A weak pillar for American national security: The CIA's dismal performance against WMD threats

Abstract

American preemptive or preventive military action against WMD-armed adversaries in the future will simply not be feasible without high-quality and timely intelligence. But is American intelligence up to this load-bearing task for the post-11 September national security? This article surveys the Central Intelligence Agency's record of gauging potential WMD threats for more than a decade and assesses its overall performance as dismal. The CIA's recent intelligence debacle against Iraq was one of the greatest in a long series of failures that has publicly exposed the Agency's profound weaknesses. These intelligence failures were due in large measure to the CIA's poor human intelligence collection and shoddy analysis, areas that cannot be remedied alone by the creation of the new Director of National Intelligence post. This article recommends steps needed to increase the quality of intelligence produced by CIA, or elsewhere in the new intelligence community, to move American intelligence in lockstep with military transformation to give the Commander-in-Chief realistic options for countering hostile nation-states or terrorist groups seeking or acquiring WMD.

Notes

1 The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the position or policy of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the US Government. The author also wishes to thank Danielle Debroux for her excellent research assistance.

2 President George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, September 2002), p.15, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf. In strategic discourse, a preemptive strike traditionally has referred to attacking an adversary in anticipation of an impending, imminent war while preventive strikes generally refer to destroying a potential adversary's nascent capabilities to stop them from growing into a significant threat over time. In the contemporary debate, preemptive and preventive strikes are commonly used interchangeably.

3 See Richard L. Russell, ‘Military Retaliation for Terrorism: The 1998 Cruise Missile Strikes Against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Sudan’, Pew Case Study (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2002).

4 Jason D. Ellis and Geoffrey D. Kiefer, Combating Proliferation: Strategic Intelligence and Security Policy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), p.62.

5 ‘Key Judgments’, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Intelligence Estimate, October 2002, available at http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html.

6 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p.249.

7 ‘Secretary Powell at the UN: Iraq's Failure to Disarm’, Bureau of Public Affairs, US Department of State, available at http://www.state.gov/p/nea/disarm/.

8 For an excellent examination of the turning point from hiding, preserving and rebuilding WMD capabilities to weathering economic hardships until UN sanctions would be lifted, see Barton Gellman, ‘Iraq's Arsenal of Ambitions’, Washington Post, 7 January 2004.

9 Report to the President of the United States, The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: United States Government, 31 March 2005), p.84.

10 Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD, Comprehensive Report, Vol. I, 30 September 2004.

11 Bob Drogin, ‘Spy Work in Iraq Riddled by Failures’, Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2004, p.A1.

12 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ‘Conclusions’, Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (Washington, DC: US Senate, 9 July 2004), p.14.

13 See Richard L. Russell, ‘CIA's Strategic Intelligence in Iraq’, Political Science Quarterly 117/2 (Summer 2002), p.201.

14 Walter Pincus, ‘Spy Agencies Faulted for Missing Indian Tests’, Washington Post, 3 June 1998, p.A18.

15 David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, ‘Pakistan's Nuclear Earnings’, New York Times, 16 March 2004.

16 William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, ‘The Bomb Merchant’, New York Times, 26 December 2004, p.A1.

17 Douglas Franz and William C. Rempel, ‘New Find in a Nuclear World’, Los Angeles Times, 28 November 2004, p.A1.

18 For an examination of the strategic rationale for nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, see Richard L. Russell, ‘Saudi Nukes: A Looming Intelligence Failure’, Washington Times, 5 January 2004.

19 David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, ‘From Rogue Nuclear Programs, Web of Trails Leads to Pakistan’, New York Times, 4 January 2004, p.A1.

20 Douglas Frantz, ‘Iran Moving Methodically Toward Nuclear Capability’, Los Angeles Times, 21 October 2004, p.A1. For more discussion of the massive scope and sophistication of Iran's uranium enrichment program, see Joby Warrick and Glenn Kessler, ‘Iran's Nuclear Program Speeds Ahead’, Washington Post, 10 March 2003, p.A1. For a discussion of Iran's strategic rationale for nuclear weapons, see Richard L. Russell, ‘Iran in Iraq's Shadow: Dealing with Tehran's Nuclear Weapons Bid’, Parameters, XXXIV/3 (Autumn 2004), pp.32–4.

21 David E. Sanger, ‘Pakistan Found to Aid Iran Nuclear Efforts’, New York Times, 2 September 2004.

22 David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, ‘From Rogue Nuclear Programs, Web of Trails Leads to Pakistan’, New York Times, 4 January 2004, p.A1.

23 Jonathan D. Pollack, ‘The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework’, Naval War College Review, LVI/3 (Summer 2003), p.13.

24 Douglas Jehl, ‘Bush's Arms Intelligence Panel Works in Secret’, New York Times, 6 December 2004.

25 Phillip van Niekerk, ‘South Africa Had Six A-Bombs’, Washington Post, 25 March 1993. For analyses of South Africa's nuclear weapons program and its decision to abandon it, see Peter Liberman, ‘The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb’, International Security, 26/2 (Fall 2001), pp.45–86; and J.W. de Villiers, Roger Jardine and Mitchell Reiss, ‘Why South Africa Gave Up the Bomb’, Foreign Affairs, 72/5 (November/December 1993), pp.98–109.

26 Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (New York: Touchstone, 2002), pp.9496 and 136–7.

27 Ibid., 167–8.

28 On the funding and personnel strength of the intelligence community, see Greg Miller, ‘Iraq Envoy to be Chief of Intelligence’, Los Angeles Times, 18 February 2005, p.A1.

29 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ‘Conclusions’, Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (Washington, DC: US Senate, 9 July 2004), p.24. For more in-depth examinations of CIA's human collection and analytic shortcomings, see Richard L. Russell, ‘Spies Like Them’, National Interest, 77 (Fall 2004), pp.59–62; and Richard L. Russell, ‘Intelligence Failures: The Wrong Model for the War on Terror’, Policy Review, 123 (February/March 2004), pp.61–72.

30 Findings of the Final Report of the Joint Inquiry Investigating the Attacks of September 11, 2001 (Washington, DC: US Government, 10 December 2002). The report is available on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's website at http://intelligence.house.gov/CaseStudies.aspx?Section=11.

31 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p.560.

32 For a revealing and damning discussion of CIA's poor human intelligence performances including during the Cold War and today, see John Diamond, ‘CIA's Spy Network Thin’, USA Today, 22 September 2004, p.A13.

33 Findings of the Final Report of the Joint Inquiry Investigating the Attacks of September 11, 2001 (note 30).

34 David Ignatius, ‘Spying: Time to Think Outside the Box’, Washington Post, 29 August 2004, p.B7.

35 Loch K. Johnson, Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p.151.

36 Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (Norwich, UK: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 14 July 2004), p.47.

37 Ibid., p.49.

38 For an examination how one analyst of questionable authority in CIA dominated the analytic assessment that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, see David Barstow, ‘Who the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence’, New York Times, 3 October 2004.

39 Report to the President of the United States (note 9), p.97.

40 Ibid., p.191.

41 Ibid., p.193.

42 Ashton B. Carter, ‘How to Counter WMD’, Foreign Affairs, 83/5 (September/October 2004), p.85.

43 Reuel Marc Gerecht, ‘The Sorry State of the CIA’, The Weekly Standard, 19 July 2004.

44 James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004), p.200.

45 Walter Pincus, ‘Bush Orders the CIA to Hire More Spies’, Washington Post, 24 November 2004, A4.

46 Report to the President of the United States (note 9), p.6 (italics original).