An Anti-War “Teach-In” at the CIA?
02.29.2008 - 9:43 AMHistorians Against the War was formally founded at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Its statement of purpose can be found on its website:
As historians, teachers, and scholars, we oppose the expansion of United States empire and the doctrine of pre-emptive war that have led to the occupation of Iraq. We deplore the secrecy, deception, and distortion of history involved in the administration’s conduct of a war that violates international law, intensifies attacks on civil liberties, and reaches toward domination of the Middle East and its resources.
Taking a leaf from the anti-Vietnam war movement, Historians Against the War sponsors “teach-ins” on college campuses across the United States in which radical professors offer their view on such subjects as U.S. imperialism and the Bush administration’s “assault on the U.S. Constitution and civil liberties.”
On April 9, 2003, one such teach-in was held at Temple University in Pennsylvania, where one such radical professor, Richard Immerman, took part. As I have noted in the Weekly Standard, in a recently “scholarly” article in Diplomatic History, the journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Immerman recounts how the Bush administration, in leading the United States into the war in Iraq, made “every effort to ‘cook the books,’ . . . ‘hyped’ the need to go to war, and . . . lied too often to count.” He calls Bush and his cabinet members “cognitively impaired and politically possessed.”
Such views would all be completely unremarkable if Immerman were just a mere–and all too typical–professor at a second-tier university. But he is not. He has gone on to greater glory. Last September, he was appointed to the position of “assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic integrity and standards” and “ombudsman” inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the top intelligence body in the United States. In that slot he is in charge of ensuring the “analytic integrity” of American intelligence reports.
One question I have about this whole affair is whether Immerman has been taking part in or organizing “teach-ins” against the war inside the intelligence community in institutions like the CIA. Another question is what his colleagues and superiors think. To answer that second one, I’ve been contacting various top spies and seeking their comments. Here is what one senior intelligence official, who did want his name used, told me:
His assertions are way off base. His statements are not only biased, they are baffling. It’s troubling and it raises all sorts of questions. If someone who holds these views was selected for that particular position, it makes you wonder what the other candidates looked like.
It is mildly heartening that not everyone within the intelligence world thinks like Immerman, although at the same time the failure of anyone, including Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, to speak out publicly is profoundly discouraging.
We are in the middle of a war in which intelligence is the most critical front. The elevation of an obscure, radical, anti-war professor to be responsible for the “analytic integrity” of U.S. intelligence reports raises a question that after September 11, 2001, we should not be having to ask: is this country serious about intelligence or not?
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February 29th, 2008 at 12:12 PM
I’m not sure how long it will take us to realize that intelligence is subvertible and corruptible no matter what. It cannot be otherwise: intelligence amounts to an official opinion on what ambiguous indicators mean. It is not and never will be X-ray vision. As with war, in intelligence, the enemy has a vote — and so does politics. Always; regardless of who is in the White House, or who presides at Langley or Foggy Bottom.
After all, the actionable political meaning of 3000 gas centrifuges operating in Iran is entirely — entirely — dependent on the political predisposition of Americans using that datum. We know the centrifuges are there, and indeed 3000 was the tally in late 2006; we can assume there are more in operation now. Our perspective on this comes not from “intelligence” but from politics. The same is true for Iran suspending the weaponization element of its nuclear programs in 2003.
Making intelligence our most critical front in this war may seem like the only option we have. But it is not. It is, rather, the most acceptable REACTIVE option. It seemingly allows us to postpone action until a predefined trigger has been spotted. We don’t want to postpone action until Iran has deposited a nuclear warhead on Tel Aviv (or Paris). But we basically feel that the only politically expedient alternative is postponing action until we have reached a magic intellectual certainty that Iran has — well, we haven’t defined what, exactly, but apparently we’ll know it when we see it.
