What Analysts Need to Understand:
The King's Intelligence Studies Program
Most of all, the program offers a containing space in which analysts from
every part of the community can explore with each other the interplay of
ideas about their profession.
Michael S. Goodman and David Omand
Dr. Michael Goodman is a senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies,
Kings College London, where he teaches an MA program Intelligence
and International Security. He is the author of Spying on the Nuclear
Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb. He is seconded
to the Cabinet Office as the official historian of the Joint Intelligence
Committee.
Sir David Omand, GCB, is a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies,
Kings College London. He has been his governments Security and
Intelligence Coordinator, director of GCHQ, and permanent secretary of the
Home Office and policy director of the Ministry of Defense. He had seven
years of service on the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Origins
In April 2007, a British newspaper the Mail on Sunday ran a story
headlined "Can Sherlock Holmes restore the reputation of our bungling spies?"
The report observed, "Spies and Whitehall officials are being given a crash
course in Sherlock Holmes' deduction techniques to prevent a repeat of the
intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq war." Although not quite
accurate, this was the first public mention of an innovative course created
in the aftermath of Lord Butler's report on intelligence and Iraqi
WMD.[i]
In this article we shall outline some of the conclusions we have drawn from
the first four courses that we have run over the past two years. What do
experienced analysts -- those with five to 10 years on the job -- need to
know? Or, rather, what do analysts need to understand?
We are not concerned here with the acquisition of subject knowledge or the
honing of techniques of analysis. Such teaching is best delivered in a secure
environment with the classified databases and tools to which analysts would
have access in their work. Exposure to an academic environment, such as the
Department of War Studies at King's College London, can add several elements
that may be harder to provide within the government system: close access
to academic disciplines, such as military history, intelligence history,
international relations, social sciences and so on; an introduction to the
relevant literature; and exposure to a variety of critical views, including
the unorthodox. But most of all, it offers a containing space in which analysts
from every part of the community can explore with each other the interplay
of ideas about their profession.
We have earlier written how "intelligence is not a new phenomenon, the academic
study of intelligence is." That article went on to describe how "intelligence"
as an academic discipline is studied and taught in the United
Kingdom.[ii] It is worth briefly reiterating
some of its findings as they pertain to the training of government intelligence
officers. The CIA had recognized as early as 1960 how beneficial it would
be to use universities as a means of intelligence
training.[iii] Put simply, it was felt that
by enhancing the understanding of practitioners of intelligence, they would
be able to work more
effectively.[iv] Such a course would be
led by someone with "extensive and well-rounded intelligence experience"
and as a whole would "apply the teachings of many academic
disciplines."[v]
Lord Butler, in his 2004 Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass
Destruction, called for an increase in the number of British intelligence
analysts and suggested forming a specialization of analysis with scope for
advancement within it across the entire British intelligence community. It
fell to David Omand, then UK intelligence and security coordinator, to start
to turn the report into action. He chaired a high-level implementation group
with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the heads of the UK
intelligence agencies and the permanent heads of the government departments
most concerned. It was recognized that:
-
The high level of secrecy that is inevitable within an intelligence community
means that training has to be largely in-house, but that, in turn, makes
it more important to provide opportunities for analysts to meet and develop
a wider professional outlook.
-
Care is needed that analysts do not come to see themselves as a professional
"closed shop" that might make it harder for the intelligence agencies to
rotate their intelligence officers between operational, analytical and managerial
duties, bringing the experience of their service to bear during their tours
of duty in the analytical environment, for example when seconded to the Cabinet
Office Assessments Staff or to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC).
-
The label "analyst" should be interpreted widely to include researchers who
regularly use secret intelligence, for example in the Foreign Office or in
the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and not just be confined to
"all-source analysts."
A professional head of intelligence analysis (PHIA), working within the Cabinet
Office's Intelligence and Security Secretariat, was subsequently appointed
to promote the idea of greater professionalism in analysis and to help generate
this sense of profession, albeit a virtual one. One of her early initiatives
was to commission us at King's College London to develop a course for experienced
analysts.
