Precis: The U.S. intelligence community is under siege. Ironically, to no small extent, the attack is coming from within -- from the senior leadership of the CIA. A troubling case in point involves charges that the Agency was tricked into overestimating the magnitude of the Soviet threat. In fact, the problem appears to be that the CIA was most misled by planted information concerning Soviet political affairs, not military capabilities. Under Clinton Administration leadership, U.S. intelligence may be making the same mistake today -- a dangerous possibility that requires urgent attention and corrective action.

(Washington, D.C.): If it were not so serious, it would be funny: The new Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), John Deutch, has proven to have a bigger appetite for currying favorable reviews in the press and on Capitol Hill than even Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Toward this transparent end, Dr. Deutch has recently been much in evidence, for example, in: reorganizing his agency (putting in charge a gaggle of left-leaning congressional staffers); quantifying and assigning blame for the Aldrich Ames debacle; and decrying and forbidding the CIA's use of unsavory characters as foreign espionage resources in Guatemala and elsewhere. Judging by the positive treatment he has received in a Parade Magazine cover story this past weekend, in myriad news coverage and in generally favorable op.ed. articles, the DCI's P.R. campaign is succeeding.

Far less clear is whether the net effect of such self-promotion will be the reliable acquisition and timely, accurate analysis of intelligence on behalf of the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the early indicators suggest that the CIA and, to varying degrees, its sister agencies in the intelligence community are suffering under a steady diet of heavy-handed, politically correct micro-management. Morale is plummeting (the DCI was recently booed by his employees at a large agency function); sources are drying up (even those agents deemed pristine enough to meet Deutch's standards are understandably growing increasingly reluctant to share information with the current Agency team), sensitive collection methods are being compromised (not least by the indiscriminate sharing of classified data with the United Nations and other undisciplined multilateral "users" of U.S. intelligence); critical counter-intelligence techniques are being selectively applied (Clinton political appointees are being excused from routine polygraphing); and analyses appear to be increasingly slanted to tell Administration policy-makers what they want to hear (assuming, that is, they are willing to listen at all).

A Sign of the Times

A worrisome example of the problem with the new politicized CIA can be found in Dr. Deutch's trumpeting of the allegedly deleterious impact of Soviet disinformation passed through agents compromised by Aldrich Ames. As the attached editorial in today's Wall Street Journal notes, the DCI recently told Congress that Soviet double agents duped the Pentagon into spending billions of dollars on unduly sophisticated and wildly expensive weapon systems. Thanks to what Director Deutch called "inexcusable" and "devastating" failures to identify reports from such agents as suspect, the Cold War was won at a vastly higher price than would otherwise have been required.

The Journal correctly observes that:

"There's just one thing wrong with this picture: It was a blueprint for Cold War victory not by the Russians but by the U.S. It would have been nonsensical for the KGB to have thought up such a screwy plot. Yet some in Washington put forward this preposterous scenario as Cold War history."

Whether by design or not, this assertion would have served a clear domestic political purpose. In the words of the Journal, it would have "prove[d] that, as liberals wailed at the time, the famous Reagan-Weinberger defense build-up was 'unnecessary.'" This purpose was (perhaps inadvertently) acknowledged in a headline accompanying a 17 November article by Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus: "Tainted Intelligence Issue Blunted; Review Can't Find a Pentagon Decision Based on Soviet Disinformation."

The Real Scandal

The truth of the matter is that the most dangerous disinformation passed on by these double agents was designed to overstate the secure hold on power and benign intentions of Mikhail Gorbachev, not to overstate the capability of his military hardware. Such data encouraged the West to lower its guard -- something it was all too inclined to do anyway in the thrall of glasnost and perestroika. The Bush Administration, which was determined to prop up Gorbachev and preserve the "territorial integrity" of the USSR, was uncritical in accepting and acting upon this disinformation.

An even more serious problem -- which seems to persist to this day -- is the failure of U.S. intelligence accurately to understand that the Kremlin's weapons development and procurement program was actually far larger and more dynamic than the Intelligence Community (IC) generally believed. According to working level analysts, many scores of Soviet military activities escaped detection or were significantly underestimated. Some of these were even operational systems. The latter reportedly included a strategic missile that could travel intercontinental distances underwater until making, with little warning, its terminal aerial maneuver.

The Bottom Line

To paraphrase a cliche, those who fail to understand the Cold War may be doomed to repeat it -- or something worse. If anything, the United States needs a more competent, aggressive and apolitical intelligence operation in the present strategic environment. Dr. Deutch and his cohorts may prove to be a serious impediment to fielding such a national asset, rather than a catalyst to doing so.

The problem represented by an IC leadership seemingly more concerned with good press than good intelligence is not, unfortunately limited to the present Administration. As the Ames case demonstrates, damage done to the integrity and quality of an intelligence service can take many years to correct. Those interested in ensuring that the next President is well served in this area have a powerful interest in limiting the damage being done by this President and his appointees at the CIA.