OPINION — I’ve been wondering what I would say to my former government colleagues at this time of imminent change if I was still working among them in the intelligence community. I’m assuming they must be feeling something between puzzlement and anxiety, given the President-elect’s talk of retribution, the contempt he and his associates direct toward the chimera they call the “deep state”, and the elevation of loyalty as the litmus test for assignments in government. Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz seemed to emphasize the latter standard in deciding recently to replace all the National Security Staff on Inauguration Day and bring in people “100 percent aligned with the president’s agenda.” If we take all of this at face value, it’s easy to predict hard times ahead for intelligence professionals – people who do typically work to support the President but who must sometimes report hard data that can complicate execution of the President’s agenda.
Against that backdrop, anything short of hair-on-fire from someone like me risks sounding complacent or naïve. That’s far from my intention, but I do think it’s worth calmly thinking through how intelligence professionals should prepare to cope with challenges that, in my experience with six presidential transitions, are unprecedented. Here, unsolicited, are six strategic perspectives — ones I think I might try on if I was still in government harness.
Stay cool. No telling what this period of intense polarization and partisanship will produce, but there is likely to be a lot of controversy and high emotion on display. In such moments, intelligence professionals must be the dispassionate ones around the table – the ones who set aside emotion when looking at people and events and see them almost clinically, not emotionally or with preconceptions. This must involve a realization that, as with a typical intelligence problem, we don’t have all the data. It is easy to infer the worst, but let’s see how appointees define themselves in congressional hearings, in the heat of real government responsibility, in their day-to-day relations with intelligence officers, and — most importantly — when the National Security Council turns to them to set the factual stage in advance of a critical foreign policy decision. They may arrive in office with their minds made up about key issues and what the intelligence should say, but we must stay open to the possibility that they are prepared to observe, absorb, question, listen, and recalibrate. Whether they are will become apparent rather quickly.
If you are thinking about leaving, don’t. Your job – your mission and professional ethic – is more important than ever. This is true not just in terms of the challenges the world presents to U.S. interests, but also in terms of the central ethic of the profession. You work in the least political part of our government. The essential service you perform is to be the “fact witness” in national councils – especially at a time like this when there is great disagreement and confusion about what is true, what to believe, or for that matter, what constitutes a fact. As a former colleague said in one of my graduate classes: “The subjectivity of truth is the crisis of our time”.
Your job remains as it always has been – to be as objective as humanly possible during controversy, confusion, and distrust. I always found it useful to keep in mind Rudyard Kipling’s formulation of what constitutes courage and responsibility under pressure: “…keeping your head while all about you people are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” I often found when tempers flared, and emotions soared that a confident recitation of the facts had a calming influence. But you do have to know your facts. So, prepare.
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Your tradecraft is your superpower. The essence of intelligence tradecraft, whether in analysis or operations, is to understand what you truly and confidently know, what you don’t know, and, as you convey judgment about a situation, to be clear about those distinctions with those you serve. This is particularly important when your view is challenged for any reason, as I often experienced — in administrations by both Republicans and Democrats.
At such moments, your best defense is to know what is unassailable in your position and why, and to hold that ground while staying open to argument on what you know to be uncertain or debatable. This involves knowing better than anyone else the breadth of the available reporting and the strengths and weaknesses within it. There is such a blizzard of reporting on many issues that reports can often be arranged to prove almost anything if people take it all literally – something new administrations are prone to do as they search for intelligence that affirms their view. So, the trick is to know what in that body of reporting is solid, reliable, and corroborated by other data — and what and why other reporting is shaky.
In other words, exquisite tradecraft should allow you to stand firm, but also to remain open to contrary views and to give them fair consideration where that is merited.
A bit of humility can be a virtue. This is especially so with some of today’s more vexing issues. Who can truly know with high confidence what Chinese president Xi will do, and when, regarding Taiwan. Yes, people can have strong views and make persuasive cases, but in the end no one really knows, maybe including Xi himself. Or what will the Russian military look like in ten years? Again, you must make projections, but these will only be estimates. It’s good to remember that Sherman Kent, the famous analyst of CIA’s early days, once said — “Estimating is what you do when you don’t know”. So on such matters, give your best estimate based on as much data as you can muster but remain open to dissent and debate – and hope that those on the other side will as well. Sometimes only time will reveal who is right and who is wrong.
Always remember you inform policy, but you don’t make it. Once you’ve done your best job to objectively define the situation, it’s up to policymakers, elected and otherwise, to decide how they want to deploy the nation’s power and influence.
Sometimes, the intelligence is so powerful and compelling that it literally determines that decision and drives the policy. But there are just as many times when Intelligence officers wonder why officials do one thing when the intelligence data clearly points more persuasively to other alternatives. At such moments, it’s useful to remember that senior policy officials often make their decisions on a dozen other considerations beyond the intelligence. And to recall that many of them have been elected and that you have not — and this factors into their decision-making too.
Finally, it is likely that a kind of leveling factor will kick in. Most administrations start off convinced that their predecessors either did a terrible job or were just clueless about the world – the Trump administration is no exception and probably comes to office with strong views on what it expects intelligence to confirm about the world. But sooner or later, it becomes blindingly apparent that the only good intelligence is that which is objective, unvarnished, accurate and that gives the President decision advantage. Policy disaster comes to policymakers who insist that intelligence conform to some politically pleasing standard. And intelligence disaster comes to intelligence officers who are tempted to discern that standard and play to it.
Hopefully, none of this will happen, and we will look back and conclude that we were seeing and hearing a cartoon version of what the administration turned out to be. But if not, the challenges the world throws at Washington have a way of eventually focusing people on the need for good and accurate intelligence. That thought was memorialized by President Harry Truman, who created the CIA in 1947. On his photo in the Agency’s first floor corridor, he wrote something in his own firm hand that always inspired and cheered me in difficult times: “To the CIA, a necessity to the President of the United States – from one who knows.” Sooner or later, all presidents come to know what Harry Truman knew.
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