6 ms·

What has struck me from reading history, US history at least, is how often intelligence reports prepared by the CIA, State Department, et al are accurate and pr

What has struck me from reading history, US history at least, is how often intelligence reports prepared by the CIA, State Department, et al are accurate and predict more or less accurately what the outcome of a given situation will be. But time and time again, presidents will ignore their own agencies in favor of what they deem most politically or personally attractive. Makes me think that the whole idea of elected representatives is flawed. I think I'd rather be governed by people who got where they are because of expertise and experience in their field.

twirlock 7y ago
I'm retrospectively psychic. Might as well get rid of democracy and become a literal police state.
nostrademons 7y ago
Curious if you have links to intelligence reports that turned out to be totally accurate? The ones I can think of (both in the news media and through personal connections to people who have worked in government) have been stunningly inaccurate.
- jonnybgood 7y ago
  How did you verify they were stunningly inaccurate?
  - mnbvkhgvmj 7y ago
    The Iraq war comes to mind.
    - ssully 7y ago
      I thought the administration at the time pushed the WMD angle, while the intel said otherwise?
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      That was one of the media-related ones that came to mind. Also, I had an International Relations professor who was a consultant for the State Department and had just finished giving the briefing for the next 5-year strategic plan on August 19, 1991. He said that nobody in the Pentagon ever considered the possibility that the Soviet Union might not exist within 5 years, let alone days. Some other experience is fairly obvious just growing up in a bicultural household with an immigrant parent who had firsthand experience living in other parts of the world, eg. the U.S. consistently underestimates the degree of corruption in many other countries and the degree to which the "state" that is ostensibly our ally is actually a fiction, with the majority of actual daily life ruled by family, ethnic, or business ties. A lot you can verify just by looking at our strategic decisions in the moment vs. how things turn out later and internal communications get declassified. We didn't understand that the Sino-Soviet split had happened until decades later, and still thought that China and Russia formed a united communist bloc well into the 80s. A number of people still think of China as communist, which isn't true at all. I'm actually seeking out information contrary to my experience here - I would love to see stories where U.S. intelligence agencies were completely on the mark but were ignored. But my knowledge base so far is that intelligence agencies are as vulnerable to human cognitive biases as the general public, and frequently get basic facts wrong.
      - SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
        We (the west) are just starting to understand that China seems to be a mafia state in a similar way that Russia is. I was watching an ABC (the Australian one) report about the rampant corporate misconduct of the Crown Casino, and how they helped launder Triad money in Melbourne. It turns out that a major player in the racket was President Xi's cousin and a high ranking member of the CCP. Additionally, we've seen Triads deployed in Hong Kong recently to attack protestors.
        wahern 7y ago
        > We (the west) are just starting to understand that China seems to be a mafia state in a similar way that Russia is. Probably because it's evolution into a mafia state has been much slower. President Xi has been slowly accumulating power for 15 years. Since Mao power was purposefully kept defuse, and while corruption has been rampant at least since the free market reforms, it was of a different kind and in some respects served to maintain competing power centers.
  - paganel 7y ago
