Why the Intelligence Community Ineffectively Uses HUMINT

Introduction

Since 9/11, the intelligence community has been at the heart of numerous policy decisions—from the invasion of Iraq to U.S. foreign relations with China and Russia. While the objective of the intelligence community is to provide legitimate intelligence to policymakers, numerous researchers have pointed out that in the post-9/11 era, policy has often shaped intelligence rather than the other way around, as it is intended to be.¹ As Richard Best notes, "intelligence from human contacts—HUMINT—is the oldest intelligence discipline and the one that is most often written about in the media."² As the CIA is the primary collector of human intelligence along with the Department of Defense (DOD), it plays a leading role in the use of HUMINT within the intelligence community.

With the wars in the Middle East having dragged on for nearly two decades, many are wondering why, with so many HUMINT sources available, these wars proved so difficult and disastrous on so many levels—and why faulty intelligence was used in the build-up to the Iraq invasion. This paper asks specifically: Why is the intelligence community so ineffectively using HUMINT? What is going on behind the scenes?

This issue remains a puzzle because the reputation of the intelligence community is that very little is kept from it in the modern era: there are few secrets and fewer surprises. For the intelligence community to get something so spectacularly wrong—such as the claim that Hussein possessed mobile weapons laboratories and weapons of mass destruction—gives one considerable pause: how could such gross miscalculations of judgment occur?

It is hypothesized that in the post-9/11 world, the intelligence community has allowed itself to be guided by policymakers instead of being the guide for policy. This study conducts a case study analysis to determine whether such an inversion has indeed taken place. By using the qualitative approach and the case study research design, the study answers those questions so as to better understand why HUMINT is not being effectively used by the intelligence community in the post-9/11 era.

Review of the Literature

The specific case examined is the way in which HUMINT was misused in the build-up to the Iraq War, particularly with respect to the source known as Curveball, whose information was problematically used to justify a full-scale invasion. This study provides a review of relevant literature with a focus on current knowledge gaps, explains how the study addresses those gaps, discusses the methodology used for collecting and analyzing data, and finally presents the analysis and findings with a detailed discussion of what those findings mean in terms of the research question and hypothesis.

While Colin Powell was testifying before the United Nations about Iraq's alleged yellow-cake uranium deals with Niger—which former ambassador Joe Wilson vehemently denied ever took place—Richard Perle, who chaired the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had been collaborating with Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Robert Kagan, both of whom also headed the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a quasi dual-American-Israeli think tank, to advance the story that Saddam Hussein posed a legitimate threat to the United States, particularly because of his alleged terrorist connections. Perle, Kristol, and Kagan were advisors to policymakers; their role was to put forward ideas about how foreign policy should be conducted. They were not intelligence analysts. The CIA did not corroborate the story these policy advisors were advancing, yet these advisors had the ear of the White House.³

Meanwhile, "CIA analysts complained publicly (through anonymous media leaks) that Vice President Dick Cheney was wrong to insist on a significant tie between al-Qaeda and Saddam. Intelligence reporting had come to just the opposite conclusion, although CIA analysts warned that indeed a bond might be forged between global terrorists and the Iraqi dictatorship…if the West invaded Iraq."⁴ This is, in fact, exactly what happened. The West invaded Iraq, Iraqi infrastructure collapsed, and out of the vacuum created by the destruction and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians emerged ISIS, which went on to wreak havoc throughout the Middle East. In other words, the HUMINT indicated that Iraq posed no threat and that the real threat of terror stemmed not from Iraq but rather from an invasion of it. In short, HUMINT implied that a U.S. invasion would serve as a catalyst for the growth of terrorism in the region.

It was almost as though the think tanks and policymakers were simply operating according to a pre-arranged plan and were assembling HUMINT sources to justify an invasion and provide a pretext that would look feasible to the world public. In fact, such a plan did exist: it was Oded Yinon's 1982 policy paper for Israeli strategists on how to destabilize Israel's enemies in the Middle East.⁵ That policy was being coordinated and implemented by White House policy advisors under Bush—via PNAC and Perle—in spite of the overwhelming evidence of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that there was no link between Iraq and terrorism or the attacks of 9/11.⁶

Analysis and Findings

Data was collected using keyword searches related to the topic, including "Curveball," "NIE Report Iraq," "CIA MI6 intel Iraq," "intel failure Iraq," and "HUMINT failure Iraq." The data revealed that Curveball—the main HUMINT source used by policy advisors leading up to the Iraq War—was deemed a doubtful source by the intelligence community but was treated as legitimate by policy advisors who wanted a justification for invasion in order to implement their PNAC plan, which was itself predicated on the Yinon plan.

