MISSOURI COMMENTARY: INTELLIGENT USE OF INTELLIGENCE

The United States has the most highly regarded intelligence services in the world, bar none. In the wake of the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade -- a horrific blunder -- this may seem to be a bold statement. But the statement still holds. The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the lesser known offices that makes up the U.S. intelligence community, are an unbearable combination when they work together.

Despite all of the clever spy technology, however, intelligence gathering is an art, not a science. Satellite surveillance, advanced listening devices, codes and all sorts of sophisticated technology -- imaginable and unimaginable -- have to be analyzed by humans. Humans are not as accurate as the technologies they utilize. The blunder in Belgrade was human error. It was "garbage in, garbage out." The computers functioned. The gadgetry worked. The aircraft performed flawlessly. The pilot hit the target he was assigned.

Too bad all of that work was undone by something as prosaic as an out-of-date map. Anyone who bothered to call the Belgrade Automobile Club could have gotten the proper street addresses of the Chinese embassy and the Serbian arms agency. If someone had called any of the European embassies still active in Belgrade, that person would have found that the Chinese embassy had relocated a couple of years ago. Using an out-of-date target map is like trying to drive today from Chicago and Los Angeles on Route 66.

A head or two will have to roll. I hope it is not the head of sensible George Tenet. President Bill Clinton has had some problems with his CIA directors. His first one was James Woolsey, who didn't trust Clinton in the first place. The ill feeling was mutual. Clinton cringed when he met with the dower, sower Woolsey. He was left out of more important White House national security meetings than any other CIA director in history.

John Deutch was the next director, promoted from his position of deputy secretary of defense. Deutch had one enormous fault: he was prone to telling the truth. When Deutch testified before Congress, he told the truth about some intelligence mistakes. Clinton didn't like such an open admissions of error. Deutch's head had to roll.

George Tenet, not as brilliant as Deutch, has one enormous virtue: pragmatism. Tenet came out of the Congressional intelligence operation and he knows how to placate intellectually-challenged senators like Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the current chairman of the secret intelligence committee. Shelby makes Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., look alert by comparison. Practical people like Tenet often do better in Washington than visionaries. That "vision thing" can get you into a peck of trouble, as President George Bush discovered.

As stupid as it was to send the right bomb down the wrong Belgrade chimney, this is not the greatest sin the intelligence community has committed. Worse than a wrong map is a wrong evaluation. Here are two of the greatest intelligence miscalculations in modern times.

Think back to the Cold War. The United States spent half of its defense budget to thwart the possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The intelligence agencies prepared for a massive Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany. Hundreds of thousands of ground troops (garrisoned in Europe for decades), backed up by tactical nuclear weapons, would have to be used to stop them. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on this theory, the presumed dominant threat of the Cold War.

It turns out that the military mobility, infrastructure and economy of the Soviet Union were so frail that such an invasion could never have taken place. Half of what we spent to defend our nation was predicated on an incorrect intelligence evaluation.

Then there was the case of Iran. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA Director Richard Helms believed that we should load up the Shah of Iran with mountains of sophisticated weaponry. Iran would then be the impregnable, pre-positioned agent of U.S. power to police the Persian Gulf and guard against Soviet expansionism. As the revolution developed in Iran, the CIA maintained this fantasy almost up until the day the Shah fled -- another totally incorrect intelligence evaluation.

A majority of the time the CIA gets it right. In Vietnam, the CIA was closer to the truth than General William Westmoreland. Up until the time that Westmoreland asked for 200,000 additional troops on top of the 525,000 already there, Lyndon Johnson much preferred to listen to Westmoreland than some of the doubters in the CIA.

The most dangerous form of intelligence is that which is tailor-made to suit the predisposition of the president. Bill Casey, Ronald Reagan's highly political CIA director, could get Reagan's juices flowing by concocting the great Sandanista threat to the cause of freedom around the globe. CIA directors do not want to be ostracized as James Woolsey was by Clinton. CIA directors, therefore, tend at times to tell a president what he already is convinced to be the truth.

As things now stand, George Tenet will survive. Clinton needs him. Tenet tells Clinton there will be no need for American troops to fight their way into Kosovo. He is right about that. All of the journalistic hysteria about ground troops and the second coming of a Normandy beachhead in Kosovo is just that -- journalistic hysteria. The overwhelming majority of our NATO allies is unalterably opposed to sending ground forces to fight in Kosovo and Serbia. Politically, there can never be a NATO ground war there.

The U.S. will continue to bomb Serbia until Milosevic decides that his nation shouldn't revert to the 19th century instead of entering the 21st century. Belgrade isn't Hanoi and Milosevic isn't Ho Chi Minh. Bombing did the job in Bosnia. In time, it will do the job in Kosovo.

There are "indirect" peace negotiations going on at this time. Make no mistake about it, Milosevic is bugged by the bombing. Ultimately, there will be a deal. Milosevic will remain in power. NATO will soften just a bit on its demands. Clinton will adopt the "strategy" of the late Senator George Aiken, R-Vt., espoused during the Vietnam War: "Declare victory and come home."

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and an occasional columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.