基式外交：更完善的情报改革 @《基式外交研究》2025年第6期

作者：亨利・A・基辛格

来源：大外交青年智库基式外交研究中心《基式外交研究》2025年第6期

文源：Kissinger, Henry A. "Better Intelligence Reform." The Washington Post, August 16, 2004.

声明：基式外交研究中心转载、编译与翻译的内容均为非商业性引用（学术研究），不作商用，如有问题请即刻联系

一、中文翻译

布什总统提议设立新的国家情报总监职位。该职位不属于内阁，也不设在白宫，职责是“协调”情报预算并与各情报机构“合作”确定优先事项。参议员约翰・克里支持9・11委员会建议的情报总监发挥更积极的作用。国会两院正举行听证会以加速立法。

总统大选期间的紧迫感源于国家面临的紧迫威胁，其隐含前提是现有情报系统无法应对眼前的危险。但这一论点具有两面性：重组将导致行政部门经历数月甚至数年的调整，改革幅度越大，调整期越长。无论如何，短期威胁必须通过改进“9・11后建立的现有结构”来应对；对于长期威胁，必须避免仓促过渡到新系统可能引发的漏洞。深思熟虑比仓促行动更重要。

恐怖主义被9・11委员会直截了当地定义为“激进伊斯兰原教旨主义的攻击”，其核心是依托主权国家领土、受超越传统政治忠诚的狂热思想驱动的非官方组织。让情报系统适应这些新现实，首先需要明确需要解决的问题。当前改革的焦点是集权化，主要争议在于拟设的情报总监的权限范围——是否应赋予其预算权，该职位应独立存在还是隶属于总统行政办公室。基本假设是，大多数情报失误源于信息收集和协调不足。但据我观察，问题通常出在评估阶段。过去三十年的四大情报失误印证了这一点：

第一，1973年中东战争，令美国和以色列措手不及；

第二，1998年印度核试验，开启了核扩散威胁的新时代；

第三，9・11事件；

第四，未能在伊拉克找到大规模杀伤性武器。

在这些失误中（可能除9・11外），事实本身并不缺失，难点在于对事实的解读。甚至9・11事件也被委员会归咎于“未能将已有信息关联起来的想象力缺失”。

1973年中东战争前，美国和以色列政府掌握了埃及和叙利亚军事集结的所有细节，但误判了其意图。没有人相信阿拉伯军队真的会发动进攻，因为各级分析师都坚信他们必败无疑。每一个看似不祥的迹象都被解读为支持这一前提。甚至当苏联在战争爆发前48小时从叙利亚和埃及撤离侨民时，也被视为苏阿关系紧张的结果。

同样，在印度核试验问题上，公开证据被忽视，因为情报界认为印度无法隐瞒实际核试验。

关于伊拉克武器问题（如英国《巴特勒报告》所示），当分析师从确凿证据（萨达姆・侯赛因十年违反1991年停火协议、建造两用化工厂、试图获取核材料、精心策划欺骗手段）直接推断“已具备生产能力等同于拥有武器库存”时，评估过程出现了断裂。（早在1998年，克林顿总统在解释轰炸伊拉克的演讲中就给出了化武和生物武器库存的具体数字。）这一结论过于武断，但即使知晓现在的情况，也未必会改变“先发制人”的决策逻辑。面对一个拥有地区最大军队、第二大潜在石油收入、曾对本国人民和邻国使用此类武器，且（据9・11委员会称）与基地组织有情报联系的国家，美国能等到其实际生产出武器再行动吗？

这一问题本质上需要地缘政治判断，而非情报判断。因此，在重组情报结构时，必须确保评估过程独立于地缘政治和战略主张。情报对已发生或即将发生的事件最可靠，对未来的预测则存在局限性。评估情报机构应看其收集信息、解读信息、避免先入为主、理解潜在趋势的能力。

这是一条微妙但对有效决策至关重要的界限。大多数重大战略决策涉及对后果的预判。情报应提供与决策相关的事实，而政策方向和最终选择取决于更多因素，必须由政治领导人做出。若将国家情报总监纳入总统行政办公室，将模糊这一界限，使情报在决策中拥有过大影响力，并扭曲情报分析的客观性。