If you hold my political views, you know with deathless certainty that Iran has ALREADY demonstrated undeterrability, by diplomatic means, in her long-term nuclear aspirations. But that deathless certainty arises not from some better form of “intelligence,” but from what I consider the most realistic, integrated, historically supportable interpretation of the same intelligence everyone else is looking at.
On the other hand, if you want to convince people that I am perpetrating an “intelligence failure” by holding this view, it is not hard to do. All that is required is to cast tangential doubt on one or more data points — whether they are central to my analysis or not — and shift the standard for certainty about the ultimate conclusion. How, after all, DO we know that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons — in a way that is actionable FOR US? Equally important, at what juncture do we conclude that Iran has passed the point of diplomatic deterrability, and will have to be dealt with by other means?
Intelligence can’t answer these questions, which are vague and ill-defined in the first place. These are questions for POLICY. I would be willing to bet most CTD readers don’t have a specific definition in mind of what is actionable, and what is going too far, on Iran’s part, in the realm of nuclear weapons. We may think about it and come up with rapid, not unintelligent answers, but most of us haven’t thought about the fact that these definitions are crucial to making “intelligence” our “most critical front.”
The US has never issued policy defining these quantities, and the main reason for that is assuredly that by the rules of diplomacy, specific-trigger policy amounts to overdefinition, and might constrain us to act when we don’t want to. But without such definitions, we can’t expect “intelligence” to tell us when Iran has gone too far. That’s something only policy can recognize.
For all the atrocious tradecraft and politicization of the 2007 NIE, on the other hand, the IC has not wavered to date on its timeframe estimate of when Iran could have an operational nuclear weapon. We can expect Iran to have a nuke by 2012-2015. Does anyone here doubt that? Even the most vociferous opponents of preemptive action against Iran have not expressed doubt about it. If we vaguely assume that we are waiting for some unspecified, not-yet-emerged trigger between now and then, to prompt action to avert Iran’s nuclear consummation; and if we assign intelligence to be the keeper of the trigger, but without further defining it — then WE are handing over national policy to whoever is wearing the green eyeshades at the moment.
Intelligence is only our most critical front in the GWOT because making it so allows us to postpone action. WHENEVER you assign intelligence to be your line in the sand, you do so because you are not politically ready to act yet. But you also hand the enemies of your policy a weapon thereby. Whether they act from within your IC or from without — using deception, obfuscation, the casting of doubt on single data points — your enemies WILL seek to manipulate intelligence, because it is such a high payoff effort. Intelligence, in its inherent ambiguity, will never be able to perfectly withstand this assault.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:52 PM
Doesn’t all this explain why the US fails so miserably in the war on islamism?
I mean, the CIA’s man responsible for OBL was Scheuer.
Enough said.
February 29th, 2008 at 1:18 PM
Gabe, one thing I’d love for you to post on, as a somewhat student of the issue, is the whole Team B experience (the first one in ‘76) and whether to repeat it, as it relates to your question above: “is this country serious about intelligence or not?”
I note that Immerman in his article, following virtually everything written about the original Team B exercise (Ann Cahn’s book in particular), stated that Team B got everything completely wrong, and otehrs have accused it of being hyper-partisan, unfactual, etc. But they did get a few things right, on both technical points (Soviet missile accuracy, for one) and doctrinal points (the Sovs did indeed contemplate nuclear warfighting/war-winning strategy and had begun to implement this through new aquisitions). And overall they were right about Soviet intentions: they were not benign and defensive, as Afghanistan among other talking points show.
But I digress, and ask that you consider posting something on Team B and whether we need a new Team B today. For me, I’d much rather have the intel community spend money on a Team B for the Middle East than on reshuffling the bureaucracy.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:28 PM
Jon S., you raise an interesting question. There’s too much here to try to discuss comprehensively, but a key issue in evaluating Team B must be the persons who were assigned to it, who included Richard Pipes, Seymour Weiss, Paul Wolfowitz, and Paul Nitze.
