Out of the info loop: why information networks are crucial to modern warfare

Reason, June, 2004 by Bryan Alexander

The transition to fighting terrorism was difficult, marked by competing internal cultures, as cowboys (action-prone activists) and professionals (procedure-focused managers) struggled for institutional power. In addition, the Aldrich Ames affair proved destructive of agency trust and morale, as the high-profile mole's long-unchecked career cast doubt on the CIA's ability to police itself. Moreover, the absence of a mission as clearly defined as the Cold War left the agency somewhat adrift. Kessler criticizes two directors of central intelligence, James Woolsey and John Deutsch, for their inability to reform the CIA, arguing that they fostered managerial problems, failed to turn around morale losses, and lost bureaucratic turf to the Pentagon.

There is some useful information in Kessler's description of how the CIA developed structures for fighting terrorism and improved operational efficacy. Kessler points to a post-9/11 emphasis on low-level initiative and increased information sharing as ways of better "connecting the dots." Kessler's defense of the CIA's approach to Islamist groups--the agency penetrates Al Qaeda and allies using local agents, not case officers--indicates that Tenet continues to stress human intelligence gathering. Intriguingly, Kessler mentions in passing the CIA's recruitment of Muslim academics and mullahs to speak out in favor of the United States. "We are creating moderate Muslims," one source says. Kessler takes this at face value, though many readers will suspect that the real purpose in recruiting influential Muslims is to use them to spread disinformation.

While Kessler provides a credible description of a CIA on the rebound, using information thoughtfully and with some awareness of its importance, his discussion of the war on terror is very weak. The information is thin, often drawn from newspaper accounts. The innovative campaign in Afghanistan receives scarcely four pages, a discussion that introduces an important CIA branch (the paramilitary Special Activities Division) we should have read about much earlier. Kessler's description of Tenet's reforms before and after September 11 consists largely of sweeping statements in the place of analysis (e.g., "In the end, it required a commitment by the entire U.S. government to change the way business was done").

Kessler's celebration of Tenet and his renovated agency becomes shrilly defensive in the face of criticism. When other observers charge that poor information-sharing in the intelligence world made the 9/11 attacks possible, the book responds by blaming the State Department and FBI while simultaneously claiming the attacks were impossible to predict. The constructive contributions of other agencies are sidestepped, as when Kessler removes the Philippine police from the scene of Operation Bojinka in 1995, when a Manila police officer acting on her own broke up an Al Qaeda plot to bomb civilian jetliners over the Pacific Ocean. Kessler defends other aspects of the war on terror in strange ways, as when he says Jose Padilla was arrested for "the attempted dirty bomb attack on America," rather than the sketchier explanation the Department of Justice actually presented.