Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners' Perspectives

I was watching a documentary on Israel’s famous Six Day War, and the big question is always how they came to be so well prepared. One of the pilots involved in the war said “above all, you have to have intelligence.” It might seem trivial compared to fighter aircraft and tanks, but for Israel, I bet 50% was intelligence. They knew the location of all the Egyptian airbases, when the planes would be on the ground, and where the defenses were. When it comes to intelligence, we can say “okay, we need to know where the enemy is and what kind of weapons they have.” But the question now is how you’re going to know. Are you watching them via satellite? Do you have a spy down there? Do you have a mole in their government? If so, how do you know you can trust them? This book covers all those things, especially with regard to the post-Cold War era.

    Analyzing Intelligence devotes a chapter to the relationship between the intelligence gatherer and the analyst. It cites examples such as Pearl Harbor, The Yom Kippur War, and the Iranian Revolution, as examples of a weak relationship. In those three cases, there were few ears willing to listen to the information gathered on the respective countries. Israel’s spies, who’d spent years accumulating information on her neighbors, didn’t know that Egypt had surface-to-air missiles and wire-guided anti-tank Sagers from the USSR. In Iran, the US embassy didn’t have employees who spoke Farsi, and they knew nothing about the country. They didn’t know that the Shah was old, the army officers were incompetent, and the starving populace was angry. Ayatollah Khomeini, then living in Paris, was anything but quiet about his intentions. Somehow, nobody noticed.

   It seems from this book that a problem with intelligence is the lack of cooperation between agencies. Pearl Harbor is used as an example of the US army and navy not sharing information, and others, like Iran in 1979, seem more an example of ignorance based on arrogance. Then there’s the failure to warn about India’s nuclear tests. But with Israel today, they seem to know everything everywhere. I suspect that when you have a tiny country, with a miniscule coastline and only one major airport, there’s less to be done. Keep in mind that today’s Arab leaders (like most third-world dictators) are rarely secretive, so it’s easy to listen in on their activities. But not so with North Korea. They’re super-secretive and impossible to penetrate. The people are all brainwashed. It remains to be seen what happens with them.