Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform (Hoover Studies in...

Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform (Hoover Studies in Politics, ... | Richard A. Posner | Insider at Heart, Useful Critiques, Not the Whole Picture

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Uncertain Shield: ...

	Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform (Hoover Studies in Politics, ... Richard A. Posner Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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This new book from Richard Posner brings the story up to date. He argues that the emerging structure of that reformed intelligence system-heavily influenced by the report of another commission on the intelligence failure related to Saddam Hussein's abandonment of weapons of mass destruction-is excessively centralized and will not be effective. Posner brings light to the issues at hand and offers solutions.

Vital for a critical understanding of the Intelligence Community's Reformation

Why can't there be more books like this one? This slim volume contains more insight than many books three times its size. "Uncertain Shield" is a follow-up to Posner's previous book "Surprise Attacks", and while either book can stand on its own, I recommend reading both. Surprise Attacks addressed the deficiencies in the 9/11 Commission's recommendation, and the resulting flaws in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. In "Uncertain Shield," Posner extends his critique to include the recommendations of the WMD Commission.

One of Posner's major arguments in "Uncertain Shield" is that that WMD Commission's recommendations actually contradicted its own observations. The intelligence community's inability to accurately determine Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities was a problem of "groupthink" - always a potential problem in any intelligence system, but one exacerbated with greater centralization. Oddly, the WMD Commission, nevertheless, recommended even greater centralization.

Posner argues that the approach for both the 9/11 and the WMD Commission was to assumed that intelligence was broken without determining the limitations inherit in the business of intelligence. He criticizes both commissions for rushing to recommend reorganization of the intelligence community without examining the unintended consequences of that reorganization. Drawing on established organizational theory, Posner shows us some of those consequences. For example, both commissions failed to distinguish coordination from command, advocating a top heavy organization, far removed from the subtle indicators that intelligence depends on for accurate prediction.

Posner is critical of the WMD Commission for making recommendations base only on shallow analysis. For example, the commission recommended that advancement within the intelligence community should be based on merit. While in theory it's difficult to argue with that recommendation, in practice determining merit in the context of an intelligence organization (and government in general) is difficult. As both history and theory have shown, without having a clear measurement for merit, this can lead to waste and inefficiency. Should we reward the quantity of intelligence sources, or the quality of intelligence sources? Quantity is objective and easily measured, but with regards to intelligence, quantity and quality often have an inverse relationship. On the other hand, if we're going to insist on rewarding quality, then we need to know how to measure it objectively, otherwise, we risk replacing effectiveness with intra-office politicking. These are the types of issues the WMD Commission simply glossed over.

Posner argues in favor of the creation of a domestic intelligence service- an American MI-5. He addresses both the security needs for, and the civil liberty concerns about such an organization. Applying organizational theory, Posner, shows that creation of an intelligence unit inside the FBI will fail, because of the incompatibility of a law enforcement culture and intelligence culture in the same organization. While the FBI measures success on the number of arrests leading to successful prosecution, intelligence work is less specific towards that goal, looking at trends and recruiting sources. Addressing the concerns of civil libertarians, Posner dispels the myth that the requirement of a "criminal hook" will somehow protect us from government abuses. History shows no evidence of this assertion. On the contrary, more likely, it will lead to the greater government coercion. An intelligence organization, with no law enforcement capability, would seek cooperation and be less inclined to alienate Muslim members of the population. As Posner points out, it was a historical abuse of coercive law enforcement in the name of security that led the Allies to insist that the German government after World War II divide its domestic intelligence (information) functions from its law enforcement (coercive) functions. Previously, these two functions had been united in the SS.

