Predictions

Freedom’s ride: U.S. intelligence never saw the uprisings of the Arab Spring coming

On December 13, 2010, one of those firms convened a meeting of intelligence analysts and nongovernment experts to explore future po­litical trends in the Middle East. Drawn from the outside were three or four faculty members from universities along the Northeast Corridor and an equal number of “think tankers” — typically people with aca­demic training who have chosen not to enter the ranks of academia as well as former government officials many of whom also have advanced degrees in history, political science or economics. The American intel­ligence community is often slandered in the press and among the tele­vision punditocracy for missing major events and developments. No doubt it has had its spectacular failures — the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Tet Offensive, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to name some of the most notorious — but the intelligence community’s record is better than many might suggest. Policymakers have a penchant for publicly flogging it to mask their misjudgments. There was the blame shifting after the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.