Response to Dr. Kissinger Part t0

Similarly, in pursuing the cost-benefit rationale, the estimate concludes that a combination of international scrutiny along with security guarantees might "prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program." That is a policy, not an intelligence, judgment. ( Fmr. Sect'y of State, Henry Kissinger )

I disagree that policy considerations assimilated into intelligence estimates are necessarily "policy judgments," as Dr. Kissinger stipulates. There is a distinction. An intelligence " estimate " is just that, a projection, that must, inherently, by definition, incorporate policymaking. In other words, intelligence estimates are a function of an array of possible policies, or policy trajectories, from which one will be chosen or pursued. It is true that the intelligence agent may not be aware of the full scope of that array - a "contollability" conjecture - and that should be all the more reason an estimate not bias intelligence in favor of the desired policy based upon some theoretical interplay of policy and outcome, or estimate. But the outcome of a decision - short-term actionability - or policy - some actionable trajectory - is what an estimate must gage based upon what raw intelligence exists at any present time, t0.

Three formidable examples come to mind, the first of which, a friend told me about, the second being one with which we're all familiar, while the third is related to the second in a reciprocal manner, meaning that the second is also related to the third.

A friend told me recently that a psychic had predicted that if Barack Obama were to accept the Vice Presidential nomination, he'd become President, if not, he'd never be President, which seems to concur with some of Barack's own stated reasoning about the timing being right for his 2008 candidacy rather than, say, 10 or 15 years down the road.

What this seems to be is a " conditional projection, " which is a form of conditional information. In other words, if A is the choice, B will happen; if not, then not B, perhaps ever. So instead of projecting what decision will be made, it projects what will happen if a decision is or is not made. Hence, it's more an examination of the role of decisionmaking in human sociological causality, or the interplay of decision and condition with respect to sociological outcomes, than it is a sheer projection about either what decision will be made regardless of outcome, of what outcome will result despite what decision is made, either of which indicating a kind of preordained order, or inevitability, or fatalism in a case where an outcome, like 9/11, is tragic.

When an intelligence estimate deems to integrate or assimilate decisionmaking and policymaking parameters, it merely says, " This is how a decision may affect projected conditions where those conditions may in turn affect the production of raw data as a function of policy, thereby indicating a posture in one direction or the other, where each all of which, condition, decision, and raw data, combine to affect or determine the estimate. "

So intelligence must report on external diplomatic conditions that decisions and policies may affect, the by-product of which will dictate what's being estimated, the acquisition of WOMDs, the proliferation of extremism or the like.

Fatalism and predestination, on the other hand, are obviously un-American because we believe that democracy to be their antithesis, and that it is, by way of democracy that some subjective notion of " inevitability, " is rendered, or transformed into that which is controllable by virtue of human choice or a multitude of choices filtered through a representative framework - a republic - even as some of the determinors of those choices might be, themselves, subjective.

In other words, the greatest, most powerful bond is to predestination, a bond that can only be transcended where history itself is observable in an unbiased manner, and a bond which is given to the notion of historical recurrence, or symmetry, but also given to a tendency to which human beings are naturally inclined - security. Why ? Because security depends upon predictability, which depends upon symmetry, or recurrence and it is precisely the imposition of security, and thus predictability that the driving force of totalitarianism. From this, historical recurrence follows naturally, but not where its causes are observable in an unbiased manner. Paradoxically, where historical recurrence is supposed to be some liberating force to those things external to us, even to our ability to observe, things that present a threat to our security, it becomes a rather repressive and deliberating force, thrusting to forefront of human affairs the insatiability of human desire embodied in a single or small group of people.

Moreover, there is a psychoanalystic theory of totalitarianism, formulated by Sigmund Freud, during the rise of the Third Reich ( Journal of Management, Vol. 13, No. 1, 41-54 (1987), On the Psychodynamics of Organizational Totalitarianism
Howard S. Schwartz ).


Human fate in totalitarian states is understood to be predestined, which is what distinguishes America. Why is totalitarianism consistent with predestination, conceptually ? Because real, or actual " controllability, " the way its defined in the applied scienes, is contingent upon " observability," which cannot exist in a totalitarian state. For " observability " to exist, there must be freedom. The mind must be free in order to see, else the entire process is biased and the mind sees what it wants to see or has to see under the threat of force. As controllability dwindles or dimishes, predestination, or pure determinism proceeds.