同样，将国内外情报合并由单一官员领导（仅受限于行政长官）也令人担忧。多数民主国家并不采用这种模式。常被援引的“参谋长联席会议”类比忽略了一个事实：尽管参谋长联席会议可直接接触总统，但其日常运作需与五角大楼文职领导层反复磨合。长期以来，政策是在国内外情报机构之间建立“防火墙”，以防止出现单一、不受制约的情报体系。9・11事件表明，这种隔离已过度阻碍了反恐情报的协调，但完全消除界限未必是最佳解决方案。

重组至少应同等重视提升情报质量，而非仅关注收集效率。政策的成败取决于从信息中提炼趋势的能力。一个独立的国家情报总监（按总统提案负责“协调”，或按9・11委员会建议“领导整个情报体系”）能否解决这一挑战？过度集权的系统是否会放大思维同质化的固有风险？何种结构最有可能捕捉到无形的趋势？

实际上，多数重组方案废除了1947年《国家安全法》中“中央情报局局长兼任政府对外情报总监”的规定。由于其他部门（尤其是国防部）坚持保留自身情报业务的自主权，中情局局长从未真正落实其理论上的权力。

在中情局局长之上增设国家情报总监将导致两种结果之一：在一个权力源于知识的世界，这需要建立庞大的新官僚机构来重新引导政府各部门的情报流向，并筛选各情报机构的输入信息。但此类机构的人员从何而来？是否意味着拆解现有机构？如果不将中情局的分析部门置于国家情报总监领导之下，该职位能否有效运作？若中情局因此被架空，其剩余职能将如何处理？反之，若国家情报总监缺乏直属机构支持，他将沦为各部门建议的“传声筒”。

无论哪种情况，中情局局长将不再直接接触总统，因为国家情报总监将被定义为总统的首席情报顾问。其他方案值得考虑，例如通过将中情局局长头衔改为国家情报总监，强化其在对外情报领域的协调和预算权。国内外情报活动的协调可通过9・11委员会提议的“国家反恐中心”等机构实现，或许还可设立总统国家安全情报助理，负责确保不同的重要情报评估意见直达总统。

重组方案并不匮乏：9・11委员会、参议院情报委员会、斯考克罗夫特委员会、哈姆雷提议（集中收集但保留分析职能）等。当前迫切需要的是暂停讨论，将各种提案整合成一个连贯的概念。可指派一小群具有高级政府经验的人士，以六个月为限，依据以下原则完成这一任务：

·集权必须与多样性平衡；

·国内外情报不应合并，而应通过专题工作组协调；

·必须制定系统性提升情报质量的特别措施，不能仅依赖组织结构图的调整；

·若不关注情报人员的士气，任何重组计划都将失效。

尽管情报人员在全球被描绘为暗中主导政策的“阴谋家”，但现实中他们承受着异常的心理压力。安全屏障将他们与同事隔离，在一个对必要保密也充满猜忌的文化中运作，周围弥漫着模糊的氛围。他们未公开且无法公开的成功被视为理所当然，而因战略误判（而非情报失误）导致的政策失败却归咎于他们。

自20世纪70年代丘奇委员会和派克委员会、以及80年代和90年代的后续调查（披露了大量特工姓名和几乎所有秘密行动）以来，情报机构陷入了长达30年的政治困境。自由派批评其过于意识形态化和冷战思维，保守派则认为其缺乏足够的意识形态敏感度，忽视国际事务中的权力要素。在局长威廉・科尔比至约翰・多伊奇任期内，重心转向减少对特工的依赖，强调更不易引发滥用指控（有时确实存在滥用）的技术收集手段。这是导致近期所有涉及情报失误的委员会报告中均提及的“反恐人力情报短缺”的主要原因。

综上，情报重组还需为情报人员带来一定稳定性。成千上万尽职尽责的人曾应政府要求参与冷战最重要的战役，如今仍奋战在打击激进伊斯兰意识形态的前线。他们的失误必须纠正，但在调整其工作架构的同时，也应认可他们的贡献。

二、英语原文

President Bush has proposed a new post of national intelligence director. Not part of the Cabinet or located in the White House, the director would be charged with "coordinating" the intelligence budget and "working with" various intelligence agencies to set priorities. Sen. John Kerry has supported a more activist role for an intelligence director recommended by the Sept. 11 commission. Both houses of Congress are holding hearings to expedite legislation.

