It is a rare season when the intelligence story in the news
concerns intelligence analysis, not secret operations abroad. The
United States is having such a season as it debates whether
intelligence failed in the run-up to both September 11 and the
second Iraq war, and so Rob Johnston's wonderful book is perfectly
timed to provide the back-story to those headlines. The CIA's
Center for the Study of Intelligence is to be commended for having
the good sense to find Johnston and the courage to support his
work, even though his conclusions are not what many in the world of
intelligence analysis would like to hear. He reaches those
conclusions through the careful procedures of an
anthro-pologist-conducting literally hundreds of interviews and
observing and participating in dozens of work groups in
intelligence analysis-and so they cannot easily be dismissed as
mere opinion, still less as the bitter mutterings of those who have
lost out in the bureaucratic wars. His findings constitute not just
a strong indictment of the way American intelligence performs
analysis, but also, and happily, a guide for how to do better.
Johnston finds no baseline standard analytic method. Instead, the
most com-mon practice is to conduct limited brainstorming on the
basis of previous analy-sis, thus producing a bias toward
confirming earlier views. The validating of data is
questionable-for instance, the Directorate of Operation's (DO)
"clean-ing" of spy reports doesn't permit testing of their
validity-reinforcing the tendency to look for data that confirms,
not refutes, prevailing hypotheses. The process is risk averse,
with considerable managerial conservatism. There is much more
emphasis on avoiding error than on imagining surprises. The
analytic process is driven by current intelligence, especially the
CIA's crown jewel analytic product, the President's Daily Brief
(PDB), which might be caricatured as "CNN plus secrets." Johnston
doesn't put it quite that way, but the Intelligence Community does
more reporting than in-depth analysis. None of the analytic
agencies knows much about the analytic techniques of the others. In
all, there tends to be much more emphasis on writing and
communication skills than on analytic methods. Training is driven
more by the druthers of individual analysts than by any strategic
view of the agencies and what they need. Most training is
on-the-job. Johnston identifies the needs for analysis of at least
three different types of consumers-cops, spies, and soldiers. The
needs of those consumers produce at least three distinct types of
intelligence-investigative or operational, stra tegic, and
tactical. The research suggests the need for serious study of
analytic methods across all three, guided by professional
methodologists. Analysts should have many more opportunities to do
fieldwork abroad. They should also move much more often across the
agency "stovepipes" they now inhabit. These movements would give
them a richer sense for how other agencies do analysis. Together,
the analytic agencies should aim to create "communities of
practice," with mentoring, analytic practice groups, and various
kinds of on-line resources, including forums on methods and problem
solving. These communities would be linked to a central repository
of lessons learned, based on after-action post-mortems and more
formal reviews of strategic intelligence products. These reviews
should derive lessons for individuals and for teams and should look
at roots of errors and failures. Oral and written histories would
serve as other sources of wherewithal for lessons. These
communities could also begin to reshape organizations, by
rethinking organizational designs, developing more formal
socialization programs, testing group configurations for
effectiveness, and doing the same for management and leadership
practices. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central
Intelligence Agency.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
