The problem is that the logic of “need to know” depends on the assumption that somebody – some manager or algorithm or bureaucracy – actually knows who does and does not need to know which material. In order to say definitively that a SEAL ground force does not need awareness of a particular intelligence source, or that an intel analyst does not need to know precisely what happened on any given mission, the commander must be able to say with confidence that those pieces of knowledge have no bearing on what those teams are attempting to do, nor on the situations the analyst may encounter.
Our experience showed us this was never the case.
More than once in Iraq we were close to mounting capture/kill operations only to learn at the last hour that the targets were working undercover for another coalition entity. The organizations structures we had developed in the name of secret and efficiency actively prevented us from talking to each other and assembling a full picture.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
