How intelligence works (when it does).

• Author: Meyer, Herbert E.
• Position: National Affairs

"Good intelligence is a combination of information and insight. Information is the raw material, while insight is the finished product."

THE PERFORMANCE of our country's intelligence service is the latest example of an issue exploding into the headlines and becoming a shouting match while failing to clarify anything about the issue itself. This explosion was ignited last fall by allegations that the Russians hacked into Hillary Clinton's campaign to help Donald Trump win the election. The blast radius expanded after the election, when rumors surfaced that the Russians had deployed their nasty tactic of kompromat to undermine Pres. Donald Trump's credibility by spreading rumors about his private behavior while in Moscow years ago.

All this, on top of failures that already had wreaked havoc at the Central Intelligence Agency and our other intelligence agencies--the 9/11 attacks themselves; the mess over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the weird 2007 National Intelligence Estimate whose key judgment was that Iran had abandoned its nuclear bomb program; Edward Snowden's National Security Agency espionage activities--has kept the issue of our intelligence service in the headlines.

However, before addressing the question of why these failures have occurred, we need to define clearly the role and purpose of our country's intelligence service, with a focus on how intelligence really works when it is working properly.

Just utter the word "intelligence" and most people conjure up images of spies, secret satellites peering down on foreign cities and terrorist camps, and rooms full of young technocrats reading private emails and listening to private conversations. These images are accurate, but they reflect the tools and techniques of our intelligence service, rather than its purpose.

To understand its purpose, think of a jumbo jet flying at night through turbulent skies--thunder clouds, lightning, other airplanes streaking in all directions and at all altitudes. To navigate through this, the pilot and his crew rely on their radar--the instrument that paints a picture of their environment, enabling them to see what is going on around them and what lies ahead so they can chart a safe course. Radar does not tell the captain and his crew what to do, but it gives them the accurate information they will need to make good decisions.

Our intelligence service is our nation's radar. Its purpose is to provide the president and his national security team with an accurate picture of what is going on in the world and what is likely to happen in the days, months, and years ahead. The assumption is that, if the president and his team have this information, they can chart a safe course for our country--and if they can see the distant future soon enough and clearly enough, and if they do not like what they see, they can take steps to change the future before it happens.

Good intelligence is a combination of information and insight. Information is the raw material, while insight is the finished product. Sometimes this...