    Not the OP but afaik the Soviet sudden collapse at the end of the '80s took almost all Western spy agencies and their governments by surprise. On the other hand I have read a declassified early '80s CIA report (too lazy to search for the link right now) that nominated two relatively young communist apparatchiks as potentially having the chance to replace Romanian dictator Ceausescu. One of them was Ion Iliescu, who in fact did just that in December 1989, after the Romanian "Revolution" (the other one was Virgil Trofin[1], who had been demoted to running a State agriculture farm where he suffered a sudden and mysterious death in 1984). As a matter of fact just as they were about to get shot Elena Ceausescu reproached to her husband: "I told you that we should have killed Iliescu". Not sure if the powers that be in the States acted or not on this piece of good and accurate CIA intel. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Trofin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Trofin
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      To be fair, the Soviet sudden collapse at the end of '80s also took almost all Warsaw Pact spy agencies and their governments by surprise.
- nickik 7y ago
  I can't like to anything but reading multiple related to US regime change it seems that often the local CIA operatives understand many of the problems and predict more or less the outcome, or at least that it will not go as the higher up things. In many of those cases that person gets replaced by somebody more eager to execute the high level demand.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    It's a common trope that inward facing organizations make critically bad decisions based on internal political factors while ignoring outside opinions and facts on the ground.
- meowface 7y ago
  To flip the question: can you show any that were inaccurate, other than the Iraq WMD stuff? One major fuckup doesn't necessarily mean everything before and after should be discredited.
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    I've mentioned a couple others in other subthreads of this comment.
    - meowface 7y ago
      If I'm understanding correctly, you seem to be criticizing negative failings rather than the much more dangerous and trust-dampening positive failings. I could also name plenty of things beyond not anticipating the Soviet Union's; e.g. improper response to intelligence warning of a possible attack pre-9/11. I think failing to predict or be aware of something is very different from proactively claiming something which turns out to be false, as with the Iraq WMDs. The question that's being asked here is not how often intelligence agencies actually gets intelligence or gets or recognizes accurate intelligence, but how often an intelligence apparatus proactively provides a report or claim which isn't true. In those cases, the stakes are usually higher, and the burden of proof is entirely on them. I was asking about examples of those kinds of failings.
ianlevesque 7y ago
I think the problem with that is that the incentives wouldn't be there to act in the interests of the public on an ongoing basis. How effective that is under the current system is up for debate, but it's not a trivial matter. Ideally the people would care enough to elect someone that respects expertise and experience.
mnbvkhgvmj 7y ago
Can you give some examples?
mlb_hn 7y ago
They've definitely gotten things very wrong, e.g. in 1989 Howard Schaffer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, testified to Congress "“We’re confident that [the Pakistani supported Afghan Government] will be neither communist nor messianic Islamic” [1]. Then Pakistan helped the Taliban seize power in the ensuing civil war. [1] U.S. Congress. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (1989). Developments In Afghanistan And Their Implications For U.S. Policy. Congressional Hearing, Feb. 21, June 14, 1989.
hanniabu 7y ago
I think a lot of this has to do with what it means to be a leader. You have the final say but you also have the responsibility to listen to your peers and use information provided. Many of our representatives aren't leaders. I know many here like to start out of politics, but case in point is Trump with his climate change denial rhetoric, constantly ignoring military advisors and tweeting on a whim without any consultation, and moving forward with various deals that advisors are recommending against.

