* * *
The great challenge facing analysts and managers in the Directorate
of Intelligence (DI) is providing real insight to smart policymakers. Meeting
this challenge is hard, but intelligence officers have long believed that
careful attention to the tradecraft of intelligence analysis would lead
to work that added value to the information available to policymakers.
During its 50-plus years, the CIA, we believed, evolved a model that needed
only successful execution to produce quality intelligence analysis. When
we faltered, we blamed the analysts (or the collectors), but not the model.
What if the failing, however, lies not with the analysts but with the
model they are asked to follow? Customer needs and preferences are changing
rapidly, as is the environment in which intelligence analysis operates.
Yet the DIТs approach to analysis has hardly changed over the years. A
DI analyst from decades ago would recognize most of what a typical analyst
does today, from reading traffic to preparing finished intelligence. Stability
is often comforting, but in the DIТs case change may be what is most needed.
The Current Model
On the CIAТs public internet website, the DI defines its mission as
the provision of timely, accurate, and objective intelligence analysis
on the full range of national security threats and foreign policy issues
facing the United States. The website outlines the different types of analytic
support that might be useful to a customer at any given time. DI officers
provide analysis that helps officials work through their policy agendas
by: addressing day-to-day events; apprising consumers of developments and
providing related background information; assessing the significance of
developments and warning of near-term consequences; and signaling potentially
dangerous situations in the future.
A key aspect of this model is that it focuses first on developments.
In fact, the analystsТ work process is structured around developments.
They spend the first quarter or more of their workday reading through the
Уovernight trafficФ to determine what is new. They report what is new to
their colleagues and superiors and then often to the policymaking community.
The Уnew thingФ may be an eventЧthe death of a world leader or the precipitous
decline of an Asian currency. Or it may be an item of intelligence reporting
on a situation of interestЧfrom signals, imagery, human-source, open-source,
or other type of collection. This basic model has guided the DIТs work
for decades.
More recently, DI managers have realized that the specific interests
of customers must have greater weight in determining what to do on any
given day. As a result, the model has acquired an additional stepЧunderstanding
customer feedback to determine policymaker interests. This new step, however,
merely supplements the pivot around which the analytic work turnsЧidentification
of the new development.
Critical, sometimes unstated, assumptions underpin this tradecraft model:
Assumption 1: Policymakers need a service that tells them
what is going on in the world or in their particular area of concern.
Assumption 2: Policymakers need help in determining what
an event means.
Assumption 3: The CIA and specifically the DI have unique
information about what is happening.
Assumption 4: DI analysts are particularly insightful
about what these developments may mean.
When Models Fail
Models work only as long as they suit the environment in which they
operate. If reality changes, then it is a good bet that the model needs
to evolve as well. The DIТs tradecraft model was developed during the 1960s
and 1970s and optimized against the characteristics of that period. It
was an era of information scarcityЧ truth about the worldТs many closed
societies was a rare commodity. Communicating across borders and with other
governments was hardЧgovernment leaders rarely talked to each other on
the phone and summits among world leaders were unusual events. Ideology
was a key driver in international relationsЧit was always important to
know how far left or right a government would tack. These traits do not
describe todayТs environment.
Analysts today have to add value in an era of information abundance.
The policymaker, an intelligence consumer, has many more ways of staying
informed about recent developments, intelligence-related or not. The responses
to a survey of customers of the Senior Executive Intelligence Bulletin
(SEIB) conducted in late 2000 are illustrative. When asked to identify
the unclassified information sources they relied on, 85 percent of the
respondents picked all four of the following sources: foreign newspapers
and weekly periodicals; US newspapers and weekly periodicals; their professional
networks; and official, informal communications, such as e-mail.
Policymakers today also read raw intelligence reports on a regular basis.