Posner's does an excellent job throughout the book of pointing out the distorted incentives found in dysfunctional organization within intelligence. For example, no one in security was ever disciplined for not giving a risky candidate a security clearance. A candidate may have all the language and culture knowledge in the world, and he may be an indispensable asset to department seeking his employment, but security won't take the risk. Why should they? They will not benefit from his skills, and they will be blamed if he turns out to be a security breach. Posner suggests that it would be better to let security make an official recommendation, and let the department managers be responsible for determining the level of risk they are willing to accept - measuring the proper balance between mission accomplishment and security concerns. The managers would also be in a better the position to restrict the candidate from certain types of access within their department.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in understanding the current upheavals in the intelligence community, and who wants to understand real issues apart from the partisan rhetoric. I would also recommend this book for anyone looking for good case studies in organizational theory. This book shows how theory can be applied in a useful, coherent, and common sense argument.

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Insider at Heart, Useful Critiques, Not the Whole Picture

This is the second of two books critical of the 9-11 Commission, both double-spaced, both approaching the issue of intelligence reform from a legalistic-organizational-economic point of view, right down to including arcane formulas incomprehensible to most people.

My reaction as I went through the foot-notes was that this was a bunch of old guys, many associated with the Hoover Institute or themselves failed insiders, talking to one another. There are however, sufficient side notes in the book to have been worthwhile, even though much of what the author discusses is "old hat" for those of us that have spent the last eighteen years being critical of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

The following points made it to my fly-leaf review:

1) Provides very strong critique of the WMD Commission as "critical overkill." I would add to that that the WMD Commission displayed a conflict of interest in suggesting that CIA could handle open source collection and analysis after decades of abusive irrational prejudice against open sources.

2) The author is completely off track when he says early on that Congress is not to be blamed for intelligence failures. Perhaps he is unaware of the fact that the Boren-McCurdy National Security Act of 1992 was undermined by then Secretary of Defense Cheney, but totally derailed by Senator John Warner of Virginia, who first sidelined reform to the Aspin-Brown Commission, then opposed all the recommendations, encouraged several DCI's in succession to do the same, and continues to this day to demand that the Pentagon control 85% of the NATIONAL intelligence budget because both the Pentagon and the bulk of those agencies are in VIRGINIA.

3) He provides a short discussion of how the IC elements use secrecy as a way of asserting "intellectual property" and this is useful. It would be even more useful if he were familiar with past public statement of Rodney McDaniel and with the full report of the Secrecy Commission under Senator Moynihan.

4) On Iraq and WMD he blames CIA without knowing what he is talking about. Charlie Allen got 30+ line crossers and at the professional level (which is to say, not including George "Slam Dunk" Tenet) it was clearly understood between Ambassador Wilson's foray to Niger, the British confessing on the side that they were plagiarizing school papers, and Charlie Allen's work (see my review of James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration) that there were no WMD in Iraq--this was a fabrication by Dick Cheney, and perhaps understandable since he and Rumsfeld provided bio-chem to Sadaam Hussein and--as the joke goes--kept the receipts.

5) He returns to his earlier (first book) focus on the need for a domestic intelligence agency, but does not appear to grasp that 50% of the dots that prevent the next 9-11 are "bottom up" dots that have no place to go and would still not have a place to go with a DC-based domestic intelligence agency. We need fifty state intelligence centers with county-level collection networks including 119 and 114 numbers for citizen reporting to a sense-making LOCAL center that is tied in to a NATIONAL picture.

6) The chapter on "Automated Woes" is quite interesting, and like Chapter 4 in his earlier book, is one of the best parts of this one. He demonstrates a superior understanding of the many reasons why government is happy to continue with 1970's technology. He focuses on the value of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) technology but does not appear, at least to where I could see it, to appreciate the value of open source software as a means of making a national intelligence network, with commercial levels of security, available to all 20,000 police forces, none of which can afford the brand of "secure" nonsense that the federal agencies are telling the states they need in order to receive the precious jewels of useless intelligence from "on high."

7) Although he absolves Congress of blame in intelligence failure, he provides a truly excellent discussion of the limitations of Congressional oversight, as well as the pathologies of Congressional oversight, and offers some suggestions for remediation.

