Egypt, Interagency Teams, and the Intelligence Community

An unidentified author at Project on National Security Reform posted an interesting critique of the current U.S. national security system – as it relates to the National Security Staff’s missteps in handling the evolving Egypt event. The blog concludes with (1) an odd call for some sort of foresight shop (the data in the blog suggest that there is not adequate bandwidth for present-based thinking; why divert scarce resources from present-based thinking to future-based thinking?), (2) a very smart recommendation for more interagency teams (huzzah!), and (3) an odd call for some sort of budget team capable of knitting together strategy and capabilities (the data in the blog suggest the problem is yet-another failure of imagination at the top of the current system, not the lack of cool new technical capabilities in a future system). So I'm not yet convinced on anonymous PNSR’s points 1 and 3, but he or she earns a big attaboy for their point 2, quoted below:

Use empowered teams – mini-NSCs of area and functional experts with real decision-making authority devoted to a single issue 24/7, rather than layers of overworked and unfocused committees full of generalists that slow down decisions. Holbrooke led a team like this in the Kosovo War. He tried with Afghanistan, but the policy structure constrained him. Such teams would ensure the U.S. government speaks with one voice and acts with a clear goal.

Here are the reasons this is a helpful recommendation: (1) it replaces the incredibly bureaucratic model of “committees” with the more agile organizational concept of “teams”; (2) it recognizes the point made soon after Holbrooke’s death by David Rohde on the radio show The World that Holbrooke had succeeded in The Balkans and largely failed in Afghanistan – not because the problem was more complex, but because the U.S. national security system had become more intractable from its rapid growth after 9/11; and (3) it emphasizes that the current system is characterized by numerous voices (Frank Wisner much?) instead of trusting the National Security Staff expert on Egypt (Dan Shapiro?) to be the administration’s single voice on Egypt.

The PNSR blog reminded me of an April 6, 2010 presentation by then-DNI Denny Blair in which he also saw high value in the creation of interagency teams:

Here’s my bottom line assessment up front of where we are. This current level of leaders in the Intelligence Community is very skilled in their individual fields of expertise. They show some flexibility in adapting the individual strengths of their agencies to meet new challenges in innovative ways. However, they are often stopped short of the best solution for the country by the boundaries of institutional prerogatives and by traditions.

Already in my year on the job, I’ve seen multiple examples of attacks on problems by throwing together interagency teams – and teams led by officials at those levels that I’m talking about go off, pool their knowledge, starting with a charge and a great deal of initial enthusiasm coming up with a solution.

But I find that when we review those after six months, seven months, we find that they’ve only gone a certain direction. That extra set of hard steps need to be taken that really involve breaking some institutional glass and doing things in a new way; they’ve not been able to reach. It’s partly a question of authorities, but it’s also partly a question of the training, the background, the selection of these leaders.

Now, interestingly, I find that the intelligence officials who are the most committed and imaginative, least parochial, who are really doing amazing things, are most often the more junior officers out in the field – especially in war zones. And I’ll talk a little bit about that later. Out there I see imagination, innovation, selflessness, mission dedication and amazing things that are being done.

So my vision is that we will have achieved success in this important area when senior intelligence officials work instinctively as a team to address important resource, policy, operational support issues – when they’re willing to bend their home agency institutional interests to the greater good. Rather than thinking of themselves only as members of a particular agency, they’ll naturally think of themselves as part of a larger Intelligence Community.

So it’s good that the IC is creating interagency teams, it’s sad that they are not yet moving to the point of “breaking institutional glass and doing things in a new way,” and it’s exciting that the junior officers out in the field “are the most committed and imaginative,” the “least parochial,” and are “doing amazing things.”

In summary, we have the White House (PNSR) looking down at the system and realizing that it needs better interagency teams, and we have the Intelligence Community (Blair) looking up at the system and realizing that it needs better interagency teams – now all we have to do is convince the other 3.8 million people in the middle of the stovepiped system to facilitate – rather than kill – the migration away from the 19th Century “committee” model to a 21st Century “cross-functional team” model.

Until we do so, we’re going to have more missteps such as we’ve seen in the last two weeks in regards to Egypt.