and so on.
Where Alvin Toffler really
distinguishes himself from other
pundits of the day is in focusing on
knowledge as an inexhaustible
resource; a resource easily shared,
re-usable many times over; a
resource able to support "win-win"
approaches to competition.
What is happening here is that
"world is becoming mind", and the
principles of cybernetics are
replacing the principles of physics
as the governing "rules of the
game". In cybernetics, a closed
system is subject to entropy. In
cybernetics, success, and
particularly success in adaptation
and survival, comes from having a
shorter faster feedback loop than
your competitor, and from having
as many sensors as possible. Those
corporations that spend 80% of
their information capital on keeping
the barn door closed are going to
lose to those corporations that
spend 80% of their information
capital on bringing as many people
through the door as possible.
In the age of information
warfare, "security" comes from
being so good at dealing with
information that you have
formulated your strategy and set
implementation in motion before
your competitor realizes the
opportunity for innovation even
exists. And you must do this many
times over, day after day, product
after product, without ever missing
a beat.
On the Empowerment of People
It has always been fashionable to
give lip-service to the claim that
"people are our most important
asset". More often than not, this
has been an out and out lie, belied
by abysmal working conditions,
non-existent tools, and oppressive
management oversight levied on our
"best & our brightest".
Robert Carkhuff, in The
Exemplar (Human Resources
Development Press, 1984),
invented the term "gold collar"
worker, or "knowledge worker",
and set forth the basic principles for
managing smart people in the age
of information warfare.
These are not new ideas,
although some of the hot properties
on the lecture circuit would pretend
they were. Before Carkhuff there
was Harold Wilensky, with his
Organizational Policy: Knowledge
and Policy in Government and
Industry (Basic, 1967), and before
Wilensky there was Chester I.
Barnard, with The Functions of the
Executive (Harvard, 1938). And
others. The difference between
their times and ours is that now we
must mind them, or lose our place
in the world.
Corporate Intelligence Strategy
Of all the books available in the
fields of intelligence, information,
strategy, marketing, and
management, the best, the one that
captures how a corporate
intelligence strategy can leverage
good people into a protected and
profitable productive capability, is
Carkhuff s. His principles are
simple:
1) Emphasize data availability to
the employee (this includes, in
today's terms, digitization of hard
copy and automated
routing/flagging of data);
2) Emphasize global unrestricted
data flow (i.e. provide online
connectivity between employees and
everyone else, in and out of the
corporation);
3) Emphasize decentralized data
exploitation (applies to both
collection and production);
4) Emphasize data-based policy
(includes automation of historical
memory and insistence of fresh
"reviews of the bidding" prior to
each major milestone in any given
program);
5) Emphasize increased data
products and direct access by the
400
consumer to organized data (don't
collect what you won't process,
don't process what you won't
disseminate, organize data to serve
the end-user executive, not the
intermediary librarian or analyst);
6) Emphasize top-level focus on
optimization of employee
productivity through insistence on
best tools, best training, best data,
and elimination of middle-
management obstacles to direct
communication between your "gold
collars".
The Bottom Line: We Have Seen
the Enemy and He is Us
What does this all mean? It is
fairly straight forward, and in total
contradiction to everything they
ever taught us in business school.
1) Invest in your best employees,
even if you don't like the way the
dress, talk, or act. Smart people
can only get smarter and more
profitable, if you give them the
training and tools and connectivity
to information that they require.
2) W_hit you make or sell is not as
important as bow good you make
it, how fast you sell it, and how
quickly you can change over to
making something completely
different.
3) The private sector is now
recognized as comprising the hulk
of the national intelligence
community; YOU are part of the
national information continuum;
and YOU are a major player in
establishing your national
competitiveness.
4) Education and intelligence are
two sides of the same coin. To be
competitive, a corporation must be
thoroughly integrated into our
educational establishments on the
one hand, and fully supportive of a
national intelligence effort on the
other.
5) National intelligence is not
going to be helpful to U.S.
enterprises unless the private sector
focuses on and accept the need for
a government-private sector
partnership, and the private sector
takes the lead in discussing these
issues and opportunities with
Members of Congress..
6) We have a national intelligence
community spending approximately
$28 billion a year, and a national
"virtual" intelligence community
spending approximately $500
billion a year, and both are in
disarray. Reform must start in the
private sector.
 SECOND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
COMPETITIVENESS: OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Proceedings, 1993 Volume I
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ROBERT DAVID STEELE

A Critical Evaluation of
U.S. National Intelligence
Capabilities
United States national and defense intelligence capabilities, while strong in many
respects, are unbalanced because of their excessive emphasis on technical
collection, inadequate human and open source collection. They are completely
unsuited for and constrained in analysis and dissemination. Also unbalanced are
their direction and responsiveness to the full gamut of consumers of intelligence,
across all departments of government, and at all levels: strategic, theater, tactical,
and technical.
At the same time, how the United States "does" intelligence is fundamentally
flawed. On the one hand, intelligence professionals keep their consumers at arm's
length. In fact, the intelligence community itself long ago decided which
consumers would have the "privilege" of being supported. On the other hand, the
intelligence community has completely ignored the flood of unclassified
information reaching the consumer, arrogantly assuming that the consumer would
pay greater heed to its classified "nuggets." This aloof attitude has led consumers
to rely far more on the 90 percent of their information that is unclassified and
unanalyzed.

Robert David Steele has had more than 18 years of experience in intelligence,
including service as Deputy Director of the United States Marine Corps
Intelligence Center. He is president of Open Source Solutions, Inc.. a non-profit
educational clearinghouse advising governments and businesses on how to
improve their unclassified intelligence sources and methods.
173
174 ROBERT DAVD STOLE

PART I: GETTING IT RIGHT - "A BIRD'S EYE VIEW"

«
Significant intelligence community restructuring is underway, responding both to
the lessons learned from Desen Storm and Desert Shield and to mandates from
Congress inspired by severe fiscal constraints. There is also a sense that all is not
well with national intelligence support to military operations and with certain
aspects of defense intelligence. The next two years will offer a unique
opportunity for reflection and revitalization.
In evaluating the degree to which the intelligence community as a whole may
need realignments and redirection, the focus here is on the four levels of
executive action: strategic, operational, tactical. Four major areas of intelligence
may be distinguished irrespective of discipline: direction, collection, analysis,
and dissemination. This matrix may be applied to every executive department
without exception, thus creating a Rubric Cube of green, yellow, and red
perform ance indicators, or "best guess" grades.
The intelligence community can be "graded" according to how well it does
each of the major functions of intelligence in relation (1) to the level of analysis
(and the consumers who need that level of analysts), and (2) to how well it serves
specific departments of government. For instance, the U.S. Departments of the
Interior, Education, Energy, and Agriculture have been poorly served. Even
though this performance has been based on presidential priorities which focused
national intelligence exclusively on the interests of the National Security Council
and the Departments of Defense and State, a deepening of the consumer base is
now obviously required. The United States is not doing well in relation to eight
non-traditional consumers of intelligence: Justice, Agriculture, Interior,
Education, Energy, Commerce, Defense, State.
Figure 1 illustrates a gross evaluation of how the United States is doing now
against the old threat and (in parenthesis) against emerging Third World, non-
conventional threats including non-military threats and circumstances. Naturally,
these grades could be argued by virtually anyone, but I feel that this evaluation is
not unrealistic, given the changing definitions of national security.
Each box in Figure 1 has two distinct grades or evaluation marks: the top mark
is the "school grade" for how the U.S. is doing against conventional (e.g., Soviet)
targets of interest to the traditional consumers of intelligence. The bottom mark,
in parenthesis, is an evaluation of how the U.S. is doing and likely to do in the
absence of major restructuring, against non-traditional targets (e.g., global
environmental and energy targets, non-proliferation, potential epidemic disease,
demographic trends of international import) of concern to those who have not
traditionally been allowed to sit at the njgh (able of intelligence.
At the strategic level, most important is the analysis of unconventional threats
and opportunities.

NTERNATONAL JOURNAL OF
A CRITICAL EVALUATKM OF U*. NATIONAL MTELUQENCE CAPAtUTES 175

Quick Looks Direction Collection Analysis Dissemination

Strategic C B C D
Level (D) (O (F) (F)

Operational C D B B
Level (D) (F) <C) (C)

Tactical D C D D
Level CF> (D) (F) (F)

Technical B B C B
Level (C) (C) (D) (D)

FIGURE 1. intelligence Evaluation Matrix

At the operational level, the concern is with the United States's lack of an
effective system for monitoring stability in close coordination with the Country
Teams and with an eye for non-military problems. This is particularly important
because the multitude of influences causing regional stability are non-military
and often cloaked in cultural intangibles against which U.S. intelligence analysts
simply "do not compete."
At the tactical level, the United States is unprepared to deal with the four
warrior classes it must deal with in the future:
(1) The High-Tech Brutes similar to the United States — those relying on
expensive technical capabilities and huge logistic trains.
(2) The Low-Tech Brutes such as narcotics traffickers and tenorists — those
presenting the "needle-in-lhe-haysiack" problem.
(3) The Low-Tech Seers such as the Islamic Fundamentalists or Asian gangs
operating within Western cities — those whose "weapons" are of a
cultural kind and difficult for a Westerner to understand and address.
(4) The High-Tech Seers such as highly skilled and knowledgeable computer
engineers — those whose ultra-sophisticated "weapons" lie in their
ability to penetrate the most advanced computer and telecommunications
networks.
The United States has spent 40 years building command, control, communica-
tions, computer and intelligence (C4!) systems designed to wage conventional
battle with the High-Tech Brutes (enemies and potential enemies). These largely
static capabilities (the North American Treaty Organization's C4! architecture
comes to mind) are relatively useless in confronting the other three warrior

MTELLIGENCE AND COWTERIHTEUJGENCE VOLUME I, NUMBER 2

Z-T/
176 ROBERT PAVDSTEELE

classes, or environmental disasters requiring close collaboration and the sharing

of "intelligence" by military and non-military organizations, including inter-
national relief organizations.
At the technical level, the United States still does not offer the policymaker
responsible for acquisition decisions a basis for evaluating the true utility,
susuinability costs, and return on investment for major systems. Most of them
are geared to fighting a high-tech warrior class and completely unsuited for
engaging the other three warrior classes.
Most intelligence products are limited to specific weapons systems, topics, or
countries, and are couched in terms of the target, not in terms of the decision
requiring support In one instance, as the senior U.S. Marine Corps civilian at the
(USMC) Intelligence Center, I was unable to persuade my uniformed colleagues
that we should be producing annual unclassified reports for each mission area
(e.g., artillery). These would have informed the General Officer responsible for
that mission area about regional "averages" (gun size, prime mover weight,
general range achieved in exercises rather than on the drawing board) as well as
environmental constraints such as cross-country mobility and bridge loading data.
With such annual reports, these General Officers would be far better equipped to
consider (and often reject) proposals for "bigger and better bangs" that are simply
not supportable in the context of the expeditionary environment — a context
almost always absent from the United States's national intelligence and defense
intelligence products.
The United States is also not ready to provide near-real-time technical
intelligence support and ad hoc countermeasures in a computer warfare
environment. Its scientific and technical intelligence capabilities are static, based
in large centers within the United States, and organized for long-term analysis of
conventional weapons systems which develop linearly over long periods of time.
The U.S. is completely incapable of routinely providing rapid tactical assessment
of a technical threat, and quickly developing technical countermeasures.
As the U.S. intelligence community evaluates national and defense intelligence
capabilities, four major and quite distinct consumer groups for intelligence must
be kept in mind:
(1) Departmental planners and programmers, who require both strategic
generalizations (rather than a flood of detailed reports about tiny parts of
many problems), and "political-military" information heavily laden with
information about" plans and intentions."
(2) Regional theater planners and programmers, who require applicable
generalizations, and very detailed mobility information. The U.S.
Country Teams are not well integrated into a regional planning process.
Civilian disasters and disorder, which could have been anticipated and
addressed with civilian programs, often are allowed to proceed, for a lack

MTEftNATONAL JOURNAL OF
 177

of "action-inducing" intelligence, to the point that military action is

required. Since the military did not budget for these contingency
operations, the military budget is annually turned topsy-turvy as the
various services are "taxed" to pay for operations that could have been
avoided had the policy-intelligence system focused on costs and benefits
of what General Alfred M. Gray, former Commandant of the Marine
Corps, called "peaceful preventive measures."1
(3) Tactical commanders require both (a) "vanilla" orders of battle
(sometimes called "bean counting." which U.S. intelligence analysts do
very well) and (b) in-depth understanding of lustainability, availability,
reliability, and lethality/accuracy issues (much harder to do, so the
analysts generally don't). Tactical commanders also require maps with
contour lines. This may well be the single greatest "intelligence"
deficiency. Of 67 countries and two island groups of interest to the
Marine Corps in 1988, there were no (zero) 1:50,000 tactical maps for 22
of them; for another 37 countries there were dated maps (i.e.. not
reflecting roads and airfield or urban areas constructed in the past ten
years) for capital cities and ports only, not for the maneuver areas. The
rest for which broad coverage was available (e.g., Cuba and North
Korea) were ten years or more out of date, and therefore suffering from
the same lack of accurate cultural feature information.2 The smartest
thing I ever heard a Marine Corps intelligence officer say was: "I don't
care how much order of battle data you have, if I can't plot it on a map it
is useless to me."3
(4) Systems designers and project managers. The United States does well
enough at initial System Technical Assessment Reports (STAR), but
three concerns remain: (a) no intelligence process exists to support
higher-level decisions about whether a system is really needed in terms
of cost-benefit or likelihood of utilization, (b) no process exists to assure
that expensive and technically complex systems are supportable by
planned C4I systems. For instance, fast-moving aircraft with limited
loiter times and precision missiles do not have the "sensor-to-shooier"
framework (or the digital mapping data baseline) with which to be
effective in most of the world, (c) Severe deficiencies exist in the United

'General Alfred M. Gray, "Global Intelligence Challenge* in the 1990'c," American Intelligence
Journal (Winter 1989-1990). pages 37-41. printed in U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff
College, INTELLIGENCE: Selected Readings — Book One (Marine Corps University. Marine
Corps Combat Development Command. AY 1992-93).
2USMC Intelligence Center, Overview of Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary
Operations in the Third World (Marine Corps Combat Development Command, March 1990). The
three unclassified volumes are Overview, Supporting Documentation, and Country Profits.
3Col. Bruce Brunn, USMC, then Director of the USMC Intelligence Center, speaking to the
Council of Defense Intelligence Producers at their 1992 meeting.

