U.S. Strategic Warning Intelligence: Situation and Prospects

摘要

Strategic warning long has been a core function of national intelligence services. Many people believe, and U.S. law states, that intelligence can provide no greater service than warning of impending threats to national security.1 The trauma of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 prompted the United States to build a post-World War II intelligence structure to prevent future such surprises. Strategic warning became a formal analytic task of the Intelligence Community (IC), along with strategic (or research) intelligence, estimates, and current intelligence. Yet strategic warning has always had a precarious existence. Enemies of warning consistently threatened the function on several substantive and bureaucratic grounds, and repeatedly killed specialized warning organizations. Those pressures grew in the wake of congressional reaction to the twin failings of the 11 September 2001 (9/11) attacks and the error-filled National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002 on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). At this point, the evolution of strategic warning in the United States can be assessed, along with the causes of the various changes and their implications for the IC's performance. Also possible are suggestions for improving what is now a deeply flawed U.S. strategic warning system.