History and Intelligence Analysis Melissa Graves In looking at intelligence studies, we wonder what history can possibly bring

to the table. After all, while many prominent intelligence analysts also doubled as historians (Sherman Kent and Mark Lowenthal both obtained PhDs in history),1 intelligence agencies today focus on recruiting students with language and science skills. What good can history bring to a conversation about improving intelligence analysis? This paper argues that historical methodology causes the historians function to mimic that of intelligence analysts; indeed, the intelligence field can glean insightful approaches by borrowing from history. History, even in university settings, garners a bad reputation. Today, the field of education debates the utility of humanities subjects such as history as well as English, and philosophy. The history major (more than likely) does not obtain a job because they can recite the date of the Boston Tea Party from memory. Meanwhile, scores of people obtain employment because they know Java code, can perform experiments in a lab, or can crunch numbers. Grade school students are renowned for their disinterest in historys endless succession of dates and battles. For many students, history merely equates with copious cycles of conquest and conquering. Whether studying United States or world history, grade schools primarily cover the achievements of significant Western men, such as Christopher Columbuss discovery of the New World, English colonists settlement of the New World, or George Washington and his mens famed crossing of the Delaware.
Jack Davis, Sherman Kent and the Profession of Intelligence Analysis. The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis, Occassional Papers, 1:5, (2002).
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For those who study history for a living, however, the field encompasses far more than average high school textbooks. History evolved into a discipline during the late nineteenth century. Like intelligence,2 for many years, American history remained the realm of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men, elites who primarily wrote political histories of founding forefathers and battles; these accounts often digressed into outright exceptionalism.3 These old-school historians petitioned for a version of history where the United States continually moved towards crafting a more perfect union. According to these historians theory of republicanism, each successive year brought increased progress. These political histories [dealt] with the development and impact of governmental institutions, along with the proximate influences on their actions.4 Unfortunately, such histories also [left] much of the American historical experience hidden from view.5 Only in the 1960s and 19070s, when graduate schools opened their doors to a more diverse student body comprised of women, non-whites, and blue collar workers, did history as a profession experience a much-needed and giant shift.6 Around that time, history began to borrow from such disciplines as sociology, anthropology, and economics and to incorporate quantitative social science research methods. Historians focused on narratives traditionally omitted from existing historical accounts. Instead of focusing on the Southern leadership of the Confederacy, historians
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Evan Thomas. The Very Best Men, Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA, New York: Simon and Schuster (1995). 3 John Higham, The Future of American History, The Journal of American History, 1289-1309, 1994; Thomas Bender, Introduction: Historians, National and the Plentitude of Narratives, Rethinking American History in a Global Age, 1-30, 2002. 4 Mark H. Leff, Revisioning U.S. Political History, The American Historical Review, 100:3 (1995), 829. 5 Id. at 830. 6 Peter Lambert and Phillipp Schofield (Eds.), Making History: An Introduction to the History and Practices of a Discipline (New York: Routledge 2004).

explored life as a slave. Instead of studying presidents, they studied the significance of female homemakers. Instead of considering the intellectually meaty influence of great thinkers like Rousseau and Locke, they examined how magical superstition induced responses from early Americans. History shifted from the great and prominent to the small and previously unseen. During this great shift, new historical methodology took form. Diversity blossomed as historians honed their expertise in new fields such as womens studies, labor history, cultural history, intellectual history, social history, scientific history, literary history, and non-European regional studies (Middle East, Africa, China, Latin America). As historians moved away from political history, the fields diverse workforce looked at emerging topics, asking new questions and gaining new answers. Most importantly, historians made judgments regarding their primary sources. They went beyond merely recounting events to crafting argument. Most importantly, they outlined their arguments, bolstered by incomplete historical evidence, in a narrative framework. They wrote cohesive historical narratives as best they could, interpreting as best they could any remaining information. The historical methodologies perfected within history can benefit intelligence analysts.7 In many ways, history is constructed similar to intelligence. Historians look to primary sources to construct history. Primary sources are original documentscensus data, medical and business records, journal accounts, legal historythat construct past events. Historians, contrary to popular belief, cannot primarily rely on books written by others. Rather, they must find new information through original sources or reinterpret

