‘Groupthink’ Isn’t the CIA’s Problem

In an unusual foray into psychological diagnostics, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Friday that CIA analysts had succumbed to what it called a “groupthink” dynamic. According to the committee’s report, the analysts suffered from a “collective presumption” that Iraq had acquired weapons of mass destruction and they blithely ignored any evidence to the contrary.

But was that indeed what happened? “Groupthink” -- identified in the early 1970s by the late Yale psychologist Irving Janis -- refers to a process by which conformity grows out of deliberations in small groups. It can indeed be quite powerful. The way Janis explained it, groupthink operates when individuals work closely together over a sustained period. It isn’t merely that members of the group come to think alike but that they come to overvalue the harmonious functioning of the group. In their eagerness to reach consensus, they become inhibited from questioning established assumptions or from raising questions that might disturb their colleagues and friends.

A vicious circle begins as the group feels good about itself because it has discovered the truth, and this truth is accepted by each person because it is believed by the others. In this way, a group of intelligent individuals can confidently arrive at conclusions that are wildly removed from reality.

Most social scientists agree that groupthink has contributed to many disastrous decisions in business, families and foreign policy.

President Kennedy and his top advisors, for instance, fell into a groupthink trap, believing that the landings of the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in April, 1961, might overthrow Fidel Castro. Intense face-to-face meetings among the president’s top foreign policy planners formed strong bonds that no one wanted to loosen. In hindsight, their plans were so badly flawed that it is hard to understand how such world-wise leaders could have endorsed them. But apparently each individual grew confident because the others were -- each was reassured because the group was functioning so well and without discord; no one felt the need, or had the nerve, to insist they consider the possibility that the group was on the totally wrong track.

Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up was in part maintained by the same dynamic. To many outsiders even at the time, it was obvious that the only way for Nixon to survive was to air the full truth early on. But the Nixon White House was a small group, closed-mouthed and predisposed to keep everything secret.

But although groupthink has played a part in past foreign policy decisions, it does not appear to explain the CIA’s current intelligence failures, despite the contention of the Senate committee. First of all, intelligence gathering is work done by individuals. Analysts read reports from the field and ask themselves how those reports fit with other reports and prevailing views, and then these individuals write their own summaries and conclusions for fellow analysts and superiors. Group discussions are generally built around what the individuals have come to believe.

Furthermore, from what I have seen of them, intelligence analysts tend to be highly individualistic, if not intellectually combative. They have selected the career of an analyst rather than a more public and people-oriented career in part because they like to work on their own.

There are, of course, some larger group meetings where members of the broader intelligence community convene. And as in any such group situations, there will be times when individuals shape the views they bring in anticipation of what they think will appeal to the other attendees.

But these meetings are not likely to be susceptible to groupthink. Many of them are quite large, which precludes the formation of close ties among participants. Indeed, many of the meetings are ad hoc, with different people participating at different times. Although the members probably know one another, the stability required for groupthink is rarely present.

Finally, many intelligence officials these days -- unlike top political leaders -- are on guard against groupthink. They have read about decision-making pathologies and are wary of overvaluing the good feeling of the group. None of this is to say that the CIA’s processes were as good as they should have been or that the desire not to rock the boat was absent. On the contrary, it appears that another dynamic was at work in this case. Intelligence officials, like the rest of us, hesitate to tell their bosses what they do not want to hear -- and may even, on occasion, convince themselves that alternative views are groundless. The Bush administration made it clear early on that it was seeking to prove the existence of WMD in Iraq -- not disprove it. The intelligence community was under pressure to deliver that evidence.

There are lots of ways political psychology can help explain what went wrong and how intelligence could be done better, but groupthink was not the main problem in this case.