The sense of urgency in the middle of a presidential campaign is being justified on the grounds that the country is in imminent danger; the implication is that the existing intelligence system is not capable of dealing with the immediate threats. This argument cuts both ways. Reorganization will bring with it months-or years-of adjustment throughout the executive branch, and the more sweeping the change, the more this will be true. Whatever happens, the short-term threats must be dealt with through improvements to the existing structure, which was instituted after Sept. 11. As for longer-range threats, care must be taken lest a hasty transition to a new system generate unnecessary vulnerabilities. Thoughtfulness is more important than speed.

Terrorism, forthrightly described by the Sept. 11 commission as an attack from radical fundamentalist Islam, is spearheaded by technically private groups basing themselves on the territory of sovereign states and impelled by a fanaticism transcending traditional political loyalties. Adapting the intelligence system to these new realities must start with an understanding of the problems requiring solution. The current emphasis is on centralization; the principal disagreements concern the locus and authority of the proposed director of intelligence-whether he or she should have budgetary authority and whether the role should be free-standing or in the executive office of the president. The basic premise seems to be that the cause of most intelligence failures is inadequate collection and coordination. In my observation, the breakdown usually occurs in the assessment stage. The four major intelligence failures of the past three decades illustrate the point:

First, the 1973 Middle East war, which caught both the United States and Israel by surprise; second, the Indian nuclear tests of 1998, which opened a new era of proliferation threats; third, Sept. 11; and fourth, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In each of these intelligence failures-except possibly Sept. 11-the facts were at hand. The difficulties arose in interpreting what they meant. Even Sept. 11 was ascribed by the commission to a failure of imagination in connecting the dots of available knowledge.

Before the 1973 Middle East war, the U.S. and Israeli governments were aware of every detail of the Egyptian and Syrian buildup. What they misjudged was its purpose. Nobody believed the Arab armies would actually attack, because every analyst at every level was convinced they were certain to be defeated. Every event, no matter how ominous, was interpreted as confirming that premise. Even when the Soviet Union withdrew dependents from Syria and Egypt 48 hours before hostilities started, it was viewed as caused by Soviet-Arab tensions.

Similarly, with respect to the Indian nuclear tests, public evidence was ignored because the intelligence community did not believe India was capable of concealing an actual test.

On the weapons issue-as the British Butler report on intelligence demonstrates-the assessment process broke down when the analysts jumped from incontrovertible evidence-a decade of Saddam Hussein's violations of the 1991 cease-fire agreement; building of dual-purpose plants for chemical and biological agents; efforts to acquire nuclear material; elaborate measures of deception- to the assumption that the demonstrated capacity to produce had been translated into stockpiles of weapons. (As early as 1998, President Bill Clinton, in an address explaining the bombing of Iraq, gave specific quantities for chemical and biological stockpiles.) That assessment went one step too far. But what we know now would not necessarily have changed the calculus for preemption. Could the United States wait until weapons were actually produced by a country with the largest army in the region, the second-largest potential oil income, a record of having used these weapons against its own population and neighbors, and-according to the Sept. 11 commission-intelligence contact with al Qaeda?

The answer requires a primarily geopolitical, not an intelligence, judgment. This is why, in reorganizing the intelligence structure, care must be taken to keep the assessment process distinct from geopolitical and strategic advocacy. Intelligence is most reliable about events that have happened or are about to happen. It grows less definitive about the future. Intelligence agencies should be judged by their ability to collect information, to interpret it, to keep assumptions from determining conclusions and to understand underlying trends.

It is a fine line, but a crucial one for effective policymaking. Most major strategic decisions involve judgments about consequences. Intelligence should supply the facts relevant to decision; the direction of policy and the ultimate choices depend on many additional factors and must be made by political leaders. A national intelligence director in the executive office of the president would erode this distinction, give intelligence disproportionate influence in policymaking and skew intelligence away from analysis.

Similarly, the merging of foreign and domestic intelligence under a single official unchecked by any institution in the executive branch short of the chief executive gives cause for concern. This is not how most democracies handle the challenge. The frequently invoked analogy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff ignores the fact that the Joint Chiefs, while enjoying direct access to the president, must in their daily operations refine their ideas in interaction with the civilian Pentagon leadership. Until recently, the policy was to raise a wall between the foreign and domestic intelligence services to prevent emergence of a single, dominant, unchecked intelligence service. Sept. 11 showed that this effort had gone too far and impeded the coordination of evidence on terrorism. But it does not follow that eliminating the distinctions altogether is the best solution.

