PDB Wars Part II: Back to the Future

By Larry Johnson

by
Larry C. Johnson

Changes in how the PDB was vetted and produced go a long way to explain some of the recent intelligence failures. These changes began during the Clinton Administration and have continued in the Bush Administration. Before Clinton and W, when CIA analysts did current production they were focused principally on writing articles for the National Intelligence Daily (aka the NID). The decision to write a NID piece was the same as the PDB process. In fact, it was the decision to write a NID piece that usually led to the decision to include a variant of the NID piece in the PDB. In those days (the good old days) analysts at CIA had to coordinate their analysis with analysts from DIA, INR and NSA. That is not the case today. On occasion the disagreements would be deep and a dissent would be published alongside the original piece to let the senior policymakers know that there were other views on some of these matters.

Back in the good old days other agencies could submit pieces for the PDB, which National Intelligence Officers (NIOs) assigned to the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and senior analysts were allowed to comment on. Not now.

Back in the good old days NIOs used to see NID and PDB drafts before they were published. This was to ensure that other agency views were at least considered. Not now.

This is not to say that old PDB and NIDs were always better than what the President sees today, but this process ensured that the President had the views that represented the best analysis of the entire intelligence community, even if drafted primarily by one agency. Not now.

The failure to encourage and tolerate dissent was a major reason for the flawed October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that grossly exaggerated the WMD threat in Iraq. If the NIC had taken the dissents on the WMD paper seriously, for example, it would not have been so disastrously wrong.

Assuming he is approved, Negroponte does not have to create a great big bureaucracy. He just has to get a handful of smart people -- a rejuvenated, cleaned-up NIC perhaps -- and have them coordinate the product. That would help compensate for the weaknesses or vulnerabilities or prejudices or whatever of any particular agency.

TrackBack