____________________________________________ 2 IICC Perspectives Is Israeli intelligence very strong when dealing "secrets", but not so strong when dealing with "mysteries"? One insight we offer as a cultural-methodological root cause for recurring intelligence failures, is the development of a culture in the intelligence community, which prioritizes operational over strategic research. Over the decades, the ongoing intelligence handling of operations and countermeasures during ordinary security periods, and the management of campaigns between wars was cultivated, received significant resources and accumulated prestige. Thus, while strategic alert research, for all its importance, and without specific decisions having been made, stalled. Therefore, the intelligence community failed the two primary tests for dealing with strategic research, resulting in the two largest, most catastrophic surprises ever prepared for Israel. The immediate, constant, not to say permanent need for operations and countermeasures, the overwhelming majority of which ended quickly and successfully, in effect gradually led to the prioritization of operational over strategic research. Over the years, a culture of rewarding investment in solving operational intelligence puzzles which hid "secrets" was created, rather than dealing with "mysteries". Joseph Nye, a historian who served as the United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs (1994-5), divided the research questions of intelligence organizations into two areas: one was "secrets", issues for which an answer exists and can be found by effective collection. Most of fields operations, countermeasures, air defense strikes, etc. belong to that category. The other were "mysteries", future issues for which no answers exist, and collecting intelligence at present cannot help. They can be resolved only by brainstorming. Thus, divining the political or belligerent intentions of global leaders, or identifying processes and assessing how they will end, mostly belongs to the field of "mystery". Brigadier General Itai Baron, who explained Nye's concepts to Israel in several methodological Joseph Nye (Source: Chatham House) Brigadier General (Res.) Itai Brun (Source: Wikipedia)
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