Kent Strategic Intelligence

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CONTENTS

Preface vii*

I. INTELLIGENCE IS K N O W L E D G E

Chapter 1. Intelligence Is Knowledge 3

Chapter 2. The Substantive Content of Strateg icIntelligence: (1) The Descriptive Ele-ment 11

Chapter 3. The Substantive Content of StrategicIntelligence: (2) The Reponorial Ele-ment . 30

Chapter 4. The Substantive Content of StrategicIntelligence: (3) The Speculative-



PART I

I N T E L L I G E N C £ IS K N O W L E D G E



CHAPTER 1

INTELLIGENCE IS KNOWLEDGE

I N T E L L I G E N C E means knowledge. I£ it c a n n o t be stretchedto m ean all knowledge, at least it means an amazing bulk

and assortment of knowledge. This book deals w i th only afraction of the total, but probably the most i m p o r t a n t frac-tion. It deals with the part, known to the inte l ligenc e tradeas "high-level foreign positive intelligence." This phraseis short for the kind of knowledge our state must possess

regarding other states in order to assure itself that its causewil l not suffer nor its undertakings fail because its states-men and soldiers plan and act in ignorance . This is theknowledge upon which we base our high-level nationalpolicy toward the other states of the world.

Notice what is being excluded. First, all knowledge of



STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE

means, but the bulk of it must be had through unroman-t ic open-and-above-board observation and research. 1

li should be borne in m i n d — i n anticipation of laterc h a p t e r s of this book which deal w i t h intelligence as aprocess—that th e in te l l igence activity consists basically of two sorts of ope rati on. I have called them the surveillanceoperation, by which I mean the many ways by which thec o n t e m p o r a r y w o r l d is put under close and systematic ob-servation, and the research operation. By the latter I meanthe attempts to establish me a n in g fu l patterns out of whatwas observed in the past and attempts to get me a n in g oucof w h a t appears to be going on now. The two operation sarc v i r t u a l l y inseparable, though for administrative andother reasons they are oft en physi call y separated. In actualpract ice there are generally two different staffs each of which cultivates the respective specialisms of surveillanceand research. But however far apart they get on the ad-mini s t r a t ive diagram or in the development of their owntechniques they are closely bound together by their com-mon devotion to the production of knowledge.

How describe this kind of knowledge? There are atleast two ways. One way is to treat high-level foreign posi-tive intelligence as the substance of humanity and nature—abro ad. This invol ves an almost endless listing of thecomponents of hum an ity and nature. The listings can bealphabetical or topical. Whichever, it runs to hundreds of pages and would ill serve the interests of the readers of thissort of book.

The other way, and the one 1 have adopted, is neitheralp hab etic al nor topical. It might be called functional.It starts from the premise that our state, in order to sur-vive in a world of competing states, must have two sorts of

state policy. The one is its own self- init iated, positive,1

INTELLIGENCE IS KNOW LEDGE

o u t g o i n g policy, undertaken in the interests of a betterworld order and a higher degree of national prosperity.The other is its defensive-protective policy necessar i ly un -dert aken to cou nter those policies of other states which areinimical to our national aspirations. This second kind of policy might better be called our policy for national se-

curity. I make this artificial distinct ion, bet ween po siti veand security policies, for purposes of the present analysis.

Consider our positive policy first. To be effect ive, itsframers, planners, and implementers must be able to select

. , ZtufarMtaA . , • rthe proper instrumentality of suasion from a long l ist orpossibles. Will it be a reso luti on in the U N , w i l l i: bediplomacy, will it be political and economic inducementor threat, will it be propaganda or information, w i l l it beforce, will it be a combination of several? The fnuners ,planners, and imp le me n te r s must also know w h e r e , how,and when to apply the instrumentality of their choice.Now neither the selecting nor the applying tan be donewith out reference to the part y of the second part. Be for ethe policy leaders do either they would be well advisedto k n o w :

how the other country is going to receive th epolicy in question and what it is prepared to

use to counter it;what the other country lacks in. the way of coun-

tering force (i.e.) its specific vulnerabilities;what it is doing to a r ray its protective force; andwhat it is doing, or indeed can do, to mend it s

specific vulnerabilities.

Thus our policy leaders find themselves in need of agreat deal of knowledge about foreign cou ntri es. They

need knowledge which is complete, which is accurate,which is delivered on time, and which is capable of serv-



c o u n t r i e s as ob jec t ive entities. For example , they mustabout:

. the physiques oE these countries, that is, theirnatural topography and e n v i r o n m e n t and them u l t i f o r m permanent structures which manhas added to the landscape (his cities, his agri-

cultural and industrial enterprises, his trans-portation faci l i t ies , and so on);. their peop le— how many; how they are settled;

how occupied;. the status of the arts, sciences, and technologies

of these people (and I would include in thisthe status of their armed forces);

. th e charac te r of their political systems, theireconomies, their social groupings, their codes

of morality, and the dynamic interrelationswhich prevail among all these.

Armed with this knowledge the leaders of positive pol-icy may go forward assured at least that, if they fail, theirfailure will not be chargeable to their ignorance.

Secondly, consider our other sort of policy, that is, ourpolicy concerned with the maintenance of the nationalsecurity. In the interests of security our policy leadersmust make constant provision for the positive policies of other states. Some o£ these policies we will have to regardas hostile to our interests and we must take steps to block them. Some, we may wish to meet half way. To frameand operate this kind of security policy we must have asecond large class of information about foreign countries,and again the knowledge must be complete, accurate,timely, and capable of serving as a basis for action. Wemust know the nature and weight of the instrumentalitieswhich these other countries can summon in behalf of theirown policies, and we must know the direction those poli-i lik l t t k W t k thi t l th t

we willnot be taken by surprise, but also so that we willbe in a posi t ion of defensive or o ffensive read iness w h e nthe policy is launched. When you know such t i l ings youknow a good deal about the o t h e r co u n t ry ' s strategic stat-ture, to borrow a phrase I will develop in Chapter 4. A ndon the theory that there is a relationship between v . ha t a

country adopts as an objective and what it thinks it canexpect to accomplish, knowledge of s t ra teg ic s t a t u re con-stitutes, in some degree at least, know ledge of the o t h e rcountry's probable intentions.

From the foregoing it can be seen that my f i r s t c lass of information to be acquired is essentially d e s c r i p t i v e am!reportorial, Jt is descriptive of the rel ativ ely changelessthings like terrain, hydro graph y, and climate. I; is descrip-tive of the changeable but no less permanent th ings l ike

population . It is descr iptiv e, too, o f , the more t r a n s i e n tman-made phenomena such as g o v e r n m e n t a l or economic-structures. With thi s kind of knowled ge our lead ers candraft the guide lines of our positive policy, of our peace-time and wartime strategy.

The second class of information to be acquired deal swith the f u t u r e and its possibilities and probabi l i t ies : howanother country may shape its internal forces to serviceits foreign policy or strategy; how it may try to use t hese

strengths against us, when, where, and with what e f f e c t i v e -ness. Where the first was descriptive, this is speculativeand eva luat ive .

Within these classes of things to be known, t hen , w emay perceive the statics, the dynamics, and the potentialsof other countries; we will perceive the established t h i ngs ,the presently going-on things, and probable t h i ngs of thefut ure . Taken together these make up the su b j e c t mat te rof what I have called high-level foreign positive intelli-

gence, or as I shall call it hencefor th—strategic intelligence.Incidentally, they also indicate the three main forms in




organizations. These f o rms are: the basic descriptive form,the current reportorial form, and the speculative-evaluative

form.- £ach of these is covered in a succeeding chapter.In these coming chapters I will give a picture of the

d ivers i ty and the size of strategic in te l l igence 's substantivecon ten t. There is no gainsaying that it is both extremelydiversified and extremely large. Bu t this does not arguethat the strategic intelligence business is either continu-ously occupied with every subject in the huge overall con-t en t or exclusively responsible for gathering all the da t awhich make up the content. I wish to be clear about thesetwo points.

Intelligence must be equipped to deal with the arrayof subjects which I will consider, and in the course o£ theyears it may conceivably deal with all of the subjects atleast once. It will, however, tend to deal with any singlesubject only when that subject is part of a threat to ournational interest or is required by a prospective course of

' Here is the first place where I will depar t f rom some of the acceptedusages of the intelligence language. I take tnis departure, as I have notedin the preface, because o E the large contusion one encounters in the lexi-con of the irade. In the trade, what I have called the basic descriptive formis variously called basic research, fundamental research, basic data , mono-graph ic data, etc. Wha t I call the current reportorial form goes by suchnames as current intelligence, current evaluations, current appreciai ions.

reports, cable material , hot intelligence, etc. What I call the speculative-evaluative form is known as estimates, strategic estimates, evaluation , staff intelligence, capabilities intelligence, and so on.

On the theory that the consumers o£ intelligence are interested inthings of the past, present, and future, I have adopted the element of time as ih e element oE overruling impor tance . This permits an easy andconsistent arrangement of the subject matter oE intelligence and permitso ne to postpone cataloguing this subject m a t t e r according to use-to-be-scrved, consumer, etc. u n t i l a later and m o r e appropr iate stage. Fewintel l igence devotees have done this in th e past. Far too man y of themin making up iheir categories of the kinds of intelligence have deferred toseveral factors of discrimination in the same list. Thus you may findimportant directives of the intelligence brotherhood which contain a list

of th e kinds oE intelligence looking something like this: (1) Basic T«e,;ircfi-_(S) Strategic intelligence, (3) Technical intelligence, (4) Counter intelli-g (bi 'T t i li t j l ig (6) C bilit i d t i t i t l l ig


action. One of the most continuously vexing problems inthe administration of intelligence is deciding w h i c h pa r -t i c u l a r subjects shall be watched, reported u p o n , or madethe object of descriptive or speculative research. E q u a l l yvexing is deciding the order of their priorit y. The po in tis that intelligence is always fully occupied, but occupied

almost exclusively on a relatively few subjects of r e a l na-tion al concern . At the same time intelligence m u s t beready to handle a large number of subjects.

Collecting the materials necessary to handle this largenumber is a task which intelligence does not do solo. In-telligence shares the task with a number of ins t i tu t ions—both public and pri vate . Let me confine myself to thepubli c ones.

Alt houg h the policy, planning, and operating o fficer s ofthe federal government (both civilian and military) arethe primary users (or consumers) of the finished intelli-gence product, they themselves are often important gath-erers and producers. As men who work in th e world of affairs they turn out, as by-products of their m a i n jobs,krge amounts of material which is the subject matter of strategic intelligence. The best case in point is the foreignservice officer in a foreign post. His main job is represent -ing the United States' interest in. that country, but a veryimportant by-product of his work is the informationalcable, dispatch, or report which he sends in. Not mere lythe informational cable but the s co-called "operational"cable as well. For in his capacity as U.S. representativ ehe must know m u c h before he takes a stand, and he mustexplain much to his superiors at home when he has takensuch a stand or when he asks their advice. A l t h o u g h th e

O

primary purpose of such communications is operational,they are frequently almost indistinguishable from thosewhich flatly state the day's new developments . And thus



talent often a valuable and effective purveyor of intelli-gence.3

There are others in public life, such as members of spe-cial commissions, U.S. delegates to international confer-ences, traveling Congressmen; and that such people makesignificant contributions to the total task of in te l l igencemust be borne in mind in the fo l l o wi n g chapters. Nor

should the involuntar y c o n t r i b u t o r s outside oE public lifebe f o rgo t t en : the writers, the newspapermen, the scholars,the businessmen, the travelers and big game hunters, evenforeign governments themselves (in their official r epor t sand releases) re nder inv alu abl e aid. I would have noreader get the idea that in te l l igence—in shirt sleeves andunassisted, so-to-speak—is obliged to produce from scratchthe prod igi ous body of data that it must have at hand. Tomake this point, however, in no way derogates the ex-

tremely important part of the total which intelligenceit se lf does produce on its own hook. Some of this is con-firmatory, and necessarily so; some is supp lementary orcomplementary of that which is in; some is brand new andsuffici ent unt o itself. Some is not merely new and vital,but is the s tuff which would not, indeed could not, beturned up by any agency other than intelligence itself. A llof it, plus the time and skill intelligence organizations em-ploy in its appraisal, analysis, and tabulation, makes up the

substantive content of our special category of knowledge.3 For cer ta in key pans of [he world th e Foreign Service does acknowl-

edge che need fo r special training, and the officers which it sends to theseareas may accordingly be considered intell igence officers in one sense o[the word . Most of even these however will have many non-intelligenceduties. ' '

CHAPTER 2

SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT: (1) THE BASIC

' DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENT

rTpHE descriptive element of s t ra tegic intelligence is basic-A - to the other two which I shall discuss. It is the gro und -

work which gives meaning to day-to-day change and t i n -groundwork without which speculation into the futureis Hkely to be meaningless.

The basic descriptive e l e m e n t deals with, or must beprepare d to deal wi th, many thing s. In the s ucceed ingpages I shal l touch upon enough of them to warrant myuse of the word "many." I shall draw my examples fromthe strategies of both war and peace, but if they feernweighted on the side of war it is because wartime has in

the past offered richer experience in intelligence and anexperience which may be discussed more freely than c u r -rent international business.

In the recent war most of the belligerents compi led en -cyclopedias on coun t r ie s they were contending with orwhich they planned to occupy or otherwise swing intotheir orbits. These encyclopedias should be conceived of either as a large file of knowledge in folders in a filing

cabinet or in some sort of finished book form. Intell igenceagencies all over the world kept this kind of file and wrotethis kind oi study. The British called them intel l igencestudies, monographs; we called them strategic,, surveys .topograph ica l intelligence studies. A f i e ld monograph;. ; theGermans called them summaries of mi l i tary-geographicalinformation or naval-geographical in fo rma t ion . Theirbasic aim was to provide the strategic planner with enoughknowledge of the country in question to make his over-all

calculations on its attributes as a zone of combat. Act uall ythey served a hundred other uses by no means all of which



S T R AT E G I C I N T E L L I G E N C E

military in th e narrow sense of the word. A surveyOf [he table of contents of a typical German book will in-d ic a t e the scope, if not the depth, of the knowledge re-quired for mili ta ry purposes.

I. G E N E R A L B A C K G R O U N D . Location. Frontiers. Area.History. Governmental 2nd A d min i s t r a t i ve Struc-ture.

I I . C H A R A C T E R OF THE C O U N T R Y. Surface Forms.Soils. Ground Cover. Climate. Water Supply.

I I I . PEOPLE. Nationalities, language, attitudes. Popu-lat ion distribution. Settlement. Health, Struc-ture of society.

IV . E C O N O M I C . Agriculture. Industry. Trade andCommerce. Mining. Fisheries.

V. T R A N S P O R TAT I O N . Railroads. Roads. Ports. Air-fields. Inland Waterways.

VI. MILITARY G E O G R A P H Y. [Detailed regional break-down].

V I I . M I L I TA R Y E S TA B L I S H M E N T IN B E IN G . A r m y : Order_; 0 of Battle, Fixed 'Defenses, Military Installations,

Supply . Navy: Order of Battle, The Fleet, NavalShore In s ta l l a t ions , Naval Air, Supply. Air: Or-der of Battle, Military Aircraft, Air Installations(see List of Airdromes, etc. Special Appendix),Lighter than air. Supply.

VIIL SPECIAL APPENDIXES. Biographical data on key(. figures of the government. Local geographical

terminology. Description of rivers, lakes, canals.Li t d ifi ti f l t i l t

INTELLIGENCE I S K N O W L E D G Emeasures. Beaches [as for amphibious m i l u a r yoperations].

A table of contents is the bare bones of the matter; itdoes not reveal the character and bulk of th e surrounding

tissue. Consider, for an appreciation of the detai l in ahandbook , of this sort, the kind of k n o w l e d g e which l iesbehind some of the simple one-word entries.

Take the chapter on "people" for instance. Here onefinds the latest population estimates—breakdowns accord-ing to ag e , sex, consumer groups, regional distri bution, andso en. When you reflect that few states o£ the world spendthe effor t on their vital statistics i h a t our census peoplespend on ours, and that even relatively reliable figures forthese states emerge only upon large labor, you discern theimportance and perhaps the magnitude of the populationand manpower division of strategic in te l l igence . Here_inthe study in question one also finds sections_Q n_SQcial strut:- \ J > *ture and social attitudes, with analyses of the groupings

e *

— ^ ^^^ ^^ _»— —^^ ^^» ^~ ^ ^— m i • '^ Ô

of society—ethnic groupings, minority groupings, religimisgroupings, r l n h s . Indies, secret societies, etc.. and howthese groups and their members feel about God, educa-

tion, filial piety, bodily 'c leanliness, c ap i ta l i sm, love, honor,and thtTstranger. Here are the sections on public welfare,educationTand the media of public opinion.

Take the chapter on ' transportation" and consider thedetails presented with each transportation system. Theroad section begins with a map of the road net; then fol-lows a kilometer-by-kilometer log of the main rou tes , withobservations on surface, width, grades, curves, fills, cuts,and bridges; then follows an overall appreciation of theroute under survey. All these seemingly endless data have




many such vehicles may pass over che road at thebefore the road (and in consequence the vehicles)

jll start disintegrating?ffP Sim ilar ly with the railroad s. Here again the gauge, num-|ber of tracks, and the routings (in the plane) are portrayed

fin general and detailed maps; w h a t might be called the^Vertical dimens ion of the route is given in a profile. ASwell designed profile provides more than the data onfgrades, however; it can be (and frequently is) a kind of jhnile-by-mile strip-map which indicates tunnels, bridges,Iwater points, ash pits, sidings, terminals, wyes, and repairShops. Wi th maps and profiles are a welter of othe r data:pSbgrade, ballast, tie characteristics, rail weights andfiengths, rail fastenings, signaling systems, and clearances;

Ipso an inventory by types of locomotives and rolling stock.my the time such materials are put together the plannerpas the data to calculate capacity of the railroad, what heshould fetch along in the way of supplementary motivef||wer and cars if he is to use the railroad, and what hisM a in te n a n c e problems are likely to be. If he has not theseffl|ta, strategic intelligence has failed.I&With ports there is another range of data: area of pro-H|cte:d water, depth of the water (at low water ordinaryB|rmg tides), dockage and depth of water at dockside,Egges on the docks, means of transportation for clearing

and for clearing the harbor area, warehousingfacilities, harbor craft, local stevedoring situa-

Snr 'bunkerage and watering apparatus, and repair facili-ttsZAll these and many more things—all of them in con-gurable detail—you must know before you can_plan theffective use of tfie pprt~which you plan to capture u n - - -gniafied and put to your own use. Most of these thingsSpan-find out about; some are not learned because no


For example, the transportation officer responsible forthe debarkation of our men and equipment in the portof Algiers immediately after the assault was well s u p p l i e dwith t h e 'm o s t detailed knowledge of that port, but in te ll i-gence fai led him in ar least two respects, It did not tel lhim that virtually every square yard of dock_space_wa.sianvpacked with enormous barrels of wine andlarge and j rc ihan^y *va1'*-' n f sw.. _BeforeJie could unload

,his o w n stuff he had_to make, way_ for it. This \vas a caseof the unlnresppn. contingency^

The other failu re is harder to excuse. One of the tra ns -portation officer's duties was to see that a number of fighteraircraft were unloaded and moved to the nearby M a i so nBlanche airdrome in the shortest time possible. If_he cou ldhave been sure that fully assembled planes of th is_ tvpecould be off-loaded and_wheeled_ down the docks, clear of the harbor area and down -the highway, he w o u l d haveloaded them on jhipdeck ready_to fly. B u t he was not sureof the width of the streets along hJS-possible itineraries andso he removed thewings. IE intelligence had ant icip ate dsuch a requirement, or if it had been 'inTorined of it, _theofficer mightjiave ha.d Ms answer and thus havejavedJiim-self some time, for at least prm nf . i - ^ ro'U'"i proved ampU'wide fo r the job.

Consider the chapter on the military establishment ini being. Granted that the force in being is_seld_o,m an .accn-

rate index oE the war-making potential. 1 there is some vir-tue in k n o w in g what exists as a nucleus of military powerand the chapter in question endeavors to describe just this.It describes' the compone nts of the standing force. In broadstrokes, the most important of these components on hcphysical side are: the number of men under a r m ? ;

their allocation among the three military services— groundforces, air forces, and naval forces; their tactical and ad-



rc


n) i n istrative_Qrganization; the q u a l i t y and quantity of tfw7ec[u ipment , l a rgeand small^the inventory of jveapons•irmrding to type and perEormance^the fixed defenses, in -^mTorv otalrcrafiandârships according to typejmd per-formance; the~'nature~6'EjTi i l ii a ryJ ins ta l la t ions—arsenals ,

air depots, shipyards, etc.; and the nature of

services. On the n o n -pliysical side thereâiôthe'Fhroad^romponents: metj iodsan d s tandards of recruitment; methods and extent bjjrain.ih"; experience under a rmYTnoT exper ience in combat;q u a n t i t y and quality of officers; quality of staff work ; theidenti ty of the important officers;"tKe nature and force o£

^ ; the degree o f esteem i n which the"

-

nation holds its armed services— all of these things head upinto two in tangibles: miUtai^skillanc^jnorale^ — If, jh'y .

strokes were made only a_Ut t le less broad this enumera-tion would be n iany~t imes its present length .

For example, consider one small item In the aboveline-up of major fac tors— the operational airfield. Thereare many categories of things which must be known of it .First it must be analyzed f rom the point of view of how.a potential enemy might use it and how well ic wouldserve his p u r p o s e s : w h a ^ j s i r s e x a c t ^ locat ion on the map

•and its location with jrespect to other airfields and supply

, centers; what is its elevation abgve^sea_ level; jwhat supplyfacilities does it enjoy (its p l ace . j n _ t h e transport an t j j rom-

"munica t ions net, in the electric power grid, the characterof its shops and hangars, baiTacks, its fuel and lubricantstorage installations, itTmumuohs .storage facilities), whatkindofplanes can i t accommodate and how £ n an y (lengthand;ype olTrun ways and taxiways, revetments, hard-stands,dispersal 'area's)', what hazafcls"to" air naviga tion does it

. pôssess^clirnateT^veather. mountains and other naturaTob-

stacles, power'lines), what in the way of protecting AA"positionslind 'smoke installations does u haye?


of view o£_its susceptibility to attack. In this_case m a n yof the characteristics noted above are still applicable; thereare ahoTom e~newJ^ri 'esr~CrITeTo't these are: what are it s iidentifying characteristics as seen from the air, wha:a m o u n t and kind of camouflage is used or may be antici-pated, what is the physical vulnerability of its man-madecomponents and their recuperability if subjected to aerialbombardment.

Thirdly, it might be analyzed from the p o i n t oi \ i e w of its use to the captor if captured. This analysis would de-mand a number of s t i t l further data on the detailed inven-tory of equip me nt. Can the machine shops, if taken u n -scathed, be used for the repair of one's own planes? Canthe r eve tmen ts and hard-stands? If not,- how much mustthey be modified, etc? When know ledge has been assem-bled :o answer these questions, and many others, with re-spect to all the military airfields of the c o u n t r y, then thisfragment of the chapter on the military establishment isdone. Questions of the sort applicable to an airfield areroughly applicable to all other installations or m a j o r piecesof a r m a m e n t — n a v a l bases, arsenals, warsh ips—and againthe knowledge brought together to answer them is a partoi the content of strategic in te l l igence.

Let the above suffice to indicate the scope, depth, andcharacter of a com pi l at ion of knowledge to serve one aspectof war-making. Before going over to the encyclopedias of peacetime strategy, I would like to indicate the substantivecharacter of three other aspects of wartime strategic intel-ligence of the descriptive category: the intelligence of strategic air bombardment, of political and economic war-fare, and of military government.

I. Strategic Bombardment ( -S^C )The crux of strategic bombardmen t (provided you have



STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE'•lean hit it) is target selection. Assuming urgency in the---Uime dimension, you must try to select those sectors of the• -enemy's war machine whose destruction will most signif-

icantly, rapidly, and permanently weaken his front line.^striking power. Since there may be several such sectors,

:>" and since they all cannot be destroyed in a single raid

(even with the A-bomb) you must not only identify suchtargets, but you must arrange them in rank order o£ impor-tance. The business of identifying targets and systems of

, targets, in terms of what their loss would mean to enemy: r

:war power, and the business of setting the priorities of their destruction, belongs properly in a later ch ap t e r,

-where I deal with the speculative-evaluative aspects ofstrategic intelligence. But both before and after this all-

;~ important evaluating operation, there are two o thers 'which

'-. partake very heavily of the descriptive.; • - The targets whi ch you are aft er constitute, in essence,ahe vulnerable areas ot the enemy's way of making war:and maintaining a funct ion ing society; and these most

:ierable areas cannot be picked out from the least (or;less) vulnerable areas until a great deal is known aboutthe enemy's entire way of life and his entire way o f mak ing

'war. Thus, whereas the strategic bombardment planner'sEncyclopedia need not include in detail all of the things;Fnecessary for the ground force (such as strategic geographyfand public h e a l t h ) , it overlaps that encyclopedia in some? places and goes beyond it in still others.

For the bombardment of a Germany or a Japan it hadto describe the national economies as if the description

• • " w e r e designed for the use of Funk and Speer or of Ishi-ibashi and Fugiwara; it had to range out into the patternof social institutions as if to serve Himmler and Goebbehor Konoye and Tojo. Before the planes went off on their

| first mission of systematic destruction, the planners for thebombardment of Germany had to know a very great deal

production, the production of ball bearings, of syn the t icrubber, and of oil. 2 Moreover, before they decided thatthese sectors of the economy were the ones whose dotruc-tion would give them the most s ignificant, rapid, and per-manent weakening of German wa r-mak i n g capacity they hadto know a very great deal about other sectors. The deci-

sion to send the B-29's against Japanese aircraft, a h u ' a f tengines, arsenals, electronics plants, oil refineries, and ul-timately against the concentrations of urban populationhad behind it a similar stock of encyclopedic knowledge .

Once the strategic vulnerabilities were tagged and thepriorities of attack settled, more descriptive k n o wl ed g e wasrequired to carry out the attack. Our bombers were tobomb physical man-made structures that the enemy wastrying hard .to conceal from ken, camera, and eyesight . " D e -

termination of their pinpoint location, their suscep tibi li tyto high explosive and incendiary, the ease with which the \could be repaired, and so o n , was more descriptive knowl -edge for which strategic intelligence was partly responsi-ble. I say partly, because another part oi the job was thatof operational intelligence.

2. Political and Economic Warfare,

Warfare is not always conventional; in fact, a great deal

of war, remote and proximate, has been fought withweapons of an unconventional sort. These weapons Ishould like to term political and economic, and the kindof war they are employed in, political warfare and eco-nomic warfare. Ip. both of these non-conventional warfare?you try to do the two things: weaken \he e_nemv'_s_wiU_aridcapacity to jgsist,jmd strengthenynur own nd your friends'will an4 capacity to_win. Political warfare might be de-

'See the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (European War), Overall Re-

port and Summary Report. (Washington, G.P.O., Sep temb e r 30, 1943):and the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific War), Summary Report.



Jgfeii' STRATEGIC I N T E L L I G E N C E

1 fined as an attempt to accomplish these ends by any means• ' • ' • - a t y o u r disposal except (1) the economic means (which I

am reserving) and (2) orthodox military operations. Eco-' n o m ic warfare may be s im i l a r ly defined with the appro-pri ate reversal of terms. In their politer guises both of these warfares have their peacetime uses; both are em-

ployed as i n s t ru men t a l i t i e s of the grand strategy cf peace;an d both have their own intelligence requirements in warand peace.

"- If the reader will pause to reflect briefly on the meaningof my definition of these two warfares in their rugged andtheir polite aspects, he will realize t h a t they encompass avery wide range of possible activi ties directed at a very wide

. . r a n g e of object ives. Consider some of these. On the po-litical side we may start with international alliances orfriendships to be strengthened or s t ra ined and interna-tional animosities to be smoothed over or aggravated.

Within a given national stats there is a wide range of I , -_•_ potential targets: first of all the armed forces and theirs ^morale problem. Then there are the political dissidents,^maladjusted social groups, the under-privileged, self-con-j scious minorities, labor leaders, gold-star mothers, paci-ffifists, angry hou sewiv es, emergent messiahs , gull ible cr

Jlpiorruptible officers of government, and a hundred otherpategories of the m i s in fo rmed , displeased, annoyed, unsat-gisfied, and outraged elements of the population. On th e

|||jcoaomic side there are international trade relationshipsjgjid in te rna t iona l financial arrangements to be dealt with,

and within the country itself soft spots in the domestic"onomy that may be reached by non-military means.

/The instrumentalities wiiich total war suggests in thexploitation of these targets are large in number and for"te most part as thoroughly unlovely as shooting war itself.'9 begin at the gentle end is to begin with the instrumen-

INTELLIGENCE IS K N O W L E D G E

by a i rcraf t ) . Such aspects of political war far e were typ ica lof our own Office of War Information and th e B r i t i ihBroadcast ing Corporation. Then comes the distorted tru thwhich we call ogeri p ropaganda , and with which we arepleased to associate the names of Lord Haw Haw, AxisSally, Tokyo Rose, and the Japanese artist who designedthe fulsome five-color depictions of what the "Yanks" inSidney were doing to the wives of the A u s t r a li a n soldiersin the field. Ne xt down the line is what is _ termed black propaganda, that which purports to come from dissidentelements w i t h i n the enemy's own popu la t ion , b u t wh i chis really carried on in great secrecy f r o m the outside. .

.Somet imes the black p ropaganda is done by radio^mne-tTrneVby leaflet, by fake newspaper, by forged letter^byany and a l l_ the means occurring to_perverse i n g e n u i ty.3

The instrumentalit ies under discussion thus far have be en,by and large, applicable to the target by remote control;there are other instruments which can be employed onlyby p e n e t r a t i n g enemy lines. This group of inst rumen ts

"leads off with the rumor invented and passed along byword, of mouth, it includes subornation of p e r j u r y, in-timidation, subversion, bribery, b lackmail , sabotage in all

• its aspects, kidnaping, booby trapping, assassination, am-bush, the franc tireur, and the underground army. It in-cludes the clandestine delivery of all the tools of thecalling: the undercover personnel, the printing press andradio set, the poison, the explosives, the incendiary sub-stances, and the small arms and supplies for the thugs,guerril las, and paramilitary formations- . ' •

The instrumentalities of economic warfare are simpleand almost simon-pure by comparison. In one idiom theyconsist of the carrot and the stick, or in Provessor Viner's

inversion, the Big Stick and the Sugar Stick. Translatedinto a more technical idiom they involve: blockade, pre-



black list on the one hand, and subsidies, loans, andbilateral trade, barter, and purchasing ag reement s on the

Before calculations of risk, expenditure of effort, andprobable eff ectiv enes s of attack can be made, all phases of

--,-'- the po l i ty, the s oc ie ty, and economy must be understood,'''""• ' vuln erabi litie s appraised, and methods of pressure

;d. A political warfare as deadly as the Germansjk'i" used in Europ e bo th befo re and afte r the outbreak of E^r armed hostilities and as the Japanese used in the putativef1.;?- Co-Prosper i ty Sphere of Greater East Asia was based uponiO.. the most pain sta kin g and min ute surveillan ce and researchfell imaginable. The sureness and deftn ess and timeline ss of I?/;-'their splitting of f and activating this dissident group, of in -t^f*>creasing the worry and apprehension of that, of aggravatinge j - ' ; " " t h i s annoyance and that cosmic gripe, of confusing this''.' : group of officials and subverting that, of sweeping this$ . -coun t ry into their economic orbit or virtually b a n k r u p t -$£-'irig that one, grew out of the descriptive knowledge which^ their intelligence operations prepared for this use.%& ""• '

3. Military Government

k'-The war over, the responsibilities of our armed forcesj-jr M ••

Continued in the civil affairs activities of the military gov-

prhment of occupied territory. The Army-Navy Manual• f i O f Military Government and Civil Affairs6 which "statesK , i l ' - . gthe .pr inc ip les which serve as a general guide . . . [to the

§xercise of] military government and control o£ civil af-lirs in territory occupied by forces of the United States"

iJis the occupants' responsibilities in twenty-three namedCategories and one miscellaneous. These are: "Politicaland Admi nistrat ive. Maintenance of Law and Order. Su-i '.

IK .'.'See David L. Gordon and Roydon Dangerf ie ld , The Hidden W eapon:gTAt Story o f Economic Warfare. (New York, 3947).§£•' 'Issued by the War Department as FM 27-5 and the Navy Department

pervision of Military and Civil Courts. Civilian Defe nse.Civilian Supply. P u b l i c Health and Sani tatio n. Censor-ship. Communications. Transportation. P o r e Duties.P u b l i c Utilities. Money a nd B a n k i n g . Public F i n a n c e .Commodity Control, Prices, and Rationing. Agriculture.Industry and M an uf act ur e. Commerce and Trade. Labor.Custody and Administration o f : Property. In form atio n.Disposition, or Relocation o£ Displaced Persons and En-emy Nationals. E d u c a t i o n . Reco rd s , [and in case theyhave missed something] M isce l laneous ." e

Of course, the degree of the occupant's responsibilitywithin any one of the aroas listed above is circumscribedby the nature o f his m i s s i o n — a f t e r all, he will not try torun the country at the same level of satisfaction demandedof its p i ev ious sovereig n. He will try to run it w i t h aneye merely to the prevention of those evidences o t dissatis-

faction: "disease and u n re s t , " as the formula gees. Buteven so the responsibi l i t ies are large, They are sc la rgethat they cannot be undertaken w i t h o u t a very carefu l eval-uation o£ objectives, without a very careful formulation ofpolicy, and without a great deal of highly detailed plan-ning. Here is anothe r legitima te demand upon th e de-scriptive element of intelligence, for it is impossible forthe man invested with the occupant's responsibilities somuch as to nibble at their edges until he k n o ws the natureof the society, polity, and economy with which he mustdeal. Intelligence suppl ies him new encyc loped ias—thistime they must cover new aspects of familiar ground.When they deal w i t h government they cannot deal withit as something to be subverted by politica l warfare. Wh enthey deal with physical plant it is not as something to bebombed. They must deal with those characteristics of bot hgovernment and industry which the occupant must con-serve for his own use. When th ey dea l with a railroadthey cannot repeat the data necessary to blow it up or the



S T R AT E G I C INTELLIGENCE

data necessary to run one's own military t r a ins over it;they m u s t deal w i th such things as its indigenous manage-ment and must furnish the knowledge to indicate how it

may te put back on its feet.

In the f o rego i ng pages I have e n d e a v o r e d to touch uponce r ta in kinds of omnibus study, the first examples of whichserve in the main the strategic requirements of war, andthe lajt examples of which shade off into post-war. Beforeleaving the subject, however, I should mention two morekinds of encyclopedia which are typical of peacemakingand peace itse lf. The first can be called the peace hand-book, the second the general purpose survey.

At the end oE World War I, the British delegation tonegotiate the peace came to Paris equipped with any num-ber of litt le blue books. Sponsored by the Foreign Of ficeand used by the delegates, they were what might be called

'a peacemaker's Baedeker.'' In short, terse paragraphs, and? appendixes containing the most important documents of _ ., state, treaties, etc., they aimed to supply the minimal needs

./V.-of the officials charged with draf t ing the treaties. A brief , - . ; ; of the table o£ contents for the two vo lumes on Austria-

' . . ^ .Hungary wi l l indicate the general substance of the work.study is first broken down according to seven re-

components of the former Austro-Hungarian1. Austria-Hu ngary. 2. Bohemia and M o r a vi a ,

'vuida. 4. Austrian Silesia. 5. Bukov ina. Transyl-a and the Banat. 7. Hungarian Ruthenia, Within

| ,each of the regional sections there is a more or less constant^Breakdown according to subject. The section on BohemiaH^nd Moiavia ran to 109 standard-size pages. No one who

them could possibly have remained in ignorance of ethnic and economic problems which were to

J

• • - - •- — *^ - 'oetfrn frvinrier*

- e.^v:3« e "nan e t n c an economc p

|v k .eset trie mer

i responsible for drawing the western frontiers.

I N T E L L I G E N C E IS K N O W L E D G E

of the new Czechoslovakia, and no one who read themwould fail to acquit h imsel f better at the peace table.

There w e r e many other handbooks in the series, andeach emphasized those phenomena of a given countrywhich were certain to come up i:i the discussions. Forexample, the book on France has a long and detailed sec-tion on Alsace-Lorraine; the one on Germany has sectionson Silesia, the Kiel Canal and Heligoland, and the Colo-nies; tn e one on Turkey, an excellent t r e a t m e n t of theStraits question; and there is one entire short study on the

Yugoslav Movement.Could there be such a thing as a general-purpose hand-

book of p e a c e t im e —a handbook which will contain theknowledge for peace and the knowledge necessary to meetaggression with dynamic defense? The answer is an obvi-ous Yes. Such a handbook would be very similar to someof the encyclopedias already described. Paying for such aprogram of general-purpose handbooks is another m a t t e r,especially so in terms of an economy-minded Congress.Perhaps such a program could be framed w i t h i n the gov-ernment where the dimensions of the substantive require-ments are known and then farmed out to our learned insti-tutions which in last analysis constitute one o f : our most

priceless strategic resources.So far I have confined myself to the form of the basic

descriptive element o[ strategic intelligence which isbroadest in one dimension and at the. same time likely tobe shallow in the other. In a sense, the stra tegic su rve y ofwar or handbook fo r peacetime should be conceived of asan introductory instrument, the sort of study a man goesto when he is new to a subject. There are at least two otherforms besides the encyclopedia which are worthy of men-tion: they are the narrow and deep study, and the thingcalled "spot information. " Since many of the exam ples of

the past pages were taken f rom a war co n t ex t , these nextill be t ken from pe cetime conte t

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENCE IS KNOWLEDGE




The Narrow—Deep Study

The national peacetime objectives of this country aren u m e r o u s and the grand strategy to attain them a many-faceted affair. In searching for examples of the kind of narrow and p r o f o u n d descriptive in te l l igence to sustain

— this strategy one is virtually overcome with the multitude

of possibilities. Everywhe re one looks in the world a na-tional objective is on the block. In the New York Times

, . for a day taken at random 8 there were between fifty andsixty news items of concern (varying degrees of concern , to

"•'. be sure) .to a g rea t ma ny officials of our federal government.. The items in this day's Times touched fourteen separate • - sovereign states, three dependent areas, five areas underj^ v U.S. occupation, and five subjects of importance all the?';X.way across the UN board, Somebody in the government

>• .-who presumably received the news over his own co m-yj£. imm icatioris before he read it in the Times—had to initiate

action, continue action, or change the course of the action|vhe was already taking . It is assumed that this news landedin Washington against a solidly informed backdrop. It

^Washington were prepared to deal with the issues in ques-,tipn, what must it have possessed in the way of complete,••applicable, and accurate knowledge?pj" Under Secretary of State Will Clayton, appeared, accord-

ling to this news item, before the House Foreign Relations(Commit tee to explain and defend a request for 350 million^dollars for continuing UNRRA functions under a - -new

fpolicy. One of the beneficiaries of the relief fund would be|Ghina. Mr. Clayton emphasized that the distribution of

would be rigidly supervised and controlled by thebUnited States as benefactor. It may be assumed tha t inBaking his presentation to the Committee Mr. Clayton

iew that there were people starving in China; knew that

Qfi'situation was antithetical to certain of our object ives• y Jday was 26 February 1947


and interests, and that it was in our power to do some-thing in defense of these object ives and interests.

An important policy decision involving quantities ofthe national treasure should be based upon the sort of de-tailed and precise knowledge characteristic of the descrip-tive element o f intelligence. If this is the case, wh at kin dsof knowledge on what subjects should Mr. Clayton have

had?First and f o r e m o s t he should know how many people

there were in China. He shou ld know this so that when heknew the second thing, i.e., how many of them were starv-ing, he would have his own notion of the size of the ca-lamity . Were 2 per cent starvin g or we re 15 per cent?Next he should know if the starvation of x per c en t of theChinese population was something that happened everyyear, or if ii was something w h i c h was happening now

because of special post-war conditions. That is, he shouldknow how China's normal or potential food -produ cing ap-paratus equated with the requirements of the population.He would have to know this in order to decide the basicquest ion—is there any use in our trying to feed the Chi-nese? For if the local food deficit were chro nic a n d th eChinese chronically unable to produce enough food andto amass foreign exchange necessary to import sufficientforeign food, was there any point in our taking China on

as a permanent charge? If this were the case and a hea l thy,unified, and democratic China one of our national objectives , should we not perhaps go about it in another way?

But a s su mi n g that Mr. C lay ton ' s knowledge assuredhim that the s i tua t ion was special, not chronic, what otherthings should he know? He should know how much foodof what kinds would be necessary to alleviate the situation.He should know how food was normally distributed inChina and if these distribution systems were partially to

blame for the famine. If they were, he should know howtheir faults could be overcome with respect to the food he

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENCE IS KNOWLEDGE




• '-. .-.• proposed to send to China, and whether or not the task of improving them would in itself be too large to underwrite.He should also know what kinds of food were acceptableio tiie Chinese. Even ser iously undernourished people areastonishingly choosey about the staples of their diet, as was

' proved aft er the last war. He should k n o w—in the eventthe Chinese insisted upon rice—if the world rice market

was able- to deliver the rice in exchange for dollars and thethings dollars can buy. He should know, in so far as such

, things can be known, what in ternal and what internationalpolitical consequences would follow a successful feeding

operation on our part. To take up the position of relief in China one can imag-

: ine Mr. Clayton armed with a study which answered allthese quest ions and many more. It would be essentiallydescriptive. It would also require a large amount of work

on the part of an intelligence staff, for knowledge of thekind required will net be lying around in neat bundles

fSv.ready for the plucking. As to the benefits we might expect„ -,;,r.from tiding China over a rough spot, the discernment of Lt^"'these is a task of appraisal and evaluation and is the subjectt-4;T of ano the r chapter.a-Wa.,

fe."-•'Spot Intelligence

IP?-' The last category of strategic intelligence—descriptive—

y>îs what the trade calls "spot intelligence," or "Informationise," or "Ask Mr. Foster." The kind of knowledgewhich it supplies is usua l ly in answer to some innocent-fsounding question like: What side of the road do cars runOn in Petsamo? What is the best map of southern Arabia?

at is the depth of water (LWOST) alongside the Jete'eransversale of C asablanca? Where is U Saw now? What

the characteristics of electrical current at the commer-fqa l outlets in Sidney? How much copper came out of the;Bor mines in 1937? How good is the water supply inJiong Kong? When did Lombardo-Toledano last go to

Venezuela? What are the administrative units of th eUSSR? And so on.

With this sort of q u es t io n , the answer to which is usu-ally cast in words, there are other ques t ions wh ic h ar eanswerable only by the map, the d i ag ram or p l a n , and thephotograph. The descriptive element of strategic intel-ligence must stock such items or know where to find them.

In some cases such questions have a strategic impo rta nc e,in many they do not. On the other hand it can be argue dthat ii an organizat ion can answer all such questions, ithas on file the knowledge to answer more important ones.Distasteful as the "Ask Mr. Foster" funct ion is to stra-tegic intelligence, it is probably a legitimate one and the

•substantive content an important fragment of the s tove o f

it s total knowledge.From the above it can be seen that in order fo r us "to

assure ourselves that our cause will not suffer nor ourpolicies fail because they are ill-informed" our intelli- , gence organizat ions must be prepared to describe a . large

number of phenomena. They must be prepared fo r morethan this however. For description involves a stop pin g of the clock of time and the real clock cannot actually bestopped. It goes on, and descriptions of the things of yes-terday are out of date tomorrow. To remedy the de fec t sinherent in a necessary but artificial stopping of the clock,a second e ement of intelligence is essential. This is th ecurrent reportorial element which aims at keeping certaindescriptions up to date. «



CHAPTER 3

SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT: (2) THE

CURRENT REPORTOR1AL ELEMENT

THE pages immediately preceding have dealt with a

knowledge of th ings and people as they were at a given. m o m e n t of time. The phenomena of H f e which appear indie formal encyclopedias can be regarded as frozen in mid-passage, Such an accum ulati on of data as has been de-scribed would be virtually all strategic intelligence re-

. quired were it not for the element of motion in hum an"events. The obvious fact, however, is that practicallynoth ing known to man stands completely still, and that the'most important characteristic of man's struggle for exist-

is the fact of change. Knowledge devised to fit theI requirements of grand strategy must everlastingly take intoaccount this fact of change. Keepi ng track of the rnodali-|ties of change is the function of strategic intelligence in itsI'current reporting" phase.^Befo re embarking upon an analysis of the areas of hu-

activity in which change occurs and where intelli-gence should note the changes, it is worth making the

Ipoint that the streets through which change moves aremany-way streets, and there are many kinds of change. For

jjexample, it is as important to know that the standing mili-tary .establishment of a potential enemy power is being

Demobilized as it is to know chat it is being built up ori&erely reoriented around a new weapon or a new tactical

Icprtcept. It is as impor tant to kno w that the level of p ros -perity in a friendly country is rising as it is to know thattis going on the rocks. It is as important to know of the

lergence of a friendly government in a hitherto hostileitate as it is to know of the overthrow of a friendly govern-

30

mem in a hitherto friendly state. In fac t the direction of change is sometimes more important to know about thanthe absolutes of quantity, extent, effect, e tc . Thus thismatter of direction, without falling strictly into the area of content, is one of highest significance.

