The Intelligence Community and the Essential Role of Threat Assessment

Photograph Source: Office of the Director of National Intelligence – Public Domain

“It is not a responsibility of the intelligence community to determine what is or is not an imminent threat.” –Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, March 18, 2026, testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Anyone concerned with national policy must have a profound interest in making sure that intelligence guides and does not follow national policy.” –Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State, October 1973.

“It is not a responsibility of the intelligence community to determine what is or is not an imminent threat.”

–Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, March 18, 2026, testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Anyone concerned with national policy must have a profound interest in making sure that intelligence guides and does not follow national policy.”

–Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State, October 1973.

When I joined the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence in the summer of 1966, the Soviet Division was in great turmoil because of the failure to predict the fall of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev two years earlier.  Because of that analytic failure, the chief of the Soviet Domestic Branch had been replaced along with several of his veteran analysts.  Most of the new and remaining analysts were without significant intelligence experience.  My immediate reaction to this bureaucratic turmoil was “how would CIA analysts in McLean, Virginia, anticipate the coup against Khrushchev if it came as a surprise to Khrushchev?”........

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