Hey, Let's Play Ball
The insular world of intelligence reaches out for a few new ideas
The SHARP workshop offered a glimpse into other challenges posed by the new outreach. Outside experts were given basic clearances-at the secret level-for three of the gathering's four weeks. During the one unclassified week, intelligence analysts avoided making presentations and generally steered clear of anyone from overseas. One National Security Agency analyst, asked by U.S. News where she worked, froze in place and tensely replied, "The U.S. government." Others declined even to admit what fields they worked in. "It was hardly the stuff of open, honest discourse," said one discouraged professor. But other scholars were more enthusiastic, particularly once this reporter and the foreign guests departed. The monthlong effort ended up producing 47 unclassified papers and 10 classified ones, with most attendees saying they would eagerly participate again. New SHARP workshops are being planned that may focus on "medical intelligence"-how to best detect disease outbreaks and bioterrorism attacks, for example-and on crossover "streetcraft" techniques useful for police detectives, FBI agents, and intelligence operatives.
While questions persist within academia, intelligence officials have found a warmer reception within the business community. Many of the programs are classified, involving sensitive operations like companies offering nonofficial cover to CIA officers abroad and NSA eavesdroppers gaining access to company communications. But a glimpse at the extent of cooperation can be seen at In-Q-Tel, the unique venture-capital firm set up by the CIA in 1999 to invest in cutting-edge technologies. Since 9/11, business at In-Q-Tel has boomed. Its budget has soared, and its backers now include most of the nation's intelligence agencies. "We've had such a surge of people trying to do whatever they could," says Scott Yancey, In-Q-Tel's senior executive officer. "There's been a huge push to find new technologies."
In the year before 9/11, In-Q-Tel received some 600 submissions from private companies for funding. In the year after the attacks, it received 1,600, and that number has kept pace today. In-Q-Tel has reviewed nearly 6,000 business plans and invested in over 90 firms, most of them since 9/11. Most had never worked with the U.S. government before. In the process, the company has brought together hundreds of high-tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, university researchers, and U.S. intelligence officials. Yancey sees little of the caution that exists in academia. "The business community," he says, "is pumped up when they see the opportunity to serve the country."
Even for skeptical scholars, the temptation to lend their expertise to an intelligence community asking for help may be hard to resist. Brown University anthropologist William Beeman says he has done seminars under every administration since the Carter presidency and feels his efforts are now more important than ever. Given Washington's recent record of glaring intelligence failures, he adds, "I am very disposed to doing anything I can to bring some enlightenment to these people."
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