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Taking the Politics out of Intelligence

(Note: An earlier version of this post ran back in February and it seems appropriate to re-run in light of recent events. I’ve fattened it up in a few places and retooled it lightly. A bad idea? Not really. Impractical? Possibly. A meaningful exercise? Most certainly.)

That senior members of our intelligence community (IC) play politics with intelligence information is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that has come to a head in the aftermath of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and current allegations against former senior CIA officer Mary McCarthy. Having acknowledged the 800 lb gorilla, what in the world should we do about it? Should we do anything?

Just because one works in the IC does not mean that one surrenders any rights, though some – like free speech – come with caveats. People are going to have political opinions and vote the way they want; but the ballot box, not the country desk, is where political intrigues should stay.

Placing restrictions on the political activities of intelligence officers is neither a radical nor draconian idea. In the financial and legal worlds “Chinese Walls” are erected to help prevent conflicts of interest between different lines of business within the same firm. Members of the military are prohibited from running in partisan elections. This latter restriction grows out concerns over a coup d’etat, but while most in the military may lean right, one need only look at the slate of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have decided to run for state and national offices as Democrats to realize that the military is not politically homogeneous. So concerned are we over a military overthrow that we’ve completely disregarded the political machinations of the intelligence officers who help send soldiers off to war.

What follows are some suggestions on ways we might reduce the amount of potential political influence in our intelligence services. The goal here is not the abrogation of any rights, but prudent steps to reduce the opportunities to politicize intelligence.

Term Limits: In order to carry out any political machinations you have to be in a fairly senior position. You don’t see a lot of GS-9s getting rounded up for being subversive political operatives. As the IC is currently structured the only way to achieve senior status is to spend a lot of time in the system building up not only mission expertise but an extensive list of contacts through which you can carry out your plans. It would make sense then to restrict the tenure of IC staff above the grade of GS-14 to five years (you can come back after a five year hiatus if you want). This would apply to practitioners in all disciplines but especially managers and executives. Officers come into their own at grade 12 and don’t start to have serious influence on missions until they get promoted beyond that. Five years is enough time to put hard earned expertise to use in a leadership position, but not enough time to fully instill the feeling that permeates so many “lifers”: that they ARE the mission, they know best, and they’ll be damned if any politician is going to tell them how to save the world. Added Bonus: Returnees might actually develop new skills and broader outlooks that they can now put to use in the business.

Restrictions on Political Affiliation & Support: Much has been made about Mary McCarthy’s substantial financial contributions to a political party and candidates within that party. Making contributions is certainly her right, but when they all go to one side of the political spectrum; the people who come to your defense are all from that same side of the spectrum; and you are accused of contributing to stories that portray the other side of the spectrum in a negative light; the idea that you are a neutral speaker of truth-to-power becomes questionable. So, I suggest that for the duration of one’s service in the IC you be prohibited from belonging to any political party or action committee, or donating time, money, or other resources to same. You are welcome to have your political opinions you are just required to voice that opinion at the ballot box, not in your assessments.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Want to watch federal employees flush a day of tax-payer funded work down the toilet? Start a political discussion between the cubes of officers who are veterans working military issues and those who were previously academics working political issues. The WWE wishes they could put on a show like what you would witness. Best to avoid all of that and say: no political discussions, stickers, posters, buttons or other items in the office. No one is saying you can’t root for one side or the other you just have to do it on your own time.

Curtail Congressional Liaison: People love to rend hair and gnash teeth over the supposed evils done by intelligence agencies, but they forget that Congress is responsible for making sure no such evils ever happen. By-and-large the oversight committees only get involved after a real or perceived scandal hits the papers. Members and their staffs are busy people, but watching orchestrated dog-and-pony shows and calling that oversight is what I call slacking. By all means each agency should keep their congressional liaison offices open, but they should be re-tooled to become facilitators of meetings, not gatekeepers of information. Leave officers and members or their staffs to meet alone and as they like to discuss what they will without the presence of a mother hen. If Members are going to do their jobs properly they deserve plenty of frank and direct - not “approved” – information.

The Four-Man Rule: I give a lot more credit to exposés that are not one-man productions. Color me skeptical, but either everyone else in the office is a scared drone and you’re the only one with the stones to speak up, or maybe things aren’t really the way you view them. Contrast most of the IC scandals to date against Able Danger, which has a squad of people lined up to express their dismay at malfeasance and missed opportunities. I submit that if you are going to blow a whistle you should do it with at least one other officer with knowledge of the issues you plan to raise. If your concerns are valid you should have no trouble finding an ally. I also recommend that any meeting with a member of an oversight committee must be done not only with a fellow officer but with a member of the other party on the same committee. If you are raising a legitimate national security concern then it deserves attention from both sides of the aisle. It is also harder to plot a politically-driven intelligence coup if the opposition is sitting right in front of you.

These are a starting point and certainly not all-inclusive. Additional carrots and sticks are also necessary, such as real protection for whistle-blowers (those who follow the rules) and serious punishments for those who meet with unauthorized recipients in parking garages and send signals to each other via the placement of potted plants.

