Authors: Colin Powell
It Worked For Me (11 page)
Y
ou can’t make good decisions unless you have good information and can separate facts from opinion and speculation.
I have always been a glutton for information. I wanted an overflowing in-box, lots of people dropping in to chat, constant phone calls from the staff or trusted agents telling me what they heard and saw. Over the years I learned to read quickly to get to the essence of a paper; tossing aside filler, unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, puffery, and snake oil arguments. I took the same approach listening to oral presentations: “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts,” an expression made iconic by Sergeant Joe Friday, the LAPD detective on the 1950s and ’60s television show
Dragnet.
Facts are verified information that is then presented as objective reality. The rub here is the verified part. How do you verify verified? Facts are slippery, and so is verification. Today’s verification may not be tomorrow’s. It turns out that facts may not really be facts; they can change as the verification changes; they may only tell part of the story, not the whole story; or they may be so qualified by verifiers that they’re empty of information.
I’ve seen apparently verified facts go whoosh in the cold light of day. On March 19, 2003, the night before we launched the Gulf War, we were in the Oval Office receiving an eyes-on report from spies that Saddam Hussein was at Dora Farms, one of his palatial estates in Baghdad, which opened up the possibility that a successful attack there would decapitate the government. We bombed the place. The spies then reported they were sure they saw Hussein’s body being brought out. All wrong.
In Somalia in 1993, we were searching everywhere for the dictator Mohamed Aidid. Spies kept reporting that they had him located, but he was always gone by the time we raided the target. Spy information always has to be challenged. If the spy tells you exactly where the target is and we get it, the spy is out of a meal ticket.
The facts you are given may not add up to reveal the whole picture, but only squares on a paint-by-numbers canvas.
During the 1991 Gulf War, President Bush’s daily CIA briefer told the President that reports from General Norman Schwarzkopf were overestimating the numbers of Iraqi tanks and artillery being destroyed by our air attacks. CIA satellite photo analysts had come up with lower numbers. A huge bureaucratic battle broke out; Norm went ballistic; we set up a meeting in National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft’s office to sort things out; and I worked to pry Norm off the ceiling of his Riyadh headquarters.
The truth was, the CIA satellite photo analysts were not taking the whole picture of the battlefield into account; they were relying exclusively on narrow looking-down-a-soda-straw satellite images of the battlefield. Norm’s assessment relied on several sources—expensive satellites, inexpensive pilot eyes debriefings, and low-level aerial photos.
A pair of experts from the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, attended the White House meeting: a satellite photo expert and a multisource expert, who gathered his facts from a broad spectrum of sources, not from a single, narrow soda straw. His picture of the battlefield, in other words, was very like the one Norm was seeing and that other multisource analysts at CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office were seeing. I laid out my explanation of Norm’s view from the field, and the multisource expert confirmed it: “Yes, that would be our assessment,” he said. Norm’s view prevailed.
Verified facts don’t always come pure, but with qualifiers. My warning radar always goes on alert when qualifiers are attached to facts. Qualifiers like: My best judgment . . . I think . . . As best I can tell . . . Usually reliable sources say . . . For the most part . . . We’ve been told . . . and the like. I don’t dismiss facts so qualified; but I’m cautious about taking them to the bank.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t look down on intelligence gatherers, and I don’t mean to condemn any specific intelligence staff or the intelligence community. It’s a hard, stressful, vitally necessary job. During my career I’ve worked with intelligence agencies and experts of every kind, from a young lieutenant, battalion-level intelligence officer to all sixteen branches of the U.S. intelligence community. With rare exceptions, intelligence analysts do all they can to give you the information and facts you need to understand the enemy and the situation and come up with the best decision.
I found over the years that my intelligence staffs told the best story when I worked with them as they were putting it together. I questioned them constantly; I sent written analyses back, loaded with scribbles in the margins; I challenged them to defend their analyses. Staffs appreciated the challenge. They wanted to get the story right as much as I did.
Over time I developed for my intelligence staffs a set of four rules to ensure that we saw the process from the same perspective and to take off their shoulders some of the burden of accountability. The rules are simple; I’m told they hang in offices around the intelligence world:
• Tell me what you know.
• Tell me what you don’t know.
• Then tell me what you think.
• Always distinguish which from which.
What you know
means you are reasonably sure that your facts are corroborated. At best, you know where they came from, and you can confirm them with multiple sources. At times you will not have this level of assurance, but you’re still pretty sure that your analysis is correct. It’s okay to go with that if it’s all you have; but in every case, tell me why you are sure and your level of assurance.
