Richard Jernigan -> RE: Vive la France (Nov. 26 2015 4:52:48)
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My personal involvement in the intelligence business extended over a period of 19 years. It was a quarter or a third of my work during that time. I was on the 12-member Joint Anti-Ballistic Missile Intelligence Review Board during 12 years of that time. Other panelists were leading national figures in radar and interceptor design. I was the radar countermeasures guy. The other guys knew how to build them, I knew how to keep them from doing their job. We had a permanent staff of about 40 or 50 people. We got quarterly summaries of collections and analyses against the Soviet strategic defenses, both technical and human, from all intelligence agencies. The technical analyses were presented to us by the people who did them. Occasionally we went so far as to review the design of signal collection equipment, and even interviewed the operators on a few occasions when something particularly concerning was reported. Our ordinary sessions lasted two or three weeks. Sometimes there were special get togethers when something new and potentially important came up. Our job was to validate or criticize, and to direct collection emphasis for the next quarter. Some of us also interviewed three important Soviet "immigrants" as they began to be called in the Carter administration. "Defector" was felt to be impolite. But most human intelligence was at second or third hand, to protect sources still in place. I wrote a fair share of our inputs to National Intelligence Estimates. Rarely (on three occasions) I was on the losing side of a debate about certain reasonably significant conclusions. In each case we were vindicated by later definitive data. In each case the Intelligence Estimate erred in giving the Soviets less capability than they in fact possessed. As far as I can tell, these intelligence errors had no significant effect on the Cold War, except for our side to waste some money developing ineffective weapon subsystems. But we could afford to waste the money. There have been more significant intelligence failures. People as intelligent and experienced as Colin Powell believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was out of the intelligence business by then, but while I listened to Powell's speech to the U.N., I thought, "That looks pretty thin. Still, maybe they are just playing their cards close to the chest to protect sources." Turns out it was even thinner than it looked, and they had no reliable sources. This is not to impugn the professionalism, honesty or dedication of the analysts who worked the problem. But if Cheney and Rumsfeld said, "Your job is to find evidence of WMD" how else are you going to make your way in the world? The intelligence people dredged up every shred of info they could find. I am morally certain some must have dissented from the conclusions. It was the policy makers who drew the (foregone) conclusions and took the action. A few years in the defense and intelligence businesses will make it clear to any conscious person that the U.S. government is neither monolithic, nor nearly as focused and adept at skullduggery as many believe it is. Much of the damage done by the USA since WW II springs from misapprehension, misplaced good intentions, fumbling, or attempts at self defense under the impulse of fear. The Great Satan fearful? I'm here to tell you, during the Cold War, everybody who was anybody was scared sh1tless. And some of the damage no doubt has been due to less admirable impulses. Nobody's perfect. When you're the most powerful country in the world, not being perfect is a big problem for everybody. We spent most of the past summer overseas. More than one person said to me, "You guys elect the leader of most of the civilized world. Please be careful who you vote for!" The other day Larisa and I were talking. She said, "Where do all these conspiracy theories come from?" Just off the top of my head, I replied, "For most of our history as a species we lived in small hunter gatherer bands of 20 or 30 people. In my experience, in a group that size a few people will dominate. If they are wise and well liked, the band will appreciate their leadership and do as well as external conditions allow. If the leadership is poor, people will tire of them and eventually get rid of them--violently if necessary. For 90-percent of our history, if things weren't going well, it was either due to the easily perceived will of the gods, or the fault of somebody you knew quite well." "Nowadays, when the gods are a little more distant and society is far more complex, and more capable of throwing up bad results from good but inept intentions, and you know hardly anybody, it's still somebody's fault. 'They' are out to get us, the sons of bitches!" But as vindication for my role in all this, I still fondly remember the time Larisa and I first visited the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC together, seven years ago. Larisa's mother was an aeronautical engineer in the Soviet Union. The Museum had more Soviet space stuff than the last time i had been there. Larisa, proud of Russian culture, was pointing out Soviet "firsts" in the space race. Teasing I asked, "So should the Soviet Union have won the Cold War?" Larisa lived in the Soviet Union until she was thirteen. Her fair face turned red and she practically spat, "No! They were a bunch of evil bastards!" The USA opposed the Soviet Union for a variety of reasons, some selfish, some noble, some misguided, in my experience mainly from fear. But opposing them was the right thing to do, evil bastards or not, by the account of every former Soviet citizen I have met--and I've met a few, both during and after the Cold War. I was raised in a religious household where the distinction of good from evil was for the most part perfectly clear. All these decades later, I am at times confident in classifying results as good or bad. But after all these decades I am far less confident in assigning "good" or "bad" to the intentions that led to the results, unless I actually know how it happened, in detail, and feel that I knew the participants to some extent. It is all too easy to attribute evil intentions to mere ineptitude or lack of foresight, or any number of other failings, and to imagine that the bastards are out to get us. Don't get me wrong. If we find ourselves in a bad situation we need to get busy and do something about it. But blaming somebody is not going to get us very far along that path. It's not going to help much in figuring out what to do. For millennia we have told ourselves that we are the masters of creation. Now we are numerous enough and technologically powerful enough actually to play that role. So far we're haven't really been up to the job. So shut up and play your guitar, RNJ!
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