It's Time to Bench 'Team B'

An article from last year.--Dictynna.

by Lawrence J. Korb
August 18, 2004

The reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence miss the real problem facing the intelligence community. The real problem is not organization or culture, but the Team B concept which began in 1976, and the real villains are those hardliners who refuse to accept the unbiased and balanced judgments of intelligence professionals about the threats facing the country.

On May 6, 1976, then Director of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush created a Team B to assess a 1975 National Intelligence Estimate by his agency on Soviet Strategic Objectives. Because the NIE did not endorse a worst-case scenario of Soviet capabilities, outsiders demanded access to the same classified intelligence used by the CIA in preparing the report so they could come to their own conclusions. The concept of a Team B competitive analysis had been opposed by William Colby, a career professional and Bush's predecessor as CIA director. But Bush, under pressure from President Ford, who was facing a strong challenge from right-wing Republicans in that year's primary, and Rumsfeld's Pentagon, which was trying to undermine support for Kissinger's détente with the Soviet Union, caved in.