Ambassador Henry Crumpton Contrasted CIA and FBI Mentalities in a Useful Way — His Analysis Indirectly Explains How Agency Rivalries are Aggravated by Differing Mission Perspectives — with the Nation’s Counter-Terrorism Effort Probably the Loser

© 2012 Peter Free

 

14 May 2012

 

 

Operational perspectives matter often more than we recognize — when they are deficient, the mission suffers

 

Ambassador Henry A. Crumpton yesterday published an article distinguishing between the mentalities of CIA and FBI.

 

His implied criticism of America’s anti-terror mission falls not on the CIA, but on the “act, don’t think mentality” that keeps the FBI rich in resources, occasionally ignorant, and mostly unaccountable.

 

Note

 

Ambassador Crumpton’s title comes from his service as the State Department’s Ambassador at Large for Counterterrorism (August 2005 to February 2007).

 

 

Citation

 

Henry A. Crumpton, Can the FBI understand intelligence?, Politico (13 May 2012)

 

 

What Henry Crumpton said

 

In Ambassador Crumpton’s view, cooperation between the CIA and FBI is thwarted by radical differences in their perspectives regarding how to carry out their respective missions.

 

To the degree that the FBI’s expanded mission includes intelligence-gathering and dissemination, Crumpton thinks the agency has failed to make the necessary transition.

 

 

Agencies’ differing mentalities

 

Crumpton lists 11 indicators that contrast the CIA (intelligence) and FBI (law enforcement) mentalities:

 

(1) The CIA measures success on the value of its collected intelligence to its customers.  The FBI on numbers of arrests and criminal convictions.

 

(2) These diverging points of view result in different attitudes toward record-keeping.

 

CIA operatives routinely write clear analyses because, without such, they have no product.  FBI agents avoid leaving paper trails, for fear defense counsel can discover potentially arrest-undoing statements.  Consequently, the FBI communicates orally, which makes staying informed across the agency difficult.

 

(3) As a result of these competing perspectives on maintaining an accessible written record — the CIA uses state of the art information systems, and the FBI muddles along without a system that works.

 

(4) The FBI is personnel rich.  The CIA is not.  The FBI has more agents at its New York field office than the CIA has operations officers covering the globe.

 

Though Crumpton goes nowhere with this observation, it seems to me that the implication is diffused accountability within the larger of the two agencies.

 

(5) The CIA values sources and devotes considerable resources to understanding and developing them.  The FBI values sources only in the context of criminal investigations and only to the extent that the source could contribute to a successful prosecution.

 

This criticism obviously implies that the FBI’s pragmatic approach tends to under develop potentially important sources of information.

 

(6) Although personnel rich, the FBI has hampering limitations on how much (and for what) agents can spend money.  CIA agents routinely carry thousands of dollars in cash, “to entertain prospective recruitment targets, compensate sources, buy equipment or bribe foreign officials to get things done.”  CIA agents’ funds are replenished every month.

 

Here, Crumpton is implying that the FBI is too cumbersome to react quickly to daily situations that would benefit from a more free-wheeling, risk-taking slant.

 

(7) Ties to the Justice Department give the FBI a sense of legality that simultaneously encourages the agency to think that CIA operatives are acting illegally.

 

Which obviously restricts its willingness to get its hands dirty by cooperating with its grubbier CIA colleagues.

 

(8) The FBI’s law enforcement mission encourages the agency to curry favor with the press, as an end to enhancing its prestige and resources.  The CIA’s secrecy mission persuades that agency to avoid media contact.

 

This difference enhances the power of the FBI relative to the CIA.

 

(9) The FBI’s prosecution function is inherently internal.  Evidence-gathering fuels the agency's own prosecutions.  On the other hand, the CIA’s mission is inherently external.  Its intelligence goes to other people.  Consequently, the CIA is arguably more customer-oriented than its law enforcement colleagues.

 

This has implications for accountability.  Crumpton’s observation implies that redirecting the FBI’s attention is going to be more difficult than changing CIA’s own tactical and strategic focuses, whenever new political administrations deem it necessary.

 

(10) The difference in internal and external foci is also reflected in the localized and individual authority of FBI field offices, as opposed to the absolute non-independence of CIA field stations, which are always subordinate to their Langley headquarters.

 

(11) Aggravating these obvious divergences in political clout is the FBI’s ability to “work” Congress — first, by designating agents to support individual Congress members with information and, second, by having the authority to investigate Congress’ people’s illegal activities.  In contrast, the CIA has little influence with the legislature.

 

 

Taken together — a bit too much FBI complacence?

 

Ambassador Crumpton’s analysis implies that the FBI’s tendency to see itself as legally and politically dominant underlies a complacent misunderstanding of its new intelligence-gathering and disseminating functions.

 

Most worrisome is the FBI’s alleged inability to record information in accessible form.  Intelligence is of no value, when (a) it is not recorded, (b) not analyzed, and (c) not widely accessible to authorized recipients.

 

 

This is a recipe for pants-down, intelligence function stupidity.  I suspect that this observation, unstated though it was, is why Ambassador Crumpton wrote his essay.

 

 

I would add another observation — agency arrogance

 

One of the things I noticed about the FBI years ago, when I was in local law enforcement, was the agency’s characteristic, often self-defeating arrogance.  By telling and demanding, instead of sharing and skillfully soliciting information, the FBI probably achieved less than it might have.

 

There were instances, for example, in which FBI bulletins told local police to make citizen stops, without simultaneously advising us why these stops were legally authorized and whom we would be dealing with when the detentions were made.

 

Because local law enforcement (a) does not hierarchically take a back seat to federal agencies in the national scheme of things and (b) is not about to hazard its officers (or the public) in blindly undertaken activities, this FBI practice was mission-defeating.

 

Therefore, Crumpton’s point about the FBI’s misunderstanding of how to deal effectively with information sources and potential allies (no matter how distasteful they might be) is probably be well-taken.

 

 

The moral? — Properly harmonizing operational perspectives with agency missions is essential to national interest success

 

Crumpton suspects that the FBI mentality is still laggard, when it comes to intelligence gathering and dissemination:

 

A member of the 9/11 Commission confided to me last year that the panel had given the FBI “a pass … and that was a mistake. They do not understand intelligence.”

 

Has there been any progress since?

 

© 2012 Henry A. Crumpton, Can the FBI understand intelligence?, Politico (13 May 2012)