This thesis is written as an effort to establish the study of intelligence failure as a critical component of national intelligence studies. The phenomenon of intelligence failure is inherently different from that of diplomatic or market failure. That...
This thesis is written as an effort to establish the study of intelligence failure as a critical component of national intelligence studies. The phenomenon of intelligence failure is inherently different from that of diplomatic or market failure. That's why it is necessary for any meaningful study of intelligence failure to incorporate a sound understanding of the inner dynamics of intelligence organizations as well as the nature of intelligence activities. In this context, this study proposes ‘the intelligence culture model’ as a new analytic tool in order to serve the purpose mentioned above. The key concepts of this approach is the intelligence leadership and the intelligence culture. The latter is a subset of strategic culture. This theoretical model posits that three independent variables - (1) intelligence chief's relationship with the President, (2) his level of experience in the intelligence field, and (3) his relationship with directorate of operations will decide the level of intelligence leadership, which in turn will have an impact upon the degree of dysfunctional intelligence culture. The corollary is that the higher the degree of dysfunctional culture, the weaker the capabilities. Finally, the probability of intelligence failure increases as dysfunctional culture spreads while capabilities weakens at the same time.
This study, which applies the new methodology to the case of 9/11, concludes that an intelligence failure had been inevitable. The quality of intelligence leadership had been rapidly deteriorating and accordingly, dysfunctional culture had taken firm roots in the intelligence community during 10 years leading up to July of 1997 when Deutch resigned as Director, handing over the reins to Tenet. Despite that the quality of intelligence leadership had been recovered to some extent, the curve of intelligence culture had made an U-shaped rather than the ideal V-shaped turn due to the inertia caused by the accumulation of dysfunctional culture. In addition, it is also noted as an important factor that the humint capabilities had plummeted to the lowest level right before and after the 9/11 due to their high vulnerability to the effects of dysfunctional culture and their nature as a form of long-term investment. Furthermore, this study closely examines the trajectory of intelligence leadership and culture since the 9/11 with a view to analyzing the rare case of consecutive occurrence of major intelligence failures. This analysis finds that at first, the intelligence leadership had strengthened for a short period due to the heightened patriotic sentiments right after the national emergency situation. The intelligence leadership, however, was quickly eroded by the phenomenon of the politicization of intelligence, subsequently overwhelming the improving intelligence culture and distorting the intelligence capabilities. That is how the Iraq WMD fiasco had developed.
In conclusion, this study, based on its findings, suggests some ideas on how to minimize the probability of occurrence of intelligence failure: (1) the President should exercise meticulous deliberation in the selection of the leader of the intelligence community, (2) both the President and the intelligence leader should understand the peculiarity of the intelligence culture and the sensitivities of the humint activities as well, and (3) the two should exercise extreme caution not to cause the politicization of intelligence by either misperception or mismanagement of the sensitive relationship between intelligence and policy, and finally (4) intelligence capabilities should be innovatively reinvented for the preemptive response to the new types of threats.