During Desert Storm, our intelligence community was absolutely certain that the Iraqi army had chemical weapons. Not only had the Iraqi army used them in the past against their own citizens and against Iran, but there was good evidence of their continued existence. Based on this assessment, we equipped our troops with detection equipment and protective gear, and we trained them to fight in such an environment.
What you don’t know
is just as important. There is nothing worse than a leader believing he has accurate information when folks who know he doesn’t don’t tell him that he doesn’t. I found myself in trouble on more than one occasion because people kept silent when they should have spoken up. My infamous speech at the UN in 2003 about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs was not based on facts, though I thought it was.
The Iraqis were reported to have biological agent production facilities mounted in mobile vans. I highlighted the vans in my speech, having been assured that the information about their existence was multiple-sourced and solid. After the speech, the mobile van story fell apart—they didn’t exist. A pair of facts then emerged that I should have known before I gave it. One, our intelligence people had never actually talked to the single source—nicknamed Curveball—for the information about the vans; he was a source whom some of our intelligence people considered flaky and unreliable. (They should have had
several
sources for their information.) Two, based on this and other information no one passed along to me, a number of senior analysts were unsure whether or not the vans existed, and they believed Curveball was unreliable. They had big don’t-knows that they never passed on. Some of these same analysts later wrote books claiming they were shocked that I had relied on such deeply flawed evidence.
Yes, the evidence was deeply flawed. So why did no one stand up and speak out during the intense hours we worked on the speech? “We really don’t know that! We can’t trust that! You can’t say that!” It takes courage to do that, especially if you are standing up to a view strongly held by superiors or to the generally prevailing view, or if you really don’t want to acknowledge ignorance when your boss is demanding answers.
The leader can’t be let off without blame in these situations. He too bears a burden. He has to relentlessly cross-examine the analysts until he is satisfied he’s got what they know and has sanded them down until they’ve told him what they don’t know. At the same time, the leader must realize that it takes courage for someone to stand up and say to him, “That’s wrong.” “You’re wrong.” Or: “We really don’t know that.” The leader should never shoot the messenger. Everybody is working together to find the right answer. If they’re not, then you’ve got even more serious problems.
We need that kind of courage. We have to encourage it in our subordinates. I hate having to say, “Jeez, why didn’t someone tell me?”
If I act on what you tell me you know and don’t know, I am adding my experience and broader knowledge to yours. If my decision turns out badly, I am responsible, but so are you, and you should expect to be held accountable. Welcome to the real world!
In 1991, as we prepared for Operation Desert Storm, our intelligence people were sure the Iraqis had chemical weapons, but there were unresolved questions about whether or not they would use them. Some analysts and experts thought they would; others thought they wouldn’t. It was a classic “don’t know” situation. We thought they had them, and they had certainly used them. But they had to fear retaliation and worldwide condemnation, and it wasn’t clear that their troops were still trained to use such weapons. I accepted this “don’t know.” We could have no certainty about whether or not they would use them until they used them . . . or tried to. And they had plenty of incentive not to.
Tell me what you think
. Though verified facts are the golden nuggets of decision-making, unverified information, hunches, and even wild beliefs may sometimes prove to be just as important. Without wild beliefs there would be no stock market or hedge funds.
Your thoughts and opinions are vital, even if you can’t prove or disprove them, and even if they are nothing more than hunches. You may be right. I have frequently found that someone’s hunch is a more accurate view of reality than his knowledge. But if I act on your thinking or hunch, then I bear all the responsibility for the outcome, not you.
Many intelligence analysts and experts believed the Iraqis would use chemical weapons. That was their opinion. The facts could be taken either way. My own judgment was that they wouldn’t use them. There was too much to lose. We had communicated to them that we would respond in an asymmetric way if they did, and we left them to imagine what that might be. They were aware of our capabilities.
I further believed that we could fight through any Iraqi chemical attacks. The possible effects back home worried me—public outrage and near-hysterical reactions. But I felt we could manage these. In making these judgments, I was relying on my experience and instincts. If I was wrong, the responsibility and accountability would be upon me and not the intelligence community.
It turned out that the Iraqis did not use chemical weapons.
Always distinguish which from which
. I want as many inputs as time, staff, and circumstances allow. I weigh them all—corroborated facts, analysis, opinions, hunches, informed instinct—and come up with a course of action. There’s no way I can do that unless you have carefully placed each of them—facts, opinions, analysis, hunches, instinct—in their proper boxes.