Twenty to thirty years ago, analysts in the DI had the fastest access to
incoming intelligence information and could count on seeing particularly
criticalcables before policymakers. Today, thanks to information technology,
policymakers often read the raw traffic at the same time as, if not before,
analysts. In a 1998-1999 survey, SEIB customers were asked, УWhat other
sources of daily intelligence do you read?Ф Almost one-half of the respondents
volunteered that they often read raw traffic. Given that Уraw trafficФ
was not offered as a specific choice, the real percentage was almost certainly
higher than the write-in responses indicated.
Analysts today have to dig deep to surpass the analytic abilities
of their customers. Modern communication technologies and evolving
diplomatic practices now allow government leaders to communicate with each
other freely and often. US officials even talk to opposition party leaders.
This makes it much easier for policymakers to be their own analystsЧto
gain insights into the intentions of other governments and decipher what
developments may mean. The DI has probably always underestimated the extent
to which policymakers serve as their own analysts. Arguably, policymakers
have never needed the DI to tell them that riots undermine governments
or that currency crises shake investor confidence. Today, however, they
no longer even need much help deconflicting signals from other governments.
Analysts today have to reach beyond political analysis, an area
in which it is particularly hard to provide value to policymakers.
The ideological orientation of governments is no longer the important issue
in international relations; it has been replaced by a growing list of non-traditional
issues that tend to defy ideological definition. In the DI, however, political
analysis is still king. We want to follow the ins and outs of political
activity in any number of countries even though the audience for this type
of analysis is not as broad as it once was. A recent study of articles
in the SEIB, for example, revealed that 70 percent dealt mostly with analysis
of political developments. In contrast, a much wider variety of issues
was covered in memos written directly in response to questions from senior
customers. Only about one-third of those memosЧwhose topics presumably
matched what was most on the policymakersТ mindsЧcovered political matters,
and many of those discussed the behavior and attitudes of foreign leaders,
a sub-category of political analysis that remains of high interest to senior
policymakers.
The move toward non-traditional issues is already underway, evidenced
by the creation of specialized Centers to deal with terrorism, weapons
proliferation, and narcotics and crime. Nonetheless, too many of our flagship
products still reflect a political analysis bias. We need to do a better
job aligning our publishing strategies with emerging realities.
Analysis in some other conventional areas can still provide value-added,
but, like political analysis, the challenge is greater than before. Economic
analysis faces daunting competition from the open-source world and those
analysts need either to serve consumers who are not economic specialists
or to identify niche substantive areas where the Agency can still provide
unique support. Scientific and military analyses are borderline issues
that defy easy solutions. A number of our senior customers, particularly
in civilian agencies, cannot serve as their own experts on technical topics,
so there is more room for the intelligence analyst to provide value-added.
The issue for military analysis, however, is which agency should be primarily
responsible. This is now a crowded field, occupied not only by the DI and
the Defense Intelligence Agency, but, increasingly more to the point, by
the strong intelligence centers at the unified military commands. The DI
is still in the process of defining its comparative advantage in military
analysis.
Analysis that Fits the New Environment
So, how does the DI, or anyone, do intelligence analysis in an era of
information abundance, wellconnected policymakers, and non?traditional
issues? First, we need new assumptions:
New Assumption 1: Most of the time, policymakers have
a good sense of what is going on in their areas of concern.
New Assumption 2: Policymakers frequently understand the
direct consequences of events and their immediate significance.
New Assumption 3: The CIAЧand particularly the DIЧoften
lacks unique information about developments, especially in the political
and economic spheres. Raw intelligence is ubiquitous and can get to policymakers
before it reaches the analysts.
New Assumption 4: Policymakers need the greatest help
understanding non-traditional intelligence issues. There is still a market
for political analysis and certainly for related leadership analysis, but
to be successful in traditional areas the DI must generate unique insights
into relatively well-understood problems.
A DI optimized against these assumptions would understand current developments,
but only as the necessary foundation for its real contribution to policymakers.
Analysts would specialize in complex analysis of the most difficult problems.
They would focus on the policymakersТ hardest questions. Their goals would
include identifying new opportunities for policymaking and warning first
of discontinuities that could spell danger.
