Jim Carey: Military Intelligence "Ain't Always Etched in Granite"
Jim Carey: Military Intelligence "Ain't Always Etched in Granite"
About
the Author
Rear Admiral [Ret.] Jim Carey is Chairman of the NATIONAL DEFENSE COMMITTEE and NATIONAL DEFENSE PAC. His background includes duty in cruisers and amphibs, at Naval Beach Group, and in the Pentagon, and naval service from Seaman Recruit to Rear Admiral. He also served in the Reagan and George Bush Sr. Administrations. Further details at The National Defense Committee and The National Defense Political Action Committee.
Nor for that matter is any national or international intelligence!
Indeed, it usually only stands just a chance of being accurate on the date it's published, and even then it's "subject to change," sometimes even on the same day.
But to listen to all the talking heads on TV, many of the political pundits, most of the political print media writers, and they all seem to be jumping on the bandwagon that the nation was misled because our Commander In Chief quoted a line on nuclear materials sought by Iraq that was in a CIA Intelligence Report he had received.
Now, to put all this in perspective, was that information, in retrospect, probably wrong? Probably. Or at least that seems to be what everyone is saying. But the President didn't cite it today, when all the Monday Morning Quarterbacks have access to lots more recent and updated information. He quoted it when he received it, and back then, it was accurate -- or at least judged to be as accurate as could possibly be ascertained by the very best and most experienced military and international intelligence minds that we have in our nation's employment.
Maybe it will help if we take just a minute of sanity away from the shrill voices of political accusation [who interestingly gathered up their courage and bravery to bring this subject up while the President of the U.S. was traveling thousands of miles away on the nation's business in Africa] to consider for one quiet sane moment how intelligence is gathered and intelligence reports are prepared. Particularly the kind of intelligence, human intelligence, that is not a finite matter that can be determined with finality much like conducting a laboratory analysis of a mineral or a chemical.
Unfortunately, the reality is that intelligence deals for the most part, particularly with regard to the pre-war goings-on in Iraq and it's neighboring nations, all with closed borders, through information gathered largely by human beings [often called spies, or for the more politically correct and overly sensitive, "intelligence operatives"].
Human beings, most of us realize, or at least those of us not in the network news business, are subject to all sorts of errors on what we see or report or observe. Don't believe me? Just ask several people to describe the same incident that all observed---- if there are 10 of them, you will likely get 10 different, and in some cases vastly different descriptions. Or if that's too tough, just play the old party game by getting ten friends to line up, whisper a single line phrase to the first and have them whisper it to the 2nd, etc. to the end of the line, and I challenge you to have the 10th in line come anywhere near what the first in line was told to pass on.
Such is human intelligence. It's not an attempt to mislead, at least not unless the information is being received from a double-agent [yes, those still exist in 2003 -- actually, they consider it a good deal since they get paid by both sides, at least until they get caught]. But usually, it's just a human being, or several human beings, some on the inside and some slinking around the perimeter, who report on what they think they see or think they hear or think what's accurate, or even in some cases, what they think we want to hear. But surely it's not some huge worldwide cabal of vast right-wing conspirators in league with the President trying to mislead the world in order to take them off to war. That should be a stretch for even the most liberal left-wing Bush hater.
What happens next in the intelligence process is that all this information flows in to a central point [i.e Central Intelligence Agency / CIA; Defense Intelligence Agency / DIA; Federal Bureau of Investigation / FBI, and numerous other members of the Intelligence Apparatus alphabet soup agencies] where some really smart people, each experts in their own right on the nation involved or the subject matter involved [i.e. nuclear materials], debate and dialogue and argue and point/counterpoint their way through what ultimately becomes the mutually agreed-upon report that goes up their chain of command for more debate and analysis and eventually in a final report to the President. But what the President gets is not some finite numbers from a laboratory analysis of a mineral -- what he gets is the very best analysis of what all these experts think are the facts and the opinions of the situation at that point in time, based on all the information and opinions and input they've received from all sorts of equipment and human beings all around the world. It never is, and never will be, 100% accurate 100% of the time. By it's very nature, it cannot be. And anyone that knows how intelligence is gathered and reported and determined and analyzed and presented to our national and military leaders knows this.
But "all the above" is way too logical and isn't going to sell any newspapers or air time or advertising, so my guess is that it will all be ignored as an awful lot of the pretty boys and girls of the media continue to surge forward re: military intelligence with their current approach of "Chicken Little, Chicken Little, the sky is falling and we've been lied to" when in fact, the truth is the exact opposite.
How sad that this continued media manipulation and misstatement of "what's really going on in military or national intelligence" still goes on, presumable just to sell papers and advertising [surely, hopefully, for the sake of the American public, we would hope this is not being done "in the name of news" to somehow shape or influence political decisions or conclusions?] . What a disservice is done to the American Public when "the public's right to know" re: these national policy matters somehow gets bastardized into "the public's being mislead, either deliberately or through lack of gathering all the facts, with half truths and innuendo by those who profess they know better". Surely the media would never do that to us, right?
Maybe what we need is Embedded Reporters in the intelligence gathering operations?
NOPE!!! Bad Idea!!! VERY Bad Idea!!! VERY VERY BAD IDEA!!!
You gotta be able to keep a secret in the intelligence business, or you get killed and so do all those around you.
