“Groupthink” Now Questioned in Reporting of WMD Issue

The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn’t Make Front Page (Washington Post, reg. req’d).

  • Definition of groupthink.
  • Testimony from Dr. John J. Hamre, Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, hearing on 9/11 Commission Recommendations: Counterterrorism Analysis and Collection—The Requirement for Imagination and Creativity, August 4, 2004. “…the tendency to group-think is inherent in our system. Despite the sophistication and size of these organizations, the intelligence community is still relatively small and isolated. The community is understandably and necessarily preoccupied with protecting sources and methods. And bureaucracies naturally fight for resources. In that kind of an environment, intelligence bureaucrats, like bureaucrats of any type, strive to please their policy bosses. Taken together, these factors contribute too much to a narrowness of perspective. The shorthand label given to this problem is “group think.”
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