With a small staff, the PHIA's main tasks are to provide advice in the security,
defense and foreign affairs fields on gaps and duplication in analyst
capabilities, on recruitment of analysts, their career structures and interchange
opportunities; to advise on analytical methodology across the intelligence
community; and to develop more substantial training on a cross-government
basis for all analysts working in these fields. The overall aim of these
tasks is to enhance the analytic capability of the United Kingdom's intelligence
community to enable it to work together more effectively and provide the
highest quality intelligence to ministers and policy makers.
Approach
The aim set for the course can be summarized as promoting multidisciplinary
understanding of the concepts, issues and debates regarding intelligence.
Analysts will thus become more aware of issues around the meaning, value,
nature and proper use of intelligence, and more confident in their own
discussions of these topics. Fostering that sense of being part of a single
UK intelligence community, and of belonging to the virtual profession of
analysts, represents a key underlying motivation for the course.
To achieve this aim we offer the analysts encouragement to look at their
profession from four points of view, based on Stafford Thomas's pioneering
fourfold typology of intelligence
studies:[vi]
-
The functional approach: studying an intelligence cycle appropriate
for the needs of a 21st century national security strategy, looking at the
development of intelligence activities, processes, and technologies. The
choice of analytic methodology is examined, drawing on the experience of
other professions grappling with problems of knowledge.
-
The historical/biographical approach: studying the historical
experiences of the use of intelligence, good and bad; examples examined have
included the controversy over Iraqi WMD, the Falklands War, and UK
counterintelligence against the Soviet Union.
-
The structural approach: studying the institutional development
of the UK intelligence community, especially the Joint Intelligence Committee
and the more recent JTAC. We look in particular at how the UK intelligence
community has adapted to an era of avowal, greater openness, and judicial
and parliamentary oversight.
-
The political approach: looking at the part that pre-emptive
intelligence now plays in operational decision-making in counterterrorism
and other areas. This provides the opportunity to sensitize the analysts
to the institutional dynamics of analytical organizations and the obvious
pathologies that can occur in the relationship between the intelligence community
and its customers. The ethics of intelligence gathering, sharing and public
use are examined in the context of current counterterrorism strategies.
These four ways of looking at the subject are inter-woven through the classes,
each two hours long, typically comprising a mixture of lecture and discussion.
Learning in the 10-week course is assessed by means of a 4,000-word essay,
marked to King's College London MA marking criteria. For this, participants
are explicitly required not to rely on practical experience but to utilize
the wide intelligence studies literature. In their essay they will normally
choose the one approach with which they have come to feel most comfortable.
One outcome of this is that those who take and pass the course are given
a number of credits, which they can then use toward one of the nine MA degrees
offered by the Department of War Studies, or indeed any other MA offered
within King's College London; in effect it is a means of encouraging thinking
about broader personal and professional development.
What do the sessions cover?
1) The functional approach
Starting with the functional approach, the emphasis is on developing an awareness
-- a self-consciousness -- of the mental processes that we all employ when
we do what we call "analysis." There is much we can learn here from other
professions and from recognizing the differences between them. We draw attention
to the relevant methods of analysis employed by journalists, physicians,
historians, paleontologists, detectives, mathematicians, and physical and
social scientists. Each group has something of methodological value to offer
to the debate in terms of what makes for reliable evidence, how to judge
between competing theories, what makes theories useful, and how uncertainty
is dealt with.
One unusual example is paleontology, an academic discipline that has had
to develop a methodology and tools for assessing fragmentary and often incomplete
evidence, on an internationally collaborative basis, and drawing general
conclusions from the evidence. For instance, from the example of modern human
origins (MHO) comes discussion of paradigm shifts and competing hypotheses
and how best to select between them when direct experimentation is not possible.
