Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

From Enemy Of The People:

John Patrick Diggins, in a June 11, 2004 op-ed piece in the New York Times, supplied yet another reminder of how consistently wrong the neocons have been over the decades and across various foreign policy issues.

Mr. Diggins' recounts the dangerous policies espoused by the neocons during the Reagan administration, and offers reminders from George Schultz and Reagan himself of how the neocons could have screwed-up the ending of the cold war. One can go back even further, however, to the Ford administration to find the neocons already at work, preaching radical militarism as a solution to all of our problems.

Perle, Wolfowitz and other neocon artists were members of a "Team B" formed during the Ford administration to second-guess CIA assessments of the Soviet threat. "Team B" concluded that the CIA was vastly underestimating the size of the Soviet economy, the level of military spending and the Soviet capability to upgrade its missile systems. Information obtained following the end of the cold war conclusively established that the CIA in fact had overestimated Soviet capabilities in each instance. The CIA had been far off the mark, but Team B wasn't even in the right ballpark. Rather reminiscent of the neocon's assessment of the Iraqi threat, isn't it?

The neocons have only one policy: rampant U.S. militarism in service of a bullying foreign policy and an American empire. That was their policy in the Ford administration. That was their policy in the Reagan administration. That has been their policy in the Bush administration. The only difference now is that they finally have a president stupid enough to actually implement each of their maniacal proposals. Hence, the catastrophe in Iraq.

It has incorrectly been spread about that I was the Japan desk officer for the company lo these many years. The fact is, I was running this English language school in the Japanese Senate, was goofing around with the Prime Minister's advisor on national security, and was generally having a good time. Gawd knows what the hell the real CIA desk officer was doing during those times.

As it happens I know the rocket secrets: you don't have to be too bright in Washington to actually meet the people who know what's what. The reason we have the Minuteman III is that I and II didn't work. (At the time I would have killed to keep that secret.)

On the currect CIA scene, I have little to say. People should perhaps consider the fact that Tenet worked for John Kerry's wife back in his Senate days: my theory is that he resigned because he was fed up with being made to lie for Bushlet and hence against a decent and honest woman he had known in an earlier career.

FWIW.

--dlj.

"People should perhaps consider the fact that Tenet worked for John Kerry's wife back in his Senate days: my theory is that he resigned because he was fed up with being made to lie for Bushlet and hence against a decent and honest woman he had known in an earlier career."

Hard to understand what your saying there--are you referring to the fact that Tenet worked for Sen. Heinz, R-Pa (Mrs. Kerry's late husband), back in the 80's?

"What Kaplan does not say is that those who made their "reputation" writing the Team B report are still "overrepresented" in the executive branch today."

... and that they pretty much all have had a primary or complementary career working in the military industrial complex. Talk about independent analysis ... It's like if the only piece of evidence you would rely on to figure out the optimal percentage of GDP (or fundamental research for that matter) to be spent on public education be the average number you got from polling all academics on the subject...

My first thought on the issue was "they better have a team c too" thinking of the team B fiasco. In effect, by setting up team B the politicians decided that the CIA had underestimated Soviet strength, that is, that they knew better than the people who knew the mere facts. wtih the ABC approach, on Iraq, they could have had team B minus (Feith's gang) and Team C which would have argued well for what turned out to be true.
With Bush in the White House,m neither this nor any other CIA reform would have done any good, since the problem was basically not at the CIA.

Upon reflection, I think I should have thought that the CIA needs a Red team and a White team pulling in opposite directions. I get all patriotic just thinking of a Red White and Blue intelligence agency.

"What Kaplan does not say is that those who made their "reputation" writing the Team B report are still "overrepresented" in the executive branch today."

Bloggy Award (I just invented it) for ironic understatement.

So this whole “CIA being used to cover Bush’s rear-end” multi-dimensional Campaign Event, is actually a graduate class in Team B Studies?

I actually liked the idea of Red Teams until I read your post. You point out that in at least one instance, the Team had a political agenda. It still seems tome that the idea could work, if there were some way of assuring that the Red Team had no hidden agenda. Whic hobviously is impossible, at least in this administration.

Independently of its topical importance, the whole question whether intelligence should be developed like a jury trial is worth thinking through. Obviously, the original team B concept was the product of special pleading by left-overs from the McCarthy era -- recall that it was only 15 years in the past when the team was set up -- so the enterprised was flawed from the start. It seems to me the flaw in the model is that it doesn't provide for peer review. In effect the 'A' team is the reviewer, which defeats the purpose of the exercise. Now, all this has to be done in utter secrecy, since we are talking about intelligence. Who is to be the jury? Someone who knows nothing about the issues at hand? A blank slate gets you the present occupant of the Presidency.

The whole idea of having two 'teams' making alternative intelligence stimates was hopelessly bulloxed from the start. Doing intelligence is like doing good academic weork. Every argument, every piece of fact has to be tested by experts, who may well differ, but at least the grounds of difference are spelled out and are in principle testable. The differences are unlikely to be reduced to 'team' points of view. 'Points' of view in this context would seem to be irrelevant, post-modernism to the contrary.

