"We See a World of More, Not Fewer Mysteries"

By BRUCE VAN VOORST WASHINGTON Robert Gates

Q. You've been making a lot of changes in the CIA's procedures. For example, you want to include more dissent in intelligence analyses. Why?

A. Every major intelligence failure over the last 20 or 40 years has been because the analysts tended to accept the conventional wisdom. The problem has not been a lack of dissent by the various agencies. The problem has come about when they all signed up to a view that was in fact wrong. One example was the conclusion ((before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait)) that Saddam Hussein would spend the next several years trying to rebuild Iraq after the Iran-Iraq war and not be looking for new conquests or new territory.

The point is that we see a world of more, not fewer, mysteries. It seems imperative to change our approach to doing intelligence estimates by building in our judgments alternative possibilities -- what if we're wrong? We must help the policymakers think through the problems, in addition to supplying our best judgment. There is, for example, really no way of knowing for sure how reform in Russia is going to turn out.

Q. General Norman Schwarzkopf complained bitterly to Congress about the quality of intelligence during the gulf war.

A. There were some very important intelligence successes during Desert Storm. It was intelligence that made smart weapons smart; it was intelligence that made the monitoring of the sanctions possible. It was intelligence that made sure that commanders knew where all the 42 Iraqi divisions were and what kind of equipment they had and that there were no technological surprises.

Q. But intelligence failed to identify the magnitude of Iraq's nuclear and chemical threats.

A. The community did a good job identifying the fact of the nuclear and biological programs. Where the community did not have the information was in terms of the scale and pace, for instance, of the nuclear program.

Q. By a big margin.

A. By a significant margin, acknowledged. We knew Saddam Hussein had a nuclear-weapons program, and the status of his centrifuge uranium effort. But we missed his Colutron development.

Q. How's the Iraqi threat evolving?

A. We think he has a couple of hundred Scud missiles hidden. Enough of his nuclear program was found and uncovered so our estimate is it would take several years to get that program significantly restarted. His biological- weapons program could be reconstituted in weeks.

Q. What if Saddam is overthrown?

A. It would depend on the nature of the regime. Clearly, a successor would not be as strong, would not have 20-some years to build a regime of intimidation and fear. Saddam himself is clearly not as strong as he was at the outset of the war. He has many problems that are growing, not shrinking.

Q. What about Iran?

A. Iran is determined to regain its former stature as the pre-eminent power in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians are spending $2 billion a year on sophisticated weaponry -- from MiG-29 and Su-24 fighter bombers, to at least two Kilo-class attack submarines, all from Russia. They have a fairly crude chemical-weapons program, and we suspect they may have a biological program. The Iranians also continue their terrorism. In the past few weeks we know they've sent a large number of weapons to Hizballah.

Q. You speak often of the North Korean threat.

A. The key question is nuclear, and how much plutonium they have separated from the spent reactor fuel. We don't really know. But once they have the requisite plutonium, they can have a weapon in from as little as a few months to two years. We believe Pyongyang is close, perhaps very close, to having a nuclear-weapon capability.

Q. You took a beating during your Senate confirmation hearings on the charge that intelligence estimates were politicized when you were deputy director of the CIA.

A. There were problems with communications between managers and analysts, of managers explaining to analysts the changes that are made in a product as it goes from being the views of the single individual to being an institutional view of the CIA. I want to see a more collegial approach, in which people's motives aren't questioned and there can actually be give and take on issues of political sensitivity.

Q. You have proposed focusing more on human intelligence.

A. Many of our new requirements can be satisfied only by human intelligence. Our problem in estimating Iraqi nuclear progress was that we had to depend primarily on technical intelligence, and that's why we underestimated. This is true for a lot of areas -- narcotics, terrorism. But we know human intelligence is very difficult in terms of the recruitment of agents, staying in touch with them and assuring that their information is valid.

Q. You are planning to set up a sort of CIA cable network to get intelligence reports to key officials. Why?

A. We have spent tens of billions of dollars for technical collection systems that will return information to us on almost a real-time basis, and then in Washington we revert to a 19th century approach to dealing with that information by holding it overnight before we can present it to policymakers. We can never compete with CNN and don't intend to, but I want an arrangement where we can provide updated intelligence information throughout the day to policymakers.

Q. You speak of a new openness in the CIA. Are you going to declassify old files?

A. I've created a new organization to do historical declassification, bringing in people with more of a historical perspective and less of a "well, how do we protect every single line?" attitude.

Q. Such as?

A. I've committed to declassifying all of the national intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union that we can that are older than 10 years. We'll pay special attention to the J.F.K. assassination papers, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis and the events of the early 1950s in Iran.

Q. Pressures mount for the CIA to spy on foreign commercial firms as their intelligence agencies spy on ours. Is that in the wind?

A. We will not do commercial spying. Period. But we can be helpful on economic intelligence, by identifying foreign governments that are involved in unfair practices, or where they are violating agreements, either bilateral or multilateral, with the U.S., or where they are colluding with businesses in their country to the disadvantage of the U.S. We are following high-technology developments around the world that may have national security implications: computers, telecommunications, new materials. Counterintelligence is also going after those foreign-government intelligence organizations that are targeting American businesses.

Q. Isn't collecting technological secrets pretty much what the KGB is up to?

A. The KGB may have disappeared, but the interests of the Russian intelligence service in Western technology continues. We see operations, attempted recruitments. Their resources have been reduced, but they are more highly focused now than before. As a matter of fact, we sense that the military intelligence, the GRU, has become more aggressive in seeking technical secrets.

Q. Have any other former Soviet republics begun spying?

A. None that have come to my attention.

Q. Why won't the intelligence community accept the notion that a reduced international threat can result in reduced intelligence budgets?

A. We've already taken hits. We've lost billions of dollars. This has caused substantial personal cuts. In real terms our 1993 budget is a 2.5% cut. But it's the President's decision, not mine. When the President and Secretary of Defense proposed a further $50 billion in cuts, they didn't take a single nickel of it from the intelligence budget. I think that says something about their priorities. They are prepared to cut defense in lieu of intelligence.

Q. But doesn't this represent an ostrichlike refusal to acknowledge the vast decrease in the threat to U.S. security?

A. My job is not to defend a particular budget level. My job is to tell people these are the requirements you want me to collect and analyze, and this is the amount of money I think it will take to do that job responsibly. If the Congress and the Administration tell me I have to spend less on intelligence, then I intend to tell them what they have to give up.