Development of Strategic Intelligence

ANALYSIS FITS INTO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE PICTURE as the finished portrait of an intelligence subject—perhaps a snapshot of a fast-breaking development, perhaps a product of collaborative, in-depth research. Reporting an event is one thing; answering the question “what does this mean?” is analysis. Analysis goes beyond what happened—as best we can discover what happened—to assess what to make of it. Analysts do both when they write: They report and they assess. What they write constitutes the intelligence product, or “finished intelligence.” This product may take the form of a quick-reaction commentary, an assessment of an event’s likely implications in the near term, or a study of long-term trends and their potential consequences. In every such instance, intelligence analysts every day are striving to make sense out of often ambiguous, inconsistent, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory data. And they do so not in a seminar but in the fast-breaking world of foreign and defense policy.

Richard Helms, whose long career in intelligence operations culminated in seven years as the Director of Central Intelligence, put it this way: “It is a long span from secret reports and photos to the conclusions reached by Washington intelligence analysts, men and women sitting at desks sorting, sifting, and patterning secret evidence into a matrix that carries conviction. This work—analysis—is the bottom line of intelligence work. This is where all the arcane techniques of intelligence come together. This is the unknown, the neglected side of the profession that has been caricatured into absurdity by writers of spy thrillers.” Helms, no writer of spy thrillers but himself a spy of the first order, knew that timely, objective analysis is the end result of all the activities that go into the acquisition of intelligence information.

Helms’s observation, made decades ago in the midst of the Cold War, is equally true in the 21st century. The attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington underscored the growing challenges to intelligence in an era of international terrorism in which small groups of individuals can inflict destruction once wielded only by nation-states. Indeed, this look at the nature and challenges of intelligence analysis comes as the bureaucratic dust still is settling following the hasty, election-year enactment of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which was an outgrowth of those attacks. That legislation created the position of Director of National Intelligence as an institutional corrective for the failure of the vast U.S. national intelligence apparatus to somehow prevent the terrible events of 9/11. The reorganization followed the completion of various inquiries and studies into what went wrong. The general, overriding conclusion of these inquiries with respect to intelligence analysis was that there had been a failure of imagination—that analysis tended to be risk-averse and more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with imagining surprises—and that there was insufficient integration of analytic efforts across the now sixteen-member U.S. intelligence community. The Office of the National Director of Intelligence now is at pains to emphasize consultation and collaboration in intelligence analysis. The office is providing central direction aimed at rising above the bureaucratic fiefdoms that for years formed barriers to the sharing of sources and analytic perspectives. Mental roadblocks to more imaginative analysis, however, are persistent challenges discussed below.

The essence of analysis is information plus insight, derived from subject-matter knowledge. It should be clear from the outset that there is nothing nefarious about trying to know and understand as much as possible about what is going on in the world. And this is the purpose of analysis: to discern pertinent facts from a flood of information and apply judgments and insights that can inform those who must make decisions and direct actions to address developments on a global scale. Intelligence analysis informs decisions and actions in ways that can make a positive difference. Timely intelligence warns of looming crises, identifies threats, monitors fast-breaking situations, illuminates issues, and detects trends. Intelligence helps U.S. policy makers consider alternative options and outcomes.