Leader Personality Assessments in Support of Government Policysignificantly reduced. In recent years, however, there have been a
number of intelligence "surprises," including the failure to predict
nuclear testing by India and Pakistan and major terrorist events—
the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the
suicide hijackings of September n, which resulted in the destruc-
tion of the World Trade Center and the crash into the Pentagon by
al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. After the nuclear
testing by India and Pakistan, the Rumsfeld Commission was estab-
lished to examine this intelligence failure. A major conclusion was
that there was an overreliance on technological intelligence and
insufficient human intelligence and analysis of leadership. At the
time of his confirmation hearings, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld identified as his leading nightmare not understanding the
intentions of dangerous adversaries. Accentuated by some of the
recent intelligence "surprises," the need to have a robust applied
political psychology capability has been highlighted and increased
resources are currently being applied to human intelligence and to
the study of the personality and political behavior of foreign leaders,
both national leaders and terrorist leaders.
Notes- The assessment prepared by the panel was classified as "secret," but
Wedge elected to publish it in the Washington Post in 1967, and it was subse-
quently republished in Wedge 1968. Wedge explained that since Kennedy was
dead and Krushchev was retired he believed the original classification was no
longer valid. - The editor of this volume had the honor and challenge of founding and
leading CAPPB for twenty-one years. An interdisciplinary behavioral sciences
analytic unit, CAPPB produced assessments of the personality and political
behavior of key foreign leaders for three purposes: (i) to assist the president and
senior cabinet officials in summit meetings and other high-level negotiations, (2)
to assist in crisis situations, and (3) to assist in estimative intelligence. - Carter had been critical of the strategy briefing books prepared for him by
the State Department and the National Security staff, whose expressed goals for
Camp David had been very modest, and set his goals on a written agreement for
peace between Egypt and Israel. But he knew that to succeed in achieving this
ambitious goal would require an understanding of the psychology and attitudes
of the principals in depth.