So even though states may evolve in the direction of totalitarianism in a way that appears to be natural, or evolutionary, even with respect to terror, inevitable, its existence is undesirable, and yet that remains unknown until such a time as it becomes observable. But is the undesirability of totalitarianism observable relative to history ? Does the " observability " conjecture bear some historical contingency ? Absolutely. Which is the antithesis of historical recurrence as a function of a totalitarian state and which defines the paradox of totalitarianism: while the prupose of totalitarism may be control which is deemed to be necessary as a result of threats to the state which cannot be mitigated otherwise, control depends upon observability, which cannot exist in the absence of liberty. Controllability and observability, controllability and liberty are thus, interdependent, lest we become fatalistically predestined in the absence of liberty and thus, our own inability to observe, primarily, but among other things as well, truth.

Generally speaking, real-world systems are only partially controllable, and sometimes only indirectly at that, thereby compounding the significance of diplomacy in an effort to modify conditions in such a way that the latter might be enlarged, on virtuous grounds.

In other words, 9/11. Suppose that the government, even the public, had known about 9/11 before it happened. The first problem is apparent. It's a Catch 22. Nobody would have believed that airplanes could have crashed into buildings. It's far too apocalyptic. You would have been called a propagandist crackpot with some sort of vendetta against Islam had you believed such a thing.

But it was real. It was true. Which is the problem. To some extent avoidability, which refutes predestination, depends upon believability, or credibility. In the case of 9/11, it was somewhat more involved. The World Trade Center had been attacked in 1993. By Al-Qaeda, as far as we know, not assuming some wider conspiracy. Airplanes might crash into the World Trade Center. Exactly. And the terrorists had already attacked the Trade Center. So even though it's still apocalyptic, it's more believable because the target, a symbolic target is consistent with a previous attack.

Now let's suppose that the intelligence had entered the system early, by way of a psychic like the one who made the conditonal projection regarding Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. Let's say that the government knew in 1987, 6 years prior to the first Trade Canter attack, in 1993. Of course it would not be deemed credible. There wasn't any precedent for such a thing outside of what occurred in Beirut in 1983. And yet that was an attack on a military installation, with hardly the same symbolism that an attack on the Trade Center might inspire.

When 1993 does arrive, the 2001 projection, an estimate, even with specifics attached, becomes more credible. It has a more substantive basis than just Beirut. But if there's going to be an attack, it can't be stopped. Stopping it might ential consequences. Exactly, which is why we have intelligence agents, one to whom this particular intelligence was reported, the Director of SCS, Robert Philip Hanssen.

So in as much as Dr. Kissinger claims to have defended agents in the past, he did not defend Hanssen. If relations with Russia were st stake as a result of Hanssen's having sold secrets, that's a policy consideration, not an intelligence estimate. To not stop an attack for political reasons is beyond atrocious; it's an act of depraved indifference.

So the attack could not be stopped. Why ? Because a psychic predicted it ? Or because we were not a democracy, which is what I believe to be a more fundamental reason. George W. Bush was elected by the Supreme Court, and was still an unelected leader at the time we went to war with Iraq, in 2003. The government of the United States was illegitimate, the war was illegal, and still is, threatening now, to become World War III. The war is predicated on the testimony of an Iraqi defector by the name of " Curveball, " testimony that ended up in Bush's state of the union address.

The problem here is exactly the opposite of what Dr. Kissinger claims it to be. The problem is that intelligence that would have been conditional, may have stopped the attack, or at least mitigated it, in the very least, led us along a decisionmaking trajectory that would render the most desirable outcome. To merely accept that an attack is going to happen, that it can't be stopped, that we shouldn't even try, that it can be easily, given the power of the American media, attributed, to Saddam Hussein, to justify an invasion, who villainized during Desert Storm, and a Sunni Muslim, is again, beyond atrocious, beyond even depraved - it's premeditated. Saddam Hussein was exonerated by the 9/11 Commission.

The U.S. military is still in Iraq, for no apparent reason. And how long has the U.S. Military occupied Saudi Arabia ? And how democratic is Saudi Arabia ? I'll tell you. Saudi Arabia just granted a girl who'd been raped there, clemency. How generous.