Cal Thomas raises an interesting issue: the impact of the media on the intelligence community. From my own experience, during the cold war the media had multiple impacts on intelligence. These included collection, analysis and distribution.
The analytical community respected, and envied, reporters from the major newspapers for their access and expertise. They were on-site collectors and got immediate distribution to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress. While we often disagreed with them we knew that our primary customers – the “decision makers” in the Pentagon, the Executive Office and the congress would read them. One of our concerns, especially after CNN and the 24-hour news cycle, was that they would get the news from the media without perspective from intelligence community
As David Kay has noted, by the end of the cold war the academic community, the media and the intelligence community had built up a tremendous expertise and database. Soviet Studies, Russian language, Eastern European studies and Sinology were all established disciplines. This was the result of 5 decades of effort. By comparison, our understanding of the Middle East was poverty stricken.
In the analytical world, we were very aware of media pressure. Every year, the Defense intelligence Agency produced a glossy book called Soviet Military Power. This was a public relations effort – legitimate in itself – to inform the public about trends in Soviet Research and Development and spending. Every year, John M. Collins, at the Congressional Research service would publish a book called Soviet Military Balance (19xx-19xx).
The two books presented two different pictures of trends in Soviet spending and the burden on the Soviet economy. Because of press coverage of the issue we were well aware that DIA had developed a reputation for overstating the threat.
The result was that intelligence analysts debated the issue of over-estimating the threat. We were reminded not to paint pictures of “the ten foot tall Russian soldier.” To a large extent, it was the existence of independent analytical capabilities in congress and the academic community, accompanied by a free press that helped us to maintain perspective.
My intuition is that the lack of an independent voice was one of the major reasons the Soviets seriously misperceived the West. These misperceptions led to some serious situations such as the 1983 war scare.
Even though I agree with much of the criticism of the media, especially with their lack of understanding of religion, they do play a vital role. Intelligence officers are very aware of what the medial reports and use the media to reinforce their own viewpoints as well as to be challenged by it.
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