One intelligence tool that we explore is the use of the Heuer
model,[vii]
as developed by the UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) and which provides
a structured way for analysts to relate competing hypotheses to their essential
assumptions. The need for care over deception, in the form of examples such
as the Piltdown fraud, can also be introduced here.
From the mathematicians comes the Bayesian approach, where we emphasize the
way that new information can be reliably and consistently incorporated to
revise an estimate of the believability of a hypothesis. Heuristics, such
as those of the mathematician George Polya, are introduced, including his
advice to draw diagrams, try and recognize when similar problems have been
solved in the past, and the notion that if a problem is too hard to solve,
attempt solution of a related but much simpler version.
At the same time the fuzzy logic school provides the analysts with cautionary
lessons concerning the less than Cartesian categories of the typical real-world
problem. A general issue young analysts invariably raise at this point is
how far such theoretical examinations of decisionmaking can have application
to their real-world problems. An example we have used will illustrate the
point. The example below sets out an apparently simple practical problem
that just might be posed to an analyst supporting an arms control inspection
regime:
You are an imagery analyst looking for an unlawful biological warfare
trailer. You think it could be hidden in one of three equally likely locations,
A, B or C. You pick one, say site C, and start to prep the arms control
inspectors for a snap inspection. The host country then unexpectedly throws
open one of the other sites, site A, to journalists so it is obviously not
there. You have the chance to change your advice to the inspection team and
tell them now to go to site B or stick with your original choice, C. Should
you change, or stick to C?
When posed this question, analysts immediately split into two camps. The
minority quickly spots the underlying structure of what in North America
is known as the "Monty Hall problem," from the name of the game show
host.[viii] As a problem in probability it is straight
forward, if paradoxical. The majority of analysts who have not come across
the problem refuse to believe the result when they first come across it but
can be persuaded to follow the probabilistic reasoning, as set out in Figure
1.
-
That, however, is the start of the teaching point. The
analysis of the probabilities in the graphic depends upon a set of strict
assumptions that are not explicit in the question. For the intelligence analyst
little, if anything, should be taken for granted, especially statements from
the opponent. What unlocks a proper analysis of the problem for the analyst
is understanding where implicit assumptions are being made about the reporting
being received. For example, do we assume that the opponent knows which initial
site was picked (the question does not say so)? If not, the solution is quite
different. Would it be safe not to assume he knows, given the history of
arms inspection regimes? Is the opponent engaged in deception, using the
media as a shield? Can it be safely assumed that the opponent who threw open
the site was privy to the secret of where the bio-trailer was actually located?
And so on.
In the end, the problem reduces to a number of alternative hypotheses, on
a number of different assumptions, and the analyst can use the Heuer table
approach to rank these. Our calculations show that the problem is asymmetric:
the wise analyst will advise switching on the grounds that some assumptions
will improve the prediction, while on others it makes the chances no worse.
One of the objectives of taking the analysts through such exercises is to
emphasize that prediction may not match reality because the model of human
motivation being used to interpret the intelligence has built-in inappropriate
assumptions. This lesson about the nature of explanation is important for
analysts to understand. The point has been well made by a leading quantum
physicist, as originally attributed to Bertrand Russell in his philosophy
lectures, but which we adapt to the intelligence world. Imagine a chicken
farm where the chickens spy on the farmer and intercept a message that he
is ordering much more chicken food. The JIC of chickens meets. Is their key
judgment that at last peaceful coexistence has come and the farmer is going
to feed them properly in the future? Or is it that they are all doomed since
they are about to be fattened for the kill? It is the same raw reporting,
but different implicit assumptions about human behavior.
The fact that the same observational evidence can be extrapolated to
give two diametrically opposite predictions according to which explanation
one adopts, and cannot justify either of them, is not some accidental limitation
of the farmyard environment: it is true of all observational evidence under
all
circumstances.[ix]
Or, to put it another way, as the Nobel prize-winner Paul Dirac said of the
early Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, it is possible to get the right answer
for the wrong reason.
