The Function of Intelligence in Crisis Management

Towards an Understanding of the Intelligence Producer-Consumer Dichotomy

Shaun P. McCarthy

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138351523
• eBook ISBN: 9780429787348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1998, this work is a study of the relationship between intelligence and policy and focuses on the function of intelligence in crisis management. It provides an integrated approach to the theory of the intelligence process and the principles of crisis management. It identifies those factors that influence the producer-consumer relationship within the context of the Traditionalist vs. Activist approaches, i.e. The Kent-Kendall debate. New insight into the practical limitations of the Traditionalist approach to intelligence is provided. Using terrorism as a crisis phenomenon, the study analyses the function of intelligence and the reasons behind the intelligence and the reasons behind the intelligence failures during the Reagan Administration's Foreign Policy initiatives in Lebanon, 1981-1985. With its focus on intelligence theory and management, as well as crisis management and policy making, this book will appeal to academics, scholars, intelligence practitioners, historians, policy makers and business management professionals. Although the work focuses on the U.S. intelligence community and the behavioural trends within American intelligence and security organisations, the principles and lessons learned can be applied to business and government in other democracies.

1 Introduction

Just before dawn one winter’s morning, New Year’s Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear blue sky.¹

While the precise truth pertaining to the explosion on board Pan-Am 103 in the cold night air thirty thousand feet above the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, continues to elude the international community and the victims’ families, one can only speculate as to whether Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was a prophesy or served as the inspiration for Islamic terrorists bent on revenge. The similarities between the opening lines of Rushdie’s book and the circumstances surrounding those last fatal and tragic moments for the unfortunate passengers aboard the Maid of the Seas could be described by some Islamists as poetic justice for a western society who harboured the author who had aggrieved millions of Muslims and incurred the wrath of Iran.² Pan-Am Flight 103, however, had a deeper significance than being just one more crisis for the government of the United States of America. After a number of intelligence crises in Lebanon during the early part of that decade, the tragedy was another major setback for American intelligence capabilities in Lebanon.³ It was once again a reminder to the world’s Superpower that despite its formidable power, it was incapable of comprehending and exercising its influence effectively in Lebanon and the Middle East environment.⁴

The principal reason behind this failure has been the disproportionate allocation of U.S. military and intelligence resources between its principal adversary, the former Soviet Union and Third World issues during the Cold War. Security, foreign policy and crisis management were influenced by and had always been conducted within the context of that Superpower relationship.⁵ With their attention focused on the Soviet Union, American policy makers underestimated the intentions and capabilities of smaller and non-state actors, and the highly volatile environment of the Middle East.

Research aims and objectives

This thesis which is a case-study analysis of the Reagan Administration’s crisis management approach from the perspective of U.S. intelligence practice, is intent on contributing to the knowledge and understanding of those forces which influence crisis decision making and intelligence tasking and analysis in the American government. The theoretical background on this subject has centred around the doctrine of the producer-consumer relationship as embodied in the traditionalist and activist disciplines which is set forth in the Kent-Kendall debate.⁶ I will argue that these theoretical approaches have produced more questions than answers because they have failed to apply theory to practice. The solution, therefore, is to transcend the boundary of normative theory and to develop an alternative analytical paradigm by examining the relationship between intelligence and policy making during crises. The justification for using crisis management as a framework is based upon two arguments.

The first holds that governments tend to manage from crisis to crisis, despite trying to manage by objectives.⁷ Because governments do not act in a vacuum, their objectives are affected and, in some instances, determined by their external environment.⁸ However, knowledge of that environment is necessary if sound policy decisions are to be made and implemented. That knowledge is provided through intelligence. This observation promotes the conceptualisation of current intelligence. It is the manner in which intelligence is requested and communicated during crisis situations which stimulates questions relating to the producer-consumer dichotomy. By analysing how intelligence analysts relate to policy makers who, in theory, direct the intelligence tasking process and how the policy makers respond to the analysts findings and recommendations during crisis situations, a greater understanding of the producer-consumer relationship can be achieved. Through focusing on the impact of a series of terrorist crises upon the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy objectives in Lebanon, the dynamics which shape and influence crisis management and its supporting intelligence analysis are identified and analysed.

The second argument is based upon the fact that, in studying crisis management, a variety of influential factors and processes are exposed which shape and influence intelligence analysis and management process. These include power structures, values and interests, threat and risk perceptions, commitment, resolve and determination, bargaining and negotiations, communication, decision-making processes and support relationships. Included in the relationship category is the role and function of intelligence as a warning mechanism (strategic) and support (operational) service for decision making. The study of crises also facilitates a variety of processes and variables and allows for the application of different theoretical approaches. Crisis management and its influence upon intelligence presents an analytical challenge for the integration of theory and practice while arriving at a greater understanding of the function of intelligence and the producer-consumer relationship. By studying the empirical dynamics of crisis events and the interaction between the policy makers and the intelligence analysts and managers as those events unfold and then, by comparing the empirical evidence to the theory of the producer-consumer relationship, inconsistencies between theory and behaviour can be identified. Crisis situations are deemed to be more appropriate models for studying decision-making behaviour than noncrises because they dominate a greater amount of energy and attention spent by policy makers.⁹ This is based upon the premise that crises threaten strategic interests and therefore demand immediate and high priority attention.¹⁰ Crises remain at the forefront of policy making and therefore exert an even higher demand on intelligence than routine decision-making processes.