If the current reponorial phase of intelligence is to dothe job, in what specific areas of human activity must itobserve and repor t change? Or, pu t anot he r way, if onevery important part of the intell igenc e mission is the obser-vation of day-by-day developments (survei l lance) whatphenomena should be put under surveilla nce? There arctwo ways to app roach the answer to this que sti on. Onewould be to list areas according to their known or foresee-able priority of interest to the grand strategy of t h i scount ry. If this method were adopt ed the first area for theU.S. in A.D. 1949 would necessarily be either that of a for-eign power's program of atomic research, biological andchemical warfare instruments, or in the successes and fail-ures of the international Communist movement. Thesecond area might be changes in the armed es tab l i shmentsof the world, or in the economic well-being of the world,or in the political stability of the world, or in its moralfsrvor to do right. It would t ake a wise man to set thesepriorities, and it is my feeling that the r e s u l t an t l isting;would have neither the cheering element of certainty northe comforting quality of logic.

The second way to approach such an analysis of con-tent w o u l d be according to some established and logicalpattern of humanity and human ac t iv i ty—would be to fallback upon the time-worn rubrics which social scientistshave used for decades. This method has the advantage of logical order, but it runs the risk of submerging importantmatters in a wel ter of uni mp ort ant ones. But since theobject of this chapter was to lay out the substance o£ oneelement of strategic intelligence and was not to serve as anexhortation to operating intelligence agencies of the mo-

31




merit, I w M adopt this latter method and follow its formal^subdivisions.' f i y. i. personalities. On the theory tha t the basic-descriptive•'•'•'element will have chronicled in its biographical files and

fe-t'. posted in it s biogra phical encyclo pedias t he names of ' e who were important a s of a certain date i n the past,

slr'the r ep o r t o r i a l element must keep track of the goings and

' g s and liai sons o f these people. More important: , even, it must in addition pry beneath the surface of past.^leadership to discover the emergent figures of tomorrow.

'-.v;lWho knows the name of the British Prime Minister or th elltlcader of t iie French Communist Party in 1960? Who

;:^ 'knows the head of the Soviet Un ion in 1955? Who will behe chie f of staff of the Yugoslav air force? Who will behe leaders of a divided Palestine? Who will be presidenti: Lever Brothers or United Chemical? Who will be the

^director of the Pavlov Institute and leader of the Latin|American Confederation of Labor? The men who wil lihold these jobs some day are alive at this moment. Where"are they? What are they doing? What sort of people are|they? The futu re is by no means entirely free to nominatefsuch officials by random choice. The chances are that the

fu ture will be obliged to make its selection from a fairlymarrow slate of candidates. These candidates are at this

abment the comers in business, in the mi l i t a ry, in the

Fade union movement, in politics, the arts (let us notforget Paderewski), education, and the conspiratorial u n-jJ?rground. The job is to find out abou t these emergentfeaders and to watch their progress upw ard, so th at asinvolutions brew and violent or natural deaths approach,|he possible human replacements for the ousted or deadjwjil be well known.

e every man is both the product and molder of hisEnvironment, and since no two men are exactly alike, an

[intelligence operation to do its reportorial job on mengnust know a great deal about them It must know of their

character and ambitions, their opinions, their weaknesses,the influences which they can exert, and the influences be-fore which they are frai l . It must know of their fri en dsand relatives, and the political, economic, and social milieuin which the y move. Only by knowin g such mat te r s cmthe emergent character be invested with the dimensions of readership, and only by knowing such ma t t e r s can one

guess at the sort of change toward which the neu ' leaderwill strive when he comes to power.

2. Geographic. On the theory that there are already de-scriptions of what I have earlier called the physiques of other countries, the devotees of current reporting must becontinuou sly improving and extending these descriptions.Not merely must they chronicle the new changes that manis making upon the landscape—many of which ap p ea r insection 4 below, but also they should be abreast of d ie

widening of the hor izons of geophysical knowledge. Wh atnew facts are being learned or can be observed in suchmatters as erosion rates, the silting of rivers and harbors,weather, beaches, water power sites and supplies of drink-ing wate r. Wha t is being discovered or can be noted inthe fields of hydrography, geodesy, and geology.

3. Military. Again on the assumption that the armedforce-in-being, as outlined in the preceding chapter, hasbeen carefully described as of a certain date, the reportorial

element has the task of keeping track of developmentswithin the establishment. It must know of new legislationwhich will set the size and quality of the force for the yearor ye^rs to come. It must keep track of recruitment poli-cies and their success and failure . It must keep track ofchanges in the training of the enlisted man and the officer.It mus e know developments in the indoctrination of troops, the social strata from which the corps of officers isrecruited, the economic status of men and officers. No

matter what the difficulties, it must try to keep track of those changes which the other country properly regards as



STRATEGIC 1

t'-jts own military secrets: such things as new fighting ships,fncvi types of airc raf t, new weapons of all horrendous sorts,

devices for improving fighting efficiency,1 changes ins^.morale and in the loyalty of the force to its government in^ its regional, its political, its religious, and its nationalistic

"orientation.4. Economic. Again on the theory that the handbooks

have stopped the economic machine at a certain point intime and described it, the r epo r to r ia l element has the task of keeping track of current economic developments. Itmust note the emergence of new economic doctrines and

j f j . theories—for purposes of example I cite the range which--lies between Keynesian theory, down through Ham and

Eggs, to the Technocrat s. It must keep carefu l track of ^.changes in the housekeeping side o£ the armed forces, ad-y-.ministrative reorganizations and the like, and it must noteI, changes in government economic policy—policy affectingK , indust ry, th e organization of business, agriculture, bankin g

Land finan ce, and foreign trade. It must know the changesif which are occurring in the size and distribution of nat ional

l wealth and income, of changes in the standard of living,fewages, and employ ment. It must watch fo r new crops and|the dev elopm ents of new methods of agriculture, changes in|farm machinery, land use, fertilizers, reclamation projects,

so on. It must follow the discovery of new industrial^.processes, the emergence of new industries, and the sink-Ting of new mines. It must follow the development of newfutilities and the extensions of those already established. Itimust follow changes in the techniques and implements of

p,distr ibution, new transport routes and changes in the in-1 It is hard to say, and perhaps footless to try to decide whether such

^matters as non-fouling marine paint, atabrine, radar, th e use of bloodgplastna, and any number o £ similar mat ters belong under the military orjsome other head ing . Perhaps the decision as to their appropr ia te nlloca-i;-t«m should be made according to the degree at secrecy with which their

hold them Pla inly it seems that highly classified things like

ventory of the units of transportation (autos and trucks,locomotives and cars, transport aircraft, canal boats, andblue water merchant shipping). P e r h a p s most importantlyin the age of atomic fission, it mu st no te discoveries in newnatural resources, notably at the moment the discovery ofhigh-grade uranium deposits.

5. Political. The reportorial e l e m e n t must pay strictestattention to changes of a basic co n s t i t u t i o n a l n a t u r e andevents such as those which rnve recently occurred inFrance and Italy, and which m ay soon happen elsewherein the world. It must observe how political power unitsare lining up on significant issues, and how such u nit s maybe splitting up into factions, disintegrating into othergroups, or joining them en bloc. It must w ? tch changesin the basic political doctrine o[ these groups. It must take

note of changes in relationship among the central, the re-gional, and the local political authorities, and the majorshifts in policy toward domestic, f o ie ign , colonial, and im-perial problems. It must follow new legislation which willaffect political expression, to make it either more f ree orless free. It must watch national and local election resultsand the emergent political figures mentioned earlier. Itmust follow the course of new pressure groups and othertypes of organizations which are cap ab l e of political influ-

ence from outside of party f ramewo rk . It must know of new governmental and administrative techniques.6. Social. Perhaps the most important single social phe-

nomenon that the reporting element must watch is that of popu lation. It must watch it in all its aspects: its gro wthor decline, and its rates of growth and decline; changes inits age groups, its occupational groups, and consumergroups. It must watch for changes in its distribution be-tween c i t y - and country, between region and region. Itmust take note oE migrations within the country and emi-gration from the country, and until time and permanent

STRATEGIC I INT LLIGJiiS il i i MJ i ij



STRATEGIC I

^displaced persons. There will also be changes in the socialwhich are closely allied to certain phases of eco-

change, and which must come under cons tan t ob-- s cr v a t o n . Wh at groups are emergin g to social and

^"economic eminence , what groups or classes of groups are? Wh at are the developments wi t h i n that particular

^'element of population known as the labor force? Theelement of intelligence must keep track, of its

-ch an g es in size and structure, and above all must watchKhow it is organizing, and under what leadership, for its£ struggle with management.

What is happening to church membership, who is join-|."ing clubs and what kind of clubs are they, who is foun ding

new lodges, secret societies, and cooperatives? Intelligence,; -- in this aspect, must also know a large number of other

^things about the society, such as changes in the way of liv-

. development of new housing, changes in the homeêconomy and fam ily diversions. It m u s t be aware of

^changes in taste, manners, and fashions. It must follow the^program of educational institutions of all levels, and wo r ryâlmost as much about the changing content of the ele-mentary history textbooks as it must about changes in the

Curricula of the highest graduate and professional schools.It must concern itself with government policy toward edu-

jjcation at all levels and with changes in the relationship

Between government on the one hand and non-govern-iinental organizations, such as the churches, the tradeBunions, the clubs and societies, on the other. It must knowjpf the changing relationship among minority groupsfWithin cultural, social, and economic groups, and it must

for the changes in the statutory and j u d g e -mad e law,yhich in turn change the course of human behavior•throughout the population pyramid.

|& 7. Moral. Within the wide range of matters moral the

reportorial element must heed changes in the basic doc-o£ life: the waxing or waning or religiosity, of pa-

INTtLLIGJiiSt-.il is iv.MJxn-i.ijut

triotism and nationalism, o£ belief and confidence in theregnant order and in the nation al myths. It must know oEthe change in popular attitudes toward the purge of unde-sirables, the n a t i o n a l i za t i o n of private property, p a r tygovernment, civil marriage, lay education, rights of mi-norities, universal military training, to hit a few of thehigh spots., 8. Scientific-Technological. Since much of the world tobe will be the product of science and technology, the re-po r to r i a l element must wat ch these with sharpness. It mus tknow of any developments that might be of significancefor foreign policy considerations in mathematics, physics,chemistry, zoology, geography, oceanography, climatologyand astronomy. It must know wha t is hap pen ing in therealm of the social sciences. What are the students of so-ciology, economics, psychology, geography, law, and his-tory, and so on coming up with? What new ideas are theyget t ing that will some day have the influence of the dis-coveries of a Locke, a Rousseau, a Darwin, a Pavlov, aFreud, or a Haushofer? What is happening in the medicalschools and the clinics; what are the new diagnoses, thenew remedies, the new treatments ? What is going on inthe realm of telecommunications: the telephone, the tele-graph, the submarine cable, and above all, radio? What ishappening in the world of cartography? What new areas

of the world and phenomena of life are being charted onthe map? What new purposes are old theories being ap-plied to, what new uses for old materials? How are any orall of these being applied to armaments?

The preceding paragraphs cover a staggeringly large areaof continuing human activities. I have written them thusin an endeavor to portray the dimensions of subject matterand not as an exhortation to the reporters of the surveil-lance force to keep every square inch of it under active and

systematic observation. It should be thought of as describ-i g t f th l d f th t ti l i





Rflities of the reporting f u n c t io n . The question which atarises is what fragments of the enormous whole are

l&ually to be put and kept under scrutiny. There is norical answ er. The only answer is one to be pu t in

|§Fi form oE a d i f f e r e n t i a l — n a m e l y : only such fragmentsif'are positively germane to na t iona l problems which are

j f b now and other problems which appear to be coming.'' iose should be dealt with first which are matters of es-

ied natio nal importan ce. They will vary fro mCountry to country and from time to time,

instance, what is going on in the French GeneralConfederation of Labor, in the Politburo, in Zionism, in

Ji'e Peron g o v e r n m e n t, in the Philippine cabinet, in thej j ranmm mines of Joachimstal, Czechoslovakia, in the Pas-

|cur Institute, is of greater national significance than theKtension of the Ouagadougou Railway, the new budget

f|f Mexico, or the ch an g i n g literacy rate in China. How-ever, this is not to argue that matters which in the shortferrn are as relatively unimportant as the last example mayOpt some day in some circumstances deserve first priorityfea tment . No r is it to argue that all matters of first orSren second degree importance are to be identified byline simple rule of common sense such as the "nationaliterest" rule I have given. Perh aps the greatest diff icul ty

the surveillance force must face in carrying, out the

iportorial function is not so much the amassing of knowl-ige on present and foreseeable problems as in looking outito the future and in trying to identify matters which will

day themselves become problems.j*As the reporting element carries out its task it constantlyfdds freshness to the content o£ the basic descriptive ele-

lent. It does more than this, for in keeping otherwiseffatic knowledge up-to-date it maintains a bridge betweenTie descriptive and what I have called the speculative-

Igvaluative elements—a bridge between the past and theiture

CHAPTER 4

SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT: (3) THE

SPECULATIVE-EVALUATIVE

ELEMENT

nno I N T R O D U C E this most important and most complicated-» - element of strategic intelligence a few fairly obvious

facts are worth a brief restatement.The world with which the United States must do busi-

ness is very largely composed of separate sovereign states,and the kind of business the United States must do rangesthrough all the possible stages between most pacific andmost belligerent, By many and diverse means we try topromote a better world order. "We undertake and makegood on collective agreements reached in the UN; w eundertake and make good on bilateral and m u l t i l a t e r a lagreements with other states and groups of states; we exerrpressures of many sorts in behalf of world well-being andour own security; and we go to war. In carrying out t hi svast amount of enormously complicated business we mustbe foresighted. We should be prepared for the f u t u r e ; weshouid put every effort into being well-girded for its con-tingencies; we must not be caught off balance by an un-expected happening. In the perf ect grand strategy nothingthat happens,can have been unexpected.

The problem of this chapter is the analysis of what theUnited States must know in order to be fo res igh ted—whatit must know about the future stature, of other separatesovereign states, the courses of action they are Hkely toinitiate them selves, and the courses of action they are likelyto take up in response to some outside stimulus. Theknowledge which is at issue is far more speculative thanthat discussed in the last two chapters, viz., the basic de-scriptive, and the current reportorial. The obtaining of it



f*A ,m^

_F?Vv•stm:* ,i:Im

•Iff?-jj;v;i -

^^

STRATEGIC I N T E L L I G E N C E

puts a very high premium on the seeker's power oE evalua-tion and reasoned extrapolation, and that is why I havecalled it the speculative-evaluative element of strategicin tel l igence.

What knowledge should the U.S. have about the.futureof other states in order to have the requisite foresight?

Let rne first create a hypothetical state, Great Frusina,to use in giving the answer to this and subsequent ques-tions.

About Great Frusina the United States should knowtwo things. These are: (1) What is Great Frusina's stra-tegic stature, (2) what specific vulnerabilities does GreatFrusina possess which qualify her strategic stature? As Ihope to demonstrate, i! the United States can answer thesetwo questions, it will be in a fair way to answer th e next.

This one is: What courses of action will Great F rus ina belikely (a) to initiate hereself, and (b) to take up in responseto courses of action ini t iated elsewhere. To produce an-swers for all these questions is difficult, but that is not theproblem here. The problem here is to put the ringer onthe kinds of things we must know and the method we mustemploy before we begin to p roduce the answers. The prob-lem is to identify the k inds of knowledge which are atonce the solid runway from which our speculations musttake off and the compass which must guide them in flight.Identification of such knowledge cannot proceed until atleast two of the terms of vecent coinage (strategic statureand specific vulnerability) are given a bit more precisionand definition.

Strategic Stature 1

By strategic stature is meant the amount of influenceGreat Frusina can exert in an international situation in

'One of my critics has objected mildly to my use of the words ta ture . As something of a purist be correctly poinU out thai it does no t

40

lNTti.LlljL.iN I, t. 3

which the United States has a grand s t ra tegic interest .This is a broad statement, and not broad by inadvertence.For ins tance, by international situation I mean any ofthe differences of opinion, misunderstandings, d i s p u t e s -minor and major—which may occur between sovereignstates and which have a re mote or i m m e d i a t e bearing uponworld security. I mean any of the dislocations in the re-lations between states of the world which by their naturemust have an adverse effec t upon Great F rus ina ' s securityand materia l welfare. Give n the oneness of th e con-temporary world there will be few situations whichGreat Frusina can neglect as unrelated to her securityand welfare and a great many in which she will there-fore exert some sort of influence . By influence I meaninfluence through any of the instrumentalities that states -employ in peacetime or w a r t im e — i n f lu e n c e t h r o u g h moral

suasion, propaganda, political and economic t h rea t s , in-ducements, and actual penalties; through acts of reprisal(in the non-technical sense); threats of hostility, and waritself. Strategic stature is thus the sum total of sugar sticksand big sticks which Great Frusina possesses, to whichmust be added her willingness to use them and her adept-ness in using them.

To get at strategic stature there are a number of thingsyou must know, and the first of these is the probable"objective situation" 2 in which Great F rus ina may be ex-

quite comport with the dynamic role I have assigned to it, that it is aword more closely allied to stasis than act ion. My reply is that contem-porary usage permits such_an expression as "the stature of British diplo-mats," by which is meant something more than their height, girth, andweight. Dip lomatic s ta ture includes the tact, persuasiveness, ingenuity, andwisdom as these a re mani fested at the conference table or elsewhere. Sta turein this sense is the la ten t power which entrance into ih e diplomatic ring"ill make dynamic.

* By "objective situation" I mean the si tuat ion as it exists in th e under-s tanding oE some hypothetical omnisci ent Being. I mean the situ ati onstripped of the subjective characteristics with which a prejudiced h u m a nobserver ii a lmost certain to endow it. I use the word "probable," be-

cause, whereas knowledge of the objective situation is of highest desira-41




tfpected to exert influence or throw weight. There are at*least two elements in any objective situation which areIlikely to be ever-present; they are the element oE geo-graphical locati on and the elemen t of time. There are-other elements which are likely to differ from one situa-

to another. To cite at random a few for purposes oE^'i l lustrat ion is to list such intangibles as the degree oE-real or fancied gravity involved in the situation and the

P Great Frusinan nat ion 's popular appreciation o£ the grav-' i ty; the degree of the nation's acceptance of the sacrifices' i t must make to liquidate the situation; the power line-up,

|that is, what friends can Great Frusina count on for sup-Iport in the situation and how much support, what friends|can Great Frusina's opponent count on for support?

The constant and variable elements in the situationIwhich are hinted at above are often of overriding impor.ftance. That is, the geographical positio n of the contest-|.ants, time, the power line-up may rule, and the situationIb e liquidated in terms of them. 3 But many situations arisetin which these elements do not rule and in these latterînstances there are two more extremely important th ingslyou must know before you can begin to gauge Great|Frtisina's strategic stature.

The first of these is the weigh t , applicability, and e f f e c -ftiveness o£ Great Frusina's non-military instrumentalities

policy and strategy. The second is what people havecalled Great Frusina's war potential. Let us take them upone at a time.

i. jbility, any non-omnis cient Being (i.e. any frail h u m a n being) probably{. ran never apprehend th e tru e objective fact. He should, however, strive

it it hu r t s ."For example, if the government of Liberia became outraged at the

Tg o v e rn men t oE Paraguay (or vice versa) for any given reason, one couldâssume t h a t the state o t outrage would pass without much having been-done about it. In the years not so long back, when the sovereign co m-

poncn ts f the world were less tightl knit and the projection of po er

. I N T E L L I G E N C E IS KNOWLEDGE

By Great Frusina's non-military instrumentalities aremeant the range of levers, short ot the great lever of mili-tary operations, which lies between such a simple thing asa properly worded and p rope r ly delivered forma', noie of oh iec t ion or invitation, and such a complicated and dan-

gerous thing as an embargo, blockade,

or other stringen'-kind of economic sanction. Also are meant such thing s asour telling Cuba that we dared not continue shipment oEthereapeut ic narcotics to her as long as she afforded havento Mr. Lucky Luciano-a man well known to us as a dopepeddler and general bad egg, whom one of our states hadbeen at great expense to catch, indict, convict, jail, andlater deport back to Italy. \Ve did not want Mr. Lucianoin our backyard and we used a mild non -mi l i t a ry i n s t ru -mentality to get him out of it.

The Soviet's use of the Comintern and now the C o m i n -form, the paraphernalia of party infiltration and front or-ganizations, state trading, and even the \Vorld Federationof Trade Unions offer corresponding cases in point . GreatFrusina will have such levers to push, such strings to pull,and such needles and ice-picks to mani pul ate, Kn owl edg eof them and their weight, applicability, and effectivenessconstitutes part of the knowledge necessary to estimate herstrategic stature in a given situation the objective facts of which are already discernible.

By war potential is meant the possible power to makewar. To be somewhat artificial, it m ayvbe useful in talkingof war potential to distinguish between Great Frusina'sactual military force in being and her mobilizable military

force. This distinction is artificial because much of theforce in being is itself not completely and uniformly mo-bilized; it is not fully prepared to get up and go at amoment's notice.* It must be topped off, so to speak, and

'Our garrison t roops on the Island of Oahu were supposedly r




this topping o f f— i .e . the issuance of ba t t le equipment, themoving up to the line o£ attack, the arrangements fo r sup-ply and auxiliary services, etc.—is itself indistinguishablefrom the essential and characteristic aspects of mobiliza-

tion. But even t h o u g h much of the force in being needssome finishing touch, there are l ikely to be units w h i c hare completely mobilized and ready to start shooting.Hence the distinction.

Now the problem before us is what must intelligenceorganizations know with respect to the situation, the non-military instiumentalities, th e force in being, arid the war

potentia l of Great Frusina so as to make an evaluation of her strategic stature in a fo reseeable or given situation.

As to the situation. Realize that it has not yet arisenand that the first big question for intelligence is to try toimagine what it will be like when it does arise. To sharpenthe imagination in tel l igence must have a great deal of thedescriptive and reportorial knowledge discussed in pre-vio us chapters. For example, it mus t know a great dea labout the political and economic structure of Great Fru-sina, about internal political and economic tensions, abouther foreign relations, and the apparent grand strategic plan

within which she is working. Intelligence must know agreat deal about the strategic geography of all parties tothe situation, and must have some sort of rational basisfor calculation of the time fac tor. Intelligence's reportorialstaff must have kept the organization f u l l y informed of developments as they watched them clandestinely andovertly, so that the speculative take-off will be from themost extreme point on the runway and the flight of imagi-nation aimed in what will prove to be the truest direction.

It is perhaps worth mention here that calculations on


ticipated, imagined, or r a t i o n a l l y assumed s i tua t ion areno; likely to be meani ngfu l. It is the con tex t oE thesituation alone which gives point and meaning to th e sub-sequent elements of the specu latio n. To talk ab ou t non-military and military instrumentalities w i t h o u t setting thelimits of th e s i t u a t i o n in which they are to bu used, totalk of them as if they would be the same for a l l si tua-tions, is to me, wit hou t much sense. The re can be nosuch thing as a calculable national potential-potential forthe achievement of goals by peaceful or warlike means—solong as the calculation proceeds in a vacuum. Onl y whe nyou fix the adversary, the time, place, and the probablemeans to be used can the calculation have point.

As to the non*mil i ta ry instrumentalities: again, knowl-edge of them is based on what intelligence has been ableto find out about Great Frusina's inner stability andstrength and the ways she has conducted her i n t e r n a t i o n a lbusiness in the past. Which of these i n s t r u m e n t a l i t ie s shewill use and with what weight and effectiveness she willuse them, intelligence can hazard t o / g u ess only when itsknowledge of Great Frusina is comparable to that o f : herown minister for foreign affairs and her own chief of state.

Intelligence may hope to possess such knowledge only asit has studied deeply and systematically her po l i ty, society,economy, and the moral tempo of her people, and as ithas been able temporarily to t f a n s m u t e i t sel f into theGreat Frusinan foreign minister and see the situation fromhis particular perspective. This again is the kind of knowl-edge dealt with in the two preceding chapters. Id eal ly itis coldly dbjective and factual, it is accurate and complete,up to the moment.

In actual practice it is often none of these things, No






H'lt mus t know a great many facts and it m u s t know a methodi'o£ combining them. It must know a very great deal about

;a t Frusina's actual and latent resources, 7 and it mustBhave the will, the wisdom, and the highly technical skill

%o arrange its knowledge of these facts as Great Frusina'i^•General Staff and her Office of Production Management s

H'1 will normally have arranged them before they made theirjfc fa teful decision. At no place in the intelligence opera tion

s^ 'is the professional training of the intelligence p r o d u c e rmore importance. The job of synthesis upon which he

His embarking is one which requires of him the very highesticompetence in one or more of the sciences, of politics, eco-|nomics, geography, and the milit ary art. He should not

Ij undertake it unless he has an easy familiarity with the| J l i terature and techniques of the relevant disciplines.

What about Great Frusina' s resources? I will take them1 first and I will be brief about t h e m — n o t because they are

ûnimportant—but because people who deal with mobiliza-|tion and the foundations of national power deal with themiendlessly. So endlessly, in fact , that one sometimes gets thelimpression that the matter o£ war potential is simply a^matter of identifying quantities of men, of steel, of kilo-

tt hours, of machine tools, railroad lines and trucks, etc.,v $ adding up the quantities, and deriving from the resul tant

isum a sort o£ index number which is meaningful. I cannotagree with this method of computing war potential. Thus

E without giving the impression that you have all when you .have a line-up of Great Frusina's actual resources let me

I name them.T la my opinion th e most egregious error in war-potential computation

iT.is the error of confining one's at tent ion to resources and neglecting the

^coun try ' s power to combine them to get an a p p r o p r i a t e end-product. On|a s traight numerical calculation of resources there is likelihood that India


The first is her geographical location and the qualityan-d extent of her terrain. Next is her population, quanti-tatively speaking, especially that part of it which lies in theage bracket 17 to 45, and qualitatively speaking, its hea l th ,vigor, and degree of general and technical education.Thirdly are the raw materials and power sources she pos-sesses or has unequivocal access to: mineral (includingu r a n i u m ) , forest and fishery resources, water power, etc.Fourth are food and feed stuffs; next, standing industrialplane and the means of distributing the finished product.Sixth is the transportation net and the i nven to ry of vehi-cles; seventh, the political structure of the state and itsstability; eighth, the social structure and the inventory of

virtues which as social beings the population possesses;ninth, the moral quality of the people and the kind of values for which they are prepared to make sacrifices.Sometimes this list is shortened down to the three primalitems: manpower, raw materials, capital equipment; andsometimes it is spun out, as anyone can see it might be,to fill pages and pages.

If intelligence knows the facts or approximations thereto,which are indicated in the list above, it has a part of the

knowledge involved in a war potential computation. Butit must also be aware of what the process of mobilization isand wha t it involves. Intelligence must know this beforeit can apply a method to the data and get a useful result.Let us say then that mobilization is in essence a matter of internal national adjustment or readjustment, A countryorganized for the welfare of its citizens and for its securitymiist now put security way out in front and the ci t izens'welfare an appropriate distance in the rear. And a country

which has never seemed to put the welfare of its citizensf f




women between 17 and 4 5 — a r e taken out of civil life andput in uniform. Be fore mobilization is done, this groupmay be 10 per cent of the total population or even more.It also means that this group (as a g r o u p ) is supported interms of food, shelter, c lo th ing , medical care, transporta-tion, communications, and insurance at a higher averagelevel than it en joyed in civil life. Lastly it means that thisgroup is furnished with the complicated and expensiveimplements of war and is taught to use them in the m os teffe ctiv e manne r. To this situation there must be adjust-ments. Wha t are the adjustments? How successful is Gre atFrusina lik ely to be in making them? These two ques tionsare the points of departure for gauging the net effective-

ness of mobilizatio n.The adj ust men ts in question mu st take place first with in

Great Frusina's polity. Even though her governm ent maybe as dictatorial as Hitler's in 1936, there still must bepolitical loin-girding . The less concentrated the politicalpower of peacetime, the greater must be the adjustment,for the measures Great Frusina is to take elsewhere in the

,. rearrangement of her national life require that the execu-- . live arm of government be given almost plenary powers.

To begin the estimate of Great . Frusina ' s capacity tomobilize, intelligence must have at hand as full a cata-logue of political knowledge as may be and with thisknowledge intelligence must endeavor to foresee the de -gree of success that the Great Frusinan statesmen mayachieve in adjusting the peacetime polity to fit a condi-tion of war.

The second and most important ad jus tments which thenew government must now initiate and supervise are theadjustments in Great Frusina's economy. Before intel ' i -

. gence looks at specific sectors of the economy in order to~ f i n d out how they are doing, there are three things about

it intelligence must know. These are overall thing s whichwill influence every decision taken with respect to war

I NT E L L I GE NCE I S KNOWLEDGE

production and the civilian s t anda rd of living, which ineffect wil l almost predetermine the magnitude of mobilizedpower which the natio n can muster. These three thingsare (I) the amount of fat on the economy, (2) the amountof slack in the economy (this could be considered a n o t h e rkind of fat), and (3 ) t h e amount of f lex ib i l i ty of which f.he

economy is capable.By fat, I mean such things as some of the things Britainhad at the start of World War II: extensive externalassets, a large merchant marine, access to necessary raw ma-terials and the credits to buy them without going into cur-rent production, a large and up-to-date supply of capitalequ i pm en t , a large inventory of finished goods, a n a t i o n a ldiet of three to four thousand calories per day, etc. Im -port ant elements of German fa t may be said to have existedin the excess capacity of machine tools, a large amountof brand new plant and new housing. The Ita li an s hadpractically no fat, indeed little enough lean.

By slack, I mean such things as the 40-hour week, twe lveto sixteen years of education for you t h , small proportionof women in the labor force, unemployment of both laborand capital, only partial utilization of equipment, etc.

By flexibility, I mean the capacity of the economy to beatplowshares and pruning hooks into swords, and that inji g dine. I mean the ability o£ the technicians to maketypewriter factories over into machine gun factories, andput the manufacturers of dry breakfast food into the shell-fuse business. I mean the abilit y to make synthetics fromscratch where the natural sources have dried up. 8 When

1 As might be imagined, war-potential computers are of m a n y types—among them is one class which is constantly trying to find a key item inthe mobilization process which will serve as an index to the whole d i f f i -c u l t process. Some o f th is group hope to find the answer to their prayersin the national income; that is. ihey are hoping to find a way of cor-relating national income to war potential, so that when the former isknow n, the latter too is know n. Other s feel this way about kilowatt-hours.There are several other schools. It has seemed to me that their neglect of




you have the facts to calculate the fat, slack, and flexibilityof the economy you are armed with a sort of basic knowl-edge which makes the pursuit of further economicknowledge profitable.

Adjustments within the economy musl take place alongtwo main lines. The economy mu s t produce a vastly in-

creased amount of goods, many of which are munitions,and at the same time the economy must provide a toler-able standard of living for the civilian population. To ac-complish these ends the economy m u s t be pretty severelyshaken . Wha t must intelligence know to gauge the extentof the shake-up and the results?

It must know how enlargements in standing capitalequipment, power resources, and in the labor force 1 0 arebeing contrived; it must know how strategically-necessaryraw materials are being stockpiled, and for those in shortsupply, what success is attending the development of sub-stitutes.11 It must know how speedily and efficien tly heavy

other general factors, part icularly this factor of flexibility o f the economymakes their conclusions peculiarly vulnerable.

' "Wi t h respect to Ger raan mobilization for World Wa r II , it is inter-esting to no te thai up until 1936 the Nazis had been bedeviled by u n e m -ployment and had partially mended matters by contriving the "Kuchen,Kinder, Kirche" slogan for women. German w o m e n under this partyexhortation went back to the kitchen and left jobs open for the men.When mobilization began (i t was not known as such) in 1936 and theeconomy could have advantageously used a larger labor force, the P a r t ydid not dare, for political reasons, welch on the slogan and call the womenback to the factories. Certain types oE economist who seldom bow toanything but a straight economic consideration may mull this over withprofit, fo r here is a case where a political commitment ruled even thoughthere was a signi fica nt economic penalty attached. See Frank D. Gr ahamand J. J. Scanlon. Economic Preparation and Conduct of War wider the

Nazi Regime (mimeographed report oE the] Historical Division, War De-partment Special Staff, Washington, D.C., April 10, 1946). Cited here andelsewhere by written permission of the issuer.

u In preparing fo r World War II, the Germans had to make veryextensive adjustments of th U sort. Foreseeing shortages in crude oil,natural rubber, high-grade iron ore, sulphur, copper, natural fibers anda number of other items, they made advance provision. They developedprocesses for the production of synthetic oil, nihber, and fibers; theydeveloped methods tor utilizing their own low-grade iron deposits, andfound adequate substitutes for materials they could not synthesize or

52

I N T E L L I G E N C E I S K N O W L E D G E

industry is being changed over from the m a n u f a c tu r e of the machines of peace to th e engines of war, and howdeftly light industry is being shifted from consumer dura-bles to shell fuses, range finders, radar components, andsmall arms. It must know these th ings—in so far as theymay be known or es t imated—and hundreds like them.

Then it must be able to gauge how well the governmentis handling its share of the adjustment: how it is allocatingraw materials, making its contracts with priv ate e nterprise,financing essential blocks of war industry, arranging forthe equitable distribution of scarce consumer goods, andcurbing in f la t ion . It must know how tolerable the gov-ernment is able to make an otherwise intolerable life tothe civilians who must produce the implements of war,suffer the economic hardships of war, bear its tragediesand still be denied the incentives of active participation.

None of the things that I have mentioned above canbe known in the same way that one can know the numberof miles of paved street in City X or the number of sugarbeet refineries in Cou nty Y. To possess the knowledgenecessary to estimate economic war potential, intelligencemust have far more than a checklist of capital goods, laborforce, and raw materials; it mus t have a great deal of general wisdom about the capacity of Great Fus ina to pullthese resources together, the strength of its political au -thority, its unity and resolve, its managerial competence.The intelligence worker must have a willingness to trans-

mute himself into the Great Frusinan who is deputed toboss the mobilization. He must realize tha t the issues heis facing up to are issues of the magnitude of national sur-vival and that he may pull any trick in the book—dirty,

stockpile. Allied intelligence underestimated their capacity to do thesethings. It tended to speak oE the shortages themselves as top items in thelist of German specific vulnerabilities. This was no t really the case. Thereal vulnerability lay in the pool of manpower, too large a por t ion of which had to be allocated to the relat ively inefficient production of substi-tutes for the short commodities.

53




u n o r t h o d o x , "unsound" in classical terms, and i l legal—ifi n will get him his results.

The third major group of adjustments attendant uponmobi l izat ion and about which intelligence must know isthe group of social ad justments . It must have knowledgeof them if it is to complete its calculation of war po te n t i a l.

It must know how the people will adjust to the loss of luxuries, amenities, and even necessities; how they willreact to poorer if not less food, less clothing, more crowdedliving conditions, and less civil liberty; how they will takethe departure of their y o u n g people, the disruption of families and family businesses, and the grim prospect of casu alt ies. As in the case of economic adj ust men ts fewof these things can be definitely and positively known , In-telligence must settle for approximations which emergesometimes f rom devious indirect methods of inquiry. Ifit cannot find out by public opinion poll, for example,

exactly how people are reacting to rationing, it may findindirect evidence thereof by following changes in govern-men t rationing regulations. These may be avail able in thenewspapers arid may indicate in so many words that theblack market is booming or that civilian compliance ishigh. One cannot stress too heavily the importance of theindirect approach where the direct one is impossible, norcan one overstress the fact that the devising of the indirectap p ro ach —"fo rmu l a t i o n of the method" it would be calledin formal terms—is itself an act o£ intelligence and an es-sential part of the whole intelligence process.

The last category of adjustments which the Great Fru-sinans must make and of which intelligence must take noteare those within the code of their national morality, withinthe ir established values of good and bad. Here, perhaps,are some of the most difficult tasks which intelligencemust face and some of the most importan t to solve. Onthe assumption that intelligence can put the finger on theaccepted moral values of life in peacetime, and on the

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I N T E L L I G E N C E IS KNOWLEDGE

assumption that these values are not all of them valueswhich will forward victory in war, the problem for thegovernment is to try to alter these values or remodel them .The problem fo r in te l l igence is to tell how the pepole willreact to these attempts. For example, let us suppose t h a tthe Great F ru s i n an s were brought up on the message of Jesus, how easily wi l l they make the transition to a warmorality where a ll evil things are pragmatically, at least,

ju st if ie d? How many people are goi ng to be pacifists orconscientious objectors, and if any large number are, howwill their point of view affect the success of mobilization?Or suppose Great Fms in an s , like some of the Orientals,view the business of s tay ing alive with indifference; assoldiers do not expect to survive a war, indeed often seemto welcome, if not actually court, death, what can intelli-gence discern in this attitude which will qual ify its overallguess on war pote ntia l? A correct estimate alo ng these

lines m re Japan, for instance, would have told us muchabout the long-range capabilities of its air force.

The preceding pages have been addressed to the firstof two questions posed with respect to mobilization; Whatadjustments must Great F rus ina accomplish in turningfrom peaceful pursuits to preparations for the use of armedpower? The second questi on is yet to be answere d, It is:How successful is she likely to be? Since we are talki ngprimarily about knowledge of mobi l iza t ion and not the

process itself this question might better be put: What mustyou know to estimate the success of Great Frusina's effortto mobilize?

You must know with as much certainty as possible Great Frusina's own appraisal of the situation against which sheis prepared to mobi l ize . How do the elements o£ time andspace (geographical relationships) shape up in Great Fru-sina's probable calculation s? Has she the time to prepar e,

55




and once mobilized can she expect to project her milit arypower to a spot on the earth where it will do some good?

Secondly, you must know many o f the other things men-tioned earlier, especially what I have called the fa:, theslack, and flexibility of the economy.

Thirdly, you must know with what skill and will GreatFrusina is able to plan, coordinate, and implement thehuge job of administering the mobilization.

Fourthly, you must know something of the government ' sprobable p e r fo rman ce with respect to the civilian econ-omy. Will it do a good job and will the cit izens realizeit? Wi l l they be able to see results commensurate wi ththeir efforts and sacrifices, or will things appear to be asbad as the gloomy ones have predicted?

\Vhen the specul ati ve element of strategic intelligenceknows these things—as a result of drawing heavily for basicdata from the descriptive and reportorial e lements—it isin a fair way to be able to know the dimensions of GreatFrusina's strategic s ta ture .

Specific VulnerabilityIn speculations about Great Frusina's future it is not

enough merely to analyze and add up her strategic assets.There are subtractions to be made before we can hopefor any realistic appraisal of her f u t u r e weight in the world

and the courses of action she may choose to initiate or takeup in response to outside stimuli. The negative quantitiesin question are what I am calling her specific vulnerabili-ties.

By these words I do not mean the general indefensibilityof her frontiers or the destructibility of her cities, or anyother such thing that may be common to a great manystates and may constitute a broad strategic weakness againstwhich a strong opponent may direct his general attack ifwar became inevitable. Assuming that Great Frusina is

I N T E L L I G E N C E TS KNOWLEDGE

with any of the non-military or military instruments o£grand strategy is to o costly to c o n te mpla te, does she pos-sess soft spots the exploitation of which will yield resultsdispropor tionate to the outl ay of eff ort ? IE she has suchsoft spots she has what I am calling specific vulnerabilities.The problem is; What mu s t you know to know the loca-tion and nature of Great Frusina's specific vulnerabilities?

The answer to this question is that you must have thekinds o f . encyclopedic knowledge described in the last twochapters; 12 and from that select, by analytical processes,those facets of the H f e of Great Frusina which are vulner-able to the weapons you possess. The weapon s, as notedearlier, are of many sorts: psychological, political, eco-nomic, and military.

During World. War II we identified and misidentifieda large number of specific vulnerabilities of our enemies.Unquestionably our correct identifications hastened thevictory. Among the readiest examples of successful selec-tions in the field of strategic air b o m b a r dm e n t were theattacks on German synthetic oil production and aircraft

"To the over-anxious and not too responsible intel l igence devotee aloud warning should be sounded at this point. In the quest fo r specificvulnerabi l i t ies no intelligence operation can conceivably afford to canvassthe whole field of Grea t Frusinan culture. The discovery that all denialchairs are made in a single factor,)' which is vulnerable to sabotage or airattack, or that ra t ion cards are easily counte r f e i ted , or iha t there is apacifist cull lucked away in the mountains, cannot possibly warrant thetime necessary to uncover such [acts. On the assumption that thesematters are vulnerabi l i i ies and specific enough to suit anyone, their suc-cessful exploi tat ion by an outside power will mean no more than a triflinginconvenience to the Great Frusinan government . People will use rockingchairs at the dentist 's; new ration books may or m ay not be issued; thepacifist cull will be liquidated ai the cost of one governmen t casualty.The quesi for specific vulnerabil i t ies rausi take place in areas which willbe dictated by common sense and a knowledge of the limits of one's ownin s t rument of exploitat ion. It should be fu rth er limited by the doctrineof comparative costs: if you can deliver a 1,000-ton cargo by air, will youmake more converts with ihis cargo in the form of leaflets or high explo-sives. I f the laiter, you should probably slow down on your research intothe weakness of civilian morale and ih e appropriate content of yourleaflets. B u t , conversely, the sue of the rubble pile is not necessarily the[nHev nf rff rn\vft\m

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE I N T E L L I G E N C EIS K N O W L E D G E




and on the Japanese cities and the Hokkaido-Honshu coalferries. On the other h a n d , attacks o n - c e r t a i n phases o£German transportation and the Japanese fleet in K u r e can-not be said to have been attacks on specifically vulnerable 'targets. T he knowledge which dictated these latte r opera-tions could have been improved.

Peacetime affords as many examples as w a r t i m e of spe-

cific vulnerabi l i t ies , and of their exploitation by the non -military instrumentalities of grand strategy. For ins tance,the Soviet Union's ambivalent position with respect to thewes ter n front iers of Poland is a case in point. To thePoles, the U.S.S.R. was saying, "We assure you the Oder-Neisse line," and to the Germans in the Soviet-occupiedzone whose support the Soviets were earnestly seeking, theU.S.S.R. was saying, "As agreed at Yalta, the Oder-Neisseline is not a closed issue." Mr. Byrnes in his Stuttgartspeech of September 1946 used the political instrument toexploit this vulner abili ty to the hilt. When he asked theRussians if they had decided how this frontier would befixed he forced them to close a decision they wished tokeep open. It will be recalled that the Russians had toforsake the comfortable double position and reassure thePoles, thus losing support in Germany. This was preciselyMr. Byrnes's plan.

Other comparable examples are in the papers almostdaily.

Probable Courses of Action; Estimates

I have urged that if you have knowledge of Great Fru-sina's strategic stature, knowledge of her specific vulnera-bilities, and how she may view these, and knowledge of the statur e and vulnerab ilities of other states party to thesituation, you are in a fair way to be able to predict her

proba ble courses of action.To strengthen the reliability of your prediction you

should possess two additional packages of knowledge.

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First, you should know about the courses of action v.-hichGreat Frusina has followed in the past. Does th e h i s to ry,o'f her foreign policy reveal a pattern which she will a d h e r eto? Has she followed certain lines of i n t e r n a t i o n a l be -ha v io r for so long that they have hardened into t r a d i t i o n swith proven surviv al value. Or are they m y t h s [our.ci;:,: inirrationality? Will these tradi tions or m v t hs exert an in-

fluence—even though an illogical i n f l u e n c e — u p c n her prob-able present course of action? Has Gr eat F r u s i na :\:\ u l dfriend wi t h whom she will never break; has she h ; iJ overthe years a real need for an "eastern ally"; has she a :ra-ditional "life-line of empire" to maintain, or t l ' . s j u r g efor "ice-free ports"? Knowledge of this orde r is i m p o r t a n t ,but must be used with caution. For whil e the fouj of:tradition is strong, the present moment may be t h e \ e r yone in which G reat Frusina is girding herself to break w it hthe past.

Second: you should know, as closely as such t h m u s ma ybe k n o w n , how Great Frusinans are es t imat ing t h e i i own•J

stature in the situa tion . Great Frusina is not he rse l f im -mune to errors in judgment, and as we have :een in thecases of both Germany and Japan in World War II, iscapable of misconstruing the situation, overestimating herown chances of success, and underestimating the strengthof her opponents.

