Paul R. Pillar
Amid repeated caving to Donald Trump’s wishes by elements both inside and outside government, one might expect, or hope, that the U.S. intelligence community would remain relatively independent. Although the intelligence agencies are part of the executive branch, a measure of independence is part of the reason those agencies exist. Moreover, independence is critical to accomplishing their mission of providing the most accurate picture possible of the world outside U.S. borders, even if that picture is not what policymakers would like to see. Otherwise, those agencies become little more than bloated speechwriting staffs.
However, the unclassified version of the community’s most recent annual threat assessment shows that it, too, has caved to the interests of the administration.
It is not unusual for the annual assessment, which is a congressionally mandated document, to partly reflect policy concerns of the White House. Indeed, it is an appropriate and necessary part of the intelligence agencies’ mission to take those concerns into account when allocating resources for collecting and analyzing information and deciding what subjects are to be addressed in written products. But such responsiveness to policymaker interests is quite different from shaping publicly released intelligence products to echo preferred administration messages.
No comments:
Post a Comment