Years ago, one of my best friends, then Major General Butch Saint, got thrown out of the Army Chief of Staff’s office for delivering bad news about one of the Chief’s favorite programs. Butch knew before he walked in that he was entering the lion’s den, and he wasn’t surprised when he got thrown out. Word quickly spread around the Pentagon, as it always does when things like that happen. Not long after I heard about it I ran into Butch in a hallway. As we walked along, I offered him comforting words. “Hey,” he said quietly, “he don’t pay me to give him happy talk.” I have never forgotten that. Butch retired as a four-star general.
T
here’s an old Army story about a brand-new second lieutenant just out of airborne jumpmaster school who is supervising his first drop-zone exercise. He is standing there by the drop zone—a big, open field—watching the approaching planes. Standing next to him is a grizzled old sergeant who has been through this hundreds of times. The lead planes will be dropping artillery, trucks, and ammunition.
Everything is looking good and the lieutenant gives the okay to drop. The first chute comes out and deploys fully. The second one is a streamer and doesn’t deploy. It hits the first one, which collapses. Subsequent chutes get caught up in the mess and they all start hitting the ground at full speed. Pieces of wreckage are flying everywhere, gasoline fires break out, touching off the ammunition and starting a brushfire that rapidly spreads into the surrounding woods.
The young lieutenant stands there contemplating the disaster. He finally says to the sergeant, “Umm, Sarge, do you think we should call someone?” His patient reply: “Well, Lieutenant, I don’t rightly know how you are going to keep it a secret.”
Staffs try like the devil to delay as long as possible passing bad news to the boss. That suits some bosses, but it never suited me. I had a standing rule for my staffs: “Let me know about a problem as soon as you know about it.” Everyone knows the old adage: bad news, unlike wine, doesn’t get better with time.
Knowing I had a problem was important, but it was more important to start the process of finding a solution. I always used that first notification to give the staff guidance about finding alternative solutions or about possibilities I didn’t want them to consider. This was guidance, not a final decision. I always made it clear that I would not leap off a cliff or jump to a solution while they were still determining the shape of the problem.
But I still had to know about it. And I wanted all of it, not part of it. I wanted to hear all the bad. If they didn’t tell me, I risked hearing it from some outsider or tripping over it myself. They knew they didn’t want that to happen.
In 2003, American soldiers and interrogators in charge of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad subjected prisoners to horrendous abuse, torture, and humiliation. Their actions were shocking and clearly illegal.
Late that year, one of the soldiers stationed at the prison reported the abuses to his superiors and said that photos had been taken by the abusers. The commanders in Iraq immediately took action and took steps to launch an investigation. Soon after that the news reached Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told President Bush in early January 2004 that incidents at Abu Ghraib were being looked into. It seems that nobody told these senior leaders that these incidents were truly horrendous. General Ric Sanchez, the overall military commander in Iraq, announced the investigation on January 12. Soldiers were suspended from duty pending disciplinary action.
The machinery was working, but not all of it. The pipes leading up to the senior leaders were never turned on. The Abu Ghraib photos were available to senior Pentagon leaders, but it does not appear that Secretary Rumsfeld saw them, nor were they shown at the White House. A fuse was burning, but no one made the senior leadership aware that a bomb was about to go off.
In late April, CBS’s
60 Minutes
broke the story wide open. They had obtained the photos and showed them on the air. The bomb went off and all hell broke loose.
I was shocked when I saw the photos. How could American soldiers do this? How could the implications of their eventually becoming public not set off alarm bells at the Pentagon and White House? Why was there no action at the top? Don Rumsfeld had been around a long time. If they had known what was going on, he and his staff would have immediately realized the dimensions of the crisis. So would the President’s staff. And yet nearly four months went by and no one had elevated the material up the chain to the Secretary or the President.
If that had happened, the problem would not have been magically solved, but the people at the top would have had time to decide how to deal with the disaster and get to the bottom of it. The President was not told early.
Leaders should train their staffs that whenever the question reaches the surface of their mind—“Umm, you think we should call someone?”—the answer is almost always “Yes, and five minutes ago.” And that’s a pretty good rule for life, if you haven’t yet set your woods on fire.
With early notification, we can all gang up on the problem from our different perspectives and not lose time.
As I have told my staff many times over the years, if you want to work for me, don’t surprise me. And when you tell me, tell me everything.
