From the 'Little Red Book' to the 'Purple' Book: Transforming Intelligence into a Profession one Page at a Time

摘要

Ethics-based decision-making problems perennially plague the U.S. Intelligence Community. Attempts by Congress and the Executive Branch to inculcate in the individual Intelligence Officer a sense of responsibility to both the organization and society and act according to sound ethical principles failed to take root. However, much of that failure has to do with the approach taken toward fixing what was perceived to be broken. The author takes the position that what sets apart traditional professions from other trades is contained within Samuel Huntington's fundamental and enduring characteristics of professions: Expertise, Responsibility and Corporateness. Using this framework establishes that Intelligence does not rate well when measured against Huntington's criteria. From that analysis, the author offers a case study of the American legal profession as a means of discovering how that profession addresses some of the aspects found deficient in the assessment of Intelligence. In that case study, the Intelligence Community finds a model that it can adapt for its own quest for professionalization. The monograph concludes that the quest for the ethical conduct is not lost, provided the following efforts to professionalize occur: the individual IO takes an active role in his professional development; the Director of National Intelligence and Intelligence Community members' leaders embrace a permanent and living dialogue on ethics and integrity; Congress acts decisively in its Intelligence oversight role to require annual ethics/professional conduct rules reporting as a condition for funding; and the American people accept that, in intelligence and national security matters (as in law and medicine), there can be no 'zero tolerance' policy.