Hanson W. Baldwin accurately portrayed this dilemma in his book, Strategy for Tomorrow. He wrote that the professionalism our Joint Chiefs possess should be factored into decisions Presidents make and not be manipulated for PR purposes. He added that even fragmented military advice should be reflected �comprehensively and honestly and in detail� to the President. Beginning with the liberal makeover of the Pentagon under Kennedy, things have been changed. Our Chiefs, for the most part, have been less than the �pound the table� tough professionals found in WWII and Korea. Congress has refused, likewise, to live up to its defense and foreign policy oversight obligations, preferring to defer to executives, often who have never served in the military.
This leaves liberals, who neither like nor understand the military, to dilute or contradict military advice. In the intelligence field, we see �CIA opinions� versus �NSA� or �DIA� opinions, even in purely military fields. Lyman Kirkpatrick Jr rightly wrote in Captains Without Eyes �where civilian authorities dominate the decision making process in matters exclusively military ... then national catastrophe may result...� Those in oversight responsibility, must be able to comprehend military matters in order to appreciate what the military advisers are attempting to state. We then end up with �surprises� like the recent announcement that Lt. Speicher of Desert Storm should have been listed as MIA, instead of KIA.
We have, like reported by retired ADM David Jeremiah in May 1998, a system wide weakness in intelligence collection, management, and analysis. We have, like I reported 20 years ago on the POW issue, an �everyone thinks like us mindset� in the foreign policy and intelligence policy process. Jeremiah decried the lack of creative thinkers and lack of contact with outside experts to shake up the �conventional wisdom� syndrome. This, of course, is a validation of LTG Eugene Tighe�s �mindset to debunk� statements on the POW/MIA issue.
There is an excellent example of this from 1997. Senator Trent Lott asked Senator Richard Shelby, head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, for the �intelligence basis� for the President�s certification for expansion of relations with Vietnam. Specifically, Lott wanted to know in light of the pending nomination of former POW and Congressman Pete Peterson to be Ambassador to Vietnam, the impact of the 1205 document and 735 documents. These documents, of course, outlined that several hundred American POWs had been left behind, abandoned, in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The President, knowledgeable about these documents, nevertheless, certified that progress on the POW/MIA field was sufficient to proceed with expanded diplomatic initiatives with Vietnam.
The answer from Shelby's Committee staff was shocking! Shocking that the process continued. Shocking that Congressional oversight allowed it to continue. The Committee staff found that �the Intelligence Community appears to have played no formal role in the determinations...� The documents in question �have not been the subject of a coordinated community-wide analysis... (they) could not dismiss them as fabrications... (and) attempts by the Intelligence Community to gain additional information on the documents appear to have been limited...� Cut to the quick, we don�t know their authenticity; they aren�t fabricated; we don�t know what they mean; and we don�t care!
So, where does that violate �tradecraft standards?� First, the Senate Staff wrote, �A primary role of U.S. intelligence is to help American foreign policy makers make informed decisions. In general, U.S. Government�s certification on foreign affairs matters is assumed to be based on a number of factors including input from the Intelligence Community. The process of collecting and analyzing sensitive and open-source information is complicated and subjective, but is the essence of the work done by the Intelligence Community. In most instances, the quality and source of information is such that it may be interpreted in more than one way and isolated reports of information may easily be misinterpreted. It is critical to take all information -- including information derived from sensitive intelligence sources and methods, and information related to policy implementation -- into account when judging the validity of information on which to base a certification or determination.�
The CIA determined that it had no role in the �input� into this determination because �the Defense Department�s Defense POW/MIA Office (DPMO) is responsible for intelligence bearing on the POW/MIA issue, other elements of the Community were not formally involved in the certification process.� The National Security Council did not request an Intelligence Community assessment on whether the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was cooperating in full faith on POW/MIA issues as mandated by Congress because President Clinton felt they were unconstitutional inhibitions on his ability to conduct foreign policy.
