Much of the Office of Net Assessment's work is handled by outside contractors. Secrets of a Pentagon think tank

From Vladimir Putin’s body language to the histories of religious warfare, from the development of new technologies to accounts of ancient empires, there isn’t much the Pentagon’s internal think tank won’t pursue.

The Office of Net Assessment, which is headed by a seldom-seen, 92-year-old Nixon-era defense analyst named Andrew Marshall, is just a tiny compartment in the labyrinthine Defense Department, but its interests are vast. In a recent solicitation, the ONA said it’s seeking research about nuclear proliferation, future naval warfare and the use of space, among other topics.


Usually this kind of work, which costs around $10 million per year, flies well under the radar in a defense budget of roughly half a trillion dollars. Every once in a while, however, the public catches a glimpse of something Marshall and his office are pursuing — most recently, when the Pentagon confirmed it has been spending $300,000 per year to study the body language of Putin and other world leaders.

( Also on POLITICO: Pentagon studies Putin body language)

The ONA’s wide reach makes the office an asset for DOD leaders, advocates say, despite the Pentagon’s acknowledgement that body language analysis of Putin and others hasn’t helped with decision making during the international standoff with Russia over Ukraine.

Indeed, a lot of the ONA’s work never makes it outside the office, said Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby. Supporters argue that it’s still worth doing.

“One of the things that has made ONA so valuable to DOD senior leadership in the past is that it is the one place where ‘orthogonal’ issues — issues that may not obviously appear to affect the department, but that may indeed turn out to have important implications for the future security environment and future warfare that DOD will need to take into account — may be examined,” said Jan van Tol, a retired Navy captain and former military assistant to the ONA.

In a capital that can be preoccupied with winning the day or kicking the can, the Pentagon needs an office pursuing many areas of interest with a long-range view, said van Tol, now a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

( Also on POLITICO: Full defense policy coverage)

“Some of these may turn out to be ‘dry holes,’ but others may alert senior leadership to some kinds of future concerns that they might never have learned about otherwise via normal organizational and bureaucratic processes,” he said.

Much of the ONA’s work is handled by contractors, including big players such as Booz Allen Hamilton and Washington think tanks like CSBA, which can include alumni such as van Tol.

Many of the priorities described in the ONA’s recent solicitation are becoming recurring themes for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Joint Chiefs. For example, Hagel and other top officials have warned that other military powers could target the constellation of American satellites that supports the services’ ability to communicate, operate drones or target their weapons.

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Other ONA-backed studies seem to go much further afield. According to an index of its reports obtained in 2009 by TPMmuckraker, the ONA has commissioned reports with titles that include “The Changing Images of Human Nature” and “Biometaphor for The Body Politic,” as well as more standard-sounding fare such as the “Role of High Power Microwave Weapons In Future Intercontinental Conventional War.”

The case of the Putin body language analysis, first described last week in a report by USA Today, gives another example of the kind of research that Marshall and the ONA pursue. The actual Putin report has not yet been released, but its author, Brenda Connors of the Naval War College, has written about him and his movements in the public press.

“By reviewing videotapes in split-second detail, it is possible to discover a person’s signature movement style, a pattern as unique as a fingerprint,” Connors wrote in a 2004 column in The Providence Journal.

“Putin’s movement style shows a man struggling to move forward — a weakness that is proving to be an impediment to both his leadership and Russia’s future,” she wrote. “His instability is compensated for by a dramatic need for internal control, which he seeks through external display of power.”

This kind of material helps Marshall as an “out-of-the-box thinker,” as Kirby called him. Kirby said Hagel continues to see “value” in his work — although Marshall no longer reports directly to him.

Hagel moved Marshall’s ONA down in the organizational chart last year so that it now reports through the undersecretary of defense for policy. Kirby said the move made sense as part of the reorganization of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which Hagel says could eventually save about $1 billion.

Hagel was said to have considered eliminating the ONA altogether. An unnamed former senior defense official told The Washington Post last year it wasn’t clear what benefits taxpayers got from the secretive office. But its allies sprang to its defense and may take up a campaign this year to preserve the ONA’s independence in law so that a defense secretary can’t unilaterally disassemble it.

Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower panel, plans to sponsor an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would guarantee the ONA’s status as its own entity. He proposed a similar measure last year amid rumors that the ONA might be shuttered. Aides say that the office’s move underneath the undersecretary for policy hasn’t caused any problems — but they want to make sure that remains the case.

“I was pleased to see the bipartisan support exhibited last fall for ONA and its critical mission,” Forbes said. “My continued worry is that by moving ONA under USD-P it could lead to the politicization of the office and slowly reduce its independence. I look forward to continuing careful oversight to ensure this outcome does not become a reality, including supporting language that would establish ONA as an independent office reporting directly to the secretary of defense.”

The ONA has been located in various places in the bureaucracy over its history, van Tol said, adding that he thought its autonomy was more important than its position on the PowerPoint slide.

“The key factor for the ONA to be effective is that it remain fully independent and thus protected from near-term bureaucratic and other pressures,” he said, “in order to be able to investigate and assess long-term trends and issues affecting the future security environment that other DOD offices and processes are unable to do given their primary focus on nearer-term matters and processes.”