Running football betting pools or selling Girl Scout cookies are all prohibited activities in federal offices, but that doesn’t stop them from taking place. It is not that there are bad rules – they address real concerns - but there is no need for a heavy hand when no offense is taken. Any rules meant to address political influence in the IC should be treated in a similar fashion because in DC especially, people make their political dispositions known. What we need is a hammer that can be dropped on those that cross the line between having political beliefs and taking political action.

Update: Looks like Ms. Chavez agrees.

Update II: Steve Hayes wraps it all up for us.

Politicizing intel or the other way around?

Able Danger blog points out an interesting development.

What We Face

The Iraqi Perspectives Project report. A good read so far. Jump to page 183 for a nice eye-opener.

700 files out of at least 600,000 (assuming they mean just hardcopy). Sufficient to judge? Add in audio and video tape, computer tapes and the computers themselves. Still sufficient or no? Just asking.

Are They For Real?

Speaking of being gob-smacked, check out today’s WaPo editorial on the CIA leak case. If you can’t bear it, let me summarize:

• Leaking is bad unless they decide that it is good
• The CIA trying to mitigate the effect of leaks by keeping a lid on secret programs is bad
• D/CIA Goss hunting down and punishing leakers is bad
• Leaking is bad unless it is a leak to a journalist, who gets to decide what is and isn’t damaging
• D/CIA Goss cleaning house (of partisan leakers, and old-think geezers) is bad

At no point in this piece of work is there any acknowledgement that the reason leaking is a punishable offense is because it has the potential to cause grave damage to the security of the country. That word “grave” is used specifically and for a reason: leaks inevitably lead to someone’s death. Not only is the Post keen on using and abusing those that feed it (don’t hear about the Post sponsoring a replace-Mary McCarthy’s-pension fund), they’re indignant that they are not immune from the principle of causality.

At the end of this rant is a complaint that Goss opted not to hold anyone accountable for the failures of the IC pre-9/11. If there is one thing I am in sync with the Post’s editorial board about it is that. Maybe Kimmel and Short got a raw deal, but they knew the rules of the game. Same goes for every Captain who was in his cabin when some Ensign ran his ship aground, or every Sergeant whose troop trips over his dingle-dangle. It is why people might grumble about hard-asses but they give them respect: they bust your b@lls not because it earns them glory but because it reduces the chance that they (and their people) will pay the price.

This last point however, is a distraction: cleaning house and giving leakers the boot is indeed part of the process of improving US intelligence. The less we have to worry about fighting each other, the more we can concentrate on fighting our enemies.

Pay for Performance

A good post at Secrecy News about changes in how intelligence officers are compensated.

Perhaps it is because I can work like a fiend that I find the prospect of breaking free of the General Schedule so attractive. Knowing that the geezer with 30 years tenure who spent his days reading the paper would make a lot less than I would (as opposed to the status quo) is a serious boost to morale, not just the pocketbook.

The question becomes: How do you assess value? Volume alone isn’t the answer because as soon as you affix a value to a given product the system will overflow with crap. Quality? When do you judge that and by what criteria? At the time of production because the writing is elegant or five years down the road when your projections are all proven to have been correct? Do you take into consideration each mission? Do CT analysts ride a huge compensation wave while the roads and bridges shop starves?

Once again we can turn to the ‘Net for an answer.

Assume the developments discussed in the previous post come to fruition. The next logical step is to then apply a Digg or eBay-style ranking and/or an Amazon-style rating system. Over 100 analysts and policymakers though Alice’s assessment on the latest reporting from Darfur was top-notch? That’s a boost to her bottom line. Bob’s work on that joint analysis project was ranked ‘mediocre’ by his peers on the staff? No raise for Bob. Charlie hasn’t posted for a month and he hasn’t even begun to fulfill his Wiki entries? Watch for a drop in take-home pay.

Implementation would not be technically difficult and over time the automation factor would allow you to cut out more overhead. Like any such mechanism you’ll have to have a means in place to make sure people aren’t gaming the system by colluding with their pals. It most certainly will be a shock to those used to the old system but as I said previously; if you make it mandatory, it’ll work.

Getting Wiki With It

Someone besides a General in Omaha talking about operating in the 21st Century:

The intelligence community can learn from the behavior of ant colonies to improve information sharing — and it can use wikis and blogs, a CIA official said today.

The intelligence community must respond more quickly to maintain tactical and strategic advantage over adversaries, said Calvin Andrus, chief technology officer at the CIA’s Center for Mission Innovation.

“We’re not in an arms race with our adversaries — it’s a time race,” Andrus said at the E-Gov/FCW Events Knowledge Management 2006 conference in Washington, D.C.

Reorganizing is not the answer because that presumes the past can predict the future, Andrus said. The future is becoming increasingly unpredictable as decisions involve more complex interactions of information and as faster communications technology accelerates the decision-making cycle, he said.

The intelligence community must change quickly in ways that it cannot predict, he added.

BINGO!

That’s where ant colonies can play a role. Complexity theory states that complex, adaptive group behavior can be built by having individuals follow simple behaviors, Andrus said.

