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Dr. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán

Killed on 9 April, 1948

Death Sparked El Bogotazo and subsequently, La Violencia

Secretary of State George Marshall calls the riots a Communist conspiracy

Presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey used the riots against his opponent, President Harry Truman

Accusations of intelligence failure caused DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter to faceaccusations of intelligence failure before congress.

Became the first in a string of accusations that the US intelligence community did not give early warning of an escalating mass social movement.

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In the US, failure to provide early warning of macro-social movements (revolutions, genocides, civil wars) tends to rest at the feet of the intelligence community.

They were accused after the Iranian Revolution, after the Rwandan Genocide, and most recently after the Arab spring.

The accusations suggest that flaws occur at the collection and analysis stages of the intelligence cycle.

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THEORY 1: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ARE HARD TO PREDICT

For instance, even when a society is unhappy, they may be reluctant to take the lead showing their discontent.

When this happens, leaders think they are loved and supported, but it is a house of cards.

The tiniest thing can set of a chain of rapidly escalating events.

The undercurrents of displeasure are the kindling to social movements. The considerably more unpredictable variable is the spark.

Even the best-equipped agencies cannot prognosticate the event that causes mobilisation.

THEORY TWO: THE IC IS NOT DESIGNED FOR THIS

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A second hypothesis suggests that the US intelligence community fails because it is not geared toward assessing non-state actors.

Initially, the USIC’s objective was to assess military capabilities and intentions of Soviet Russia.

As the US became a global stakeholder, the intelligence community’s objectives expanded to include a greater number of states and state actors.

In response to the need, the intelligence community developed and sharpened tools and tactics designed to monitor state-driven intentions and capabilities.

However from the start, the community was implicitly tasked with observing threats a sub-state level.

Across most other western governments, this level of observation is a function of policy.

It could be argued that the US intelligence community failed to adapt their existing tools to sufficiently monitor societal actions.

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If we look at the accusations of the 1979 IRANIAN REVOLUTION

History books and congressional hearings refer to the events as an intelligence failure

Specifically intelligence collectors were accused of gathering insufficient or incorrect information,

Intelligence analysts were accused of providing insufficient and flawed analysis.

HOWEVER

If we look at the mandate, we realise that Iranian domestic issues had been given deliberately low priority at the Shah’s behest.

This lead to limited resources, limited funding and limited access to information.

It was only after events escalated, and a mandate shift was put into motion, did the agencies begin to receive more attention and resources.

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The same is true of other cases, including the Rwandan Genocide, and of the Arab spring, and of El Bogotázo.

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However upon closer inspection, the evidence, it suggests that the intelligence community does NOT fail.

Asking WHY the intelligence community fails is a pre-suppositional fallacy.

In fact, the USIC has consistently provided RELEVANT, VALID and ACTIONABLE information when it is directed to do so.

The failure is not a result of poor collection or analysis.

It is a failure of mandates.

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Intelligence community activities are driven by a mandate that is formed through the Requirements and Priorities process.

This process is conducted through a cooperative effort between the intelligence community and key policy and decision makers

The R&P mechanism establishes bidirectional communication regarding intelligence needs. However this aspect of the R&P is only one component.

The decisions made as the result of the R&P serve as a major factor in determining:

• The federal civilian and military intelligence budgets. • Dispersal of resources including staffing, collection channels, and technology. • Which intelligence efforts will require interagency cooperation, and to what extent• Justification for the authorisation of operational clearance.

Together these amount to the marching orders for civilian and military intelligence production…. the mandate for the intelligence community.

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Thus the R&P process will interchangeably be referred to as the “mandate development process”

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Within the mandate, Intelligence Requirements are rank ordered in priority according to their significance to national security and national interest.

Its order is crucial; once assets are allocated to one task, they cannot be allocated to another.

The distribution of resources occurs in descending order; items of higher priority on the mandate receive the greatest share of the budget.

As the priority level decreases, so too does its associated budget.

In this manner, the mandate provides a list of explicit instructions, and implicit restrictions. In other words, spend time on this, not that.

Determining their order of importance and their associated budget is a complex and fragile process. As Loch Johnson says (See Above)

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A successful mandate covers the most significant areas of risk and remains flexible enough to accommodate emergency events.

Mandate failure is the result of a malfunction anywhere in the process of mandate

development.

These glitches can occur at any stage of the R&P process;

they can be the result of a defect in the system used to implement the process, or in

the process itself.

Mandate failure can cause a misalignment of the mandate with policy needs or

intelligence capabilities.

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This is particularly problematic when transient, urgent events arise and require a shift from low to high priority. These are called an “ad-hoc” priorities.

When an ad-hoc event occurs, resources must be rapidly redirected to the new issue in order for the intelligence community to provide information as quickly as possible to decision makers.

This movement of priorities is a MANDATE SHIFT.

If mandate failure or a mandate shift failure occurs, it can result in insufficient

funding or resources for intelligence purposes.

It can also delay or restrict actions at every subsequent stage of intelligence

production.

Mandate failure can occur in multiple ways, including underuse or misuse of the

system, insufficient filtering, poor hierarchy development, or force-feeding

infeasible or restrictive mandates.

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The Because intelligence failure is:A coat of armour

A partisan weaponA budget justifier

The requirements and priorities process is rarely taken into account when failures occur.

This allows the stigma of failure to remain attached to the intelligence community.

Why would this happen?

To some, particularly in the policy realm, it is advantageous.

Government appointed fact-finding committees have a self-interest in focusing in directing attention away from actions taken at the policy level.

At the best of times, politicians wish to keep unwanted attention away from themselves or their departments.

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On radio, television or social media, politicians can blame the intelligence community for “their policy errors and execution deficiencies—or distance themselves from their own subordinates—with little fear of complaint from legislators or voters.”

Because the intelligence community is a secretive institution with a considerably smaller voice in the media, responses to these accusations are often given less bandwidth in the public sphere, or glossed over by then next wave of policymaker rebuttal.

Thus, intelligence failure serves as a coat of armour.

During election years, failure becomes a partisan battle-cry.

This is evidenced during the 1948 Presidential battle between Dewey and Truman after el Bogotazo. Dewey delighted in the intelligence failure, using it as ammunition against Truman in the run-up to the election.

This has become a running theme; in 1960, John Kennedy used information obtained from Strategic Air Command against incumbent Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

Kennedy argued that Eisenhower was weak on defence, and as a result, the Soviets had a greater number of nuclear weapons than the US— a missile gap.

The allegation is believed to have been a significant force-multiplier for the Democratic Party, and is attributed to helping Kennedy win the election.

More recently, the mid-term elections of 2006 were swayed greatly by the failure that led to the Iraq War.

Democratic senator Robert Menendez argued that his Republican opponent Tom Keane and President George W. Bush were “living in an alternative reality where intelligence findings don’t matter, mounting casualties don’t count, and rhetoric about the war on terror is more important than results.” The accusations of intelligence failure were an impetus for the Democratic Party to gain a large number of seats in Congress.

In these instances, failure was successfully used as a political weapon.

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Thus we can see that the mandate has internal costs to the country.

Internationally, the mandate has external costs in the form of changes to international relations, or the determination to take diplomatic or military action.

With respect to the significant role that mandates play in the domestic politics and international interests, it is bewildering that it has been so resoundingly ignored. This process could arguably be the weakest link in the intelligence production chain, yet it is one of the most under-examined areas in the field.

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