PREVENTIVE DEFENSE PROJECT
A RESEARCH COLLABORATION OF STANFORD & HARVARD UNIVERSITIES
WILLIAM J. PERRY & ASHTON B. CARTER, CO-DIRECTORS
April 5, 2005
Colleagues:
The Robb-Silberman Commission did an excellent job of identifying deficiencies
in the performance of U.S. intelligence regarding WMD programs. Its
recommendations are well-considered, and if implemented will do much to
improve the intelligence basis of counterproliferation. I was pleased to contribute
to the deliberations by appearing before the Commission.
At the same time, the Commission’s charter did not address the use of intelligence
for policy and action. It will make no difference to our security if we know more
but take no action. Conversely, if intelligence is focused on supporting action (as
is done so well with support to military operations), it will be clearer to the
intelligence community what information policymakers actually need to know to
take informed action, and therefore where they have failed and must improve.
The attached oped argues that in the case of the “axis of evil” proliferators and
nuclear terrorism, the link between intelligence and policy action is missing. Until
the United States has a stronger action agenda for counterproliferation, avoiding
“intelligence failures” will not matter.
All the best,
Ashton B. Carter
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY & COOPERATION
ENCINA HALL
STANFORD, CA 94305-6165
TELEPHONE: (650) 723-9910
FACSIMILE: (650) 725-0920
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL
OF GOVERNMENT
BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE &
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
79 JOHN F. KENNEDY STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138
TELEPHONE: (617) 495-1405
FACSIMILE: (617) 495-9250
Tuesday, April 5, 2005; page A23
A Failure of Policy, Not Spying
By Ashton B. Carter
President Bush praised the Robb-Silberman commission report for its scathing and perceptive
analysis of "intelligence failures" in the "axis of evil" states of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Indeed, the report contains many useful recommendations for improving intelligence on weapons
of mass destruction. But the fallacy in the administration's appointment of a commission to study
intelligence failures is that there is almost never such a thing as a pure intelligence failure.
Intelligence failure is usually linked to policy failure.
Let's take the case of North Korea. While the commission's chapters on North Korea's nuclear
program are rightly classified, the unclassified summary suggests that spies and satellites have
yielded very little information about that country's nuclear weapons efforts. But what does it
matter? North Korea has admitted, indeed boasted, of its growing nuclear arsenal, and the United
States has done nothing to stop it. How could a few more details provided by the CIA make a
difference? If you don't have a policy, intelligence is irrelevant. North Korea's runaway nuclear
program is a policy failure, not an intelligence failure.
What's worse, policy failure has actually caused intelligence failure in North Korea. From 1994
to 2003 North Korea's plutonium was at a known location, Yongbyon, where it was measured,
handled and surveilled by international (including American) inspectors. We could inspect it -or bomb it -- at any time. But when North Korea threw the inspectors out and threatened to truck
the plutonium away to a hidden location, the United States did nothing. In due course the North
Koreans made good on their threat and took the plutonium away. Are we now supposed to
believe that it is an "intelligence failure" that we don't know where it is?
A second member of the axis of evil, Iran, demonstrates the same point. Iran, unlike North
Korea, denies it has a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration firmly contends that it
does and is almost surely right, even though the intelligence is apparently not a "slam dunk." But
since the United States apparently does not plan either to attack Iran's nuclear sites or to try to
negotiate them away (the Europeans are supposed to be trying the negotiation route), it hardly
matters whether we know all the details.
The "intelligence failure" that prompted the creation of the Robb-Silberman commission was, of
course, Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction. Here there surely was a policy - full-scale invasion, no less -- and no one can accuse the United States of inaction. Knowing
what we thought we knew, invasion was absolutely the right decision. WMD are too dangerous
to take chances. But Bush has since made it clear that even if he knew then what we know now -that the information on Hussein's weapons was "nearly worthless," in the words of the RobbSilberman commission -- he would have invaded anyway. There were other reasons for his
policy -- Hussein's mistreatment of his population and the wider implications for the Middle East
of his continued rule in Iraq. Future historians will decide, we all hope favorably, whether his
policy was a success or a failure, but they will know from his own testimony that the CIA's
"intelligence failure" was not the determining factor.
It therefore is a fact that in the three most important cases studied by the commission -- Iraq, Iran
and North Korea -- the intelligence failures the commission so carefully identifies and makes
recommendations to correct made no difference to policy success or failure.
The commission's recommendations focus on improving intelligence on classical proliferation
targets -- rogue regimes such as the three axis-of-evil states and Libya. But in the post-Sept. 11
world, we have to fear WMD not just in the hands of national governments but in the hands of
terrorists. The nation's failure to prevent Sept. 11 was less one of intelligence gaps than inaction
in the face of clear threat. With WMD terrorism, the policy-intelligence mismatch is also
evident. Osama bin Laden has declared it a "sacred duty" of jihadists to get nuclear weapons. We
hardly need more intelligence on his intentions. But to make a bomb, bin Laden's followers must
get either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. U.S. efforts to safeguard these materials
worldwide, even after Sept. 11, have been halfhearted. The tremendous success of the NunnLugar program in denuclearizing the former Soviet Union in the 1990s has not been replicated in
the post-Cold War era of terrorism. If the United States had such a vigorous set of policies to
combat nuclear terrorism, it would need good intelligence to implement those policies. But until
we get the policy right, it hardly matters that the intelligence is imperfect.
Without a comprehensive policy to combat WMD, better intelligence alone will not improve
U.S. security. Bush was right to say that keeping the worst weapons out of the hands of the worst
people is a U.S. president's highest national security priority. Since Sept. 11, under his
leadership, we have scored many successes against the worst people. With the nation at last
taking action against terrorists, intelligence has improved to support the new activism, according
to the Robb-Silberman commission. But U.S. policy toward the worst weapons is still in a preSept. 11 state. Indeed, since Sept. 11 the United States has suffered greater setbacks in
counterproliferation than at any time since the 1980s, when Pakistan went nuclear. Until this
changes, preventing intelligence failures will not matter.
The writer is co-director of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project and was assistant
defense secretary in the Clinton administration. He testified before the Robb-Silberman
commission. This article appeared in the early edition of the Sunday Post, but dropped out of
later editions to make way for commentary on the death of Pope John Paul II.