The Committee Staff found that �The U.S. Intelligence Community did not on its own provide an assessment on whether Vietnam was cooperating in full faith on the key POW/MIA issues." What the White House did was to task the DPMO and the State Department East Asian and Pacific Affairs Office, both policy directorates, and as the Senate Staff noted, �outside the oversight of the Intelligence Community,� to provide input for a Presidential �Memorandum of Justification for Determination.� In arriving at this �justification,� both policy directorates did not include any Intelligence Community input. Instead, they relied upon �in-country reporting from the State Department Embassy officers and the DoD personnel with the Joint Task Force - Full Accounting.� Therefore, there was no identifiable intelligence input into the decision.
That should be shocking! However, it was inevitable because �collection requirements pertaining to the POW/MIA issue� which were in place during the Reagan, Bush, and early Clinton years, �were removed from the President�s Decision Directive on the Intelligence Community�s priority requirement list on the recommendation of the National Security Council in 1995." No one is tasked to find out anything. Thus, it is not surprising that the Intelligence Community did not �on its own� do anything. There has to be requirements for that community to act. Those are called Special Intelligence Collection Requirements or SICRs. In fact, the Staff reported, �The Intelligence Community�s only POW/MIA analytical element, the Defense Intelligence Agency�s Office of POW/MIAs Affairs, was transferred out of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.� This is just like the situation Kirkpatrick referred to, policy makers without eyes, and not wanting any. If you want to accomplish a policy, i.e. recognize Hanoi and put in place full relations with them, you don�t want little things like finding out that American POWs had been left behind to stop the progress that is part of the greater good (according to the policy makers). The result, at some point, will be "surprises" like Speicher, or worse, finding out, hopefully not too late, that POWs have been rotting away for years with no one wanting to bring them home.
You still haven�t stated the violations. Well, here we go. Remember, the Staff stated, �It is critical to take all information -- including information derived from sensitive intelligence sources and methods and information related to policy implementation -- into account when judging the validity of information on which to base a certification or determination. � You�ve just seen that this did not happen. I don�t want to let the CIA off the hook on this point. They tried to slough off onto DoD the responsibility for intelligence matters, i.e. DPMO, as being �responsible for intelligence bearing on the POW/MIA issue...� Yet, as the Staff pointed out, DPMO was �transferred out of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.� Thus, �The Intelligence Community�s only POW/MIA analytical element� no longer existed as part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program. That left CIA as being charged with intelligence matters, no matter who else had prior responsibility. Their charter is to provide intelligence on all matters.
In their own words, CIA states that the �DI professional ethic requires that analysts provide direct support to policymakers� efforts to define and defend US national security interests...� (From the CIA tradecraft training manual) The CIA notes that their product requires them to go �beyond general relevance to US interests to customized assistance for identified policy officials who have the �action� on designing, implementing, or monitoring US policy on an individual issue.� Note, despite what CIA said to the Staff, the �action� on implementing or designing US policy belonged to DPMO, the intelligence gathering belonged to CIA, since no one else had any responsibility for gathering it. CIA always has a task or �charter� to gather foreign intelligence, if no one else does.
Ironically, CIA addresses this dilemma by saying, �The challenge to address effectively US interests is greater when the initiative for launching a DI product comes largely from the intelligence side of the relationship. It is here that Agency monitors (such as the staffs of the congressional oversight committees) are most likely to raise questions about the policymaking utility of individual DI products.� However, as the Staff found, �the U.S. Intelligence Community did not on its own provide an assessment on whether Vietnam was cooperating in full faith on the key POW/MIA issues.� The tradecraft rule here is to �Think of the analysts role as that of the objective or tough-minded expert for a policymaking team... What they need most from the intelligence analyst is organized information, including specialized intelligence, that clarifies the goals and motives as well as the strengths and weaknesses of adversaries, allies, and other foreign players... The goal is to convert substantive expertise into action-support analysis before conveying it to consumers...� Unfortunately, CIA politicized it�s own role, i.e. ignored the POW issue, when the President took the issue off the front plate of priorities. I presume that CIA took this to mean they actually followed tradecraft by �Targeting the policymakers� specific interest in a substantive issue.� If the President wants �Justification� for a policy - expanding the political intercourse with Vietnam, who are they to spoil his policy?
