This book, although first published in 1991,remains an interesting and relevant meditation on the role of intelligence in support of U.S. national level decision makers and in the formulation of national security policies. Codevilla identifies such intelligence as `national intelligence' to distinguish it from military or other types of intelligence. His argument is that CIA, is the principal agency responsible for producing national intelligence, but requires a significant internal cultural change if it is to do so effectively.
He supports his argument with a rather well developed operational history of CIA in which he points out the dominance of the clandestine collection and covert operations side of CIA (known variously as the Directorate of Plans (DP) and Directorate of Operations (DO)) to the determent of an effective national intelligence program based on CIA's research and analysis side (Directorate of Intelligence). He is particularly scathing on the crown jewel of CIA national intelligence production, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). He observes correctly that an appallingly large number of NIEs have either been outright wrong or ignored or both wrong and ignored (and this was before the notorious WMD NIE).
Codevilla has a good deal to say about CIA's record of clandestine collection and covert action, but this was not the main theme of his book. His central point was that CIA had the primary role of providing the executive branch of government, the decision makers, with the best information available and had consistently failed to do so. He offers a rather unique but absolutely correct solution to this which is to change the culture of the analytic arm of CIA to reflect greater emphasis on subject matter expertise by analysts and to hold them accountable not for the number of reports they produce, but for their quality.
In 2004 the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was created and responsibility of NIE production along with the National Intelligence Council was then transferred to this office. It has yet to be determined if this move has materially improved intelligence support to the executive branch.
The National Security Establishment and CIA in particular have ignored this book for twenty years and are unlikely to pick it up at this late date. This doesn't make the book any less true or important. It would be a good companion to a more recent study of national intelligence issues, "Strategic Intelligence" (Scarecrow Press, 2009) by Don McDowell. McDowell is an Australian whose views dovetail nicely those of Codevilla.
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