Korean Intelligence Failure Essay

Intelligence officers were impeded by the refusal of their leaders to accept the reporting of Chinese presence. Colonel Percy Thompson, G-2 (intelligence officer) of First Corps received information from a variety of sources that made him believe that the Chinese have already entered North Korean territory in late October 1950, however his Commanders of the First Cavalry Division did not believe him. Colonel Thompson’s intelligence assessment was accurate as the Chinese attacked on October 25, 1950. Even at the Battalion level, human intelligence from farmers of the thousands of Chinese on horseback fell on death ears as the leadership thought the idea of Chinese on horseback was absurd. Additionally, the intelligence received from the

However, were these intelligence failures or a command climate failure? The Korean War changed intelligence and the two disastrous warning failures, regarding Korea in 1950, helped to make the “estimates process” a Community fixture, overseen by the DCI. However, even after the Korean War to the Soviets’ fall in 1991, U.S. intelligence challenges remain diversified geographically and in substance. After many years of failures due to stovepipes and mismanagement, it would take the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks to prompt calls for an intelligence restructuring in light of inadequate pre-attack coordination of resources, operations, and information. How substantially the DNI’s office will change the Intelligence Community, and whether it will primarily become another bureaucratic layer over the Community’s now 16 members, remains to be