bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2012) — Spring 2012 // Printemps 2012, pp. 26–28
When left the Department of Foreign Assessment Staff (IAS) of the Privy Cc government of Canada — entered av hardly unique; subsequent conversatic me realize that they did not really und common, my ignorance of intelligence service, one of the primary clients for regularly dropped in on friendly emba: only a foggy notion of what was reac
This article aims to help correct this state of affairs by giving readers a basic introduction to the world of intelligence. James Bond aficionados should prepare to be disappointed. Those, on the other hand, who have always wondered “What is that stuff they bring me to read?” will, I hope, find this helpful. I also suggest a few changes in current practice that might help bridge the gap between intelligence and foreign policy.
The term intelligence is itself confusing. It can be more or less synonymous with information, as in “business intelligence”. Or it can mean information gathered through covert means, evoking the world of spies and secrets. But even in the covert world, many analysts work from “all-source intelligence”, meaning sources ranging from media reports through diplomatic reports to highly classified material. (In this article, the term intelligence, unless qualified as “all-source”, means highly classified covert intelligence.) In addition there are many sub-categories of intelligence, including criminal, military, national security and foreign — the latter being that which the foreign policy community generally sees.
Adding to the confusion, the intelligence community as a whole carries out a range of highly varied jobs. Broadly speaking these divide into three distinct categories: special operations, collection and assessment. This makes for an exceptionally diverse community, from Navy Seals to holders of Ph.Ds in area studies, which the traditional need-to-know philosophy has made even more segmented.
Operations belongs to the rarefied world of James Bond and of Special Forces. These are the groups who undertake covert activities abroad such as the recent tracking and killing of Osama bin Laden.
Collectors access information, directly or indirectly, through covert means. They then analyze and disseminate this material. There is an operational aspect to collection, whether at home or abroad, but the goal is information gathering.
Collection results in single-source reporting: brief transcriptions of information obtained from liaison with other intelligence agencies, from direct contact with an individual (human intelligence or HUMINT) or by technical means such as listening devices (signals intelligence or SIGINT) or imagery.
Assessment involves using all-source intelligence to explain and make judgements on complex situations or issues. The assessment community plays no part in operations or collection, but is a major consumer of single-source intelligence. Assessors spend much of their time behind a desk, producing briefs or reports that look quite like diplomatic reporting: broad analyses that draw on multiple sources. Assessment can be seen as a bridge between the intelligence world and those parts of the public service that formulate policy. Assessment differs from diplomatic reporting, however, in its greater focus on the writer’s views than an interlocutor’s views, and in deliberately omitting policy recommendations. “Policy relevant but policy neutral” is the motto of the IAS.
When left the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) in 2006 to join the International Assessment Staff (IAS) of the Privy Council Office — one of the main intelligence assessment bodies of the government of Canada — entered a world of unknown unknowns, to quote Donald Rumsfeld. In this was hardly unique; subsequent conversations with some former senior consumers of Canadian intelligence made me realize that they did not really understand the “funny papers” they had been given to read. Even if it was common, my ignorance of intelligence should have been surprising. had spent 16 years working in the foreign service, one of the primary clients for foreign intelligence. held a high level clearance and on one posting had regularly dropped in on friendly embassies to read the intelligence they agreed to share with Canada. Yet had only a foggy notion of what was reading, how it was produced, or how to make best use of it.
In the policy world, contact with collectors is regular and highly structured. Collectors meet with public servants annually to determine their requirements. Since collection is expensive, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous, collectors seek explicit guidance on what information customers want. They must also carefully consider which of these needs are best met through covert collection. Once collected, the most useful single-source HUMINT or SIGINT reports are disseminated to senior clients. These are the packages of “funny papers” that appear on senior desks on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
The policy community’s contact with assessment is more variable and informal. Assessment priorities can be adjusted relatively rapidly in response to events, changes in policy direction or requests from clients. Policy staff are sometimes invited to attend discussions or meetings by the assessment community, notably inter-departmental expert group meetings, and to comment on draft assessments. Analysts may participate in policy discussions as resource-persons, and visit posts abroad to update their knowledge.