The Intelligence Services of the United States, unlike that of most countries, makes a large part of its output available to the legislative branch. Such sharing has provided tensions since Congress often uses the intelligence to provide it with ammunition to challenge administration policies. Likewise, the Administration often see intelligence agencies as "allies" in their political struggles with Congress. Here, the POW issue falls. Those who control the intelligence output controls the results of the policy - return or forget POWs. We'll see how tradecraft rules were violated with Congress also.
One of the first rules of intelligence is to be precise about what is known. In the case of the 1205 and 735 documents, plus a whole host of other items, that has not been done. What has been done, as we have seen, is that a statement is made like, we �could not dismiss them as fabrications.� Then, there is no attempt to say what that means. Instead, the statement is overlooked as if it did not exist. The CIA tradecraft says, �With US interests, and at times lives, on the line, policymakers... need to be informed precisely what the all-source analysts know and how they know it. In making decisions, ... it is important for them to know if the information is direct (be considered factual because of the source) or indirect (doubt because of the source�s reliability), and if and why the analysts have concluded it is factual. Direct information can be considered to be factual because of �the concrete and readily verifiable character of the contents.� One thing accomplished was the determination that the information was not a �deception� by a �foreign government� or group �to get US intelligence analysts to reach an erroneous conclusion."
Just as importantly, �the more complicated an issue... the greater the informational demands to establish... (what) is factual. The burden of proof for determining what foreign leaders... intend to do... is much greater than that required for what they have done or said... the burden of proof is high on matters that are controversial among policymakers or politically sensitive between the Administration and Congress...� Analysts should err on the side of providing more, rather than less, information. Thus, when CIA had no one in the intelligence field involved, and only policy makers were �justifying� a previously determined goal, tradecraft was compromised, The result was flawed.
What has happened is that when all-source information has been applied to the issue, the results have been highly reliable indicators that Americans are being held prisoner. Taking the 1981 Laotian (Nhom Marrot) incident, here is what has been known:
* COL Nick Rowe stated we knew the camp commander�s name (To Monika Jensen Stevenson in Kiss The Boys Goodbye)
* HUMINT sources saw and reported American POWs in the area consistently from at least 1972
* Confirming evidence came from trusted American, allied, and special �sensitive� sources with direct access to the target area
* HUMINT sources were polygraphed with positive results
* Technical intelligence, including photography from satellites and SR-71s confirm what the HUMINT sources revealed. Radio intercepts confirm other HUMINT evidence.
* A name of an MIA matches the data base and man-made symbols hidden from the �captors� further the evidence of American POWs being held
Going to 1992, the following is found:
* The Staff used �a long -standing and proven method of analysis used by the U.S. Intelligence Community... the same method ... used ... to track SCUD Missile firings by Iraq during the Gulf War ... a similar process also is used in tracking SS-25 mobile missile units in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Russia)...� and the same system I used in Vietnam to trace VC local force units; VC Main Force units; and VCI.
* The staff developed a �measles map� or cluster analysis of radio intercepts; distress symbols; and HUMINT sighting reports. They weeded out: �clearly outrageous, inflated, exaggerated, or impossible reports;� �several hundred reports equating to Robert Garwood� (or other returnees); reports that could plausibly equate to foreign nationals; reports of people not living in confinement; reports of yachtsmen, adventurers, or smugglers; and sightings equating to Americans detained in Saigon and later returned.
* What was found? The existence of logistical and administrative relationships among camps in Northwestern Laos and in northwestern Vietnam not reflected in DIA documents; Evidence of a second set of camps in Vietnam from which no prisoners returned; Differences in the policies, patterns, and characteristics of POW incarceration in Vietnam and Laos; a context for interpreting and understanding the limited amounts of signal intelligence of POW movements in Laos and Vietnam along with the photography of alleged distress signals.