One may say in summary that if intelligence is n r m e dwith the various kinds of knowledge which I h a ve dis-cussed in this chapter, and if it commands the w e l t e r of fact which lies behind them, intelligence ought to ix: ableto make shrewd guesses— estimates, they a rc -genera l ly c a l l ed—as to what Great Frusina, or any other co u n t ry is l i k e l y todo in any circumstance whatsoever. Not e that i n t e l l i g en cedoes not claim infallibility for its prophecies. I n t e l l i ge nc emerely holds that the answer which it gives is its mostdeeply and objectively based and carefully considered esti-mate.

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STRATEGIC INTELLIGEN CE

In such fashion intelligence should have a reasonedopinion on what policies a country is likely to initiatewithin the next year o£ its own free will. If one shouldwant to know, intelligence should be able to estimate thechances of n a t i o n a l i za ti o n of a particular British industryin the next six m o n t h s and the effect such a move wouldhave on Britain's balance of payments. Likewise intelli-gence should be able to estimate another country's reactionto outs ide stim uli . How will a cou ntr y react to suchstimuli as a U.S. policy, a policy of some state other thanthe U.S., an act of God, or natural calami ty. What for in-stance, would be the probable reactions of the U.S.S.R. toan arrangement whereby the U.S. secured r ights to thenaval and air facilities of M e rs el Ke b i r, Bizerta, Malta,Cyprus, and Alexandria? What would they be to a violentswing to the left of the British Labor Party 01 the emer-gence o£ Communist Party control in France?

Before leaving this subject the question should be asked:in terms of the myriad qualifications introduced all a'ongthe line, how valuable is the "knowledge" which emergesfrom th is element of strategic intelligence? Are the so-called "estimates" of intelligence of any value? My answeris Yes, they are of very great value if they are soundly basedin reliable descriptive data, reliable reporting, and proceedf ro m care fu l analysis. The value may not be an absoluteand ultimate one; the speculative evaluation or estimatemay not be exactly accurate, but if individual lives and thenational security are at stake I would prefer the indexes of strategic stature, specific vulnerability, and probable coursesof action as they emerge from this phase of strategic intelli-gence to the indexes afforded by the only alternative, i.e.the crystal ball. In actual fact, many a speculative estimateundertaken along these lines by the experts has besn aston-ish ing ly close to wha t actually came to pass. The social sci-ences have by no means yet attained the precision o£ thenatu ral sciences; th ey may never do so. But in spite of the

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INTELLIGENCE IS K N O W L E D G E

profound methodological problems which they face theyhave advanced prodigi ously in th e last fifty years. Takenas a block of wisdom on humanity their accomplishmentsare large not merely in the area oE description but morei mp o r j an t l y in the area of prognosis. If th e record did notread thus, this book most em p h a t i ca l l y w o u l d not havecontained a chapter on this element of the long-range in-telligence job.

A Note on Capabilities

. Although this discussion has faced up to the possibili tyof war and the mobilization of armed power, and althoughI have drawn many illustrations from wartime, it has sofar been cased in a c on t e x t —a nd h o p e — o f peace. It hasbeen written as if we were directing our p e a c e t i m e policytoward m a i n t e n a n c e of peace and na t iona l secur i ty, bu tat the same time we were r e m e m b e r i n g t h a t we migrht beO J

thrust into a war which we must win. The questi on maybe put: What happens to the speculative-evaluative ele-ment of strategic intelligence when the context is war?How are our speculations changed by the i n t roduc t ion of astate of war? The answer is, our specul atio ns change inemphasis and direction, but not in any fundamental sense.. For example, the components of strategic stature aresomewhat altered. To begin with, the situation may wellbe much clearer when it is upon us than when it was out \ *in the future. 13 "We are likely to be able to give a largerdegree of certainty to the time factor: When may we expectthe major effort ? We are likely to be able to discern much

u However, the coming of war by no means gives us an absolute cer-tainty about th e situation. The unexpected or unant ic ipated happeningso f the last war demonstrate this. I doubt if any strategic prophet on 1September 1939 foresaw the date of Italy's entrance in to the v a r, the dateof Germany's attack on the U.S5.R-, the date of the Japanese attack uponPearl Harbor, the date of Italy's surrender. On 1 September 1939 weknew more about th e situation than a year earlier, but we by no meanshad a perfectly clear p ic tu re of how the situation wa s destined to changein some of its major proportions.

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more clearly the geographica l - spa t i a l e l e m e n t s of the situa-tion and foresee exactly the place or places of major anddiversion ary attack. The line-up of allies and enemies willin the main he much clearer though we may never be ableto call the turn exactly.

Next, although the enemy is still using h is n o n - m i l i t a r yelements of grand s t ra tegy, they have been converted intoquas i -mi l i t a ry instrum ents. Political pressures and induce-ments are used with the gloves off and become political andpsychological wa r f a r e . The economic big stick and sugarstick become the implements of economic warfare .

The armed establishment in being is now the already-mobi l i zed fraction plus what was mobilized during theemergency period. The big question w ith respect to mili -tary power is now referred to as the country's capabilities.1*When the military use the word "capabilities" they mean

a state's ability to achieve a given objective expressed intime and force requirements. They apply the word to boththemselves and the enemy. In a situation where the ene-my's objective is precisely denned—viz. , his objec t ive tocontain an amphibious operation (Normandy), or capturea vital strategic objective (Stalingrad), or destroy by aerialbombardment his enemy's ability to stay in the war (thefirst blitz of London or the V-weapon attack), or destroyhis merchant marine (the Atlantic campaign), a broaderand more explanatory definit ion is permissible. In thislatter context we might say that "capabilities" means theamou nt of armed force (ground, naval, and air power) thatthe enemy can mount on a battle line or battle lines andmaintain there at maximum operational activity, withoutundue damage to over-all strategic commitments, without

11 This is a time-honored military word and I have kept it sacrosanctto use in just t his place. The t emptat ion to use it in a peacetime contextas an al ternative f or strategic stature wa s strong. To have don e so m i g h thave been a temporary favor to military readers, but the final result wouldhave been to spoil one of the few words in the intelligence vocabulary thatis still fairly pristine.

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o v e r s t r a i n i n g or r u i n i n g the home war e c o n o m y, and with-•J O '

out shattering the staying p o w e r of the p o l i t y and society.The issue of mobilization is t e c h n i c a l l y at least a dying

or dead one for the problem of t h e peacetime war po-tential has been transmitted to the problem of mainte-

nance of the armed force at t h e l ev e l of maximum opera-tional ac t iv i ty. N e a r l y a ll the fac tors of war potential arestill very much in the calcul atio n which in t e l l i g en ce mustmake, but since the war is on, not in the offing, the word"potential" might w e l l be dropped or qualified.

Specific vulnerabilities are, if anything, of intensifiedimportance and their i d e n t i f i c a t i o n one of the major tasksof intelligence, They are being exploited with all effectiveand available w e a p o n s , and d e f e n d e d wi th a l l the skill,ruse, and strength the enemy can muster for the task.

Our side will be calculating the courses of action opento the enemy in terms of our estimate of his capab i l i t ies .Military doctrine shys away from trying to be so specific asto put tlie finger on [he one course of action the enemy ismost likely to take; it shys away from the identification of what is often called the enemy's "intentions" or "probableintentions." In an e s t im a te of the alternative course's of action of which the enemy is capable the military formulaknown as the "estimate of the s i t u a t i o n " is used. Roughlyspeaking, this formuh runs as follows: (1 ) knowledge of the environment, i.e. the terrain, weather and c l imate , hy-d ro g rap h y, logistics, etc., (2) knowledge of the enemy'sstrength and the d i sp o s i t i o n of his forces, (3) knowledge of

-one's own forces, (4) probable courses of action open to theenemy.13 The courses of actio n will lie primarily in thefield of military operations, but secondarily and scarcelyless importantly in the fields of political and economicrelations.

To make an estimate of enemy capability in wartime you

"I n a later chapter I will discuss the "estimate of the situation"formula at greaier length.




must have possession of the ma in categories of knowledgeneeded to gauge what I called the strategic stature, andspecific vulnera bilities of peacetime. To get at probablecourses of action you have to know much the same sort

of thing you needed for estimating probable courses of action in peacetime.

In totting up these similarities we must not forget cm every l arge dissimilarity. In peacetime it is not too difficulta task to come by the sort of bask knowledge you musthave to make these speculations (the U.S.S.R. excepted).Before World War II you could have knov/n a great dealabout any country of the globe and now after the war youcan again by no greater outlay of effort (the U.S.S.R. ex-cepted). But during a war, when the enemy knows fullwell the importance of keeping you in ignorance, the get-ting of the basic knowledge is quite another matter. It canbe had, and much of it through perfect ly overt channels,but the effort necessary to get it has been multiplied manytimes.

Throughout this chapter the theme has been the themeof speculative knowledge. In discussing this element inthe content of strategic intelligence I may have given theimpression that speculative knowledge is a c ommon com-modity which is to be had for the gathering. I£ I havegiven this impression, I wish to correct it. Speculativeknowledge is not common and it is not to be had for thegathering. It is the rarest ingredient in the output of intel-ligence and is produced only by the most competent stu-dents this country possesses. It requires of its producersthat they be masters o£ the subject matter, impartial inthe presence o£ new evidence, ingenious in the develop-ment of research techniques, imaginative in their hypoth-eses, sharp in the analysis of their own predilections orprejudices, and skillful in the presentation o £ their con-

If requires of its producers the best in profes-

INTELMGENCE IS K N O W L E D G E

sional training, the highest intellectual integrity, and avery large amount of worldly wisdom. In this case, what Iam speaking of is not the important but gross substancewhich can be called recorded fact; it is that subtle form of knowledge which comes from a set of well-stocked andwell-ordered brain cells.

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PART II

INTELLIGENCE IS ORGANIZATION



CHAPTER 5


I N T E L L I G E N C E is an institution; it is a physical organiza-•*- tion of living people which pursues the special kind of

knowledge at issue. Such an o rgan izat ion must be pre-pared to put foreign countries under surveillance and mustbe prepared to expound their pasts, presents, and proba blefutures. It must be sure that what it produces in the way of information on these countries is u sefu l to the people w homake the decisions: that is, that it is relevant to theirproblems, that it is complete, accurate, and tim ely . It fol-lows that such an organization must have a staff oE skilledexperts who at the same time know (or can be told) whatthe current foreign policy and strategic problems are, andwho will devote their professio nal sk.il to produc ing usefulinformation on these problems.

In discussing organization in this chapter, I do not wishto get into its detailed administrative aspects. There are,however, certain problems of intelligence organiza t ionwhich I will discuss at some length in a later chapter(Chapter 8). In this section I wan t to confin e myself tosome general comments on organization and the kinds of people it must include.

Some of the staff must be particularly expert as on-the-spot observers and as such will make up the bulk of the

overseas surve i l lance force. They are the men s ta t ioned inforeign capitals whose job consists of observing a n d re-porting. They are the people who supply in large measurewhat I have called the current-reportorial element in stra-tegic intelligence. What are the qualities of the idealovert 1 foreign observer, information officer, or attach^?

1 It goes without 'aying that the fine qua l i ty of a clandestine observerii an inpeneirable cover or disguise, which at the same t i m e docs notunduly restrict his observational activities. He should havii o t h e r th ings

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STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCEINTELLIGENCE IS ORGANIZATION

O i i i ll hi t h t h i lli



To begin wi t h , there are some superficial qua l i t ies whichare none the less impor ta n t . He must not dislike forei gnersor living with foreigners; he must be adaptable to the con-ditions of life abroad; he must be something o £ an extro-vert who is good with peop le. Too oft en men possessed of these obvious surface qualities and none of the deeperones are chosen for foreign duty. This is poor policy, for

such a man may not be much sharper as an observer thanany casual American tourist or expatriate. What he m u s thave beyond all things is a high capacity 'to detect the sig-nificant and a high sensitivity to changes which occur inthe matters he is watching. He has acquired this sensiti v-ity by becoming a specialist in his subject. These quali tie swhich he has acquired by study and experience make upthe screen of sensitivity he exposes to the foreign scene.

B u t everything that such a screen picks up will not be of concern to the home intelligence organization. Only cer-tain things will be. To select these certain things he mustpossess a second screen which was made in the U.S.A.That is, he must be as thoroughly sensitized to the infor-mation requirements of his country's foreign policy andstrategy as he is to the foreign scene he is observing. Hemust know what is wanted, what is important and u n i m -portant.

Lastly, he must be no mere passive receiver of impres-sions. He must conti nually be asking himself embarrassingquestions. He must be imaginative in his search for newsources of confirming or contradicting information, hemust be critical of his new evidence, he must be patientand careful in ordering the facts which are unchallenge-able, he must be objective and impartial in his selection of hypotheses—in short , although his job is not pr imari ly 'aresearch job, he must have the qualities and command thetechniques of the trained researcher.

beside cover, many of which arc ihe same as those to be described for theovert observer.

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Organizat ionwise, all this means t h a t the intelligenceservice must recruit trained and gifted people, must keepthem in the home o f f i c e until, they are thoroughly familiar*with the things that this government wi l l want to know,and must see to it tha t , once in the field, they are keptfully posted on changes in the government's i n f o r m a t i ona lrequirements. The overt foreign surveillance staff is thusan overseas extension of the surveillance and research staff which remains at home. At least it ought to be. Its inti-mate connection with the home staff sho uld be emphasi zedand formalized by rotation oE assignment,

In addition to the people who a te on surveillance dutyabroad, the intelligence organization of course has a homeestablishment. The staff of this home establishment isbusy on a home-based surveillance job and the research

jo b. In the cir cumstance th at home sur vei llanc e is anovert occupation there is a large overlap between thequalities of the surv eilla nce and research men. In fact, the

jobs of the two so completely merge that more often thannot one man does both jobs all the t ime. At hi s surveil-lance task he leafs through the day's take oE radio broad-casts, foreign press dispatc hes, the k ey newspapers from theforeign country of his specialty, cables and reports fromrelevant field observers and attaches. While at his research job , whi ch he may be con duc ting at the same time, thedata he acquires each day as he watches the d aily parade of events, are likely to be import ant pieces of his study. If hedoes not keep abreast of what is happening today, his re-search will lose sharpness'and direction—not to say com-

pleteness.• The qualities necessary for an overt surveillance man onfield duty apply with equal vigor among this home surveil-lance and research group. These people, too, must beaware of the reigning problems of foreign policy, theymust be students highly trained in the matters which makeup the problems of that policy, they must have the capacity

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fo r p a in s t ak in gresearch and impartial objective ana lys i sI N T E L L I G E N C E 15 O R G A N I Z AT I O N

K b itt t t th t f d



.-Via

fo r p a in s t ak in g research and impartial objective ana lys i s ,Some oE the work they do will be in the field of the naturalsciences; most of it in the area of the so-called social sci-ences (in which I include the military a r t ) . The qu e s t i onswhich they must answer are obscure and can be r e a c he donly by knowledge of out-of-the-way languages and thet e c h n i q u e s of higher criticism developed by the scholar;often they are subtle, and subtle in a way understood onlyby a man who has lived with them and understands theirsu b t l e t i e s almost by intuition.

Consider for purposes of i l lus t ra t ion two small problemsrelated to our landing in North Africa. Long befo re thatoper atio n was set, the United States through an ag reemen twith the Vichy French government was sending to FrenchMorocco, Algeria, and Tunisia occasional shiploads of con-sumer goods, including petroleum products, co t ton piece-goods, sugar, and tea. All along, and especially in t hesummer of 1942, the potential propaganda value of these

goods was well understood: if they could be properly pack-aged and if they could carry some sort of message bespeak-ing our cause so m u c h the better. What should thismessage be? Wha t languages should it be written in? Howshould it be phrased? The problem wa s in essence onewell known to cur advertising men, but then again it wasnot. They could devise a label which had a fair chance of success when applied to Americans, but the audience inquestion was not American, it was predominantly Frenchand Arab . How do you reach the soul and conscience of the colonial Frenchman and of the North African Arab?You have to know as much of their psychologies, r u l i n gideologies, habits of thought, and manner cf expressingthemselves as you know of your own people.

Of the many hazards to success consider the actualphr asi ng of the message in Arabic. The language is an oldone and at present is rapidly adapting itself to the new worldits users confront. Many things have happened since the

72

Koran became a written text; the new concepts of democ-racy, totalitarianism, liberalism, and so on must be given anomenclature before they can be expressed. Today ' ; , Arabj o u rn a l i s t s and politicos n n d professors arc doing just thatand our experts who know only the language of the Arabclassics could not possibly t iar. s la te the message >n ques-tion. The American to do the job is the one who not only

knows modern journalistic and spoken Ar a b i c , bu t thatparticular subspecies of the green language wh ich is writ-ten and spoken in the local c e n t e r s of Northw est AfricanArab culture; Fe z and M a r r a ke c h , Oran, C o n s t a m i n e andKairouan. Unless an intelligence organization could pro-duce such a man, either from its own resident staff or fromits roster of consultants, it would fail in its o b l ig a t io n s .

Another case in point was the problem of estimating thea"a i lable local labor force an army could count on inSpanish Morocco. If the problem were given to someoneexpert in manpower c o m p u t a ti o n s bu t i n n o cen t of the spe-cial situation in Spanish Morocco, the answer would begrossly mislea ding. The expert would begin his mistakenway by t ak ing Spanish Moroccan census figures at facevalue, he would compound his error by assuming that thepeople noted in the census could be physically r e a c he d , byassuming that incentives could be devised to get them towork, and by assuming that once employed they would beable to do the sort of work required of them. Without aSpanish Moroccan expert at the nlanpower man's elbow totell him that the census was inflated, that the people were

scattered in tiny communities throughout the rugged andvirtually c ommunic a t ion le s s country; that the last thingsuch people wanted to do was work; and that if they couldbe induced to work the supervision problem would been o rmo u s—i n short, without a man to add the local cor-rectives— the result would indeed be misleading, Such aman can develop the necessary competence only through

73


th e method suggested. An intelligence organization must

I N T E L L I G E N C E IS O R G A N I Z AT I O N

forty odd square feet of floor space per person which pre-



r

gg g ghave a large number of such real experts.

These examples are net cited to suggest that ive wouldhave been defeated on the beaches of North Africa if wehad not known how to write the Arabic language of FrenchMorocco, or if we had overestimated the local labor supplyof Spanish Morocco. D i ff e r en t examples could prove thatwithout a large amount of comparable special knowledge,the costs of our landing would have been appreciablyhigher.

My point is that not just anyo ne can hold a profes siona l job in an inte lligence organiz ati on . My p o i n t is that anintelligence o rgan izat ion is a strange and wonder ful collec-tion of devoted specialists molded into a vigorous produc-ing unit.

In a sense, intelligence organizations must be not a littlelike a large university facu lty. They m u s t have t he peopleto whom research and rigorous thought are the breath of l i fe, and they must accordingly have tolerance for thequeer bird and the eccentric with a uniqu e talent. Theymust guarantee a sort of academic freedom of inquiry andmust fight off those who derogate such freedom by point-ing to its occasional crackpot finding. They must be bu iltaround a deference to the enormous difficulties which thesearch for truth often involves.

Intelligence organiza t ions must have appropriate facili-ties, prime among which are a library and a quiet place towork. The library must contain both published referenceworks and the welter of classified documents which are th e

news of today and the raw materials of tomorrow'sanalysis. The library must be well run, by which I mean,run after the fashion of the ideal of American libraries. Ir .will, of course, not be a general library, but it will be anextensive one in the area of current happenings a b roa d . Asto the quiet place to work, I mean something a great dealmore conducive to concentrated intellectual work than the

74

vailed during the war.But that intelligence o rg an iza t io n s bear a resemblance

to a university f aculty is not enough. T h e y must be gearedto a quicker pace and must be more observant of deadlineseven though this may occasionally and regr ettably involvea sacrifice in accuracy. Int elli gen ce organizations mustalso have many of the qualities of those of our greatest

m e t r o p o l i t a n newspapers. A f t e r all, many of their dutieshave a close r e s e m b l a nc e to those of an outstanding da i ly.They w a tch , report, s u m m a r i z e , and analyze. They havetheir foreign correspondents and home staff. Like thenewspaper the y have their pr ivate ly developed hot sources;their speedy and sure c o m m u n i c a t i o n s . They have theirresponsibilities tor completeness and accuracy—with com-m e n s u r a t e l y greater p en a l t i e s fo r o m i s s i o n and error.They have their deadlines. They have the same hugeproblem of handling the news in mi l l ions of words perday and seeing that the right s t a f f man gets a ll messageswhich fall appropriately into his field. They even have theproblem of editorial control and the difficulties of repro-duction and dissem ination. In these te rms it is fittingthat in te l l igence organizations put more study upon news-paper organization and borrow those phases of it whichthey require.

Along with the newspaper and university aspects, intel-l igence organizations must have certain characteristics of good business organiza t ion. It is by no means throug h aninadvertence that the language of intelligence organizations

. is weighted with words from busines s. Intelli gence can bethought of—indeed it often i s— a s an organization engagedin the manufacture of a product (knowledge) out of rawmaterials (al l manner of data) and labor (highly skilled,bu t not practical in the bus iness sense of the word). Theproduct, to be worthy of the label, must be up to stand-ard. It must be packaged in a mul tit ud e of ways to suit

75

i . M E L L I G E N C E INTELLIGENCE IS ORGANIZATION

i i d i i



the diversities of c o n s u m e r demand. Some consumerswant i t in semi-f in ished fo rm (f ie ld no tes w i t h co mmen t supon them), some want it finished but in bulk ( the encyclo-pedia), th e most p e r n i c k u y wan t it in small amou nts doneup in gift wrapping (the one-page summary of the worldsi tu at io n in words of two syllables or less). Not only in itspackaging, bu t in its very inner make-up must the produ ct

both direct and reflect the fluctuations of consumer'taste,or better, consumer requirements. Let Hung ary threatento go Communist and the Hungarian ingredient m u s e bes tepped up; let Panama ready itself to take a stand againstus in the matter of bases and the Panamanian constituentwil l have to be increased. By using its backlog of experi-ence it can an t i c ipa te—even crea te—consumer demand fora new product, but only by maintaining the quality can itexpect continuous acceptance. Like many a producer of consumers' goods, intelligence will have its greatest market-ing success when its prod uct bears the unmi stak able signsof superior research, cautious development, sound design,and careful production.

Intelligence organizations are in competition with eachother. They must study the market and develop its unex-ploited interstices. They must mainta in small forces of decorous and highly intelligent salesmen who not onlypush the product and appraise consumer reaction to itbut also discover new consumer problems with an eye tothe de ve lopme n t of new products. They must plan for thefuture.

Their organization must reflect these characteristics of . business, and although both newspapermen and professorsare said to be equally allergic to organization chaits, theorganizations must be set up by chart and operated with adecent respect for the chart. But at the same time theymust strive for fluidity of structure; they must strive forthe ability to shift power from an under-utilized unit to anoverburdened one as unforeseen peak loads develop. They

76

must not permit any unit to get a vested interest in someoperation of forgotten importance. They m u s t be willingto undertake heartbreaking r eorganiza t ion when the bal-ance sheet so indicates. They must be willin g and able toundertake irksome and seemingly profitless tasks for thegood wil l of their best customers, and above all they mustnot oversell themselves.

What I have said of intelligence organization is as truefor pe a c e t ime as for wartime. Just because poor intelli-gence developing out of poor organization in a war has itshighly dramatic penalties, there is no logic in assumingtha t similar penalties do not pertain to peace. Errors inthe grand strategy of peace may not produce the spectacleo£ a needlessly disastrous bat t lef ield, jhey_jp_m_etimes p r < > _duce something worse.

77



rCHAPTER 6

CENTRA L INTELLIGENCE

AS CAN be seen f rom the foregoing, the intelligence of-^ grand strategy and national security is not produced

s p on t a ne o us l y as a result of the normal processes of govern-ment; it is produced through complica ted machinery andintense purposeful effort. In this and the following twochapters I will discuss certain aspects of the intelligencemachine. I lead off with that of our own Central Intelli-gence.

On 22 January 1946 President Truman addressed amemorandum to the Secretaries of State, War, and Navyin which he directed "that all federal foreign intelligenceactivities be planned, developed and c o o rd i n a ted so as toassure the most effective accomplishment of the intelli-gence mission related to the national security," Thememorandum continued, "I hereby designate you, togetherwith another person to be named by me as my personalrepresentative, 1 as the National Intelligence Authority toaccomplish this purpose."

The memorandum went on: "2. Within the limits of available appropriations, you shall each from time to timeassign persons and facilities from your respective Depart-ments, which persons shall collectively form a Central In-telligence Group and shall, under the direction of a

Direc tor of Central Intelligence assist the National Intelli-gence Authority. The Director of Central Intelligenceshall be designated by me, shall be responsible to the Na-tional Intelligence Authority, and shall sit as a non-votingmember thereof."

With these words the President created for the first timein our history a formal and official central organization for

1 Fleet Admiral Leahy was later named to this office.

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I N T E L L I G E N C E IS ORGANIZATION

strategic in tel l igence,2 It wi l l be noted that the C e n t ra lIntelligence Group was not the u s u a l sort of federal com-mission or board. It came into being in response to anexecutive act of the President as opposed to an act of Con-gress; and it depended upon three established departmentsof the government for personnel and funds.

Whereas this arrangement was commendable in that itpermitted the speedy establishment of a central intelli-gence organization, it did possess obvious disadvantages.Prime among them was the d i sad v an tag e of uncertainty.Who could foretell when the "limits of avail able appropri-ations" of the contributing d e p a r t m e n t ; might be n a r-rowed down to the point where the departments would beunable to "assign persons and f a c i l i t i e s " in adequate sup-ply? W ho cou ld tell wh en a Congress—otherwise favorab lydisposed to the central intelligence i d e a — m i g h t not destroy

it by too great reduction of the budgets of the sustainingdepartments? In these circumstances w h a t first-rate ci-v i l ians would seek employment , what f i rs t - ra te officers seekassignment there?

Lieutenant General H o y t S . Van d en b erg (now General),the second director of central intelligence focused his at-tention on the problem. Largely throu gh his efforts, whichextended throughout his directorship, central intelligencebecame legi t imat ized in an act of Congress. Titl e I, Sec-tion 102 of the National Security Act of 1947 3 establishes

a Central Intelligence Agency and makes the matter of its• ' D u r i n g World W ar II (h e Joint Intel l igence Committee of the JointChiefs of Staff carried om th e s t rategic intel l igence mission of wartime.Its several subcommittees and working commit tees did include representa-tives not merely from ih e Army, Navy, and Air Force, but from several of the civilian agencies as well—notably the Siaie Department, the Office of Strategic Services, and the Foreign Economic Admin i s t ra t i on . To thisextent the JI G wa s a kind of central intelligence organizat ion but itssphere of activities was limited by the na tu re of it s wartime mission. It sparent group, the JCS itself, never had an Executive Order proclaimingits formal existence.

•Eigh t ie th Congress, First Session, Pub l ic Law 253.

79



Bfi-


budget one of the annual concerns of Congress. Let use xa mine th e statute.

Perhaps first to be said is t ha t it purported to closeout, for the time being a: least, a long a rg u men t , as to theessential fo rm chat cen tral in tel l igence should take, (n the

last days of the war this argum ent was at peak and centered 'around the basic question as to whether central intelli-gence should be a very large operating organization orwhether it should be a kind of holding and m a n a g e m e n torganiza t ion. The most extreme advocates of the opera-ting-organization idea asserted that an agency which hadan almost exclusive responsibility for the intelligence of grand strategy and national security would be the onlykind to do a proper j ob . "Whereas they did not propose topu t d ep ar tmen ta l intelligence completely out of business,they did urge a central organization, which would conducton its own, the functions described in current doctrine ascollection, evaluation, and dissemination (or as I havedefined them—survei l lance , research, and dissemination).As such it could not help but envelop (or duplicate) a sub-stantial pa r t of the departmental intelligence functions. Itwould have a s t a f f of appro priate size: very large. It wouldnot be a part of a po licy-making or operating departmentor agency of the government. It would be a vast and livingencyclopedia of reference set apart from all such depart-ments and agencies, and devoted to their service. Some of

its proponents would have had it report to the Joint Chiefsof Staff, some to the President.

Around the advocacy o£ such an organization whirledthe usual arguments for and against highly centralizedadmin istrat ion. In my opinion these were peripheral tothe real issues. In one highly significant matter the pro-ponents of the large operating company had a strong case.It was: if thrust into the collecting phase of intelligence—especially the overt collecting phase—the new organizationmight do a -better job than was currently being done,.


The bulk of overt collection was then and is now carriedout by overseas representatives of those depa rtme nts of thegovernment concerned with our foreign relation s. The threeservice departments, as well as the Departments o f : Com-merce , Agriculture, Treasury, Justice, and o t h e r s send at-

taches; and the State Department, which stands in the fore-front of all of them, sends its Foreign Service Officers andattache's. For reasons deeply rooted in tradition and admin-istrative practice, the quality of this overseas surveillanceand collecting force has been below stand ard . Some of itsmembers have had too many other duties to allow for agood surveillance and reporting job; some have had thetime and i n c l i n a t i o n b u t not the substantive competence;some have had the time and neither the i n c l i n a t i o n northe competence. But let us not forget those who have beendownright brilliant.

Now if is arguable that a new institution charged withthis surveillance and reporting function would be in astrong position to break with departmental precedent andput a keen expert force in the field. The chance of betterforeign reporting constitutes perhaps the strongest argu-ment for highly centralized intelligence.

At the same time such centralization violates what to meis the single most important principle of successful intelli-gence, i.e. closeness o£ intelligence producers to intelli-gence users or consumers. Even within a single department

it is hard enough to develop the kinds of confidence be-tween producers and consumers that alone make possiblethe completeness, timeliness, and applicability of the prod-uct. There are great barriers to this confidence even whenintelligence is in the same uniform or building or line of work. But how m u c h more difficult to establish thatconfidence across the no man's land that presently lies be-tween departments. It would be too easy for such anagency to become sealed of f from real intimacy with theState, Army, Navy, and Air Force departments- to live in

01

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE I N T E L L I G E N C EIS O R G A N I Z AT I O N



I,


relative innocence of thei r particular fears and of the smal lb u t significant changes in their objectives, policies, andplans. It would not be impossible for such an organizationto misdirect its efforts, watch the wrong developments, andreport on matters of smal l concern. Moreover, its remote-ness from day-to-day departmental business would have a

seriously adverse effect upon the applicability of its re-search product. And it may not be too much to say thatdirectives to the departments from the President himself could not alter this situation. The departments whichinevitably carry the chief responsibilities for th e grandstrategy would continue their own intelligence work andwould remain aloof; they might not be entirely who l ehearted in passing on to the agency the take of their ownintelligence operations. They might be a lot less thanwholehearted in passing on information which they were

entitled to consider "operational i n f o r m a t i o n . "4

In m a t -ters of interdepartmental concern, such as those handledby the old StateAVar-Navy Coordinating Committee, eachdepartment could be counted upon to rely upon theknowledge produced by its own people. There would be

'Adminis t rat ive practice likes to try to m ak e a distinction betweenwhat it calls informational (or intelligence) communicat ions and operational communicat ions . In many cases the distinction is valid. Fo r in -stance, a cable concerned with the payroll, leave, and travel of th.;Embassy staff, say, in Lima has operational bin no intelligence importance.However, other cables which ate p r imari ly devoted to operations m ayhave an impor tan t underlay of intel ligence. Suppose, for ins tance, a com-munication comes in which asks for supplementary funds for travel. Sucha request would normally require explanation and in the explanationmight well be contained information of an important nature . Cornmor:carriers in Peru way have suddenly become inadequate or unsafe orunrel iable—a fact which pu ts the mission at a great disadvantage. It mus thave special a r rangements for it s staff. If the recently developed troublein public transport had not already been the subject of an i n fo rmat iona lreport, ihe "operational" communication in question might be the onlyword sent home on the subject. And if this particular commtinicationwere held closely on the grou:ids that its content was primarily of opera-t ional concern, the receiving organization could be said to be w i thho ld ingintelligence from the field,

82


l i t t l e d i spos i t ion to revere the opi nions and f acts producedby the agency just because it was central.

The National Security Act, as it applies to the CentralIntelligence Agency, endeavors to meet this danger in anumbe r of ways. One of them is to reject the idea of thelarge self-contained operating o rgan izat ion and to estab-

lish an agency primarily dedicated to the coordination of departmental intelligence. Let u s examine the text of theact.

Its fourth paragraph (paragraph d) describes the func-tion of the new Central Intel ligence Agency. It reads:

"For purposes of coordinating the intelligence activitiesof the several Government d ep a r t men t s and agencies inthe interest of national security it shall be the duty of theAgency, under the direction of the N a t i o n a l SecurityCouncil — s

"I. to advise the National Security Council in mattersconcerning such intelligence ac t iv i t ies of the Governmentdepartments and agencies as relate to national security;

"2. to make recommendations to the Natio nal SecurityCouncil for the coordination of such intelligence activitiesof the departments and agencies of the Government as re-late to the national security;

"3. to co rrelate and evaluate intelligence relating to thenational security, and provide for the appropriate dissemi-nation of such in te l l igence within the Government usingwhere appropriate existing agencies and facilities:

'See Section 101 of the National Security Act. The Chairman of theCounci l shal l be the President, or hi s designate from among i ts members.These shall be the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of De-fense (see Section 202 of the Act) th e Secretary of the Army (See Section£05), the Secretary of the Navy, The Secretary of the Air Force (see Section£07), the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board (see Section103). W it h advice and consent of the Senate t he Pres ident may from timeto time designate other Cabinet members, th e Chairman of the MunitionsBoard (see Section 213), and the Chairman of the Research and Develop-ment Board .(see Section £14). .Thus the new National Security Councilreplaces the former National Intelligence Authority as the interdepart-mental organization to which the CIA is responsible.

83




Provided, that the Agency shall have no police, subpoena,law-enfor cement powers, or internal security func tion s; Pro-vided further, that the departments and other agencies of the Government shall continue to collect, evaluate', corre-late, and disseminate departme ntal intelligence: And pro-vided further, that the Director of Central Intelligenceshall be responsible for protecting the intelligence -sourcesand methods from u n au th o r ized disclosures;

"4. to perform, for the benefit of existing in ie l t igenceagencies, such additional services of common concern asthe National Secur i ty Council determines can be more e f f i -

ciently accomplished centrally;"5. to pe r fo rm such other functions and duties related

to intelligence affecting the national security the NationalSecurit y Coun cil may from time to time direct."

Let me pause brief ly at this point. Certain ma tters are

quite clear in this paragraph. To begin 'with the clearestones first: The Agency will not have any police functions.The American public, which has rightfully feared any tie-up between intelligence and the police power and whichupon occasions has been misled by irresponsible newspa-pers, can bury the specter of an emergent American Ges-tapo or M V D. Equally clear is the fact that CIA does notsupersede departmental intelligence; CIA's task is to addto its effectiveness by coordinating it and supplementingit. That CIA cannot usurp functions more properly per-formed in the departments seems to be adequately guaran-teed by its subservience to the National Security Councilupon which sit the secretaries of the departments in ques-tion . Lastly it is very clear that CIA will have certainoperating functions (subheadings 4 and 5) and that theseare to be construed as either directly in aid of depart-mental intelligence or as an indistinguishable part o£ itsgeneral mission of coordination.

A little less clear is the matter of advising the NSC ondepartmental intelligence and o£ makin g recommendations

84


for its coordination. Obviously CIA can advise and recom-mend only when it knows practically eve ryth ing there isto know abo ut departmental intelligence. This impliesthat CIA should have an unrestricted right of inspection,but no such right is vouchsafed by the Act. To be sure the

next paragraph, (e), does consider inspe ction , but t he in-spection in question seems to be an inspection of in-telligence (knowledge, the product of the intelligenceactivity) and not the departmental activity whichproduced it. It might be a rgued—and I imagine ithas been a rgue d—tha t the right to inspect the p roduc tconveys the ability to judge the operation which puts itout. But there is a considerable differ ence betwee n thisright of judgment and a right to inspection qua inspec-tion. I should guess that anyone responsible for th e awe-some task of coordinating the intelligence of national

security would sleep better if his inspectorial rights werestated a bit more carefully and fully.

Basic to a ll discussion so far is the meaning of the words"national security." As I have argued earlier, all of theaims of foreign policy or the grand strategy become inextri-cably intertw ined . Is United States policy with respect tothe UN a policy which emerges from our desire to promotea better world order or one which emerges from ourinsistence upon natio nal security? Does our a to mic energypolicy emerge from the one or the other? Is our policy onthe International Trade Organization undertaken in be-half of our material prosperity, a better world order, or OUTnational security? I personally would not be bold enoughto hazard a categorical answer to any of these questions,nor do I feel craven in not doing so. I find it hard toimagine the CIA being any bolder and I assume thereforethat the intelligence functions o f : the Agency will in actualfact be considerably broader than a narrow constructionof the Act's "national security" would have it. In fact Ican only surmise that under the rubric of "national se-

85

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENC E

curity intelligence" CIA will find i tself in all reaches of the

I N T E L L I G E N C E I S O R G A N I Z AT I O N

unaware of possessing the i n f o r m a t i o n , had not mislaid it,



rcurity intelligence" CIA will find i tself in all reaches of thein te l l igence of high polic y and th e grand strategy. This,the Act does not spell out. Maybe it is not necessary.

The next paragraph (e) is dedicated to making sure thatCIA has the abilit y to "correlate and evaluate intelligencerelating to the national security. . . ." ° It reads: "To thee x te n t recommended by the National Security Council

and approved by the President, such intelligence of thedepartments and agencies of the Government, e xc e p t ashereinafter provided, relating to the national security shallbe open to the inspection of the Director of Central Intel-ligence, and such intelligence as relates to the nationalsecurity and is possessed by such departments and otheragencies of the Government, except as hereinafter pro-vided, shall be made available to the Director of CentralIntelligence for correlation, evaluation, and dissemina tion:Provided, however, that u pon writ ten request of the Direc-tor of Central Intelligence, the Director of the FederalBureau of Investigation shall make available to the Di-rector of Central Intelligence such information for correla-tion, evaluation, and dissemination as may be essential tothe national security."

The meaning of the paragraph is quite clear: if centralintelligence is mandated to correlate, evaluate, an d dis-seminate a certain kind of knowledge, and if it is not .toproduce this knowledge from scratch, then it must haveaccess t.o the files of the organizations which do produce itfro m scratch. CIA must have the right to inspect (i.e. rig ht

to see the files) because it is unreasonable to require thatCIA ask for knowledge by the title of the d p c u m e n t it mayappear in. Wit hout the right of inspeciion CIA would bein a hopeless spot; it would have to ask the departmentsfor knowledge the existence of which it did not certainlyknow. And in the event of a negative reply from the de -partment it could never be certain that the department was

•See Article S of paragraph (d).

86

o r w as w i l l fu l l y w i th h o ld in g i t .In addition to the right of inspection CIA must alsfi

have the right to uê t h e i n f o r m a t i on w h i c h the departmentsproduce from scratch. Hence the phrase : such intelligence. . . "shall be made available to" CIA.

The special position which the FB I en joys among theother departmental i n te l l igence o rg an iza t io n s is note-wort hy. If I read the lines correctly , CIA has no right of inspection in the FBI. When it wants in fo rm at io n whichit feels m ay be possessed by the FBI, CIA must ask forit in writing. In the best oE circumstances this p r o c e d u r econstitutes a barrier between the two o rganiza t ions , andin circumstances other than the best it can become animpenetrable wall.

To be sure the FBI's main function is peripheral toCIA's, and the bulk of information which the FBI pro-duces from scratch will not be of inter est to CIA. For

instance, CIA is not likely to be concerned with any of the FBI's domestic intelligence in aid of its law enforce-ment duties. O n the other hand, the re are areas in whichthe FBI works which can be of immense importance toCIA. From the wording of the Act, wh eth er or not CIA isinformed of the FBI's knowledge in these areas wouldseem to rest too heavily upon such intangibles as goodinter-agency relations and personal friendships.

Preceding paragraphs of the Act place the CIA in anappropriate interdepartmental milieu, provide for the po-sition of its director, and m a k e special provision with re-spect to its personnel.

Paragraphs (a) and (b) establish CIA under the NationalSecurity Council and deal at some length with the prob-lem of the direct or. Accord ing to the text he may beeither a commissioned officer of the armed services or anindividual from civilian life. His salary is to be §14,000whatever his previous s tatus. This means that if he is of

87

STRATEGIC I N TELLI G EN CE

one of the services, he will draw his service pay and enough

INTELLI GENCE ,IS ORGAN IZATION

But still Congress has not dealt with all objections—the ones which remain I will consider in the latter half of



additional to bring him up to the full $14 ,000 amount.Furthermore as an officer he is removed from the chain of command: "he shall be subject to no supervi s ion , control,restriction, or prohibition (military or o therwise) o t h e rtha n would be operativ e with respect to him if he w ere aciv i l ian . . . . He shall not possess or exeruse ai,-; super-

vision, control, powers, or functions (other than such ashe possesses . . . as Director) with respect :o the armedservices or any component thereof . . . ." Havin g com-pleted his tour as Director of CIA, his serv ice may notput him under any disability for having been absent fromservice duty.

In making these provisions with respect to the director,Congress tried to overcome certain objections to entrust-ing the job to an officer of the armed services. These ob-

ject io ns ma y be sta ted as fo llo ws: (1) The in cu mb en cy of a service officer is likely to be short. Further more it may

be terminated at the very moment when a change in thetop control will be most h a r m f u l to the organizatio n. Thereasons for this situation lie in the services' own demandfor their best officers and in any officer's reluctance tc sep-arate h imsel f too long from his service lest he damage hisprofessional militar y career thereby. In s t ipula t ing thehigh salar y (high er than any save that of five-star rank)plus the guarantees of no-disability for absence, from astraight service assignment, Congress was holding out aninducement for long continuous tenure and protection forthe officer who made use of it. (2) An officer on loan toCIA from one of the services, and not separated from thechain of his command might not be free to act in co m-plete impartiality toward the other services represented inC I A — m i g h t have duties within his own service whichwould prejudice his wholehearted devotion to CIA. Byspecifically l ift ing him out of the chain of command Con-gress has tried to meet these objections.

the ones which remain I will consider in the latter half of

this chapter .Paragraph (c) of t i ie act gives the director the power to

"terminate the e m p l o y m e n t " ... of anyone in th e Agency,"whenever he shall deem such termination necessary oradvisable in the interests oE the United States." The Di-rector's power in this respect overrides g u a ran t ees of tenure -

written into civil service legislation. At the same time thepresent act goes on tc say that persons thus terminated areto be under no disabi lity in seeking and a c c e p t i ng emp l o y -.ment elsewhere in the government.

This paragraph is dictated by the personnel problemwhich confronts all federal departments and agencies—intelligence and o therwise—charged with the national se-curity. That employees in such organizations, and withinthe government at large, must be loyal and discrete goeswitho ut saying. Bu t in the so-called securit y agencies (no-tably State, Army, Navy, Air Force, Atomic Energy Com-mission, FBI, and CIA) this is not enou gh. Certain of theiremployees and all oE those oE CIA must be in a specialbracket of de pe nda b i l i t y. It can be argued that iE a manhas irregular habits or abnormal quirks o£ character hemay be subject to pressures akin to blackmail; that if aman has near relatives living under the control of a for-eign state he ma y be subje ct to similar pressures. Personsof these categories are not of as good dependabi l i ty— or,as the phrase goes, are not'as good security risks—as others,and a security agency might be well advised not to em-

ploy them. Once they are employed, the agency shouldbe allowed to terminate their employment without preju-dicing their employment rights and expectations elsewherein the government. 7 What is true for the security agencies

* It goes w iLhout saying that a person with a primary and demonstrablea t tachment to a foreign power, or to an ideology inconsistent with that ofthe U.S., has even less reason for employment in a security agency or, for

89

[ STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE

l f h llI N T E L L I G E N C E 15 O R G A N I Z A T IO N



[ in general is true of their intelligence compartments,even more so for CIA. For unless CIA is known or be-lieved to be the safest place in the government it will nothave the full confidence of the agencies to which it is sup-posed to be central. And if it does not have this confidenceit has no function. Therefore paragraph (c) 'of the Act isof vital importance to the very existence of central intel-ligence.

The frarners of the foregoing paragraphs of the NationalSecurity Act have recognized three matters basic to theachievement of an intelligence o f : national security. Theyhave recognized the fundamental importance of depar t-mental intelligence and have not impaired it in the inter-est of central intelligence. They have recognized thatdepartmental intelligence must be worked over ("coordi-nated" ts thetr word)—by some higher power to make surethat it adds up to the requirements of national security.

