Nada BakosVerified account @nadabakos
Former CIA Analyst 2000-2010. Sr Fellow, NatSec, Foreign Policy Research Institute
11m11 minutes ago
THREAD: Multiple reports say that POTUS wants to see raw intelligence, here’s why that’s a huge mistake pic.twitter.com/WtyY4A2Ok3
- Raw intelligence is info that’s newly collected & not vetted for truthiness or accuracy - its just data - there is no context provided
- Why does this matter? Because POTUS doesn’t know what he is looking at, he doesn’t spend 14 hours a day analyzing/synthesizing 1 topic
4.Can POTUS request intel products on certain topics? Absolutely, intel community has to provide objective products with complete analysis pic.twitter.com/dw9JGmCObI
5.There are 2 BIG problems at stake: if POTUS were to receive a raw intel product that said the sky is not blue, what is he to make of that?
- POTUS might tweet – the sky is not blue, therefore the climate change scientists are only providing FAKE NEWS
- In context, the report about the sky not being blue is actually a puzzle piece, other intel reports explain its because the air is blue pic.twitter.com/miVSG99K13
8.problem 2: Politicization-distorting, intel, analysis or judgments to favor preferred line of thinking irrespective of evidence
- Example: Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon ‘analyzed’ (not) information about WMD and al Qaida connections to Saddam pic.twitter.com/GkRFvqFN1x
- Feith/OSP didn’t analyze, they cherry picked intel to support already baked conclusion-Iraq had WMD and must be tied to al Qaida – WRONG
11.See here, cherry picking intelligence is extremely dangerous and is a threat to the US public let alone the world www.wired.com/2013/03/iraq-intelligence/ …
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Intel analysts at the CIA are highly trained to sift out the truth from the rumors and garbage (there is so, so, so much boring stuff)
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So it is ridiculous to expect POTUS to have accurate judgment on what is and isn’t important raw intelligence let alone context - END