Intelligence in the 21st century

Air Force Speeches, June 19, 2007 by Michael W. Hayden

Thanks for the chance to come down and talk a little bit about both of my lives: my life as an Air Force officer and my life as an intelligence officer. And what I've proposed to do in my remarks--and we'll leave some time for questions at the end--is to try to describe how those two lives have intersected and intertwined with regard to the craft of intelligence, but particularly the craft of intelligence as it relates to an Airman and to the Air Force. So, I'm not speaking just as CIA Director, but as a career Airman as well.

To begin, it's no exaggeration, I think, to say that intelligence is at the nexus of every major security challenge facing our nation today. You're talking about the global threat from al Qaeda, the influence of Iran and the Middle East, the growing economic strength of China, the growing influence of India, the intentions of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. In every one of those instances, the need for timely, accurate, comprehensive information is almost unprecedented. This shift, this rising demand for intelligence, corresponds to some changing landscape in the world as we know it.

Now, it goes as a truism, you know the Cold War's over, we've got to change Cold War paradigms and so on, but sometimes those phrases, those labels, they're substitutes for thought rather than deep, drilling-down thinking. So, bear with me a minute, and I don't want you to tune out when I say the Cold War's over, but I want you to bear with me as I discuss some of the implications of that very fact.

In the Cold War, the target of American intelligence was the Soviet Union, the nation state, conventional interests, territory to defend. When we assess the dangers that the Soviets posed, my community, both the Air Force and the intelligence community, we tracked troop movements, fighter wings, ICBMs, big stuff. That's the way I would characterize all of those. In that "find, fix, finish" thing, which anybody in the profession of arms has to master, the enemy was easy to find. He was just hard to finish. Intelligence was important, make no mistake, we were fully employed back there in the 1970s and 1980s. It was important, but it was overshadowed by the need for firepower. In the war on terrorism, that equation is reversed. Our enemy is easy to finish, he's just very, very hard to find.

Today, we're looking for individuals or small groups: groups planning suicide bombings; running violent jihadist Web sites; sending foreign fighters into Iraq; acting as conduits between al Qaeda and potential nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons experts. We can see why the drive for intelligence is paramount in this post-9/11 world. Our mission as intelligence officers is to locate the threat, identify precisely who it is and what their intentions are so that we can bring the full resources and capabilities of our nation to bear before the enemy strikes.

Let me underscore this: this is the fundamental shift in how we go about ensuring the nation's security, in this "find, fix, finish" thing. For most of, certainly, my professional life, most of our work was out there on fix and finish. Find was important, but the really hard job was finishing. The world has turned upside down. It's all about "find." The finishing is relatively easy. This has infinite numbers of ramifications. Now, I'll just give you one: when we talk about classified information getting into the public domain it upsets many of us. But the argument usually given is that, look, we'd never do anything that would put American forces at risk. We're not revealing troop movements or operational plans. Do you see where that's trapped in to Cold War thinking?

Back in the Cold War it was the troop movements and operational plans that were the hardest-to-do function. In this world it's the finding that's the hardest-to-do function, it's the intelligence thing. And we now have to treat those sources and methods with the same almost sacred respect we treated the secrecy of troops movements and operational plans in the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s, because it's those things at the front-end, the fine point, that have become the critical piece of that "find, fix, finish" equation.

There's another important plot line to consider as we talk about intelligence in this new century. It runs parallel to some of the trends I've already mentioned and it has to do with the way the Air Force views intelligence. As I said, I've grown up in Air Force intelligence; as I said, I consider myself an Airman first, but because of my assignments at NSA, and at the DNI, and now at CIA, I think I've got a unique vantage point. I've seen an important shift in how we as an Air Force think about intelligence. It comes down to this: intelligence is not a support activity. Intelligence is inherently operational. And it's not just because of that "find, fix, and finish" equation I just gave you.

I had a conversation with Charlie Holland (Retired Air Force General Charles Holland), who at the time was Commander of Special Operations Command, Charlie was a good friend; we were in Capstone (General and Flag Officer Course) together; our trip was through Latin America. He and I jogged through all the capitals of Latin America on that trip. Now, this is after the war started, so probably late 2001--early 2002. I'm down at Tampa, Charlie was gracious, we didn't have to go out to eat; he'd just invite us over to the house. There were three or four of us there, and by about dessert Charlie was talking to the intelligence guy and getting a little forceful in his gestures and just kind of tapping the table, "Mike, I need actionable intelligence, I need actionable intelligence, I need actionable intelligence." I figured Charlie would never be on a promotion board that I cared about again, and so part of my body, this one, engaged before this one was fully involved and I blurted out, "Charlie, let me give you a new paradigm. You give me a little action, I'll give you a lot more intelligence."