IKTEUJGENCEANDCOUWrERIWTEUXENCE VOLUME «, NUMBER 2

178 HOBBJTOAVCSTEELE

Stales's ability to introduce updated intelligence information into the

systems design and acquisition process.

EVALUATION OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES

A persistent problem at the strategic level (Figure 2) is the overemphasis on the
"top 100" policymakers in the traditional national security arena, and a relative
lack of attention to the needs of action officers who fonnulate strategic plans,
recommend programmatic actions, and identify opportunities for advantage.
Also, because of the focus on the "inside the beltway" group, American doctrinal,
architectural, and technical capabilities for secondary dissemination of multi-
media intelligence have not been satisfactory (until recently).

* Strategic Level
— Direction. No trocking system for consumer scrtisfoctlon, no
outomoted integrated muttidiscipiine requirements database,
non-traditional consumers not well represented
— Collection. Superb but ossified capability with limited utility
against emerging threats

— Analysis. Cut-and-paste community, a few bright lights kept

under tight control, too many young people with little idea of
life overseas, limited language/cultural skills
— Dissemination. Cumbersome compendiums of limited utility
to day-to-day decisions

. Strategic Level Problems

EVALUATION OF OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES

U.S. operational capabilities (Figure 3) have existed for so long under the
premise that the Soviet Union was the main enemy that, even in theaters where
virtually the entire area of operations consists of Third World countries, the
United States has paid little attention to developing encyclopedic intelligence for
campaigns and contingencies. For example, many nations have glaring disaster

KTERNATIOMAL JOURNAL OF
A CRITICAL EVAUMTOH OF U.8. NATIONAL MTEUJ6ENCECAMMUTIS 179

problems on the horizon: environmental, medical, and demographic. This should

be cause for concern and for much greater remedial action than I perceive to be
the case.

• Operational Level

Direction. Self-imposed overemphasis on "worst case' threats

continues, complete lock of focus on basics such as Third
World mapping data and communications Intelligence

Collection. Virtually no support for human contingency

requirements, limited low Intensity conflict Indications and
warning capability

Analysis. Highly motivated and responsive analysts In the joint

Intelligence centers

Dissemination. Excellent dissemination to the theater

headquarters, very poor capability to support theater
(forward). Joint Task Force commanders, or Country Team
members

FIGURE 3. Operational Level Problems

In addition to the lack of encyclopedic intelligence (most of which should be

unclassified) there is a very limited capability to deal with these pressing issues,
in pan because of a severe shonage of analysts who are fluent in Third World
languages. The likelihood that U.S. analysts might have actually lived in the
country they purport to understand is indeed remote.
Finally, the United States is severely deficient in the day-to-day communica-
tions, computing connectivity, intelligence sharing, conferencing, and
intelligence exchanges needed among theaters, country teams, and parent
agencies at home, and coalition partners abroad. The United States learned these
lessons again, the hard way. in Bangladesh, during Operation Sea Angel. In that
operation, Lieut. Gen. Harry Stackpole, commander of the joint task force sent to
render humanitarian assistance and deliver staples throughout the country, found
that his C4! system, designed for tactical military communications in a combat
situation, was not suited to imeragency coordination requirements (including

MTELUGENCEANDCOUNTERIKTEUJGENCE VOLUME (, NUMBER 2

180 B08ERTDAVB STOLE

interactive voice). He could not communicate well with foreign military, foreign
government, and international relief organizations.4 Finally, when Stackpole
asked his intelligence officer for information about disaster conditions, the officer
reputedly said: "General, we only do threat intelligence." A new J-2 was soon
found.

EVALUATION OF TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES

During the war in Southwest Asia (i.e., the Gulf War) the U.S. service
intelligence centers, notably the Army's Intelligence & Threat Analysis Center,
performed heroically. Although numerous improvements are underway, such as
the transition to digital backbones, the U.S. is not yet ready for global joint inter-
operable intelligence, nor for combined and humanitarian operations. Its
personnel are simply not trained, equipped, or organized for coalition operations.
This is particularly true with respect to the communication and computing of
tactical intelligence (Figure 4).

EVALUATION OF TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES

During the next decade two major deficiencies in technical intelligence —
sources and methods — will require continuous policy attention. Open sources,
although better-exploited by the technical community than any other group of
producers, remain a virtually untapped resource of enormous potential, while
also being extremely cheap (Figure 5).
As various Third World nations and present-day allies choose in the future to
confront the United States over several issues, American deficiency in open
sources exploitation will be recognized as critical. This deficiency cannot be
corrected without a broad partnership between the government and the private
sector. Once corrected, significant dividends will be reaped in terms of improving
private sector competitiveness without classification constraints.
Current U.S. methods, by contrast, emphasize highly sophisticated modeling
and simulation techniques, and pay very heavy attention to technical
countermeasures issues. They have almost completely excluded intelligence

4U.S. theaters commands have either a regional focus (such as the Atlantic and Pacific Commands)
or a functional focus (such as the Transporution, Space, and Special Operations Commands).
Country Teams are the Embassy principals representing the major functional agencies (State,
Defense, Commerce, Othen) in each country where an official U.S. presence is maintained. Pvent
agencies, themselves fragmented into smsller fiefdoms, constitute the third pan of the
coordination triangle. If we add to (his C4! morass allies, regional coalition partners, international
relief organitations, and host country government and private sector parties with whom C*l ties
are necessary, the difficulties of non-traditional campaign planning become apparent.

KTERNATCNAL JOURNAL OF
A CRfTXALE VALUATOR Of UJ. NATION At ITOJJKMaCAPABIUmS 181

Tactical Level

— Direction. From whom? How? At the mercy of notional

capabilities not designed to support the tactical commander,
with a theater staff between the tactical units and the
national organizations

- Collection. Adequate organic capabilities with exception of

wide-area Imagery; ground reconnaissance skills (basic
patrolling) appear to have atrophied; completely Inadequate
prisoner handling and Interrogation capabilities even when
Including capabilities In the reserve

— Analysis. Mixed bog, with personnel generally consumed by

volumes of traffic and additional duties — they are
overloaded with raw data and poor hardware and software.
Science and technology analysts fare somewhat better, but
generally very poor abilities to do intelligence preparation on
the battlefield against unconventional opponents.

— Dissemination. Secondary Imagery dissemination problems

will be fixed eventually, but the lack of a realistic
communications architecture to support multimedia
intelligence broadcasts as well as digital mapping data
suggest this will be a showstopper. Vulnerability to high energy
radio frequency and other computer warfare techniques will
persist.

FIGURE *. Tactical L*v»l Problems

about operational geography and civil properties (road networks, hospitals,

airfields) of the utmost importance in determining the general utility, reliability,
mobility, and sustainabiUty of U.S. systems across a range of countries, not just a
single country where the "worst case" threat and benign terrain are assumed. In a
declining fiscal environment, when the external threat itself is changing rapidly,
there is no finer or more important means of responsibly reducing acquisition
costs than by modifying technical analysis methods. The goal is to develop
intelligence, more meaningful selective procurement, and the surgical
employment of U.S. capabilities.

WTEUJGENCE AND COUNTERINTOLJGENCE VOLUME I, NUIBER 2

182 ROBERT DAVDSTEEU

* Technical Level

• Direction. The mechanisms are wett-estobllshed and the

scientific and technical communities know how to get what
they want but they do not always ask the right question
• Collection. Very good against the denied areas, less so
against emerging technical powers and our present-day allies

• Analysis. Too much emphasis on technical countermeasures

and single system threat assessments, but virtually no strategic
generalizations to support cost savings In major acquisition
areas by focusing on sustoinabilrry. reliability, and mobility
across regions and systems

• Dissemination. Adequate, In part because the customer

occupies a fixed site. As technology becomes more complex
and computer warfare becomes endemic, 'tactical
technical* intelligence capabilities will be deficient

TOURE 5. Technical Level Problem]

Radically altering the relationship between the analyst and the consumer by
substituting the concept of distributed analysis for that of distributed production
is important, as is including the analyst as a member of the policy team.5
Legislation might not be the vehicle by which to resolve some of the
intelligence community's deficiencies, but the restructuring efforts of both the
Secretary of Defense (through the Assistant Secretary responsible for these
matters) and the Director of Central Intelligence, are helpful in forcing an
evaluation and discourse upon certain aspects of U.S. intelligence structure and
its approach to the task of performing the national intelligence function.
One final comment: the Vice President of the United States and his competent
staff have studiously avoided (1) scrutiny of the intelligence community and
(2) integration of the intelligence community into the information policy and

'An evaluation of the two bilk from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and die House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence it provided elsewhere. See my articles "The National
Security Act of 1992," American Intelligence Journal (Winter/Spring 1992); "Applying the New
Paradigm: How to Avoid Strategic Intelligence Failures in the Future." American InitUigence
Journal (Autumn 1991); and "Intelligence in the 1990's: Recasting National Security in a
Changing World." American InieUigence Journal (Summer/Fall 1990).

IfTERNATONAl JOURNAL OF
A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF UJ. NATIONAL MTEUIGENCC CAfAlttJTES 183

budget discussions which are underway in association with the National

Information Infrastructure (Nil). This is a serious mistake.
The intelligence community has never come to grips with the fundamental
question about its purpose: is it in the business of producing "secrets"? Or is it in
the business of informing policy? In my view, the intelligence community is a
vital part of a larger national information continuum that runs from U.S.
elementary and high schools and the universities, through private and public
libraries, business and media centers, "rest of government" information, and
directly to the White House, "from school house to White House."6
The Vice President, as de facto Chief Information Officer, has a personal
interest in the training, equipping, and organizing of the intelligence community.
From the community's budget, $1 billion a year could be reallocated toward
something along the lines of a "public intelligence agency." Integrated into the
Nil, it could provide basic encyclopedic intelligence about all manner of topics to
government action officers (most of whom are not cleared for secrets), private
sector enterprises, individual citizens, and, inevitably, citizens and organizations
elsewhere in the world. In this manner, the Vice President and the intelligence
community could make a significant contribution to the effectiveness of the U.S.
government and the competitiveness of its economy and its citizens, while also
contributing to the general prosperity of the global community.7

PART II - HOW THE U.S. "DOES" INTELLIGENCE

The Basics of Intelligence Analysis

Any executive or legislative action to improve national and defense intelligence
capabilities must address not only authority and organization, but also perspec-
tive and objectives. Only then will the United States be able to accommodate the
changed nature of the "threat," the changed fiscal environment, including an an-

*This latter phrase is an adaptation from David Otbome and Ted Oaebler's Reinventing
Government: Hew ike Entrepreneural Spirit it Transforming the Fubtie Sector From Schoolnouse
to Siauhouse, City Hall to the Pentagon (Addison-Wcitey, 1992). David Otbome U an advisor 10
President Clinlon and an influential participant in the Vice-President's task force to evaluate and
"reinvent" the U.S. federal government. Several books discuss the "privatization of intelligence,"
including Alvin Toffler's PowtrShifi (Bantam Books. 1990) and his forthcoming book on
information warfare and national knowledge strategies litkd War end Anti-War, u well as Jon
Sigurdson and Yael Tagerud (ed.), Tke Intelligent Corporation: The Privatization of Intelligence
(Taylor Graham, 1992). This last book is dedicated to Slevan Dedijer (• member of the editorial
board of the MIC), a former member of the Office of Strategic Services, who has been very
influential in developing this area of both scholastic inquiry aid business practice.
7Both Vice-President Gore and Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown have been invited to speak at
Mr. Steele's forthcoming Second International Symposium on "National Security &
Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions," to be held in Washington, DC, 2-4 November 1993.

