Re: NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: The C.I.A.:

[Victor Steinbok <victor.steinbok@verizon.net>]

At 10:41 AM 2/3/2004, kvscanty@pacbell.net wrote:
> I know this doesn't appear to be an anti-testing article but I think it 
> sums up the problem perfectly...karen

It's quite entertaining, which what newspapers have been lately around 
here. If you want hard news, you have to go elsewhere.

> Op-Ed Columnist: The C.I.A.: Method and Madness
>
> February 3, 2004
>  By DAVID BROOKS
>
>
>
>
>
> After speaking to "innumerable" U.S. intelligence officers,
> David Kay has concluded that Bush administration officials
> did not pressure analysts to exaggerate the threats posed
> by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction....

No, they did not pressure them to exaggerate--they did all the exaggeration 
on their own.

> ...Leading the C.I.A.'s own internal review, Richard Kerr has
> apparently also concluded that there is no evidence that
> political pressures influenced the C.I.A. reports.
>
> And this is precisely the problem.

I suppose, we should let the White House run the intelligence operations. 
Wait, they already do! Oh, yeah, that one's against you and me, not the 
external "enemies".

> For decades, the U.S.
> intelligence community has propagated the myth that it
> possesses analytical methods that must be insulated
> pristinely from the hurly-burly world of politics. The
> C.I.A. has portrayed itself as, and been treated as, a sort
> of National Weather Service of global affairs.

And it's been about as accurate. Actually, the NWS has improved leaps and 
bounds in the last five years. The CIA had the technology available a lot 
longer and their record is becoming worse.

> It has relied on this aura of scientific objectivity for its
> prestige, and to justify its large budgets, despite a
> record studded with error.

There is nothing wrong with data analysis, as long as the people in charge 
understand that statistical predictions are not deterministic. This 
particular point is very closely related to the interests of this list--we 
are dealing with the same single-minded obsession to put all the eggs into 
one statistical basket.

> The C.I.A.'s scientific pretensions were established early
> on by Sherman Kent. In his 1949 book "Strategic
> Intelligence for American World Policy," Kent argued that
> the truth is to be approached through a systematic method,
> "much like the method of the physical sciences."

Again, there is nothing wrong with that, especially for the time when this 
was said. The difference is that the intelligence services are not dealing 
just with physical objects, but with human minds. Again, the parallel with 
educational issues is stunning. Human sciences cannot make deterministic 
predictions, period. One can offer trends, tendencies and distributions, 
suggest methods for improvement, but he should always be prepared that a 
substantial minority may buck the trend and that methods will fail to offer 
improvements for many. In education, ignoring this caution ruins lives. In 
the intelligence business, it ends them.

> This was at a time, just after the war, when economists,
> urban planners and social engineers believed that human
> affairs could be understood scientifically, and that the
> social sciences could come to resemble hard sciences like
> physics.

I may see behaviorists behind every corner, but, in this case, they really 
were behind this trend.

> If you read C.I.A. literature today, you can still see
> scientism in full bloom. The tone is cold, formal,
> depersonalized and laden with jargon.

To be more precise, this is not "scientism"--it is reductionism. And 
reductionism can be a very dangerous thing, especially in the hands of 
narrow minds, which, for the most part, what seems to prevail at the top of 
the food chain both in Washington and in the intelligence services. The 
real thinkers rarely make it to the top--they are too soft, they are prone 
to agonize over their decisions and that is not what is expected of "leaders".

> You can sense how the
> technocratic process has factored out all those insights
> that may be the product of an individual's intuition and
> imagination, and emphasized instead the sort of data that
> can be processed by an organization.

See above.

> This false scientism was bad enough during the cold war,
> when the intelligence community failed to anticipate
> seemingly nonrational events like the Iran-Iraq war or the
> Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But it is terrible now in
> the age of terror, because terror is largely nonrational.

Is this guy kidding? Having been IN the Soviet Union at the time of the 
Afghanistan invasion, it appeared to be a perfectly natural--and 
rational--outcome. The trouble with analysts here--Marshall Goldman is my 
favorite target for this purpose--is that they think they know more than 
they do. The fault lies precisely with the human element--even the most 
elaborate technologically and scientifically based prediction still require 
human interpretation and this is where the failures have been. Don't blame 
the technology for the incompetence of its operators.

> What kind of scientific framework can explain the rage for
> suicide bombings, now sweeping the Middle East?