We have found that many young analysts implicitly carry in their heads what
might be described as an inductivist model of their work, involving experience
of being able to generalize from patterns or from changes to recognized patterns.
They need to be reminded of
the asymmetry between experimental refutation and experimental confirmation.
Whereas an incorrect prediction automatically renders the underlying explanation
unsatisfactory, a correct prediction says nothing at all about the underlying
explanation. Shoddy explanations that yield correct predictions are two a
penny, as UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists and pseudo-scientists of
every variety should (but never do) bear in
mind.[x]
We emphasize too the risk of overinterpreting evidence and contriving ever
more complex explanations to fit available data. As the late Professor R.
V. Jones, the father of scientific intelligence, put it in a dictum he called
Crabtree's bludgeon:
No set of mutually consistent observations can exist for which some human
intellect cannot conceive a coherent
explanation.[xi]
Discussion with analysts usually leads to their volunteering
examples from their experience of the human tendency to try to explain away
apparently contradictory evidence that might confound the favorite explanation
of the moment. A temptation we have all noticed is likely to be unconsciously
stronger if that explanation is known to be favoured by the senior customer,
or if deciding upon it has been particularly stressful for the organization,
in which case a form of cognitive dissonance may effectively blank out discussion
of alternative explanations.
A well-documented case that illustrates the pitfalls here, which we give
the analysts to examine, is the 1982 "yellow rain" allegation of Soviet BCW
agent use in Laos and
Cambodia.[xii] In that case there were good
reasons for initially giving credence to the reports, but as contrary evidence
began to emerge it was explained away by ever more complex explanation. Thus,
as an example, the alleged agent particle size was smaller than might have
been expected, well, that just showed how fiendishly clever the enemy was
because smaller particles could be ingested more quickly through the lungs
as well as through skin absorption. In the end, analysis by labs such as
the UK's Porton Down showed no trace of BCW agent and the organic substance
found was probably pollen from clouds of defecating wild bees -- as perhaps
the analysts might have found out if experts on the fauna of the region had
been consulted initially, another useful learning point. There may well have
been covert activity going on in the region, but this was not the way to
go about uncovering it.
We introduce the students gently to postmodern critiques of international
relations and the role of intelligence -- the only session that we might
describe as turbulent since our experience is that most analysts are impatient
with modern structuralist thinking. However, it is important for analysts
to realize how the language they habitually use, such as intelligence collection,
production, analysis, assessment and so-called finished product (and the
meaning that different generations of customers may ascribe to words such
as probably) are categories that can shape and constrain thinking.
-
-
In discussion with analysts we have found our own thinking about the
"intelligence cycle" being reshaped. The depiction of the intelligence cycle
in Figure 2 uses "access" to cover all three types of information that can
be turned into intelligence: traditional secret sources, open sources (including
nonintelligence government information, such as diplomatic reporting) and
the third increasingly important category of private information covered
by data protection legislation (such as financial, credit, travel, passport,
biometrics and communications records).
We have found that the analysts respond readily to the term "access," that
deliberately conjures up the image of the analyst and the collector working
together and the development of a new skill set of mission management to
connect them. We only have time in the course for the merest glimpse of the
technological possibilities that the future will bring here for their work,
for example in data mining and pattern recognition software.
Our description of the cycle uses "elucidation" to describe the ways in which
usable intelligence can be created by shedding new light on what is going
on in theaters of interest, providing a crucial element to situational awareness
and providing surer explanations of what has been experienced from which
more reliable predictions can be generated.
As Winston Churchill put it: "The further back you look the further ahead
you can see." Certainly the traditional evidence-based inferential work is
still there, as it was during the Cold War, but so is seeing inside the head
of the enemy. The term "dissemination" is used to convey the sowing of seeds
in the minds of other analysts as well as customers, and to a much wider
group of potential users, including local police officers or operators of
the critical national infrastructure, interested in data streams, pictures,
maps and video as well as written reports of the traditional kind.