And finally they have realized that certain essentially op-erating tasks in aid of the total intelligence effort mightbetter be undertaken centrally. That the homers did notspell out at length how departmental intelligence shouldbe coordinated and how supplemented is certainly to beunderstood and applauded . The question is however, doesthe Act-give CIA and its Director sufficient latitude to doa good job of coordinating and supplementing. To an,-swer this question it is necessary to say what the good jo bin question involves. In the rest of this chapter I shall tryto answer the question with respect to my notions of whatthe job calls for—first with respect to the coordination or management function.

The job of coordinating departmental intelligence ac-tivities is an important one. It is far more important than

that matter, anywhere in the government. But for the very reason that theproblem of loyalty is so much broader than that of security in an intel-ligence organization a full discussion of it would not seem appropriate ina book oE this kind.

90

the coordinating o£ the knowledge which these activitiesJ O

produce. For unless the coo rdin atin g agency can exercisesome influence over what should and shou ld not be pro-duced, it is hard to see how coordinating that which isnominally produced will always be a remunerat ive opera-tion. I feel therefore that CIA's primary task lies in some

sort of oversight over depa rtme ntal activit ies. Let me beclear about the de pa r tme n t s and agencies in question.In the first instance the departments in question are the

four which have a primary responsibility for the nationalsecurity, viz., State, Army, Na vy, and Air Force. In peace-t ime, the Depar tment of S tate c la ims , an d g en era l ly enjoys,primacy in the field of foreign po l icy—which as I haveindicated earlier, includes the maintenance of the nationalsecurity as one of its objectives. Thus, at the present writ-ing, intelligence activities of the D e p a r t m e n t of State areor should be of a high degree of importance under the CIA

canopy.In the second instance the departments and agencies at

issue are those like Treasury, Commerce, Agr icu lture, Jus-tice, the Tariff Commission , and so on, whose primaryresponsibilities lie in the domestic sphere, but whose sharein foreign affairs is by no means negligible. As domesticand foreign policy becomes harder and harder to separate,even a department with the name Department of the In-terior finds itself in foreign matters. Actually, I nterior'sBureau of Mines does a good bit of observation and re -search on the mine ral resources of foreign count ries. Thepoint is that after the big four there is a lesser group of twenty-plus organizations which contribute much to the to-tality of federal knowledge and which, theref ore, fall underCIA's coordinative power. The coordinati ng task I havein mind requires that CIA follow six lines of administra-tive activity.

One, it must establish clear jurisdictions for the variousdepartmental intelligence organizations. That is, it must

91


define what subjects each will pursue a nd what subjectseach w i l l not purs ue For exampl e it migh t tell the De-


quality, and that the contribution which each dep::r_-mental outfit makes to an interdepartmental project ji ; ;



H

each w i l l not purs ue. For exampl e, it migh t tell the De-partment of Agriculture to do a better job in foreign agri-cultural intelligence and tell the State Department to getout of that field. It might tell the Division of Intelligencein the Army Department to get out of certain aspects of economic intelligence and tell the Department of Com-merce to take on this responsibility.

Two, having set up departmental jurisdictions, it wouldpolice them. The policing would have to be a continuousprocess and would have to be carried out w i t h the g reates ttolerance and wisdom. It would consist of three subact iv i -ties. First, it would deal with the inevitable expansionof one jurisdiction over into another. In this guise CIAwould pursu e needless duplications of func tion . I shouldlike to stress the word "needless," and assert that all ap-parent duplications are by no means duplication in fact.People who shout duplication at the first sign of s imi lar i ty

in two functions and who try to freeze one of them outon the g r o u n d of extravagance often cost the governmentdearly in the long run. Second, CIA w o u l d see ( .hat everydepartment was exploiting the entire area of its jurisdic-tion. By this I mean that a depa rtm ent would not be per-mitted to pick and choose the subjects within its jurisdic-tion and skimp on those it found distasteful or re la t ive lyuseless for purely departmental purposes. No departm entcould welch on its allotted responsibility and t hu s permita gap to develop Jn the total picture. Third, it w o u l d haveto enlarge certain of the established jurisdictions by the

addition of new subject matter as it appeared and becamesignifi cant to the national security. For example, responsi-bility for knowledge of space ships m a y one day have tobe assigned to some department's jurisdiction.

Three, to return to my main lines of coordina t ive activ-ity, CIA should run a continuing survey of departmentalintelligence to see that its produce is up to standards of

92

mental outfit makes to an interdepartmental project ji ; :;the i n t e r d e p a r t m e n t a l o r i en t a t i o n . This is perhaps as im -portant as the quality of the work i tself , (o r wi thout wi.: . :I have called the interdepartmental ori ent atio n ind iv id ; : . ; :cont ribu tion s will not add up. No r can they be made [ •add up. The project manager in central intelligence w i lfind himself forced to do a subs tant i a l part of the o r i g i n swork al l over again and from scratc h. As I will point onlater this must be avoided at all costs.

Four, if a departmental intelligence o rga n i z a t i on sho i ;Mbe in default, central intelligence must be ready to di : , : -nose and help correct the trouble. For ins tance, on t h .•

theory that the intelligence requirements of top policy i \ i -be something larger than the sum of the requirements ; : £

departmental policy, and on the theory that the sum .

normal departmental contributions to a given top-poh ;.project falls short o£ the requirements, some depa r tm<_ : : [

may well be judged in defau lt of its obligation. It m u i i i i

be that this top project demands such a thi-ig as a table r j 'world tugboat tonnages and that the Navy D e p a r t m e n thad never before felt obligated to keep a tally of tugs. Ti-t-Office o f Naval Intelligence could not deliver. If S U L : Iinformation were mandatory for the project, central i n t e l -ligence should be ready to see that ONI got the funds a n dpersonnel to go into tugboat intelligence.

Five, central intelligence must manage directly or i n < : ireedy a ll interdepartmental projects. By such projects !mean studies which will require both surveillance and re -

search along a very broad front and which will be des t inedfor White House, Cabinet, National Security Council, andthe Joint Chiefs of Staff. Projects of this sort will com-mand the resources and skills of all federal intelligenceand should be carried out under CIA responsibility. Ihave in mind such large orders as the Vatican in w o r ldaffairs, the probable world growth curve of i n t e r na t i ona l

93

ST RAT E G I C I N T E L L I G E N C EI N T E L L I G E N C EIS O R G A N I Z AT I O N



Communism, and the effect upon world power a l i gnm e n t sof [he new movements in the so-called dependent areas.It may be that central intelligence wi l l have one of ii sown staff act as project supervisor, qr it m ay be that theproject supervisor is temporarily bo r r owe d from a depart-ment al intellige nce outfit, In eithe r case, the su p e rv i so r

should be responsible in the firs: instance to the Directorof CIA or his de lega te .

Six, CIA should take cognizance of the p e r s onne l pol-icies of departmental intelligence. It should be fu lly awareof the d i f f i c u l t i e s w h i c h civi l service and the d e p a r t m e n t sthemselves occasion i n te l l igence work. It should take anactive part in seeing that the proper people are recruitedand trained for departmental intelligence.

In performing these six types of coordinating activity,CIA should be guided by one high overriding principle-it should stay out of primary substantive work. CIA willhave to staff up on a few men of highest professional com-petence in appropriate fields of study. It wi l l have to havesome outstanding economists and political scientists, someinternational relations specialists, some specialists in themilita ry art. It wil l have to have a somewh at larger n u m -ber of junior men who have begun to make their profes-sional way. But as little as possible should this staff ge tinto the creative substa ntiv e work. It should confine its ac-tivit ies to management of interdepartmental projects, criti-cisms of the departmental contributions to such p ro tec t s ,investigation of why such departmental contributions areinadequate or in default. Its job is what might be calledpolicing the professional competence of the departmentaloutfits and continuously pushing departmental frailtiesback into departmental laps.

As soon as CIA departs from this principle, as soon as itgets into substantive work and itself makes descriptive orevalu ative studies, it is in trouble. For when it does this,it becomes little more than a fifth major research and sur-

94


veillance outfit. It enters into direct compe tition with itssubsidiaries and at great disadvanta ge. It competes withthem for professional personnel in a market which is al-ready tigiit to the strangu lation point. It competes withthem in building up a library of basic documentation (see

page 133 and fo l lowing) , and its la teness in entering thisfield puts it under enormous hand icap . It has few con-sumers which are noc also served by departmental intelli-gence ou t f i t s or by ad hoc co m b in a t io n s of them and thusit competes for co n su m ers an d c o n s u m e r guid ance. Thisguidance will be grudgingly given to an organizationwhich is administratively separated from the consumeran d w h ich has no operating resp onsi bilit y.

Competition of this sort will annoy and anger. Depart-menta l intelligenc e will swear out the vendetta and througha few sordid and well-known bureaucratic dodges may ne-

gate CIA's whole program. N o t that bad blood will notbe created in the six lines of management I have proposed.I see plenty of it. But I do not see it enduring forever. Forthe role I have assigned CIA is a non-compet i t ive- ro le andone which the departments should come to honor oncethey have recovered from the original shock.

Some may argue that CIA cannot pol i ce substantivecompetence in the departments unless it has a staff whichcan beat departme ntal, intelligence at its own game. Bythis they imply that CIA c a nno t keep up departmentalstandards until it is so strong a research organization thatit is virtually the match of the combined strength of all

• the departm ental outfits . With this poi nt of view I cannotagree at all , I do not believe that a critic, to be construc-tive, must know everything that the person he criticizesknows. I do believe that a wise and experienced critic canpoke holes in an argument or put his finger on soft spotsin another's work without being the technical equal ormaster of that other. The kind of critic I have in mindis the eldtr statesman of his profession, the man who has

r i STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE

been through the mill of detailed duty or original workand who, therefo re , has a high ability to discern the good

INTELLIGENCE IS

pend upon criteria such as a p p r o p r i a t e rank, ava i lab i l i ty,and branch of service. S o m e of the officers wi l l be there



r

rr"

ri-

r

rFr

n

, , g y gand bad in another's wo rk . He is a man wh o keeps upwith his profession, in fact leads it, not by doing the choresof early and mid career, but by doing the ripe and reflec-t ive work, o f fu l l career. I should expert that t hey—a dozenor so aided by perhaps a score of sharp ass is tants—-would becivilia ns. Not only will c iv i l ians suitable for the job bemore abundant, but as well, the right ones can move withhigh fluidity from service to service. Perhaps higher fluid-ity than an officer of one of the services. If more t h a n adozen of such were needed there is no reason to w i t h h o l dt h e m , so long as they clearly understood that their dutywas criticism and direction, not surveillance and research .

The problem of recruiting a dozen such men is perhapsthe key problem of the whole program I have laid down.Wi tho ut them the program will not move. I bel ieve, how-ever, that they can be recruited but only under the follow-ing conditions:

1. The program which they are to inaugurate must havebeen fully thought through. M o re , CIA must have takensoundings in the National Security Council and. made sureof its support. No men of the caliber I have in m i n d willtake on a job of this sort until they have some clear notionson the chances of success.

2. If they are to be civilians then the leadership of CIAmust be civilian. The National Sec urity Act has obviatedsome of the disadvantages of military leadership, but it hasnot obviated the main one. This is that so lonw as an om -

j

cer of the armed services is director of CIA it is almostinescapable that his immediate staff also will be of themilit ary. It is likewise almost inescapable that he will setup his organization according to the familiar military staff pattern and will pad out the top echelon—it has happenedof ten—wi th Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine officers.Appointment to the top staff in this way is likely to de -

96

because they are colonels or captai ns not oth erwi se assignedand others will be there merely to maintain a service-by-service balance in the table of organization. Some of thisgroup will have little p ro fess ional competence in the spe-cialized task o f : high-level intelligence and o th e i s may havelittle interest to boot. In short, the p eo p le to whom the

civilian experts report and with whom they must workwill be chosen on criteria fa r different from those to whichthe c iv i l i ans themselves owed their o w n appointments.They will not regard th is situation as enhancing the job,and no matter how good and g r ea t a man the Director,they will be recruited with difficulty.

Of course there is an alternative, n amel y, to have a mili-tary Director and to man the top coordinating echelonfrom the ablest men of the services themselves. I am notof those who assert the services do not possess officers of adequate professional training for the job. I know theydo. I also know, however, that the ser vices wi ll be slow toassign such officers to intelligence and that the officersthemselves will not be gay about the a s s ig n m en t . A longduty in intelligence is not the best way to advance in themilitary career. 8 Realize that the privileges and immuni-ties with which Congress has invested the Director (shouldhe be an officer) do not apply to other military men as-signed to CIA. But suppose the services assign and theofficers gladly accept the assignment and go to work. Isubmit that such a coordinating staff will have more trou-

ble dealing with the military departments than a.

civiliang ro u p — an d almost certainly more difficulty with the ci-vilian departments. For instance, if someone is to inves-tigate shortcomings of the Army's intelligence activities, heshould be an army officer, not a navy or air officer. But itmay happen that the right man for the job wears the blue

' In the next chapter, I deal w i th this problem at some length.

97


uni for m. And if someone is to give unpleasant advice to


Departmen t to ind icate t h a t it is s i u i . s a t i s f i e d w i th ' the



«*.

uni for m. And if someone is to give unpleasant advice toState or Commerce, he had best not be a man in any colorunifo rm. To create an al l -m i l i tar y coord inat ing s taff is torob it of fluidity of action with respect to the services andprejudice its success with the civilian d e pa r t m e n t s .

Let u s suppose that CIA is civilianized as to leadershipa n d does recruit its key professional c oo r d i na t i ng pe r s o n -nel, what of the r e m a i n i n g problems? They are block-bus ter s . Take the questio n of defining th e jur i sd ic t ion- o f a given departmental intelligence o rgan izat ion—say, theArmy Department's Division of Intelligence.

Everyone would agree that Army Department positivein te l l igence should produce knowledge on the groundforces of fore ign states. This is jus t abou t as fa r as thea g r e e m e n t w i l l go. Ask the next qu e s t i on—" wh a t is m e a n tby g round forces? the force in being or the mobilizableforce?"—and see what happens. The Army Departme nt

would hold that knowledge of the ground forces in beingwas only a fragment of what it had to know; it w o u l d arguethat the force in being is only an inaccurate and mislead-ing symbol of the total ground force which might be m o-bilize d for war. It is against the p o ten t ia l force that ourarmy must be prepared, not against the fragment in being.No w this mobili zable force is no simple thing, and" tocalculate its size and striking power no mere matter of mili-tary in te l l igence narrowly construed. As I tried to demon-s t ra te in Chapter 4, ca l cu l a t i o n s on mobilizable force arepreponderantly based on knowle dge of political, eco n o mi c ,

social, and moral phenom ena. To estimate mobi l izab leforce or war potential, Army Department intelligence mustspread far and wide over other departmental jurisdictions.

Suppose now that CIA moves to restrict the Army De-partment's jurisdiction and to make other de pa r t m e n t s —i nthis case State and Commerce especial ly—furnish it the po-litical and economic knowledge to complete its calculation.Two howls will go up. One will go up from the Army

98

pstuf f it is receiving. It will say t h a t what State and Com-merce are handing on is i n a d e q u a t e or t h a t it cannot bef i t ted into its kin d of estim ate. The o i h e r howl will go upfrom State and Commerce to indicate t h a i their intell i-o-ence o rg an iza t io n s a re over-burdened wi th the i r own de-O O

pa r t r ne n t a l du t i e s and t h a t they do no; want the ArmyDepartment account.

Or , S ta te and. Commerce's howl will indicate that theyw o u l d be glad to work for the Army D e p a r t m e n t if the lat-ter were more specific in its demands. As m a t t e r s stand, theyclaim, the Army Department is being o \ e r l y cautious aboutthe large project to which they are supposed to contribute.So long as they do not know the end-use to which iheirproduct will be put, t h ey cannot t u r n out a satisfactory

job. Indeed th ey may go f u r t he r and . s a y that this is. thelast time they will aid the Army Department if it does not

take them into its confidence and give them t he sort of guidance they require.Such arguments back and forth wi ll inevi tably draw CIA

deeper and deeper into the supervision of departmentalintelligence operations. If CIA has the right men in itsown employ this will be a good thing for the country. Butit will not be so conceived by the par t i es of the secondpart, They will tak e it with poor grace, and CIA must bestrong and c o m p e t e n t to weather a five-ye ar storm.

The trouble CIA makes for itself on these jurisdictionalproblems will be aggravated w h e n it cracks down, say, onthe State Department for an unsa t i s fac tory contribution toone of its (CIA's) own int erd epa rtm ent al project s. Its sub-sequent investigation into State's i ntelligence organizationwill, for a while at least, provoke bad feeling. State, asother departments, will have its d i f f i c u l t i e s accommodatingitself to what it will consider an impairment of its sov-ereignty.

Bu t C IA may improve its position with its subsidiaries

99

J

, . ,i i j. '.it. ) '- l i . i - U C E . N C Ewhe i . it fights the goud fight fo r them. If the State De-partment's poor performance were occasioned by a lack of staff , and the lack of staff by unreasonable budget-cutting,CIA's championship of more funds wil l w in friends This

I do not think it has. For the dra fte rs of the Act havebeen too much preoccupied in the wrong direction. Th':yhave given CIA access to th e p r o d u c t o f d e p a r t m e n t a l y i -



CIA s championship of more funds wi l l w in friends. Thisand the fact that department intelligence craves good topmanagement may take some of the sting out of CIA'sunpleas ant activities. If it can bring depa rtme ntal intel li-gence together as a team on broad intelligence problemswhich everyone regards as nationally important; if it can

furn ish first-rate interdepartmental project supervisors andgood staff work, it can step on departmental toes and sur-vive a good deal of depa r tmenta l wrath . The fact that itis not competing with the departments will be one of thestrongest points in its favor.

In the very best of circumstances the task I have outlinedfor the CIA of my choice would be an extremely" difficultone. Bu t the wording of the Act does not describe to methe best of circumstance s. To begin wit h, it does notcivilianize the agency by specifying that the Director mustcome from civil life. In permitting an office r of the armed

services to hold the post the Act gives CIA a military aura.This may turn out to be a positive disadvantage, for inmaking possible an accumulation of military men at thetop level, it will discourage the recruitment of profession-ally competent civilians at what I have called the coordi-nating level. Let us not forget that the subjec t matter of CIA's particular brand o£ intelligence is much closer to .so-called civilian specialties than to military.

But as I have indicated, failure to have high-calibercivilians in the coordinating staff is not necessarily a dis-aster. The services have able people for the job if they(the services) are willing to assign them and keep themthere for long periods of time. Let us assume that they do

ju st this. Unde r these conditions has CIA everything itcould ask in the way of statutory powers tc do the f o b Ihave described?

100

te l l igence act iv i t ies , bu t no t to those a c t i v i t i e s ih emseh L - .

In truth they have given CIA th e r i ^ l i t to make r e c om -me nda t ions about the act iv i t ies , bu t they have not v o u c h -safed CIA the right directly to i n v e s t i g a t e t h e m . U n < J . , _ vthe Act, if CIA is to make such r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s it w i : lhave to base them not on a direct f i r s t - h a n d k n o wl ed g e c i '

what these ac t iv i t i es are , bu t upon a k n o wl ed g e o t t h e : : ;inferred from a study of th e i r end p r o d u c t . This p r o c c . - jseems unnecessarily devious to m e — l i k e leaving an a u t o ' sign it ion switch off and p ropell ing it by its battery ar.:istarter.

Suppose the director of CIA senses something wrong indepartmental intelligence and suppose th at, b ecau se of t helimitations of the Act, he cannot make weighty and p o in tedrecommen dations to the NSC. Suppos e the NSC is i;otimpressed by the recommen dations he does make. The di-

rector of CIA is none the less under the terrifying respon-sibilities of the Act. If he cann ot get w h a t he must h:\\cfrom d ep ar tmen ta l intelligence and if he has not the p o w u rto make departmental intelligence produce it, his way is

' all too clear. He must start producing his own int ell ige nc efrom scratch. He must embark upon his own full-sca lesurveillance and research activities. And, as I have re -marked, in so doing he will move into competition withthe departments. Things being as they are he cannotexpect to triumph; departmental intelligence, no matter

•how inadequate it becomes, has certain important and

persistent advantages. The best he can hope for is a stale-mate.

So far I have confined myself only to the first of the tw ochief functions of CIA, e.g. coor din ati on. What of thesecond, the operating func tion ? The n a t u r e of this is ft

101


f o r t h in sections 4 and 5 of paragraph (d) of the Ac t. I:I N T E L L I G E N C E IS O R G A N I Z AT I O N

the Cent ral In tel l igence Agencyinsists o n t r y i n g to per-



Ifrfc

:;fch t

- & • • • - - i f f•,SB>. *

p g p ( )consists of performing for the benefit of departmental in-telligence those tasks which can best be performed centrally plus any other tasks that the NSC assigns it. Theintent is c l ear and its chance of real izat ion high. In' i tsoperations CIA will be working in behalf of th e depart-ments. Should CIA desi re to go off on its own it m u s tfirst obtain clearance from the NSC upon wh i c h sit thesecre ta r i es o£ the depar tment s in question. They may beexpected to show an appropriate amount of pa roc h ia l in -terest in the d e p a r t m e n t a l operations. That they shouldis just right.

In consonance with what I have said about CIA andthe coordinating function, I repeat here: CIA's operatingfunctions should not be in competition with the d e pa r t -ments. Whatever the substantive product of these opera-tions may be, it should be a product designed to fit a

dep art men tal intelligence requirement. Or, it should be ap r o d u c t to fit the requirement of some interdepartmentalproject. It should not be somethi ng which CIA fanciestoo important for departmental use, or too far r emo v edfrom a ll departmental jur isdic t ions . For as soon as CIAoperates and produces new substantive knowledge only fo rits own account, and as soon as it passes this knowledge onto some final consumer without making the departmentspar ty to the procedure , CIA is in substantive work. Ail of the woes which will beset it if its coordinating activitieslead it to original and creative research, will beset it inthis second case.

It seems to me that the worst thing CIA could do wouldbe to set up operations in aid of a home research staff andto try to turn out supra-departmental knowledge withoutthe partnership of the departments. Should d ep ar tmen ta lintelligence reach such a low estate that it was unworthyof CIA's conf idence, then CIA's job would be to build updepartmental in te l l igence— not try to supersede it. For if

102

the Cent ral In tel l igence Agency insists o n t r y i n g to perfo rm the entire intelligence job and in so t r y in g endeavorsto reduce d e p a r t m e n t a l orga niz ati ons to impotence it willnot succeed . It w i l l e m e r g e from the bat t le p e rh ap s stillan agency but not central, and it may not even w a r r a n t thename intelligen ce.

103

CHAPTER 7

DEPARTMENTAL INTELLIGENCE

..>. J ELLiOil.-..— .. j —., -.

of national policy. This is to say that departmental intel-ligence has obligations both to the department whichhouses and supports i t and to the counci ls of top n a t i o n a lpolicy which lie above This l a ; t e r obligation may fo rce



I\ Ir

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f

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fn

I-

BY D E P A R T M E N T A L intelligence I mean the organizationswithin certain f edera l d e p a r t m e n t s and agencies which

are devoted to the production of intelligence (knowledge)of wha t goes on abroa d. There are a g reet many suchorgan izat ions—perhaps twenty or m o r e — b u t those of pri-mary importance are, as I have already noted, within theD e p a r t m e n t of State, Army, Navy, and Ai r Force. It isthese o rgan izat ions—the State Department's Office of In te l -ligence Research and Office c E Collection and Dissemina-tion, the Army D ep ar tmen t ' s Division of Intelligence, theNavy Department's Division of Naval Intelligence, andthe Air Force's Division of In tel l igence—which should inthe nature of things produce, or possess the capacity toproduce, most of the basic knowledge fo r our high-levelforeign policy and grand strategy. The remainder is theproduct of the Central Intelligence Agency and of the

other departments peripheral to the problems of foreignrelations.

The job of any one of the big four is easy to describetheoret ical ly—though as I indicated in the last chapter,very difficult to describe in practical terms. In theory the

job shou ld consis t of describing, observing and reportingupon, and speculat ing as to the future of those phenomenain foreign lands which He within the jurisdictional com-petenc e of the department. Thus our Air Force's intelli-gence arm should devote itself to foreign military aviationand our State Department's intelligence to foreign politi-cal and perhaps economic activit ies. The job which anyone o£ the big four does will tend to be a double one.Ideally it wi l l first produce a ll the knowledge required forenlightened departmental policy, and second, enough moreof the same kind of knowledge to satisfy the requirements

104

policy which lie above, This l a ; t e r obligation may fo rcean intelligence organiza t ion to p roduc e k n o wl ed g e w i ; i ; : t ithe de pa r tme n t ' ? s phe re of interest o f a b re a d th a : i , l :idegree of remoteness that would not be necessary i.jrstraight d e p a r t m e n t a l c o n s u m p t i o n . Thi; is the kind o lextra knowledge which the Cen t r a l Intelligence Agcr.^y

must have in order to carry out its program of l o n g -n m^ einterdepartmenta l studies.To perform the dual task d e p a r t m e n t a l i n te l l igence

must ha ve an organisat ion an d people to f i l l it. Let :i;espeak of the people first. They should c o m j first becausethe proper people cons t i tu te the single essent i a l e l e m e n t ,There is no subs t i tu te for them.

The people in any departmenta l in te l l igence o r g a : i i : ^ : i -tion are of several main categories:

First, and in common with all organiza t ions there mv.stbe the administrative housekeepers—the people who sec

that the mail comes in and goes out, that the s t a f f has work-ing quarters and supplies, that the s t a f f gets paid; that themult i fa r ious regula t ions regarding leave , t rave l , e ff ic iencyratings, and the working day are observed; thai the classi-fication of positions is in line with regulations of the CivilService Commission, and that the budget gets preparedand presented in order and in t ime .1

'I will not discuss this group of people f u r t h e r b ecau se the p r o b l e m slurrounding Ijiem are problems by no m e a n s peculiar to an i n t e l l i g e n c eoutfit. However, I am reluctant to leave the area of the admin is t r a t iveforce in government work w i t h o u t some c o m m e n t s w h i c h apply to my ownexperience in intelligence, and I suspect, to many a civil s e rv an t i;i otherreaches of the government.

On principle I w o u l d always find myself on the side of the a dvoc a t e ? of a d m i n i s t r a t i v e decen t r a l iz a t ion . I ful ly r e a l i z e t he pe na l t i e s which a looseadmin is t r a t ive o rgan iza t ion imposes, hut my conviction is that they arefar less t h a n the penalties of ( h e o t h e r e x t r e m e —a fortiori in gove rn -ment, where the main administrative problems go back to the an t iqu i t ie sand obscurities of the Civil Service S ta tu te . T he lesser u n i t , or to use th e

105

ST RAT E G I C INTELLIGENCE

Next t h e r e ' i s the clerical group. This is composed o £f


to the people who are putting the d a t a t oge ther in newd d f i i h



the people who dc the paper work for the administrators,but more importantly it also encompasses the people whoput out and physically distribute the operation's end-product: the studies and reports and me mos . I might gofu r t h e r and include all the various categories of repro-ducers: the mime ogra phe rs , the photographers , the print-ers o[ maps, the assemblers and binders of manuscript, andalthough it will not flatter them to be included h e re— th epeople who aim to present the language of letter and num-ber in the language of p icture.3

Next is the library group about which I will have m o r eto say in the next chapter. As in any insti tution where re -search is going forward and where new knowledge is th eend-product, they constitute the keepers of th e physicalaccumulation of knowledge. They take in. as a result of their own and other peoples' efforts, the data of yesterday;

they index and file it; they safeguard it; they dispense itj argon, the lower echelon uni t , of any government office which has noadmin is t r a t ive agent to represent its case (and represent it with f e rvor an dlow an imal c u n n i n g in the higher admin is t r a t ive o lTiL-e) is o u t o f l uck .The Civil Service system under its present j u n g l e of rules and regu la t i onsmust inevitably appear a; not much more t h an a conspiracy agains t com-petence. The only way a low echelon unit can stay in business is to ma in-tain its o wn paid administrative champion to fight its way through to thesurface. Wi t h o u t a large amount of such decentral izat ion and resu l t an tcombat there is th e calm which settles over buried cilies: the [ront officeis beaten into line by the Commission and the survival of the unfitthroughout the organization becomes the order of the day.

'With respect to these la tter—the visual presentation experts—I findmyself of several minds. There is no question that good d i ag ram s and

char t s improve ih e understandabill:y of certain kinds of text. There is alsono ques t ion—to me at least—that certain other kinds of text cannot beillustrated, let alone irapioved in understandability, by such diagrams.The .p resen ters themselves are not always of th i s ' l a t t er view. Like mem-bers of an y new and aggressive calling they o f t en seem to be unaware of th e limitations of their medium and highly r e luc tan t to play the role o E apassive service organization. If left to follow their own inclinations, theyhave been known not merely to essay the impossible in picture language,but also to start urging ih e professionals whose work they should be illus-trating to change th e wording and even the meaning so as to make it moreamenable to their means of expression.

106

patterns and deriv ing from it new a p p r o x i m a t i o n s to truth.Next is the p rofess iona l s t a f f w h i c h , w i t h m y las t group,

is the cruc ial part of the organiza tion. Wi tho ut the pro-fessional experts there is no i n t e l l i g en ce . These are thepeople who are students of the manifold aspects of lifeabroad I have describ ed earli er. They are the social and,

natural sc ien t i s t s and the military experts who have afinger-tip feel for the ways of research and analysis, whoare masters (or dedicated novi t i a tes ) oE the tools and tech-niques of their particular bracket oE l e a rn in g , and to whomthe discovery o£ new facts or new relationships betweenfacts is a career , They are the people with wide screens of professional sensitivity whose o rgans oE reception registerand convey minute changes in the areas they have undersurve i l l ance—changes which would not register at a ll ona less specialized screen. They are the p e op l e who, stimu-lated by a minute change, automatically go into action toprove its importance or unimportance and its validity orinvalidity. F u r t h e r — w h o go into action equipped with thebasic knowledge for research in t h e i r particu lar field.They are also the people who u n d e r t a k e research at thesuggestion of a policy officer or a planner, the people whofind out about the food situation in China for Mr. Clay-ton, or the broad outlines of the program which the Rus-sian listener to the Voice of America wants to hear. Theyare the ones who furnish the knowledge for testing thefeasibility of objectives and the knowledge from which

policy and plan's may be formulated . In short, they arethe human element behind everything that is written inthis book, and if they do not in actual departmental prac-tice measure up to the specifications of this paragraph ordo not perform the functions I have designated for them,they should,

My last group is the group of substantive managers whoare in spirit and training at least a fraction of the

107

I N T E L L I G E N C E

professional staff set o f f for other du t ies . The job whichthey have to do is that of seeing t h a t th e o u t p u t . oE theprofessional staff is specifically direct ed to th e cu i - ren t problems of the department and to those of top pol icy; that

power of their organization can be most effec tive ly u t i l i s ed .What I am describing is not what every p ro fess ional getswith h is g raduate t ra in ing ; in Eact he i s l ikely no t to acquire it anywhe re Ge ner ally he has to be born with it



\r

r

I

f

P

f r

lems of the department and to those of top pol icy; thatthe component pieces of the output, i.e. the .s tudies ormaps or reports or m e m o s , will be produced according tothe priority of demand for them; that the f in i shed projectswil l be co mp l e t e , balanced, and del ivered on time; andthat they will be delivered in a physical form most a p p r o - .

priate fo r the user. (You do not send a 200-page stu dy tothe White House when the request asked for a memoran-dum, nor do you send a memo to the operating officer whohas requested an encyclopedia.)

To car ry out this job the substantive managers must beexcepti onal indeed. For they must c o m b i n e a high degreeof p ro fess ional ability with a high degree of practical so-phistication and man ag er ia l talent. They must have pro-fessional standing in order to command the respect of aprofessional staff. That they have this respect and the goodwill which usually goes with it is of utmost importance.They will have great difficulty in obtaining either respector good will without themselves possessing a reputationand a proven ability in an apposite field of sy s t em a t i cstudy . This experience in turn will favor their perform-ance in another and almost eq u a l l y impor tant way: it willpermit them a personal insight into the capabilities of thestaff and a fo reg l impse of the time necessary for the c o m - 'p l e t ion of a given project.

The other quality which they must possess is no lessvit al. It is the qua l i ty or qualities which permit them to

move easily and informally among the policy people andplanners of their own and other departments and to iden-tify the intelligence requirements of the main problemswhich are at issue; it is the quality which gives them good

judgment on the pri ori ty rating of the main p rob le ms , andwhich permits them to see precisely where the weight and

108

quire it anywhe re. Ge ner ally he has to be born wi th it .It is good sense, d i scret ion , tact , abi l i ty to g e t on with peo-ple, ability to lead and direct them, a knowledge of whatmakes the world go around, and an a c u t e understandingof where the world is right now.

There can be no question of the importance of compe-

tent professional specialists and of th is managerial c o n t r o lstaff. Yet depart mental intelli gence often behaves othe r-wise. It oft en behaves as i f the secret of success lay iningenious organiza t ion, as if a subtle and complicatedproduct could be turned out by inexpert people using fool-proof jigs and tools. I hold that th is is an Lgreg iously mis-taken notion; I hold that you cannot produce knowl e dgeof a high order of subt le ty and utility in the same wayyou produce Fords. If you fol low the assem bly- l ine pr in-ciple and multiply the individual steps and stages of anintelligence enterprise to the point where each of them isso reduced in com ple xit y that a non-profess ional employeecan perform it, you will not get knowledge at the end o fth e l ine . Yo u wi ll g et v i r t u a l l y n o t h i n g o f v a l ue . Yo u wi l lcontinue to get next to nothing until the people who work at the rudimentary tasks also know a great deal about thewhole process and are also able to work effectively at manyof the ad v an ced stations on the line.

The simplest example of what I am talking about is thehabitual division oT labor between a foreign languagetranslation service and the analysis of the translated texts.

There may be such a thing as foolproof t rans la t ion, but Ihave seldom seer. it. Language, be ing the b l u n t tool thatit is, is capable of concealing the message it aims to conveyto everyone except the man who is attuned in advance toits meaning. Just as some very wise men cannot read atimetable in their own language, so other equally wise men

109


who have spent a l i f e t i m e learning and teaching a fo reignl ill fi d hi i i h i l


i d en t i ca l ca r ee r o p p o r t u n i t i e s . Pa r a d o x i c a l l y, where no in -t i t t i i t th l 0 1 t l l " k th th



l an g u ag e will find many things wr i t t e n in th is l a n gua gewhich t h e y cannot translate. They can t r a n s l a t e only thosepassages w h e r e both the fore ign and American meaningsar e exper ient i a l ly f am i l i a r to them. The man who canrender every shade of meaning of a foreign novel into ourlanguage will not necessarily be the man who can t ranslatea technical article. Furt hermo re all the dictionaries in theworld are not going to see him t h ro u g h his difficulties if he should try. He cannot translat e the article unt il he hasmastered its tricky vocabulary, which in turn means thathe has, in some measur e, mastered the sub ject matter . Thep o i n t is that the intelligence officer who must rely on some-one else's translation of the materials he h i m s e l f ' m u s tanalyze is at the mercy of the translator, and in my experi-ence few people who are satisfied with the dreary job of routine translation are ones I would choose to lean upon.

But the division of labor in the translation service isonly one ready example among many. Separation of thecollecting from the evaluating phase, and the evaluatingphase from what is termed "research" on the organizationdiagrams are other parts of the same picture and even moreopen to question on the same basis.

The masters and doctors of public administration whodraw the organization diagrams have seemed too oftenobl ivious of this, as have high officials in departmentswhich must perform a crucial intelligence miss ion . Servicethought along these lines I find peculiarly hard to unde r -

stand. It takes off from the premise that the line officershall not become a specialist in any one kind of endeavor,and that the top brackets of the career, whether in staff orline, will be filled by officers with command experience.Although the services do tacitly acknowledge the impor-tance of specialization in such obvious matters as medicineor communications or logistics they do not give these spe-cialists parity with the line officer by guaranteein° them

110

s t i t u t i o n is more aware ot the v a l u e 0 1 s t a l l " w o r k than th eservices an d f ew i n s t i t u t i o n s p u t such e m p h a s i s upon i t ,th e o f f i c e r with too much s t a f f e x p e r i e n c e in his life or theo f f i c e r w ho w o u l d choose n o t h i n g b u t s t a f f work i s undera d isab i l i ty c ogna t e w i t h t h a t of t h e t ech n i ca l or profes-s i ona l specialise. The resu l t of t h i s l ine of th inking upon

t he i n t e l l i ge nc e f unc t i on i s t o be regre t t ed .The general off icer or f lag off icer in charge of intelli-

gence at the general s t a f f level of Army, Navy, and AirForce is almost invariably a man with distinguished . com-mand experience. By the same token , he is almost nevera man whose whole life has been devoted to strategicintelligence. The people in his o rg an iza t io n upon whomhe places most reliance and who exer cise greatest authority— h i s deput ies , h i s opera t ing branch chiefs , h i s staff ad -visers, and even s om e t i m e s some ot his "experts," are al-most certain to come from the same stratum of commandexperience. Those with a future in the service cannot af-ford to do too long a stretch in any specialized task—intel-ligence i nc l ude d—a nd the best of them, who in a few yearsof study and practice in a given intelligence area wouldbecome experts in every sense of the word, are the veryones who must move on. Behind th em they m ay leave, inmore or less permanent residence, the men who have be -come reconcil ed to not rising to the top. This is not toimply tha t these are necessarily alw ays t he least wise, imag-inative, and act ive men in the service, b ut it is certainly to

argue that t he y - a r e not always the people of greatest wis-dom and imagination, and the most active.

Given this s i tuat ion—a situation in which personnel of the very highest degree of technical competence are neededbut not f o r th co m in g — i t is perhaps reasonable that servicethinking tries to produce a remedy in the organizationdiagram. On the principl e that a crew of x men can bringa 16-inch gun turret to bear upon an invisible target and

111


h i t it by the deft but uncomprehending use of de l i ca te andcomplicated gadgets, this thinking argues a s i rn i l iar case

I N T E L L I G E N C E J S O R G A N I Z AT I O N

acclaim which holds for line duty, the spec ia l i s t ' s f u n c t io nwill suffer.

No w s t ra tegicintelligence is one of the phenomena of



for a simi lar division of labor in a problem, say, eco n o mi canalysis. Break, down the task into its simplest componentsand use as many men as you have components. "U'i-th gun-nery the solution works better than with economics.

The services have an extremely difficult problem ontheir hands. There is no escaping t he fact that their primeobligation is to win the battles and the wars. One hund redand fifty years ago the state of the art of war was such thatgenerally informed and intelligent men were adequatelyequipped to use the then relatively simple m a c h i n e s of war. At that time an overwhel ming p e r c e n t a ge of anarmed es t ab li sh men t could take its place in the line and avery small percentage had to be withheld for setting up,ma in ta in ing , and impro ving the machine s. In these cir-cumstances the services could afford to frown on special iza-tion, and they did so. B u t not a decade has passed in

which the state of the art of war has not changed, andc ha nge d in tune with the growth of science and technol-ogy. Today an army, navy, or air force mus t still be ableto put a winning force in the field, and at the same timeemploy the incredibly complicated new implements. Socomplicated are these that a service might dissipate itsentire capability in learning their refinements and thenuances of their most effective use. There is a not un-natural apprehension in service opinion that unless one ison his guard, the armed forces will be under the control of

the new gadgets instead of the other way arou nd. Thusthere is another o f those well-known cultural lags which inth is case is damaging to the services' professional special-ists. The services real ize they must have them, but theyhave not yet reached the point of putting a proper valueon their talents. And until these special talen ts get thesame opportunity for accomplishment, advancement, and

112

No w s t ra tegic intelligence is one of the phenomena ofw ar and peace which has advanced in c o m p l e x i t y alongwith a ll the other machines and techniques. It is n o l o n g ersomething that a competent officer can do b e t ween twocommand assignments. Ii is a specialty of t he vc- . -y highestorder and until the services recognize it as such and prop-erl)1 recruit, train, and reward p e r s onne l who make acareer of it; they are certain to do an inadequate job.

But the services are not the on l y departments which areculpable. The State Department, for example, had nointelligence service by that name until the fall of 1945.(It had had some research units in recent years t h a t did notsurvive for long.) The intelligence mission, in so far as itwas carried out a t all, was carried out by non-special is tswho also had a thous and other things to do. Amo ng theconservative element of the department, which was alsothe regnant element, there was little or no c o m p r e h e n si o nof what intelligence was and no disposition to support anintelligence staff. In fact when the Research and AnalysisBranch of the Office of Strategic Services was transferredto the d e p a r t m e n t by Executive Order (20 September1945, to take effect 1 October 1945} it was vigorously op-posed by the old guard. They did not want an intelligenceoutfit as such, although they did assert an interest in someof the personnel and the library. They urged the break-upof the i nhe r i t e d o rg a n i za t io n and the apportioning of itsregional experts to the appropriate operating desks of the

so-called geographic offices. Altho ugh this meant gravedamage to the organization, Mr. Byrnes was prevailedupon to take the step.

Throughout the debate which preceded Mr. .Gyrnes'saction, high officers of the State Department based theirargument on one basic issue. According to the ir lights,they already had an intelligence o rgan izat ion in that they

113


themselves were all in te l l igence officers- They therefo redid not n e e d — n o r indeed did they w a n t — a n o rga n i z a t i on


right kind of p ro fess ional people to produce it; and t i iescpeople have been given an enlighte ned leade rshi p. It is in

f h h f d l k b



1y g

which might reach conclusions d i ffe ren t from their own.To the extent that sensate beings usually know and think before they act, these State Department officers—some of whom were very a b le i ndiv idual s—were correct in assert ingthat they were intelligence officers, but to the extent rhat

they knew everything which they should and co u l d , haveknown before they acted, they were not. Of tw o importantaspects of intelligence, they had time to do no m o r e thanan indifferent job of surve i l l ance and no time at al forresearch. If an army had followed a similar line of argu-ment and based its action upon it, it might have tried theNormandy landing with kn igh ts in armor or the reduc-tion of the Japanese homeland by Greek fire.

Since Mr. Byrnes 's decision, the situation in the StateDepar tment has changed considerably. One of GeneralMarshall's first acts upon becoming Secretary of State wasL O reverse Mr. Byrnes and restore the department's in telli-gence organiza t ion to its o r i g i n a l shape. If le f t thus andgiven the wherewithal to rebuild its s taff , it would cer-tainly have become of increasing value . Bu t no sooner hadthe retransforrnation taken place than the organizationbegan to be starved out. Its budge's have been clipped inthe department and manhandle d in Congress. The reduc-tions have been sufficiently severe to have occasionedalmost mortal hurt.

There are other civilian agencies which have a second-ary role in foreign policy and which have more or lesscontinuously given intelligence it s duo. A l t h o u g h ' t h e yhave not always called it by that name, and a l t h o u g h theyhave not been able to maintain it at h igh level in everybudget year, they have nevertheless demonstrated a thor-ough understanding of the problems. They have realizedthe importance of the task; they have had a decent respectfor full and accurate knowledge; they have employed the

114

some of the reaches of departments like Labor, Commerce,and Ag r i cu l t u r e th at one finds the encouraging- element ino o

departmental in te l l igence , w

Let us a s su me that departmental intelligence overcomesthe handicaps it is working under; let us assume that itrecruits the right people and prope rly di rects their efforts;t h a t each departmental intelligence unit digs in in the areaof that department's jurisdi ction. The q u es t i o n is, can weexpect that the sum of d e p a r t m e n t a l i n t e l l i g en ce wil l addup to the requirements of the grand strategy and the na-tional secur ity? It seems to me that we can expect this onlyif the co o rd i n a t i n g and managerial job done by a centralintelligence agency is of th e same degree of expertness asthat of the control personnel of departmental intelligence.In other words , CIA (in its coordinating function) is tothe whole intelligence picture what the substantive man-

agers (call them the Control S t a f f ) of any departmentalintelligence unit is to the departmental professional staff.It must do the same sort of job, though on a larger scale;it must have the same type of people, though better.

»J

11 5

CHAPTER 8

DEPARTMENTAL INTELLIGENCE


c rea t u re wants, and as social, moral, and inte llec tual bein gsgiving play to their gregariousness, their consc iences , andthei r minds Strategic intellig ence w h i c h p u t s pe op l e s



fn

ORGANIZATION:

TEN LESSONS FROM EXPERIENCE

I T is virtually impossible to separate the substan t iveelements of a big sub ject like in te l l igence from the

met h o d s of setting up and operating an in te l l igence or -ga n i z a t i on . In preceding pages alt houg h I have not dealtwith administrative problems except as they arise in othercontexts, I have touched upon many of theni . In thischapter I will try to concentrate all that will be said of administration in it s own context. The selection of theproblems and my interpretation of them derives from myfive years in war and post-war intelligence experience. Aswill be seen, I will not attempt to draw the master organi-za t ion chart, nor will I attempt to cover a ll fields of ad-

mini str atio n. I will confine myself in the first instance toorgan izat ional problems which are characteristic of theintelligence business, and in the second to only ten of those. The general reader will perhaps forgive this sortieinto shop talk; but if he prefers he may turn immediately10 Chapter 9 and resume his way.