WTELLIGENCEANOCOUNTERINrEUJGENCE VOLUME I, NUMBER 2

164 ROBERT DAVBSTEE1JE

ticipated decline in intelligence manpower of major proportions, and — last but

certainly not least — magnitude changes in the public information environment
Before considering "intelligence" and its purposes, some basic definitions,
such as those developed by Jack Davis, one of the grand masters of analysis and a
recently retired member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service, should be
reviewed. The following basic information regarding terminology, the differences
between producers and consumers, and the barriers to analysis, owe much to
Davis's course on "Intelligence Successes and Failures." and to another course he
helped establish, the Harvard Executive Program's "Intelligence Policy
Seminar.'*
In each definition in Figure 6, analysis is there to inform the customer, to aid
the customer in preventing or defeating threats, and in exploiting opportunities.
"Current intelligence" is put in perspective, as are the shortfalls of "research"
production planned in relative isolation from the customer's decision milestones.
If a policymaker does not read the product nor talk to the analyst, all the authority
and money in the world are not going to alter the practical outcome of
restructuring.
Different Mental Maps. Different Objectives
The experience of generations of analysts is articulated in courses the CIA offers
its own analysts and participants from other government organizations (Figure 7).
To understand why intelligence so frequently fails to impact on policymakers
or decisionmakers — even when "utlored" intelligence products are known to
reach them — the differences between the intelligence professionals (the
analysts) and intelligence consumers (the policymakers) must be recognized.
This difference, an important element of intelligence failure, is vital to
understanding my recommendations. Two additional descriptions of these
differences are found in Figure 8. Changes in organization, the authority of the
DCI, even significant increases in the amounts of money invested in additional
collection and information technology capabilities, are all irrelevant if the United
States cannot change the basic relationship between the analyst and the individual
consumer in every department and at every level.

•Other than classroom materials prepared by Jack Davis, and those at Harvard by Richard Neustadt.
Ernest Msy. and Gregory Treverton, no one has consolidated these perspectives into a simple
public article. I used an earlier version of this article as background reading in a course on
-Intelligence and the Commander," that I help teach at the Marine Corps Command and Staff
College.

MTEANATONAL JOURNAL Of
A CRITICAL EVAUUTOH OP US. NATIONAL MrEUJQENCE CAPAB&JTES 185

INT£LUGENCt ANALYSIS
The process of producing written and oral assessments designed to
improve the pollcymaMng process by helping policy officials better
understand and deal more effectively with current and prospective
national security Issues. Including opportunities as well as threats to U.S.
interests.

ESTIMATING

The means by which intelligence professionals address aspects of

national security Issues that cannot be known with fuH confidence and
thus require conditional judgments, interpretation of the evidence,
and inference.
INTELLIGENCE SUCCESS
Support to the poiicymatcing process that has the potential to assist
policy officials to avoid or mitigate the damage of threats to U.S.
Interests and to enhance the gain from opportunities; that is,
assessments that are timely, insightful, relevant, and attention-
demanding.

INTELLIGENCE FAILURE

The inadequate preparation of policymakers for an Important threat

to or opportunity for U.S. interests, because of the absence of timely
and attention-demanding assessments or the presentation of flawed
assessments.

FIGURE 6 Basic Terminology

Jhe Academic View of Differences

An "Intelligence Policy Seminar" for general officers and Senior Intelligence
Service officers was recently offered under the auspices of the Center for the
Study of Intelligence and prepared by the Harvard University John F. Kennedy
School of Government, Gregory Treverton, then associated with the Council of
Foreign Relations and now Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
This organized and thorough look at the differences between producers and
consumers held clearly that, until the United States changes the way it "trains,
equips, and organizes" intelligence analysts (and other elements of the
intelligence community) to "fit in" with consumers and impact on consumers, no

WTEUBENCEAMDCOUOTEftlNTEUJGEMCE VOLUME I, NUMBER 2

186 MKHTDAVOSTEELE

Int9ttlg»nc0 Producer inJ»JV0«nc« Consumer

Believes sound policy starts
with International realities
"Expert* on specific topics.
Immersed In their complexity
• Emphasizes foreign
constraints, what U.S.
'cannot* do
« Gravitates to most likely
perceived outcome
« Prefers to be authoritative
and avoid speculation
« 'Objectivity* first!
• • We Know What You Need *
Believes sound poflcy starts
with U.S. political realities
Political generallsts want
solutions, simple ideas that
sell
Wants to focus on U.S.
opportunities, art of the
doable
Wonts to understand
desirable and undesirable
alternatives
Wants to know or at least
discuss the 'unknowable*
Get the job done!
"Whose Side Are You On?*

FIGURE 7. Producer versus Consumer. Version I

Analyst* fotteymaktn
• Facts/Disengaged Beliefs/Accountable
• Objective Intuitive
• "Balanced* View Agenda-Driven
• Long-Term View Short-Term View
« Descriptive Action-Oriented
« Employer-Driven Constituency-Driven
Protect Information Use Information
International Focus Domestic Focus
Perfect ion/Accuracy "Good Enough* /Utility
Written Compendiums Oral Shorthand
Facts/Things People/Personalities
Tenure/Continuity Short Tours
Generic Audience Specific Audience
Single Output Multiple Inputs

. Producer versus Consumer. Venton II

MTERNATONAL JOURNAL OF
AOimCALEVALUATK)MOFU^.NATK)NALWTEUJGENCEC«PABIJm8 187

amount of consolidated authority at the DC1 level will be effective in curing our
ills.
The Policy Staff View
The third and final version of these differences, reflecting the realities of policy
staffers at senior levels at the Department of Defense, was ably articulated by
Sumner Benson — a former CIA senior analyst (Figure 9).
When evaluating the intent and utility of the two congressional bills, the
analyst should be thinking about how to increase the intellectual and the political
"authority" of the analyst in terms of credibility and consumer respect. As Andy
Shepard — a senior analyst manager now serving on the Community
Management Staff—has noted elsewhere, such authority must rest in part on the
analyst's direct access to the consumer, and a corresponding familiarity on the
pan of the analyst with the consumer's day-to-day, as well as mid- and long-term
concerns. Changing the organization, funding, and authority of the DCI will not
significantly alter This fundamental deficiency in the U.S. national intelligence
community.

The analyst focuses on oil-source INTERNATIONAL DATA while the

policymaker focuses on DOMESTIC POLITICAL ISSUES OS the
primary criteria for decisionmoking.
The analyst focuses on (and Is driven by community managers)
producing "PERFECT" products over a lengthier timefrome while
the policymaker requires 'GOOD ENOUGH* products
Immediately. Analysts continually run the risk of having ZERO
IMPACT because their review process delays their product to the
point that It is overtaken by events.
The analyst is accustomed to INTEGRATING oil-source information
at the CODEWORD level, while most policymaker staffs, and
especially those actually Implementing operational decisions,
hove at best a SECRET clearance. "A secret paragraph is better
than a codeword page,'
The analyst and community management focus on SUBSTANCE
and ACCURACY while the policymaker focuses on POLITICS and
PROCESS, on arena where disagreement con be viewed as
insubordination. Even If new Information is received, POLITICAL
considerations may weigh against policy revision.

FIGURE 9. Producer vmm Conmmw. V«nlon III

INTELLIGENCE AND COUKTEfllKTEOICENCE VOLUME I, NUMBER 2

188 ROBERT OAVDSTEEU

Barriers to Useful Intelligence Analysts

The barriers to analysis, namely differences in perspective, can also be looked at
in generic terms, in the context of institutionalized barriers to intelligence
success. In each case, the complexity and confusion of the environment being
analyzed, and the limited U.S. capabilities in communication, lead to distorted
and erroneous perceptions by both intelligence producers and consumers
(Figure 10).

Signal Bani^t
International — complexity of
world affairs; multiple interests
and actors; national cultural
differences; impact of U.S.
actions.
PO//CK — misperception of
foreign actors (policy
mirroring); wishful thinking;
policy momentum.
Organization — resource
limitations; emphasis on
authoritative publications
and predefined missions and
rotes; fragmentation of
missions, functions,
knowledge, and data.
Analysis — substantive biases
and cognitive traps;
parochialism; monasticism;
lock of exposure, to the real
world.
International — ambiguity
of Information- noise;
paradigm bios; deception;
domestic collection
confusion or gaps In
understanding.
Policy — threat distortion;
distrust of analysts;
hoarding and manipulating
of Information.
Organization — mixed
management signals If not
active subversion;
resistance to alternate
views; Information choke
points (both Internal and
external).
Analysis — arrogance or
overconfidence If not
naivete, tunnel vision;
resistance to outside views
and priorities.

FIGURE 10. Borrim to InWIlgenc* SUCCM

Such barriers, though relatively well understood by students of intelligence,

have not yet been systematically addressed by either legislative charter or
executive organization. Whatever legislative or executive initiatives taken in this

MTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
ACftrrK^EVALUATttNOFUANATKWALWTELUQENCECAPWUnES 189

watershed year of restructuring must be founded on a solid understanding of this

dimension of the problem. Those responsible for crafting the National Security
Act of 1992, or radically revised Executive Order 12333. must understand that
increasing the authority of one person, the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI),
will not mitigate these predominantly cultural circumstances, and may well
exacerbate the situation.
Each of these barriers has doctrinal, architectural, and technical remedies of
one son or another. In all cases the two key ingredients for improving the
chances of intelligence success lie in personal relationships — the relationships
between individual analysts and consumers on the one hand, and the relationships
between analysts and their immediate managers on the other.
Further afield, in the collection management and individual functional areas of
support (imagery, signals, human, and open-source intelligence, communications
and computing, training, and security) equally divisive and counter-productive
disparities in perspective between those "doing" and those "receiving" will
further enervate the intelligence community.
A final illustration (Figure 11) establishes a foundation for remedial action.
This simple yet powerful illustration has been explained to generations of
analysts and managers without apparent impact on the way the intelligence
community does business. Note that the intelligence community is but one of
many competing influences, lacking the political influence, economic incentives,
or persona] appeal that can be better brought to bear by other constituencies.
There is no short-term or personal cost to the policymaker when intelligence is
ignored!
Intelligence failures are more often than not policy failures, and especially
failures of character or process — failures in the definition of the problem or
acceptance of the cost of good intelligence.
The Marine Corps teaches that intelligence is an inherent function of command
— yet the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, or the
Commandant of the Marine Corps — and their three-star subordinates — do not
come to grips with the fact that Marine Corps intelligence is in desperate straits
as a result of years of neglect by the operators. Operators are unwilling to assign
talented people to this field, unwilling to give up a few riflemen so that tactical
intelligence billets can be properly filled, unwilling to allocate training dollars to
ensure good intelligence training, unwilling to integrate the intelligence
professional into the operational planning cycle, unwilling to represent the
Marine Corps at Navy and other flag forums where vital resource and joint
doctrinal decisions are made.

INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERIKTEUJGENCE VOLUK I, NUttER 2

190 ROBERT DAVDSTEEil

PottHclont
Executive Leadership
Legtstatrve Leadership
Personal & Professional Staffs

Government OfRclak Foreign OMclcrit

Department Heads P and Organization*
Assistant Secretaries O Diplomats
Program Managers L Counterparts
Message Traffic 1 Correspondence
C
Private and Y Independent
Public Sector M tetearchen
Lobbyists A Think Tanks
Executives K Academics
Citizen Groups E Authors
Pollsters R Foundations
Individuals Laboratories

Media Personal Intelligence

CNN/C-SPAN Family Community
Newspapers Intimates CIA
Wire Services Church NSA/DIA
Rodio/TV Clubs State
Pool Reporters Aiumni Services

FIGURE It. Competing Influences on the PoHcymoker

No organization is monolithic — each has its own fragmented culture to worry

about. It is not uncommon for members of one Directorate or Bureau of Division
or Service to carry entirely contradictory messages to individual policymakers,
all ostensibly from the same organization. In brief then, national and defense
intelligence managers are in charge of a vast conglomeration of fragmented
resources, created in a piecemeal fashion over time to serve an even vaster array
of consumers, most of whom do not really care one way or the other if
intelligence is on their table. Only after a failure is the refrain, "Where was
intelligence?" heard.
Finally, the intelligence community is caught in a constant identity crisis over
whether it is in the business of producing "secrets" or of information policy.

WTEWaTIONAl JOURNAL OF

Z4-C-
A CRITICAL EVALUATION Of U*. NATIONAL MTELUQENCC CAPAB&mES 191

Roughly 90 percent of the "input" to i policymaker's mind is both unclassified

and unevaluated or unanatyied in relation to classified sources. Certainly the
policymaker and his/her staff will attempt to integrate all of these inputs, but the
people who are trained at "aU-source fusion" and supposedly understand and
practice analysis methods for a living are completely out of the loop on 90
percent of the "intelligence" to which the policymaker actually pays attention.
The customer base for intelligence analysis must not only be expanded but the
intelligence community must be forced to undergo a radical and comprehensive
"make-over" in which open sources are truly the "source of first resort" (a
marvelous phrase coined by Paul Wallner, the Director of Central Intelligence's
Open Source Coordinator), and intelligence analysts are comfortably fitted into
the total information flow and process that feeds the policymaker on a day-to-day
basis.
Such is a foundation. Listed are a a few modest areas where legislative or
executive arrangements may help break down some of the traditional barriers to
intelligence success, and improve the ability of the dwindling numbers of
analysts to render insightful, relevant, and attention-demanding judgments which
prepare and encourage policymakers for their full range of planning,
programming, and execution responsibilities.
Measures to Re-engineer Intelligence
Each of the four groups of ideas in Figure 12. as labeled, corresponds to one of
the barriers of analysis outlined earlier in Figure 5.