From these discussions we have the impression that analysts are being pulled
in two different directions. On the one hand, the center of gravity of UK
intelligence work has shifted to "action-on" intelligence, to use the old
SIGINT expression. That brings a very close interaction with the user operating
in real time or near real time, a feature of both support for military operations
and support for what in UK parlance we might call the civil authority, including
law enforcement over terrorism, narcotics, proliferation and serious criminality.
On the other hand, the demands for high-level analysis have become more
demanding, with military involvement in Iraq and in Afghanistan, where strategic
judgments depend crucially on deep knowledge of language, customs, history,
religion, tribal relationships and personalities, and topography that place
exceptional demands on the analyst. The future will hold many demands for
such deep analysis of global phenomena, such as resource shortages and the
security impact of climate change, posing real challenges for the next generation
of young analysts.
2) The historical/biographical approach
Under the heading of the historical approach, the analysts have been able
to hear Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman analyzing the dynamic interaction
between UK and Argentine intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of the
Falkland Islands and showing how perceptions of the moves made by one side
affected the
other.[xiii] For example, Argentine
intelligence incorrectly assumed that a nuclear attack submarine was leaving
Gibraltar for the South Atlantic. The UK government was not unhappy to have
such a deterrent message understood, but the Joint Intelligence Committee
failed to assess that the Argentine junta would, as a result, actually accelerate
its plans for invasion before supposed British reinforcements arrived. Such
dynamic situations are much the hardest that the intelligence analyst ever
has to face. Another important lesson is that dictators may not react the
way democracies would.
Different lessons about the use of intelligence have been provided by Gill
Bennett, until recently chief historian of the Foreign Office, with her analysis
of the meticulous intelligence case built up against Soviet espionage that
allowed the UK to expel 105 Soviet officials in 1971 (Operation Foot), a
blow from which their effort against the UK never
recovered.[xiv] She contrasts
that with the hasty and botched action in 1927 against ARCOS, the Soviet
trade society that had been fomenting industrial subversion. In attempting
to defend his action, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin revealed to Parliament
the contents of an intercepted Soviet telegram with the obvious result that
readability of Soviet diplomatic cyphers was promptly lost.
3) The structural or institutional approach
It would be fair to say that we have found the analysts less knowledgeable
than they need to be about the history of the wider intelligence community
outside their own employing agency or organization. In particular, the history
of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee has many lessons for the analyst
in understanding the developing relationship with the policy customer.
Examples abound of JIC key judgments that illustrate predictive intelligence
at its worst and best. At its worst, we examine the conclusions of the recently
declassified Nicoll Report that provide the basis for a rich discussion of
mirror imaging, perseveration, transferred judgment, etc., all made worse
by group
think.[xv] At its best (leaving aside the
double negative which would be disapproved of today), we have the following
historical key judgment based on fresh HUMINT in 1939:
Apparently the reason which was supposed to have led Herr Hitler and
his advisers to come to this decision was that they felt the rearmament of
the democratic powers was proceeding at such a pace that Germany's relative
strength would inevitably decline. This was therefore the moment to
strikeâ¦by reason of [intelligence reports] which show which
way the wind was blowing, it is unfortunately no longer possible to assume
that there is no likelihood of Germany "coming West" in
1939.[xvi]
And this judgment from 1956 on Suez:
Should Western military action be insufficient to ensure early and decisive
victory, the international consequences both in the Arab States and elsewhere
might give rise to extreme embarrassment and cannot be foreseen.
This shows a nice delicacy about reaching a judgment, not about the enemy
but about your own government's proposed
actions.[xvii]
One of the course sessions that has been the most popular has been that dealing
with the history of avowal and oversight. We examine how the use of pre-emptive
intelligence in countering terrorism has brought greater public awareness
and, at times, criticism of intelligence work. We engage the analysts in
a vigorous debate about the ethics of intelligence, one of the most appreciated
sessions on the course, given sensitivities over the uses that may be made
of their intelligence to guide military or police action.