It's called cultural psychology--something that has been rejected as a 
science by the reductionist hard-liners. Again, there is a parallel with 
education.

> What technocratic mentality can really grasp the sadistic
> monster who was pulled out of the spider hole a few weeks
> ago? Under Saddam, Iraqi society seems to have been in a
> state of advanced decomposition, with drastic consequences
> for its W.M.D. program. How can corruption and madness be
> understood by analysts in Langley, who have a tendency to
> impose a false order on reality?

The same mentality that has ignored or supported Marcos, Bosota, Noriega 
(until he became insubordinate), Duarte, to name a few. Wait a second, they 
supported Saddam initially as well, did they not? Any scientist would 
notice a pattern here. The trouble is that we've asked non-scientists to 
interpret allegedly scientific data. And, ultimately, the decisions to ACT 
lie with politicians, not the CIA. Again, technocracy appears to be blamed 
for purely human failings.

> We're in a heck of a bind. In the age of global terror and
> W.M.D., we can't wait until threats are right on top of us.
> And yet, given the errors over Iraqi W.M.D. stockpiles,
> we're going to find it very difficult to act preventively
> because we won't be able to have confidence in our
> information.

We should not have had it to begin with! See above concerning determinism.

> The people at the C.I.A. understand the problem: on the
> C.I.A. Web site, you can find a book called "Psychology of
> Intelligence Analysis," which details the community's blind
> spots. But the C.I.A. can't correct itself by being a
> better version of itself. The methodology is the problem.

Well, that may be the case, but the problem is not exactly where this guy 
thinks it is--you have to look in the right places even if your methodology 
is correct. We have not been doing that because the search is politically 
motivated even if the methods are not.

> When it comes to understanding the world's thugs and
> menaces, I'd trust the first 40 names in James Carville's
> P.D.A. faster than I'd trust a conference-load of game
> theorists or risk-assessment officers.

And you would fall into exactly the same trap. These are the guys who do 
not understand the meaning of the word "may" on an intelligence report. 
They always see an affirmation of whatever they expect politically. One 
cannot cull the data for information that matches his prejudices, then turn 
around and blame the source of the information for not offering alternatives.

> I'd trust politicians, who, whatever their faults, have finely tuned
> antennae for the flow of events. I'd trust Mafia bosses,
> studio heads and anybody who has read a Dostoyevsky novel
> during the past five years.

Somehow, the world was not better off with politicians running the show. 
WWI comes to mind--the conflict was not the fault of overanalyzing 
"technocracy". It really sounds like David Brooks is campaigning for a job.

> Most of all, I'd trust individuals over organizations.
> Individuals can use intuition, experience and a feel for
> the landscape of reality. When you read an individual's
> essay, you know you're reading one person's best guess, not
> a falsely authoritative scientific finding.

That's funny and scare at the same time--trusting individuals over 
organizations CAN be a good thing, but, unchecked, it becomes anarchy. And, 
as I said earlier, ultimately the failings have been from human decisions, 
not necessarily from relying on "science" and "data" in organizations. But 
one does have to focus on individuals--that is, the decisions should be 
made individually. Hungary should not be analyzed the same way as Iraq even 
if trends appear similar (not that they do), nor should North Korea be seen 
in the same light as Iran or China or Cuba. It's all too easy to paint the 
world into "friends" and "enemies", but we are reaping the harvest from 
just this kind of policy that was allowed to dominate for forty years. The 
Wall might have fallen in Berlin, but it still stands in Washington.

> So when the president names the members of intelligence
> review commission,

Speaking of individuals whose decisions should not be trusted...

> I hope he won't just select people who
> are products of the old methodology. I hope he'll pick
> people who will fundamentally rethink intelligence. And I
> hope he'll throw in a few political hacks, just for a
> little reality.

Can someone explain to me why all these people keep talking as if "the 
president" makes all the decisions, writes his own speeches or has any 
control over his cabinet? Are they stupid, blind or disingenuous?

 "The President's" primary concern appears to be that all meetings start 
on time that his weekends not be interrupted by world affairs. I suppose, 
one could argue that they all mean "presidential advisors" when mentioning 
"the president". The trouble is, they are writing for an speaking to the 
masses, with many people actually believing what they read and hear, 
including that president actually makes his own decisions. Guys, we are not 
dealing with Richard Nixon here.

        VS-)