Policy-makers receive intelligence materials from both collectors and assessors, but they rarely get any guidance on how to read them or on what these materials actually are. This can lead to significant misunderstanding and abuse. Readers are often dazzled by a high level of classification. In fact, “Top Secret” says nothing about the value of the contents; rather it indicates the sensitivity of the means by which it was collected. Moammar Gaddafi’s laundry list would be highly classified if obtained by tapping his cell phone.
Instead, readers should look at the source description at the start of a single-source item, or the description of the multiple sources used (the “assessment base”) in an assessment paper, to get a sense of their reliability. Too often readers skim over these apparently administrative sections. They are not always couched in the clearest language, but they are much better indicators of the value of the contents than the level of classification. For assessments, the identity of the author is also important; as with diplomatic reporting, some analysts are better than others.
Above all, the reader needs to understand the distinction between single source material and assessments. It is easy to focus on the former — which seem like “real intelligence” — and reject the latter, which read more like a competing stream of diplomatic reporting. Yet in reality most single source reports are what one agency terms “building block intelligence”, useful for developing a bigger picture but not that helpful when read in isolation. Even if all but the Juiciest pieces are usually filtered out, they remain single bits of information without context, often partial or oblique, and hard for a non-specialist to assess.
My personal view is that we should be presenting senior readers in particular with far less raw intelligence and far more assessment. As one colleague put it, we should stop dumping raw ingredients on their desks and give them a cooked meal instead. To change this long-standing practice will demand major changes in the intelligence community, however, not least because the strategic assessment component is so small: some 200 analysts for the whole government of Canada.
Even if there were a better balance between assessment and collection, intelligence products and practice would still sit somewhat uncomfortably with the policy world. The intelligence community provides a service to its customers, but not always a friendly one. This discomfort arises partly from a difference in cultures, and partly from necessary differences in practice. The intelligence world is focussed on risk, warning and secrets; it comes into its own when others are up to no good. Diplomacy focuses on the positive and the art of the possible, and requires a degree of trust in others. Combine its somewhat gloomy worldview with a tradition of policy neutrality, and it is easy for the intelligence community to seem like the perpetual skunk at the foreign policy picnic.
In addition, policy-making requires unanimity at key points — only one recommendation can be made to Ministers — while intelligence assessment incorporates dissent. When there is disagreement on a serious issue, analytical best practice requires that to be made clear. The intelligence community learned the dangers of glossing over minority dissenting views the hard way on the issue of Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction. Another lesson assessors learned from the Iraq WMD debacle was the danger of giving decision-makers the single, unequivocal answer they demanded, when an honest assessment based on the available intelligence was more a matter of probabilities and risks.
Since questions of such importance are sometimes in play, involving decisions to warn the public, apply sanctions or even go to war, intelligence methodology is by necessity painstaking. The most striking difference for me between the IAS and DFAIT was the time, thought and training put into assessments, in contrast to diplomatic reporting. Even when the issues in play are more mundane, analysts take great care to ensure they can back up their conclusions, and avoid speculating beyond what their material warrants. Analysts often have the advantage over diplomats in longterm expertise in their subject area, and analysis entails a greater responsibility to justify one’s conclusions than does reporting. Despite these differences, diplomats might benefit from some of the training analysts receive on thinking, analysis and writing.
To round out this list of differences, diplomats are posted in the countries they report on, while Canadian intelligence analysts mainly observe their countries of specialization from a distance. Intelligence analysts work in close collaboration with allies to a degree that would be familiar to members of the military, but less so to diplomats.
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Wa’ra 1NN°, Mamhar awr Finally, diplomacy is firmly founc in international laws and conventi intelligence exists in a grey area 0 international law. While experienc from the Gulf War, Bosnia and Af may have reduced the numbers of the foreign service who consider s be un-Canadian and un-gentlemat degree of suspicion persists.
Why intelligence matte! Intelligence work may be expen: dangerous. It may exist in a lega zone. It may produce much dros: every valuable nugget. Neverthe it endures because it is useful. D properly, it provides a useful ser those whose job is to develop po – Free Portfolio Evaluations
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2012) — Spring 2012 // Printemps 2012, pp. 26–28. Read the rest of this issue →