On a lighter note, we have devoted one session in each course to examining
how the serious media now operate. Students have been fascinated to talk
to the foreign editor of a leading journal and to a leading BBC correspondent
to learn first hand about how the process of serious reporting is managed,
open and private sources handled, and editorial discretion exercised, since
in journalism, as in intelligence analysis, to edit is to choose. Writing
accurately and clearly, to a tight deadline, is a skill that both professions
have to exercise.
Our media representatives readily concede, however, that there is one big
difference. As the Economist put it many years ago on the retirement
of Sir Kenneth Strong as the director general of defence intelligence:
Modern intelligence has to do with the painstaking collection and analysis
of fact, the exercise of judgment, and clear and quick presentation. It is
not simply what serious journalists would always produce if they had time:
it is something more rigorous, continuous, and above all operational -- that
is to say, related to something that someone wants to do or may be forced
to
do.[xviii]
4) The political approach
Under this heading, the course examines the analyst/customer (variously called
the producer/consumer) relationship. Two models are compared at the outset
of the course, broadly the school associated in the literature with Bob Gates's
time as DCI and that espoused decades earlier by Sherman Kent. Most of the
analysts feel comfortable adapting their approach to circumstances. We discuss
times when the former approach is more appropriate, for example in strategic
assessment of issues of peace and war (Iraq), and times when a very close
mutual understanding is needed (uncovering terrorist networks).
We have many more publicly documented case studies of problems in
intelligence assessment to draw on than there are documented successes. The
Butler inquiry has provided useful case histories, including A.Q. Khan and
Libya, to balance its strictures about intelligence on Iraqi WMD. In the
course, we do however look in detail at the now reasonably well documented
controversy over pre-war associations between al-Qa'ida and Iraq and, in
particular, the case of Curveball and Iraqi BW trailers.
We encourage the analysts to distinguish between intelligence "gaps" and
intelligence "failures." Certainly, as far as domestic counterterrorism is
concerned, they need to accept that the former will always exist -- the analysts
are, we find, very balanced in their views about the acceptable limits of
surveillance. To be classed as a failure, there has to be a reasonable
expectation that the analysts could have had access to actionable intelligence
that would have provided timely warning were it not for some negligence,
including that resulting from over-stretch, inadequate training, personal
dereliction of duty, institutional rivalries and so on. The analyst needs
to be alert to the first warning signs of incipient failure conditions.
In looking at the relationship with the user, the writings of Professor R.V.
Jones provide examples during WW II when he resorted to advocacy rather than
presenting facts neutrally, fearing important warnings were not being heeded.
Who could blame an analyst for advocacy, faced with, say, a General Percival
in Singapore refusing to accept the reality of the impending Japanese invasion
or a secretary of defense, as Robert Macnamara admits in his own memoir,
resisting appreciation of the true state of affairs developing in Vietnam?
But the analysts are quick to recognize this must never, ever, become the
slanting of intelligence. And the analyst must encourage the customer to
recognize that what the analyst is painting is an impressionist portrait,
without the complete detail that you would find in a photograph. So what
is included as the essential highlights and what is left out as distracting
detail is a matter of analytical judgment. Customer and analyst alike need
to be conscious of this.
We look, therefore, in a final session at institutional dynamics as they
might apply to teams of analysts and their interactions with users. What
modes of behavior are likely to encourage innovation and creativity (or not)?
How much latitude should the dissenting analyst expect, and what safety valves
exist, such as the use of the intelligence counsellor, an independent senior
retired figure who can be consulted in confidence over professional issues
of conscience? What are the first symptoms of group think and blame culture?
We find that most of the answers here come from the analysts with little
or no prompting from the tutors, demonstrating that recent experiences have
had their impact on the intelligence community.
Conclusion
To conclude, as a result of having worked with four iterations of the course,
we think we have a better understanding now of what, outside the professional
tools of their trade, it would be helpful for the up and coming analyst to
understand better. Much of this understanding revolves around self-knowledge
and development of sound instincts of curiosity.