When you look at the team 'B' personnel, one of the things that stands out is that these so-called intellectuals never made it in academe's big show. They and their epigones like to think it's because of their opinions. Wrong, it's because of their intellectual mediocrity.

The CIA has been politicized to the point of limiting its effectiveness. This is an issue President Kerry will need to address.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/071304.html

The CIA has not been politicized. It makes mistakes, but it does not pander to policy. Read the SSCI report thoroughly, and it will be impossible for you to come away with the impression that the CIA is politicized.

Tenet resigned, I suspect, not because of political pressure in the partisan sense, but because the Agency's overisght committees were both about to come down on the place like a ton of bricks, which they did. Again, read the SSCI report and download the HPSCI report (a markup) from the FAS web site.

BTW, red teaming is a very popular and constructive technique for avoiding analytic bias; the Team B exercise of years passed abused the concept because there was a political agenda. Usually, there isn't. This issue is whether there is a political agenda in ANY intelligence enterprise, in which case the enterprise is in trouble. Red teams are not inherently prone to this.

It is good that Kerry is getting advice from Turner who knew the CIA before it was politicized.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/opinion/14TURN.html

Jim you are not correct about what happened to the CIA. At one time, the CIA was much more independent and free to debate alternative analyses. That changed with Reagan.

Before Reagan, analysts were encouraged to develop contrary ideas and try to fit their ideas to the data. Since Reagan, the process has been reversed. Analysts must now fit the data to the idea. Don't forget their Reagan launched his political career traveling the country making anti-communist, anti-Soviet speeches based on right wing ideology and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Remaking the CIA was a way to vindicate the ideology in the face of reality.

The CIA leadership was complicit with the Bush administration in the Iraq intelligence. Tenet made a career of pandering. McLaughlin, his replacement advanced by pandering. Our intelligence has been compromised by ideologues who are more interested in making the world fit their ideology than understanding the world.

A key difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives have rigid ideas about how the world should be and will relentessly try to hammer square pegs of policy into their round hole concept of ideology. They resist debating the nature of the hole. Liberals are more open to new ideas and opening the debate. At CIA, the conservatives won. Unfortunately, the conservative perspective is much too blind for an intelligence agency.

Many of us without access to intelligence available to Senators and Congressmen knew from informed sources that WMD were most likely not in Iraq before the war started. Our legislators were misinformed by the intelligence they received.

Bakho, I value most all of your very perceptive posts, but I'm respectfully disagreeing with you in this thread.

Don't confuse Tenet's manueverings to get close to the White House as pandering; it was actually good tradecraft. He may not have been a great manager, but he knew how to get close to the Oval Office, and he was right to do so. Part of his job was to make sure Agency views were heard where it counted. He did this part of his job well.

The other part of his job--getting the actual lowdown on WMD in Iraq--he did badly. Blame him, and the Agency, for this. If the Agency needs to be rebuilt, it is to repair this kind of capability.

But they don't pander. There would be a mass exodus of the workforce. Really.

Read the SSCI report, my friend.

Very Respectfully,

Jim

Red Teams could work if they were technical experts in the areas of discussion and a valid framework of scientific method were being applied.

The CIA analysts tried in at least some cases to analyze outside their specialties and were immune to expert review of technical topics. They didn't even want expert review or input. Read the SSCI portions on the aluminum tubes for confirmation of this. The obstinance on the part of the "centrifuge analyst" in this regard was simply appalling.

In the case of the aluminum tubes I thought the DOE experts fulfilled a red team role of sorts. They not only took the time to explain the whys and wherefores of the topic within their expertise, they were willing to seek out other specialists when they weren't certain of answers, such as with the rocket application hypothesis. Isn't this what the sharing of information and shopping around of these draft findings is all about? So, they effectively had a red team process but utterly ignored it.

The problem was that the analyst(s) at CIA clearly pushed forward with their "I have a hammer and everything looks like a nail" approach in spite of really good evidence contrary to their points.

When this argument came up in the press over the past year or more I was always stumped at how DOE and CIA could be at such loggerheads over what turned out to be a reasonably clear technical issue. I did not expect to find the kind of snotty attitude exhibited by CIA that comes through clearly in the SSCI report.

It is unclear how tossing a red team at that situation would have helped if either team simply ignored counter arguments or technical hypotheses posed by the other. At that point an analysis framework is completely broken due to the unwillingness of personnel to take a scientific approach to the facts at hand.

In spite of calls by Pat Roberts and others to let it pass I really think some of the people involved should be demoted/reprimanded/reassigned/fired. While I was never in the CIA, arrogant disregard for detail and deliberate obfuscation of facts in a matter of this importance would not have been allowed to pass in Commands where I served in the US Navy. Careers are ended for a lot less.

D-O

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