February 3, 2004
THE PRETENSE OF OBJECTIVITY:
The C.I.A.: Method and Madness (DAVID BROOKS, 2/03/04, NY Times)
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. It has relied on this aura of scientific objectivity for its prestige, and to justify its large budgets, despite a record studded with error.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."
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.
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. 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.
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.
There's a related problem implicated but not discussed here,, which is that the CIA, like any bureaucracy, has as its first interest itself. There is therefore a built in prejudice in favor of finding threats everywhere they look, because more threat means more CIA, and vice versa. No one ever tells their boss that their own job is superfluous and should be cut. Somewhere in some forgotten corridor at Langley is a room full of analysts who are still crunching numbers to show that the USSR is about to overtake us militarily and economically, and they're just as right now as they were in 1962... Posted by Orrin Judd at February 3, 2004 9:09 AM
The root problem with intelligence agencies of the CIA type -- not just ours, but any -- is that they are incapable of recruiting talented and mature help. So they end up with a bunch of disgruntled drunks and third-raters.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 3, 2004 5:50 PMThis issue brings to mind the small book "Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology," Valerie Ahl & T. F. H. Allen, Columbia Univ Pr, 1996. The book considers HOW we look at the world. Isuues include: shifting one's focus of attention; the mistake of seeking more data within an old framework; the contribution of Piaget's stage theory.
A scientific approach at the CIA and elsewhere is a great idea. What's the alternative? But the West has not yet figured out a way to scientifically set priorities and to question-then-reset the foundational positions that lead to the CIA's global perspective.
As for the CIA looking out for itself: so what else is new?? On matters such as this ... the burden of proof should fall on anybody who at any time chooses to argue that a major bureaucracy, governmental or otherwise, IS NOT, in a significant way, operating so as to further its own interest -- THAT is where the burden of proof should fall, based upon our emperical understanding of mankind.
Posted by: Larry H at February 4, 2004 7:05 AMOne alternative is the information market type idea that Admiral Poindexter proposed.
Posted by: oj at February 4, 2004 8:27 AMI am not much of a fan of markets without regulations. Even Wall Street feels some need to regulate itself.
But if you are thinking of running a market on secrets, then consider Rothschild. Cui bono?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 4, 2004 8:56 PM