PERSPECTIVE: Intelligence mattersSupport for U.S. Intelligence Continues, Despite Presidential Attacks and Concerns Over Transparency

Here is good news: The American public supports; has confidence in; and appreciates the contribution to homeland security of the U.S. intelligence community. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs recently published the results from the third round of an annual poll, sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin’s Intelligence Studies Project, which aims to shed light on Americans’ perceptions of the intelligence community. The study covers the 2017-2019 period (for an analysis of the survey’s baseline data from 2017 see here, and for a discussion of the 2018 survey results see here).

Steve Slick and Joshua Busby write in Lawfare that these high levels of support and confidence come come against an unprecedented background:

President Trump’s public antagonism toward the IC continued through the period measured by the 2019 survey on which we are currently reporting. In the months preceding our last survey, the President disputed key judgments presented to Congress during public hearings (while personally denigrating the

witnesses), ordered a politically tinged criminal investigation of IC counterintelligence activities undertaken before his inauguration, and publicly rejected the CIA’s high confidence judgment that Saudi Arabia’s leaders had ordered the extrajudicial killing of journalist Jamal Khasoggi. Notwithstanding these unprecedented attacks by the IC’s “First Customer,” public confidence in the IC remained high, bipartisan, and resilient.

While we do not know the President’s calculation, if any, in publicly deriding U.S. intelligence agencies, his criticism does not appear to impact the level of support for the IC and its mission. Indeed, even among survey respondents of the President’s party who are presumably sympathetic to his views, support for the IC increased from 59% to 74% over the three-year period of this project.

Slick’s and Busby’s key takeaways from the survey are:  

·  A growing majority of Americans believe that U.S. intelligence agencies play a vital role in protecting the nation. Support for this view was strongest among older Americans, but the level of confidence increased in all age cohorts. There is no evidence that the president’s persistent attacks affected the public’s attitude toward U.S. intelligence. In fact, support for the intelligence community among Republicans polled increased over the three-year survey period.

·  An overwhelming majority of Americans regard U.S. intelligence agencies as effective in accomplishing their assigned missions with eight in 10 crediting the intelligence community with preventing terrorist attacks and successfully uncovering the plans of our adversaries.

·  Only half of respondents believed that the intelligence agencies effectively safeguard Americans’ privacy rights and civil liberties while pursuing their missions. This concern is widespread even among the intelligence community’s strongest and most knowledgeable supporters.

·  The number of Americans who believe intelligence agencies should respect the privacy of foreign nationals to the same degree as U.S. citizens declined generally, but that sentiment remains popular with Democrats and younger respondents. Fewer than half of those surveyed believe they will be required to sacrifice personal freedoms to remain safe from terrorism.

·  A strong majority of Americans believe the intelligence community could share more information with the public without compromising its effectiveness.

·  Americans remain uncertain about which government officials or institutions are principally responsible for supervising and overseeing intelligence agencies.