Problem No. 1: Should the basic pattern of intelligenceorganization be regional or functional?

The job of strategic in te l l igence deals with' foreigncountries and with the complex of the life of foreignpeople. Any people, and especially those of greatest con-cern to our strategic intelligence, have many patterns of behavio r. They behave as mili tar y beings organized intoarmed establishments, as political beings engaged in p u t -ting the ir formal relations with each other into orderlyform; they behave as economic beings providing their

116

thei r minds. Strategic intellig ence, w h i c h p u t s p e op l e sunder surveillance and investigation, deals with them inboth national and behavioral guises. It deals with the m asFrenchmen, Swedes, Russians , and Belgians, and it dealswith them also as military, political, or economic beings .Furthermore it deals with combinations of t h e m , acnnsr,

•j

say, in their military or economic guises; Swedes andRussians as economic rnen in a trade agreement; Britonsand Frenchmen as political men looking out for their

jo in t sec uri ty. The pra cti cal qu es ti on is, how do you plotyour o rg a n i za t io n so as to deal best with both the nationaland the f unc t i ona l phases of foreign existence?

The trouble begins with the customs of American edu-cation. Certain groups of peopl e w h o become critical ex-perts in a line of study specialize in a g eo g rap h i ca l a r e a , ora region, or a single national s ta te . Modern historians,

geographers , and some political scientists, for example,tend to be regional in their special izat ion and aim to learnall about, say, Greece, or the Iberian peninsula, or LatinAmerica. They learn the necessary languages of the pri-mary literature, they learn the whereabouts and w h a t -abouts of that literature, they travel in the area wheneverthey can, and they write books about it . In these booksthey often move from disciplines of which they are realmasters over into others of whi ch the y are not. The ana-lytical niodern historian, for example, inev itabl y finds h imself working in the area of the political ph i l o s ophe r, theeconomist, and the sociologist.

Other groups of people devote their time to functionalstudy. Many economists and sociologists, for instance, arestriving for the discovery of economic or social laws whichwill obtain for the Chinese as well as the Egyptian orDutchman. They specialize in the subject "economics" or"sociology," and oftentimes they do it without nailing

11 7

ST RAT E G I C I N T E L L I G E N C E

the ir investigations down to any country or race of men.At these t imes they v/ork in pure theoretical terms with

I N T E L L I G E N C E I S O R G A N I S AT I O N

question as to whether the whole organization should be



yno earthy f r a m e of reference whatever. At other times,when they must have an ea r t h y frame of reference, -theypick the most convenient one: the U.S.A. These non-regionalists learn only the languages that their theoreticalliterature is written in; they may learn French or German

in order to get at the untranslated economic and sociologi-cal treatises which they must keep up with. They seldombother to learn any other.

In these terms, suppose that a prospective loan to Iranmust hinge upon the chances of success of Iranian eco-nomic recovery. Suppose a strategic intelligence outfit isgiven the task of making an es t imate of these chances.What sort of o rg an i za t i o n will best handle the job: ano rga n i z a t i o n which has an Iran section in command oi th eproject or an o rgan izat ion which has an economic sectionin command? The argumen t is vir tua lly endless. Theregionalists say that unless you understand the nature of the Iranian, his traditional behavior, the national mythshe defers to, and the character of Iranian politics and so-ciety, no amount of theoretical economic analysis willprovide the answer. The functionalists, or economists inthis case, say that economic considerations override all of these things; that the Iranian economic problem is notsubstantially different from any other economic problem;that their (the economists') business is the analysis of thisuniversal economic behavior, and that if the regionalists

will loan them some staff to act as translators and legmenthey will get on with the job.• Out of this dilemma one thing is plain: you mus t havepeople who know a very great deal about Iran in general(and, I would insist, ca n read the Iranian language) andpeople who know the field of economics . . Which of rhetwo groups should have command of the project is by nomeans so plain, nor is there a clear answer to the larger

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laid down along r e g iona l or functional lines. , 'Unsophisticated administrative thought tends to com-

promise along unsophisticated lines. Faced with the basicorganizational problem, it divides the wo r l d into a seriesof regional units, known as the European Division, Latin

Ameri can Division, etc., and d iv ides th e f unc t i ona l subje'ctmatter into another set of units k n o w n as the EconomicDivis ion , the Psycholog y Divisio n, etc. The outcome of such compromise is immediate and total administrativechaos. It is an invitation, and one re adi ly accepted, formajor civil war. In those matt ers whic h have, say, aneconomic or psychological aspect and w h ich also pertainto a g r o u p of people (that is, in all ma tt er s except those of unique concern to the f u n c t io n a l t h eo r i s t) regionalists andfunct ional is ts will line up in defense of their special com-petence, will bicker and snipe, and will often end by pro-ducing two separate analyses which may contradict eachother.

To be sure, there are more subtle and elaborate compro-mises possible than the simple and frustrating one outlinedabove, but in my experience they were so complicated thatthey tempted human nature to disregard them and cutcorners, and when they did work they worked because of one superhuman genius in a key spot.

The compromise which I find myself supporting is onewhich uses the regional breakdown as fa r as possible. Thatis: step one is to break the world up into four or five majorgeographical areas, step two is to break each of these intosmaller geographical components. Thus you might havea Far Eastern Division, composed of four sections, one of which deals with Southeast Asia. Wi thi n the SoutheastAsia Section you could have a Burma Unit and as manyother units as there were countries in Southeast Asia. Thiswould take care of the regional specialists. But the chancesare good that you could not regionalize the functionalists

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down to the level of a single country. Ou r system of edu-cation does not produce economists whose chief compe-tence lies in the field of the B u r m e s e economy. Hencethere must be a compromise

I N

which th ings are measured are l ikewise apt to follow a localnat ional u?;age.

Three. The in s igh ts which arc jointly reached into thesignificance of trends in a region w i l l o f t en be more



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there must be a compromise.The economists, if possible, should constitute a group

at the leve l of the Southeast Asia Section. If competenteconomists cannot be found for so s t r ingent a r e g iona l spe-cialty, they should be trained, and in the meantimegrouped at the level of the Far East Division . But in myview, the more one defers to the shortcomings of Americantraining and the larger the geographic area one uses forthe grouping of the functional staff, the more administra-tive grief one is piling up. Ideally, for many of the mostimportant phases of strategic intelligence, the regional andfunc tio nal expert should be one and the same man. Theideal Burmese unit should be made up of people, each oneof whom could handle every complex and technical prob-lem of Burma's existence, whether that problem were po-li t ical , social, economic, legal, military, or what h av e you.

The compromise which I have advocated will appear tothe functionalists as virtually no compromise at a l l . Theywil l regard it as a distinct victory for the regionalists. ButI believe that an essentially regional pattern should pre-vail for three reasons. They are:

One. The business which an intelligence organiza t ionmust perform is predominantly national or regional busi-ness. Foreign policy and grand strategy seem in the firstinstance to deal with other states and groups of other states.

Two. The bulk of the primary data coming in or al-ready available in the file or l ibrary is from a na t ionalsource and deals with national or regional problems. Sta-tistics, official reports and publications, observations, criti-cal reviews, the press, monitored radio programs, and soon in very large measure follow the pattern of the world'spolitical boundaries and appear in the official language of the state in question. The units of value and quantity in

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significance of trends in a region w i l l o f t en be morevaluable than what might be called eclectic insights ar-rived at by merging the work of an eco n o mi s t who wasthinking "economics" and a political specialist who wasthinking " reg ion ." To i l lus t ra te : if an economist who isthinking the French coal problem works with a politicalman who is thinking French politics the result i s likely tobe a better result than o therwise .

For these reasons, intelligence o rg an iza t io n s which haveessayed the non-regional or functional arrangement havefound it practically i nope ra b le . One very import ant or-ganization finding funct ional i srn thrust upon it was im-potent until it wa s able to jockey, say, a ll Latin Americanwork to its sociological division (which th ere upo n did lit tlebut Latin American political, economic, social, and m i l i -

. tary i n te l l igence) , all Far Eastern work to its poli t ical di-vision, etc. The functional names on it s various units weremerely cover for the regional o rga n i z a t i on be ne a th .

As our institutions .o f higher l ea rn i n g go in for theirso-called area programs, the aims o f which are to produceexactly the kind of e xpe i t I have placed in my ideal Burmau n i t , the administrative problems of intelligence o rgan i -zations are bound to become easier. "We may look to theday when staff will be satisfied with the place it occupieson the organization chart and when it stops its silly j a bbe rabout the superiority of it s special discipline. In the

meantime, awaiting the appearance of these paragons, theformula fo r the best temporary solution is to set up astraight regional o rganizat ion , to mix regionalists andfunctionalists (and mix them at the lowest possible ad-ministrative level), to make them sit next and work nexteach other, and finally to offer every prayer and induce-

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mem to them to respect and absorb the other man's pro-f i l




p pfessional competence.

This solution disposes, on paper at least, of a very largepart of the classic regional - func t iona l row, but by nom e a n s all of it. What remains is:

Problem A'o. 2: How to handle matters which defyregionalization?

In any s t ra teg ic intelligence operation (as in the conductof foreign relations themselves) there are problems whichare impossible to handle on a regional or national basis,I refer to such things as the d ev e l o p men t s in internationallaw, the United Na t ions , and other straight internationalorganiza t ions . There is a second range of p ro b l ems whichis international in nature though not so purely in terna-tional as the above. These problems still have their dis-

ti nct ly national nuclei. They revolve arou nd such insti-tutions as the World Federation of Trade Unions (whichis an international organization superimposed upon m a n y .na t iona l c ompone n t s ) the Catholic C hurc h , an d the Corn-inf orm . There is still a thi rd group of problems which areinternational only in the sense that they are m u l u - n a - .t ional ; such matters as world trade and finance, transpor-ta t ion , food, and a number of key strategic commodit ies ,such as rubber and oil.

An intelligence organiza t ion must handle all three sortsof problems. It must be doing a surveillance job on whatis happening in these fields and it must be prepared to puta research team to work on them . A straight regional or-g an i za t i o n will not be able to do either. There must there-fore be some sort of functional co-organiza t ion which isancillary to the main regional show.

There is a simple principle which should govern theestabl ishme nt of this func tion al staff. The units whichdeal with problem s which have least connection with na- •

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tional states (my first category) can be properly built to thesize necessary to handle the job by themselves, c a l l i ng o n .regional sections when needed. The units which deal withproblems not so purely international as the former (mysecond category) should be kept at minimum s t r en g t h "r e l y i ng more heavily upon appropriate regional person-nel. The u n i t s which dea l with p r o b l e m s which a r e essen-t i a l l y m u l t i - n a t i o n a l ra ther than i n t e r n a t i o n a l p rob lems(my t hir d category) should consist of no more than one ortwo high-grade specialists whose main job is to needle theregional units and co o rd i n a t e the regional effor t. Further-more these th i rd -category units should be restricted rigor-ously to the subjects in which the in te l l igence o rga n i z a t ionhas an important and primary responsibility.- From the above, the principle which I urge in the estab-

l i sh men t of the functional part of the organization is aprinciple of beware. Beware lest the funct ional units,which had to be formed, grow to the point where they area menace to the smooth work ing of the regional staff.

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If this principle is followed and the functional units arekept in a secondary but h ig h ly special ized position, theorgan izat ion wi l l find itself confronted with still anothercategory of job for which it provides no formal organiza-tion. The hand ling of this last category is my nextprob le m.

Problem No. 3; How to handle those problems of amulti-national nature for which the organization providesno full-time functional supervisor or coordinator?

The kind of problem under discussion here is a verycommon one in the in te l l igence business; it arises fromsuch phenomena as the Franco-Bri t ish defense pact, therebellion in northern Greece, the emergence of the VietNam Republi c, or the racial issue in South Afr ica. In eachcase the situation involves the competence of more than a

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single regional un i t .1 The Greek problem, for ex amp l e , tobe properly dealt with, should be studied by the Greek,the Yugoslav the Albanian the Bulgarian the U S S R


exclusively on his own region or country ag a in , or he maybe a minor membe r of a n o t h e r ad hoc team.



I

the Yugoslav, the Albanian, the Bulgarian, the U.S.S.R.,th e Br i t i sh , and probab ly the Turk ish experts. It will de-mand a good amount of political, economic, social, andmi lit ar y expertise on all these nati onal fronts. It willsurely demand the knowledge of the man or men who are

fu n c t io n a l ly specializing in international communistmovem ents. How is such a project unde r t a ke n?

The answer is that that it is undertaken on a purely ad hoc basis. Let us assume tha t an important consumer hasasked for this study. 'Once formally accepted by the topman ag er ia l or cont rol staff, which weighs it against other

. . commi tme nts and assigns it a priority, it is handed on to a' project supervisor. He should be the man wit h the largest

amount of substantive knowledge of the subject, who alsois the best manage r and coordinator and editor. Let us

say he is chief of the Greek un i t , or, if personnel problemsare acute, a util ity special assistant to the division chief forsuch as signments. He meets with people from other units,blocks out and breaks down the total task, fa rms out thepieces, outlines the length and formal structure, and setsthe de adli ne. Whe n the pieces are done and the finalpaper is being put together he bosses the work directly if he does not actually do it himself. He is the champion o£the finished job; he sees to its clearance with the top man a-gerial or control staff, its reproduction, and its dissemina-

tion to the important consumer and to other people whohe knows will find it most useful.2 Next week he may be

'I will deal wi th the large problem of dissemination at greater lengthlater on.

* I am assuming tha t no single unit will have exclusive responsibilityfor both Br i t a in and France, nor will any single un i t have responsibility[or the several states d i rect ly an d indirectly involved in the Greek s i tua-tion, or for metropolitan France and its far eastern colonies, or for Britainand all i ts dominions.

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The task of the top control s t a f f t h r o u g h o u t th i s proce-dure is one of grea tes t importa nce . To begin w i t h , t h e ymust pass on the relative importance of th e project; t h e ymust see that the organization's totality of r e l ev an t compe-tence is brought to bear upon the subje ct; the y mu st stan dbehind the project supervisor in ironing out diff ere nc es o f:opinion; they must critically examine the finished job forthe way it is presented (length, l an g u ag e , completeness ,etc.); and they must try to feel out and identify substantivesoft spots even though they themselves may not be special-ists in matters Greek.

Of their services the working staff is sometimes likely tobe contemptuous and to hold that they do nothing butthrow their ineptness in the way of the struggling profes-sional. But the fact is that all professionals are not them-

selves any too realistic about the kind of work they aredoing. They pay the well-known acade mic pen alt y fortheir expertness: they a r e - o f t e n , c a va l i e r about deadl ines ,they are sometimes overly precious in matters of smallpractical concern, they are sometimes capable o E blurringdie crucial point or points at issue or burying them inirrelevancies. It is the job of the manageri al s t a f f orControl to introduce, w h e r e necessary, the corrective of utility and applicability to the problem at h a n d . Thisleads to:

Problem No. 4: How is effective control exercised with-out jeopardizing the accomplishment of the missio7i?

First le t me say that Control is the crux of successfuloperation, and that successful control demands a kind of hard-boiledness which a staff of substantive experts often

. finds not merely distasteful but almost unsupportable.Control is thus quite justifiably placed in this list of primeadministrative problems.

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ST RAT E G I C I N T E L L I G E N C E

As lias beeu noted e l sewhere. Control must c onc e r n itselfwith the fo l lowing chores:

I N T E L L I G E N C E IS O K G A M / A H u .N

edge of even ts furnishes a better basis of j u d g m e n t thanthat which is afforded to Control.

Or consider the s i tua t ion when C o n t r o l vetoes theundertaking of a p ro j ec ton the ground thai the subject is



1 . From know ledge of what is going on in the world of policy, plans, and operations, it must see that the intelli-gence program is in line . This involve s:

a. Seeing that appropriate foreign activity is keptunder special ob s e r va t i on and that interesting leads

are systemat ical ly fo l lowed up .b. Seeing that research is undertaken on problems

which need illumination and that the totality of theoutfit's relevant resources is brought to bear on theseprojects. This means t ha t Control will know, in sofar as such things may be known, the agenda of a ffa irsof state and will undertake to have useful knowledgeprepared in advance of formal action.

c. Seeing that regular and special surveillance andresearch are programmed according to the priority of their importance.

d. Doing some tho ughtf ul anticipating of problems be-yond the hor izon .2. Arbitrate disputes among the professional staff in

mid-course.3. Review and cri t icize the finished product from the

point of view of its form and probe it for possible inaccu-racies or want of balance.

4. Maintain standards of excellence fo r a l l work.5. See that the finished product is reproduced in ap-

propriate form.

6. See that it is properly distributed and that a recordis kept of recipients.

Now in virtually every one of these tasks, Control mayand sometimes does develop f r ic t ion with the professionalst af f. For example, ther e is ample room for dispute as towho best knows the score and who thus is best equipped "toset priorities. The professional staff which is continuou slyclose to world developments may feel that it s inside know -

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undertaking of a p ro j ec t on the ground thai, the subject isinconsequential . I t may be that the unit which wishes todo the project is working on a quiet p a r t of the world,where all projects are of a relative uni mpo rtan ce. If theprofess iona l s are capable and devoted men, t his is one fact

which will certainly escape their a t t e n t i on : their work, tothem must inevitably be the most important thing in life.All right, Control may reply, let them work on t h e i r low-priority jobs—they have nothing better to d o — b u t theymust also expect low p r i o r i t y on c l earance , reproductionof their product, and its d i s t r i b u t i o n .

Or again, l et Control raise an eyebrow at w h a t it considersimpolitic language or let it doubt the soundness of a sub-stantiv e conclusion and see wha t hap pen s, The profession-als are being questioned in the very field where they are,formally at least, entitled to regard themselves beyond

criticism . They will always be ind ig nan t at wha t they callthe tampering or tinkering of some lesser expert.

But the. fact is that the professionals are a long wayremoved from the freedom of the institutions of learningfrom which they sprang, and which they reverence, andalthough what they have to offer to i n t e l l i g en ce is its singlepriceless ingredient, they cannot expect to enjoy the samesort or degree of freedom under the driving practical obli-gations of government service. There is thu s a tremendousinherent conflict between the very terms "professionalstaff " and "Control." How can it be ironed out?

I doubt if it can ever be completely ironed out so longas Control is established at the top of the administrativepyramid. The ideal solution seems to me to push the con-trol function back down the hierarchy as far as possible.If this were done, each professional unit would have itspw n control officer. Almost certainly he would be a trusted

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member of the p ro fess ional staff who had a fl.ire for th econtrol job. More than likely he would be the u nit chief.If this were the case at the lowest administrative level, theunit chief would be d ev o t i n g half his energies to p a ro ch i a lproblems and half to the control problems of the wholelarge organi zation The chief at the next leve? up would

But if we abandon the idea of d ecen u ' a i u n i g ur i...moment and cope with the situation in its practical reali-ties; if we ag ree that Control must, even if t emp o ra r i l y, becentralized at the top, there are some principles which itwould do well to follow.

First as already noted the personnel of Control s hou l d



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large organi zation . The chief at the next leve? up wouldbe spending less energy on his loca l problems and more onthe general ones. The chie fs of the top eche lon wouldconstitute the governing board of all the c o n t r o l officers,and the director of the o rgan izat ion , the ex offido chai r-

man . In such a fash ion the people closest to the real i t iesof substantive work would be se t t ing the standards of excellence, the procedures, styling, etc. But there are enor-mous p r ac t i ca l difficu lties to such a solution. 1 list them:

1. Budget wizards would immediately perceive a la -m e n t a b l e duplication of work and would insiit on central-izing the function and reducing the staff necessary toperform it.

2. If by a miracle the budget wizard did permit it,there would be the problem of the relationship betweenthe small unit chief and his control officer (if the two jobswere not merged in the chief). Af ter all, the control func -tion is of highest importance and the unit chiei could ili-afford to delegate it.

3. If he did not delegate it, he would have to perfo rm itand his other duties as well. This would mean that he hadmore to do than one man should be asked to do. In factthere probably are not enough capable men for this sortof job to fill the vacancies.

4. If capable men could be found they wou ld not belikely to accept the salary which Civil Service prescribes

for a-low-level unit chief.In spite o£ these practical difficulties, the decentraliza-tion of the control function seems to me wholly worthstriving for. Nothi ng that I can think of will better thrustresponsibility upon those who should be carrying it. •

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First, as already noted, the personnel of Control s hou l dhave as many of the professional gifts of the p rofess iona lstaff as may be. If C o n t r o l is made up of pe op l e u-lio h av egone through some professional mill, h av e standing intheir own right, have respect for the professional achieve-

ment of o thers—and if in addition, they have had intelli-gence experience at the working l eve l—the cur ta i lmentswhich they impose upon staff freedom will be taken withmuch better grace. Per contra, with rare except ions , noth-ing will make their necessary activities more u n p a l a t a b l eto staff than that their previous experience or field of specialization was remote from the pursuit of knowledge.If they are not entitled to an honorary membership in theclub, dissidence and resignations (or applications for t rans-fer) will follow in their tracks.

Second, Control must continually police the amount of paper work it requires of staff and see that it is kept at aminimum. If professional s t a - f f is not everlastingly com-pelled to fill out forms , write memos of defense, maintainover-elaborate bookkeeping of its efforts, participate incomplicated paper procedures, etc., it will accept the moreimportant regulation from Control with far less animus.

Third, Control must be able to de mons t ra t e it s utilityby the swift perform ance of its job. It must act prom ptlyin its authorization of projects, in its clearance of projects,and in its reproduction and distribution of the finishedproduct. Furthe rmore, in the interests of speed it must bewilling to break its own rules.

If Control can be properly manned and if it will spendpart of its efforts in restraining its natural bureaucratic

12 9


t endencies it may look to much more effective relationswith s ta ff—and p leasanter ones.


secret intelligence work .3 But perhaps, again, such coun-tries set up such joint activities because they are innocentof the diffic ultie s and blind to the risks

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The preceding four problems had a string of c o n t i n u i t yrunning through them; the next six are not so closely con-nected to each other,

Problem A'o. 5: What is the most effective administra-tive arrangement to govern the performance cf a fieldforce?

I t goes without saying that the proper conduct of thein te l l igence business r e qu i re s a force on foreign duty. In-telligence cannot make good on either its surveillance orits research function unless it can physically project parrofitself out to the places where things are going on andwhere the raw materials of understanding are being pro-duced. Wit hou t a field force of its own, any departmental

intelligence organization will lose a needed sense of realityand immediacy. Ideal ly this force should be engaged inwhatever type of activity is required to deliver the goods:overt , clandestine or both. And i£ the force in questionwere engaged in both kinds of activity, it should o£ coursebe under a single mana geme nt. Were such an a rrange-ment possible, the overt staff could furn i sh the c l andes t inewith the spec ifications of the missing pieces. And on theo r he r hand th e clandestine s t a f f could not only furnish theevert with such pieces, but more importantly, could passon new hypotheses which it acquired in its subterraneanwanderings. Perhaps to gain these advantages some co u n -tries have set up departmental field forces which engagedin both overt and clandestine activities. The SovietUnion's embassy in Ottawa sheltered the representativesof five home departments (a sixth was about to join) whoamong other things presumably engaged in both open and

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of the diffic ultie s and blind to the risks.The realities are wide of the ideals . As is demonstrated •

by the Soviet experience, the risks of disclosure o£ clandes-'.tine activities were large and when the break occurred the •entire Ottawa mission was d i scredi t ed . No t only this, but

much more significantly, al l states beyond the curtain nowfelt justified in putting Soviet missions on their soil underrestrictions which they might not otherwise have chosento impose. Needl ess to say the restrictio ns imposed ad-versely affect the permissible overt intelligence activities.Thus it would seem necessary to r ecognize the risks of suchcombined activities and to require that c l an d es t i n e activitiesin the fields be cleanly separated from ove rt. This beingthe case, in the succeeding paragraphs I make the separa-tion and will confine myself to the problems of the overtdepartmental field force.

The administrative problem with respect to such a fieldforce arises from the following circumstances:

First, the actual man who is sept out, say to Great Fru-sina, should be a member of the p rofess iona l home staff handling Frusinan mat ters .4 To be e f f ec t ive in the field

•Re p o r t of the Royal Commission . . . June 27, 1946 ( O t t a w a , 1946)pp . 12-17 and esp. 19-29. The home depar tmen t s rep resen t ed were: TheN RV D (Security Police), Central Committee of Communis t Pat ty, TheCommissariat of Foreign Trade, the Red Army, and o f course the Com-missariat for Foreign Affairs. The Navy was p robab ly about to place ilsown representative.

'O n this point I will not yield an inch. The worst disfavor that canbe done an intelligence operation is to send to the f i e l d personnel who

are specially recruited for field duty and ship them ou t before they haveworked their way into the bosom of the home s t a f f . Field men should tehome men who al so have the outgoing , adventurous , and world ly qual i t i eswhich a foreign ass ignment demands . They should know wi thout t h ink ingwhat the main problems of the home stall are, what it does not know,what i t must find out, what i t needs in the way o f physical materialsprocurable only in Great Frusina, etc. They should know personally, and,if possible, they should like and admire the members of the s t a f f they areleaving behind. Even under these conditi ons the prob lems of perfectunders tanding are not negligible. /


he must maintain the closest possible relations with hishome unit.

Second, the large organization (o f wh i ch th e Frusinanunit is a small part) which sends the man out to GreatFrusina will be sending other men to other parts of the


Problem A'o. 6: Is there a library function in a strategicintelligence organization?

The answer is, yes. *An in tel l igence operation which has the attributes o :



Frusina will be sending other men to other parts of theworld. To handl e the housekeeping oE such an opera t ionit will be forced to set up some sort of central administra-tive unit in the office of the chief of the organiza t ion. Fur-thermore, in as much as the man in Great Fr usina may find

out things about Pakistan which should be brought to theattention of the home Pakistan unit, and the man in Lon-don pick up data of interest to the Far East Division, therewill be an administrative reason to interpose a substantiveuni t alongside the admi nistr ativ e one. This l a t t e r unitwill see that all interested consumers of the end-product of field work, are served. Thus the front o f f ice of the largeorganization comes to have a dual adminis t ra t ive stake inthe field operation.

Third, when the field man arrives in Great Frusina heacquires a third boss. This is the

chief of the U.S. official

mission there, who in turn reports to the Secretary of State and the President.

The problem is how to maintain the close personal con-tact between the field man and the chief of his small Fru-sinan home u n i t —wh i ch is absolutely v i t a l—and at thesame time keep the other parties to the triarchy satisfied.To this problem I have no sure answer; in fact I do notthin k there is one. The hope is that hum an und ersta ndin gand cumulative experience in making a d jus tme n t s willbridge the inherent difficulties. This will be done morereadily if everyone involved in the transaction realizes theultimate importance of keeping the F rus ina n professionalstaff as closely and informally tied to their field representa-tive as possible, and makes every reasonable effort toaccommodate and further that re la t ionship.

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g pboth the large metropolitan daily n ewsp ap er and the largeresearch foundation handles an enormous amount of in-coming physical material. In its newspaper guise it re-ceives a continuous flow of regular and irregular reports

f rom i t s own f ie ld s taff , some of which come in by cab leand some by pouch. It is also like ly to rece ive simil ar re-ports from other intelligence outfits in r o u g h l y the snmel ine of work. It subscribes to the intelligence e qu iva le n tof the news services—the best example of which is th egovernment-operated monitoring service which handler-popular foreign radio programs. Prett y much as a m a t t e -of course it receives, on an exchange basis, the finishc-.!o u t p u t of other departmental organizations which are f o l -lowing and studying conditions abroad. There are man yother items in this general category covering the t o n n ag eof classified and unclassified "d o cu m en t a t io n th at flows irn^Washin gton from all over the globe.

In its research-foundation guise, it del iberately and con-sistently procures other mater ia ls which its program of research makes essential. It subscribes to a wide range of professional journals, foreign newspapers, the official p u b -lications of foreign governments, officials and unofficialstatistical series, and so on; it also keeps up its collection of standard works of reference, and the most important newbooks on subjects of peculiar interest. It has a call upo nthe Library of Congress and has inter-library loan arrange-ments with the great libraries of the co u n t ry.

The problem is whether or not all these functions andsome others should be handled in one central place, andwhether or not that one central place should also be th erepository for the physical mater ia ls . It is my convi ction

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that one unit should handle these functions and should bethe curator of what comes In. In short, I am an advocateof a central library of all the materials (maps excluded)


document be o b t a i n ed —n ami n g it by source and subject,if not t i t le—the library gets busy.

2. It registers such documentary m a t e r i a l s and by cir-



of a central library of all the materials (maps excluded)whi c h an intelligence organization needs.

A central library of the sort I advocate may consist of several separate parts: one part would be made up of un-classified printed books and m agazines—this collection it a

highly special ized one; it consists of the standard works of reference and the new technical publications not readilyavai l able e l sewhere. A second part might be composed of photographs; a third and most important part consists of classifie d documentary materials of all sorts. The library,no m a t t e r how m any parts it has, has the following tasks;

1. It acquires mate rials as a result of its own activi ties .This means that it procures such things as the latest foreignyear books an d gazet tes and statistical annuals and direc-tories; it procures the record of foreign parliamentarydebates and other official publications of foreign govern-ments which bear upon the mission of strategic intelli-gence; it procures foreign newspapers and technical jour-nals. In this sort of procu rement it has had the advice of the professional staff at home and in the field.

It also collects classified documents. It knows, fore xa mple , that practically a ll State Department cables (thenon-administrative ones) are important; it knows thatnearly all a t t a c h reports and studies o£ foreign situationsby other federal departments and agencies like the De-partment of Agriculture and the Tariff Commission areimpor tant. It knows that everything put out by this or thatother intelligence operation is important. The libraryendeavors, therefore, on its own to procure all such m a-ter ials . It wi l l place blanket orders wherever it can andget the entire official output of a large number of organiza-tions whose line of work, is similar. In addition, w hen amember of the professional staff asks that such and such a

134

g y yculating a daily mimeographed sheet informs professionalstaff as to what has come in.

3. By rigorous organization rules, by po l ic ing , cajolery,and every other device it endeavors to intercept similar

materials which the staff has acquired on its own, and toreg is ter them as any other documen t. The professionalstaff wi l l acquire such materials through its personal con-tacts w i t h opposite n u m b e r s in other o rgan izat ions . Oftenthey are working papers, or notes, or memoranda not con-sidered suitable for routine d i s t r i b u t i o n . O f t e n they arewhat might be classed as o p e ra t i o n a l as opposed to infor-mational papers and therefore inappropriate for outsidescrutiny. There is a very large amount of this kind of material which the senior staff member will come by; it isl ikely to consis t o f h is most valuab le s tu ff .

The library should be allowed to register, index, andreissue it to the acquiring staff member on what amountsto permanent l oa n ,5

4. It indexes all materials no m a t t e r how acquired onstandard 3 x 5 library cards according to p l ace of originand subject. It gives each docu ment a file num ber and aplace in the central file. A meaningful indexing operationis the most valuable and costly part of the whole librarybusiness. Unless it is performe d, there is no librar y in thereal sense of the word. There exists nothing more than a

formless accumulation of paper.5. Upon call it delivers to professional staff such itemsas they require for their work, and keeps track of wherethese items are. If some other s t a f f member later wants thedocument, the library recalls it or otherwise arranges fo rhim to see it.

A library which operates along these lines will not be

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' See p, 137, Problem No. 7.

135


arrogating to itself functions which properly do not belongto it (see the next problem, number 7), wi l l be doing aclean and simple service job, and will in time build up alarge volume of indexed mat e r i a l s . Suc ' i a collection isone of the most v a l u ab l eassets of the o rga n i z a t i on

INTELLIGENCE 15 O R G A N U / i i .O-N

quite another thing to vest in a librarian the exclusiveright to acquire all the materials w h i c h , say, Mr. Jones, anIranian specialist, will need to do his s t u d y of the TuddiParty and the Arab League, It is qu it e a n o t h e r matter torequire Mr Jones to communicate to a collector what he



Mr -3II

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one of the most v a l u ab l e assets of the o rga n i z a t i on .

Problem No. 7: Should there be a separate arf-riinistra-tive unit for collection and dissemination?

Before hazarding an answer to this question it would be

well to define the terms.By collection is meant the exclusive right to procure for

the use of professional staff all the raw m a te r i a l s which itneeds. It means not merely the col lec tio n of the itemswhich I have noted wi t h respect to a l ibrary ' s collectingactivities, but a ll other items. For example, a co l l ec t ingunit, upon being informed that professional staff is goingto do a study on the Iranian Tudeh Party'. '] views on theArab League, has the duty to collect information on thissubject which will answer every conceivable question themind of the Iran ian specialist can pose. Thus collecti on inthis sense involves collecting as any gcod librarian (of books) fulfills that function, and also collecting as a profes-sional researcher collects after he has exhausted the staticresources of his library.

By dissemination is meant the exclusive r ight , to d is t r ib -ute to consumers: (a) raw materials which the surv eillan cepeople pick up in the field or at home," and (b) the finishedproduct as turned out by the professional staff.

In my view, to establish a collection and d i s s e m i na t i o nunit with those duties is little short cf preposterous.

With assignment of an exclusive co l lect ion function I findmyself at greatest variance. For if, is one tilin g for a libr aryto do a good job of acquiring basic stuff of general utility(like State Department cables and embassy reports), and .

•These may be the reported observations o £ at taches, photograohs ,maps, newspapers, books, magazines, etc.

13 6 •

require Mr. Jones to communicate to a collector what hethinks he will need to do his study. And it is quite anothermat ter to make i t admin is t ra t ively d i ff icu l t , i f no t impossi -ble, for Mr. Jones himself and in person to call on peoplein other government agencies and leaf through their fileson Iran.

The collecting phase of research cannot be done onc e.and for all at the initial stage of a p ro j ec t ; the collectionphase pervades all the othe r phases , and indeed is the phasewhich is never completed; and the only man to do thecollecting of data (beyond obvious materials) which hecannot name by title is the one who knows what he i jlooking for. Shou ld there exist a man in the library unitwho was so great an Iranfan expert that t h = professionalJones could make his wants known without giving a lec-

ture course on Iranian l i fe and politics, then this manshould not be on the library staf f. He sh o u i d be on Mr.Jones 's staff .

It will be argued that unless collection is centralizedtwo calamities will result: one, p ro fess ional staff will u n -systematical ly canvass outside sources of information andas a result of uncoordinated and repetitious r e que s t s fo rthe same material will a n t a gon i z e these soa ices . Two, pro-fessional staff, upon acquiring materials t h r o u g h its owncollecting efforts will tend to set up its own small libraryand hoard materials which other parts of the organization

should have.There are answer* to both of these points.One, anything that professional staff can ask for by spe-

cific designation should of course be procured by the regu-lar acquisition methods of the library, provided the librarycan act with speed. Materials th at professional staff cannot

137

I STRATEGIC I N T E L L I G E N C E

specif ical ly designate, it must acquire i tself . In these cir-cumst ances there is bound to be certain unavoidabl e dupli-cation of requests . But this is not necessarily the unp ar-donable sin especial lywhen it results in a higher level


sent out afte r it has passed the critical revie w of th e re ign-in g experts. The rest sho uld be described on a dail y orweekly bulletin by source or subject or both, and outside

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c donable sin—especial ly when it results in a higher levelof accomp lishm ent. I have long fe lt that the man w homakes a profession of blustering with indignation everytime two people from the same agency make identicalcalls upon him would bemore suitably employed else-where.

Two, professional staff will in fact tend to build up itsown library . This is as it should be. On the other handprofess ional staff is the first to realize the advantages of h av i n g its private loot registered and indexed by the li-brary. It may then get it back and in most cases keep itforever. Cer tain ly not all private loot will be registered,and th e organization will suffer accordingly, bu t t h a t por-tion which is not turned into a central file will b e relativelyunimportant . Co n s t an t effort on the part of management

a n d fast regis t ra t ion and return of such materials will keepthe quant ity small.

What about the dissemination funct ion? First, wha tabout the d i sseminat ion of the so-called raw ma te r ia l outof which the finished product is built up. Should it bedisseminated in raw form? I see no reason whatever forthe outside distribution of this material in it s raw form.Let me be clear about the words "outside" and "raw form."

By outside I mean outside the parent intelligence or-ganizati on. Of course it mus t be circulated inside the or 'gani zati on and circul ated with speed and system. The

prompt and effective r o u t i n g of incoming data to the homesurveillance and home research people is one of the li-brary' s prime jobs. Bu t I do not feel that rout ing thismaterial in the raw form outside is doing anyone a favor.

By raw form I mean as it comes in—precisely as it comesin. A certain amount o£ it which the professional staff regards as appropriate for outside distribution should be

13 8

persons interested in it should encounter it first in thisbulle tin. If they wish to see an i t em of in te res t let themcorne around and draw it out of the l ibrary.7

Admittedly there are disadvantages which such a pro-,

cedure imposes on outside users, but th e disadva ntages aresmall compared to those attendant upon an indiscriminatecirculation of everything that comes in, in its originalform. In the present state of affairs wh en th e field work is done by far too many inexpert people and when theirvirtues are likely to be calculated in terms of the bulk of paper they send in, t he i e seerns to be good reason to estab-lish some sort of high-grade p ro fess ional screen throughwhich the raw material must pass on its way out. In Chap-ter 10, I touch on this problem again.

Second, what about the dissemination of the intelligence

organization's finished product?That the daily or weekly summaries, the reports, studies,

maps, etc., are delivered to people with policy, planning,and operating responsibilities sh o u l d be and is a matterof gravest concern to every person in th e organ izati on. Itis a func tio n of ultimate importance. Ther e are two rea-sons why it should not be placed in the hands of a specialcol lec t ion-and-disseminat ion unit and why it should beplaced in what I have earlier called Control.

Administratively speaking, Control must know where itsgoods are being sent and how received. It has, handsdown, the first claim on the records of distribution and"

j•This indeed is a system widely held among es tabl ished intelligence

organizations. There is, however, wi th in mos t of them a continuing pres-sure on th e part of the library s t a f f to send o u l the raw s tud before it ha*been vetted by the professionals. This pressure is pa n o £ the same phe-nomenon which gets an aggressive library unit into th e "Ask Mr. Foster"business (see above, p. 28). People who are close to th e hand ling of in-coming stuff, its registration, its indexing and filing, have a pardonabledesire to show of E a bit.

139

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Con trol must still have its duplicat e set. Hence it wo u l dseem reasonable to vest the whole job in. Contr ol. Sec-ondly, C o n t r o l is closer to the professional staff thin anyother unit, and Control and Professional Staff togetherknow more about the substantive side of the j o b thananyone else. Together they know more abou t the prob-l hi h th k i d i d t d h

of data because there are so m a n / p e r u n e n : t ..v.loroways being asked about people. Wh at sort of man is he rWha t are his polit ical and economic vie ws? Wh at are allhis names and when was he born? Can he speak Engli sh?Who are his intimates? "What are his weaknesses? Howlong is he likely to hold his present s tanding? Where wash



lems which the work is designed to serve, and hence moreabout the people who are dealing with the problems.Their continual striving for the applicability of theirknowledge automatically put t he m in close touch with thepotential users. Thus there is a sound substantive reasonfor t hem to perform the dissemination of the finishedproduct.

In terms of the reasoning in the above paragraphs, I findit impossible to accept the concept of an ad mi n i s t r a t i v eunit to handle exclusively the co l lect ion-and-d isseminat ionfun cti ons . Collect ion of materials which can be designatedby name or place or origin can be and should be collectedby the library; other materials must be collected by p ro fes-sional staff. The dissemination of both the raw materialsand the finished product is a matter in which the profes-

sional staff has such an intimate stake that it cannot beexcluded. My own answer to the problem is a skil lf ul andactive library and a small distribution unit attached to theoffice of the chief of the organization where it will haveclose contact with Control and the professional s taff .

Problem No. 8: How should the biographical intelli-gence function be performed?

Acquiring knowledge of personalities is one of the mostimportant jobs of an intelligence organiza t ion. It is alsoan enormous job. The ideal biographi cal file would have

tens of thousands of names8

in it, and against each name1 A huge problem in itself is to decide which tens of thousands oE th e

world's billion possible names are to be included. It is, however, not anadministrative problem and I will not go into it here.

140

he in 1937? E tc.These questions and literally hundreds of others show

that the perfect biographical note must include a largeamount of cold factual information and a large amount of

critical appraisal. The users of the note likewise partakeof this two-way division o £ interest. A great many of themwant to know nothing more than the exact title of theman's present job or his rank or his street address. Ano the rgroup of users must know his probable chances of becom-ing the No. 1 man in his party, army, co mpany, or c h u i c h ;his probable sentiments on the local sugar situation, onMr. Bevin, or on the Christian f a i th . The first set of usersdoes a considerable part of its business by telephone; thesecond by more or less formal request. In these terms theadministrative problem begins to take shape:

One, a large amount of factual data must be assembledon a large number of peopl e. Since mu ch of this is a scis-sors-and-paste job it can be performed by people of cleri-cal-plus status.

Two, these factual data must be in a central file wherethey can serve the use of the telephone customer. But sinceit is impossible to say where factual data begin and endand impossible to guarantee that all telephone customerswill request only factual data, all biographical stuff shouldbe kept in this same file.

Three, the critically evaluative part of the biographicalnote is beyond the competence of the clerical-plus groupengaged in snipping biographical dictionaries and currentnewspapers.

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•-aSTRATEGIC I N T E L L I G E N C E

The problem is, do you maintain the central file andbuild up the biographical s tag with high-grade profession-als; or do you break up the central file into its regional


on a more compelling project there wi l l always be a tend-1

ency temporarily to starve biograp hical wor k by mergingth e biographers with other s taff . This must n o t happen.

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•

components and make th e regional surveillance and re-search units keep up their parts; or do you try some com- 'promise?

It appears to me that it the first course is adopted, i.e.

build up a large and complete biographical staff or P e r-sonalities Unit, two evils result: one, since it is ridiculousto try to divorce people f rom th e th ings that they do, thePersonalities Unit is likely to become a cluster of smallregional research units which duplicate a good part of thebu sin ess of the main regional show. Two, it is very poorpractice to try to stop this duplication by telling the re-g i on a l units of the main show that they shall not haveprofessional knowledge of the personalities of their re-spect ive areas.

If the second course is adopted and the whole operationdecentralized to the main regional units, there are twoother evils of equal magnitude: one, loss of the advantageof a central file and central telephone service. Two, thekind of professional management which is characteristicof the main regional units will not have adequate en thu-siasm for the scissors-and-paste part of the job and willn o t give it proper emphasis.

Some sort of compromise is the on ly way out. The filemust be kept together, the Personalities Unit must furnishthe clerical and clerical-plus help; and the reg ional units

must recruit high-grade professionals for their share of th e burd en. Ther e is no good reason why these specially-recruited people should be the only ones in the regionalunits to work on biographies, nor that they themselvesshould wo rk exclusively on biographies, but there is everyreason to insist that whatever the circumstances they ortheir p rofess ional e qu iva le n t s put in the requisite hourson biographical business. In the face of a tight deadline

142

Problem No. 9: What is the best disposition of the mapproblem?

The map is one of intelligence's most useful tools and

most usef ul vehicles. It is of param ount imp ortan ce tothe work of the professional staff and i: is the most dra-matic and direct way of presenting a certain large block of their findings. Thus there are at least two aspects to theproblem of maps which an intelligence o rgan izat ion mustconfront. The first of these is the prob lem of a map c o l _ -lection; the second, the problem of map-making or car-tography.

Consider the collection first. It should consist of all themaps produced anywhere in the world which contain thelatest data suspectible of p re s e n ta tion on a map. This isa large order. Few intell igenc e o rga n i z a t i ons come withinshouting distance of the goal, but they strive for it withwhat resources they can muster. For the ide al map collec-tion is one o f : the most powerful reference wor ks imagina-ble. It tells the political specialist how the Communistvote in B razil 's last election was geographically distributedand what the new administrative divisions of the U.S.S.R.are; it tells the economist where the population of Chinais concentrated and why new industrial development inTurkey is improbable. It tells the strategist abo ut terrain

and the logistics man about supply channels.The administrative problem is, who makes the mapcollection and who takes care of it? Is it th e j o b of thelibrary or is it the job of a special map library?