The first permanent secretary that David Omand ever met was in the Ministry
of Defence in London over 35 years ago. He sat in a large, elegant Whitehall
office and inquired kindly about how this new recruit was settling in and
then he said, "You may wonder what a permanent secretary does all day. Let
me tell you." He went on, "I sit behind my desk and I transfer papers from
my intray to my outtray. And, as I lift them, I sniff them, and 35 years
in Whitehall has given me the ability to tell when advice going through to
the minister is soundly based and well timed, and it has also given me the
nose to detect a wrong'un."
This encounter was, of course, before the advent of managerialism in the
British public service. But his words were good advice in relation to developing
strong professional instincts. Perhaps, for he was a highly educated man,
he had in mind Wittgenstein's account of a visit to a tailor, when the
experienced customer who knows his own mind came to indicate his choice from
an endless number of patterns of suiting -- almost beyond words of explanation
-- no, this is slightly too dark, this is slightly too loud, this is just
right.[xix] The
experienced mind is demonstrated by the way choice and selection is indicated.
Much of the early career may necessarily be spent in acquiring mastery of
the necessary technical skills of the analytic trade, processing raw
intelligence, in searching through imagery or communications patterns and
collating data of every kind. For experienced analysts, however, what will
make the difference are the instincts -- which we believe can be developed
-- that can be brought to bear to generate hypotheses worth testing on the
evidence base. It may rest on the ability to get into the mind of the adversary,
to understand the responses of a foreign culture, to sense when new thinking
is needed, and -- in the words of that permanent secretary -- to spot a wrong'un.
It will rest also on deep understanding of the world inhabited by the users
of their intelligence, to understand what intelligence they need to do their
job better, and also to sense what they do not yet know that they need to
know, and that the intelligence community might be able to provide if
appropriately tasked.
To conclude with the words of Richards Heuer, which might have been written
for the course at King's College London:
Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning
processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions,
not just about the judgments and conclusions
themselves.[xx]
Footnotes
[i]HC 898. The Lord Butler of Brockwell. Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. (London: The Stationary
Office, 2004).
[ii]M.S. Goodman, "Studying and Teaching About Intelligence:
The Approach in the United Kingdom," Studies in Intelligence 50,
no. 2 (2006): 57-65.
[iii]P.J. Dorondo, "For College Courses in Intelligence,"
Studies in Intelligence 4, no. 3 (1960).
[iv]S.T. Thomas, "Assessing Current Intelligence Studies,"
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 2,
no. 2 (1988): 239.
[v]Dorondo, A15-A16.
[vi]Thomas, 239.
[vii]R Heuer, The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis,
(CIA: The Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999)
[viii]An entertaining simulation can be found at
math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/monty.html
[ix]D. Deutsch. The Fabric of Reality. (London:
Allen Lane, 1997)
[x]Ibid.
[xi]R.V. Jones. Reflections on Intelligence (London:
Mandarin, 1989).
[xii]With acknowledgments to Professors Meselson and Perry
Robinson, who generously allowed us to draw on their work on this subject
as part of the Harvard Sussex program.
[xiii]L. Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands
Campaign (London: Routledge, 2005).
[xiv]Documents on British Policy Overseas. Series III:
Volume I - Britain and the Soviet Union, 1968-1972. (London: The Stationery
Office, 1997).
[xv]M.S. Goodman, "The Dog That Didn't Bark: The Joint
Intelligence Committee and the Warning of Aggression," Cold War
History 7, no 4 (November 2007): 529-51.
[xvi]Cited in W. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British
Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1985).
[xvii]Cited in P. Cradock, Know Your Enemy: How the
Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World. (London: John Murray, 2002).
[xviii]The Economist, 1 October 1966: 20.
[xix]L. Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations
(Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1966), 7.
[xx]Heuer, ch. 4.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article
are those of the author. Nothing in the article should be construed as asserting
or implying US government endorsement of an article's factual statements
and interpretations.