Data was analyzed by identifying themes among the various sources and conducting content analysis to examine how the variables intersected. The common themes were then assessed using eidetic reduction to eliminate noise and imaginative variation to distill the essence of the information, which is a recommended practice in content analysis.¹²

A key limitation of the study design was the potential for confirmation bias. For this reason, Fischer recommends bracketing out researcher bias upfront so that it does not interfere with data collection.¹³ The beliefs the researcher held prior to data collection were that HUMINT is mismanaged because of the disparate aims of the intelligence community. This belief was not fully borne out in the data.

DeVine noted that secrecy is critical to the intelligence community and that it is therefore difficult for the public to understand how operations are proceeding and where money is being spent to obtain or shape intelligence.¹⁴ Former CIA Director George Tenet argued that by showing the American public how the intelligence community conducts its business, foreign governments would also become privy to that information, which would then aid them in counter-intelligence operations and hamper the CIA's ability to collect accurate HUMINT.¹⁵ As a result, secrecy is an issue that is unlikely to be resolved—yet transparency is demanded by the public. For HUMINT to be used effectively, some form of transparency would be required, but such transparency runs counter to the wishes of the Director of Central Intelligence.

Pfiffner and Phythian noted that even though the CIA and MI6 failed to push back strongly against the "alarmist stance toward Iraq," a few CIA analysts did come forward publicly to express disconcertion about the Vice President's position: "CIA analysts complained publicly (through anonymous media leaks) that Vice President Dick Cheney was wrong to insist on a significant tie between al-Qaeda and Saddam. Intelligence reporting had come to just the opposite conclusion, although CIA analysts warned that indeed a bond might be forged between global terrorists and the Iraqi dictatorship…if the West invaded Iraq."¹⁶ This demonstrates that the intelligence indicated the threat was not Iraq, but rather Western intervention itself.

As Hersh points out, policy advisors were overruling HUMINT analysts, and so foreign policy was being determined by pro-interventionist figures such as Abram Shulsky, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, and Scooter Libby: "a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts…based in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP)."¹⁷ The OSP helped transform the HUMINT source Curveball—nothing more than a source of soft, unsubstantiated evidence of collusion between Iraq and terror networks—into the main impetus for policymaking.

The OSP used Curveball as the primary source of information for the Bush administration, which was looking for something that connected the Iraqi regime to terrorism. Curveball was a source the CIA had been using, but had never been able to verify. Everything this source provided was unsubstantiated, leading the CIA to deem Curveball's information "soft" data—data that could not be relied upon because there was no way to establish its veracity. Curveball had claimed that Iraq was involved in terror networking; however, UN inspectors had found no evidence of a WMD program in Iraq, as the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq confirmed.¹⁸ This was not hard evidence but rather what the CIA termed "soft" data.

The Bush White House wanted to act quickly in response to 9/11 and needed a target. Policy advisors latched onto Saddam Hussein, as doing so fit with their previously articulated policy regarding the Middle East. This was a clear example of policy trumping HUMINT. Because neither the CIA nor MI6 did much to effectively use HUMINT to transfer accurate knowledge to the White House, the policy advisors were able to take a "soft" source and convert it into the provocation needed to unleash a sweeping military intervention across the Middle East.

Curveball was thus used as a pretext by policy advisors to advance the Yinon plan of the 1980s, which stated in no uncertain terms:

The dissolution of Syria and Iraq…into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present-day Lebanon…Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.¹⁹

Curveball was literally a tool used by policy advisors to counter the UN's assessment that Iraq possessed no WMDs. Curveball claimed the WMDs were being stored on mobile platforms and could thus be moved away from inspectors.²⁰ The outcome of the intervention—the destabilization of Iraq and, what would have been Syria had Russia and Iran not intervened—indicates that the Yinon plan was the motivating factor for the policy advisors.

Curveball was being used by Scooter Libby and others in the White House to plant stories for intelligence officers to find and report on. Those reports were then used to justify war plans. It did not matter that intelligence officers could not corroborate what Curveball was saying—all that mattered was that stories about Iraq possessing uranium were in circulation, and this was deemed sufficient justification by the Bush White House.²¹