U.S. intelligence analysts ascribe three different confidence levels to their assessments: high, medium, and low. These levels describe an intelligence service’s confidence in what it tells policymakers is happening.
Most analysts are reluctant to offer an assessment if the confidence level is only low or medium. Different intelligence services such as the CIA and NSA often disagree over the confidence they ascribe to an assessment. The risks of getting something wrong at that confidence level are significant. This bears note in light of NBC News’s reporting on Thursday concerning the Biden administration’s use of intelligence regarding Russia’s war on Ukraine.
<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1649430145161,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07a3-de22-a173-2ffbeb100000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1649430145161,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07a3-de22-a173-2ffbeb100000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_49428360", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"989021"} }); ","_id":"00000180-09b2-d028-a5b0-dfb3a38a0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedWe know the United States released intelligence material in the buildup to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to prepare Ukraine and its Western allies and to show Russia’s lie that it had no plans to invade. But NBC News reports that some U.S. intelligence material since released has had only a low-confidence prescription. This includes intelligence references to a possible Russian chemical weapons plot that would target Russian interests and then be blamed on Ukraine. While Russia has hinted at the possibility of a chemical weapons incident, it seems the U.S. has had little further indication to suggest such a plot is being readied.
One U.S. official told NBC News, “It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence when we talk about it. It’s more important to get out ahead of them — Putin specifically — before they do something. It’s preventative.”
The risk, however, is that by producing flimsy intelligence that misleads the public, the U.S. risks being perceived as playing the same information games as Russia.
On chemical weapons, the exaggeration of U.S. intelligence findings risks playing right into Russia’s disinformation. The Kremlin has recently played up a supposed joint Ukrainian-U.S. bioweapons facility in Ukraine, for example. While there was no such weapons facility, the U.S. does not help itself when it exaggerates Russia’s own chemical weapons activity.
There’s also the risk that policymakers won’t be believed when they start talking about intelligence reporting in the future. For one, I’d like to see the information that the Pentagon spokesman was referencing when he recently said that the intelligence community assessed that there would be a high risk of Russian escalation if the U.S. helped deliver warplanes to Ukraine.
I suspect that the intelligence reporting was low-to-medium confidence and centered mainly on intercepted Russian communications. The problem, however, is that the Russians regularly make things up on encrypted phone calls so as to throw off American and allied eavesdropping. Again, this cuts to the importance of an intelligence process that threads various strains of intelligence into a web of confident understanding.
The sacrosanct principles of the intelligence cycle — the collection, analysis, assessment, and dissemination of information — are objectivity and credibility. Exaggeration or misrepresentation of information risks diluting that credibility and the confidence of allies and the public. This should be no small concern for the intelligence community, concerning its flawed assessments over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The same concern applies with regard to existing partisan perceptions of the intelligence community, a la “the deep state” etc.
Concerning comments by U.S. officials to journalists last week that Putin was being misled about the success of the war, NBC News has dropped another bombshell.
“Two U.S. officials said the intelligence about whether Putin’s inner circle was lying to him wasn’t conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence,” it reports. “Other officials disputed that, saying the intelligence was very reliable and had been vetted at the highest levels.”
At a minimum, this varied description of the intelligence shows that there is unlikely to be a high confidence assessment that Putin is being misled. While it is true that the various Russian intelligence and defense services tend to play up positive developments and downplay or leave out negative developments in their reports to Putin, a confident intelligence assessment that this is indeed happening over Ukraine would be hard to come by.
It would require either a source inside Putin’s inner circle feeding accurate information about the content of the most sensitive meetings (the CIA is highly unlikely to have such a source), or the interception of communications between persons inside that meeting describing how they deceived Putin. (Again, this is highly unlikely, if only because those persons would fear being listened to by Putin’s own spies!)
It would not be enough for the U.S. to access a “briefing for Putin on military operations, Apr. 8th.” The Russians might only have produced that briefing as a decoy so that our intelligence services would detect it. Put another way, the U.S. would need to have insight into what was actually said in the room.
Finally, a lot of the intelligence material coming from Ukraine is derived from one particular allied intelligence service. Unless that service has approved using this information for these purposes, the U.S. risks jeopardizing its relationship with a close partner.
The real question is who exactly we think we’re fooling, and that’s why the difference between the use of intelligence abroad and at home is critical. It would be very clever to plant stories about Putin being misled in the Russian media, for example. But history suggests that misrepresenting intelligence at home, even if marginally, is not a good idea for intelligence services or the people they ultimately serve.