Michael Herman, What can intelligence analysts learn from historians (and from international relations academics)? Background paper, (2008). Many historians have written histories to justify present day wars. See Making History.
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old information to confirms, in the words and record keeping of those who lived there, what really happened. As new methodology took shape, however, historians struggled with unprecedented questions. They found that their newfound admiration of quantitative methods yielded only a limited amount of illumination. Birth, marriage, death and census records only told a portion of the story. Though historians could spot broad trends among their magnanimous data sets, they found themselves bereft of any insight into the everyday details of the subjects lives. The data sets failed to explain the underlying motivations of historical actors. Historians found themselves studying the same primary sources as their colleagues and somehow coming to disparate conclusions. This absurdity led them to question the validity of their methods. Historians wondered if the truth of history was relative; critics accused these historians of revisionism, claiming they had slanted history to fit their own agendas. Like intelligence, history is highly politicized. One need only look to Texas to see this phenomenon. For years, Texas has set the standard for the entire United States with the purchase of grade school history textbooks.8 As the third largest state, Texas is also one of the largest purchasers of schoolbooks. In 2010, the news media exploded over a shift in Texass history curriculum towards a more conservative version of history that emphasized the role of the founding fathers over such topics as diversity. The debacle proved that it is possible to politicize not only the present and future but also the past. In an ideal world, historians would always present unbiased and thoroughly vetted

James C. McKinley Jr., Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change, New York Times, March 12, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html.
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accounts. In reality, however, historians often support their own political agendas. Also tempting is the ability to omit or exclude those sources which do not support their conclusions. Historians and intelligence analysts can learn from each other regarding the temptation to succumb to an ideology or popular viewpoint. The struggle to find a best way to construct history has led to some approaches that may benefit intelligence analysts. Certainly, intelligence analysts and historians perform fundamentally different tasks. Historians reconstruct the past while intelligence analysts largely forecast future events. Historians work within flexible environments that provide years for reflection and publication. Analysts, on the other hand, struggle to meet challenging deadlines. Finally, historians and analysts have very different audiences. Analysts provide their information to policymakers so that they can take immediate action. Historians write for scholars and students; no lives are at stake.9 Nevertheless, historians and analysts construct their accounts in similar fashion. Historians even perform the work of intelligence collectors. To uncover primary documents or information, historians face challenges similar to those inherent in intelligence collection. Often, historical information is difficult to obtain, and the informations reliability is questionable or woefully and frustratingly incomplete. Like intelligence analysts, even in the best of situations, when there is an abundance of primary materials, historians must sift through countless numbers of pages to glean the most important information and piece together a cohesive narrative.

Christopher Andrews, Intelligence analysis needs to look backwards before looking forward. History and Policy (date unknown).
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When conducting historical research, I experienced this phenomenon firsthand. One of my research projects focused on the education of women in Christian fundamentalist universities. To conduct my research, I visited three universities. The universities kindly set me loose in their archives. Under the watchful eye of archivists, I exercised unlimited access to decades of information. During one of my visits, however, I happened upon an interesting problem. At Bob Jones University, (BJU) I realized the extent of my limited access. The university, located in Greenville, South Carolina, opened in the 1920s as a haven for Christian fundamentalists who wished to escape the evils of modernism (namely, the burgeoning spread of the newly-developed theory of evolution). To this day, BJU stands as a fortress against outsiders. Students must adhere to numerous rules; until recently, women could not wear pants. Acres of iron gating enclose the university from the outside world, and younger students are prohibited from leaving campus as well as listening to any music, watching any movies or television, or reading any books that BJU has not approved. When George W. Bush kicked off his campaign for the US presidency in 1999 at BJU, he received criticism for choosing a location that prohibited whites and blacks from dating or marrying each other. Bob Jones, Sr., the schools founder and a Southern leader who repeatedly attended Ku Klux Klan rallies in the early twentieth century, began that sordid tradition. Throughout its history, BJU has occasionally appeared in the news and its coverage is almost never positive.10

