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IN THIS ISSUE:
Alumni Interview | Eye on Iraq | Rockin' Rollback — WPGU Reunion
FEATURE STORY — July/August 2004
A former CIA analyst answers questions about U.S. involvement
Editor's Note: From 1975-1995, Judith Share Yaphe, AM '67 LAS, PHD '72 LAS, served as a senior analyst in the CIA regarding Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf issues. For her role as senior political analyst on Iraq and the Gulf, she received the Intelligence Medal of Commendation. Now director of the Middle East Project at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., and a lecturer at George Washington University, she frequently briefs senior U.S. and foreign officials, has testified before Congress and lends her expertise to print and broadcast media. Illinois Alumni invited her in May to share some insight on her campus days and U.S. involvement in Iraq.
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What else do you remember about the University of Illinois?
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JY: I remember the Vietnam War when I was there. Teaching was so exciting.
[My husband Michael '75 and I met there and] formed our best life friendships there. ... I used to do my studies in Altgeld Hall's library; that was my favorite place.
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How did your experience at U of I affect your career?
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JY: Directly. ... [My history adviser] Ernie Dawn was very strict in terms of analysis and sources and thinking critically and always challenging — to the point where it used to drive me crazy, but he was right.
I had some very good experiences as an intelligence analyst [in] that I think I was able to do things that few people are able to do in their careers, and I value that.
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How does one gather good intelligence?
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JY: Well, you need the same kind of skill set as an intelligence analyst that you need if you're a historian or a journalist. ... "Why am I reading this? What is this person saying ...? Why are they telling me what they're telling me?" ... Whether you're a scholar examining history ... [or] whether you're somebody who sits in the CIA [reading] all day, the same questions must be applied and the same standards.
My favorite [standard] in the end is, "Does it pass the taste test?" Because in
the end, intelligence is more of an art than a science.
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No or few weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, despite intelligence appearing to indicate their presence prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003. How does that chasm between intelligence gathering and reality occur?
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JY: There were people who were giving us information, and we couldn't verify it. Now for some people, it was just enough to have the information, and they believed it as a willing act of faith. ... We failed to think outside the box. ... I think a failure to reassess baseline assumptions is one of the things that contributed to this. The other, of course, was faulty information.
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What are the baseline assumptions for Iraq?
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JY: There was a baseline drawn in 1991 when the inspectors went into Iraq and for the first time realized all that was going on there [programs for nuclear bombs and chemical and biological weapons]. So what we did was, in a linear thinking we said, "Well, here's what he had in 1991. A + B: Saddam always loved weapons of mass destruction, and we can't see him giving them up. Therefore, A + B + C: They must still have them." ... And that's where there's a flaw in the logic because thinking isn't always linear. Maybe he didn't have them. Maybe they're so well-hidden we still haven't come across them.
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Where did all these things go?
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JY: I don't know. The Iraqis are saying, "We destroyed it all."
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Are you saying, with your background on Iraq, that "tastes" right to you?
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JY: No, it doesn't.
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The appearance of Secretary of State Colin Powell before the U.N. Security Council in 2003 seemed to imply the existence of weapons of mass destruction.
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JY: Wasn't that painful?
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Is it naive to think the government ought to present solid information?
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JY: No. ... You want to believe in what your policymaker says. ... You want to think that they've taken the best information available to them and made a decision. And then when you find out that what they were looking at was based on faulty intelligence, ... you have to wonder, "If that's true, then why did they tell us this was true?" As an intelligence professional, that makes me feel really bad.
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From what appears in the media, there is not a strong terrorist link to Iraq, at least to 9/11. Do you agree?
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JY: There is no strong evidence, but there are people who wanted to believe.
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What happens in the process between gathering intelligence and the government's use of it? What's the role of both sides?
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JY: You can gather all the information in the universe — what difference does it make? The intelligence community works for the executive branch of the government, and it is the mission to ... try to predict where the risks are to national security, so that the president and his advisers ... can see that there's a risk or a problem, and they can formulate a policy.
Intelligence doesn't make policy, and policy shouldn't make intelligence. ... It's up to the policymaker to decide what they want to do — they can choose to act on it; they can choose to ignore the issue; and if they act on it, they have a lot of different instruments of national policy. ... The military solutions are not the only ones.
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Are people running around in the CIA, tearing their hair out, saying, "I told them this was important, and they're ignoring it"?
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JY: When I was ... at the CIA, I felt a very strong sense of mission. I felt that we were really doing serious work ... and that we had an administration that valued the role that intelligence could play in their formulation of policy.
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Are you talking about the first Bush administration?
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JY: Yes. ... When I was first hired into the agency, I was hired to work on Iraq. ... I also did three years in counter-terrorism, which was intended to be proactive. ... something which was very important to the Reagan administration. So I had a feeling there that [the analysis] I was doing was being read [by those on the policy side]. More than that, what does an analyst hope for in life? You want your stuff read.
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Photo by Christmas City Studio.
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