Why Intelligence Fails Lessons Learned From The Iranian...

To conduct effective analysis, which leads to decision-making, it is important to have an understanding of cognitive biases and how they impact the analysis provided. How does our government decide if they are going to get involved in a war? A lot of information is provided and analyzed to form the intelligence they use to arrive at their final decision. The concern with this is the amount of cognitive bias involved. Most people make decisions all day long without realizing the biases they have. When it comes to things like National Security it is imperative the agencies, committees and individuals all have an understanding of their own biases. One case of National Intelligence where you can see cognitive bias play a role is with the Iraq†¦show more content†¦Just prior to the1980’s Saddam became president of Iraq and shortly after he began utilizing chemical weapons like mustard gas against Iranian forces and at the end of the 1980’s even used them against his own population. In the 1990’s Saddam utilized his forces to invade Kuwait and was subsequently ejected by the international military coalition who came to their rescue. It was not until after the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 687, Iraq had to dismantle its stockpile of WMD and any means to produce them. In the end there was some question to the entire stockpile having been destroyed due to Saddam not wanting to comply with the inspections. Curveball The main human sources of intelligence (HUMINT) operation conducted and speculated during the Iraq WMD program was Curveball. Curveball was a German intelligence source whose intelligence was passed along. The United States (U.S.) Intelligence was only able to talk with curveball on one occasion and never able to fully vet him regarding his reliability until it was too late. (Jervis, 2010, p. 141). To cut to the meat of the problem, curveball identified Iraq had a secret biological weapons program. In particular Curveball insisted Iraq had mobile facilities to produce such weapons. (Silberman Robb, 2005, p. 80). It was later revealed due to his admission he lied about it. The analysts received intelligence regarding curveball’s information and due to masking of