8) The book concludes with a discussion of the "intelligence dilemma" to wit that success demands sharing but sharing threatens secrecy. Like most insiders, he completely misses the point of the OSINT revolution: sharing is optimized by focusing on open source intelligence that can be shared with both state and local governments, and with foreign coalition and non-governmental partners.

9) Finally, he ends with comments on the need for metrics, concluding that this is in the too hard box, but that is simply because he is unfamiliar with the path-finding work of Marty Hurwitz in the 19990's, or the work of Thomas J. Berholtz (see my review of his Information Proficiency: Your Key to the Information Age (Industrial Engineering) The fact is that intelligence can be evaluated based on its outcomes in relation to investments of time, money, risk, and credibility.

See my lists on intelligence (short and long) for a wider range of readings more likely to result in long-term intelligence reform. Judge Posner certainly merits our respect and attention, but his views are rather narrowly formed.

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Original Thinking

This book has a good deal to recommend it. Perhaps its highest virtue is that its author Judge Richard A. Posner is not an intelligence professional or even a groupie of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). As a result, Posner is unusually objective in his analysis of the IC and the two reports which have precipitated its so called reformation. Another commendable virtue of the book is that Posner writes in clear jargon free prose and expresses himself with great accuracy.

He does a great service by providing the reader with a careful analysis of both the 9/11 Commission Report and the WMD Report which were the catalysts for the congressionally mandated reforms in the IC, particularly the creation of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI). Posner applies impressive logic to the task and reveals a host of short comings and failings in both reports. The center piece of this book, however, is his reiteration of an argument he made in a previous book, "Remaking Domestic Intelligence" in which he makes a strong case for a domestic intelligence agency independent of the FBI. This indeed is a book clear of the vague musings and fuzzy recommendations so often found in books on reforming the IC.

Yet this reviewer must fault one of Posner's premises on which his argument is built, namely that, "intelligence is inherently and incurably mistake prone" (P. 208) and therefore the criticisms of IC found in both the (/11 and WMD reports are unfair and inappropriate. No one will dispute that producing accurate intelligence is a dicey business. It is nonetheless a leap of logic to extrapolate from this that the IC, and especially the CIA, is blameless in regards to the 9/11 catastrophe and the Iraqi WMD fiasco. In point of fact both these two events are simply the latest (that we know of) in a long series of badly executed intelligence projects. Sure intelligence by definition can only produce approximate truth, but that does not relieve the IC or CIA from the responsibility of doing a better job than they have over the last twenty years. It is often claimed that the while the failures of U.S. intelligence are widely known its successes must remain secret. To an extent this is true, but it should also be noted that the great bulk of its failures are also buried in secrecy and unknown to the public.

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When In Doubt, Reorganize

One of the striking arguments in Richard Posner's study of US Intelligence Reform is that the US's intelligence post 9/11 is probably less effective then it was pre 9/11. The 9/11 commission report's recommendations hurt the US by making its intelligent forces more centralized and bureaucratic.

"Uncertain Shield" is one of three books about US Intelligence and counter terrorist activities written by Judge Richard A. Posner. Posner, a Judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for the 7th circuit, has the work pace of a machine: aside from being a judge, he's a lecturer in Chicago Law School, a leading scholar of Law and Economics, who regularly produces tombs on subjects from Aging and Anti Trust to Sex and Utilitarianism, a frequent contributor to periodicals, both popular and scholarly, and a blogger.

Whatever topic Posner tackles, he always brings his great analytic powers and wordcrafting gifts to it. In previous books of his I have read, Posner took on fascinating topics and made unputtdownable books of them; Here his topic is not obviously intriguing, but the result is compelling and insightful.

Posner asserts that US Intelligence should not be faulted for the failures of 9/11 and the Iraqi WMD affair. Intelligence is an inherently difficult field, and that a high rate of failure should be expected. Preventing Terrorist attack is particularly difficult because of the plurality of possible targets - with limited resources, strengthening the defense of one target means weakening that of another.