What does this mean in practical terms? How would the practice of intelligence
analysis change?
Analysts must focus on the customer. For many analysts,
particularly those involved in political work, the focus would shift from
tracking developments in their particular accounts to addressing the specific,
hard questions of policymakers. An analyst, for example, would often start
her day by reviewing feedback and tasking from customers, instead of first
reading the morning traffic. We need to use technology and a network of
high-caliber representatives at policy agencies to create stronger links
between analysts and customers.
Analysts must concentrate on ideas, not intelligence.
Because the DI has no monopoly over the dissemination of intelligence reporting,
synthesizing it for others is a poor investment of its time and talent.
This particularly applies to political and economic analysis; policymakers
do in fact often need help deciphering technical reports on such issues
as proliferation and information warfare. In many substantive fields, the
DI can best serve the policymaker by tackling the hard questions and trying
to develop more reliable ways of identifying and understanding emerging
issues. To do this kind of work well, the DI will need keen critical thinkers
open to unconventional ideas, perhaps even more than it will need regional
experts. Customers are actually pretty good at letting us know what issues
keep them up at night; we have to stop dismissing these questions as either
too hard or not intelligence-related.
To free analysts to do this work, we will need to de-emphasize products
that largely describe what has just happened. This will be hard because
there are customers who want such products, which are seen as convenient,
free goods. But if our relatively painless experience last year with the
elimination of the Economic Intelligence Weekly, a decades-old publication
that reviewed economic developments, is any guide, policymaker demand for
such products is shallow at best.
Analysts must think beyond finished intelligence. Analysts
are schooled in the need to produce validated, finished intelligenceЧУfinishedФ
meaning that it has been carefully considered, officially reviewed, coordinated
with colleagues, and sent out under official cover. The main problem is
that such products often cannot keep pace with events or even with information
sources. DI officers who deal frequently with customersЧincluding those
who carry the PresidentТs Daily Brief to the most senior officialsЧreport
that many products short of finished intelligence often satisfy the needs
of policymakers. These include annotated raw intelligence, quick answers
to specific questions, informal trip reports, and memoranda of conversation.
Too many intelligence analysts and managers remain fixated on formal products
even as policymakers move further away from them in their own work. As
anyone who has done a recent tour at a US Embassy knows, most of the real
scoop on world events is now exchanged in informal e-mails and telephone
calls. Our adherence to the increasingly outdated concept of finished intelligence
is what makes the DI wary of such informal intelligence practices as electronic
Уchat roomsФ and other collaborative venues.1
Analysts must look to the Centers as models. If you sit
long enough on a DI career service panel, you will still hear some managers
say that certain analysts in the Counterterrorism Center or the Crime and
Narcotics Center are not doing real DI work. They are producing little
in the way of finished intelligence, and they are spending a lot of time
doing individual tasks that meet very specific customer needs. Instead
of being perceived as outside the DI mainstream, the Centers should be
recognized as early adapters of the new model. Their focus on customer
requirements, collaborative work, and less formal products speaks to the
future.
| The Old Analysis
Cautious/Careful
Fact-based
Concrete/Reality-based
Linear/Trend-based
Expert-based
Hierarchical
Precedent-based
Worst-case/Warning-focused
Text-based
Detached/Neutral |
21st Century Analysis
Aggressive/Bold/Courageous
Intuitive
Metaphor-rich
Complex
Humble, Inclusive, Diverse
Collaborative
Precedent-shattering
Opportunistic/Optimistic
Image-rich
Customer-driven/Policy-relevant |
Now for Something Completely Heretical
As policymakers continue to raise the standards for intelligence analysis,
we may need to change more than just our assumptions and work habits. The
fundamental characteristics of intelligence analysis, carefully developed
during the last half of the twentieth century, may in fact need to be completely
rewritten. The transition might look something like the box at the right.
The qualities of Уold analysisФ are familiar to any intelligence professional.