The answer seems clear in terms of the second mapfunction, the cartographic or map-making function . Anintelligence organization worthy of the name must makemaps. It must make them as illustrations for its studies

143

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and various other sorts of p resentat ion , and it must makethem fo r their own sake. Generally speaking, the type of map which will be turned out is known as the small-scalespecialty map; that is, it is not the kind of map suitablefor planning a military operation, or a railroad r ight-of-way, or an artificial port, or an irrigation projec t . It is a

uit:is ;ut :. ; : r : L _ . s _ ' s o n , lo r ' . ; , • . . • .overlap and perhaps a row or tw o o ^ t^ 'unit s and cartography's research comm itm ent , but this can-not be helped. Alter nate solutions seem to carry a fargreater cargo of difficulty.

P bl No 10 : Ho to maintain a professionallycom



depiction of data or of a situation wh ic h has a geographi-cal significance and which at the same time can be accu-rately and strikingly presented on a stylized replica of apart of the globe's surface. To make such maps the car-

tographers must have someone else's maps for the referencedata they may contain, and other information which theyor the regional staff dig out of gazetteers, books, and docu-ments. In other words, cartography is one of the largestusers of the map collection: without it cartography couldnot operate.

The answer to the administrative problem thus beginsto emerge: the map-collecting and the cartographic func-tions must be kept together. Should both be p u t under th elibrary ? I see no reason why they should; in fact I seemany reasons why they should not. Chief of these is thatcertain phases of car tography are high p rofess iona l skillswhich involve a great deal of the very kind of researchwhich the rest of the professional s t a f f performs. There isno good purpose served by putting a high-powered re -search operation under a sen-ice operation. Secondly, andperhaps just as important, it takes more than an ordinarytal ent to collect, index, and curate maps. A great deal of professional know-how is required, and the best of themap collectors are likely to be geographers and cartogra-phers of considerable standing. If their task is regarded asa simple library-clerical function they will not want thejob, and without them the map collection •will be a sorrything indeed. Thus the only conclusion I can reach is thatall map duties should be kept together and given the sameadministrative autonomy as the largest regional unit. This

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Problem No. 10 : How to maintain a professionally competent staff under the Civil Service Act and under condi-tion* of budgetary stringency.

The intelligence agencies of the regular departments of

government are operating under the jurisdiction of the.Civil Service Commission and are sub ject to its regula-tions. Civil Service legislation aims to provide for theimpartial selection of persons best qualified to B ll govern-ment jobs, and none will challenge the valid ity o f t h i s pur-pose. Unf ortun ately , this ideal has not been a t t a i ne d ,

During the war, m a n p o w e r was scarce, needs were grea t ,and' expediency r e q u i r e d that indiv idual agencies be givena fairly free hand in selecting their employees. If y o u hada position to fill in an intelligence operation and found aman who seemed to fit your requirements, the chanceswere you could offer him the job. It was un l ikely thathe had, or was interested in, civil sen-ice status, bj t thatdid not matter.

In these circumstances, and with f un ds fo r an e xpa nd ingorganiza t ion, a good staff could be mainta ined . Keen, ag-gressive, and competent people were willing, even anxiousto join up. Once in, they attract ed their colleagues, andthe weight and prestige of the intelligence organizationsnowballed. It came to be'called a "good outfit" and an-nual requests tor funds were apt to find added favor amongthe budget people and Congress.

Even in those days it was very difficult to fiie and replacepeople who for one reason or another were unsatisfactory.The organization needed to expand, rot only to take onadded functions, but also to make room for new and better

145


people to do the jobs neglected by the incompetents . Af te ithe war was over, economy in the federal budget becamea political i ssu t : fe w people were willing to admit t ha t th e

I N T E L L I G E N C E 15 O R G A N I Z AT I O N

tractive offers. Two forces of disintegratio n are now work-ing in concert on the most val uab le people. They areb e i n g nudged from within and beckoned from without.



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a political i ssu t : fe w people were willing to admit t ha t th ei n t e l l i ge n c e business needed approximately as large a s t a f fin peace as in wart ime. In addi t ion, the civil service regu-lations began again to be applied with full force.

Throughout the g o v ern men t , including its highly spe-cialized intelligence outfits, s tandard reduct ion- in -fo rceprocedures were followed v.'herever reduced budgets madeit necessa ry to reduce staff . In general, these proceduresprovide that employ ees with the slimmest r igh ts of tenureshall be t he first to go. It has happened many t imes thatv a l u a b l e employees have been dismissed and other peopleof a lesser order of c o m p e t en c e stayed on. The least valu-able people—those who arc virtual ly unemployable outsideof g o v e rn m en t— b u s i ly consolidate their grip on tenureand take advantage of al! the rights which accrue to them

under the system.When vacancies occur they must be filled by personswho have the highest qualifications in terms of the civilservice rules; these may be people who have just beenreleased by other agencies, and often they fit poorly the

jo bs to which they are shunt ed. On ly in high-ec helon po-sitions and in those requiring the greatest specializationis it possible to appoint men of outstanding professonalqualification if they have never taken a civil service exami-nation or never worked for the government.

Good people in intelligence are naturally discouragedby this sit uati on. Many of them are insecure in their own

jobs , no matt er how good thei r per formanc e has been , andall of the others are worried by actual or prospective lossof good s taff . Their concern , when communicated to theoutside, becomes the cause for outside bidding for theirservices. Business, indu str y, their former employers andcolleagues in various forms of non-governmental servicebegin considering them as available and begin making at -

146

Their loss is a catastrophe to federal intelligence work.It is virtually impossible to find their replacements any-where in the country. The only remedy is an hero ic one—highly specialized p e r s onne l , such as the p ro fess ionals in

an intelligence organization, must be immune from ordi-nary civil service regulations. I fu ll y realize the heresy of such a suggestion, but unless some special provision .ismade for intelligence, the whole question of the preserva-t ion o f t h e - d e m o c r a t i c w ay may i t sel f become one daysomewhat academic.

The above are by *no means the only administrativeproblems of the intelligence business, but they are prob-lems on which much experience has been accumulatedin recent years—at great expense in grief and taxpayers'dollars.

147



PART II!

I N T E L L I G E N C E IS A C T I V I T Y

LC H A P T E R 9

INTELLIGENCE IS ACTIVITY



IN THE language of the trade, the wo rd intelligence is used

not merely to designate the cypes of knowl e dge I havebeen discussing and the o rg an iza t io n to produce thisknowledge, it is used as a synonym ior th e activity w h i c h ,th e o rga n i z a t i on performs. In this c ha p t e r and the nexttwo I will discuss intelligence as act ivi ty, or perh aps better,as process. My primary concern will be die large num-ber of methodological and other problems wh i c h are char-acteristic o f the intelligence process. But befor e coming tothese problems I should deal, if only briefly, with theprocess itself.

The knowledge, which I have been cal l ing strategic in-tel l igence, serves_two uses:_ii serves a prot£ci jvp T i^cfen-s i v e u s e in chat it f o r e wa r ns us. of the designs which otherpowers

may be hatching to the da ma ge of our n a t i o n a lin ceres ts; and it serves a posi t ive or outgoing use in thati t p r e p a r e s t f Te way for o u r~ o wn act ive fo reign policy orgrand"stfaTegy."Bunhe"Importantilling"to grasp is that,no ma t t eF 'wKaT the d ivers i ty of use to be served, theknowledge at issue is produced by the process of research.

Sometimes research is fo rmal , highly technical, andweighty; sometimes it is informal, untechnical, and speed-ily arrived at. Sometimes a research project requi res thou-sands of man-days of work, sometimes it is done in oneman-minute or less.

The research process, especially thac of strategic intelli-, gence, is initia ted in two chief ways. When the policy

•C l " people or planners of our gove rnme n t begin formulating /* something new in our foreign policy they often come to

intelligence and ask for background. (They should domore of this than they actually do.) In their request forthis or that block of knowledge, they stimulate the intel-

151

l igence force to embark upon a piece of research and acourse of specially aimed surveillance. There is, how eve r,a second way in which the intelligence force comes to in-i t i a t e research. This is through its own systemat ic andconti nuing surveillance of what is going on abroad.

So impo rtan t is this general surveillance that it is oftenconceived of as separable from research. I do not th in k

very important ones take place at h o m e in tn e hueiuge;.::headquart ers. Queer as it may seem to observe a foreigncountry from a home observation post, there are severalreasons for this apparent paradox.

First., there must be surveillance at h o m e purely andsimply as a m a t t e r of convenience. For exam ple, wha t theofficial French radio beams on the rest O L the world is a



it should be so conceived. Let me discuss it furt her .Surveillance, as I am using the word here, is the ob-

servation of what goes on abroad and the deliberate at-tempt to make sense of it. The actu al physic al ob s e r v i ngprocess takes place in foreign lands and at home; k cantake place overtly or clandestinely or both,

In foreign countries we carry it on through a m u l t i t u d eof open-and-above-board officers—some civilian, some mili-tary—whose duty is to keep eyes and ears a l e r t and reportwhat they learn. These officers are the foreign service o f f i -cers and attaches which I have mention ed earlier. Eachof them has his field of special interest and competence,whether it be political, military, commercial, or culturalaffairs, etc., and each is supposed to keep himself and his

principals at home posted within this specialty.Some foreign governments supplement the work of their

overt officers of this type with espionage activities; that is,they send out secret agents, or undercover recruiters of secret agents, to discover and report on matters whichwould be d ifficu lt to discover overtly. If you would likea sample of how such activities are established and howthey operate, read Richard Hirsch's The Soviet Spies,1 orthe Report of the Royal [Canadian] Commission . . ,z uponwhich it is largely based.

Nof a ll surveillance activities take place abroad; s ome'New York, 1947.'Report of the Royal Commission . . . to Investigate the Fads relating

to . . . the Communication . . . o f Secret and Confidential Information to Agents o f a Foreign Power, June 27 , 1916, (Ottawa. 1946).

15 2

m a t t e r of considerable interest to us; we should like toknow the content of its political news and commentary.It does not follow, however, that we m u s t set up a com-plete radio-mon itoring operation in every city of the world.The techn ical d i ff icu l t ies would be g rea t , the large staff necessary to run such operations would be i l l - rece ived bys ome of the countri es, and the costs would be t remendous.Hence, that extremely important surveillance organiza-tion known as the Foreign Broadcast I n f o r m a t i o n Branch

.i s established at home. Its monito ring stati ons pick up themost significant programs; the home o ff i c e transcribesthem, translates (and sometimes abstracts them), repro-duces them, and sends them around to officers of the gov-ernment. Departmental intelligence o rgan izat ions are, of

course, th e chief beneficiaries.A similar case will hold for official use of the largeamount of fo ie ign news which cor respondents of our do-mestic press gather and cable home to their papers. Sharpnewspapermen, though they have no connection with theintelligence work of our federal government, are impor-tant observers of foreign affairs and important, though in-advertent, contributors to the surveillance activity underdiscussion. Wise is the government not to try to intercepttheir dispatches at the point of origin, but to let themland in the home cable rooms of our domestic papers andput the content to official use. Doing the business this waymeans that an intelligence operation engaged in overt sur-veillance will have to have some small force at home whichfollows the best foreign news.

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There is a second reason for home surveillance activity,ft is based upon the proposition that anything beinghatched abroad to our detriment has about it a conspira-torial air: it is being hatchedin secret and there are several

I N T E L L I G E N C E 15 ACTIVITY

munLJiumber p f _ p h e n o m e n a ; and m o r e imp o r tan t ly. itm u s t be aggressive in th;u t l ie observer docs a maximum

up his impressions of these phe-m oun t _o f f o l l owi ngnomena



torial air: it is being ha tched in secret and there are severalpeople or g roups of people part y to it. In the world of international relations these par t ies to the conspiracy maybe residents of half a dozen countries, and the story of

what they are up to , if ever pieced together, must be piecedtogether from f ragments supplied from the half-dozen dif-fe re nt nationa l sources. For example, wha t Franco w a jconsidering at a given moment might be less availablefrom Madrid sources than from those of Mexico City.Buenos Aires, L isbon , Ea y onne , and Rome. This is not toargue that Washington is the on ly place where surveillanceshould take place, but it is to argue that given the com-plicated nature of the modern world, there must be a lis-tening and observation post and clearing house in a centralspot.

However conducted—over t ly or clandestinely, abroad orat h o m e— su rv e i l l ance serves two vital functions: It tells uswhen another state is contemplating a policy or an actionhurtful to our national interest. In this role it stimulatesth e production of the defensive-protective knowledge nec-essary for our security. It also tells us what we must knowabout affairs abroad if we are to implement our own activeoutgoing policies. In this second functio n the surveil lanceforce has collected, observed, and reported the wide rangeof phenomena which I described in Chapters 2 and 3 andwithout which strategic intelligence would have l i t t le con-

tent of current importance.In t a lk ing of surveillance there is always the danger of

pdrtravincr_sornething7ntirely passive. Surveil lance soundslike sitting- bark_3nd_ awai t ing the impression. But surveil-lance worthy of th e name must rJe vigorous_and agoressive.It must be aggressive.in that the observer rovers as muchground as possible, seeking to expose himselfLtQ. a maxi-

nomena.So long as I use the imprecise term "fo l lowing up" I am

on safe ground with the general reader and the intelligencebrotherhood. It implies checking on die accuracy of

sources, comparing divergent accounts, and gaining per-spective by broadening the field of inquiry, finding newleads—out of a ll of which emerges a proposition whichseems the truest of all possible propositions. X o u ' I wouldlike to call this process of fo l lowing-up by the more preciseterra of "research" and say that a certain kind of researchmust accompany the surveillance a c t i v i t y , This researchis a systematic endeavor to get firm me a n ing out of impres-sions. Surveillance with out its accompanyi ng research willproduce spotty and superficial information.

Research has a greater importance than merely supply-ing the cutting edge to surveill ance. It has a role entirelyits own—in the service of the outgoing positive aspects of policy. In wartime it produces the knowledge of enemystrategic capabilities, enemy specific vulnerabilities; itproduces the knowledge of the political and economicstrengths and weaknesses of the enemy; it produces theknowledge of the physical plant which the enemy is usingfor war-making. On such knowledge our own offensivemilitary p lans were based. In peacetime, it p roduces- thekind of knowledge of foreign lands that you would liketo have if you had to decide whether to sponsor a Euro-pean economic recovery program and then to defend itbefore Congress and your fellow countrymen;

Research is the only process which we of the liberal tra-dition are willing to admit is capable of giving us thetruth, or a closer approximation to truth, than we nowenjoy. A medieval philosopher would have been content

.. to.get his .truth by extrapolating from Holy Writ, an Afri-

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can chieftain by consultation w i th his witch doctor, or amystic like Adolf: Hitler from communion with his in-tui ti ve self . But we insist, and have insisted [or genera-tions, that truth is to be approached, if not a t t a i n ed ,t h r o u g h research guided by a systematic method. I n - t h e

3 h b


described in any nu mb er of ways. For i n s t an ce , one couldeasily paraphrase the discussion of the phys ica l sciences (asset forth by President Conant of H a r v a r d ) and say that themethod of the social sciences involves th e development of•new concepts from observat ions and that the new conceptsi t i i di t d l d t b ti B t t



social sciences 3 which very largely constitute th e su b j ec tmatter of strategic intelligence, there is such a m e t h o d . Itis much like the method of phys ical sciences. It is not thesame method but it is a method none the less.4 It can be

'I am inc lud ing ih e science of mi l i ta ry s t rategy as a social sciencealong with social psychology, economic, politics, sociology, geography,anthropology, history and others. It is worth no t ing that ih e intel l igenceof physical science a nd techno logy ha s a very heavy overlay cf socialscience. For example, it is a very important m a t t e r to know preciselywhere Country Y is in its development of new fuels, vaccine?, or weapons,and p resumably on ly a man ivell-versed in th e appropriate exact science iscompetent to handle the technical details of this in tel l igence p roblem.But jus t as impor tan t , possibly even more so, are the p red i c t ab l e e f f e c t sof such developments upon the n a t i o n which produces them. If CountryY has found a new f u e l which will revolutionize i ts aviation industry, hasCountry Y the desire and the cash to go through this revolut ion? And if Co u n t r y Y does go through the r evo lu t ion , w h a t will be the results uponher commercial aviation policy, her a t t i tude in foreign relations, etc.?

These latter questions are of greatest importance and the answers tothem do not necessarily lie w i th in th e province of the physical scientist orengin eer. The answers are the stock in trade of the social sc ientists. A n yforeign country working on the U.S. in th e a tomic age should be everybit as concerned about how our possession of the bomb and other a t omicenergy secrets will affect our own domestic an d foreijm policy as it shouldbe in tryi ng to find out our highly technical secrets. I should thereforeexpect the U.S. Division of Country Y's cent ral intelligence outfit toemploy a few scientists who are trying to find out how we do it and alarger number of social scientists to p u t their findings into the properpolitical, social, and economic contexts.

•It is often pointed out that the method of the social scieices differ)most dramatically from that of the exact sciences in the enormous d i ff i -cult ies they encounter in running controlled and repet i t ive experimentsand in achievi ng sure bases for prognosis. In spite of these great disad-vantages, social scientists go on str iving For improvements in the'r methodwhich will afford th e exactnesses of physics and chemistry. Some of thephysical scientists, like President Conant of Harvard, while respectfulof the "impartial and objective analyses" achieved by the social scientist)woul d dissociate the two methods. They feel that th e method of socialscience is so different from that of the physical sciences (for th e reasonsgiven above and others) that to try to make the two cognate is only toconfuse. To quote Mr. Conant, "To say that all impartial and accurateanalyses of facts ar e examples of the scientific method is to add confusion

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in tuin indic ate and lead to new observati ons. But to ex-pand this admirably simple formulation so that it wouldfit the special case of the social sciences would perhaps beless useful than to spell out another which is specifically-

designed to meet the p re s e n t requirements.In this other formulation seven steps or stages arc recog-

nized:1. The appearance of a problem requ iri ng the attentio n

of a strategic intelligence staff.2. Analysis oi this problem to discover which facets of

it are of actual importance to the U.S. and w h i c h of severallines of approach are most likely to be useful to its gov-ernmental consumers.

3. Collection of data bearing upon the problem as for-

mulated in stage 2. This involves a su rve y of data alre adyat hand and available in the libraries of d o c u m e n t ar y ma-terials, and an endeavor to procure new data to f i l l in gaps.

4. Critical evaluation of the data thus assembled.5. Study of the evaluated data with the intent of findin g

some sort of inherent meaning. The mome nt of the dis-covery of such meaning can be called the moment of 'hypothesis. In reality there is rarely such a thing as onemoment of hypothesis though some students of method,largely as a convenience, speak as if there were. Nor canit be said categorically at what stage in the process hypoth-eses 'appear. One would be pleased to think that they

beyond m eas u re to the p roblems of understanding [physical] science."[fames D. Conant, On Understanding Science, New Haven, 1947, p. 10.)However Mr. Ccnan t , as a chemist, is chiefly concerned to avoid confusionin the field of pure science. The social scientist has a very d i ffe ren tconcern.

157

-.as..•:.-*

• .-Fig


appeared at this, the respectable stage 5, but in actual prac-tice the y begin appearing when the first datum is co l lected.They have been known to appear even before that, andthey may continue to appear until the project is closed oat—or even after that.

6 More collecting of data along the lines indicated by

CHAPTER 10

SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF METHOD IN INTELLIGENCE WORK

O T R AT E C I Cintelligence confronts difficulties at each stage



6. More collecting of data along the lines indicated bythe more promising hypotheses, to confirm or deny them.

7, Establishment of one or more hypotheses as truerthan others and statement of these hypotheses as the best

prese nt approximations of truth. This is the last stageand is often referred to as the presentation state.

At each of these stages two sorts of methodologicalproblem arise. One sort is characteristic of all systematicresearch in the social sciences, the other derives from thepeculia rities of intelligence's research activities. To put itanother way: strategic intelligence has a set of methodo-logical problems all its own which are relatively unknownto the social scientist at work in his university. My pr in-cipal concern in th e next chapter will be with this classof special methodological problems.

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O T R AT E C I C intelligence confronts difficulties at each stage^ in the meth od discussed in the last ch apter. As I havesaid, these difficulties are not general to all research in thesocial sciences; they are peculiar to in te l l igence work. In

the next pages I will discuss them stage by stage.The word "problem" can cause some confusion. I usethe word frequently and in two quite different senses.These I will tag t h r o u g h o u t as "methodological prob-lem," by which I mean a problem characteristic of themethod of trying to establish a new approximation totruth, and "substantive problem," by which I mean a prob-lem in the actual subject matter of strategic intelligence.As an example of a "substantive problem" consider th estrategic stature of the Chinese C o m m u n i s t s ; as an exam-ple of a "methodological problem" cons ider the me ans you

would employ to get the basic data on the Chinese com-munists ' military establishment.

1. Stage One, the appearance oj the substantive prob-lem

The substantive problem in strategic intelligence canemerge in three principal ways.

a. The substantive problem may emerge as a result of the reflections of a man employed to do nothing but .an-ticipate problems. In actual fact, the intelligence businessemploys all too few o£ such men. Bu t suppose there are'

such men; their job is to ask themselves the hard, thesearching, and the significant question and keep passingit on to professional staf f. An intelligence operation shouldbe bedeviled by such questions, and a substantial part of

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Ei:

B inBfii

it s work p rogram should be concerned with getting an-swers. A Pearl Harbor disaster is to be ascribed in nosmall measure to the absence of some unpleasant and in-sistent person, who, knowing of the growing animus of Japan, kept asking when is the attack coming, where isit coming, and how is it c o m i n g ?l

The methodological problem involved here is a very

of spott ing the unusual , t i ic rea l ly u n u s u a l ? How ca.. i .be sure of putting the finger on the three things per weekout of the thousands it observes and the millions that hap-pen which are r ea l ly o f p o t en t i a l m om e n t ? The a ns we r i bthe same as the former one: procure the services of wis£m e n — a n d wise in the subject—arid pray that their myste-rious inner selves are o £ the kind which p r oduc e hypo th -eses of national importance



slight one, on the surface, at least. It consisrs. o f devisingthe m ean s by which such anticipators will be sure of for-mu lat ing good subs tant ive problems. The only answer liesin picking a man who already knows a good deal aboutthe substantive area in which he is supposed to ask ques-tions, and who has an inquiring mind; and then see to itthat he has ready access to every scrap of new incomingevidence on it, access to everyone who knows about it, andfreedom from other burdensome duties. But if you gobelow the surface and ask, ho w does one come to ask oneself good questions, you start down one of the mainroadways of epistemology. It is not my intent ion to do so.

b. The substantive problem can emerge when surveil-lance makes one aware of something unusual. For ex-

ample, suppose the people watching Great Frusina learnthat that country is expanding its Christian mission pro-gram in the Belgian Congo and that it has named a certainBrother N e p o m u k as aide to the new director. If surveil-lance is-sharp enough to recognize the unusualness of thisshift in a minor part of Great Frusinan policy it has ini-tiated a substantive problem which miy be very importantwhen followed up, or it may be of no importance at all.

The methodological problems here are very similar tothose just touched upon: how can surveillance assure itself

'See Seth W. Richardson (General Counsel for '.he Joint CongressionalInvest igating Committee [on Pearl Harbor]), "Why Were We Caught Nap-ping at Pearl Harbor?" Saturday Euening Post (vol. 219, no. 47, May 2*.1947}. Mr. Richardson documents the proposition which w generallyaccepted.

160

eses of national importance.c. The third and last way in which the substantive-

problem can emerge is at the direct in s tance of the con-sumer. For example, let us suppose ihat the policy people,

who are prime among the intelligence consumers, are f a c -ing up to a revision of the establ ished Ch ina policy. Letus assume that they summon some of the c on t r o l andprofessional staff of intel l igence tc a meeting where theproblem is p*ut on the table. In the course of this meetingthere will appear to be aspects of the China question whichthe policy people have not had to kno w abo ut before. Letus assume that they have to do - w i t h population. A pros-pective change in policy has caused a substantive problemto emerge.

There is no real methodological problem in this case as

presented. From the point of vie w of the in te l l igence or-ganization, things have gone just as they ?hould . To besure, the assignment is so large and so general as to presentserious difficulties, but in as much as intell igence was sum-moned to the meeting, intelligence may assume a good bitof further guidance from the consumers in precisely shap-ing the substa nti ve problem to the ir needs. (This is stage2 and will be discussed immediately.) Bu t what happen sall too often is that the decision to revise the policy istaken and discussion begun wit h int elligen ce not included,Weeks later, when the policy people are close against an

immovable deadline, they discover they must have a newpopulation est imate from intelligence and that at once.They raise a substantive problem all right, but they raise

161


it to the consternation and despair of in te l l igence, whichis asked to do a month's work over night.

2. Stage Two, the analysis of the substantive problem

The substantive problem has emerged in very roughform. Before the surveillance or research people can pro-

I N T E L L I G E N C E IS ACTIVITY

their substant ive problems to find the most f ru i t fu l line o f attack, they wil l seek guida nce. This guid anc e should comeboth from their own inner selves as they increase theirunderstanding of their respective substantive problemsand from the policy, planning, or operating people whomthey are endeavoring to serve Lee me take the problem of



•'uiss

ceed with it they must give it some close and searchinganalysis. The aim of this analysis is not merely to discoverand discard those elements which are irrelevant or unim-portant, but more importantly, to shape the problem insuch fashion that the solution (when it appears) will bedirectly applicable to the task of the consumers.

For example, the surveillance people have many possiblecourses of subsequent observat ion open to them by theirdiscovery of Great Frusina's new missionary zeal. Theycan begin watching the church-state relationship lookingfor new angles; they can start an observation of the G rea tFrusina-Belgium relationship; they can skip over GreatFrusina, Belgium, and the Congo, and start chasing afteidevelopments in the general field of missions to find newchurch policies therein. They are almost certain to turnup interesting leads no matter which of these, or other,lines they pursue. But that is not the question. The ques-tion is, what particular line of further observation is likelyto prove of most importance to the security of the UnitedStates?

The research people who come back from the policy-on-China meeting may have much the same sort of choice tomake. They were asked to come up with some popula t iondata; let us suppose that the original request was not moreexplicit than just that. Obviously there a re dozens of kindsof popula t ion data only one or two of which will have any

bearing whatsoever on the task of the policy people. Wha tare these data, and in what degree of detail should they beworked up?

As the surveillance and the research peopk mull over

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they are endeavoring to serve. Lee me t ake the problem of guidance as it appears to the surveillance man.

He discovered that Grea: F r u s i n a was enlarging itsChristian missions p rogram in th e Congo; he knows that

the Congo has large uranium deposits; he asks himself, isthere a connec tion? When his for ay into research revealsthat Brother N e p o m u k won a N o b e l prize for work ingeology he sees a connection and one aspect of the most fruitful tins of attack has presented i t s e l f to him. He nowhas a hypothesis that Great Frus ina is trying to get ura-nium from the Congo and that Brother Nepomuk is aG r e a t Frusinan agent. At thi s poi nt he must get outsideguidan ce. What other lines of a ttack wi l l the people whomhe serves designate as fruitful, what do they propose to doabout Great Frusina if such and such a line indicates an

ill-intentioned activity on her part?With the research people at work on the population of China the sequence may be exactly reversed. In their questfor direction they will promptly go back to the policy andask their advice about lines of attack. They will also ask how the policy people see their task shap ing up, and whattheir aim is in revising the old policy. If they get answersto their questions they can state the substantive problemin such a way th ^ t an answer to it will have practicalutil ity to their principals. Moreove r, as they advance intotheir research they will get useful hypotheses which springfrom their familiarity with the subject matter, and whichthe policy people might never have got on their own.

But the methodological problem at issue is not that of inner guidance. It is that o £ gu idanc e from without, guid-ance from the users of the knowledge which the intelli-

163


gence people are trying to produce. It is one of the criticalproblems of the whole intelligence business a nd one towhich I have devoted a substantial part of the next chap-ter. Suff ice it to say here that the relations hip between in-telligence producers and intelligence consumers has beenuneven; that intelligence often finds it impossible to getth t f id hi h it t h t k it d t

other k indred materials in other n e ig h b o i in g intel l igenceorganizati ons close by. He must reach these. I have al-ready noted the difficulties in the task of reaching them if (1) he must communicate his wishes to another person in*his own organization who has an exclusive man d a t e to col-lect data, and (2) if the other organizations possess nocentral l ibrary of indexed documents The fact that in



the sort of guidance which it must have to make its productuseful; and that one o£ the places where this lack of guid-ance produces its most disastrous results is at this verystage 2 of the intelligence process. Unl ess ih e intelligenceorganizat ion knows why it is at work, what use its productis to be designed to serve, and what sorts of action are con-templated wi th what sorts of implements, the analysis andproper formula t ion of the substant ive problem suffer inproportion.

5. Stage Three, the collection of dataThe collection of data is the most characteristic activity

of the entire intell igence business. There can be no sur-veillance without the collection of data nor can there beresearch. Accordingly, an intelligence organization cannotexist until it does a broad and systematic job of collecting.But in this very task He methodological problems whichare so tough as to be almost unsolvable and in their un-solved state are a perpetual source of inefficiency.

a. Let me start with the easiest. This is the method-ological problem which a member of the professionalstaff encounters when he embarks upon a piece of research.After he has blocked out his substantive problem, his nextstep is to see what data bearing upon the subject exist inhis own and other intelligence organizations. Let us as-sume that his own files are in good shape and that his

outfit has a central ized library of properly indexed docu-ments. In a short time he can round up the materialswhi ch are in his own possession, so to speak. These mate-rials indicate, as will also his horse sense, that there are

36 4

central l ibrary of indexed documents. The fact that in-telligence organizations are likely to a t t e m p t t o cen tra l izethe col l ec t ing func t ion and are not l ike ly to mainta in acentral index oE their documents thus raises a consider-able barrier to our researcher.

b. To proceed to a later step in this process, let usassume tha t the s t a ff member d i scovers tha t even af t e rcanvassing every resource in his headquarters city thereare still a number of unanswered subs tan t ive questionswhich he must explore. He must comm unica te with thefield; he mus t try to explain to someone in a foreign capi-tal what he wants to find out. Now if the ma n on the other-end of the wire has formerly been a worker in the homeoffice, if he has a feel for home-office functioning and per-sonally knows the home staff, and if he is .on his toes, hewill the more readily understand what he is being askedto do and will do it wit h efficie nt good grace. He wil lgrasp the instruct ions (which can be given in off ice short-hand) and will act pretty much as an overseas projectionof the home staff. But if he has not served in the homeoffice, and instead has gone to his foreign post improperlybriefed on home problems then there may be difficulties.

The trouble begins with trying to explain in a letter orcable precisely what is desired, and in trying to explain itto someone starting from scrat ch. Re qu isi tio ns for data o fthis sort must be spelled out in detail and to achieve re-

sults they must communicate in their sub stance a sense oEurgency and importance. They are time-consuming. If they are no more than short blunt c o m m a n d s they areHkely t o be handled in a per functory fashion.

165


Tlie tr ouble increases when the requisi tion deals wi th asubject to which the recipient is stranger. The h o m e o f f i c emay wish to have a foreign o f f i c i a l in terv iewed on a tech-n ica l d e m o g r a p h ic m a t t e r or wish to have someone auditand report on a scientific congress, but the men in the

I N T E L L I G E N C E I S A C T I V I T Y

This segregation is dictated by U i e need lor secrecy- Anabsolute minimum of people must know anything aboutthe operation, and the greatest amount of caution and dis-simulation must attend its every move. But unless thisclandestine force watches sharply ii can become its own



field may have had the wrong kind of professional trainingor no professional training at all, and thus be totally in-competent to handle the subject matter of the request. O r,

most likely, the field staff is completely engulfed in makinggood on a previous request which seems to them to be of highest importance.

The above type of problem I have called the easiest ofthe problems of collection, because certain simple rulesof good sense can probably beat it. Bu t ther e are o therswh ic h cannot be so easily disposed of. They are in her entin the surveillance phase of intelligence.

The survei l lance force in a strategic intelligence opera-tion is supposed in the first instance to watch ac tua l ,fancied, or potential ill-wishers or enemies of the UnitedStates and report on their activities. In the second instancethe surveillance force is supposed to procure a less dra-matic sort of information which is ca lcu lated to forwardthe success of our own policies. In certai n aspects of bothlines of work the surveillance force must work clandes-tinely. Or to put it another way: a surveillance forcewhich was not equipped to work clandestinely could notdeliver on a small but extremely important part of its task.Generally speaking, it could not deliver information whichanother country regarded as a secret of state . Many suchsecrets can be apprehended only by fancy methods whichare themselves secrets of state. Thus a certai n imp orta ntfraction of the knowledge which intelligence m us t*produceis collected through highly developed seciet techniques.Herein begins perhaps the major methodological problemof the collection stage of the intelligence process.

It begins with the segregation of the clandestine force.

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worst enemy. For if it allows d ie mechanisms of securityto cut it off from some of the most significant lines o f g u i d -ance, it destroys its own reason for existence. This gu id -

ance, in the nature of things, should come from twosources: ic should come from the ultimate consumers di-rect, or it should come from the ultimate consumer indi-rectly, through the overt part of the intelligence operationto which he ( the consumer) ha s gone for help. As there la t ionsh ip between th e c l andes t ine people and the directand indirect consumers o £ their p r o d u c t is stopped down(as it may have to be for long periods); as it becomes for-malized to the point where commun icat ion is by the writ-ten word only; as it loses the in fo rmal i ty of man-to-rnandiscussion, some of its most important tasks become prac-

tically impossible. Requisi tions upon i t for informationbecome soulless commands which, through the innocenceof the consumer, can take no notice of the capabilities of th e o rgan izat ion . The consumer may ask for somethingthe organization is not set up to deliver, or he may ask forso wide a range of information that the totality of resourcesof the o rganiza t ion 'would be fully deployed for months,or he may ask for something which though procurable isnot wor th the effo rt. With a high wall of impenetrablesecrecy the consumer has great difficulty in not abusing theorganization, and the organization ha s an equal difficultyin shaping itself along lines of greatest util i ty for the con-sumer. It is constantly in danger of collecting the wronginformation and not collecting the right.

This danger is intensified by the very way clandestineintelligence works. Its job involve s i t . in ' highly compli-cated techniques: the correct approach to a source, the

167


"development" of source,2 the protection oE the sourceonce it has been developed, the security and reliability ofits own communications, and so on. Isolated by the se-c u r i t y barrier, the perfecting of these techniques somet imesthr eat ens to become an end in itself. One can unders tandthe technician's absorbed interest in the tricks of his trade,b t it i h d t d hi h h t hi d

I N T E L L I G E N C E li A C T l V J Ti

cause he knows from other evidence of unquestionablereliability that her capacity is 30 million tons, he may faesaid to have tr ut hf ul inf ormat ion. When he appraises inthe indirect method, viz., when he rejects a report whichputs Great Frusina's harvester output at 30,000 per yearbecause he cannot see what she could do with such a num-ber he is exercising what he hopes is good judgment



but it is hard to pardon him when he gets his means andends conf use d, There are cases on record where clandes-tine intelligence has exploited a difficult and less remu-nerative source while it has neglected to exploit an easyand more remunera tive one. This kind of mis-collectionwould be E a r less likely to occur if the ope r a don were notfree to steer its own course behind the fog of its ownsecurity regulations.

4. Stage Four, the evaluation of data

If the language of intelligence were more precise itmight use the word "criticism" in place of the word "eval-uation," and if "criticism of data" were permitted wemight move forward with a little more certainty and speed.The word criticism means the comparison of somethingnew and unestabl ished with something older and betterestabli shed. How does the new measure up to the old?The best critic, in these terms, is the man who has thegreatest number of somethings on the established side of his ledger and the right sort of mind, for he will be sbleby direct or indirect comparison to appraise the validity of the new somethings as they come in. When he appraisesin the direct method, viz., when he rejects a report whichputs Great Frusina's steel capacity at 45 million tons be-

"For the meaning o£ the word "development" died in this seme seeRichard Hirsch, The Soviet Spies (New York, 1947), esp. chrtp. 16. Thepeople whom th e Russian in Ottawa induced to beiray their co u n t ry didno i betray it fo r money. They betrayed it because, through a subtle an dpersistent indoctrinat ion, they became sure thai in so doing they werebenefit ing hu manity . There are many other ways of "de\ doping" asource wi t hou t the blunt use of the cash reward.

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ber, he is exercising what he hopes is good judgment.In the research aspect of the intelligence business the

collected data bearing on the substantive problem must of course be criticized before they can become [he stuff fromwhich a hypothesis emerges. If incorrect data are notrejected the emergent hypothesis will be accordingly incor-rect, and the whole final picture incor rec t . The methodo-logical problem at issue boils down to a quest ion of theexpertise of the critic, the breadth of his understanding,and the freedom he is permitted in arriving at his ap-praisal of the data. M ay be , as in the case of an e i r l ierproblem, this one is as much a problem of administrationas of methodology. But the point is, that the intell igencebusiness in trying to run itself on an assembly-line basisand in trying to subst i tu te administrative techniques for

high-class professional personnel is al l ro o likely to falldown on the all-important issue of the criticism of data.This is just another way of saying that we have lost toom a ny scholars of knowledge and wisdom from a pursuitwhich cannot get along without them.

There is, however, a problem in the area of evaluat ionwhich can properly be called a methodological problemand one which is peculiar to the intelligence business.This problem arises because of the two ways in which theproduce of the survei l lance operation is distributed to theconsumers. The first of these ways of distr ibution isthrough the finished digest or report or daily or weeklysummary. The new s t u f f is put on the expert's desk; hecriticizes it, judges its importance, mixes it with otherdata he received yesterday and the week before, gives it

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background and point, and sends it on to the consumer.This activity may be called "reporting," but as can be seenit con tain s all of the elements of research.

Tiie second way in which the produce of the surveillanceoperation is distributed is in a much less finished form.The collectors pass to a sort of mi d d l emanwhat they ha've

INTELLIGENCE IS ACTIVITI

If this argument has any force the midd lemen t hemselvesdo much to negate it. For they do not di st rib ut e the com-modit y in anyt hing even appro aching the raw state. Theyedit it, abbreviate it, translate it, and obscure its source if necessary. Worse, they frequently lose the point-of-obser-va t ion youmight call it the slant o £ the information:

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The collectors pass to a sort of mi d d l eman what they ha vepicked up. The mi d d l eman grades th e data for r e l iab i l i tyof source and accuracy and reliability of content, and m a y -then d i s t r ibute direct to th e consumer or to the researchs t a f f of his own o rganiza t ion and to other intelligence or-ganizations. Tin? only ostensible reason for the existenceof this m i d d l e m a n is that he is handling data which havebeen collected c landest inely. His organizat ion must pro-tect its sources. B u t the m i d d l e m a n - n o matter how hecame into existence—in actual fact does far more thanobl i te ra te the source's identity. He a t t empts to grade therel iabil i ty of the data. In doing so he is guided by somebtrange patterns of thought.

The middleman, according to standard practice, is re-stricted to a very narrow language in making his evalua-tio ns. He is perm itte d to grade the relia bilit y of the sourceaccording to the letters A, B, C, D, and the content accord-ing to the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. Thus " A - 1 would designatea report of unvarnished truth that was straight from thehorse 's mouth. Data from less dependable sources, andless accurate, might be B-2, C-4 etc. If the data happen tohave come from a document, a newspaper or press release,or some such, one school of evaluators simply designatestheir value with the single word "documentary." Middle-men have insisted on not amplifying their comments be-yond this elementary code and have done their best to see

that others who might well be able 'to amplify were pro-hibited from doing so. They cling to this procedure onthe ground that they are purveyers of a raw commodityand thac it is their duty to distribute the commodity in therawest state possible.

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va t ion—you might call it the slant o £ the information:Was it a French Communist, Socialist, or Rightist sourcewhich told the number of machine guns on the headquar-ters of the communist newspaper, L'Humanite, or whichtold of the new political instructions from the Vatican?When it lands on the consumer's desk, it is a semi-finished

Evalua t ion of the source may be a valid and valuableservice of the middleman. It the source is known to be. agood one and if it must be p ro tected a t al l costs, to label itas grade A is helpf ul. But it is he lpf ul and vali d only in sofar as the middleman knows what li e is t a lk ing about, orin so far as the validity of the source has any bearing onthe content. Often middlemen have no independe nt lineon the reliability of the source, and instead of admitting asmuch will proceed to grade th e source on the apparentreliability of the content. This m ove m e n t in vicious circlesis neither helpful nor valid.

Aside from the value of an authoritative evaluation of the source, there are within this procedure so many ques-tionable elements that one scarcely knows where to begin.1

Actually one would not feel obliged to begin ac all if thesemiddlemen did not broadcast their p r oduc t among peoplewho are ultimate intelligence consumers and who tend touse the data without further and systematic criticism. Butevaluated data do reach this group of consumers, and theyare likely to accept the evaluation at face, and be accord-ingly misled.3

'Not to be forgot ten is an equal peril. The busy consumer may no chave t i m e or inclination to read m a t e r i a l put out in th is form—in whichcase he remains innocent of the good along w i th th e bad.

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l nc ursi peculiar c l e m e n t consists 01 u iethem selve s. Who are these people who neither themselvesdirect the clandestine operations nor sit in a place wherethey are forced to view all incoming materials? By al l in-coming mater ia ls I mean those collected overtly from opensources (newspapers, government reports, transcriptionsof foreign radio broadcasts, etc.) as wel l as those collectedclandestinely from other secret sources. Located wherethey are, the middlemen seem to be insulated from both

s i t u a t i o n ; tlie C O I H C I U w.,i •_- j - . . . ,. .evaluator knew conditions iii v j ; " < i i i wen . ,.u.. ^ i ^ a c i _ _represented. One recipient of th is document who wa s wellequipped for systematic criticism poked around until heident i f ied th e source as none other than an importantFrench official and the document as the text of one of hisoff- the-record speeches. Now the official was unques t ion-ably an A scurce on the matter, he shou ld know fromfirst-hand informantsor even his own exper ienceexactly



y ,the field experience of the operator and the desk experi-ence of the research man who constantly and aggressivelyworks at a specialty. I can understan d how a man l iv ingin Rome and spending all his time collecting informationon Italian policies can develop a high cri t ical sense. I canunderstand how a research man in Washington w ho im-merses himself in the data of his specialty and every mo-ment of his professional life runs an obstacle race-wi:h hisown and other people's hypotheses must have a high criti-cal sense and a lot of criti cal abilit y. But I cann ot under-stand how a man who passively reviews a wide range of material without doing anything about it except grade it,can have the necessary critical sense.

Another peculiar element of the evaluation business is

closely akin to the last one. It is to be fou nd in the impliedassumption that the data of the social sciences have singlenon-relative values-that the datum, "Mr, Truman willtry for the Democratic nomination in 1948," is in the sameclass with the datum, "All physical objects will fall sixteenfeet in a perfect vacuum during the first second of theirfa l l"—that if Mr. Hannegan gives the first datum it is thesame thing as Dr. Millikan giving the second.

To illustrate further: During the war a documentgraded as A-3 was circulated which told of the Americanfailure to take care of the inhabitants of the ci ty-of Oran,

Algeria, in the win ter of 1943. The source was given an Arating because it appeared to be someone familiar with the

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first hand informants or even his own exper ience exactlywhat the s i tuat ion was. But what he said about Oranunder the Americans was of relat ively little importanceeven i£ it had happened to be correct. The importantaspect of this d o c u m e n t was that violent adverse criticismof the Americans had come from an important man whowas allegedly their frien d and close all y. It; importance asa source on Oran was as nothing compared to it s impor-tance as a source on the ill-will, bad nature, or even mildperfidy of the official himself . One use of the document,in fact its real value, was completely obscured by the en-coded evaluation. To serve the more import ant use, theevaluation should have called attention to the authorshipof the document. If the docume nt had fallen into thehands of American intelligence through the work of asecret agent whose indentity had to be protected, the eval-uation would have required four or five sentences insteadof one. But suppose t hat these sentences could not bewritten without compromising the agent, is this adequatereason for misleading the consumer through the A -3 evalu-ation? I would say not. I would say that if the middlemencould not think up some other method of handling theproblem they should get out of the business.

The crowning peculiari ty is the evaluation of a news-paper clipping by the use of the word documentary. Whatpurpose this can serve has always eluded me. Further-

more, removing the name of the newspaper from the re-production of the clipping is a positive disfavor to the

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r e c i p i e n t . Wit hou t it he is himself deprived of per hap sir.e most, u sefu l p iece of in format ion in making h is owne v a l u a t i o n . For example, would you not like to knoww h e t h e r th e New York Times or the Daily Worker wa sresponsible for an estimate cha t Henry Wallace would


room will not produce the ideas of o n e n iu n w i th u mentalrating of 100. You cannot add minds as if they were somany fractio nal parts of genius. So long as t he intelligencebusiness behaves as if it could do this, it will not producethe sort of hypotheses essential to its mission.