The vehicle for proposing Team B was the President’s Foreign Policy Advisory Board (PFIAB), which has only rarely in its 50+ year history been chaired by someone who was not steeped in the mindset of the foreign policy establishment. In 1975, when Team B was proposed, the chairman was Admiral George Anderson, who was Chief of Naval Operations during the Cuban missile crisis, and later clashed with Robert McNamara over policy, and resigned. Anderson is known in the Naval community for having been a (then-retired) proponent of the developing “Maritime Strategy” in the late 1970s. (The Maritime Strategy envisioned taking the maritime fight of the Cold War’s central front — Europe — to the Soviet Navy, through forward deployment and perpetual readiness for a surge forward, in case of tensions or war. A similar idea was applied to the Pacific theater. Reagan’s “600-ship” project was to arm the Navy for this strategy.)
In today’s environment I don’t see a Team B being assembled with anyone of the stature of Richard Pipes. The current PFIAB chairman, Stephen Friedman, is not a bad guy but he has no background in the use of intelligence for national security. His background is entirely in securities, investment, and economics (he was Bush’s chief economic adviser before moving to PFIAB). There is no effective counterweight now to the anti-Bush, policy-maker wannabes in the IC. The fulcrum on which to leverage a truly independent Team B doesn’t exist, after the IC reorganization.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:32 PM
I meant to add that I’d enjoy Gabe’s take on this very much, as well.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:14 PM
Are ALL intelligence indicators ambiguous??? What about unambiguous ones which CIA seems unable to get because it is incompetent and full of people like Scheuer and Immerman?
Hell, they were unable to properly vet an advisor to the 2nd in command at the Pentagon with a false resume and a MB background.
After 9/11 some TV network invited several former CIA ME desk chiefs to comment. The interviewer went around the table asking them who spoke arabic and studied the ME. Can you guess? NONE!!!!
So all this sophistication is nice. The reality is much more mundane.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:11 PM
As I’ve suggested before, we’re using a standard of proof more exacting than that for a criminal trial conviction, having become terrified of the consequences of settling for an indictment. Which would be bad enough if we weren’t also permitting defense counsel to argue our case.
February 29th, 2008 at 8:45 PM
oao - yes, they are all ambiguous. This doesn’t mean they are AMBIVALENT, meaning that they might suggest diverging moral interpretations of the character or intentions of the surveillance target. It means that they are ambiguous — they are indications of possible or probable specific intentions or capabilities. They signify a trend about which we can make worst case and most likely case estimates.
We may be quite correct about who is our enemy, and whether he is up to something bad; but intelligence will always be imperfect on whether he has 1000, 10,000, or 30,000 chemical warheads, or how effectively he employs them, or whether he will pursue a set doctrine in using them, or if he has the cojones to use them on American troops, or Israeli civilians, versus on Iranians or Kurds.
Having done intelligence for years, I can tell you that being perfectly correct is a matter of luck. We make a considerable portion of our own luck by cultivating linguists, and students of target regions, like the Middle East. There’s no question the CIA is much at fault for its many failures in that and other regards. But the kinds of evidentiary “certainty” on which the Iraq intelligence, for example, has been judged, after the invasion, is a kind of certainty that intelligence will never have.
March 1st, 2008 at 1:55 AM
Much verbiage but no approach to the real problem. There is no downside risk for failure in the intelligence business. No one is ever fired despite disaster after disaster. Hence there is no incentive to hire smart and work hard. The CIA and other intelligence agencies are no doubt filled with the slow children and nephews of congressmen and their contributors - the same sorts of folks who staff motor vehicle bureaus across the country.
March 1st, 2008 at 5:13 AM
What was McConnell thinking when he hired Immerman? What does his action imply? It seems clear to me that he was playing politics. In view of the weakness of the president and the vice president Immerman’s appointment aims to placate the democrats, the state department and the NYT.
Are McConnell’s political maneuvres damaging the functioning of the American intelligence services? I think that they do. Moreover I think that a service that is so highly politicized is badly flawed.