In an ant colony, each ant knows a few rules — move dirt, carry a pupa, find food — and uses them to react in various situations, Andrus said. If too many ants are carrying pupae, others will go find food on their own without looking to the queen for direction or permission.

In a similar way, Andrus said, “we need intelligence officers who just go do.” They can’t do that if they have to ask for permission every time they want to share information, he said. “It’s about letting employees be free to share and act” and trusting them to follow simple rules of engagement.

In this area my second to last boss was my best boss. You had a set of givens that needed to be accomplished, but there was no question that whatever time left was your own. He rewarded initiative and self-starters, both when it came time to doll out the pittance that our Uncle allotted, and in the most valuable way of all: he blocked while you carried the ball. We didn’t always make it to the end zone, but we made forward progress. Thanks D.

Blogs can be used to track and share individuals’ intellectual capital, especially their disagreements and mistakes, Andrus said. Wikis can aggregate common knowledge and wisdom, he said, and they don’t require participants to get permission to act or update.

Man, this sounds familiar. It goes on and then, the kicker:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence must build an incentive and reward structure to change the organization’s business model to incorporate wikis and blogs, Andrus said.

Wikis and blogs are as essential as e-mail and word processing for 21st-century organizations, Andrus said. “Gen-Y-ers have it down.”

Nothing is going to change, NOTHING, as long as there is no real incentive to do so. What do I mean by “real?” If it is in your performance evaluation, it is real. If it is in your charter, it is real. If you have to show up once a week with stats on how much of “it” you are doing, it is real. To the best of my knowledge none of this is “real” yet, though it has to be if we are to succeed from an intelligence perspective.

The biggest roadblock to success in this area is the fact that it breaks the pyramid, or rather; it connects the series of pyramids that we label “community”, rendering the masters of the pyramid useless. When you no longer need gatekeepers (insert your own press-editor-blogger example here) to “coordinate” and when things are essentially self-organizing, you start to see just how much bloat you as an institution are carrying around. The elimination of inefficiencies becomes dramatic and you can put people back into productive work again or you can cut them loose. That’s more time that can be spent doing meaningful work and more money that can be spent on practical issues (or to get really radical: that’s extra money we could say we don’t need).

Some have lambasted open source efforts along these lines, but I can’t recall ever having seen a response to any issue on the “inside” that took place as quickly or was as comprehensive as any blogswarm on the outside. Group efforts traditionally have required physical presence, hours of discussion, and weeks of back office work. End results might see daylight months down the road. A fine process in Kent’s day, but ill-suited for this age.

Info Sharing Progress?

U.S. intelligence tsar John Negroponte “is winning his battles” to boost information-sharing, a senior U.S. official said.

Dale Meyerrose, the official in charge of information technology for the sprawling collection of U.S. agencies managed by Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, is defending the Bush administration’s efforts to improve the sharing of vital counter-terrorism information.

Meyerrose told UPI that the new director’s office was “winning battles” over information sharing every day, but he acknowledged that the larger “war” — to create the policy, institutional and cultural changes needed — continues.

Starts to get interesting here:

He said portals [for bird flu issues] were modeled on the blog-type pages used by researchers or programmers collaborating online — with everyone reading each other’s information and analysis, and able to comment on it.

“The analysts came to us and said ‘We have a problem…’ 95 percent of what they thought they were sharing was not getting out there,” Meyerrose said.

It turned out the reason was the inclusion of what he called “ORCON-type elements” in the headers and footers of some documents. ORCON means “originator controlled” — a designation which prevents anyone distributing or passing along a document without the permission of the agency that produced it.

ORCON: The real bane of information sharing . . .

“Within 24 hours, this office issued written instructions to all the agencies involved that they must change their procedures and we provided technical specifications for that to happen,” said Meyerrose.

Final judgment to be withheld for now, but on balance it seems like the guy is doing the right things and addressing the right issues. The faster we overcome this hurdle the better, because so much rides on our ability to work off of a common picture.

One Solution

Much flailing about the last two days about Ms. McCarthy and her relationship (or not – ahem) with the press, whether the press has a right to do this or that, and how do we fix the situation? For my $.02:

• Let the press do what they do. By all means. The more open and free it is the better. Nothing wrong with extolling the virtues of another era (Eisenhower telling the press when D-Day was and them not reporting it early) but no sense in getting worked up if they don’t oblige you.

• Once found and prosecuted, actually punish leakers. Lots of damaging leaks these last few years, but precious few prosecutions. The result? More people feel that leaking isn’t all that because no one gets in trouble. Want to see the wellspring of unauthorized disclosures dry up? Start sending leakers to the big house.

No one to leak = no leaks to publish. Does it get any simpler?

Not Serious XII

Just days after U.S. troops were ordered to plug a security breach at their base here, the black market trade in computer memory drives containing military documents was thriving again Monday.

I’m gobsmacked.

Endulge in your fantasy

I’m reminded that my neighbor Vince Flynn does a fine job portraying in Term Limits the impact of what leaking can do and what a lot of more rash folks would like to do to leakers. A short extract here.

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