Intelligence Studies Review

Literature on intelligence tends to acknowledge the requirements and priorities (R&P) process in passing, but rarely is explored in depth— at best, it is granted a few pages in larger volumes. However, this mechanism, which exists at the nexus of the intelligence and policy communities, has a significant impact on national security outcomes. My most recent article, “Modelling the intelligence requirements and priorities process: the US response to the Rwandan genocide”, explores the role of the R&P process in developing the mandate for the US intelligence community, and demonstrates the positive and negative impacts that this mechanism can have on urgent escalation of priorities; in this case, the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The R&P helps to determine national security priorities and the related distribution of resources across the intelligence community. It provides guidance for collaborative efforts between various departments or agencies, and issues authorisations regarding what can and cannot be done in the efforts to collect information on a particular topic. Surely, such a significant process should be considered more deeply. In the case of the Rwandan Genocide, we are given a window into both the success and failure of a mandate when urgent issues arise. On one hand, the R&P process worked smoothly to execute the rapid evacuation of US expats from Rwanda at the start of the genocide on 6 April 1994. On the other hand, the process failed to address the larger issue of the genocide itself—resulting in not only in the loss of countless lives, but also costing the US nearly eight times the amount they would have spent had they responded earlier.

The aim of this article (as well as my previous piece with Philip Davies) is to urge readers to reconsider the binary construct that largely holds either the intelligence OR policy community responsible for the success or failure of national security outcomes (and let’s be honest, the accusation of failure is most often directed at the intelligence community). In short, this means that if an investigation focuses on the actions of the intelligence community, it will almost certainly find fault there. In the absence of a mandate, the intelligence community has no directives, no resources, and no authorisations to examine a particular issue. To the investigators, this manifests as failures of collection or analysis, with no acknowledgment that the root cause of failure occurred before the intelligence community was directed to act.

In fact, by exploring numerous cases, two apparent truths arise:

1. The intelligence community does provide timely, reliable, actionable reporting when it is given the direction and means to do so.
2. Investigations into intelligence failure will sometimes conclude before new intelligence requirements (and their associated authorisations and resources) have been provided to the intelligence community.

“Why does this matter?”, you might ask. It matters because 1) the cycle of accusations of failure can cause an intelligence community to become risk averse, and 2) historically, we have seen a cycle of intelligence reforms that do not resolve the problems, because they fail to acknowledge that the root cause of failure sometimes occurs before intelligence collection and analysis is initiated. We cannot, therefore, clutch our pearls in surprise when failure occurs again.

Western intelligence and policy communities, and those investigating them, should consider greater scrutiny of the efficacy and function of the R&P process. In fact, the standardisation of investigations would be useful in creating an audit trail of all components of national security outcomes. Perhaps then, reform would be more effective at targeting those areas that need scrutiny, shedding the consistent (and at times inaccurate) accusations of intelligence failure.