Reorganization needs to improve the quality of intelligence at least as much as its collection. Policy stands and falls on the ability to distill trends from information. Does a free-standing director of national intelligence, charged with coordinating (in the president's proposal) or running the entire intelligence community (as in the Sept. 11 report) solve this challenge? Or does an excessively centralized system magnify the inherent danger of intellectual conformity? What structure is most likely to achieve a sense for the intangible?

In practice, most of the proposed reorganization schemes abolish the provision in the National Security Act of 1947 that makes the head of the CIA also the director of foreign intelligence for the entire government. The CIA chief has not been able to implement his theoretical powers because of the insistence of other agencies or departments-especially the Pentagon-on autonomy for their share of the intelligence process.

Layering a new national intelligence director over the CIA director would have one of two consequences: In a world where power flows from knowledge, it would require creation of a massive new bureaucracy to redirect the flow of intelligence throughout the government and sift the intelligence input from the various components of the intelligence community. Where would the personnel for such a structure come from? Does it mean dismantling existing institutions, and which ones? Could the national intelligence director function without having the analytic branch of the CIA placed under his or her direction? If the CIA were gutted in this manner, what would become of the remnant? On the other hand, if the national director were without an agency to provide support, he or she would become little more than a conduit for the recommendations of the various agencies.

In either event, the CIA director would no longer have direct access to the president, since the national director of intelligence would be defined as the president's principal intelligence adviser. Other alternatives deserve consideration; for example, enhancing the coordinating and budgetary authorities of the CIA director on foreign intelligence, symbolized by changing his title to national intelligence director. The coordination between domestic and foreign intelligence activities could be achieved by institutions such as the "National Counterterrorism Center" proposed by the Sept. 11 commission and possibly by a presidential assistant for national intelligence, charged in addition with making certain that significant competing intelligence assessments reach the president.

There is no shortage of schemes of reorganization: the Sept. 11 commission, the Senate intelligence report, the Scowcroft commission, the Hamre proposal to centralize collection but leave the analytical functions in existing institutions. What is urgently needed is a pause for reflection to form the various proposals into a coherent concept. A small group of men and women with high-level experience in government could be assigned this task with a short deadline, say six months, based on the following principles:

Centralization must be balanced against diversity.

Foreign and domestic intelligence should not be merged but should be coordinated by task forces, depending on the subject.

Special provisions must be made for the systematic enhancement of quality; it cannot be left to moving around boxes on an organizational chart.

No reorganization plan will work if attention is not paid to the morale of the men and women staffing the intelligence services. Despite the portrayal of them around the world as devious master planners dominating policy, intelligence personnel in the real world are subject to unusual psychological pressures. Separated from their compatriots by security walls, operating in a culture suspicious of even unavoidable secrecy, they are surrounded by an atmosphere of cultural ambiguity. Their unadvertised and unadvertisable successes are taken for granted, while they are blamed for policies that frequently result from strategic rather than intelligence misjudgments.

Finding themselves in a kind of political wilderness, the intelligence services have been under assault for 30 years, ever since the floodgates were opened in the 1970s by the Church and Pike committees and subsequent probes in the 1980s and 1990s, which disclosed the names of many agents and almost all clandestine operations. These attacks reflected the political debates of the period. Liberals attacked the intelligence community for being too ideological and Cold War-oriented. Conservatives were critical because they considered the intelligence community not sufficiently ideological nor conscious enough of the element of power in international affairs. Inevitably, between the terms of directors William Colby through John Deutch, the emphasis was to reduce the reliance on agents and to emphasize technical means of collection less subject to the allegations (and sometimes) the reality of abuse. This was a major contributing factor to the shortfall in human intelligence regarding the terrorist threat remarked on by all commissions dealing with recent intelligence failures.

For all these reasons, intelligence reorganization needs to bring as well some stability for intelligence personnel. Thousands of dedicated people participated, at the request of their government, in some of the most important battles of the Cold War and are even now at the front lines of the war with radical, ideological Islam. Their failures must be corrected. But they deserve recognition for their service even as the structures in which they function are being revised.