With the release of what purports to be some several tens of thousands of intelligence documents from Afghanistan, the commentariat is atwitter with the possibility that people normally excluded from the intelligence process have been granted an all access pass to the inner sanctum. While I have not yet been able to read the reports due to a clogged WikiLeaks portal, most of these rules are precisely what was taught to me and what I taught to intelligence professionals throughout the military.
1) While 90K seems like a lot, it is only about 50 reports a day over a five year period. Many individual intel teams will generate that many reports on a busy day, and it only represents a very small fraction of the total intake of intel across Afghanistan. With so few reports it is possible that these reports were cherry picked, but even without deliberate selection bias, this is hardly an accurate picture.
2) Context is everything. There are literally dozens of things that a good analyst must take into consideration before giving credence to any report. Is the source honest? Is the source well informed? Are there other confirming reports? Does this really reveal anything? Human intelligence is notoriously easy to fake, and the more well known a person is the more likely you are to get reports on that person, usually false. Similarly, if people know that you suspect someone, they are often very willing to fabricate information to confirm your suspicion. Many times sources are just looking to get paid. For this reason single reports are basically useless. In fact, any source has to be evaluated over time, and against other intelligence. Without a lot of experience and access to broad spectrum information it is very difficult to evaluate intelligence.
3) Intelligence is perishable. Things change. If you tried to get a picture of someone based upon their Facebook page from the past five years, and assumed that it was all current across the entire time, you would likely be surprised by the number of twenty-somethings who were really into Britney Spears. Drawing conclusions in 2010 from links made across five years is hazardous at best.
4) People have agendas. Sources, WikiLeaks, the analysts (including me) all have things they are trying to accomplish. You do not and will not know their motives. But every level has filtered the information how they want. In the case of these leaked documents, the information has been filtered at least four times: the original source, the reporting officer, the leaking person and WikiLeaks. In at least two of those cases we know that part of the agenda is in opposition to the U.S. war effort, but we still have no idea how that filtered the information. More obviously, most readers will not read the actual documents, and will rely on people who claim to have read the documents and are writing for other media.
5) Just because something is secret does not mean it is important. The U.S. could probably declassify 90 percent of the things that are currently classified as 'secret' without hurting the mission one bit, because that information is either not true or unimportant. People keep secrets for all kinds of stupid and not stupid reasons, but that does not intrinsically mean it has any value.
If you want more information on the U.S. intelligence procedures as followed by the U.S. Military, refer to FM 2-0 (pdf).
David Benson has spent the last ten years in the intelligence community both in the U.S. and abroad, including seven years with the Army, and three years as a civilian contractor with a DoD Intelligence agency.
