Erik J. Dahl - Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond

INTELLIGENCE AND SURPRISE ATTACK

Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond

ERIK J. DAHL

2013 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dahl, Erik J.

Intelligence and surprise attack : failure and success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and beyond / Erik J. Dahl.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58901-998-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Intelligence serviceUnited States. 2. National securityUnited States. I. Title. JK468.I6D325 2013
327.1273dc23

2012042488

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

15 14 13 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing

Printed in the United States of America

PART I
THE PROBLEM OF CONVENTIONAL SURPRISE ATTACK

PART II
THE PROBLEM OF TERRORIST SURPRISE ATTACK

I FIRST BEGAN TO THINK about the subject of intelligence failure and surprise attack during my career as a naval intelligence officer. My greatest goal during that time was to avoid contributing to another failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor, while seeking to recreate the success experienced by an earlier generation of intelligence professionals at the Battle of Midway. In the end neither my failures nor my successes were quite so spectacular, although I had my share of both. But when I retired from active duty and began graduate studies at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, I finally had the time to think systematically about the question: Why does the American intelligence community so often fail to prevent surprise attacks and other disasters?

At the Fletcher School my dissertation adviser Richard Shultz helped me focus my thinking on the project that would become this book. I would also like to thank my other dissertation committee members, William Martel and Anthony Oettinger, for their advice and enthusiastic support. At Fletcher I would also like to thank the staffs of the Ginn Library and of the International Security Studies Program, as well as Beth Ahern, Natasha Bajema, Emma Belcher, Jenifer Burckett-Picker, Beth Chalecki, Josh Gleis, Nathalie Laidler-Kylander, Nicola Minott, Anna Seleney, and Lorenzo Vidino. Among the many others from whom I received valuable advice and guidance in the early days of this project, I would like to thank Frank Stech, who first suggested that I compare the failure of Pearl Harbor with the success of Midway, along with Jim FitzSimonds, Richards Heuer, Art Hulnick, Tom Mahnken, Jim Miller, Fred Parker, and Bob Vickers.

At the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government, I received wonderful support from Steve Miller, the director of the International Security Program, from my office mate Erica Chenoweth, and from Chuck Cogan, Susan Lynch, and Micah Zenko.

At the US Naval Institute, Janis Jorgensen, Mary Ripley, and Paul Stillwell helped me locate oral histories that were especially useful for my chapters on Pearl Harbor and Midway. At the Naval Historical Center and the Navy Department Library, Linda Edwards and Glen Helm helped me with their invaluable collection of formerly classified cryptologic studies. In Washington, I was able to conduct research using materials on the Day of Terror trial and other terrorism cases through the invaluable assistance of Steven Emerson and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and I would especially like to thank Ryan Evans and Lorenzo Vidino for going out of their way to help me.

Since arriving at the Naval Postgraduate School in 2008, I have benefited from the support of many colleagues and friends, and for their comments and advice I would especially like to thank Victoria Clement, Mohammed Hafez, Maiah Jaskoski, Jeff Knopf, Sandi Leavitt, Clay Moltz, Brian Pollins, Maria Rasmussen, and Arturo Sotomayor. I have also received valuable advice from Gary Acker-man, Dan Mabrey, and Assaf Moghadam, and from my teaching colleagues at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, Pat Miller and Bob Simeral. James I. Walsh and Jim Wirtz read several of the books chapters and provided valuable recommendations.

My editor at Georgetown University Press, Don Jacobs, has been greatly supportive throughout the entire process and provided many important substantive comments and recommendations. The comments from the books anonymous reviewers were extremely useful. An earlier version of was published in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. The views expressed in this book are my own and do not represent the views of the US government or the Naval Postgraduate School.

Above all I would like to thank my wife, Christa, for the support she has given me in this project and in so many other ways over the years. This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Margaret Dahl, and my father, Per Dahl.

Breaking the First Law of Intelligence Failure

WHY DO SURPRISE ATTACKSwhether from terrorists or from conventional military enemiesso often succeed, even though later investigations almost always show that intelligence warnings had been available beforehand? In her classic book about Pearl Harbor, Roberta Wohlstetter provided what is still today the most widely accepted answer to this puzzle. She argued that although there had been numerous warnings of a Japanese threat, the large ratio of extraneous noise to meaningful signals made analysis of the data difficult: In short, we failed to anticipate Pearl Harbor not for want of the relevant materials, but because of a plethora of irrelevant ones.

Wohlstetters viewthat an excess of noise had drowned out the pertinent intelligence signals and warningshas since become conventional wisdom, and most major studies of surprise attack and intelligence failure employ the concepts of signals and noise to at least partly explain why intelligence so often fails and surprise attacks succeed.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many scholars and intelligence practitioners cited Wohlstetters arguments in attempting to explain how the US intelligence community could have missed what after the fact appeared to have been clear warnings.

According to most experts, this first law of intelligence failure continues to hold true today, and it has become conventional wisdom that preventing surprise attacks depends largely on the ability of analysts and policymakers to understand and connect the available signals and warnings.

This book argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong. When we compare cases of intelligence failure with those of intelligence success, we find that the first law of intelligence failure is broken: Before most surprise attacks or other strategic surprises, the necessary signals were not there; and it is highly unlikely that surprise could have been avoided if only imaginative intelligence agencies and analysts had been able to connect the dots and understand the signals amid the noise. The problem is that most intelligence available before surprise attacks is general and nonspecific, producing what is often termed strategic warning. As a study by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) put it, this strategic intelligence allows policymakers to see the smoke of a growing threat, but not the flames that tell them where and when to take action against it.