UNCLASSIFIED Event: Professor Richard K. Betts Type of Event: Interviews Date: August 19,2003 Special Access Issues : None Prepared by: Gordon Lederman Team Number: 2 Loca ti on: Columb ia Un iversity Participants - non-Commission: Professor Richard Betts Participants - Commission: Kevin Scheid, Lloyd Salvetti, Alexis Albion (team '3), Gordon Lederman (U) Professor Betts is the Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of an article in the J anuary/February 2003 edition of Foreign Affairs entitled "Fixing Intelligence: The Role of National Security and Intelligence Service in Preventing Terrorism." He also is the author of Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Washin ton, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1982). (U) WARNING AND THE INTELLIGENCEIPOLICY NEXUS. (U) "Waming" refers to alerting people in a position of power to the dan er or probability of attack. Ideally, that alert involves sufficient information to detect with no doubts or ambiguities in time to defeat an attack in progress. The information must be useful in order to constitute "warning," and usefulness means that there is some action that people in a position of power can take to prevent the danger. There are several elements of warning, each on a continu m, including: (1) the degree of certainty about the event, (2) the specificity of the information, and (3) the usefulness of the information. Another way of defining warning is "who, what, where, when, why, how." (U) A serious problem in warning is that it may cause as many problems as it solves, particularly given the "cry wolf' syndrome. It is a delicate question whether "warning" requires the Intelligence Community (IC) to 'grab policymakers by the lapel' to convey the importance of the information, but it is the IC's role to convince policymakers of the threat. Mr. Salvetti noted that the term "warning" has been diluted to be associated with non-Pearl arbors. Prof. Betts agreed. (U) In principle, the IC should not be inv lved in policymaking activities, but in practice it is inevitable. The reason why the IC should in principle stay out of policymaking is so UNCLASSIFIED
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8/14/2019 MFR NARA- T2- Columbia U- Betts Richard K- 8-19-03- 00059
(U) Professor Betts is the Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at ColumbiaUniversity. He is the author of an article in the J anuary/February 2003 edition of ForeignAffairs entitled "Fixing Intelligence: The Role of National Security and IntelligenceService in Preventing Terrorism." He also is the author of Surprise Attack: Lessons forDefense Planning (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1982).
(U) WARNING AND THE INTELLIGENCEIPOLICY NEXUS.
(U) "Waming" refers to alerting people in a position of power to the danger orprobability of attack. Ideally, that alert involves sufficient information to detect with nodoubts or ambiguities in time to defeat an attack in progress. The information must beuseful in order to constitute "warning," and usefulness means that there is some actionthat people in a position of power can take to prevent the danger. There are severalelements of warning, each on a continuum, including: (1) the degree of certainty aboutthe event, (2) the specificity of the information, and (3) the usefulness of the information.Another way of defining warning is "who, what, where, when, why, how."
(U) A serious problem in warning is that it may cause as many problems as it solves,particularly given the "cry wolf' syndrome. It is a delicate question whether "warning"requires the Intelligence Community (IC) to 'grab policymakers by the lapel' to conveythe importance of the information, but it is the IC's role to convince policymakers of thethreat. Mr. Salvetti noted that the term "warning" has been diluted to be associated withnon-Pearl Harbors. Prof. Betts agreed.
(U) In principle, the IC should not be involved in policymaking activities, but in practiceit is inevitable. The reason why the IC should in principle stay out of policymaking is so
UNCLASSIFIED
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that the IC cannot be accused of slanting information in order to support the IC's policypositions.
(U) The IC's most important mission is to support policymakers, but even more
important is the IC's responsibility to conduct warning. In the 1990s, the IC was toofocused on satisfying its customers. Yet policymakers do not know what they should beworried about. And the IC's task is complicated by the fact that the IC must give relevantinformation to policymakers - i.e. , information that matches the policymakers' policyinterests - in order for the IC itself to be relevant to policymakers.
(U) Prof. Betts identified three challenges associated with warning:(1) the tradeoff between comprehensiveness and specificity, in other words between
the IC covering every possible topic and having in-depth information on the topicof current or future importance;
(2) the "old debate" about Department of Defense (DoD) control of collection, which
expanded in the 1990s; he noted that the question of whether the IC devotes toomuch attention to servicing DoD's needs depends upon one's view of the natureof the threat; and
(3) the question of who is responsible for warning, whetherit should be the unitregularly studying a particular problem or a specially-designated gadfly; a gadflymight lack access to the details of a particular matter but might also be free of theassumptions that the regular analysts use in examining a particular area and thatobstruct prediction of major events.
Prof. Betts is a believer in redundancy. Area specialists and non-experts (gadflys) shouldlook at the data in a warning context.
(U) Regarding whether there are examples of warning actually working, Prof. Betts notedit is rarely an "either/or" issue as to whether warning worked or not. Also, warning iseasier to do in wartime because you are under no illusions regarding the opponent'sintentions.
