Stephen Marrin

Improving Intelligence Analysis by Looking to the Medical Profession

Intelligence agencies might benefit from assessing existing medical practicesfor possible use in improving the accuracy of intelligence analysis and itsincorporation into policymaking. The processes used by the medicalprofession to ensure diagnostic accuracy may provide specific models forIntelligence Community use that could improve the accuracy of analyticprocedures. The medical profession’s way of accumulation, organization,and use of information for purposes of decisionmaking could also providea model for the national security field to adopt in its quest for moreeffective means of information transfer. Some limitations to the analogyareinevitableduetointrinsicdifferences between the fields, but the studyof medicine could provide intelligence practitioners with a valuable sourceof insight into various reforms with the potential to improve the craft ofintelligence.A LITTLE-EXAMINED ANALOGYThe analogy between medical diagnosis and intelligence analysis has been athin thread running through the intelligence literature. In 1983, historianWalter Laqueur, in ‘‘The Questionof Judgment: Intelligence andMedicine,’’

CIA's Kent School: Improving Training for New Analysts

The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) Career Analyst Program (CAP) for new analysts seeks to increase their on-the-job effectiveness and ability to produce more accurate analysis. The program is located within the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, which CIA’s senior managers created in 2000 to increase the expertise of officers within its Directorate of Intelligence (DI). The school provides analyst and managerial training for the DI, as well as housing the Kent Center which acquires and disseminates information regarding analytic ‘best practices.’ According to an Agency press release, the CAP is CIA’s ‘‘first comprehensive training program for professional intelligence analysts,’’ and is a noticeable improvement on prior training efforts. The CAP provides new analysts with the knowledge and skills that enable them to be more effective in the production of finished intelligence, as well as in their overall job performance. It also provides them with the means to produce more accurate analysis by teaching them the causes of—and means to avoid—intelligence failure, and cognitive tools to assist them in structuring their analysis more along the lines of the scientific method. Whether the CAP will lead to an improvement in the quality of the CIA’s analytic output will depend on whether analysts have the opportunity to apply their newly acquired expertise when back on the job after training. Ultimately, the institutional assessments of analytic production processes will determine whether analytic training programs allow the CIA to

Training and Educating U.S. Intelligence Analysts

In the United States, the training and education of national security intelligence analysts in both government and academia is undergoing significant changes. Most of them are associated with efforts to improve the quality of analysis in the wake of the 11 September 2001 (9=11) terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., and the controversy over the accuracy of intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. Additional changes are likely as analytic training is subsumed into a broader national effort to professionalize the country’s analytic corps.

Preventing Intelligence Failures by Learning from the Past

The literature on strategic surprise and intelligence failure contains nuggets of insight that United States policymakers can mine in their attempts to prevent future terrorist attacks. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 (9=11) terrorist attacks, national security policymakers in both the George W. Bush administration and Congress would do well to examine Intelligence Community performance within a historical context before making any lasting changes to the intelligence agencies’ structures or processes. Many imperfections in the intelligence process are the result of unavoidable tradeoffs in structure and processes. Any specific changes made to address imperfections that led to the failure to prevent the 2001 attacks could easily lead to corresponding pathologies that will cause future failures. In the end, the only way to improve intelligence capabilities is to understand the tradeoffs and either fine-tune the balances more effectively or create new ways of doing business that get past existing tradeoffs. The study of strategic surprise and intelligence failure from a historical perspective provides the best vantage point for understanding the tradeoffs that exist and the pathologies they can cause. Fortunately for policymakers of today—if unfortunately for policymakers of yesteryear— a long string of both policymaker surprise and intelligence failure in the annals of intelligence history can be mined for insight.

Intelligence Analysis Theory: Explaining and Predicting Analytic Responsibilities

Theoretical work involves explanation and prediction, but thus far there has been little scholarly work explaining and predicting the role of intelligence analysts in support of foreign and national security policies. Without a theory of intelligence, it becomes difficult to decide what the appropriate substantive analytical responsibilities of the intelligence community should be. Accordingly, a theory of foreign intelligence analysis is necessary. This paper presents a theoretical framework developed during the immediate post-Cold War timeframe to explain why there was such a wide variety of perspectives regarding the future need for intelligence, embeds these ideas within the existing intelligence theory literature, applies this framework more generally in a way that can be used to explain variations in the substantive coverage of intelligence analysis in the past and predict possible variations in the future, and then tests the theorys ability to explain the analytical focus of domestic intelligence organizations.

Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline

As the field of intelligence studies develops as an academic complement to the practice of national security intelligence, it is providing a base of knowledge for intelligence practitioners to interpret their past, understand their present, and forecast their future. It also provides the basis for broader understanding of intelligence as a function of government for other government and security officials, academicians, and the general public. In recent years there has been significant growth in the numbers and kinds of intelligence-related educational and training opportunities, with the knowledge taught in these courses and programs derived from the body of intelligence studies scholarship. The question posed here is: to what extent is this body of knowledge sufficient as a basis for the development of intelligence studies as an academic discipline?

The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis

Abstract The 9/11 terrorist attacks have been intensively examined as both tactical and strategic intelligence failures but less attention has been paid to the policy failures which preceded them. Perhaps this is due to the presumption that intelligence analysis influences decision-making as a precursor to and foundation for policy. This assumption about the influence of analysis on decision deserves a much closer examination. The 9/11 terrorist attacks provide a good case to study for greater understanding of the influence, or lack of influence, that intelligence analysis has on decision-making. Specifically, the 9/11 Commission Report identifies as a significant failure the lack of a National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat between 1998 and 2001, and implies that if one had been produced it might have helped enable decision-makers to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In other words, a failure of strategic intelligence analysis lay at the foundation of the failure to prevent 9/11. But was this really the case? This article takes a closer look at the case of the missing National Intelligence Estimate by first evaluating what decision-makers knew about the threat prior to the 9/11 attacks, the policies they were implementing at the time, and the extent to which the hypothetical National Intelligence Estimate described by the 9/11 Commission would have mattered in terms of influencing their judgement and policy for the better. It concludes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were more a failure of policy than strategic intelligence analysis.

Intelligence Studies Centers: Making Scholarship on Intelligence Analysis Useful

Abstract Improving intelligence analysis requires bridging the gap between scholarship and practice. Intelligence studies as an academic discipline is not very theoretical compared to the more established disciplines of political science and international relations. In terms of conceptual depth, levels of abstraction and theoretical development, even the theoretical portions of the academic intelligence studies literature could be described as policy relevant and potentially useful for practitioners, including intelligence analysts. Yet despite this orientation to the practitioner, there is still a substantial gap between scholars and practitioners, thus replicating within a more applied context the conventional theory/practice divide that exists in other fields. Those fields do, however, possess a variety of ideas and recommendations that could be used to bring scholarship on intelligence analysis closer to practice. If implemented, these ideas might help actualize the benefits of scholarship that are as yet still unrealized potential.

Is Intelligence Analysis an Art or a Science

A discussion, sometimes portrayed as a debate, has been taking place for decades addressing the issue of whether intelligence analysis is an art or a science. According to Robert Folker, this debat...

Modeling an Intelligence Analysis Profession on Medicine 1

For decades intelligence analysts have played a key role in national security decisionmaking of all kinds, and have increasingly been used by law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as by private industry. Yet, even with its rich history, intelligence analysis has historically been practiced more as a craft reliant on the intrinsic skill and expertise of the individual analysts than as a highly developed profession with structured personnel practices to select and develop desired characteristics, skills, and behaviors. For example, a key factor in the production of high quality intelligence analysis is the skill and ability of the intelligence analyst, yet no official standards exist to ensure the competency of individual analysts. Any occupation that lacks performance standards or other formal personnel practices will have difficulties improving both its practices and management, and this has been the case with intelligence analysis across its different disciplines. Fortunately, over the past few years many improvements in the practice of intelligence analysis have occurred in national security, law enforcement, and private industry, effectively beginning the process of turning intelligence analysis from a craft into a more highly developed profession. But this professionalization process has been spontaneous and its implementation haphazard.