A Tale of Two Failures: Intelligence Failure and the Failure of the Press


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A Tale of Two Failures Intelligence Failure and
the Failure of the Press

• May 9 2008

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Overview and Reminders

• Remember final exam distributed next week in
  class research papers due too
• In lieu of a brief quiz evaluations
• Plowing ahead

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Not all were asleep at the wheel

• Walter Pincus Washington Post though his key
  story on WMD gets buried on A17
• Landay and Strobel Knight Ridder newspapers
• Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker
• Mark Danner and Michael Massing at the New York
  Review of Books

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Why the media failedKamiya

• Psychological institutional ideological
• Psychological causes sound familiar
• the subtle internalized often unconscious way
  that the media conforms and defers to certain
  sacrosanct values and ideals

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Institutional causes for failure

• Kamiya the decline of newspapers the rise of
  infotainment and media owners insistence on
  delivering high returns to their shareholders
  have diminished resources and led to a
  bottomline fixation unconducive to aggressive
  reportingIt is harder to monitor the centers of
  power when you work for a gigantic corporation
  that is itself at the bulls eye of power.
• The Faustian tradeoff of access journalism
  Judith Miller and the Chalabi disaster

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Ideological causes

• Made possible by an embarrassing lack of
  knowledge about the Middle East
• An unexamined assumption that the interests of
  Israel are with those of the identical to those
  of the United Statesthe press trades in an
  extremely narrow range of opinion in regards to
  Israel almost always right or rightcenter
• Kamiya and Michael Kinsley also of Slate argue
  this is the elephant in the room no one says
  anything because they dont want it to be treated
  like crude antiSemitic slur

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Bonus cause An overmatched press

• Kamiya The mainstream media especially in its
  current enfeebled form is simply not equipped
  with a regime as secretive manipulative
  vengeful and not to put too fine a point on it
  malignant as the present one. Watching the
  mainstream press try to contend with the
  BushCheney gang is like watching the Polish
  cavalry galloping up in 1939 as the Wermacht
  tanks approach.

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Failures of US intelligence

• The way it is supposed to work intelligence
  agencies bring information about issues to policy
  makers who then determine which of a number of
  approaches are most likely to advance the
  interests of the nationgood intelligence allows
  policy makers to choose the best policy

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What were the failures of intelligence

• Evidence is NOT strong that the Bush
  administration directly manipulated intelligence
  to promote the war in Iraq
• Evidence does suggest and reports have called
  CIAs processes were catastrophically flawed
• 2004 Senate Report Republicans in charge cites
  mistakes in nuclear chemical and biological
  weapons as well as specific efforts to obtain
  WMD ingredients

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Senate Report and Groupthink

• Irving Janis conceived
• Groupthink suggests that groups without
  precautions tend toward self reinforcing
  delusions of unanimity morality and
  correctness. Dissenters are marginalized and
  most join the bandwagon to support the groups
  findings.
• Prevented by active promotion of devils
  advocate of leaders not tipping their hand in
  advance bringing in respected outside
  authorities. In each case Bush does the opposite

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Additional causes of intelligence failures

• Dual intelligence operations CIA and defense
  Bushs War
• The powerful influence of administration
  expectations on intelligence findings
• The huge overreliance of agencies on defectors
  telling them what they wanted to hear
  discounting stories from those who they did not
  This explains Judith Miller as well

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Special Sources for this lecture

• Gary Kamiya Why the media failed Salon.com
  April 10 2007
• Michael Massing Now they tell us New York
  Review of Books January 29 2004
• Michael Massing Unfit to Print? New York
  Review of Books June 24 2004