CONCLUSION
Who is the customer? What do they need? How can they be sure of getting what
they need? These issues have not been considered as fully as necessary in
executive restructuring efforts, nor have they been adequately addressed in the
proposed legislation.
Most individuals contemplating improvements to U.S. national and defense
intelligence capabilities appear to be thinking about block and wire diagrams and
funding authority, when they should be thinking about truly changing the way
business is done as indicated in Figure 13. The intelligence community must take
full advantage of rapidly expanding sources of unclassified information, while
also empowering its dwindling work force.
If the United States does not come to grips with these basics, then neither the
executive initiatives nor the proposed congressional legislation will make any
real difference in its national security or national competitiveness.

INTELLIGENCE AND COUWTEWKTELLIGENCE VOLUME », NUMBER J

192 ROBERT OAVD STOLE

• International Signal Barriers

• Mondated Inter-agency sharing of Information at multiple
levels of security.
• Required overseas assignments for most analysts.
• Radically expanded clandestine human Intelligence and
overt Information collection efforts.
• Policy Signal Barriers
• Annual Congressional review of "threat* In relation to each
departmental activity. I.e., required 'state of the world*
report as precursor to congressional review of President's
budget.
• Full Integration of analysts into each Department and country
team policy process.
• Organization Signal Barriers
• Congressional and executive Intelligence 'Ombudsman.'
• Increased emphasis on cross-program oversight by functional
area.
• Establish 'return on investment' program evaluation process
(not just for weapons systems, but for Intelligence
capabilities).
• Analysis Signal Barriers
• Mandated Inter-agency training and foreign travel for most
analysts.
• Increased exploitation of foreign and domestic subject
experts In development of competing 'open source*
analyses.
• Mandated direct consumer contact with analysts.
• Regular evaluation of analyst and product relevance and
Impact on decisionmaking to Include critiques of format,
medium, and timing of delivery.

Figure 12. Remedial Provttons

MTERHATIONAL JOURNAL OF
A CRITICAL EVALUATON OF UJ. NATIONAL MTELU8ENCE CAPABIUHES 193

Expand the customer base

Redefine national security
Integrate analysts and customers
Recapitalize the infrastructure
Fully integrate open sources and products

Rgur* 13. Prescription Tot intMlQence SUCCMS

A great deal is "right" with U.S. intelligence, of course, and many unsung
heros have proven themselves developing "work arounds" in extremis. But the
reality is that U.S. intelligence has built up an enormous and relatively
cumbersome intelligence community which has gradually isolated itself, both
from its consumers, and from the "real world" of cultural complexity, fast-
moving events, and changing priorities. Neither the role of the private sector as
an alternative source of "national" intelligence, nor the need to substantially
improve the ability of nations, organizations, and individuals to exchange
"intelligence" at will, in fluid coalitions of the moment, have been addressed
here. Therein lies the future.

MTELUCENCE AND COUNTEfllHTEUJGENCE VOLUME I, NUMBER 2

 SECOND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
COMPETITIVENESS: OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Proceedings, 1993 Volume I
Link Page
Previous Testimony and Comments on Executive Order 12356,'National Security Information'
Next Executive Book Report: Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations. Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism by
2nd Lt Michael J. Castagna, USMC

Return to Electronic Index Page

 APPLYING THE "NEW PARADIGM":
HOW TO AVOID STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE FAILURES
IN THE FUTURE
by Robert D. Steele
This article focuses on three
concerns of mine which are central to
ensuring (hat the restructuring effort is
meaningful. First, what "sins" of strate-
gic intelligence persist in the face of re-
structuring? Second.howmustthenature
of the individual intelligence analyst, their
working conditions, and their relationship
to policy-makers change if we are to
avoid strategic intelligence failures in the
future? And third, how must we relate
defense intelligence restructuring to a
broader national effort to establish a truly
national knowledge management and
information technology strategy, a strat-
egy to empower our enterprises and
schools while enabling our government
to make informed policy decisions in all
areas?
Here are the major sins we are
committing today:
(1) Excessive collection of
technical intelligence (including much
too much emphasis on repetitive collec-
tion against higher priorities instead of
baseline collection against lower, e.g.
Third World, priorities);
(2) Cursory attention to both
open source collection, and the need for a
American Intelligence Journal
Mr. Steele is a senior civilian employee of the Marine
Corps with experience as an infantry officer and Foreign
Service officer. He holds two graduate degrees and is a
distinguished graduate of the Naval War College. The views
expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily
reflect the official policy or position of the Marine Corps or
the Department of Defense.
modest and redirected expansion of our Union and major economic powers. To
clandestine human intelligence collection be clear on this problem:
capability;
(a) It will continue to be diffi-
(3) Severe shortcomings in cult for our policy-makers and senior
control over intelligenceresources - those intelligence managers to focus on the
responsible for billions of dollars in each need for changed priorities because our
year's budget have no capability to intelligence and foreign affairs commu-
evaluate relative returns on investment nities are at least two generations away
across programs or elements of the in- from fully understandingtheThirdWorld
telligence cycle, and no adequate and dimensions of change outside the
mechanisms for ensuring government- political-military and transnational eco-
owned capabilities are shared and not nomic environment. We do not have an
duplicated. adequate methodology for studying the
preconditions and precipitants of revolu-
tionary change (including ideo-cultural,
techno-demographic, and natural-geo-
graphic change), and no indications and
...there are shortcomings warning (I&W) capability suited to this
in evaluating relative re- challenge.
turns on investmentacross
(b) Our entire intelligence
programs or elements on structure, our designs and methods, do
the intelligence cycle... not lend them selves to being restructured
andreconsb'tuted. It is as if, after decades
of learning how to build Cadillacs, our
very fine Cadillac, accustomed to travel-
ing the same super-highway back and
(4) Mindset inertia. We still forth, must suddenly be taken apart and
have very senior bureaucrats and ap- put back together as an off-road vehicle
pointees insisting that we maintain our able to deal with the treacherous terrain
traditional priorities against the Soviet and back roads of the Third World. It is
Page 43 Autumn 1991
obvious we not only need to pay much
more attention to different "designs and
methods", but that the fastest way to
create our off-road vehicle, given our
lack of resources, is by melting down and
recasting some portions of (he community
in their entirety.
(5) Lack of accountability
among acquisition managers and the in-
telligence professionals who support
them. We spend billions on complex
weapons systems which cannot be sup-
ported by existing or planned commu-
nications, computer or intelligence ca-
pabilities. Thissinalsomeritselaboration:
(a) Many of our acquisition
managers and action officers want noth-
ing to do with classified information -
their offices are not cleared to hold what
they would want to hold; they tend to
assume that once the Required Operation
Capability (ROC) is approved that the
"threat" ticket has been punched; they
don't understand the intelligence com-
munity or how to make it work; no one
has sponsored many of them for appro-
priate clearances; and they have no pro-
cess for prioritizing their needs for on-
going threat support to their respective
life cycles.
(b) Our concept for providing
intelligence support to acquisition is
flawed. We tend to focus on the technical
lethality aspect of the threat, while ig-
noring the equally if not more important
aspects of tactical reliability, operational
availability (and mobility), and strategic
sustainability. It makes sense to have
capabilities able to deal with worst-case
scenarios - it does not make sense to
burden expeditionary forces with main-
stream conventional weapons systems if
cheaper, more mobile, and more easily
sustainable alternatives are available.
(6) Finally, our worst sin, a lack
of commitment to people. Our grade
structure, working condition, and turnover
rales (both job reassignments and resig-
nations) leave us with a largely "un-ex-
pert" analysis population whose histori-
cal memory is both conventional (what is
in the files) and of shortduration. Weare
American Intelligence Journal
not growing the kiiul of analyst so im-
mersed in their topic thai [hey can sense
change and underlying analytical trends
and anomalies. When someone says
"protect the people in the budget", what
they mean is "keep as many serfs on
board as possible". They do not mean
"nurture our best, give them time and
money for travel, training, and reflection,
protect them from day-to-day 'musthave
update'calls". Our personnel strategies,
some of which seek to keep personnel
costs down by having a "bulge" in the
most junior analytical ranks, do not pro-
vide the career opportunities needed to
keep the "best and the brightest" focused
on analysis for an entire career, and lit-
erally drive people away from analysis
and toward "management" or adminis-
trative positions, if not out the door en-
tirely. We compound this sin by failing to
provide the analysts we do have with the
tools they need to manage raw multi-
media data and carry out higher-level
analysis tasks including pattern analysis
and modeling. In combination, our ex-
isting tools, training policies, and pro-
duction requirements perpetuate the "cut
and paste" syndrome. This is all pan of a
broader national failure, my final concern.
The six sins discussed above
come together in our failure to develop a
national knowledgemanagementstrategy
and a related national information tech-
fnology strategy. We spend too much on
^classified collection which we cannot
Jprocess in time, and not enough on open
{source information, including foreign
[scientific and technical literature vital to
lour national competitiveness. We have
done well at linking a vast array of dif-
ferent computer databases and capabili-
ties, but at a huge cost in terms of people
(and maintenance dollars, and without
significantly improving the individual
analyst's access to data. We have failed
completely at developing a standard ad-
vanced analysts' toolkit (workstation with
integrated application), and we are
therefore wasting millions building hun-
dreds of different workstations and ap-
plication packages which provide slightly
different implementations of the same
generic functionality at thousands of sites
throughout the world.
Page 44
In short.we have done nothing
to improve the quality of life for our
individual analysis, and little to improve
their intellectual reach, in a broader
context, outside the intelligence arena,
we have failed to use federal funds in the
knowledgemanagementarena to support,
direct, and synergize private outlays in
the commercial and academic sectors.
Our nation is significantly behind its po-
tential in exploiting the available knowl-
edge in the world, and the available in-
formation technologies, and this is a
"grand strategy" failure of enormous
proportions. Within intelligence, we will
continue to have strategic failures so long
as we continue to intellectually shackle
and starve our diminishing population of
analysts by failing to act in the two areas
offering very significant returns on in-
vestment: the integration of now-opera-
tional advanced information processing
technologies into a single standard
analysis "toolkit" exportable to any en-
terprise; and the development of a multi-
level and multi-media database architec-
ture which seamlessly merges classified
and unclassified data, and extends the
analyst's reach to every corner of the
globe.
As an aside, let me note my
support for those initiatives sponsored by
the Federal Coordinating council for
Science, Engineering, and Technology
("Grand Challenges: High Performance
Computing and Communications"), and
the related "computer superhighway"
concepts coming off the Hill. Both reflect
our national tendency to focus on "big
problems" and "technical solutions".
Where my emphasis differs from these
two major initiatives, in a complementary
way, is through my focus on "enabling
tools" which givelargenumbersofpeople
greater access to data, rather than great
computingpowertoafewselectscientists
and their acolytes.
What is to be done?
(1) Adopt David Abshire's idea
of an Advisor to the President for Long-
Term Planning, and make that individual
the Presidential champion of a national
knowledge management strategy, work-
Autumn 1991
 ing in concert wiUi the Office of Science f (4) Establish a new National merous intcr-agcncy collection manage-
and Technology Policy and other inter- Information Agency (NA1) which folds ment and analysis centers along the lines
ested parties. in the National Technical Information of the existing centers focused on special
Service (NTIS) of the Department of topics; a consolidated clandestine opera-
(2) Establish a Senior Inter- Commerce, the Foreign Broadcast In- tions agency with its own communications
Agency Group (SIG/C4I) tasked with formation Service (FBIS), the Joint and computing capabilities but integrat-
directing resources toward a global C4I Publications Research Service (JPRS), ing tactical SIGINT, necessary technical
system that provides multi-level security IheDefenseGateway Information System support and a new separate Office for
access (to include foreign nationals with (DGIS), and the Defense Technical In- Military Contingencies manned jointly
no clearances), integrates multi-media formation Center (DTIC), while also by military and civilian personnel; a na-
databases, and establishes a standard ad- folding in and revitalizing the Federal tional technical intelligence agency to
vanced analysis "toolkit". The Informa- Research Division of the Library of manage overhead technical collection
tion Handling committee (IHC) and the Congress.andcreatingahewconsolidated systems; and finally a national intelligence
Advanced Intelligence Processing and joint government-business Center for the research and development (R&D) agency
Analysis Steering Group (AIPASG) Exploitation of Open sources (CEOS). under a new deputy director responsible
should serve as focal points for inter- Such a national investment could be for consolidating and managing the now
agency coordination while the SIG/C4I fruitfully directed to: fragmented intelligence R&D efforts
provides a decision-making forum and » scattered among different services and
ensures that the external investments in (a) Engage in "competitive agencies.
communications and unclassified com- analysis", using only open sources, as a
puting arepart of an integrated continuum means of challenging the assumptions of
of government-private sector spending. the remainder of the intelligence com-
Use the Defense Information Systems munity regarding the value of extremely
Agency (DISA), the Intelligence Com- expensive and fragmentary classified ...the vast outpouring of
munications Architecture(lNCA)Project, sources; and multi-media, multi-lingual
and the Joint National Intelligence De- knowledge has presented us
velopment Staff (JNIDS) as executive f (b) Emphasize directsupport to
agents for implementing a national national and private research endeavors, with an enormous technical
'cnowledge management campaign plan, /with a view to stimulating and reinforc- and intellectual challenge...
.iavethenew Advisorto thePresidentfor Jing business and academic research and
Long-Term Planning chair this group, •development in all domains.
with an assistant to serve as Executive
Secretary. (5) Establish an Open source
Committee under the Director of Central Knowledge is power. Technol-
(3) Use the Corporate Infor- Intelligence, to serve as a focal point for ogy has broken down the walls that pre-
mation Management (CIM) initiative to intelligence community collection and viously required vast technical and human
begin exploring inter-agency solutions processing of open source information endeavors to isolate nationally vital in-
andmechanismsfor fully integrating open (which would include multi-spectral im- formation about plans, intentions, and
source and unclassified databases into a agery as well as public signals, unclassi- ^capabilities. At the same time, the vast
global C4I architecture. Provide a fied documentation, and open debriefings outpouring of multi-media multi-lingual
mechanism for conveying to Comptrol- and interviews). Utilize military intelli- knowledge has presented us .with an
lers theevaluationsand recommendations gence personnel and capabilities in enormous technical and intellectual
of the IHC and AIPASG as a means of peacetime to"jumpstart" the open source challenge, one worthy of the samekind of
accelerating the retirement of inefficient collection and exploitation process - this national attention occasioned by past
installed bases while consolidating re- will help the military because many of the energy crises. There is still a role for
sources to attack generic problem sets. In Third World intelligence gaps stemming clandestine human collection and covert
particular, end the isolation of intelligence from our obsession with the Soviet Union technical collection, but it must be more
systems from all other C4 systems - C4 can be filled relatively quickly through tightly focused. Our emphasis must shift
must improve its personnel security lev- systematic, legal, and overt access to from collection to analysis, from indis-
els and adjust its approach to accommo- unrestricted foreign information. criminate collection to integrated pro-
date intelligence, but intelligence systems cessing, from analysts as assembly-line
managers must understand thattheir days (6) Consider reorganizing the producers chained to their desks to ana-
of pipeline management and compart- Central Intelligence Agency to provide lysts as observers and partners in the
mented resource allocation are over. for four distinct capabilities: a national national decision-making process - not
intelligence analysis capability with nu- making policy, but informing policy.
L
American Intelligence Journal Page 45 Autumn 1991
 Finally, we must shift away from a strat-restructuring will cure some ills and bring lenge; then we will have accomplished a
egy of producing highly classified com- on others; our greatest challenge contin- far more fundamental and constructive
pendioms of information for a few select ues to be one of strategic vision - if we can "restructuring" - applied a "new para-
'customers, and toward maximizing pub- change the way we view analysis and digm". This strategic interpretation is
lic access to basic knowledge in all areas
their role in the daily decision-making consistent with the present restructuring
Lof endeavor. process; if we can adopt a national plans, butof far greater import to how our
knowledge management strategy, accel- Nation "does business" in the future.
The sins of intelligence will air erate our integration of national C4I sys-
ways be with us in one form or another; tems, and address the open source chal- ********************