We pride ourselves on carefully basing our judgments on fact, on our expertise,
on our ability to warn, and on our neutrality. Some might argue that these
are clearly the analytic qualities that must persist under any scenario,
regardless of whether we have addressed the needs of our customers.
Perhaps not. To really help smart policymakers, we may need to adopt
new practices, new habits of thinking, and new ways of communicating our
analysis.
To tell a policymaker something he does not already know, we have to
be prepared to take risks in our thinking, to Уgo to printФ with
new, adventurous analytic lines before anyone else. This is not
always our current style. Almost everything an analyst learns teaches her
to be conservative: do not jump to conclusions, consider all sources, coordinate
your views with colleagues. At best, an analyst will occasionally lean
forward, when in fact she must strive to be several steps ahead of the
policymaker on a regular basis.
It is difficult to generate new ideas when you have to stay close to
the facts. New ideas are often intuitive, based on one or two stray
bits of information that coalesce into new insight. Analysts in the 21st
century will not only have to develop their intuition, theyЧand their managersЧwill
also have to trust it.
Analysts today spend considerable time identifying patterns in recent
events and then projecting them onto the future. This is trend analysis.
Unfortunately, policymakers who are smartЧand most areЧcan easily do this
for themselves. The analystsТ real value increasingly will lie in identifying
discontinuities that shatter precedents and trends.
Analysts are often good at identifying what is not likely to work in
a given situation; however, policymakers are usually more interested in
figuring out what can work. While courses in the Intelligence Community
teach analysts how to warn, there are no handbooks on how to identify new
opportunities for policymakers.
The most controversial contention may be that 21st century
analysts will need to become less independent and neutral in favor of
greater tailoring to customer needs. Some critics have already noted
that our customer focus in recent years is eroding our detachment from
policymaking. The usual answer is to assert that customer focus and neutrality
are compatible; but in truth they are not completely. The more we care,
as we should, that we have an impact on the policymaking community, the
less neutral we become, in the sense that we select our topics based on
customer interests and we analyze those aspects that are most relevant
to policymakers. Analysts understandably are confused by this new direction.
They were taught, they say, to produce intelligence analysis that focuses
on events and developments, not customers. It is not their job to worry
about whether or not it has impact.
This is the most significant and difficult consequence of working in
an information-rich era lacking in significant ideological conflict. Analytic
detachment and neutrality are values bred of the Cold War,when foreign
policy observers often compensated for lack of information with ideologically
based assertions. Intelligence analysts correctly tried not to do thatЧthey
were reliably objective.
Being completely neutral and independent in the future, however, may
only gain us irrelevance. We need, of course, integrity in our analysisЧwe
must be willing to say things that are uncomfortable for the Pentagon or
the State Department and that are not compatible with the goals of policymakers.
But we should not pretend that integrity and neutralityare the same thing
or that they are dependent on each other. Neutrality impliesdistance from
the customer and some near mystical ability to parse the truth completely
free from bias or prejudice. Integrity, on the other hand, rests on professional
standards and the willingness to provide the most complete answer to a
customerТs question, even if it is not the answer he wants to hear. Neutralitycannot
be used to justify analytic celibacy and disengagement from the customer.
If forced to choose between analytic detachment and impact on policymaking,
the 21st century analyst must choose the latter.
Footnote:
1The need to escape
the constraints of finished intelligence was highlighted more than five
years ago by Carol Dumaine, a DI officer currently leading the DirectorateТs
Global Futures Partnership, who has written extensively on new models for
intelligence analysis. In 1996, for example, in a submission to an in-house
electronic discussion database, she noted that the future intelligence
officer would Уproduce unfinished intelligenceЧall of it on line, interactive,
iterative, multidimensional, an interdisciplinary fabric of specialist
contributions, and available 24 hours a day to trusted consumers.Ф
Carmen A. Medina
serves in the Office of Policy Support in the Directorate of Intelligence.
UNCLASSIFIED
AIDS UPDATE (планы партии = планы народа.un)
(англ., PDF, 2 139 kb)