(U) In many instances, there is too much warning rather than too little, leading to theproblem of 'overwarning.'
(U) Mr. Salvetti mentioned that Vice President Dick Cheney once said that the U.S.needs to have a way to educate policymakers about intelligence, and Lloyd mentionedthat policymakers should be educated about warning as well. Prof. Betts posed thequestion of how to get people to shed expectations. Prof. Betts said that he was surprisedthat the government did not do more after the first World Trade Center attack butsuggested that perhaps the government thought that it had the issue of terrorismadequately covered.
(U) Prof. Betts noted that the question of whether to arm commercial airlines with anti-man-portable-missile devices is a classic warning question: if the U.S. spends billions ofdollars and nothing happens, then it looks like a waste; but if nothing is done, and anattack occurs, the U.S. public will accuse the government of negligence.
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CU)Prof. Betts was asked about the legitimate expectations of the Kl's performance; in
other words, if we are to educate policymakers about the IC, what would we tell them?Prof. Betts described himself as a "congenital pessimist" regarding the performance ofthe Ie given the nature of the intelligence problem. He noted that Professor Eliot Cohenhas criticized him for essentially giving a no-fault waiver to the IC.
CU)Regarding 9/11, Prof. Betts said that it is hard to see what would have made thedifference between knowing the danger in general and knowing what to do to stop thisspecific attack. Prof. Betts thought that the Korean War was a historical parallel, asindicators prior to North Korea's attack showed the possibility of an attack all over theworld.
CU)Prof. Betts thought that the declassified Joint Inquiry report showed that thereessentially ~ere no 'dots' that could have been connected to discover the 9/11 plot.
CU)Prof. Betts said that in addressing the terrorism threat, collection is more critical thananalysis. war, there is much intelligence about capabilities but little about intentions;in contrast, in terrorism there is basic information about intentions but little informationabout capabilities. Discovering capabilities is the task of collection.
CU)IMPROVING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS.
CU)Prof. Betts said that things happen quickly in areas to which no one in the IC ispaying much attention. Essentially, no one knows what areas/countries will be importantin the future. Because IC analysts are relatively cheap, the IC should 'waste' someresources by having extra analysts to cover what today are seemingly unimportant areas.There is some analogy to the military spending money on capabilities that it might neverneed in wartime. Prof. Betts suggested having an intelligence reserve corps of academicsand other experts to provide surge capacity and broad coverage for analysis. He hasadvocated this idea for years, but the IC has not expressed interest. He dismissed thenotion that concerns for security prevent adoption of his idea, as (1) countries that wouldbe covered by reserve analysts are of low importance and thus of low security concern;(2) the military has an intelligence reserve capability; and (3) there are thousands ofconsultants with clearances already. Lloyd noted that retired Ie employees can be hiredas contractors and that the IC is no longer opposed to doing so.
CU)Prof. Betts also advocated increasing the cadre of Americans familiar with thelanguage, culture, and politics of other countries. The National Defense Education Actprovides inducements for language-capability, but the U.S. needs substantive countryexperts rather than m ere linguists. We need a bigger pool of people w ho can operatebiculturally, and then we need to create incentives for them to do government work. Wealso need to foster language skills for children, and he suggested creating fellowships forstudents to live abroad and then work for the government.
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the IC has historically resisted having to do an annual report of its activities. Moregenerally, Prof. Betts suggested that the ICshould do an accounting of its successes. Mr.Salvetti noted that the IC never does lessons-learned on successes, unlike the military.Prof. Betts thought that the IC should learn from the military and institutionalize theprocess of lessons-learned. He noted the after-action report on the Gulf War I aircampaign, a 5-volume set written by outside experts. Mr. Salvetti thought that the reasonthat the IC has not done lessons-learned is not security (i.e., not wanting to hire outsideexperts) but rather lack of resources; for example, the IC redeployed its forces toAfghanistan from Yugoslavia, and the CIA's history staff is very small. Mr. Scheidsuggested that the IC contract-out for lessons-learned. Lloyd said that, after many yearsof conducting Presidential transitions on an ad-hoc basis, the CIA history staff did a studyof how the CIA handled previous transitions that will prove instrumental for futuretransitions. Prof. Betts suggested that we conduct a post-mortem of post-mortems toascertain what 'wheels keep being reinvented' and what are unique problems. Prof. Bettsobserved that the IC might feel that commissions lack expertise and background to makelegitimate recommendations about the IC. Mr. Salvetti suggested creating a CIAuniversity.
C U )Prof. Betts discussed risk aversion. Mr. Salvetti noted the Washington Post test, thatthe IC does not want to be held up to public ridicule. Prof. Betts noted that there may notbe a need to discuss whether the IC should deal with quite unsavory characters because itis unlikely that the IC would trust them in the first place.
C U )Mr. Salvetti asked whether we can have an IC whose standard mode of operation iscontrary to American values.