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American Intelligence Journal Page 46 Autumn 1991

 FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
COMPETITIVENESS: OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Proceedings, Volume I - Link
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 Page 1 of 1

Gordon Lederman

From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele Local Broadband [oss.net@cox.net]

Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 12:47 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Subject: GOP Task Force Got It In 1992-No One Wanted to Listen

Bodansky, staff director of the GOP Task Force on Terrorism, who went on to write the book on Bin Laden: The
Man Who Declared War on America (published prior to 9-11, but no one wanted to listen), wrote the attached and
presented it to my 1992 conference.

From 1988-2001, a succession of DCIs, including the current DCI, turned a blind eye to lower tier festering issues,
including terrorism, and refused to listen to all of us who were sounding the alarm about either terrorism
(Bodansky) or our loss of perspective on being thorough and professional about how we carried out the business
of intelligence (Steele at first, others joining over time).

3/22/2004
 BILL McCOLLUM FLORIDA VAUGHN S FORREST
CHAIRMAN CHIEF OF STAFF

DANA ROHRABACHER CALIFORNIA YOSSEF BODANSKY

CO-CHAIRMAN DIRECTOR
DONALD J MORRiSSEY
MEMBERS LEGiSlAT.vE DIRECTOR
WILLIAM BROOMFIELD. MICHIGAN
JAMES E GEOFFREY. II
CHRISTOPHER COX. CALIFORNIA
EDITOR
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE. CALIFORNIA
ROBERT DORNAN. CALIFORNIA
TASK FORCE ON TERRORISM & SCOTT BRENNER
GEORGE W GEKAS. PENNSYLVANIA
BENJAMIN OILMAN NEW YORK
UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE PUBLIC AFFAIRS

JIM LIGHTFOOT IOWA HOUSE REPUBLICAN RESEARCH COMMITTEE 1622 LONGWORTH BUILDING
202/2250871
BOB LIVINGSTON LOUISIANA
DAVID O'B MARTIN. NEW YORK ' U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FRANK 0 RlGGS. CALIFORNIA
JAMES F SENSENBRENNER JR WISCONSIN WASHINGTON. D.C 20515
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE. MAINE
C w BILL YOUNG FLORIDA

THE GOP TERRORISM TASK FORCE:

RESEARCH TECHNIQUES & PHILOSOPHY

A Paper for the

First International Symposium on
NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS:
OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS

Washington, DC
1-3 December, 1992
 THE GOP TERRORISM TASK FORCE:
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES AND PHILOSOPHY

Since its establishment nearly four years ago, the Republican

Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare has been able
to provide a stream of accurate and detailed information to its
Members and other key offices of government through its Task
Force Reports. These Reports cover numerous subjects,
concentrating on the main crisis points throughout the Third
World and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the Task Force has had several
"scoops" over the years of which it is particularly proud,
including the manipulation of the Afghan resistance by
fundamentalist Islamist elements, the use of chemical weapons by
Vietnam in Laos, forecasting the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, and
the discovery that Iran had obtained nuclear weapons from the
Islamic republics of the former USSR.
However, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this track record
is that all of the research material was obtained through open
sources. In this research, the emphasis is always on the use of
indigenous source material, that is, material produced by and for
the interested local populations, institutions and authorities.
These publications, predominantly foreign language publications,
constitute one of the best sources for obtaining an understanding
of the political and social forces at work in the Third World.
In this context, it should be noted that the Task Force does have
access to unique sources throughout the world, including
principly individuals on site, but that these sources operate
outside the official establishment. These sources are therefore
not too different from the confidential sources used by many
reputable journalists.
This all said, the Task Force's very existence stems from
Washington's increasing recognition of the importance of the
Third World and of the danger of state sponsored terrorism to
Western interests. This is important because, as the Third World
adjusts to the dynamic forces of nationalism, tribalism and
religious and ethnic fundamentalism, the danger of a backlash
against the West will intensify.
Furthermore, these problems have been complicated by a dangerous
trend in the strategic political development of Washington's
self-proclaimed "New World Order" which is viewed in the Third
World as little more than the proclamation of a "pax Americana."
Indeed, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union,
many Third World leaders see a unique opportunity to consolidate
their positions as regional leaders. Thus, most of them perceive
the United States as a threat to their ambitions and will
therefore be tempted to make the U.S. a target of agitated Third
World populations. In this connection, the employment of
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons by these Third World
leaders and their allies cannot be ruled out.
Meanwhile, other major powers, primarily Western Europe
(especially France), Japan (with South Korea, Taiwan, etc. in
tow,) and a Russian dominated Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS), are competing with the United States for access to the
Third World's markets and raw materials. With these resources so
crucial to the world economy, and with the United States
increasingly at odds with the other trading blocs over these
resources, local regimes may be inclined to exploit great power
rivalries to their own advantage.
Taken together, all these trends, mixed with an increasing
ideologization of the Third World, clearly point to an increased
risk of anti-Western terrorism and violence, as well as to the
build-up of Third World war machines to challenge Western
military predominance. These are factors that the United States
cannot afford to ignore. Moreover, because of the interests that
the United States has in the Third World, and because it is today
the world's only remaining military superpower with global
interests, increased US military and diplomatic involvement in
the developing world is almost inevitable.
This means, of course, that it is imperative for the United
States to understand and comprehend the Third World, particularly
its military and ideological components. The record of the
Terrorism Task Force leaves no doubt that this can be done. The
key to the Third World, however, will mean that intelligence
gathering will have to be done less by "bean counting" through
technical means and more through "on-the-spot" analysis.
This "professional factor" will therefore be the most important
resource for knowledge of military and security issues. Simply
put, weapons do not grow on trees and military experts are not
usually found amongst the tribes of the deserts and jungles of
the Third World. All of these have to come from somewhere and
therefore emphasis will have to be placed on tapping intelligence
sources who are involved in what will be a massive transfer of
weapons and expertise from the former Eastern bloc to the Third
World. An intelligence network designed to cover this issue,
combined with a greater understanding of indigenous Third World
cultures and problems, holds the key to understanding the post-
Communist world.
The Task Force recognizes this fact and understands that it will
therefore be necessary for the intelligence community to change
expectations about the kind of data that intelligence will be
able to provide in the future.
Specifically, it is impossible to have a complete picture of any
major topic on a timely basis. Concerning the crucial
developments in the Third World, such as the acquisition of
weapons including nuclear weapons, the development of terrorist
networks, the involvement state sponsored terrorism in the Third
World and technology transfers, the availability of data will be
conditional on the ability of sources to get around and see past
the security precautions taken by governments.
Almost all matters of interest to the professional intelligence
gatherer will occur within a larger context. Nuclear weapons
acquisition will have to be visible in order for the acquiring
state to gain a deterrent over its potential opponents, but not
so obvious as to provoke a response from the great powers.
Terrorists strikes will not only be aimed by the state against
its perceived opponents in the West, but amongst the various
competing factions within given states and organizations. Thus,
even the most visible events will reverberate with secret
undercurrents that will affect the balance of power in the Third
World.
These undercurrents will only be recognizable and comprehensible
if viewed through the prism of the Third World's various cultural
and strategic perspectives. This will require attention to daily
events, including some of the seemingly smallest and most mundane
matters. For example, did a given leader wear a certain
ceremonial sash at a state meeting? Did a leader change his
emphasis on who his enemies are by some small change in language?
In a closed society these seemingly unimportant matters may speak
volumes to the perceptive observer who is well versed on the
cultural underpinnings of his subject. Thus, the researcher must
be constantly attuned to all of these "vibes" and must record
them, even if it is unclear what significance they will have.
Of Course, to some degree, it will not be possible to recognize
the significance of events except through the eyes of natives in
the region of concern. Thus, indigenous source materials, both
written and oral, will be of crucial significance to any
intelligence gathering effort. No amount of technical data
gathering will be able to convey the logic and significance of
events.
In this environment, there will be no such thing as a "key"
source. Even access to a supreme national leader will not be
enough. For especially in the Third World, even a despotic
totalitarian leader will not have total control over his country.
In the tribalized, balkanized Third World, a national leader will
not often know what various segments of his country's populations
are doing or how they are organized. Furthermore, given the
sycophancy and cronyism that often surrounds leaders in the Third
World, self-deception will be prevalent and verification of data
will only be possible on a comparative basis.
Thus, knowledge of a situation from the "ground up" will be
indispensable. The ability to see things "as the natives do," to
put oneself in the shoes of given people, and to understand why a
people will react to events as they will, these will be the keys
to a successful intelligence gathering effort in the post-Cold
War era.
As already noted, much of this will be possible with open
sources. These sources provide the ability to notice the small
"vibes," to correctly read the "dialogue" between key players and
to accurately asses actions. Thus, the key to intelligence data
will be a current reading of events done on a continuous basis.
Of course, open sources will only go so far, and specific details
will still need to come from special sources. Background
material provided by such sources will enable the researcher to
narrow the scope of his studies, to be specific about given
actions and to make optimum use of limited communications assets.
This kind of material will allow the researcher to "fill in the
blanks" and draw as complete a picture as is possible in a Third
World context.
The result of this complex process will be excellent
intelligence. In the case of the Task Force, with its
comparatively limited resources, it has proven amazingly
successful and has led, as has been noted, to not a few "scoops."
When implemented by a reconfigured American intelligence
community, with its enormous human and material resources, it
will provide a treasure trove of data that will be crucial to
understanding the world in the post-Cold War age. This "on the
ground" technique, combined with the researcher's two most
important tools, patience and perseverance, are the weapons by
which the nation will secure its future in the volatile Third
World.
by Yossef Bodansky
& Vaughn S. Forrest
(This paper may not necessarily reflect the views of all of the
Members of the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare. It is intended to provoke discussion and
debate.)
 FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
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 INTELLIGENCE IN THE 1990'S:
RECASTING NATIONAL SECURITY IN A
CHANGING WORLD
by Robert David Steele

Robert Steele, the senior civilian participant

in the creation and management of the new USMC
Intelligence Center at Quantico, has served in a
variety of assignments both in and out ofDoD. His
views, while personal and not official, are consistent
with those of his Commandant as published in our
Winter issue, and are a refreshing demonstration of
strategic and forward thinking among our mid-level
career intelligence professionals in the civil service.