Posner's case about the unpreventability of 9/11 seems sound, but I think he's on looser footing when arguing the same regarding the WMD debacle. Posner argues, reasonably enough, that given all we knew about Saddam, expecting him to develop a program of WMD was rational, and that while every piece of evidence for the hypothesis of the existence of WMD was weak, they had a cumulative effect.

I can't follow Posner that far; Posner himself acknowledges that the most important source, an Iraqi exile code named "Curveball", was extremely unreliable. He fails to consider the evidence from absence - a nuclear program is hard to hide. That all the evidence was weak should have been suggestive. Crucially, US Intelligence's actions should be assessed given the high costs of the planned operations - the CIA knew that the intelligence it was supplying was to be used in support of a major military adventure, but it failed to present to Congress and the public its unreliability. Posner makes no mention of George Tenet's "Slam Dunk".

After discussing the inherent difficulties of Intelligence gathering, Posner addresses the 9/11 and WMD commissions suggestions, the role of the FBI in Intelligence gathering, and the need to improve the data sharing between agencies.

Unlike the commissions, Posner thinks that the problem with US Intelligence is too much centralizing, not too little. He does support separating the jobs of the Director of Central Intelligence and the director of the CIA, but he opposes creating an "Intelligence Czar". Rather, the head of intelligence should be coordinating the various Intelligence agencies, not controlling them.

At a first glance, the number of US Intelligence agencies - 16 - seems excessive. But as Posner points out, Intelligence is a catch all phrase that covers wide apart fields: financial experts tracking terrorist's financial transactions; computer technicians patrolling the world wide web; Spy satellites and the decoders who are trained to read their outputs; Spies and spy handlers - all of these are completely separate functions requiring separate organizations, skills, and organizational culture; The attempt to centralize and unify them is misbegotten.

A price example is the FBI's role in domestic intelligence. The FBI is a crime fighting organization, but through the accident of bureaucracy, it is also, uniquely in the Western world, responsible for internal intelligence. As a law enforcement agency, the FBI is unsuitable for spy work - "Cops are not spies". The FBI is focused on retribution, not prevention. It is focused on convicting criminal and closing cases, not on building up information databases and seeking emerging patterns. Specifically, FBI agents are not specialists in intelligence - most of them come from the criminal field, with short stints at best in Intelligence. And yet neither the WMD nor the 9/11 commission suggested the obvious solution - creating an Internal Intelligence agency, the American equivalent of MI5.

One of the best chapters in Posner's book deals with the problems in the information processing of the US Intelligence services; Essentially, Posner argues, government organizations are ineffective in the introduction and use of information technology. This is due to the lack of expertise - most qualified computer people find work in the private sector - and lack of interest: Government policy towards automations seems to be "if it ain't broke, why fix it"; consequently, government organizations keep using technology that ain't broke, but -is- outdated. Similarly, the automation questions are frequently outsourced to private contractors, who have an interest in selling the government specially tailored solutions instead of commercial, off-the-shelf merchandise. Add to this the focus on secrecy in the Intelligence field, which discourages information sharing, and the problematics of High-Tech Intelligence is clear.

The final chapters deal with Congress's role in the operation of Intelligence. Posner argues that Congress meddles too much, and that its input is counter productive, and probably unconstitutional. Posner makes good points, but I admit that I find the executive branch of the US government more worrisome then the US Congress. Even setting aside the extreme incompetence of the Bush II administration, US Presidents, who are typically former governors, have very little experience in either Intelligence or Foreign affairs when they take the job. Congressional oversight is surely problematic: but it seems to me that the US better have too much of it than too little.

Overall, Posner's book offers a valuable discussion of the difficulties in Intelligence gathering, and of the various organizational and structural challenges of reforming it.

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