[Listmembers might also wish to check the jya.com site out, as they
have posted a copy of the CIA intel analysis process there. --MW]
________________________________________________________________________
CIA seeks to provide warnings of global conflicts
Copyright ) 1997 Nando.net
Copyright ) 1997 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (December 27, 1997 11:36 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net) --
The warning came Dec. 19, 1979 in a top secret alert: the Soviet Union
was preparing for "multibattalion combat operations" in Afghanistan.
CIA satellites had spied convoys of fuel trucks along narrow roads
leading to the Afghan border. But the spy agency said the Soviet force
appeared limited in scale and that an incursion might not be imminent.
Nine days later, the Soviets attacked, abruptly ending efforts at
reaching U.S.-Soviet detente.
The ability to provide "strategic warning" -- more than minutes or hours
before an attack -- was a major preoccupation of the CIA during the Cold
War, according to newly declassified intelligence documents.
It remains one today, with new threats arising in such flash points as
the Persian Gulf, Somalia and Bosnia.
"This has been an issue that has been worked extensively by the
intelligence community to try and help the policymaker focus on a
problem," said former CIA Director Robert Gates. "It's to say, 'You'd
better pay attention to this one because there's a chance it might blow
up in your face."'
The Associated Press examined the formerly top secret "National
Intelligence Estimates" dating from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Through much of the Cold War, the CIA presented a coldly realistic
picture of its ability to predict aggression. Despite aerial
reconnaissance, moles behind the Iron Curtain and a host of other
assets, the message was that war might come without warning, and that
any warning at all would likely be uncertain and hedged.
"The chances of providing warning of an ICBM attack designed to achieve
maximum surprise would be virtually nil," the CIA wrote in a 1966
estimate. "Intelligence could almost certainly give no firm warning of
an intention to attack. Intelligence is not likely to give warning of
probable Soviet intent to attack until a few hours before the attack, if
at all."
A source high in the Soviet government might help, if only the CIA had
one, the intelligence agency said five years earlier. Such an
intelligence coup was judged to be highly unlikely.
Though the technology of spying has improved markedly since then, the
number of potential enemies has increased.
In 1990 in the Persian Gulf, U.S. spy satellites saw Iraqi forces
massing on the Kuwaiti border, but policymakers discounted the
possibility of invasion after Arab allies said Saddam Hussein was
bluffing.
Intelligence officials say it is particularly difficult to predict a
missile attack -- whether by Soviet ICBM or Iraqi Scud.
"My warning was going to be physical evidence derived from infrared
satellites and ground-based radars of actual ICBM launches," said
retired Air Force Gen. Chuck Horner, who headed the NORAD North American
defense command in the early 1990s.
In an August 1978 top secret report, CIA analysts said their ability to
predict a Soviet chemical attack on Western Europe also was low. Easier
to foresee, the agency said, would be a conventional Soviet invasion
because of the preparations that would have to be undertaken.
Depending on the size of the Soviet force, the CIA said in November 1978
that it had high "confidence" it would detect war preparations almost
immediately and could provide three to 12 days advance warning.
Even so, the warning would be uncertain: "We are unlikely to be able to
... foretell when the enemy will attack, where he will attack, or
whether he will attack at all."
Complicating this was the CIA's conclusion that the most likely war
scenario involved an East-West crisis escalating to the point of
conflict.
The CIA said it would have a hard time differentiating whether the
preparations were defensive or offensive in nature. It was a recurring
problem; the CIA cited the same concerns in 1954.
"Soviet behavior in a period of heightened political tension would not
necessarily give specific warning of a Soviet intention to attack," the
agency said at the time.
These reports point to what intelligence experts view as the universal
challenge of strategic warning.
The best warnings require not just data but an insight into the mind of
an enemy, an elusive goal in the case of "rogue" adversaries such as
Saddam.
"The warning process is plagued with uncertainty from beginning to end,"
former warning intelligence expert Cynthia Grabo wrote in a monograph.
The CIA was created after the U.S. government failed to act on
indicators pointing to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Other
attacks that were not detected in advance or, if detected, were not
considered likely by policymakers include the North Korean invasion of
South Korea, Chinese intervention in Korea, the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia, the Tet offensive and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Within the CIA, Afghanistan emerged as a key episode because it provided
a rare instance in which the intelligence community could grade its own
powers of prediction.
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, who headed the CIA at the time, rated
the CIA's performance as "sterling."
"With our photographic satellite capability, nobody's going to line up
110,000 people to invade a country without our knowing it," Turner said.
The CIA itself, while saying it may have been too cautious in predicting
the size of the Soviet invasion, concluded that "no key policymaker
should have been surprised."
Reporting on Afghanistan might have been better, the agency said, had
not the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis in the fall of 1979
intervened. That episode caught the CIA and the Carter administration by
complete surprise.
Just over a decade later, U.S. spy satellites showed a force of more
than 100,000 massing near a border -- this time, the border of Kuwait.
But most top administration advisers considered the move a bluff and
doubted, up to the last minute, that Iraq would invade.
The CIA had anticipated this problem in a 1966 report.
"A warning judgment which is not believed by responsible policy
officials," the agency wrote, "is as ineffective as no warning at all."
By JOHN DIAMOND, The Associated Press
________________________________________________________________________
Once a week, CIA looks at likelihood of war
Copyright ) 1997 Nando.net
Copyright ) 1997 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (December 27, 1997 11:36 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net) --
Once a week a group of senior intelligence officials gathers at CIA
headquarters outside Washington to try to predict the likelihood of war.
They scan a list of a dozen or so hot spots and express their views in
terms of percentages about whether war will begin.
"We take odds," said a senior intelligence officer familiar with the
warning process. "What is the likelihood that this will happen over the
next six months? We poll the people."
If intelligence officials see an area of particular concern, they might
recommend that the CIA director issue an "alert memorandum" to the
president and his top national security advisers that conflict is
imminent.
"You are not hiring me to observe and comment," CIA Director George
Tenet said at his confirmation hearing. "You will be hiring me to warn
and protect."
Earlier this year, the intelligence community alerted senior
policymakers that refugee flows into Zaire from strife-torn Rwanda could
threaten the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was evenutally driven
from power.
Things have not always worked so smoothly, as with the government's
failure to clearly recognize in 1990 that Iraq was about to invade
Kuwait.
"The intelligence community could see the buildup of Iraqi forces
opposite Kuwait," said the senior official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. But policymakers remained skeptical.
After this experience, then-CIA Director Robert Gates established a
commission to recommend changes in how warnings are provided. The
commission's report, still classified, established a more formalized
National Warning Committee that would meet regularly and assess global
threats.
But Gates also wanted individual analysts who might hold minority views
to have access to the CIA chief.
"In most instances, by the time you have intelligence community
consensus on an issue, the invasion's already taken place," Gates said
in a telephone interview. "The real warning, more often than not, is
likely to come from that individual analyst."
By JOHN DIAMOND, The Associated Press
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