"I am constantly being asked tional threat is generally associated with repetitious, and largely bureaucraiicized
fora bottom-line defense number. I don't a government, conventional or nuclear in way of doing "analysis"; the emerging
owofany logical way to arrive at such nature, represented by static orders of threats, in sharp contrast, simply cannot
figure without analyzing the threat: battle, linear in the development and be spotted, assessed, fixed, and neutral-
without determining what changes in our deployment of its capabilities, employed ized by our existing capabilities.
strategy should be made in light of the in accordance with well-understood rules
changes in the threat; and then determin- of engagement and doctrine, relatively The "war on drugs", and our
ing what force structure and weapons concern over arms control (not just veri-
easy to detect in its mobilization, and
programs we need to carry out this re- fication of Soviet reductions but also
supported by generally recognizable in-
vised strategy." -Senator Sam Nunn telligence assets. control of nuclear and bio-chemical
weapons proliferation in the Third
This article will discuss the World) are both representative of these
changing threat in terms of six challenges The emerging threat...cannot be new threats.
critical to our over-all national security assessed...by our existing capa-
posture in the 1990's. To adapt intelli- bilities. Narcotics, in both the intelli-
gence to our new threat and fiscal envi- gence and the operational worlds, must
ronments, we must make radical and be seen as representative of a "type"
comprehensive changes in how we man- threat, not as an odious and undesirable
age and conceptualize intelligence. The emerging threat, by con- distraction from the "real" threat
trast, is non-govemmenial, non-conven-
Our Environment tional, dynamic or random, non-linear,
with no constraints or predictable doc- Narcotics. Js a 'type' threat...not
We find ourselves in a multi- trine, almost impossible to detect in ad- a distraction from the 'real'
polar and multi-dimensional'environ- vance, and supported by an unlimited 5th threat.
ment in which a critical distinction must column of criminals and drug addicts.
be drawn between the conventional
threat and the emerging threat. The conventional threat lends
itself very well to conventional intelli- The multi-dimensional nature
This distinction, first presented gence collection capabilities which in- of change in our multi-polar world must
Jic Commandant's article in the Win- clude a strong ability at stand-off techni- also be considered as we evaluate how
ter issue, is straight-forward: the conven- cal collection, and a fairly methodical, best to meet these threats.

AIJ 29 Summer/Fall 1990


DIMENSIONS OF CHANGE
Political-Legal
Socio-Economic
Ideo-Cultural
Techno-Demographic
Natural-Geographic
Intelligence must be much more
than simply political reporting or mili-
tary Order of Battle "bean counting".
Intelligence must be able to identify
emerging sources of power and emerg ing
sources of instability in each dimension,
and forecast their rate of change.
Our emphasis on the need to
modify our "world view" and our defini-
tion of what merits attention from our
intelligence community in no way re-
duces the importance of continued atten-
tion to the Soviet Union.
Three areas in particular must
be acknowledged:
- First, we must continue to monitor the
strategic nuclear threat.
- Second, intelligence must be capable of
monitoring "plans and intentions" of the
Soviets in the decades ahead. Wemustbe
prepared to identify regression and de-
ception, e.g. perestroika and glasnost
may have a mirror image as a STRATE-
GIC DECEPTION, as a means by which
the Soviet Union can establish its techno-
logical depth and regain its competitive
edge.
- Finally, the flowering of democratic
and opposition movements in Eastern
Europe and Soviet Republics call for
much more intelligence on the ground
inside the Soviet Union and Eastern
European countries, and a much greater
sensitivity to the socio-economic, psy-
chological, and cultural factors which
were previously overshadowed by the
military threat from the Warsaw Pact.
Having established in this way
the environment within which intelli-
gence must operate in the 1990's we can
now outline each of the six challenges
and what it means for our intelligence
structure and the allocation of resources
in FY 92-97 and beyond.
AIJ
program of Third World intelligence
SIX AREAS OF CHALLENGE analysis and forecasting is needed if we
arc to justify long overdue and
Meeting Needs of Public Programs underfunded peaceful preventive meas-
I&W Methods for New Threats ures in this vital area of concern and
Theory & Methods for CI/OPSEC potential." (emphasis in the original)
InfoTech Strategy
Requirements System Warriors pray for peace. Gen-
Resource Realignments eral MacAnhur made this point with
unusual eloquence, and it remains true
Challenge Number One: Meeting the today. The task of the warrior is made
Intelligence Needs of Public Programs more difficult and costs the nation much
more in the lost lives of its sons and
Today there is insufficient daughters as well as simple economic
emphasis on defining and meeting the cost if prc-rcvolutionary conditions arc
intelligence needs of overt civilian agen- not identified and dealt with through
cies, law enforcement activities, and "peaceful preventive measures". Moni-
contingency military forces. toring corruption associated with our
military assistance programs, identifying
This point has major fiscal popular misconceptions about our Na-
implications well beyond those of con- tion that should be corrected, and under-
cern to defense force structure managers. standing the true and often unarticulated
needs of Third World countries are ex-
There are two major fiscal tremely important tasks that intelligence
strategies that intelligence must sup- can undertake in defense of our over-all
port: first, the strategy of "spending national security.
smart", and investing in cheaper peace-
ful civilian nation-building capabilities Intelligence must help us make
as early as possible, rather than waiting investment decisions and evaluate our
for situations to deteriorate to the point programs, with special emphasis on oven
that military intervention is required; & covert programs focused on "nation-
and second, the strategy of fighting a building" and/or the furtherance of our
truly "total war" in which we recognize national interests.
that a failure on our part to be competitive
in the international trade & financial Challenge Number Two: Indications
markets is tantamount to losing a "real" & Warnings of Revolutionary Change
war.
Our intelligence and foreign
Selected public programs not affairs communities have demonstrated
necessarily associated with "national only a limited understanding of revolu-
security" in fact offer an exceptional tionary change, no methodology for
"return on investment" in terms of en- studying the preconditions, precipitants,
hancing our strategic depth and our posi- and actualization of such change, no
tion overseas.
General A. M. Gray, Comman- We have paid insufficient atten-
dant of the Marine Corps, recently em- tion to open sources...
phasized the need for "more and better
Third World intelligence...(so) corre-
sponding resource allocations can be framework for ensuring collection and
appropriately balanced". He went on to analysis priorities respect the importance
say: of all the dimensions within which revo-
lutions can occur, and no indications &
"If threat is a factor in determining na- warnings (l&W) capability suitable to
tional investments in security assistance this challenge. There are several contrib-
and foreign aid, then a more aggressive uting factors:
30 Summer/Fall 1990
 Firstly, we have never been and the development of an infrastructure opportunities for dealing legal active
comfortable with intangibles, and even for capturing and exploiting the vast out- blows to our present and future oppo-
less comfortable with abstract concepts pouring of print and voice information nents. Failure in either area will cost
and ideo-cultural meaning. It is far easier about the Third World as well as more billions over time and will hamper our
to count beans and compare things than it developed and technologically competi- ability to understand and correct our own
is to try to understand people, especially tive nations such as West Germany, Ja- vulnerabilities at home.
people whose entire psycho-social fabric pan, Singapore, and Brazil.
is alien to our own. Challenge Number Three: New The-
The community has done well ory & Methods of Counlerintelligence
Secondly, our planning, pro- in developing a capability for strategic
gramming, & budgeting system (PPBS) warning of attack by a major governmen- Closely related to our severely
perpetuates this tendency: only very tal nuclear and/or conventional force, deficient clandestine HUMINT capabili-
large, obvious, "tangible: treats have in largely because of the relatively static ties and our lack of understanding of
the past been acceptable justifications for and linear manner in which these capa- foreign entities is our virtually complete
major planned investments. All other in- bilities are developed, deployed, and vulnerability to penetration by represen-
vestments, for instance in the Third prepared for employment tatives of non-governmental groups pos-
World, have generally been ad hoc re- ing a non-conventional threat to our na-
sponses to crises, and therefore poorly These facilitating conditions tional security.
conceived, coordinated, and effected. do not hold for the emerging threat.
The threat today and in the 1990's is We must, quickly and compre-
Thirdly, our national skills lean often not clearly associated with a hensively, begin addressing the threat
to the technical, and away from the government, "it may not come in con- posed by individuals seeking our techni-
human factor. We have become soenam- ventional forms," its bearers are not cal secrets for economic warfare; by
ored of our overhead technical capabili- constrained in any way, and their ac- individuals suborned by criminal organi-
ties that we have failed to balance our tions may be dynamic or even random zations, terrorist groups, and religious
as the frenzy of the moment moves cults; and by individuals whose motiva-
them to action. Their capabilities do not tions we may never fathom, but whose
We need an entirety new theory develop in a necessarily linear fashion reliability can not be determined with any
and structure of counterintelli- because they draw their weapons from all assurance by our present system of back-
gence.. sources, including commercial enter- ground invesu'gaiion.
prises, and their motivations are not well
enough understood to permit any kind of We need an entirely new theory
reliable forecasting. and structure of counts-intelligence (CI)
tremendous signals and imagery intelli- capable of dealing with both the ex-
gence (SIGINT/IMINT) collection abili- A great deal of work needs to be panded access of representatives of for-
ties with a commensurate processing done in this arena, in terms of both sub- eign governments, and the more perva-
ability, and capped that with a compara- stantive research, and designs & meth- sive and subtle threat from a virtually
tive abdication in the arena of human ods. Among the approaches that appear unlimited "5th column" of criminals and
intelligence (HUMINT). Heavy reli- to offer some merit are those of cognitive narco-terrorists.
ance on foreign intelligence & security mapping, social network theory, psy-
services, and officers under official cholinguislics, and good old-fashioned This will require an unprece-
cover, does not constitute a serious listening by experienced diplomats, offi- dented degree of cooperation between
clandestine HUMINT capability. Such cial representatives, business and aca- national agencies (including economic
a capability requires years to develop, demic personnel, and agents in place. and financial agencies), private industry
and patience, a trait for which we are not (including especially high-tech firms and
noted. Our lack of commitment to strong Even more fundamental is the financial institutions), and law enforce-
language programs, longer tours, and desperately needed commitment to rea- ment agencies.
non-official cover mechanisms facilitat- lign existing and future intelligence re-
ing access to every level and dimension sources toward basic analysis (not neces- It will require a totally new and
of foreign societies and non-governmen- sarily production) outside the standard comprehensive approach to the manage-
tal groups will continue to frustrate pol- political and military spheres, and in the ment of information about people, an
icy-makers attempting to improve our Third World. approach which must integrate legal
national capabilities for "low intensity safeguards through the development of
onflicl". We must take initiatives, not simply de- artificially intelligent "expert systems"
fend ourselves. Our methods of I&W and the partial automation of Inspector
Lastly, we have paid insuffi- should lend themselves to identifying General functions.
cient attention to open sources (OSINT), opportunities for advantage as well as

