Transforming U.S. Espionage:
A Contrarian's Approach
By Jennifer Sims
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, national security experts
have tried to identify the causes of U.S. intelligence failures
and propose structural reforms to remedy them. Yet in
designing proposals for reform, experts have overlooked a
contradiction with important implications for intelligence.
On the one hand, academic and government-sponsored
research has substantiated a disturbing trend of which the
growing terrorist threat is just one part—the rise of hostile networks,
net-centric warfare, and “smart mobs” empowered by
modern personalized communications and the Internet.1 The
prescription: de-emphasize central authority and empower
lower levels of decision making because, according to this view,
“it takes networks to fight networks.”2
On the other hand, the 9/11 Commission, which substanti
ated the failures of U.S. government bureaucracies before the
attacks, has noted the dangers of uncoordinated decision making
at lower levels. The prescription: bureaucratic reforms that
call for new authorities and centralized command at the highest
levels of Washington’s intelligence establishment.”3
In other words, looking at what went wrong on 9/11, we have
a near consensus that the United States needs a more powerful
manager at the top of a more centralized intelligence community.
4 But, looking at the future of warfare, communications,
and interstate competition, we also have a
near consensus that decentralized
authority and the ability to rapidly build
and disassemble teams for field operations
against a networked adversary is
most essential.5
This contradiction in analysis and prescription
is less interesting on its merits
than it is for illustrative use in classroom
discussions of the public policy process. It
is, after all, far harder to legislate better
intelligence policies and practices than it
is to centralize and augment bureaucratic
power in the hopes that someone with
“real authority” at the top can do so.
Academics, free from policy responsibilities,
too frequently offer creative
prescriptions that lack roadmaps for
implementing them.6 This article
bridges this gap by focusing less on struc
tures than on the policies and practices of
intelligence—the “how–to’s” of getting the
job done. It will also focus on one of the
most important domains of intelligence—
human intelligence (HUMINT) or espionage,
widely regarded to be under-powered
as a result of years of budget cuts.7
Of course, such an approach does not
mean that governmental structures are
irrelevant to success. It does mean that, if
one goes to the meat of the matter and
asks intelligence professionals what capa
bilities U.S. intelligence needs that it
does not have now, the first answer will
not likely be a new office in Washington.
Instead, it will be to provide them with
the policies and practices necessary for
intelligence to succeed in the twenty-first
century. If we begin with this issue of
necessary capabilities and attendant con
straints, it may be possible to suggest
reforms that follow function and to satisfy
perhaps the greatest deficiency the 9/11
Commission identified: a lack of imagi
nation, practically employed.
The Conventional Wisdom on
Espionage. Expert observers generally
hold to three “truths” about human
intelligence: it is the most important
mode of intelligence collection against
transnational networks such as al-Qaeda,
especially when married to timely law
enforcement information; reconstituting
American capabilities in this area will
take at least five years; and, in the meantime,
gaps in espionage capabilities can
be filled through foreign intelligence
liaison. Insiders quietly discuss a fourth
“truth”: spies posing as diplomats will no
longer be effective in the new “war”
against terrorism and its allies in inter
national organized crime.
Whereas all four assertions contain
kernels of truth, they also involve dangerous
misperceptions. For example,
foreign intelligence liaison provides
intelligence with a catch; allies often want
to help, but they have their own agendas,
including influencing U.S. decisions and
keeping terrorists from turning on them
or crossing their own borders.
Intelligence liaison demands superb
counterintelligence capabilities or it risks
distorting operations and misleading
decision makers. Witness the results of
“liaising” with Iraqi dissidents prior to
the Iraq war—significant overestimation
of the WMD threat. Unfortunately,
counterintelligence is hardly U.S. intelligence’s
strongest suit. While there are
gains to be had from liaison, there is,
perhaps, no way for it to fill near-term
gaps in unilateral human intelligence
capabilities.