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p yr.-oll te n m i l l i o n votes Eor P r e s i d e n t in 1948? Or wo ul d; .ou settle for the attribution "d o cu m en ta ry "?4

5. Stage Five, the moment of hypothesisWhat is desired in the way of hypotheses, whenever they

may occur, is quant ity and quality. What is desired is alarge number of possible in terp reta t ions of the data, ala rge number of inferences, or concepts, which are broadlybased and productive of still other concepts.

There are two things an intelligence organization m u s thave in order to generate more and better hypotheses: (1)professional s t a f f of highest competence and devotion tothe task, and (2) access to all relevant data.

There were many men who lived contemporaneously

with M arian and Mitchell, with Darwin and Freud, withKeynes and Paretc who could have made these men's dis-coveries, but who did not have the necessary training orquality of mind. But that these many others did hot an-t icipate the g reat was not because they could not have hadthe necessary facts. To a very large extent the facts werethere for anyone. The great d iscoveries of the race-are th sresul t of r igorous, agile, and profound thinking; the greatdiscoverers have brains capable of such thinking and th es tamina to face up to an intellectual responsibility. Gre atdiscoveries are not made by a lot of second-rate minds, nomatter how they may be juxtaposed organizationally.Twenty men with a m en ta l rating of 5 put together in one

'The official apology for this practice is t h a t news kerns may beplanted roisinlorroaiiun and that the evaluate* does not wish tof u r th e r th e conspiracy. He thus uses th e wo rd " d o cu men ta ry " a a a warn-ing flag and as evidence tha i he is strictly neutral as far as in terpretat iongoes. I at n not impressed by this reasoning.

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But the intell igence business which recrui ted its profes-sional staff from among the nat ion ' s most gifted peoplewould not produce the good hypotheses unless these

people had access to all the relevant da t a . This is by nomeans easy to arrange. Two thin gs get in the way and thefirst of these is security.

Even though most of the subject matter o£ strategic in-telligence'falls in the field of the social sciences, it does notfollow that the intelligence man has exactly the same prob-lems as the university researcher or the journalist. He isdealing with state secrets upon which the safety or well-being of a nation may rest. On the the ory th at the degreeof secrecy of a secret is a fu nc ti on of the number of peoplewho know about it, a highly important secret cannot be

too widely known. But a man canno t produce the goodhypothesis in the matter of an important secret if he doesnot know as much as there is to know about it. It is inter-esting to speculate on how far Lord Keynes would havegot if libraries withheld large blocks of economic data onthe ground that they were operational, or how Ear Dr.Freud might have progressed if mental clinics sealed the_irrecords against him on the ground that they were too con-fidential. Yet intelligence people are constant ly confrontedwith th is very sort of argument. Secu rity comes at a greatcost in terms o f. results, and it should be allowed to inter-fere only so far as absolutely necessary. It must not bepermitted as a cloak Eor inter-office and inter-departmentaljealousies.

This matter of jealousies is the second of the two thingsthat get in the way. I deal with it also at lengt h in the nextchapter. Here let me but say that, whatever the cause, one

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6, Last Stage, presentationI am skipping the next-to-last stage (i.e. m o r e collecting

and more testing o£ hypo theses) in the intelligen ce processbecause it contains few, i f any, problems not covered instages 2 and 3 T he last stage the stage in which the estab-

w h ich al l real meaning ha s been j^. ju..... • . ' r . ; m e . t h e ; -go at such a problem they vail have less eiuimsiasm forexhaustive work, will turn in a poorer study with a stillpoorer summary tacked on the front . This is not a pleato the harassed consumer or man of action to r e a d all thehundreds of pages of knowledge which come his wa y, bu tit is a plea for him to realize that there is a middle positionan d ' t h a tas he lets it be kno wn he will read no thins; long er



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stages 2 and 3. T he last stage, the stage in which t he estab-lished hypothesis is presented as a new and better approxi-mation to truth, contains within it at least two importantprobl ems. These emerge from the form whic h the f i r i i s h e dproduct must take. The most conspicuous aspec ts of thisEorm is unadorned brevity and clarity.

To be sure, intelligence does produce long reports-some reach many hundred pages in length—but there arefew studies or reports or monographs which do not alsofurnish the reader with the one- or two-page summary. Ina way this is as it should be. The imposition of a wordlimit forces the intelligence producers to be clear in thenthought and concise in their presentation, and it enablesthe hurried consumer to consume while he runs. But theresult, while necessary, is by no means an unalloyed good.There is such a thing as a complicated idea; there is sucha thing as so complicated an idea that it cannot be ex-pounded in 250 words, or in two pie-charts, s.n assemblageof little men, little engines, and three-quarters of a littlecotton bale. The consumer who insists that no idea is toocomplicated for the 300-word summary is doing himself nofavo r. He is requiring the impossible and is paying heavilyfor it. He is paying in two ways: he is kidding himself inhis belief that he really knows something, and he is con-tr ibuting to the demoralization of his intelligence outfit.The intelligence people who spend weeks of back-break-

ing work on a substantive problem and come up ' with ananswer whose meaning lies in its refinements are injuredat the distortion that may occur in a glib summary from

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an d th a t as he lets it be kno wn he will read no thins; long ero o

than one single-spaced page, a good many of his most loyaland hardest workers arc going to lose some of their fervor

. in serving him.A second problem o[ the presentation stage is th e prob-lem o£ footnote references. Intelligence consumers , unlikemost serious and critical readers, have no: demanded foot-notes, in fact, they have often contemned footnoting asanother evidence of the impract icahty of the ac ademic intel-ligence produce r. The producer himself, has his difficultieswith the citati on of sources. In those in t e l l i j ence organiza-tions where the rules of styling are made by men w'io donot understand the method of research there is the usualamount of lay opposition to the reference note. Again,even in organizations where the value of citing sources isfully understood, many sources must be concealed for thereason of security. Thus on both sides there are good andbad reasons fo r skimping on citations and citations areskimped. 5

I know of no formula for evil that is any surer thansloppy research un too tno ted . Sloppy an d footnoted is notgood, but sloppy and unfootn oted mu lti pli es the danger in

•Some organizations have developed a practice of citing ^ many opensources as the text req u i res and d£ citing secre t or delicate sources in acode system. The consumer in these c i r cu ms tan ces gets a better break even t hough some of (h e citations m a k e n o sense :o h im. \ . he m u s t knowthe source for E given statement, he is always [vec (o ask the producer [or

e n l i gh t e nm e n t . The p r o d u c e r , however, w o u ld sccr:i L O he the chief be ne -ficiary. He has his record before him against the time w h e n somecne maychallenge one o£ hi s s t a t e m e n t s , or he may h a ve 10 rev ise or e x t e nd hi sstudy.

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a way that the layman can hard ly imagine. The f o l l o w i n gexam ple is a case in point..

The military staffs of two coun tr ies , X and Y, had somepre -war conve r sa t ions about the a i r f ie lds which Y had inone oE its colonies, Y told X. that it had some a ir f ie ldsbuilt, some about to be built on land already purchased,

d hi d b b il h h l d h d b

I N ' I L L U G L ' N C K IS A C l l V m

r u n w a y. N o w b a c k in t h e o r i g i n a l c io cu n ie iu no lengthwas g iven for the nonexis ten t runways o f the fields to be,but it was noted that the areas to be purchased for airfielddevelo pment were to be one mile square. This datum hadbeen repeated in all the succeeding report s. But when themap-makers landed upon it they f o u n d it inconvenient.They did not wish to do the unrealistic thing of depicting



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and a third group to be built when the land had beenpurchased. The outbreak of war turned the co n t en t oEthese conversations into an important item o£ intel l igence,

and one of Country X's intel l igence outfits distributed areport which accurately named and located the fields andnoted that some were ready, others not yet built, andothers only planned. It cited it s source and gave th e datesof the conversations. So far so good.

A few months later another in te l l igence outfi t in anothercountry, Z, had occasion to get out a report on the co lon) .The report had a section on a i r f ie lds . The i n f o r m a t i o nw h i c h ir co n t a in ed came from the earlier study, but i:was changed in two respects: the matter of the land forthose airfields whose land had n o t . y e t been bought was

glossed over, and the citation of source was o m i t t ed . Y/enow have a report which con tains i n f o r m a t i o n on airfieldsin operation and an o th e r group soon to be c o m p l e t e d .

A little latei a second intelligence outfit of Country Ztook the second report and entered the airfield data oncards. These cards were printed form s -which had no ap-propriate box tor noting that an airfield was in operationor in the process oE constr uctio n. The cards carried noEootnote references. All three categories of airfi eld t husdropped into category one. Takin g i n f o r m a t i o n from thecards you would have thought that the area in question

had f i E t y some more airfields than it in fact possessed.It was about this time that a third intelligence outfit oJCountry Z came into being and inherited the card file of the second. It developed a technique of p resent ing airfielddata on maps with symbols to indicate length and type of

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a square runway one mile by one mile, so they co m p ro -mised. They reasoned that the runways wo ul d be of maxi-mu m length , hence must follow the d iagona l , and hence be

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so m eth in g over a mile, say 7,000 feet, in length. Thispoint decided, they made their maps and assigned a symboli nd ica t ing -a 7,000 to 8,000 foot runway to the fields. As amatter of E a c t , later demonstrated, only one or two of thefifty-odd fields were ever completed.

This sort of error is by no means ent i re ly ascr ibable tothe lack of a footnote, but I would sa y that the lack of thefootnote considerably enhanced its chances of occurring.Furth ermor e, the lack of the footnote made the correctionof the original error more and more d i f f i c u l t as the datawent through the producer-consumer-producer-consumerchain. By th e time the map was made the discovery of theerror demanded hours oE the time of t f i e m o s t studious andprofessionally competent man who happened to have thehours to spend. And even so the damage was irreparable,for his more correct and cautious appra i sa l of the airfieldsituation in Y's colony could not possibly expect to reachall the consumers of the erroneous repor ts , or convince allthose whom it did reach that his was the truer picture.

The methodological p ro b lem s which I have discussedabove would appear to be the most vexing ones. But mycatalogue is not exhaustive. There are other problems and

there are other facets to the ones already considered.Taken together they make the calling of intelligence adifficult one, and cause the results of the intelligence proc-ess often to fall below necessary standards of quality.

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CHAPTER 11PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS OF

INTELLIGENCE

is no phase of the intelligence business •which is•A - more important than the proper relationship between

intelligence itself and the people who us e its product.Oddly enough this relationship which one would expect

off from the w o r ld in which act ion is planned and carriedout the knowledge which i t produces wil l not f i l l the bi l l .

Let me be precise about the m e a n i n g of me wordguidance. To be p roper ly guided in a given task intelli-gence one must know almost all about it. If you wanted tofind out from a road contractor how big a job it was tobuild a particular piece of road , you would not go to himand ask: "How hard is it to make a road?" Before youcould expect any sort of meaningful answer you would



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Oddly enough, this relationship, which one would expectto establish itself automatically, does not do this. It isestablished as a result o f a great deal of persiste nt conscious

effor t, and is likely to disappear when the effo rt is relaxed.Proper relationship between intelligence producers andconsumers is one of utmost delicacy. In te l l igence must beclose enough to policy, plans, and operations to have thegreatest amount of guidance, and must not be so close thaiit loses its object ivity and integrity of ju dg me nt. To spellout the meaning of the last sentence is the task o £ the nextpages.

The Problem of Guidance

One of the main propositions of this book may be sum-

marized as follows: Unless the kind of knowledge hereunder discussion is complete, accurate, and t imely, and.unless it is applicable to a problem which is u p or comingup, it is useless. In this proposition is recognized the factthat intelligence is not knowledge for knowledge's sakealone, but that intelligence is knowledge for the practicalmatter of taking action. Fulfillment of this function re-quires that the intelligence staff know a great deal aboutthe issue which is under discussion in the other units of,say, the depar tment-charged with policy, plans, and opera-tions, and that it have the largest amount of guidance and

cooperation, from them which can be afforded. The needfor guidance is evident, for if the intelligence staff j s sealed

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could expect any sort of meaningful answer you wouldhave to stipulate what two points the road was to connect,what volume of t r a f f i c you wished to run over it, the nxle

loading of your heaviest vehicle, and so on. Aft er you hadmade your specifications clear you still would have to waitfor the f ina l answer. The cont rac tor mig ht g ive a veryrough estimate but refuse to commit h imself u n t i l he hadinvestigated the nature of the terrain to be traversed, theweather he w o u ld have to contend with while putting inthe road, the local labor force, etc. Wh en he had madethese investigations he might come up with a figure for aroad answering all the preliminary specifica tions bu t whichwas prohibitively high in cost. At this point he mustreturn to you to begin conversations on compromises. Willyou accept two lanes instead of three or f o u r ? Will youaccept a more circuitous route with fewer cuts, fills, anddifficult grades? Will you accept a less expensiv e surface?As you talk these matters over with him you find yourself,although you are not a professional road-builder, battingup suggestions as to how he can avoid this or that techni-cal difficulty, and he, though no professional transportationman, begins asking you questions about your own prob-lems. If things go well, yo u fetch your technical people into the discussion, and he does also. Before you are done,your organization and his have got together straight acrossthe board and a community of interest and understandingis developed that produces a workable plan and a smoothoperation. You have naturally and unconscio usly afforded

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him the guidance which was mandatory for his ( and your)success.

Now this same sort of guidance is essential in th e stra-tegic intelligence business. Intelligence is not the l ormula-to r of objectives; it is n o t the drafter of policy; it is not themaker of plans; it is not the carrier out of operations; In-


what is to be watched and what can be left to cool off.There will be differences oE opinion as to what is and what '

is not important, and differences of opinion on where this ,that, and the other matter belongs on the priority list.And whereas this s t r iving to anticipate the trouble spot isnot to be discouraged, it c e r t a in ly should be supplemented

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p ptelligence is ancillary to these; to use the dreadful cliche,it perfor ms a service func tio n. Its job is to see that thedoers are generally well-informed; its job is to s tand be-hind them with the book opened at the right page, to calltheir attention to the stubborn fact they may be neglect-ing, and—at their request—to analyze alternative courseswithout indicating choice. Intelligence cannot serve if itdoes not know the doers' minds; it cannot serve if it ha snot their confidence; it cannot serve unless it can have thekind of guidance any professional man must have from liisclie nt. The uninitia ted will be surprised to hear that theelement of guidance which is present in the fu l l at thelowest operational levels becomes rarer and rarer asthe job of intelligence mounts in augusmess.1

Without proper guidance and the confidence which goeswith it, intelligence cannot produce the appropriate kindof knowledge. Its surveillance operation, while relativelycertain to keep its eye on th e obv ious foreign problemareas, may well neglect the less obvious though significantones. There will be a playing of hunches: "Watch Bo-livia, they'll be sc reaming for in fo rmat ion on it in amonth"; "Isn't it about time we began watching for unrestin Madagascar or Soviet activities in India"; "Say, howabout the Spanish underground , how about West Africannationalism?" There will be plain and fancy guesswork on

'To see the intelligence-operation relationship a t it s best and raosie f f e c t i v e , one mu i t clamber far down the administra tive or commandladder. There, in the smallest units, the intelligence and the operaiiomoff ice r o f t e n ex ch an g e jobs-so me times there is only one m a n fo r both

jobs. In these circumst ances there is no problem ot guidance, an d intelli-gence can be counted upan to do its job with a m i n i m u m of waste e f f o r t .

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g , y ppcontinuously by the very best advice t ha t the doers andintelligence consumers can offer.

The research aspect of intelligence s u f f e r ? even morethan the surveil lance when improperl y guided. In the firstplace the knowledge which it purveys may be inapplicableto the us e it is supposed to serve, incomplete, inaccurate,and late. It is not reasonable to expect otherwise, for thekind of task intelligence is often asked to do in, say, aweek's t im e or a day's time may be simply beyond humancompetence. To be able to deliver in the fashion appar-ently expected, and in the quality, would demand a re-search staff large enough to codify and keep up to datevirtually the sum-to ta l of universal knowledge. Even thenit is doubtful if th e result would be what was requiredunless intelligence had some advance war ning of the nextjob -

In the second place, the want of sharp and timely guid-ance is chief contributor to the worst sickness which canafflict intelligence. This is the sickness of irresponsibility.Intelligence loses the desire to participate in the thing tobe accomplished; it loses the drive to make exactly theright contribution to the uni ted eff ort . It becomes satis-fied with dishing up information without trying to findout what lies behind the order for them, without trying tomake sense out ofwhatapp earssense less. When intelligent

and sensitive men reach this stage they are no longei eitherintelligent or sensitive; they begin behaving as dumb andunhappy automatons who worry, if at all, about the wrongthings. Wha t they hand on in the way of knowledge isstrictly non-additive; it must be worked over by someone

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else up the line, less we l l - in fo rmed than themselves, beforei t has value fo r the en terp r ise . And fu r thermore what theyhand on is not only non-addi t ive it may also be out of dateor inadequate because long ago they quit c a i i n g .

There are a number of reasons why intelligence pro-ducers and consumers have difficulty in ach iev ing theproper relation ship. The first of these is a formal one and

I . \TELLIGE.NiJc . -J , . ^ i .tution, will jell first and f o remos t a l o n g th e ve r t ica l ad -ministrative line. T h a i is, the people under the D i rec io i "of Plans and Operations, say, wil l fee! m o s t l o y a l t y t o t h o s ewho work next to them in the same s m a l l administrat ive-unit and next most loyalty to the whole echelon of whichthey are a part, next most loyalty to the next echelon up.and so on to the Director himsel f. Unt il the loyalties of the people in the whole o rgan iza t ion o f P lans and O p e r a -



perhaps, on the surface at least, more typical of the armedservices than the civilian departments.

The services are organized in the well-known staff pat-tern. At the highest level in the old War Departm ent, forexample, the Ch ief of Staff had under him a Deputy Chief of Staff, the General Staff, and the Special Staff . The Gen-eral Staff still is composed of six divisions, each under thedirection of a general officer. These are respectivelyresponsible for matters concerning personnel, intelligence,organ izat ion and training, s e rv ice - supp ly -p rpcu remen t ,plans and operations, and research and development. \Vi thmodifications this pattern is easily recognizable in the co plevel of the other services, and typical of r . l l services (againwith modi fications) in the descending order cf thei r forma-t ions. For exam ple, the com man ding officer o f an in fan trydivision, a wing of c om ba t aircraft , or a ba t t l esh ip wouldliave a staff consisting of half a dozen officers, each of whom was entrusted with functions more or less accuratelyparalleling those of the D i rec tors of the General Staff. -

The main job of all staffs is to keep the commander in-formed and assist him in making the "sound mi l i tary deci-sion." Each staff officer who is the specialist in his ownparticular function has the primary duty of contributingto his commander's understanding in that field, and asecondary dut y to his fell ow staff members. It is to beexpected that the loyalties, as they jell in my human insti-

'I t goes w i t h o u t saying t h a t the r e se a rc h -a nd-de ve l opm e nt funct int i hno t u s ua l ly r e p re se n t e d at lliis level.

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p p gtions have traversed this vertical line , the y will usua lly notspread out within the organiza t ion , and not until they

have spread out within the o rgan iza t ion w i l l they s tar tspreading over to other simi lar organiza tions (Intelligenceor Personnel, for example} under the commander.

In these circumstances there is a form al reason inherentin s taff s t ructu re why the Directo r o f In te l l igence m i g h thave his difficultie s in get t ing from the other directors the

d O

kind of guidance on plans, projected operations, opera-tional s t rength , etc., whic h he sho uld hav e. The same rea-son might explain why the lower echelons of the severalorganizations find it hard to ge t together. B ut genera l iz ingO G O O C-

along this l ine is dangerous. P e r h a p s the only generaliza-tion w h i c h has validity is that rigorous s t a f f structure in-creases the inertia of any large organization, and whatseems to be true of the highest levels of th e nrmecl servicesis equally true of any very large commercial or industrialventure.

Some, basing their arguments upon a well-known phaseor armed service doctrine, have held that inflexible rela-tions across the main administrative lines are inherentlymore serious in the services than in big business. Theypoint to the doctrine which is buried deep in one of thebasic service formulae called "The Estimate of the Situa-tion" 3 and assert that herein lies something which adds no

1 This fo rmula is designed primarily to fit an essentially military situa-tion. Whereas the textbooks do not confine it to a tac t ica l mi l i tary situa-tion there is a good bit more tactics involved th an strategy . Furthermore.

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small amount to the unsatisfactory relationship betweenintelligence producers and consumers,

The estimate of the situation is what a military com-mander must make before he decides upon a course of action." Very briefly, the steps in the estimate involve firsta knowledge of the environment in which the course of action is to be undertaken (terrain hydrographyweather

INTELLIGENCE IS A C T I V I T Y

discussions of th e es t imate f o r m u l a dea l p r im ar i l y w i th t h eresponsibilities of the commander, the precise nature of what the intelligence o f f i c e r should know and shou ld notknow about his commander's own fo rces is not specificallyconsidered therein. Nor does it app ear th at formal stu dyhas been g iven the matter in other o f f i c i a l service l i tera-ture. It is perhaps unnecessary to say tha t a compe tent

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action is to be undertaken (terrain, hydrography, weather,e t c . — i n a grand strategical situation these factors would in-clude the overall nature of the polity, economy, and s o c i -

ety); secondly, a knowledge of the siie, fighting strength,and disposition of the enemy forces (in a g rand strategicalsituation this would amount to what I have termed stra-tegic stature minus specific vulnersbilir-ies); thirdly,, asimilar knowledge of the commander's own forces. Fromthis knowledge the c o m m a nde i deduces the courses of ac-tion open to the enemy, and courses of action open to himwhich will accomplish, or further the accomplishment of,his mission. After he equates the enemy capability andpossible courses of action against his own, he decides wiiathis own course of action should be.

In the process briefly described above, the commander,of course has the services of his staff., Each of his staff o ff i -cers has a clearly defined role in the procedure; personnel,operations, and logistics tells him precisely about his ownforce; intelligence tells him about the physical environ-ment and the enemy force. The degree to which intelli-gence is permitted knowledge of his own forces and thecourses of action which the commander may be mullingover are matte rs not spelled out in the formula. Since all

the strategy at issue seems to be a [airly straight mil i tary strategy. Never,theless. th e f o r mu la s applicable to what I have tailed the grand strategy,an d lo p military m en concerned w i th the grand strategy are not unlikelyto think in its terms.

' W h eth er the commander actually prepares the estimate, or whetherhis chief oE s t a f f does, or whether his operations officer does, s likely tovary from c i r cu ms tan ce to circumstance. Seldom if ever would the intelli-gence o f f i c e r tf o it . in c om ba i condit ions the chief of s tal l or o p e r a t io n sofficer is the most likely candidate.

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. p p y y pcommander in a tense strategic or tactical situation wouldordinarily desire to have his intelligence officer know

everything which would contribute to his, the co mman d -er's, success. If he though t that an info rmed intelligenceo f f i c e r added another wise head to the s t a f f ne would ordi-narily see that the latter were informed no matter whatthe doctrine might imply.

There is, however, one reason why the commandermight wish to deny his G-2 ( i .e . his intel l igence off icer)know ledge of his own forces. It can be, in fac t it has been,argued that the G-2 should approach his job of estimatingthe enemy with complete objectivity, and that if he hasfull knowledge of his own forces and how they may beemployed, his thought may jump ahead to the showdownof strength. If his mind does ju mp ahead, he will see hisside about to win or lose, and his elation or fear will bereflected in his estimate of the enemy. If he sees his sidethe easy winner, the argument runs, he will tend to under-rate the enemy; if the loser, to overrate the enemy. Thecommander who is going to have enough difficulties con-quering h is own subjective self may not wish to complicatethe task by having to screen out that of his intelligenceofficer to boot. In these circumstances it is said, the com-mander may feel justified in keeping his intelligence armin ignorance of his own plans and operational strength.But it seems to me that something is wrong with such acommander. If he counts on achieving an objectivity forhimself it is hard to see why he should retain on his staffsomeone else whom he does not believe capable o£ such

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object iv i ty. 'I his point aside, it wou l d appear to me t u a ithe doctrine at least allows the commander the opt ion totell intelligence nothing.

Whether or not he takes up the option would seem todepend upon the personal attributes of the commander,the magnitude of his command, the tenseness ot thesi tuat ion , and the need for air-tight security. One can con-ceive a wide range of possibilities beginning with a smallunit action where the c om m a nde r could not keep his intel-ligence officer in ignorance even if he thought it a good

consumers liave a puuit. i wi t i f this doctr ine were the only d i scern ib le cause , and i f civilian departments which have inherited no such doc-tr ine' did not also have th eir d i f f i c u l t i e s i n the producer-consumer relationship. There are other causes, and thedoctr ineless civi l ian departments fal l vict im to them alongwith the military.

The first of these may be called psych olog ical. One of the sure ways to alienate a co-worker is to question hisbilit t dd l f fi t k t k f it



•

ligence officer in ignorance even if he thought it a goodidea, and ending with the determination of a major stra-tegic course of action at General Staff or Chief of NavalOpera t ions level where considerations of t Jme or secr.riryor something else might justify Che commander in keep-ing his intelligence o f f i c e r in the dark. At this level, too.,the commander might tell everything to his G-2, but bindhim to secrecy with respect to his (the G-2's) staff fo r thesame reasons. It must be said, however, that no matterhow good these reasons may appear to the commander,they can never seem so good nor so compelling to hisintelligence officer.6 The latter will always be miffed atthe thought that his chief doubts his ability to overcomehis subjective self, or that his chief holds him and his

organization as a poor security risk. He will be a gooddeal more than miffed at the realization that no matterhow hard he works, he will always run the risk of turningout a useless product.

Those who argue that the doctrine in the estimate-of-the-situation formula has within it the means of stultifyin ga free give and take between intelligence producers and

* The classic case ot operational information withheld from intelliger.eeis tha t of the atomic bomb. For months after it) use. national intelligenceac the highest level wa s expected to con t inue its speculat ive field (seeChapter 4). of work with little more knowledge of the bom1.' lhan th e manin the street. That an analysis of Great Frusina's strategic suture shouldbe meaningful, when the analysis was computed without reference to herspecific vulnerability lo th e bomb, is so meth in g I have gveat difficulty inaccepting.

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ability to add up a column of figures, take stock of a situa-tion , or understand wha t he sees or reads. The vocabularyof insult and abuse about mental capaci ty is on a par withunsympathetic remarks a b o u t parenthood and ancestry,may be even ahead of them in provoking anger. On thetheory that man's intellect alo ne separates hi m from otheran imals , perhaps this is understandable. N o w, separatingout from all the various steps necessary to accomplish anend, the thing called intelligence (intelligence in the con-text of this book) and bestowing it upon one group ofmen , to the formal exclusion of all others, is not to flatterthe excluded. Deep in their subconscious selves they maywell harbor the feeling that someone has told them theyare not quite b r igh t—that someone has in effect said, "Nowdon't you worry, your thinking is being done fo r you.We've arranged to relieve you of all thinking by givingyou an external brain. W e call it Intelligence. Wheneveryou want to know something, just go ask Intelligence." Formany a man the separate existence of an intelligence armmust convey this sort of odious comparison.

If intelligence were staffed with supermen and geniuseswho promptly and invariably came up with the correct anduseful answer, the sting might wear off; intellig ence mightcome to be revered by its users as a superior brain. Butso long as intelligence is not 50 staffed, but in fact is staffed

by men who, in the armed services at least, themselvesoften have small taste or special qualification for the work

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•, 3

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and do nor intend to mak e it a life career, the relat ionshipbetween producers and consumers will co n t in u e a trou-bled one.

A second cause for this s ta te of affairs (and one whichupon unfortunate occasions is closely related to the f i r s t ) ,is what the language of intelligence would call th e security

"S i " i hi f h


ru l e s are an absolute essential. The first rule o £ securityis to have the secret known by as few people as possible,and chose o f established discretion who, at the same time,must know the secret in order to do their share of thecommon task. What is the effect of this rule in th e intel-l igenceproducer-consumer relationship?

When the rule is rigidly applied by the producers, the

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reason. "Security" in this context, cf course, means th esecrecy with which certain affairs of state must be con-ducted.

As long as timing and surprise are essential aspects of policy and strategy there must be secrecy. A boxer whotelegraphs his punches, a quarterback who inadvertentlyreveals the play, or a pitcher who cannot conceal the pitchis likely not to be the winner. The grand s trategist—mili-tary or civilian—whose exact intentions and capabilitiesare known by the party of the second part finds himself without a strategy.

Policy makers and planners will, in the nature of things,deal with secrets of state, the disclosure of which wouldamo unt to a national calamity. (Although peacetime hasiis examples of what I am talking about, wartime providesthose most readily understood: What if one mont h beforethe Allied assault on Normandy or the American landingat Leyte the enemy learned the exact time, place, and mag-nitude o E the projected attack?) Likewise must the intel-ligence people have their secrets. A power ful inte lligenceorganizat ion can develop sources of intormation of a valueutterly beyond price. They can be of such value that theythemselves become the points of departure and the guar-antors of success for a policy, a plan, or an operation. Therevelation of such sources or even a hint of their identity

will caqse their extinction and perhaps the failure of theaction based upon them. Their loss can be likened to theloss of an army or all the dollars involved in the Marshal!Plan, or, upon occasions, the loss of the state itself.

The stakes being what they are, security and its formal

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When the ru le is rigidly applied by the producers, theconsumers are entitled to a legitimate doubt as to theval idi ty of the producers' findings. Suppo se you, as a plan-ner, were told something which was contrary to all pre-vious knowledge and belief and contrary to the laws of c o m m o n sense? Would you accept it blindl y and stake apolicy or a p lan upon it? What would be your emotions,,your considered judgment, and your final decision if, afterreceiving such information, you went back to the producerto ask for confirming details and got a "Sorry, but I can-not say more than I put in the memorandum"?

Likewise, when the consumers—the policy people andplanners—rigidly apply the rule, they give the intelligenceproducers good cause for non-compliance; or the produc-

tion of useless knowledge. Suppose you were an in -telligence producer and suppose one of your consumersappeared with a request for everything you could find outabou t Java. Suppose the request were phrased jus t thisway. Suppose your entire staff were occupied on otherhigh-priority jobs and that you could not put any of themon his request withou t some just ificat ion on his part. Sup-pose you told him this. It might be that he would feel hecould not give you the justification without a breach ofsecurity. You are at cross-purposes. In some cases the con-sumer would drop the matter there. But in others,, he

would go back to his office, carry his request up throughtwo echelons of his own organization, and see that it camedown to you through two echelons of yours. You wouldbe given your orders to get to work on Java.

The chances are excellent that a request which comes

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through in this fashion is a request in which the securityissue is paramount. The consumer does not really wantto know all about Java; he wants to know merely aboutsome tiny fraction of it. Bu t he dares not stipulate thefraction for fear of revealing his intent . So he asks for alof it, hoping to get his information out of one paragraphor chapter of your encyclopedia. He has no gu a r a n t e e iliacthis paragraph or chapter is not the very one you consider

INTELLIGENCE IS A C T I V I T Y

What I am concerned with in these paragraphs is not toplay down the importance of security regulations and thei;observance. I am concerned with t he poin t that securityis like armor. You can pile on the ar mor un til the rna:;inside is absolutely safe and absolu tely useless. Both producers and consumers of intelligence have their secret:;.and in safeguarding them they can so insulate themselvcthat they are unable to serve their reasons for being Thi-



p g p p y yunimportant and accordingly will leave out. Nor have youany guarantee that if you write the paragraph or chapter

you will write it in the way that will serve his interestsbest.

Now wha t I have said above is the extreme case. Whenthe issues are of highest importance both p roducers andconsumers go to all permissible lengths to help each otherforward the success of the common task. Bu t this veryleaning over backwards merely confirms the existence of the basic problem which security throws in th e way of aperfect relationship. Furthermore, when the substantiveissue is of some lower order of importance no one maylean over backwards and something akin to the impasse I

have described can easily develop.8

• The security problem within a single mili tary d e p a r t m e n t occasion!some of th e difficulties I hive enumerated in my extreme case. But it oc-casions worse ones in th e relat ionship between the m i l i t a r y and civiliand ep ar tmen t s . For very good reason some, if not all, civ ilian d e p a r t m e n t shave poor reputations for safeguarding secrets of state. They have beenslack in their investigations of dubious personnel; they ha\e talked whensilence was in order. They have been responsible for ou t r ageous leaks. Inthese circumstances, officers of the services who have been thoroughly in-doctr inated in the. necessities for security are understandably reluctant toopen their hearts to the civilians. Moreover, these officers, who face directand severe penalties if they themselves are responsible for a leak, fullyrealize that no such penalties are imposable upon civilian employees.Without an official secrets act such as the British have, a loose-talkingcivilian or a man under the influence of a foreign power will in mostcases suffer no greater harm than dismissal from his job.

By the above I do not mean to imply that all people wearing theu n i fo rm are reliable and those in civvies not. I do mean to say that themilitary's record for safeguarding secrets is better than the civilians, andthat this fact plus differences in applicable penalt ies aggravates the securityproblem in the service-civilian relationship.

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that they are unable to serve their reasons for being. Thi .problem is so critical to intelligence that it deserves thucontinuing study of a high-powered board. It cannot bemet by the earnest but informal and sporadic efforts w h i c l iare current today. Nor do I believe it would vanish withthe passage of an official secrets act, Such an act woul dhelp enormous ly, but it would not be the al l-powerfulpanacea its proponents would have it .7

A last reason for the m i su n d e r s t an d in g s between i n t e l -ligence producers and consumers is a n understandable re -luctance on the part of consumers to embark upon ahazardous task on the basis of someone else's say-so. Afterall, if anyone is going to be hurt it probably will not bethe producers. I will wa r r a n t that the Light Brigade's G -"was high on the list of survivors in the charge at BalaclavnSo it will be in less dramat ic instances. The casualties, i ;both the literal and figurative senses, will be to the intel-ligence users first, and to the producers late down the line.In these circumstances it is easy for the users to ad o p t theattitude expressed in the rhetorical question : "W hy shoul d

* I£ such a la w existed, it could do no more than provide penalties forthe unathorized disclosure of "state secrets. P enalt ies have been deterrentto crime, hut no matter how severe, penalties have not obviated crime.There will always be people to whom the p en a l ty is a secondary consid-eration. Some would choose to disclose sta te secret s of a given order n fimportance even though the penalty were death. In these terms is itreasonable to suppose that secrets of this order of importance can be a nvmore tightly held than at present? I would say tha t an official secrets a t:would have little if any effect upon th e inte l l igence producer-consuim •relat ionship where the substantive issue was o ne of lop n a t i o n a l in :portance and hence highest jecrecy.

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intelligence worry about doing a . perfect job, after all it'snot their neck?" From this there can emerge a fee lin g o fdisrespect, perhaps even of derogation, for the word ofthose who do not carry the weight of operational respon-sibili ty. Let intelligence make any kind of mistake fo iwhich there is a natural penalty, and the relations between


the consumers innocent of intelligence's capacity to con-tribute to thei r p roblems.8 In war tim e the closer to thefighting front and the smaller the operating unit, the bet-ter the relationship and the keener the guidance; the moreremote from the fighting front and the larger the unit, theworse the guidance In peacetime ther e are few situations

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which there is a natural penalty, and the relations betweenthe two are likely to worsen.

One last word: intelligence is bound to make mistakes.Some of the questions it is required to answer demanda divine omniscience; others demand mo re painstakingwork than can be accomplished in the time allotment; stillothers can be had only with the most elaborate sort of undercover preparations which have never been made.But let intelligence make a mistake or come up with aninadequate answer and all too often the reaction o f ' t h econsumers is on the uncomprehending and bitter side:"1 wouldn't ask those geniuses to tell me how many pintsthere were in a quart." When intel l igence errs there seemsto be less tolerance of its error than there is for the error

of other mistaken specialists. For example, when a dentistpulls out the wrong tooth (as the best dentists have done)or a lawyer loses a case, the client's reaction is not that he,himself could have done a better job, and that henceforthhe will do his own dental and legal work. Yet in intel l i-gence matters, pardonably wrong diagnosis and under-standably inadequate presentation very often do arouse

ju st such a reaction in the client. For good reason or bad,an intelligence failure seems to rankle out of p ropor t ionto its importance, and to tend to justify the c on s um e r indoing his own intelligence henceforth.

Thus there are a number of reasons why the relat ion-ship between producers and users may at times be extraor-dinarily difficult with the result that the a l l - impor tantelement of guidance is lost. Once this occurs, intelligencemust remain innocent of the consumers' requirements, and

. . . 1 9 4

worse the guidance. In peacetime ther e are few situationscomparable to the fighting fro nt. Wher e they do exist they •do not possess that element of common physical perilwhich makes all men of one side fr iends and brothers. Inpeacetime top-level intelligence must function in the veryarea where wa rtime relations were worst and where withoutthe leaven of what you might call front-line tolerance theyare likely to remain worst. One concludes that of thetwo dangers—that of intelligence being too far from theusers and that of being too c lose—the greater danger isthe one of being too far. But wha t of the other?

The Problem of Objectivity and Integrity

The other danger—that of being too close to the con-sumers—is, however, not to be read ily dismissed. In amoment of intense exasperation, intelligence producersand consumers might agree that the administrative bar-riers between them should be knocked down and that in-telligence should be moved piecemeal into the policysection or the plans section or operations section, or thatintelligence should be broken up into its regional andfunctional units and dispersed among appropriate parts ofthe total organ izatio n. If this we re done, intelligence

* During th e war there was a very in terest ing parallel in th e relation-ship between certain civilian scientists in enterprises under control of thegovernment, and the military men they were serv ing . As civilians thescientists had few natural insights into the detailed req u i remen t s of themilitary and spe n t no sm a l l amount of time t ry ing to find these out. Them i l i t a ry, on the o the r hand, lacked a similar n a t u r a l insight into thecapabil i t ies of modern science. There was thu s a wall between themwhich hod to be de m ol i she d before the scientists could get the light kindof g u id an ce , and before the mil i tary could gain th e proper knowledge of wha t they might ask. the scientists to work on.

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STRATEGIC I N T E L L I G E N C Ewould very likely acquire a ll the guidance it could possiblyask for—perhaps even more than it could legitimatelystomach. There will be great and obvi ous advantages;there will also be costs, some o f them considerable. Let usbegin with the meanest.

Intelligence is likely to be diverted from its essentialtask. I mean this in its most crude sense: th e intelligencepersonnel who are professionally studious and also pos-sessed of some of the talentsof the doer are going to find

I N T L L . L H j r .i M , ; , . ,.s t re tches o£ u n i n t e r r u p t e d t i m e to ca'.Ty uut lo i ig-ra i . , :projects which can be done in no other circum stan ces.

T h i r d l y — a n d this would be true o n l y w h e r e im e l l i g en c .was not only brought across the l ine admin is t ra t ive ly, bu ;also broken up and dispersed among appropriate p l a n n i nor operat ions sections—the substantive integrity can 1:seriously injured. Jn an earlier chapter I indicated h o -intel l igence can handle surveillance and research p rob lem; ,

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sessed of some of the talents of the doer are going to findthemselves asked to share the no n- in te l ligence burden of

the office. Personnel raids of this sort are very familiar tointelligence peop le everywhere; practically everyone not M I

intelligence has a way of fancying the best of intelligencestaff as a pool of unencumbered and elite m an p o w er readyto be tapped at will. Fighting off such raids is a well-kno wn necessity. In the context und er discussion resist-ance is likely to be useless and once the intelligence manhas crossed the line, into operations, say, he is going tohave greatest difficulty arranging his return to intelligence.Generally speaking, once out of the intelligence phase of the work he will be engulfed in the day- to-day business of the new job. Soon the intelligence staff is whittl ed downto its least valuable members, which is tc say intelligencehas lost its identity and its fu nc tio ni ng integrity . This verything has happened enough times to be worthy of seriousconsideration.

Secondly, intelligence, if brought too close to its con-sumers, is likely to be diverted in a slightly less crudesense, but scarcely a less damaging one. For instance, thedetailed problems of an operating office can be many andcompelling. A great many of them requ ire an "Ask Mr.Foster" type of research. The tendency will be to putintelligence staff on this kind of work. This is not toargue the work 's unimportance, but it is to argue thatabsorbing too much intelligence talent ir, it is to makepoor use of intelligence. Intelligence should have long

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which cut across its regional or functional lines, Ac c on ;ing to this method a 'problem such as Spanish influence i i ;

Argentina would become the charge of an ad hoc c o m m i i -tee under the supervision of a project leader (either .;Spanish or Latin American expert) and under the u l t i m a t emanagement of the staff I called the Control Staff. In sue :a way one may be relatively sure t h a t th e to ta l i ty of re -sources which intelligence can turn to the problem a i\turned to it. But when the intellig ence o rgan izat ion h a :been fractioned and spatially separated and put into close;;contact with the consumers, no such m e th o d need be fol-lowed. Indeed it is easy to see how a Spanish u nit chidwould call up one of his intelligence men, ask what he.could find out about Spanish doin gs in Argentina, and l a vno prohibition upon him against going to another bui ' i l -ing to talk with his Latin American opposite number. .

is not merely possible, it is highly probable, that the mul-titude of problems of this sort would be dealt with by peo-ple who are expert in on ly one sector of the subject.

Nor is this, and the want of substantive give and t a k e ,which it implies, the only disad vanta ge. In addition th ereis the matter of contrasting standards of performance asa price of dispersal. An intelligence outfit, which is admin-istratively separated from its consumers and unified withinitself, is able to strive for a uniformly excellent p r oduc t .The best work passing through Control will inevitablybecome the scale against which other work is measured.Destroy the centralization and the unity and you destrov

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the best and most natu ral method of establishing competi-tion and of deriving good from it.

To all the foregoing, there may be devisable administra-tiv e remedies. I doubt if the remedies will be whol lyeffective, but they may be able to meet the worst objec-tions There is however one high order disadvantage in

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is inspirational])' perfect- But my point fo r the momentis that unless th e necessity for ac t ion is too pressing topermit impartial analysis of all th e av a i l ab l e facts, prefer-ably before "view" j e l l s into "position," but in any eventantecedent to action, this procedure is fu l l of unnecessaryrisks. If there is an intelligence staff on the periphery it

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tions. There is, however, one high-order disadvantage inbringing the producers and consumers of intelligence too

close together which will elude the most ingenious of ad-ministrative devices: this is the disadvantage of gettingintelligence too close to policy.

This does not necessarily mean officially-accepted highUnited States policy, but something far less exalted. WhatI am talking of is often expressed by the words "slant,""line," "position," and "view." Almost any man or groupof men confronted with the duty of getting somethingplanned or getting something done will sooner or laterhit upon what they consider a single most desirable courseof action. Us uall y it is sooner; sometimes, under duress,it is a snap judgment off the top of the head. The way inwhich such people arrive at this most desirable course of action does not require them to examine all the factscritically and dispassionately and to arrange them into alogically sound and secure pattern. They may arrive attheir solution in ignorance of many relevant and impor-tant facts, and with their prejudices and cliches of thoughtdiscriminating in favor of the facts which they do use.This kind of off-the-cuff solution tends to harden into whatI have termed policy—in the unexalted sense of the word.Their "view" is thus and so; their "position," therefore,thus and so; their "line," in support of the "view" and

"position" thus and so. Add the ingredients of time andopposition and you have something which can be called"policy" without doing too much violence to the lan-guage. Even though this policy may be arrived at by ruleof thumb, hazard, or blind intuition, it does not followthat it is invariably and necessarily wrong. Sometimes it

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should be instructed to do the systematic analysis.Now an intelligence staff which must strive for reasoned

and impar t ia l analysis, if it is to strive for anything, hasit s own difficulties with view, position, slant, and l ine. Afterall, it is made up of men whose patterns of thought arelikely to color their hypotheses and whose colored hypoth-eses are likely to make one conclusion more attractive thanthe evidence warrants. The main differe nce between pro-fessional scholars or intelligence officers on the one hand,and a ll other people on the other hand, is that the formerare supposed to have had more training in th e techniquesof guarding against their own intellectual frailties. Polic-ing their inescapable irrationalities is a twenty-four-hours-

per-day task. Even so, they are by no m e a ns alwayssuccessful. The history of intelligence is f ull of battles be-tween the pro-M ihailovitch and pro-Tito factions, betweenthe champions and opponents of aid to China, betweendefenders and detractors of the Jewish national home inPalestine. The fact that there have been such differencesof opinion among supposedly objective and impartial stu-dents who have had access to substantially the same mate- •-rial, is evidence of someone's surrender to his irrational t

self. These differ ences of opinion have appeared amongintelligence o rganizations which were administratively sep-arate from the people they were to serve.

IE intelligence under the best of conditions finds itself guilty of hasty and unsound conclusion, is it likely to finditself doing more of this sort of thing when it is under theadministrative control of its consumers in plans or opera-tions? M y answer is, yes. I do not see how, in terms of

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h u m a n natu re, it can be otherwise. I do not see howintelligence can escape, every once in so o f t en , f rom swing-ing into line behind the policy of the employing unit andprostituting itself in the production of w h a t th e Naz i sused to call kampfende Wissenschajl? Nor do I s.»e how,if the unexpected occurred, and intelligence invar iab lycame up with findings at variance with the policy oE theemploying unit, intelligence could expect to draw its payover an indefinite period. I cannot escape the belief that

known device to make the users familiar with the pro-ducers' organization, and the producers w i t h the users'organization.