Richard Goodling. The Trashing of John McCain, Vanity Fair, November 2004, http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2004/11/mccain200411.
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While visiting, I learned, in talking to one of the archivists, that the university did not house many of its files in the archive.11 The university believed in preserving appearances. Their official historian, a music faculty member, alluded tangentially to several scandals within the university in his centennial account.12 When I asked the archivist for files regarding any former faculty members long ago accused by the administration of inappropriate behavior towards women, I learned that the archives did not contain any information about said persons. Upon further inquiry, I learned that the administration had scrubbed the archives files of any information that might invite any scrutiny or shine light on potential scandals, even information from seventy and eighty years ago. This revelation perplexed me. I wondered how I would ever tell the story of a university when I was unable to assess so much of its history, which the institution had carefully and purposely hidden away. I felt discouraged. It was time to resort to HUMINT. I needed human sources. I found two immensely helpful sources. The first was a well-known lesbian feminist, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott.13 To be sure, no love was lost between Mollenkott and BJU. University officials, based upon past statements, despaired that such a prominent lesbian and feminist once served as a student and faculty member at their university.14 Mollenkott, on the other hand, spoke eagerly about the universitys

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Shannon Brooks, BJU Archivist, in discussion with the author, June 14, 2011. Daniel L. Turner, Reflecting Gods Light: Facets of A Miracle (Greenville: Bob Jones University Press, 2001), 72-73. 13 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, former professor of English Literature, interview with author, June 17, 2011. 14 In a posting to the website BJUnity, Mollenkott writes, Some years ago, a person who had read my books wrote to BJU to ask whether I had actually gradued from there. The answer, on the college letterhead, signed by Bobby III [current president of BJU], said that yes, I am a BJU graduate, but in their opinion I am a demon and they are praying that God will destroy me.

voracious love for Pharisee-like rules and about the inability of faculty to accept her homosexuality.15 During our conversation, she recounted unpleasant stories about the school and, in doing so, provided me with precisely the sort of information that I could never find in the BJU archives. Another one of my HUMINT sources came in the form of a blogger. Upon leaving Bob Joness archive, I worried that my primary sources told an unsurprising and obvious narrative. I knew, based upon the viewpoints of fundamentalists in the early twentieth century, that BJU almost certainly had some interesting ways of treating women. I lacked any evidence or primary sources to prove such an assertion. I ran BJU through several Internet search engines for hints of chatter. Scrolling through the search results, I came across a blog by Camille Lewis, a former faculty member of the university. Lewis had grown up in a fundamentalist church associated with the university. From the earliest age, she knew that she would attend BJU. The universitys community of alums, including pastors, Sunday School teachers, and stay at home moms comprised her childhood community. She attended the university first as a student and later ascended to the faculty. Lewis became a revered faculty member; when Naomi Shaeffer Riley, a well-known writer, visited Bob Jones for a book she was writing, BJU had Riley meet with Lewis to obtain an insiders perspective.16 Despite her high standing, however, Lewis fell out of favor with the university when she posted on her

See Who We Are: Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, June 17, 2012, http://bjunity.org/who-weare/virginia-ramey-mollenkott/. 15 Ibid. 16 Naomi Shaefer Riley, God On the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America, (New York: St. Martins Press, 2005) 43.

