Student-conducted interview with Elliot Carlson, author of Joe Rocheforts War Student: What is meant by the concept actionable

intelligence? Carlson: Rocheforts definition of [actionable intelligence], as he repeated over and over to fellow analysts at Pearl Harbor, was to tell the Fleets commander in chief today what the enemy is going to do tomorrow. This might seem obvious, but in the early 1940s the Navy had devised a rather cumbersome system for processing intelligence. Rocheforts field station at Pearl Harbor (today famously known as Station Hypo) was subordinate to the Navys cryptology headquarters unit in Washington, known as OP-20-G. As 1942 unfolded, Rocheforts OP-20-G superiors in Washington thought that Hypo should function primarily as a collection agency: that is, Hypo should continue to intercept and decrypt messages from the Imperial Japanese Navy, but then send the raw material to Washington for analysis. Washington would do the thinking. And Washington would report its interpretation of Hypos decrypts to the Fleet Commander, then Admiral Chester Nimitz, based at Pearl Harbor, about a mile from Rocheforts office. In other words, Hypos findings from codebreaking would have to go through another layer of bureaucracy before they reached Nimitz. This had two disadvantages: it would slow down the routing of intelligence to the fleet commander, and, worse, Washingtons evaluation of Hypos decrypts might differ from the analysis of Rochefort and his codebreakers. But Washington would have the final word. Rochefort wouldnt go along with this. He thought because of his background in cryptanalysis and his mastery of the Japanese language he was better fitted than his superiors in Washington to determine Japanese intentions. So [Rochefort] continued to report directly to Admiral Nimitz, and only secondarily to OP-20-G. This is where Rochefort broke new ground (much to the unhappiness of his Washington bosses). In relying on Hypos locally gathered intelligence and reporting it directly to Nimitz, he pioneered the idea of actionable intelligence that is, minimizing the layers of bureaucracy through which intelligence must pass, bypassing the central bureaucracy if necessary, so that the findings of cryptanalysis can be made immediately available to the Pacific Fleet Commander. The value of actionable intelligence is that it puts emphasis on speed (crucial in combat) and decreases the danger that findings from codebreaking will be misinterpreted by far-away officials with less knowledge of the situation than those intelligence analysts on the scene,

who presumably are closer to the action and have a better feel for what is happening.

Student: Has the legacy of actionable intelligence carried on to today? How is this beneficial to our military? Carlson: Today the concept of actionable intelligence is respected . . . and given lip service. But it has been diluted by the complexity of modern warfare and the emergence of much new technology and communications systems that sometimes work at cross purposes. Thus, in practice, the concept of actionable intelligence has been transformed into a doctrine the Navy calls information dominance. The Navy today seeks to achieve information dominance, in the words of one Navy official, by integrating command and control, information, intelligence, cyberspace, environmental awareness, and networks operations capability into a weapon of influence. This may be a fine doctrine, but I, for one, wonder if there still isnt the danger of too much centralization and too much bureaucracy. I wonder, in particular, what Joe Rochefort would think of this doctrine, and how he would fit into this doctrine, if he were with us today. Not too well, I fear. I raise the question because it seems to me the Navy needs people like Rochefort who are cut from a different cloth and who, when the situation demands it, arent afraid to challenge existing commander structures. Student: Would you say cryptology gave an advantage that allowed the battles of Coral Sea and Midway to be won? Carlson: Yes, cryptanalysis gave the U.S. Navy a priceless advantage in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (as one historian put it). Consider the Battle of Midway. Three elements were critical for the American victory at Midway: (1) the U.S. Navy breaking Imperial Japanese Navys main operational code, (2) codebreakers at Station Hypo identifying the geographic designator AF as Midway, and (3) Rocheforts role, not only in convincing Nimitz that AF was Midway, but in resisting pressure from his Washington superiors at OP-20-G that AF represented an island or land mass other than Midway. If the Washington interpretation had been accepted by Nimitz, the aircraft carriers he ultimate deployed to the Midway area would have been out of place nowhere near Midway. The carrier Yorktown would have been at the Bremerton, Washington, shipyard getting repairs from a

bomb hit at the Coral Sea, and the carriers Hornet and Enterprise would have been on station in the Coral Sea, 4,000 miles away from Midway. Because of Hypos codebreaking and Rocheforts defiance of his OP-20-G bosses, Nimitz was able to deploy those three carriers to the right place at the right time and enable the American Navy to score one of the great naval victories of WWII an outcome that substantially changed the course of the war against Japan in the Pacific. Fiona, one caveat here: you should regard everything Ive said here as my opinion and my interpretation. Nothing is gospel; other people may have different opinions.