The Problem o f Intelligence and Policy Formulation

What has just been said of intelligence and policy is no:all that must be said. Cert ainly intellige nce must not buthe apologist for policy, bu t th is does not mean that intel-ligence has no role in policy f o r m u l a t i o n . Intel l igence's



under the circumstances outlined, in te l l igence will find it-self right in the middle of policy, and that upon occasionsit will be the unabashed apologist for a given policy ratherthan its impartial and objective analyst. As Walter Lipp-mann sagely remarks, "The only institutional safeguard[for impartial and objective analysis] is to separate as abso-lutely as it is possible to do so the staff which executes fromthe staff which investigates. The two should be parallelbut quite distinct bodies of men, recruited differently, paidif possible from separate funds, responsible to 'differentheads, intrinsically uninterested in each o ther ' s personalsuccess." 10

For these reasons, what is unquestionably g-ained inguidance may well be lost in the integrity and objectivityof the operation. The absorption of intel l igence producersby the intelligence consumers may prove to be too heroica cure fo r both disease and patient.

The only way out of the dilemma seems to me to He inthe very compromise that is usually attempted: guaranteeintelligence its administrative and substantive integrity bykeeping it separate from its consumers; keep trying every

• ' To be rendered roughly as "knowledge to further n i m s o f stale policy"—ihe'k ind of "knowledge" put forth by the p ar ty "intel lectuals" purport-ing objectively to prove such phenomena as Aryan Supremacy, German

Destiny, the need for Lebtnsraum, th e Judeo-Capitalistic-Bolshevist En-circlement, the Stab in the Back, the Versailles Diktat, etc."Quoted from Public Opinion (The M acmillan Co,, N.Y., 1922) with

the kind permission o£ the publisher. Chap X X V I § 2.

200

ro le is definite and s imple . Its job mig ht be described intwo stages: (1) the exha usti ve e x a m i n a t i o n of t he s i tuation,for which a policy is required, and (2) the objective andimpartial exploration of n i l t he a l t e r n a m e solutions w h i c l :the policy problem offers.

It goes without saying that intelligence can skew it sfindings in either stage, especially in the second, so thatone alternative will appear many times more attractivethan the others. It is not heartenin g to reflect that just thishas been done, though it would be hard to prove thatevery such crime was one upon which intelligence em-barked entirely on its own responsibility. For instance,during the war some British in te l l igence o rgan izat ions

could prove at the drop of a hat that there was such athing as a soft underbelly and that compared to it all o the:portals to fortress Europa were as granit e. Merely becauv.'intelligence is capable of getting off th e beam is not s u f f i -cient reason to exclude it entirely from policy considera-tions or to contemn it as unpr inci pled. As long as i t . -

complement of professional personnel is of high intellec-tual and moral caliber, the risks which the policy-makingusers run in accepting its analysis of alternatives are far lessthan those they would run if they excluded in te l l igencefrom their councils.

20 ]


The Problem of Intelligence (the Product) and its Ac-ceptance

As far as an intelligence staff is concerned, what it de -sires above all else is that its findings prove useful in themaking of decisions. There is, however, no universal lawwhich obliges policy, plans, and operations to accept and

I N TELLI G EN C E IS ACTIVITY

upon the raven and attacked. The raven put up a gamefight, but as things moved from bad to worse decided toretreat to prepared positions, I f White An telope were anirresponsible G-2 he might have left it at that, but beinga responsible man and feeling that he shou ld nuke hiscontribution to the common cause, he hazarded an inter-pretation. To him the raven was the allied force and the

u



g p y, p , p puse these findings. If intelligence is guilty of poor methodor errors in judgment, there is nothing to coerce its puta--tive consumers into acting upon its advice. This fact hasits benef its and its evils. The benefits are almost too ob-vious to mention: for example, no one would advocatetaking a course of action which evidence, rot consideredby intellig ence, indicated to be suicidal. Jus t because anintelligence aberration happens to indicate th e law of grav-ity is Inoperative in Lent does not constitute sufficient rea-son to jump off a high roof on Good Friday. B u t in thisvery laudable liberty to discount intelligence lies a sourceof danger. Where is one to start discounting and wher-estop discounting intelligence?

In one of the books tor children written by James Wil-lard Shultz there is a story of some Indian tribes readyingthemselves to r the warpath. The combined chiefs met todiscuss the projected operation and instructed the head-quarters G-2 (a medicine man named White Antelope) togive them an estim ate of enemy capabilities. In a coupleof days' time White Antelope, having gone through thenecessary professional gyrations, carne back to the com-bined chiefs with his estimate. It seems that the gods hadfavored his ceremonial by granting him a vision in whichhe saw a lone raven seated on the carcass of a dead deer.

As the raven feasted he did not notice a magpie whoslipped into a tree overhead and took some observations,nor did he notice that the magpie gave the signal fo r theconcentration of his deployed force. When the magpies'build-up in strength was sufficient, they dropped down

202

pmagpies were the enemy—the facts would justify such anin te rpre ta t ion—and plainly the enemy's capabil i t ies weremore than adequate. The allies were in for a licking. Hesaid as much. B u t Bull Head who was supreme com-mander spoke up and said in effect, "What you tell us isnot much more than that the expeditiona ry force will bein danger. This we already know. As to the raven andthe magpies, it is my belief that we are the magpies, andthe enemy, the raven. We start tomorrow." The G-2'sestimate had not been accepted.

It is important to notice that W h i t e A ntelop e had donethe best he knew how and according to a m e th o d whichwas standard operating procedure. Bull Head himself would have admitted as much. Bull Head did not over-ride his G-2 because of a reasoned distrust of liis data ora r a t iona l doubt of his objectivity; he overrode him on thebasis o£ a hunch and probably a wishful one at that.

Now I do not wish to be the one who rejects all hunchesand intuitions as uniformly perilous, for th ere are hunchesbased upon knowledge and understanding which are thestuff of highest truth. What I do wish to reject is intuitionbased upon nothing and*which takes off from the wish.The intelligence consumer who has been close to the prob-lem of the p roducer, who knows it inside out, may have

an insight denied the producer. His near view of thebroad aspects of the problem and his remoteness from thefogging detail and drudgery of the surveillance or researchmay be the very thing which permits him to arrive at amore accurate synthesis of what the truth is than that

203

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STRATEGIC I N T E L L I G E N C Eaff ord ed the producer. But let the consumer, in these cir-cumstances, beware. I f he overrides the conclusions of hisintelligence arm, and makes a correct estimate, let himdeeply ponder why this came about. Let him not get thenotion tha t he need only consult his stars to outdo his G-2.If he does get that notion, he will destroy his intelligenceorganization—its members will not seek truth so that asoothsayer may negate their conclusions and embark upona perilous course IE there is anything in the ration al phi-

INT E L L IGE NCE ii At i iVITY

and equal ly hur t fu l one in that, he damaged severely theut i l i ty of h is s taff and intel l igence services.:1

When intelligence producers realize that there is nosense in forwarding to a consumer k n o w l e d g e wh i c h doe snot. correspond to preconceptions, then intelligence isthrough. At this point there is no intel lig enc e and theconsumer is out on his own with no more to guide himthan the indications of t he tea leaf and the crystal ball. He



ra perilous course. IE there is anything in the ration al phi-losophy of the West-which holds that the mind is the best

long-run solver of unknowns—the consumer who deridesthe philosophy runs great risk of making a series of climac-tic errors. From these there may be no second chance.

Adolf Hitler was such an intelligence consumer. Thereis every reason co think that his intelligence at the techni-cal levels of both surveillance and research was adequate.In fact there is reason to think it was a good deal betterthan that. There is every reason to thin k that hi s generals t a f f was technically competent. There is every reasuii tobelieve that he did not get inaccurate knowledge from hisintelligence or poor advice from the staff which based its

j u dg m e n t s upon this knowledge. Hitler had his hunchesand the first few of them were brilliant. Because of luck,or because of a profound and perhaps subconscious knowl-edge of the situations at issue, he called the turn correctlyand in opposition to his more formal sources of advice.But the trouble was that he apparently did not try toanalyze the why of his successful intuition. He went onas if his intuition were a natural, personal, and infalliblesource of truth. When he began to reap the natural pen-alties for such errors as overestimating the Luftwaffe's ca-pabilities' in Britain and underestimating the capabilitiesof the Soviet Union, when he ordered a cut-back in Ger-man war production in the fall of 1941 because he thoughtthe war was won, he not only took some of the direct andpositive steps to lose the war, but he also took an indirect

204

may do well with them, but for the long haul I would

""The fol lowing is illustrative, and I have no doub t t ha t similar inc i-dents occurred outside the Third Reich: Short ly a f t e r Mr . Roosevelt'smessage to Congress (6 January 1942) in which he put o u i - a i rp lan e andl an k p roduc t ion goals at seemingly a s t ronom i c a l figures (w e were toproduce 45,000 lanks during the year) R i b b e m r c p , who moved in highestNazi circles, telephoned th e Foreign Office's chief ne go t i a t o r and advisoron economic mat ters—a man named Ritler. The question in Ribbentrop'smind was, of course, the bluff and p r o p a g a n d a q u a n t a in (he President 'sfigures. He already had decided (out of i n t u i t i o n , perhaps) t h a t t.ie goalswhich Mr. Roosevelt had mentioned were very largely nonsense. What heasked Ritter was an estimate of American steel capacity,

Ritter replied that the last firm figure available on a c t ua l productionwas 45.000,000 tons and that the consensus placed c a pa c i ty at 57,000,000.He may have talked in the familiar way of the expert, and instead o t usingth e word "million" merely used the numbers f o r t y - f i v e a nd fifty-seven. Afew days la ter—after hearing that some other e xpe r t s h ad revised the figure

upwards to 110,000,000 tons R ib b en t ro p called him again and scolded himfor what he felt to be an over-inflated picture. R i t t e r, making clear hii ownposition, asserted that in his judgment the figure 110,000,000 was too highan d that his own estimate was somewhere between 60 and 70 m i l l i on tons.

In another few days Ribhemrop was back again. This t ime with a no t eof triumph in his voice, he put the question, "Do yo u think the 45,000tank figure is possible?" The a nswe r : "Yes I think i t is possible," The nextquery: "But if you accept the tank figure and each lank c on t a i ns at leasttwo tons of steel, already you have accounted for 90,000 tons of steel.Your estimated oveyall steel capacity would be complete ly absorbed intanks." The reply: "But Mr. Minister, you are talking in terms of thou-sands of tonr. We speak of steel p ro d u c t io n in t e rms of mil l ions." Ribben-trop hung up abruptly.

It was wi t h i n Ribbentrop's province to question the estimate of theexperts, and the fact that his technical ignorance w as p r o f o u n d seem: inno way to have inhibited him. Indeed, in othe r c i rcumstances one caneasily imagine a difference between consumer's hunch and the producer'ses t imate which did not provoke a final and clarifying telephone call. Inthese circumstances a course of ac t ion m i g h t be adopted which was closeto pure folly. (I am indebted to P r o f es so r Ha ro 'd C. Det i tsch fo r thisanecdote.)

205


place my money elsewhere. Without discarding intui tio nn s invariably a f a l s e friend, I would urge the consunie ito use i: with a full knowledge of its frailties. W h e n thefindings of the intelligence arm are regularly ignored bythe consumer, and this because of consumer i n tu i t i o n , heshould recognize that he is turning his back on the tTv cinstruments by which western man has, since Aristotle,



steadily enlarged his horizon of knowledge—the ins t ru-ments of reason and scientific method.

APPENDIX

r

A P P E N D I X

KINDS Of INTELLIGENCE

TNTELUGENCE at the national level in both wartime and-» • peacetime has a great number of separate and distinctforms, and is carried out by a wide range of federal de-partments and agencies. 1 Unti l the genera! reader is awareof the multiplicity of forms and aware of the rough pat-



r

H

of the multiplicity of forms, and aware of the rough pat-tern of their arrangement, his elementary confusion is

easily justified.In the pages which follow, I have three a ims: First and

foremost, to set out in an orderly, if somewhat arbitrary,form the main kinds of intelligence in which our federalgove rnmen t engages. This I will do in the char ts andexplanatory text. Secondly, I will indicate the particularkinds of intelligence with which this book has been con-cerned. And lastly, having given an oversimp lified pictu re,I will endeavor to reintroduce a corrective element of murkiness and confusion in so far as this is c haracterist icof the federal intelligence pattern.

E X P L A N A T I O N O F T H E T E R M I N O L O G Y o? T H E C H A RT S

1. SECURITY AN D POSITIVE I N T E L L I G E N C E

a. Security Intelligence. To pu t it in its s implest terms,you should think of security intelligence as basically theintelligence behind the police functio n. Its job is to pro-tect the nation and its members from malefactors who areworking to our national or individual hurt. In one of itsmost dramatic forms it is the intelligence which continu-ously is trying to put the finger on the clandestine agentssent here by foreign powers. In another, it is the activity

which protects our frontiers against other undesirable gate-crashers: illegal entrants, smugglers, dope runners, and so

'See diagrams following p. 210.

209

APPENDIX

on. It identif ies our own home-grown traitors and personsviolat ing th e federal law. By and large, security intelli-gence is the knowledge and the activity which our defen-sive pol ice forces m u s t have before they take specific actionagainst the individual ill-wisher or ill-doer.

b. Positive Intelligence. Positive intelligence is harderto define. I E one wished to talk in not-quite-true riddles,he mi g h tsay that positive intelligence was what was left

KINDS OF I N T E L L I G E N C E

the surprise moves of his opponen t. In this aspect it hasan important deEensive and protective flavor. Is this flavordist inguishable from what 1 have given security intelli-gence? The answer is, yes.

Let me illustrate the distinction. A policeman, alertedby security intelligence, will protect your house againstburglars, or, if the house is robbed, he will use security



he mi g h t say that positive intelligence was what was leftof the entire field after security intelligence had been sub-tracted. This is a starter, but not too helpful.

To approach it more directly: it is all the things youshould know in advance of initiating a course of action,Thus, positive military intelligence in anticipation o£ anoffensive operation furnishes the military commander witha ll knowledge possible on the strength and deployment o 'ithe enemy and on the physical attributes of the battlefieldto be. The idea is that the commander should knew whathe will be up against before he goes into battle . Thereare many other kinds of positive intelligence besides mi l i -tary, but all of them have about them the preparatory

characteristic typical of this phase of m ilitary intelligence.If this were the only aspect of positive intelligence, the

denning of it would not be so difficult. But th ere is an-other aspect, and one which is closely enough akin tosecuri ty intelligence to cause some trouble. Everyone whoknows that there is such a thing as positive military intelli-gence knows that it does not confine itself to furnishingstrategists, planners, and field commanders with the sortof knowledge they must have before they take action.Practically everyone knows that mili tary intelligence mustalso try to find out what the enemy's plans are, so that he

(the enemy) will not be able to take one's own forces bysurprise. In other words, positive intelligence is not merelyan intelligence for the commander on the offensive {theman who has taken or plans to take the initiative), it isalso the intelligence which protects this commander against

210

intelligence to catch the burglars. But this policeman willnot warn you when there is to be a boost in the price of beef, nor will he tell you when your bank is going to fail.This is not his job. To get this kind of prot ecti ve knowl-edge, you will have to pat ron ize some sort o£ positive intel-ligence service.

2. FORE IGN AN D D O M E S T IC

"Foreign" and "domestic" in the context oi intelligencerefer to the targets of intelligence, not to the place wherethe intelligence activi ty takes place. For example, 'by "se-curity intelligence— foreign," I mean the security in-telligence which applies itself to another country's spies,saboteurs, or agents provocateurs; which identifies foreignnarcotic and smuggling rings. By "po siti ve intelligence-foreign," I mean knowledge o £ other countries and otherpeople, and, incidental ly, what those countries may behatching in the way of policy or action against our na -tional interest.

By "security and positive intelligence— dom estic," Imean that kind of intelligence which deals exclusively"with people and problems local to the United States, its*territories, and possessions.

3. L O N G - R A N G E , M E D I U M - R A N G E , SHORT-RANGEThere are many possible levels of intelligence. One

knows, for instance, that there is in al l probability anintelligence project or two designed for members o E thecabinet which has high Soviet policy as a subject; that

211

Afl f.lMLtlA

there is another intelligence which keeps the State Depart-ment informed about political goings-on in, say, Iran orItaly; and that there is still another intelligence whichi n f o r m s an individual officer of the State Depar tment ex-actly what tone he should strike in a note to, say, theDanish Ambassador in Washington. One feels instinc-tively that there are several "intelligences" or severallevels of intelligence, which indeed there are. In militar yformations, there is usually an intelligence organization ateach staff or command echelon. When in wartime one

K I N D S OF I N T E L L I G E N C E

the Air Force Department to have in carrying out thei rspecific functions. Granted that it is dif fic ult , perhaps im-possible, to ide ntify a dep artmental problem wh ich has nosupra-departmental significance, at the same time it mustalso be granted that there are technical dep art ment al prob-lems which have f ar less of this significance than others.

The least function which I have entered on the diagramis the function of departmental operations. This is, in my"positive foreign" category, what I have called short range.

Let me illustrate all three levels from a subject of cur-



started at the Joint Intelligence Co m mi t t ee at Joint Chiefs

of Staff level and progressed down any of the various serv-ice ladders to the intelligence section of the smallestground, naval, or air unit, one touched perhaps as manyas fifteen levels. As one descended, the intell igence f unc -tion became more and more restricted, and more and moretechn ical. But in a diagram such as I have given, or in abook such as this, there is no point in too fine a breakdownin the "function to be served."

4. FUNCTION TO BE SERVED

What has already been said in the section on Range may

be extended to explain this column in the charts. Thepoint is that the federal government has a great manylevels of responsibility and, in general, a level of intelli-gence to serve each one of them. Its top responsibility is tothe security of the national state against internal and ex-ternal enemies. Thi s I have called the long-range intelli-gence of high policy, the national security, the nat ional ,welfare, and the grand strategy. This intell igence is theintell igence of national survival.

Immediately below, I have put the intelligence of de-partmental policy. By th is—and I have called it med i u mrange—I mean the kind of knowledge (and the activitywhich produces it) which is necessary for the State D epar t-ment, the Army Department, the Navy Department, and

23 2

Let me illustrate all three levels from a subject of current interest: our arming of the Latin American republics.Intelligence for the basic decision to make standard U.S.military equipment available to the Good Neighborhoodshould be furnished by the highest level. This intelligen cedeals with the world si tuation, the strategic statur e of othercountries, and the courses of action open to them. It triesto estimate how the world situation will be altered by ourdecision and whether to our advantag e or not.

Suppose, now, that on the basis of top-level intelligenceour high policy people decide that we should work tostandardize military equipment in Latin Amer ica, Atonce several government departments will have their own

policy problems to straighten out. The State Departmentmay have been having its troubles with Cuba, or Chile, orArgentina, and may have been follow ing a policy wh ich isout of line with the new top-level decision, Tc get in tol ine will be something of a task, and the Depar tment 's ownintelligence o rganization may well have an im port ant role.' The lowest level of departmental operations might be

illustrated in, say, the Army Department's share in thedetailed implementation of the top decision. Before itsends small-arms ammunition to Brazil to supplement thelocal supply it should know, among other things, how large

a ground force the Brazilians plan to maintain. Knowledgeof the Brazilian force in this situation would be what Ihave termed the intelligence of departmental operations.

21'3

APPENDIX

5. D E PA RT M E N T S AN D A G E N C I E S CONCERNED

In the two top ranges of "positive, foreign" and "secur-i ty, foreign" intelligences, ray designation of departmentsand agencies concerned is to al l intents and purposes com-plete. In the other ranges of intelligence, which I note onth e d iagrams, my designations are intended to be purelyillustrat ive. I have touched upon the more i mp o r t an t or-

KINDS OF I N T E L L I G E N C E

mark et pri ce oE a railroad stock. In some kinds of intel-l igence work, especially posit ive foreign intell igence, youcan learn a great deal by these overt methods . You studythe current published technical l i terature, or you read theforeign press, or you listen to the official broadcasts of foreign radio stations, or you walk down the streets o£ aforeign city (with no a t t e m p t to conceal your identity) andobserve what is going on. Some in telligence devotees havesaid that y ou can find o u t by overt means some90 or more



ganizations, but anyone familiar with the federal govern-

ment could add many more.6. MAIN CAT E GORIE S OF SUBJECT MATTER

These categories, too, are intended to be illustrativerather than exhaustive. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 treat in detailthe substantive content of the kinds of intelligence whichare the subject of this book.

7 . A N O T E O N T E C H N I Q U E S : T H E " H O W A C C O M P L I S H E D "ELEMENT

All intelligence operations sketched out on the d iagramstend to develop their own special techniques for the ac-complishment of their ends. These techniques are numer-ous and differ widely from each o ther—as widely, forexample, as fingerprint and ballistics analyses differ fromest imates of coal or wheat production. In a book of thissort there is no place for even attempting to list the tech-niques which are noc peculiar to the "intelligence" underreview (i.e. foreign positive intelligence). B ut one pointmust be made; Intelligence experts tend to consider themass of individual techniques as belonging to one of twomaster categories, the overt and the secret or clandestine.

By "overt" I mean the technique of finding things outby open and above-board methods such as are used in allkinds of scientific, commercial, and journalistic pursuits.I mean the kind of technique you might employ it youwanted to make biscuits for the first time or ascertain the

214

said that y ou can find o u t by overt means some 90 or more

pe r cent of what you must know . The remai ning percent-age constitutes the very thing that the other countries re-gard as secrets of state, and these things cannot be hadwithout recourse to clandestine operations.

By "clandestine" I mean the technique of finding thingsout by various concealed, dissimulai ive, or surreptitiousactivities. I mean the use of such devices as wire-tapping,th e undercover agent, interceptions o f the other man'smail , and so on. Some branc hes o £ intelligence would getnowhere witho ut using these covert techniques. The bestexample is, of course, the intelligence o £ counter-espio-nage, where the utter secrecy of the other man's spyingmust be more than matched by the secrecy of your owncounter measures.

Since these two master categories of the techniques of intelligence may or may not apply to every branch of in-tel l igence—depending upon factors o £ time, degree of emergency, an d the official mandate within which thebranch is permitted to work, I have not indicated a "howaccomplished" e lement on the diagrams. The reader whowishes to think up £o r himself a clearly-defined problemin intelligence work will be able to make a good guess asto how much of either technique would be required to

solve it.

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":W"H-fr

• • V j .

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•rJ * ? ° * = -

. A P P E N D I X

T H E B R A N C H E S O F I N T E L L I G E N C E O F PA RT I C U L A RC O N C E R N T O T H I S S T U D Y

Of the many kinds of intelligence activity described inthe diagrams, only two are of particular concern to thisstudy . They are the ones enclosed in dotted line on th epositive intelligence chart, viz., Positive Intelligence,Foreign, Long and Medium Range (Overt and Clandes-tine ) This is the intelligence of high policy national

RINDS OF

is; before it makes the final arrest, it insinuates one of usown undercover agents into the other man's spy net. Sup-pose he not or.ly leains the identity of many of the foreignagents, but also achieves a position where he reads thecommunications and directives which the foreign agen:sget from their home office. These documents are notmerely descriptive of that country's espionage activities;they are also likely to reveal a great deal about :.ts general

ti iti policies d l Th t i th



tine.) This is the intelligence of high policy, nationalsecurity, and the grand strategy: the intelligence requiredby our top-level foreign policy men in every federal de-partment.

Is IT REALISTIC TO IMPLY THAT EACH OF THEM A N Y B R A N C H E S O F INTELLIGENCE S H O W N O NT HE D IA G R A M S HAS IT S OW N S E PARAT E E X I S T Ê N C E ?

The outline presented above is highly s implif ied. ' Cer-tain qualifications are now needed.

In the first place, it is not always wise to conceive toohigh a barrier between security and positive intelligence.

There are phases of the one which are of the greatest im-portance to the other. Let me give an example. Supposesome foreign power set up an espionage system in thiscountry to spy upon us. Pursuit of these spies is the job of the counterespionage branch of security intelligence andtheoretically of no formal concern to positive intelligencewhatever. To a certain degree this is the case. But thereare byproducts from the counterespionage activity whichare of highest concern to positive intelligence, so high infact, that it has often been argued that security and posi-tive intelligence (especially at the top levels of the foreignfield) should not be separated at all. What are these by-products?

Suppose that our counterespionage service moves clan-destinely and penetrates the foreign espionage net . That

216

activities, policies, and plans. They may contain the veryinformation which the positive intelligence people havewanted for a long time and which they could get from noother source. I should venture that the by-products otCanadian counterespionage in its uncovering of the Sovietespionage net in Canada were every bit as important as thedestruction of the spy net itselE. The Canadian positiveintelligence must have learned things about Soviet policywhich it could not have learned except by itself cryingclandestinely to penetrate the Pol i tburo—which task would have had its difficulties.

The moral of the above is that, whereas, beyond alldoubt, there is a kind of intelligence you can call securityintelligence, and whereas a great many of the activities of this kind of intelligence arc entirely self-contained, thereare other and important aspects of security intelligencewhich pass over the artificial barrier I have erected andmix inextricably with positive intelligence.

So also with the theoretical foreign and domestic intelli-gence. Fo r example, in the course of its daily business ofrecommending, making, and implementing our foreignpolicy, the Department,of State encounters a large num be rof organizations of Americans whose parents came fromforeign countries. Many of these organizations—the Polesfor example—have strong views on what United Statespolicy should be toward Poland. Now what these foreignnationalities in the United States think and do about ourforeign policy is likely to be a matter of some importance

217

APPENDIX

to us, and the knowledge of what they think and do canbe a very significant phase of what might be called domes-tic positive intelligence. But merely because these peopleare Americans by birth, and the issues which trouble themare American issues, there is no reason to -think cE themas an exclusively domestic intelligence source. The rootsthat they have in the old world the contacts and commu-

KINDS OF INTELLIGENCE

may first come to the attention of the force against whichthey are being employed. Say that th e weapon is a newfieldpiece, and the force it is being used against is.a bat-talion of infantry . Intelligence of the weapo n is of greatopera tional importance to the battalion. The battalionintelligence officer must find out as much about it as pos-sible so that his force will not be wiped out by it. Wh at



that they have in the old world, the contacts and communications they have with it, the old-world visitors they seeand talk to, make them a subtle and sometimes a uniquesource oE foreign positive intelligence. Here again, the by-products of a purely domestic intelligence operation mayhave a high significance for the foreign branches.

Sometimes domestic intelligence operations unexpect-edly uncover matters o£ large concern to foreign intelli-gence. For example, the Securities and Exchange Com-mission sent an investigator to the Hawaiian Islandsin 1938 to look into the unregistered sale o£ some Japaneseg o v ern m en t bonds. These bonds were being sold andbought by Americans of Japanese origin. Enforcement -of

a federal s tatute was at stake as f a r as dom estic intelligencewas concerned, but far more than that for foreign intelli-gence. For the investigation of the domestic issue revealedthat the Japanese consul had curiosity about many thingsnot within his legitimate jurisdiction, and had a large un-official o rgan izat ion o f . volunteer agents reporting to him.These facts, and others, were matters for the urgent con-sideration o£ the foreign positive intelligence people.

Perhaps more artificial than either of the two precedingcases of arbi trary separation (the securi ty f rom the posi-tive, and the domestic from the foreign) is that of making

too airtight a separation between what I have called thelong-, the medium-, and the short-range intelligence. Theseparation is there, but it must not be thought of in abso-lu te terms. For example, a new weapon may have beensecretly developed and a few trial models put into a smallmilitary action. The existence of a few of these weapons

- - - - - -. 218

sible so that his force will not be wiped out by it. Wh athe embarks up on is the shortest of short-range intelligence"activity; it could be properly termed combat intelligence.Yet what he discovers about the weapon may be of pro-digious importance. If the weapon is effectiv e, his short-range intelligence work is of significance not merely tothe medium- , but also the long-range activities. A weaponlike the German triple-purpose 88 mm. rifle, tried out ona battlefield of the Spanish Revolution, is a case in point.Knowledge of it was of importance, not merely to theRepublican unit which first encountered it but to thegrand strategists of all the general s t a f f s of all the powersof the world. So, with the first gui ded miss ile, the first 50-

caliber machine gun, the hedgehog, the V-l , and so on.On the other hand, long- and medium-range intelligence

frequently has its short-range importance. It is almost un-avoidable that a thorough study of the long-term policy of,say, the French Communis t s—a study designed primarilyto assist our top foreign economic policy people and plan-ners—would not also have some small operational (short-range) value to one of our representatives in Paris.

Lastly, even overt an d clandestine intelligence activitieshave a way of mingling with each other so that a hard-and-sharp line is sometimes difficu lt to draw. For example,when an undercover agent learns something through anactivity for which his cover was not necessary—say, he readit in the paper—and reports it, he could be considered asengaging in overt intelligence. Or per contra, when anattache with no official funds to spend for the purchase of confidential information buys a hungry and potential

219

APPENDIX"source" a series of expensive meals out o£ his own pocket,he is pretty close to clandestine intelligence.

More important than this inadvertent merger oE func-tion is the inadvertent merger of what both overt and clan-destine intelligence produce in the way of substance. Anovert intelligence -organization must have the produce of clandestine intelligence to make its descriptions, reports,and speculations complete. It cannot hope to acqu i re allthat it needs through its own open methods; there willl s be the missing pieces hich the cl ndestine people

I N D E X

acceptance oE intelligence by itsusers, 202-206

administrative decentralization ininte lligence organization, 127-139 -

administration of intelligence or-ganizations, key problems,116-147. See aha, Intelligenceorganization

A i l f i d

Canada, Soviet Union's espiona;âctivities in, 130-131, 152

capabil i t ies , 61-64; capabilities a:alysis , 63-64 . S« also I n t e l l . -gence, specula t ive e va lua t iveelement of

ca r to g rap h y in in tell igence woix.143-144

central intelligence and its ro le i ; .



ftt

always be the missing pieces which the clandestine people

must p roduce. But on the other hand, the clandestine peo-ple will not know what to look for unless they themselvesuse a great deal o£ intelligence which they or some otheroutfit has acquired overtly. Their identification of a suit-able target, their hitting of it, their reporting o £ their hit-all these activities exist in an atmosphere o£ free and openintellig ence. A good clandestine intelligence report mayhave a heavy ingredient of overt intelligence.

The real picture of the diversity in kinds o£ intelligenceis the one I have been trying to block out in these lastpages. IK essence lies in this truth: a very great many ofthe arbitrarily defined branches of intelligence are inter-dependent.;^ch L pay vhave its well-defined primary targetwhich it makes its primary concern, but both the pursuito£ this targeted the''by-products' of .pursuing it bringmost of the independent''branches' into some sort :of rela-

..tionship with/the othenÎnte iigenc^ as an Activity is at itsbest when t h i s fac t is realized"anct'acte'd upon in good faith.

Agr i c u l t u re , Department of, in de-partmental intelligence, 81, 91

a ir bombardment and target analy-sis, 17-19

air fields, in intelligence, 16; e x a m ,pie of error in, 178-179

analogy as a phase of intelligenceresearch, 46

applicability of intelligence toproblem of policy and strategy,162-164

"area" programs of universitystudy and intelligence organi-lation, 121

armed forces, intelligence organiza-tion of , 104; personnel policiestor intelligence organization of ,111-112

armed forces, lack of a career inintelligence in, 88, 97, 112;need for acknowledgment of a specialization in intelligence.113; assignment of personnelto intelligence, 97

"Ask M r. Foster" intelligence. Se eIntelligence, spot

attaches in' intelligence wo rk, 46 ;desired, qualities in. 69; as col-lectors of i n fo rmat io n , 81

s

basic intelligence, basic-descriptiveintelligence, 7-8, 11-28

biographical intelligence, 32-33;how should the (unction beperformed. 140-143

Byrnes, Secretary of State James F.,and Stats Department intelli-

gence, 113-114

substantive work, 94; as :i"holding company," 80-31; a -.an "operating company," f n:

arguments pro and con the "operating company" idea, 80-82;ideal s t a f f , 95*96; ideal opera-tional functions. 102-103; id«coordinut ive funct ions an i lpowers of , 90-94; di ff icul t ies of pe r fo rm i ng these f u n c t io n s , O S -100

Central Intelligence Agency an . ;inspection of departmental i n -tell igence organizat ions, 85. K o

87; the intelligence fo t na t ion, :security, 85-86; its director, S 7 -88; security of it s pe r sonnd ,

89-30; disadvantages O f m i l i i nvcontrol, 9S-97; [unctions of, ncording to the provisions o f :National Security Ac t o£ 1 ' JT.83-90; shortcomings of this Ad,101; no pol ice funct ions, 84

Central Intelligence Croup, fo rmi' iJan. 1946, 78; character of, '••-79; superseded by Central I E - -tcll igcnce Agency. 79

civil service and intelligence p e r -sonnel. 105 and n., 145-147

clandestine intelligence, see Intell igence. clandest ine

collation , see Inte l l igence, evalua-tion of

collection of data, 9, 157; some of the problems of, 164-163

collection and dissemination, ex -clusive, as the function o f a

£20: 22 1

P O S I T I V E I N T E L L I G E N C E

W H E R E :Agains t whatt a rg e t s

WHATRange of inter.est to he served.

F UNC T I ON TO B E S E RVE D D E PA R T M E N T S A N D A G E N C I E S C O N C E R N E D

L O N G The In te l l igenceof High I 'olicy 'Foreign

The Ce n t r a l In tel l igence Agency.

fid Hoc I n t e r d e p a r t m e n t a lI n t e l l i g e n c e C o m m i t t e e sa c t i n g

M A I NCATEGORIESof Sub ject Mat ter( N o t M organ i ja-t i o n s concern t h e m -sclfes with all sub-



F O R E I G N(Al l fo reignL a n d j an dTropics )

L O N GR A N G E

M E D I U MR A N G E

The In te l l igence o f High I olicy, Foreign,the Na t i o n a l S ecu r i t y, th e G r an d St ra t egy.

Th e In te l l igence of Dep a r t men t a l Po l i ty—notably of those department] w i t h a keyrole in U-S. foreign affairs: State, Army,

Navy and Air Force,

Ot h e r d e p a r t m e n t s w i t h secondary re-sponsib i l i t ies in foreign a f f a i r s : C o mmer ce ,Ag r i c u l t u r e , Treasury, Just ice. |csp.) Fed-eral Agenciei Jxich as The Tariff Commii-sion .

In war t ime, th i s ra nge .wou ld i n c l u d etheat re i n t e l l igence , perhaps, Army G r o u pintelligence.

fid Hoc . I n t e r d e p a r t m e n t a l I n t e l l i g e n c e C o m m i t t e e s a c t i n gu n d er ( h e C en t r a l I n t e l l i g r n ce Agency.

The Jo in t In tel l igence C o m m i t t e e of th e Jo in t Chie fs of Stall.

De p a r t m e n t a l In tel l igence Organ izat ions,

1. The offices o f In tel l igence Research an d In te l l igenceCol lect ion and Disseminat ion in th e S t a l e D e p a r t m e n t .

2. The Positive intelligence branches in;a. The Division of I n t e l l i g e n c e — Ar m y De p a r t m e n t .l i . Div is ion o f Nava l In te l l igence—Navy D e p a r t m e n t .c. Division of I n t e l l i g en ce— A i r For te D e p a r t m e n t .

3. "Intelligence" b ranches (not so cal led) in o t h e r d ep a r t -men t such as Bu r e a u of A g r i c u l t u r a l Economics inDe p l , of Ag r i c u l t u r e , B u r e a u o f Forr ign and D o m es t i cCo m m e r c e in Dep t . o f C o mmer ce .

D e p a r t m e n t a l f ield fo rcesd n t v.

-The At t aches on f o r e i g n

SHORTR A N G E

The In tel l igence of De p a r t m e n t a l Op e r a -t ion* .

In wartime, th i s would include the oper-ational and combat intelligence of thearmed services.

Fore ign miss ions o f the S tats De p a r t m e n t an d t l i coperating officers in the home office.

At t a c h e s : Mi l i tary. Naval , Air, Co m m e r c i a l . Labor, O i l ,Cu l t u r a l , etc., from d ep a r t men t s w i t h key o r secondaryresponsib i l i ty in foreign affairs.

H o m e operating desks of t h ese d ep a r t men t : .

M i l i t a r y, Na v a l and /o r Air i n t e l l igence u n i t s of c.\pe<Ji-t i o n a i y o r occupying forces.

DOMESTIC C on t inen ta lUS., t e r r i tor i es •<an i l possessions)

LONGR A N G E


SHORT

Th e In tel l igence of 'the Na t i o n a l w-H-bcing (Investigations precedent lo reme-dial or regu lato ry leg is lat ion) .

The In tel l igence of Go v er n men t a l Openat lon, vii,, that behind periodic ordersand initruclient of L d mi n i s t r i d v t agen-cits, etc.

The In te l l igence behind the Governmcn t ip rog ram si uteful In fo rmation , vli..weather forecuu C M < ot living indexes,

i . Divi s ion of Legi s l a t ive Reference. Lib rary o f Congress,

a. Congressional Invest igat ing Commit tees .

j. C o mmi t t ees set up by the Presiden t , such as N a t i o n a lResources P l an n i n g Board.

4. Organiza t ion like the B u r eau of Labor S t a t i s t i c s , B u -reau . . . Domest ic Commerce.

Invest igat ive an d research b ranches in the ch ief a d m i n i s -t r a t ive agencies, such as the In ters tate Commerce Commis-sion, the Federa l Trade Commission . Secur i t i es am iExchange Commission , etc.

Weather Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statist ics, Bu r e a u of the Census, Many divisions of Commerce and Agriculture

sclfes with all subj ec t s )

SCIENTIFICa ndTECHNICAL U

S E C U R I T Y I N T E L L I G E N C E

W H E R E :Agains t whatt a rg e t

WHAT

R a nge ol in ter-est to be served

LONGR A N G E

F UNC T I ON TO HE S E RVE P

T h e In t e l l i ge nc e 01 N a t iona l Se c u r i t y a ndWelfare:

Long range invest r ( Ta t i r 3 ' > s of such t h i n g sas:

Internntiooal communism.International f.iscism.International traffic in n a rc o t i c s .In ternat ional w h i t e slavery.

D E PA R T M E N T S A N D A G EN C IES C O N C ER N ED

I Federal I l ineai i of Invcs t ig

•( Tic. isury D e pa r tme n tI D e pa r tme n t of Justice

M A I NC AT E G O R I E Sof Sub ject M a t te t(N o t all organiza-t ions c onc e rn t h e m -j? lvr( iv i ih M I s > i b -jecu)

an ni l

genre

by st ,b u r t ^ I ;i n t c l l inot wb c i - f ,



I

FOREIGN

D O M ESTIC

FP


SHORTR A N G E

LONGR A N G E


SHORTR A N G E

Intelligence of enemy agen ts Slid t h e i rhome organizations, fore ign malcfac lors ,

•Intelligence of "Safe-Haven" (idemifica-lipn ol h idden exterior assets of former

Operational intelligence fo r -:arrjii ,g o u lapprehension of unreg istered fo re ign•genii, illegal entrants, smugglers , cle.

Intelligence of Domestic Danger:"Un-American" trends, movements , jndorganizations—

Causes behind t h e m : U.S. Commu-nists, Si Iversli iris, K K K .

Identification of "disloyal" employees of Ihe Federal government.

Federa l B u re a u of InvestigatiunBranches of Slate and Justice De pa r t m e n t )

( D e p a r t m e n t o f Jus t ice

1 Treasury D « p » t m e n l

Congressional Committees

Federa l B u r eau of Invesl igat ionD e p a r t m e n t of Justice

D e pa r tme n ta l Secur i ty offices

C iv i l Serv ice Commission

Federal B u re a u of Invest igat ion

[ Iden tification of c riminal ollcn<lers of the / Federal law en f o r cemen t officers1 Federal laws, [.(Postal Inspecto rs , Secret Service, FBI, Treasury agents, etc.)

C o u n t e r-

"Lin A m e r i c a n -i sm"

C o u mer f c i i i n g\ Vh i t c Slavery

Mail Fraud

Ki d n ap i n g

Tax and exciseta x evasion.

etc.

b c ,

T l i i sedge,

l i g r r u

2 . i

r e f e r(he ircu n t . }t c l l i g isn b o t in : i r eof n t r E

pi. 'nplh a t c ht i o n a

mean

t c i r i t

Th

k n o wi n t c l lca l i in

P O S I T I V E I N T E I, L I G E N C EWHERE;Against whatt a rge t s

WHATRange of i n t e r-est 10 be served.

F U N C T I O N TO BE SERVED DE PART Nf E NT S AN D AGE NC I E S C ONC E R NE D

LONG

R NG {The In tel l igence of High Pol i cy/Fore ign,the Na t i o n a l Secu ri ty, the G r an d St ra t egy.

1 l i e Cent ra l In tel l igence Ag en cy.Ai l Hoc. I n i e r d i p a r i mcn i a l In tel l igence Comin i l lcei ac t ingunder i l i e C en t r a l In te l l igence Agency.

Tlie Joint In tel l igence C ommi t t e e of th e Juia t Chiefs of S t a f f .

M A I NCATEGORIESof Subject Matter( No t all organiza-tions concern them-selves w i t h all sub-jects)



FOREIGN(All foreignL an d s an dPeoples)

MEDIUM

RANGE

The Inte l l igence of De p a r t m e n i a l i 'o t i iy—notably of those d e pa r imc ms w i th a keyrole in U.S. foreign affairs: $<ate. Army,

Navy and Air Farce.

Other d e pa r tme n t s with secondary re-sponsibilities in foreign affairs: Commerce ,- «Agricul ture , Treasury, Justice, (esp.) Fed-eral Agencies such as The Tarilf Commis-sion.

In wartime, this range would includetheatre intelligence, perhaps, A/ my C r o u pintelligence.

De p a r t m e n t a l In tel l igence. Organ iz?Lions,1. The officei of In te l l igence Research and Intelligence

Col lec t ion and Dissemination in the State De p a r t m e n t .2. The Positive in te l l igence branches in:

a. The Division of In tel l igence—Army D e p a r t m e n t,h. Division of Naval In tel l igence—Navy Depar tment ,c. Division of In tel l igence—Air Force Depar tment .

3. " In tel l igence" branches (not so rai led ) in o ther depar t -m e n t s such as Bureau of Agr icul tura l Economics inDept. of Agricu l tu re, Bureau of Foreign an d DomesticC omme rc e in Dept. of Commerce .

Dep ar t men t a l field forcesd u l y.

The Attache's on fore ign

SHORTRANGE

The Intelligence of Departmenta l Opera-tions.

In wa r t i m e , this would include th e oper-ational and combat in tel l igence of thearmed services.

i. Foreign missions of the State Department and theoperating oHicers in the home office.

s. At tach es: M il i tary, Naval, Air, Commercia l , Labor, Oil,Cu l t u r a l , etc., from d e pa r tme n t : with key or secondarylesponsib i l i ty in foreign affairs.

3. Home opera t ing desks of these departments.

4. Military, Naval and/or Air intelligence u n i u o f expedi-t i onary or occupying forces.

DOMESTIC(ContinentalU.S., t er r i to r iesand possessions)

LONGRANGE

MEDIUMRANGE

SHORTRANGE

The Intelligence of the Na t i o n a l well-being (investigations precedent to reme-dial or regulatory legislation).

The Intelligence ol Governmenta l O p er-ation, vii., th a t behind periodic o rdeisand instructions of admin ist rat ive agen-cies, etc.

The Intelligence behind the Government 'sprogram of useful information, viz.,weather forecasts, cost of living inrlexes,censuses, etc.

VERSONALITIES

MILITARY

POLITICAL

ECONOMIC

SOCIAL

MORAL

SCIENTIFICandTECHNICAL

LEA RN I N GandTHE ARTS

i. Division of Legislative Reference, L i b r a r y of Congress.i Congressional Invest igat ing Committees.

3. C o mmi t t ees set up by th e Pies ident , such as NationalResources Planning Board.

4. Orgsmillions like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bu-reau . . . Domestic Commerce .

Invest igat ive and research branches in the chief admini s -t rat ive agencies, such as the Interstate Commerce Commis-sion, the Federal Trade Commission, Securities andExchange Commission, etc.

W c a t i i c r B u r eau , B u r eau of Labor Statist ics, Bureau of th e Census. Many divi s ions of C o mmer ce and AgricultureD e pa r tme n t s , etc.

The kinds o f intelligence treated in thii book are in tin area enclosed by dolled line

J

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