In an effort to bridge the theoretical with the practical domains it is necessary to review the existing literature on intelligence and crisis management. To date, nothing substantial has been written on the subject with the exception of a chapter by Stan A Taylor and Theodore J Ralston in Alexander L George, Avoiding War: Problems of Crisis Management.¹¹ Specifically there is little reference to the application of intelligence and crisis management in terrorism and its use has focused primarily on war avoidance.¹² A brief comment on the phenomenon of crisis management and its intersection with intelligence is appropriate.

The Cold War, and indeed lessons learnt from the two great wars and post-World War II regional conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East, has influenced the approach to the discipline of crisis management.¹³ This is not surprising, given both the actual destruction witnessed and the potential destructive capability of nuclear war. Salmon argues that the gravity of the Cuban Missile Crisis provided the turning point in the postwar approach to crisis management and that the focus actually shifted from the mitigation of crises to crisis prevention.¹⁴ The Cuban Missile Crisis had a profound affect upon American foreign policy and the attitude towards crisis management.¹⁵ The successful management of that crisis created a belief that crises could be both managed and exploited. This confidence is reflected in much of the literature in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. One notable contribution is that of Thomas Schelling who wrote in a chapter titled ‘The Manipulation of Risk’ in Arms and Influence, that there are few choices between war and peace and that the questions that arise are ones that imply degrees of risk. Since risks exist, these should be utilised, but, properly managed.¹⁶ This implies that crises should not only be managed for the purpose of damage limitation, but for exploiting whatever opportunities exist, short of inadvertently pushing the situation over the threshold between political confrontation and the outbreak of war. Consequently the conventional wisdom on crisis management and indeed on intelligence, has shown the tendency to gravitate around the concept of war and surprise avoidance.¹⁷ While not attempting to detract nor minimise the importance of these concepts, this study attempts to examine the issues of intelligence and crisis management from a more practical perspective, aimed at creating a framework according to which crisis management and intelligence as a support function can be analysed. This will be achieved through examining the role of intelligence during crises and how intelligence analysts have challenged the assumptions upon which crisis policy decisions have been based. It will also examine how policy makers have failed to task intelligence organisations effectively. The response of the Reagan Administration to those situations which presented a direct threat or opportunity to their policy in Lebanon will be examined. In addition, their relationship with the intelligence community,¹⁸ and the manner in which they responded to crises according to the theory of crisis management principles will also be considered. The use of crisis management theory provides a reference against which government behaviour can be evaluated in accordance with their conformity to policy and how these objectives are pursued with the assistance of intelligence analysis.

The main objective of crisis management is to achieve a satisfactory resolution of the situation in such a manner that the vital interests and values of the government are secured and protected. This includes existing policy and is achieved through a process of coercion and accommodation in order to achieve the maximum concession from the adversary while simultaneously maintaining one’s own position relatively intact.¹⁹ It is precisely the manner in which the crisis situation is managed, i.e. the stratagem of using coercion and accommodation, and the influence of these methods upon the normal policy making process and objectives, which determine intelligence analysis and gives rise to the producer-consumer dichotomy.

Crises can assume different forms and emanate from various developments – surprise attack, the outbreak of war, a coup, the collapse of a government, increasing possibility of an insurgency, rampant demonstrations, riots, assassination of an important political figure, massive economic failure, the downing of an aircraft, the sinking or seizure of a ship, the failure of nuclear energy installations and ecological disasters such as massive oil spills.²⁰ It is therefore reasonable to say that the discipline of crisis management is extremely wide and ranges from war and its avoidance to the management of natural and man-made disasters.²¹ This makes the delimitation of crises essential in order to avoid the study from becoming unwieldy. The role of intelligence prior to a crisis is to eliminate surprise by alerting and warning of an impending development. Once the crisis has occurred, however, the role of intelligence is to keep the policy makers, the crisis managers and those agencies responsible for implementing policy and crisis decisions informed of events and circumstances as they unfold.²²

For the purposes of this research, the crisis phenomenon that has been selected is terrorism and the manner in which it was applied against the United States and its foreign policy interests in Lebanon. As a foremost democratic nation and the world’s Superpower, the USA affords scholars greater advantages in studying political science phenomena in comparison to closed societies. Open societies offer the scholar of intelligence greater recourse to research material and data. More research has been done and written on U.S. intelligence than any other nation.

The reason why the American intelligence model and the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy initiatives in Lebanon have been selected for this study is the fact that the memoirs of the key individuals who were involved, notably, Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, William Casey, Howard Teicher, Geoffrey Kemp and Robert McFarlane and Michael Ledeen are available.²³ Another important consideration is the fact that these individuals are no longer serving officials and are therefore at greater liberty to participate in interviews. In addition to these first-hand accounts, there is a seminal work on U.S. foreign policy in Lebanon written by John Walcott and David Martin.²⁴ Supplementary material is to be found in the works of leading journalists who covered the events in Lebanon during the period in question.²⁵ All of these publications shed light on the Lebanon crisis, albeit from their individual perspectives, they nevertheless provide the scholar with valuable source material and variations in their interpretation of the events.

The selection of terrorism as a crisis phenomenon is attributed to the fact that outside the threat of war, terrorism must be considered as a direct and major threat against state interests and public safety. Not only does terrorism pose a threat to the state’s security, however, but it raises additional issues such as the role of intelligence, the media, and the relationship between law and civil liberties.

Counter-terro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Towards an integrated theory of intelligence and crisis management
• 3 The bombing of the American Embassy on April 18, 1983 and the Marine Barracks on October 23, 1983
• 4 The kidnapping of William Buckley and the embassy bombing
• 5 The hijacking of TWA Flight 847: Crisis management and the media
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix: Interview Questionnaire
• Bibliography