* In every instance, the signal intercepts and the alleged distress signals coincided with a cluster of live sightings posted to the map. (This is exactly what happened also in the 1981 example)
* The staff estimated, based on the evidence before them, that between 100 to 850 POWs were being held through 1989 (and most likely 1992)
The contrary opinion was expressed by COL Joe Schlatter, a DIA spokesman and self professed internet �myth buster.� He testified in July 1989 that �If we look at everything we collected during the war and ... since the war, we don�t find any evidence that Americans are captive.� The Senate Minority Interim Staff Report directly contradicted him with this statement: �... classified and unclassified information all confirm one startling fact: that DOD in 1974, concluded ... several hundred living American prisoners remained... in Southeast Asia. This was a full year after DOD spokesmen were saying publicly that no prisoners remained alive...�
So what happened? How did the evidence, gathered in full accord with intelligence standards, become what is commonly reported today? The Senate POW Counsel told the staff, �Unless and until the Senators understand and agree with your findings, there are no findings or conclusions.� The staff found that �In every instance that DIA found the source of a live sighting to be credible... analysts left the resolution of the sighting �open - ended� or ... the source ... mistaken... In the former case, no additional analysis was evident. In the latter, none was needed. The minority assessed that credible sources produced believable reports and credible information. Additional analysis could lead to additional results.� Instead of doing this, we have the full violation of tradecraft rules. No follow-up. No additional analysis. All this was said before the 1205 document was found.
With the 1205 document we find: Corroborated was the previous 735 document, the findings from the 1981 all source analysis; the findings of the 1992 all source analysis; the reportings of Dr. Dang Tan (an important defector from the war); the findings of the Senate Foreign Relations Minority Staff; and the findings of war-time analyst LTG Eugene Tighe (from 1972) that American POWs had been left behind in great numbers.
The finding of the 1205 document should have been the signal to begin serious negotiations to bring men home. Instead, as we saw, nothing was done. Intelligence tradecraft rules were thrown out. Policy makers, including those in DoD, sacrificed men held prisoner, and to date, nothing has been done of an all-source nature, outside of those shown above. It is small wonder that LTG Tighe testified he was ashamed of the analysis done and he detected a mindset to debunk.
More seriously is the probability that the head policy setter, President Clinton, wanted the �justification� to pay back financial contributors, like the Riady clan and the Chinese backers (read intelligence operatives) of other contributors, and ignore all this stuff so that millions could be made in China, Vietnam, and elsewhere. That is why, contrary to law (he called unconstitutional), he swept aside �silly rules� like tradecraft and came to conclusions not backed by solid facts. That is �mind-set to debunk� in full action.
More importantly for intelligence professionals, full politicization of intelligence output has likely resulted, permanently and perhaps fatally tainting futher results without a full housecleaning effort. Serious breaches of professional conduct have resulted in the POW issue, not to mention others. An Executive, the President, wantonly violated regulations he did not understand on intelligence use. Another Executive, the DCI, allowed the process to be abused. This is not the first time for CIA to have done this in SEA policy. Men in uniform, relying upon professionals in intelligence to find them, were likewise abused. From this monograph, you can easily see, and I hope, likewise come to this same conclusion. While the focus was immediately on the expansion of relations, without a proper "all source" analysis of revelations going contrary to established policy, informed diplomatic initiatives cannot be undertaken. That is why DIA said in 1994 the documents were:
* "Too fragmentary to permit detailed analysis... the numbers cited are inconsistent with our own accounting"
* "... we need more information to understand its origin and meaning..."
* The number cited "was so much higher than the United States Government believed had been captured..."
These statements, taken in conformity with tradecraft rules, and in conjunction with the POW issue being the highest priority of the US government, show the breaking of the rules and establishing "conclusively" the mindset to debunk LTG Tighe so decisively testified about. You draw your conclusions. Mine are - POWs were left behind - and are abandoned until policies are changed.
Violating Tradecraft Standards
Where are the violations?
What about CIA's duty to Congress?
Busting the Myth busters and debunkers
This page is owned by Golden Coast Publishing all rights reserved copyright 2001 - updated January 17, 2001-