blog that she refused to discipline her children with corporal punishment, something that fundamentalists believe is commanded by the Bible. I spent the weekend reading years of Lewiss blog posts and longed to speak with her. She was a missing piecesomeone with insider knowledge who could enlighten me about the recent treatment of women at Bob Jones. But how did I get her to talk to me? I didnt know her, and unlike most bloggers, Lewis did not have a contact email address on her site. I finally settled on visiting her latest post and issuing a comment at the bottom. The comment was simple; I explained that I was a graduate student researching the subject of Bob Jones University and women, and that I wanted to talk to her. I included my email address for her to contact me, if she was interested in talking. Within hours, I had an email from hersuccess! The process of speaking with her was not nearly as simple as her initial email suggested. She inquired (rightfully so) about the sort of questions I wanted to ask her. My task became increasingly complicated, as I needed to ask some fairly delicate questions regarding her experience at BJU and her religious beliefs. Her website explained that following her resignation from the university, she underwent months of therapy. Lewis had been through nothing short of a traumatic experience, having been ousted from a community in which she had been a member for her entire life. I didnt want to make things worse for her. I knew asking the wrong questions, or even the right questions in the wrong way, could dissuade her from talking to me. Talking to her required me to demonstrate empathy as best I could. After some thought, I sent her my list of what I hoped would she would perceive as innocuous questions. Days passed with no response, and I began to fret. After a time, I became certain that I had unintentionally

offended her and would never hear from her again. Finally, after a couple of weeks passed, I received a response, along with an offer to share primary source documents that she had somehow retrieved from the BJU administration building prior to leaving. Because of Lewis, I gained access to many of the documents that the university had refused to let me see in my visit to the archive. After looking at the documents, incomplete stories from the official history began to make more sense. Historical figures burst into color, and the universitys embarrassing past surfaced. My quest for HUMINT, in some ways, mirrored an intelligence agent acquisition cycle.17 In talking to Mollenkott and Lewis, I had to gauge their veracity. Both sources had left BJU on terrible terms. In addition to deciding whether or not their accounts were trustworthy, I also had to earn their trust. They had no initial motivations to talk with me. I had to convince them that I would fairly depict their struggles. Historians and intelligence officers frequently struggle to discern whether or not their sources are reliable. I relied heavily on Mollenkott and Lewiss interviews to help me fill in the missing pieces of BJU; ideally, I would have had many more sources. In reality, however, I was lucky to find two dissenters who would go on record. I had to work with what I had. Estimative language is designed to indicate to a policymaker a measurable level of reliability. Intelligence analysts can learn from historians, who often must assess source reliability of accounts decades, centuries, or millennia old. Finally, historians practice the art of historiography. Before starting any of their own primary research, they refer to everything that other historians have written. In their

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Mark Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, 5th Edition. Washington DC: CQ Press (2012).

books and articles, they discuss these other works first, noting the merits and weaknesses of each piece. They describe the holes their work seeks to fill. Best of all, they provide for their readers, a neatly packaged summary about the current state of a particular historical field before they advance this argument. Intelligence analysis could also incorporate the idea behind historiography into its own reports. One of the complaints of the 9/11 Commissions report was the fact that intelligence agencies failed to communicate.18 The right hand oftentimes did not know what the left was doing. While its not appropriate for analysts to present a historiography-type overview to policymakers, writing internal pieces that summarize all the ICs viewpoints on certain issues could help to ensure that alternative analysis does not fall between the cracks. Intelligence analysts could model such reports after historys method of historiography. Such a measure could prevent analysts from replicating their colleagues work. For example, by writing a report that succinctly summarizes the ICs position regarding nuclear weapons in recent years and across different agencies and weighs the merits of each conclusion, analysts can remain mindful of each considered possibility. In conclusion, history offers several methods that may aid intelligence, both in collection and analysis. Historians often conduct their own collection when they gather primary sources. Their techniques for gathering information can serve as a lesson for the government. Also, history frequently becomes politicized not only in the United States but around the world. By becoming familiar with the challenges faced by historians,

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National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. (Philip Zelikow, Executive Director; Bonnie D. Jenkins, Counsel; Ernest R. May, Senior Advisor). The 9/11 Commission Report. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

intelligence personnel may strengthen their ability to collect and synchronize information related to national security.