AD 31 Summer/Fall 1990
 We must also completely
reevaluate what we want to protect, and
what we mean by "confidential", "se-
cret", "lop secret", and "sensitive com-
partmenied information" (SCI). The
system is so fragmented and inconsistent
that even the most loyal individuals have
difficulty taking it seriously.
Although efforts have been
made to address these issues, we simply
cannot resolve the contradictions of
counterintelligence without an over-
arching strategy that includes person-
nel compensation and quality of life
issues as well as a comprehensive ap-
proach to the management and secu-
rity administration of both electronic
and hard-copy information across
agency boundaries.
We must move quickly to de-
velop an effective means of organizing
and "lagging: our electronic records with
essential information about their source,
classification, and control parameters,
and we must develop inter-agency meth-
ods of electronic sharing which maxi-
mize our exploitation of information
while affording us much greater auto-
mated auditing and alert capabilities es-
sential to identify unauthorized or inap-
propriate diversions of knowledge.
We must carefully redefine
both intellectual and physical properties
that we wish to protect, with special ref-
erence to both technology and our own
national infrastructure (water, power
grids, lines of communication). We
should pay particular attention to "criti-
cal" nodes in our technical systems
which would if sabotaged or penetrated
render irreparable harm to our gross na-
tional production and general security &
public welfare capabilities.
We should be less concerned
about the "illegal" export of technology -
advanced information technology appli-
cations and capabilities, for instance, are
developing so fast they have usually left
the country years before they can be
added to the "dual use" list of controlled
items. More to the point, information
technology (to take one example)
evolves so fast that whatever is stolen is
AU
out-dated within 6-18 months, and off the This situation is largely of our
market within 36 months. We are better own making; Service and professional
off concentrating on staying ahead fragmentation has been allowed to con-
than on keeping the other folks behind. tinue within a resource-rich environment
where inter-opcrability and inter-
We must recast our domestic as changeability of information technolo-
well as our international security re- gies (and related multi-discipline data-
sources to better blend the efforts of those bases) were not required. The infrastruc-
responsible for law enforcement, physi- ture within the Department of Defense
cal security, background investigations, has at least a modicum of cohesion; the
offensive counter-intelligence, and op- same is not true for the array of law
erations. Counter-intelligence cannot be enforcement, civilian government agen-
treated as a separate discipline in isola- cies, and private enterprises, including
tion; it must permeate all aspects of na- universities, which have had little occa-
tional operations in the same way that sion in the past to require direct electronic
"administration" crosses all boundaries. connectivity. Now we are discovering
that knowledge is indeed power, and that
"Operational security" the shorter the loop in exploiting knowl-
(OPSEC) requires much greater empha- edge, the more competitive our Nation.
sis, especially in the countemarcotics
arena and particularly in the execution of We must get serious about cy-
interdiction operations. We have given bernetics, and exploiting knowledge in
the narcotics community years in which relation rather than in isolation. This
to build up billion-dollar war chests and requires the development of a national
capabilities that in some cases exceed our electronic information & records man-
own. We must be much smarter about agement architecture that goes far be-
how we plan and conduct operations in yond the existing plethora of database
this environment. management applications and isolated
proprietary or domain/agency specific
As with I&W, CI must protect databases. Every traditional function of
the nation against the massive costs asso- "hardcopy" records management must
ciated with treason and compromise, or be automated and integrated into every
with terrorism unleashed on our popula- organization's knowledge management
tion and infrastructure. Financial & architecture.
economic counterintelligence should
' become a recognized sub-discipline. Reliable and tested multilevel
For the latter to be successful, there must security operating systems are critical to
be a closer working relationship between our national knowledge management
government and the private sector, a strategy and must be fielded before a
willingness on the part of the private
sector to identify and correct its areas of
vulnerability, and a national recognition OPSEC requires much greater
that international finance &, trade compe- emphasis, especially in the
tition is the "second front" of the 1990's counternarcotocs arena...
(drugs & terrorism comprising the first
front).
Challenge Number Four: Developing serious program of cross-Agency and
an Information Technology Strategy federal to private data sharing & exploi-
tation can be considered. Much greater
We need a national information emphasis at the policy level is required on
technology architecture and manage- this topic, for without this capability four
ment infrastructure that integrates tele- of the six challenges cannot be fully
communications, computing, and analy- addressed. It bears comment that multi-
sis, and enables the full exploitation and level security may finally enable us to
integration of data from human, signals, link operators directly to analysts, and
imagery, and open sources. break down the "green door" that has
32 Summer/Fall 1990
isolated intelligence for so long from its knowledge management tools impera- We have absolutely no way of
consumers. tive; the primary way we will be able to evaluating our "return on investment"
improve our national productivity in by intelligence discipline or by element
In addition, it is critical that the the 1990's is with a major national of the intelligence cycle.
Services, agencies, and private industry investment strategy focusing on ad-
work closely together to avoid at all costs vanced information technologies and The continued fragmentation of
incompatible interfaces and applications automated knowledge exploitation. the intelligence community into disci-
that have in the past restricted the transfer plines with their own "pipelines" for
of data between applications and be- Challenge Number Five: Establishing tasking of subordinate units and report-
tween users. A total commitment by all A Responsive Requirements System ing of information back to their head-
information technology vendors to quarters will make serious all-source
"open systems" is vital to national We need a national intelli- fusion a virtual impossibility unless, as
productivity and competitiveness in gence requirements system that is General Gray points out in his own ar-
the 1990's. useful in the management of re- ticle:
sources; is cross-disciplinary, auto-
An important element of this mated,&"zero-sum";andisresponsive "Capabilities must be inte-
information technology or knowledge to individual customers, allowing them grated both vertically and horizontally -
management strategy must be a commit- to (rack the satisfaction of their require- inter-agency policies and practices must
ment to fund a global program to capture ments by discipline, topic, country, or be developed which permit the fusion of
and make available to both government timeframe.
and private industry those essential open
source print and voice records necessary There are a number of contrib- We have absolutely no way of
to compete in all dimensions on interna- uting factors, some of which are being evaluating our 'return on invest-
tional life. This will satisfy the addressed, some of which will take years ment' by intelligence discipline
President's desire to help U.S. business to work out.
while avoiding the dangers inherent in or by element of the intelligence
attempting to pass classified information The greatest problem lies in the cycle.
o selected enterprises. complete fragmentation of intelligence
management over-all; between disci-
As outlined by General Gray in plines, between major management ar- information at every hierarchical level,
his article, this would include digitization eas, and between levels and types of beginning with the Country Team. Atthe
of newspapers and journals from Third organizations, each committed to doing same time, we should avoid redundant
World countries (and should include business "it's way". processing of the same information by
technical journals from such countries as every agency and service."
West Germany and Japan); the establish-
ment of a central repository of govern- FRAGMENTATION OF It is vital that the existing re-
ment-owned open source data bases such INTELLIGENCE MANAGEMENT quirements system, which includes
as those developed by the Foreign Broad- means of specifying topics of immediate
cast Information Service (FBIS); A na- Disciplines interest to policy-makers as well as pri-
tional program to digitize hard-copy rec- IMINT orities for topics of mid-range and
ords pertinent to our national interests in SIGNINT longer-term interest, be automated and
the Third World; and expansion of the HUMINT structured so that all capabilities at all
Defense Gateway Information System OSINT levels are working in consonance with
(DG1S) to include management of the one another. Whilesomedisciplinesare
latter initiatives. Decision Areas undeniably more effective than others
Design & Methods at obtaining partkular types of infor-
U.S. business overseas can Funding mation, they should be managed in
make a significant contribution by as- Collection Mgmt unison and at the lowest possible level.
suming responsibility for digitizing open Production Mgmt
sources in specific countries or technical The second greatest difficulty is
areas. The data entry problem is so Levels of Effort the absence of a clear consensus within
large, only private assumption of this National the community over the purposes of our
responsibility will permit the national Theater various requirements documents and
•ategy to succeed. Departmental processes. Although a document exists
Country Team to forecast future intelligence require-
The downward trend of our ments and is intended to guide invest-
demography makes an investment in ments in new designs & methods, in fact

A1J 33 Summer/Fall 1990

it is both moribund and nothing more - at policy-makers can certainly impose ness and inertia precisely at a time when
this point - than a rehash of the imagery "emphasis" on the individual disciplines, innovative, flexible, cooperative efforts
requirements document from which it and gel what they want if it is collectable are going to be critical to our success and
was born. with existing resources, they cannot our Nation's security.
expect to receive the kind of information,
There is no over-all manage- including "plans & intentions" and tacti- On the positive side, Congress
ment of funding trade-offs between cal readiness information, for which has shown a strong inclination to direct
disciplines or between elements of the years are required to develop agents in innovative solutions where it must and
collection cycle. We still spend too place, or sophisticated technical collec- where it has not been able to gel construc-
much on technical collection and not tion systems, or sophisticated artificial tive proposals from the beneficiaries
enough on clandestine HUMINT or intelligence applications and related themselves. The negative side of this is
the processing of imagery, signals, and knowledge bases. that appropriated funds are meaningless
human intelligence. We spend virtu- if not properly and rapidly obligated, and
ally nothing on the single most valu- We simply cannot have topics the budget executed. With the best of
able (and cheapest) source of intelli- of current interest driving what should be intentions, and no resort to such historic
gence, foreign public print and voice the five-year priorities plan, and no seri-
media. ous twenty-year plan. What should be
happening is that current require- We urgently need a streamlined
Collection and production ments should drive collection and budget execution process...
management continue to be dominated production by existing resources; the
by the owners of the respective discipli- five year plan should drive the reas-
nary collection resources, or the owners signment of existing resources and the gambits as impoundment, the lead agen-
of the analysts. This is a major reason development of mid-term new capa- cies can fail to expend funds for lack of
why we have redundant or unprocess- bilities; and the twenty year plan strategic planning & programming tal-
able collection, and redundant produc- should be driving the development of ent, and for lack of responsive and flex-
tion. The community has made great completely new designs and methods ible procurement & accounting capabili-
strides in eliminating redundant produc- unconstrained by existing technical ties. The 1990's will be characterized by
tion, but it will not meet with full success collection preconceptions, and with- extremely short resource management
until there is a cross-agency, cross-serv- out regard to existing "standard oper- cycles in which some initiatives will
ice mechanism for balancing collection ating procedures". move from conception to obligation to
versus production, and for balancing the expenditure in under a year. The "war
needs of the Theater Commander-in- Challenge Number Six: Realigning on drugs" is an ideal opportunity to
Chief and each Country Team with the Resources in an Era of Radical Change develop, test, and refine 3 new process
needs of national policy-makers and for allocating resources and restruc-
other consumers. There is limited experience in turing capabilities under revolution-
managing resources in a declining fiscal ary conditions.
There is another subtle miscue environment while simultaneously iden-
built into the system: there is no provi- tifying emerging threats and rapidly real- In order for ihe shortened PPBS
sion for weighting first-time collection locating resources to meet those threats. cycle to be effective, top-level managers
and production requirements over those Perhaps of greater concern, we appear must be willing to delegate authority
requirements that may have a higher reluctant to establish a flexible process down to the project and program man-
over-all priority, but against which volu- for fulfilling this fundamental require- agement levels. The execution require-
minous efforts have been made in the ment. The bitter resistance of both the ments for the realignment of manning,
past As we seek to address ever-chang- training, procurement, facilities, and
ing issues and make our intelligence operations & maintenance are simply too
structure more responsive to our needs Congress has shown a strong complex and time consuming to permit
for new data, this feature must be estab- inclination to direct innovative top-down micro-management.
lished. solutions...
We must introduce the same
Lastly, we come to the problem "mission type order" style to our PPBS
of distinguishing between limeframes for process as we expect on the battlefield.
the management of intelligence re- mainstream military and the intelligence
community to such concepts as "low in- We must eliminate as much of the paper-
sources (i.e. on-year, five-year, twenty- work and documentation as possible, and
year). This is important in each of the tensity conflict", "special operations",
the exploitation of " open sources", and drastically reduce requirements for top-
decision areas: design & methods, fund- level approval of lower-level adjust-
ing, collection management, and produc- support to law enforcement agencies, all
portend an era of bureaucratic helpless- ments in organization, equipment, tasks,
tion management. Although the national

A1J 34 Summer/Fall 1990

and production where these arc consis- Conclusion gcnce arc required. We must reassess
tent with strategic guidance. what it is we want to protect, and we
The six challenges facing na- must reassess the threat at all levels, to
In the computer Held, the "rapid tional intelligence in the 1990's arc all include special emphasis on both
prototyping" approach has much to offer linked together- success in one will serve domestic and foreign non-governmen-
all of us as an example, in sharp contrast as a catalyst for success in another, fail- tal actors. We must institute compre-
to the system acquisition and life cycle ure in any will stymie success in all. All hensive new means of coordinating and
planning approach which is so detailed have a direct bearing on the fiscal health controlling our law enforcement, intelli-
and lengthy that the system is obsolete of the nation as well as the soundness of gence, and counterinieliigence re-
before it gets to the production line. its national security structure in the sources, to include oversight mecha-
1990's and the 21st Century. nisms and the firm protection of the rights
We urgently need a stream- of our citizens. If we do not design and
lined budget execution process in We must recognize that "war- implement this new and comprehensive
which the individual responsible for fare" has once again gone through a program, then we will leave at risk our
the mission has full obligational au- major redefinition - we must now com- most precious strategic assets: our popu-
thority over funds earmarked for that pete with other nations in the context of a lation, our infrastructure, and our scien-
mission; e.g. the Director of a new Intel- "total peace" in which the tools for peace- tific & technical leads.
ligence Center or Joint Task Force should ful competition are every bit as important
to national security as the tools of war. If None of the above three chal-
intelligence does not meet the needs of lenges can be met without developing an
'Intelligence' cannot limit itself our "front line", the civilian agencies information technology strategy which is
to stereotypical perceptions of implementing peaceful preventive meas- national in scope, comprehensive (inte-
what is and is not a threat... ures and enforcing the law, then our de- graung telecommunications, computing,
fenses will continue to erode, and no and production across government and
amount of investment in "strategic deter- private industry as well as academic
rence" and conventional military forces lines), and visionary. We simply cannot
be able to establish a grade & skill mix, will suffice. afford to perpetuate the continued frag-
hire people, buy equipment, contract for mentation of systems development and
•xiemal assistance, and make structural We must place a great deal more continued investments in labor-intensive
changes to assigned facilities without emphasis on understanding all of the computing systems which do not opti-
being bound by inappropriate regulations dimensions of power and change, and mize the integration of available applica-
and entrenched preferences of the parent especially conditions in the increasingly tions and capabilities. We must aggres-
organization's civilian personnel, auto- lethal and volatile Third World. Without sively pursue means of exploiting all
mated data processing, and other estab- an entirely new methodology which af- available sources of data, both classified
lished staff elements whose processes fords us indications & warnings of revo- and unclassified.
have grown too complex and time-con- lutionary change in every dimension, we
suming while contributing little of sub- will be vulnerable, in the "worst case", to The establishment of a respon-
stance. One must stress that this in no bio-chemical and technical terrorism as sive requirements system within our
way exempts the obligating official from well as less threatening but ultimately government, one which acknowledges
oversight and accountability. more costly losses of initiative in various the importance of open sources and also
non-military arenas of competition. focuses resources on gaps rather than
Put another way: if Congress
authorizes and appropriates ceiling "Intelligence" cannot limit
spaces and funds for a particular activity, itself to stereotypical perceptions of We cannot be content with simply
the activity director should not then have what is and is not a threat. Intelligence
to fight on a "second front" with his or her must inform decision-makers about 'cutting back' across the board.
own bureaucracy, slugging out each per- every aspect of human endeavor upon Realignments must occur, and
sonnel and procurement action through- which good order and the prospects occur quickly.
out the budget execution - nor should the for a prosperous future depend. Intel-
activity director have to fight on yet a ligence must identify emerging sources
"third front" against Departmental and of power and opportunities for advan- repetitive collection against the same
Service financial administrators bent on tage as well as threats. static interests, is critical to the develop-
"taxing", redirecting, and restricting ear- ment of informed national acquisition
marked funds. The other side of this coin is strategics and the articulation of national
counts-intelligence and operational se- interests. Ifwccannof'shortenourloop"
curity. An entirely new theory and en- in the acquisition and exploitation of
tirely new methods of counterintelli- knowledge, we simply will not be able to

