"Programs Advance Effective Intelligence/Policy Links"

Defense Secretary Gates Initiated Early KSG Intelligence Program

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Spring 2007

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Belfer Center Studies in International Security

In 1986, when now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was deputy director of Central Intelligence, he worked with Belfer Center Director (then Kennedy School Dean) Graham Allison and the School's Ernest May, Albert Carnesale, Joseph Nye, Peter Zimmerman, Nancy Huntington, and the late Richard Neustadt, among others, to establish an intelligence and policy program at the School. Gates, who had been a career analyst in the CIA with some tours of duty in the White House, had noticed a disconnect between the work of the intelligence and policy communities. The program he initiated, which continued at the Kennedy School until 2002, developed in-depth case studies to teach leaders in the intelligence community to think about needs of the policy community when gathering and analyzing intelligence.

Today-in collaboration with former Senator and Center Senior Fellow Bob Graham-Allison and May, the Charles Warren Professor of History and consultant on intelligence to several government agencies, are building on the School's earlier program with an intelligence policy program for members of Congress. Initiated by Senator Graham, who headed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the program will facilitate bipartisan discussions among leaders in the Congressional intelligence community. In addition to members of the Congressional Intelligence Committees, the program will host sessions with the international Association of Chiefs of Police in order to link local law enforcement with federal security strategies.

Participants will benefit from the extensive experience of presenters, as well as from the case studies developed in the earlier program. Six of those cases are analyzed in depth in a book just published by Ernest May and 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow-Dealing with Dictators: Dilemmas of U.S. Diplomacy and Intelligence Analysis, 1945-1990. The chapters, note the publisher, "seek to deepen our understanding of how uncertainty permeated the [decision-making] process and whether decision-makers and their aides asked the right questions." May and Zelikow are among the officials and experts who have joined Center scholars recently to brainstorm and debate intelligence issues. Others include Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Henry Crumpton, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns, and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Chris Hill. Belfer Center Lecturer Elaine Kamarck, who consults, teaches, and writes on reform and innovation in intelligence, also provided valuable insight into intelligence practices and needs.

For more information about this publication please contact the Belfer Center Communications Office at 617-495-9858.

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