twirlock 7y ago

I'm retrospectively psychic. Might as well get rid of democracy and become a literal police state.

nostrademons 7y ago

Curious if you have links to intelligence reports that turned out to be totally accurate? The ones I can think of (both in the news media and through personal connections to people who have worked in government) have been stunningly inaccurate.

jonnybgood 7y ago
How did you verify they were stunningly inaccurate?
- mnbvkhgvmj 7y ago
  The Iraq war comes to mind.
  - ssully 7y ago
    I thought the administration at the time pushed the WMD angle, while the intel said otherwise?
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    That was one of the media-related ones that came to mind. Also, I had an International Relations professor who was a consultant for the State Department and had just finished giving the briefing for the next 5-year strategic plan on August 19, 1991. He said that nobody in the Pentagon ever considered the possibility that the Soviet Union might not exist within 5 years, let alone days. Some other experience is fairly obvious just growing up in a bicultural household with an immigrant parent who had firsthand experience living in other parts of the world, eg. the U.S. consistently underestimates the degree of corruption in many other countries and the degree to which the "state" that is ostensibly our ally is actually a fiction, with the majority of actual daily life ruled by family, ethnic, or business ties. A lot you can verify just by looking at our strategic decisions in the moment vs. how things turn out later and internal communications get declassified. We didn't understand that the Sino-Soviet split had happened until decades later, and still thought that China and Russia formed a united communist bloc well into the 80s. A number of people still think of China as communist, which isn't true at all. I'm actually seeking out information contrary to my experience here - I would love to see stories where U.S. intelligence agencies were completely on the mark but were ignored. But my knowledge base so far is that intelligence agencies are as vulnerable to human cognitive biases as the general public, and frequently get basic facts wrong.
    - SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
      We (the west) are just starting to understand that China seems to be a mafia state in a similar way that Russia is. I was watching an ABC (the Australian one) report about the rampant corporate misconduct of the Crown Casino, and how they helped launder Triad money in Melbourne. It turns out that a major player in the racket was President Xi's cousin and a high ranking member of the CCP. Additionally, we've seen Triads deployed in Hong Kong recently to attack protestors.
      - wahern 7y ago
        > We (the west) are just starting to understand that China seems to be a mafia state in a similar way that Russia is. Probably because it's evolution into a mafia state has been much slower. President Xi has been slowly accumulating power for 15 years. Since Mao power was purposefully kept defuse, and while corruption has been rampant at least since the free market reforms, it was of a different kind and in some respects served to maintain competing power centers.
- paganel 7y ago
  Not the OP but afaik the Soviet sudden collapse at the end of the '80s took almost all Western spy agencies and their governments by surprise. On the other hand I have read a declassified early '80s CIA report (too lazy to search for the link right now) that nominated two relatively young communist apparatchiks as potentially having the chance to replace Romanian dictator Ceausescu. One of them was Ion Iliescu, who in fact did just that in December 1989, after the Romanian "Revolution" (the other one was Virgil Trofin[1], who had been demoted to running a State agriculture farm where he suffered a sudden and mysterious death in 1984). As a matter of fact just as they were about to get shot Elena Ceausescu reproached to her husband: "I told you that we should have killed Iliescu". Not sure if the powers that be in the States acted or not on this piece of good and accurate CIA intel. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Trofin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Trofin
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    To be fair, the Soviet sudden collapse at the end of '80s also took almost all Warsaw Pact spy agencies and their governments by surprise.
nickik 7y ago
I can't like to anything but reading multiple related to US regime change it seems that often the local CIA operatives understand many of the problems and predict more or less the outcome, or at least that it will not go as the higher up things. In many of those cases that person gets replaced by somebody more eager to execute the high level demand.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  It's a common trope that inward facing organizations make critically bad decisions based on internal political factors while ignoring outside opinions and facts on the ground.
meowface 7y ago
To flip the question: can you show any that were inaccurate, other than the Iraq WMD stuff? One major fuckup doesn't necessarily mean everything before and after should be discredited.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  I've mentioned a couple others in other subthreads of this comment.
  - meowface 7y ago
    If I'm understanding correctly, you seem to be criticizing negative failings rather than the much more dangerous and trust-dampening positive failings. I could also name plenty of things beyond not anticipating the Soviet Union's; e.g. improper response to intelligence warning of a possible attack pre-9/11. I think failing to predict or be aware of something is very different from proactively claiming something which turns out to be false, as with the Iraq WMDs. The question that's being asked here is not how often intelligence agencies actually gets intelligence or gets or recognizes accurate intelligence, but how often an intelligence apparatus proactively provides a report or claim which isn't true. In those cases, the stakes are usually higher, and the burden of proof is entirely on them. I was asking about examples of those kinds of failings.

ianlevesque 7y ago

I think the problem with that is that the incentives wouldn't be there to act in the interests of the public on an ongoing basis. How effective that is under the current system is up for debate, but it's not a trivial matter. Ideally the people would care enough to elect someone that respects expertise and experience.

mnbvkhgvmj 7y ago

Can you give some examples?

mlb_hn 7y ago

They've definitely gotten things very wrong, e.g. in 1989 Howard Schaffer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, testified to Congress "“We’re confident that [the Pakistani supported Afghan Government] will be neither communist nor messianic Islamic” [1]. Then Pakistan helped the Taliban seize power in the ensuing civil war. [1] U.S. Congress. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (1989). Developments In Afghanistan And Their Implications For U.S. Policy. Congressional Hearing, Feb. 21, June 14, 1989.

hanniabu 7y ago

I think a lot of this has to do with what it means to be a leader. You have the final say but you also have the responsibility to listen to your peers and use information provided. Many of our representatives aren't leaders. I know many here like to start out of politics, but case in point is Trump with his climate change denial rhetoric, constantly ignoring military advisors and tweeting on a whim without any consultation, and moving forward with various deals that advisors are recommending against.