AU 35 Summer/Fall 1990
identify multiple challenges and oppor- from base a full forty percent - twenty per perspectives, such as we have never been
tunities within our multi-polar and multi- cent to new initiatives tailored to the willing to muster.
dimensional world in time to be effective. emerging threat, and twenty per cent to
BASIC research & development in criti- Top down strategic guidance
Lastly, if we are to meet the first cal areas such as artificial intelligence, will probably not be forthcoming before
five of these challenges, we must develop cognitive mapping, and the general the- FY 92, if then; in the interim, "bottom up"
a process for realigning resources in this ory of cybernetics. We must also protect common sense, and individual efforts to
era of radical change. We cannot be the mission/program manager respond- move in these directions when we can,
content with simply "cutting back" ing to strategic direction from Congress may be our best means of continuing u>
across the board. Recognizing new and the President, and buffer them from earn the "trust and confidence" of our
needs, developing new initiatives, and intermediate authorities seeking to President and our public.
funding research & development in all undermine if not destroy new initiatives.
dimensions will be critical to our strate- We in the intelligence commu-
gic longevity. The complexity and lethality of nity, like it or not, must play a leadership
the emerging threat, and the severely role if then national security community
constrained fiscal environment within is to responsibly decide how to train,
Realignments must occur, and which we must plan for national security, equip, and organize its forces and capa-
occur quickly. We in the national intelli- require vision, energy, a commitment to bilities for the 1990's.
gence community should plan on giving cross-agency and service cooperation,
up any increase over base, and taking and an understanding of Third World ********************

GTE
GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS CORPORATION
Electronic Defense Communications
* Intelligence Communications Architectures
* Systems Integrator for:
- PORTS Imagery Communications
- Wideband Multilevel Security Systems
* Intelligence Communications Interface Design (Ada)
* INFOSEC / COMSEC Systems
* LPI/LPD Special Communications Systems
Intelligence Communications Center
9400 Key West Avenue
Rockvitte, Maryland 20850
Tel: (301) 294-8517

AU 36 Summer/Fall 1990
 FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
COMPETITIVENESS: OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Proceedings, Volume I - Link
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 DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTIVITY IN THE 1990'S:

EXECUTIVE OUTLINE
R. D. Steele
Special Assistant
U8MC Intelligence center
18 May 1991

Budgetary constraints, competing Service requirements,

and the projected drop over the next 20 years of
qualified applicants will reduce the number of people
available to perform defense intelligence missions in
the 1990's.

If defense intelligence is to meet the challenges of

the 1990's with a smaller workforce, the productivity
of the remaining people must be dramatically improved.

"Productivity" can be defined as the optimization of

knowledge, time, product mix, process mix, and
organizational structure to accomplish the mission.

Building blocks for productivity increases include:

-- As Individuals

Quality of new hires and retention of most

productive workers1

- Quality of tools provided employees

1 To some extent the issue of attracting and retaining

quality employees goes in a vicious circle: good people are
needed to create good products which in turn justify funding of
good tools which in turn attract the best people. At this point
a strategic "leap of faith" is needed; only top-level support for
a ma-ior investment in the RECAPITALIZATION of the intelligence
infrastructure will lead to adequate intelligence capabilities in
the 1990's and beyond.
 Quality of training & education as veil as
general work experiences provided each employee1

Quality of employee interaction with customers

(policy-makers/commanders)

Quality of employee access to data (both open

source 6 classified, in all media - hard & soft
text, voice/ imagery/ graphics 6 mapping data)

Quantity and criteria of compensation/ allowing

employees to properly support a family/ own a
home/ and fulfill personal goals

— As Members of a Group

- Facility of interaction among employees (including

voice & electronic mail/ ready identification of
others with common requirements & interests)

- Quality of employee management (including

reduction of middle management positions and
INCREASE of management attention to strategic
direction)3

2 The importance of travel as well as training & education

cannot be exaggerated. Under current circumstances employees are
deprived of travel opportunities both because of budgetary
constraints/ and because the false urgency of "current"
requirements causes their managers to cancel travel in favor of
day to day production. The intuitive understanding essential for
analysis & forecasting can only be developed in the field.
Training & education are the other half of the equation - it is
foolish to expect good analysis from individuals whose
professional frames of reference are ten to twenty years out of
date; only a strong program of continuing education will keep
analysts current - the best analysts WANT more training.
3 There is no reasonable prospect for most military
intelligence officers of achieving general officer rank; there is
also no reasonable prospect for the best qualified civilians to
achieve super-grade status. Intelligence cannot solve this
fundamental lack alone; both civilian and military intelligence
professionals must be integrated into operational and policy
 - Flexibility t timeliness of recognition system
(including both tangible cash and intangible
award system)4

Over-all quality of employee environment (including

especially the provision of parking/mass transit,
health/shower facilities/ and a commitment to a
non-smoking environment)

Flexibility & timeliness of position management

permitting rapid re-training/ re-location, or
outplacement for unproductive employees5

The employee of the 1990's will be the "knowledge

professional" (sometimes called the "gold collar
worker"):

such an individual cannot be directed or managed in

accordance with standard operating procedures;

they are productive only to the extent they feel

responsible for and are interested in their work;

— management's challenge will be to create an effective

positions in such a way as to permit them to both impact on

operations and policy "from the inside", and to qualify for
general officer/super-grade status as generalists, not just as
intelligence professionals.
4 Civilians are warriors also. Defense civilians should be
eligible for all awards and medals, and recognized as frequently
as their military brethren.
5 Experts in human productivity such as Peter Drucker and
Robert Carkhuff emphasize that there is no such thing as an
unsalvageable employee - virtually everyone wants to excell and
be recognized. Too frequently employees fail because management
cannot afford the time or the expense of properly training,
equipping, and organizing individual employees. Defense
Intelligence in the 1990's must devote resources to
recapitalizing its human element. EEO gains can be protected by
emphasizing EEO priorities in relocating i retraining specific
individuals.
 channel for their productivity, determining "what"
they do and "who" they communicate with, and to
concentrate less on specifying "how" they work.

In the Age of Information:

productivity increases come from handling information

more efficiently;'

humans win remain the primary means of transforming

raw data into information; and

-- improved information technology applications are

the primary means of enabling humans to be more
productive at this task.

• Strategic directions which should be pursued include:

— Emphasize data availability to the analyst

(both in terms of timeliness ft comprehensiveness)
- Digitization of hard copy inputs
- Open source exploitation strategy
- Automated routing/flagging of relevant data
- Multi-level security and cross-Service, cross-
Agency on-line data access7

' Stress must be placed on the fact that this does not mean
more production, it means better more relevant, timely, and
ACTIONABLE production.
7 The trade-off between security & the value of free access
to information can be reduced through the implementation of
multi-level security programs and the development of artificial
intelligence programs which routinely sanitize & declassify
information for possible human validation & release. In cases
where "sources & methods" are involved, it is possible to use
REVERSE POINTERS which inform the owner of the sensitive
information of a query, permitting a tailored response as
appropriate. Right now the multiple pipelines of unintegrated
information (both by intelligence discipline and by organization)
are shackling the ability of our government to understand the
 — Emphasize global unrestricted data flow
- Online connectivity between Country Team,
analysts, and policy-makers
- Complete review & restructuring of defense
communications to eliminate dedicated channels
and accommodate digital mapping data, video
teleconferencing, secondary imagery dissemination,
and multi-media electronic mail
- Analyst access to "operational" traffic
- Automated sanitization as required

— Emphasize decentralized data exploitation

- Decentralized collection management with
priority to the Country Team and Theater
Commander
- Decentralized production management with
emphasis on "living" documents and databases

— Emphasize data-based policy

- Automation of "historical memory" through
digitization of pertinent records and creation
of selected expert systems
- Insistence on valid updated "threat" being
considered at each milestone in acquisition
process as well as force structure and training
evaluation

Emphasize increased data products and direct access

by consumer (policy-maker & tactical commander) to
organized data
- No more collection for sake of collection; new
systems must program resources for processing
& dissemination
- Mo more production for sake of production; "type"
products are less important than capability to

emerging threats of the 1990's.

 desktop publish answers to specific questions in
near real time*
Policy-maker must be able to access intelligence
electronically/ in near real time/ and must be
able to "drive through" intelligence data at
different levels (e.g. hypermedia branching)

Importance of top-level emphasis on the optimization of

employee potential cannot be over-stated:

Quality of individual employee will affect frequency

& depth of "sparking" and intuitive insights

Quality of tools provided each employee will affect

quantity of data reviewed/ reliability of review/ and
quality of analysis process

Quality of training provided each employee will affect

currency and breadth of analysis

Quality of employee access to customers and data will

affect relevance and timeliness of analysis as well as
accuracy of analysis

Facility of interaction among employees will reduce

redundancy and inconsistency while increasing cross-
Service/ cross-Agency joint perspectives

* Among other implications/ this suggests that "current"

production is over-emphasized/ as is the requirement for analysts
to "produce" a hard-copy publication. Much more could be done in
developing a cadre of both military and civilian analysts and
foreign area officers who work together to create country or
region-specific "skunk works" able to develop long-term strategic
and operational understanding of core issues. The ability to
quickly answer any specific question based on both intuition and
depth of understanding should be prized above the ability to put
"data dumps" out the door. Today we emphasize products which
force the consumer to choose what to read and what to believe; we
should be moving toward a "live" interaction between consumers/
analysts/ and information which leads to education, insight/ and
dialogue.
 — Quality of employee management and over-all quality of
employee environment will affect retention rate and
productivity

Specific recommendations for improving productivity of

defense intelligence employees:

'— Quality of People

- Implement a joint Civilian Intelligence Personnel
Management system (CIPMS) and convert all civilians
to a single joint Defense intelligence career pattern
- Provide early retirement incentives for civilians
in select Defense intelligence positions which either
require sacrifices beyond the norm (e.g. clandestine
HUMINT)/ or which must be realigned to permit
creation of new capabilities
- As productivity improves within Defense Intelligence,
reduce dependence on external assistance - channel
savings toward improved tools, training & travel, and
compensation
- Increase funds available for civilian pay and
allocate those funds on a meritorious basis rather
than as an across the board pay increase
- Provide for each analyst to spend at least 30 days a
year in training and/or travel to foreign countries
- Provide for each analyst to procure personal copies
of professional books and materials as desired and
to retain such materials

— Quality of Tools
- Establish a generic intelligence analyst's
workstation along the lines of the CATALYST
Project at the Office of Scientific £ Weapons
Research, Central Intelligence Agency*
- Provide central system planning & procurement

' There is no equivalent Defense Intelligence example.

Neither DODIIS CMW, EMERALD, LATIN, SIMS, KISS, RAPIDE, nor Other
systems are as mature in either their functional requirements or
their integration of artificial intelligence applications.
 assistance to the ten new intelligence facilities10;
do not rely on DIA/DS for this service - E8D/MITRE
and CATALYST could "bootstrap" tool situation
- Increase funding and accelerate schedule for
development of multi-level security system
enabling global on-line connectivity of operators,
analysts, and non-government experts"
- Establish an Open Source Committee at the
Intelligence Community Staff level
- Fund a global program of open source
exploitation (perhaps jointly with business)
which leads to the near-real-time digitization
of foreign SST and general interest publications
- Establish a central repository for open source data
(perhaps jointly with a major university) which
enables the business and academic communities to
increase national productivity through online access
to foreign information
- Establish a standard optical disk dissemination
media and work toward minimizing hard-copy products

— Quality of Management & Environment

- Encourage managers to facilitate direct analyst
access to individual policy-makers and commanders
- Train managers to serve as bridge-builders and
communicators
- Compensate managers based in part on independent
evaluation of their subordinates' production
Establish as a critical performance objective for
all managers the task of recapitalizing their tools
in order to maximize employee productivity

" USMC INTCTR, USCG INTCTR, TRANSCOM, SPACECOM, FORSCOM,

NORAD, JTF 4, JTF 5, JTF 6/ NNIC.
11 The absence of multi-level security systems remains the
greatest obstacle to most of the productivity initiatives
discussed in this paper; without multi-level security the analyst
will not be able to fuse all-source intelligence and will not be
able to communicate with analysts at other agencies and useful
but uncleared points of contact outside Defense Intelligence.
8
 Ensure minimum space and amenities standards are
adhered to in accommodating intelligence personnel;
Move as much of the intelligence infrastructure as
possible outside the national capital area in order
to restore basic quality of life for most employees11
Establish a standard analytical vork environment
consisting of furniture and equipment including a
personal printer and access to a production copier/
a high performance scanner, and distributed
processing capabilities

Bottom Line: Objective management of intelligence in

the 1990's with require firm emphasis on quality: in
people/ in tools, and in access to and sharing of data
within the government. Expenditures must be evaluated
in terms of their contribution to over-all defense
intelligence productivity/ not simply in terms of
relative cost within isolated services or Agencies.

11 This goal does not conflict with the equally important

need to increase analyst interaction with consumers. Direct on-
line consultations and secure voice access• as well as video-
teleconferencing and routine visits to the KCA, will permit
achievement of both goals.
 FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: NATIONAL SECURITY & NATIONAL
COMPETITIVENESS: OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Proceedings, Volume I - Link
Page
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