 Dick
Coffman is an international business and security
consultant and media commentator on intelligence,
homeland security and terrorism. He is managing
Director of Odysseus
Group International, which provides risk
management and security solutions to the transportation,
basic infrastructure and manufacturing industries.
Mr. Coffman specializes in ports and maritime
security and homeland defense. He is founder
and President of Coffman
Global Group, which leverages worldwide
networks for business development and marketing
in high technology, basic materials and capital
construction.
Mr. Coffman has conducted assessments of intelligence
operations for the U.S. Customs Service and
the Office of Naval Intelligence and for a
major defense contractor.
Mr. Coffman served 31 years in the Central
Intelligence Agency where he formed and managed
the Agency's first counterterrorism analytic
organization and served as Chief of Station,
chief of staff to the Director of the Clandestine
Service, coordinator of major worldwide covert
intelligence programs and CIA representative
to the NATO Commander.
He also served four years in the U.S. Marine
Corps, including duty in Vietnam in 1965 and
1966. Mr. Coffman remained in the Marine Corps
Reserves retiring in 1992 at the grade of
Colonel. Mr. Coffman is a student of military
history and an authority on the U.S. Civil
War.
Coffman
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February 18, 2004
("Intelligence has never been more important to the security of our country." CIA Director George Tenet, February 5, 2004)
Make no mistake; WMD in Iraq is an intelligence failure with massive consequences.
It doesn't matter if Iraqi WMD, technologies or related programs are eventually uncovered -- an extremely remote possibility at this juncture. Waiting for this to happen while failing to address intelligence shortfalls and while America's enemies continue to marshal forces, develop weapons, recruit adherents and prepare for future attacks would be disastrous.
Nor does it matter that not only US intelligence, but nearly everyone was fooled: apparently Saddam Hussein and his top scientists, technologists and generals, the leading intelligence services in the world, the UN and even political opponents of the war.
What matters is that we have further evidence that US intelligence may be unequal to the task of supporting US strategy for taking the war to the terrorists abroad; for launching pre-emptive actions against countries and terrorist groups planning to strike the US homeland; and, for countering the proliferation of WMD and neutralizing those countries that possess a WMD capability.
Worse, the fog of politicized and uninformed rhetoric and superficial analysis coming out of Washington threatens to obscure the scale of this failure and its causes and cures.
There can no longer be serious dispute that US intelligence did not accurately assess Iraq's WMD capabilities and programs prior to the war in March 2003. CIA Director George Tenet admitted as much in his speech cited above exclaiming, "In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right."
The National Intelligence Estimate issued in October 2002 is the public benchmark for the assessments of US intelligence on Iraq WMD. Weighed against the results of subsequent searches in Iraq and testimony by chief weapons hunter David Kay, the NIE's judgments about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs are starkly overdrawn.
This misjudgment and earlier contemporary failures of US intelligence to alert the country to the 9/11 attacks, development of nuclear capabilities by India and Pakistan and the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union point to the need for urgent strengthening of US intelligence.
Why urgent and why now?
Intelligence is the most critical element in pre-empting terror strikes against the US. We certainly have the military power and logistical reach to confront any enemy virtually anywhere on earth. But only intelligence can provide forewarning and pinpoint who is planning to attack the US, from where and with what capabilities.
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At the same time, intelligence must provide early warning of threatened targets in the US, as we simply don't have the resources or time to defend all potential domestic targets. By focusing resources and energies on threats to commercial aviation, we have neglected other vulnerable sectors of our transportation and industrial infrastructure. Our enemies will give us neither time nor a second chance to order our priorities of defense correctly; sound and comprehensive intelligence can give us this critical measure of security.
Similarly, only intelligence can provide the crucial detailed information to counter the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to anti-US terrorist groups and hostile states.
Unfortunately, our political leadership seems confused, uncoordinated and excessively driven by the Beltway noise machine whose din is drowning out what is important and sensible with what is flashy and has political juice.
For example, we now have at least six congressional and executive branch inquiries underway on Iraq, WMD and intelligence.
Two are in the form of commissions, which are time-honored Washington devices for burying difficult problems. When was the last time a blue-ribbon Washington commission led to timely action or an enduring remedy on a matter of urgent national importance?
Especially disappointing is President Bush's commission. Not only does it not include a critical mass of experienced intelligence and national security professionals, it probably is unnecessary. Since he receives our highest level and most sensitive intelligence, the President is uniquely positioned to determine whether it is adequate for policy decisions. He doesn't need help from a commission.
The crucial questions now are what went wrong with US intelligence and how can it be fixed?
To catalog what went wrong would require a far lengthier exposition than this space allows. Let me suggest some of the most serious, if not obvious, shortcomings that must be corrected:
Years of over-reliance and over-spending on technical collection systems including electronic intercepts and overhead and space-based imaging have finally caught up with us. In an attempt to leverage our massive superiority in technology and amortize the enormous cost of these systems, we have turned into our primary collection tools what should provide tactically useful snap-shots and should support more strategically focused systems.
Such technical programs are deceptively seductive as they produce mountains of raw data with relatively little manpower. But, they almost never pinpoint the intentions, plans and last-minute strategy shifts provided by human agents. Moreover, experienced and sophisticated foes are finding ways to deceive and defeat such collection systems.
In a counterterrorism and counterproliferation environment, human source collection is at the heart of the intelligence challenge. And the CIA's Directorate of Operations is at the heart of US human source collection. That is where strengthening US intelligence in today's world must be focused.
Recruiting and exploiting human agents is an imperfect, risky business, in which a ten percent success rate is very high and public exposure can cause uneasy moments for the US. It demands highly trained, tough-minded and field-tested intelligence officers operating against ruthless and elusive targets usually over an extended period.
Years of politically-inspired blows against the Clandestine Service, including interminable, intimidating and downright silly congressional, Special Counsel and IG investigations (BNL, BCCI, Guatemala, Paris Station, the list is almost endless) have taken their toll virtually institutionalizing an aversion to risk and undermining serious espionage against serious targets.
Not only have high value, high-risk operations not been undertaken, but also experienced and creative operations officers have left the Service, or in some cases have been forced out only to be provided high profile awards and acclamations after their departures. Those left behind have taken notice and accommodated themselves to the prevailing political and bureaucratic winds.
CIA, Executive Branch and congressional leadership must stand behind these operations and the officers that undertake them, particularly when it is politically difficult to do so. This almost goes without saying, but too often in the past leaders with the best of intentions have headed for the tall grass when operations went south.
A corollary is that those engaged in clandestine human source operations must be confident that merit will be the only basis for rewards, advancement and future assignments. They must also be confident that the country will provide the resources and retention incentives that match the risks and difficulties of the missions they are being asked to undertake.
If this comes at the expense of other collection systems or other Intelligence Community personnel, so be it. Our political leadership must have the fortitude to do what is necessary to strengthen an essential weapon against very real and dangerous contemporary threats to the US.
All this must sound hopelessly naïve to veterans of the Washington wars, and perhaps it is. The reality, however, is that there remains serious unfinished work in our intelligence, and time is not on our side.
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© 2004 Richard Coffman. All opinions expressed in this article
are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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