International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 26: 652665, 2013 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN:

0885-0607 print=1521-0561 online DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2013.807188

MATTHEW HERBERT

The Motley of Intelligence Analysis: Getting over the Idea of a Professional Model
The United States Intelligence Community (IC) has had more than a decade to reflect on its failure to predict the catastrophic events of 11 September 2001 (9 = 11). Nearly as much time has passed since the ICs mischaracterization of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, a mistake that led to the costly expansion of what became the war on terrorism. More cause for recrimination followed when key U.S. decisionmakers seemed to fundamentally misunderstand what was required to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in both countries hit repeated snags that should have been seen going in. How could the intelligence analysts who were supposed to have briefed U.S. leaders on the risks of these undertakings have left their audiences so poorly informed?1

Matthew Herbert, an intelligence analyst for more than two decades, is employed by the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (USAINSCOM) at the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade in Darmstadt, Germany. As a Senior Southeast Europe Analyst he leads a team of analysts supporting the U.S. Army Europe. Previously he was a Senior Middle East Analyst and a Senior Open Source Analyst. From 2002 to 2006, he was a Senior Political Analyst in Kosovo, after prior service in Germany, Bosnia, and Italy. A graduate of Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, he earned his M.A. in Philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago, and received a Command and Staff Diploma from the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. The opinions expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of USAINSCOM, the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the United States government.

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In 2008, Josh Kerbel proposed that the analysts underperformance stemmed from the lack of a professional model.2 Analysts didnt know whether to be more like scientists, dedicated to rigor and objectivity, or artists, creative and open to possibility. With no paradigm to guide them, according to Kerbel, analysts oscillated between incommensurate sets of professional standards or simply made them up as they went along, with predictably poor results. But being able to strike the right balance between art and science, Kerbel argued, could perhaps allow analysts to find their way out of the professional wilderness. Medical doctors, he explained, came closest to the model analysts were seeking: [B]oth intelligence analysts and medical doctors are confronted with problem setsthe international system and living systems respectivelythat are highly dynamic and uncertain. 3 By thinking more like doctors and adopting their terminology of diagnoses, interventions, and prognoses, analysts would unlearn the physicists rigid metaphors of cause and effect that had conditioned them into making mechanical, linear predictions. This exercise in metaphor reform, moreover, would ultimately help answer the question Kerbel discerned at the core of the analysts identity crisis: [W]hat exactly is intelligence analysis? But intelligence analysis is not susceptible to a precise definition. Seeking its hard conceptual boundaries may be a futile undertaking that produces no professional revelation. What is known as analysis encompasses a multitude of tasks that, although related by theme, orientation, or method, elude a common definition. The work analysts do is too diverse to fall under a single model or to draw usefully from a single fund of metaphors. The urge to seek the right model, therefore, is an idea that the IC should get over, not pursue. This is not to say that analytic techniques should not be improved or common intellectual standards cultivated. Particular techniques and standards are, however, adapted for the particular decisionmaking processes they support. Since the national security community practices several distinct kinds of decisionmaking, no single predominant concept should serve to inform continuing efforts at improving the intelligence methods supporting them. Ultimately, prescriptive models have to proceed from the bottom-upfrom the specialized nature of the work analysts actually doand should reflect the full diversity of intelligence analysis rather than its a priori idealization. WITTGENSTEIN ON DEFINITIONS The ICs identity problem, as Kerbel and perhaps a handful of others4 deem it, lurks in the misplaced expectation that analysts ought to be able to define precisely what they do. Many fear that something must be wrong with the scattered, ad hoc character of current professional techniques since

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analysis is, by definition, methodical. Common sense dictates that a coherent program for improving the craft can be designed only if a clear idea of its nature is shared from the start. The question arises as to whether the inability to formulate a cohesive analytic identity5 based on a precise definition really constitutes a professional crisis. Or does it reflect an idle hankering for artificial precision? The philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein began his career bewitched by the intricate truths of science into seeking all-out semantic precision. Language was for him a picture of the world in all its discernible detail, and science made it increasingly possible to render pictures in miniscule granularity. Together with its underlying mathematics, science taught that if something be described at all, it can be described precisely.6 For Wittgenstein, this insight was applicable to all language, from the crystalline claims of physics to ordinary conversations. All language could, in theory, be reduced to pristine symbolic systems similar to mathematics. But eventally, Wittgenstein realized that the desirable level of semantic precision varied with context. Language users themselves generated flexible standards of usage depending on the purpose for which they were using language: scientific precision was good for scientists but not necessarily for everyone else. When a given term as used in a wide variety of lifes contexts is examined, one sees a host of vague reference relationships pertaining to the term that lose no utility even when they are quite imprecise.7 A concept is not necessarily an ironclad rule but often a rough, pragmatic sign-post for governing language use in context. A term is perfectly functional, Wittgenstein argued, if under normal circumstances, it fulfills its purpose. If I tell someone Stand roughly heremay not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too?8 Intelligence analysts feel the allure of ideal precision when drawn into the attempt to define analysis. It is worthwhile quoting Wittgenstein at length, however, on the utility of vaguenessprecisions opposing property. In the following passage Wittgenstein discussed the meaning of the term game. His observations have clear implications for intelligence analysis.
Consider for example the proceedings that we call games. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?Dont say: There must be something common, or they would not be called gamesbut look and see whether there is anything common to all.For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: dont think, but look!Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ballgames, much

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that is common is retained, but much is lost.Are they all amusing? Compare chess with noughts and crosses [tic-tac-toe]. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience [solitaire]. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.9

Of course, games are not the only clusters of like-named things that evince more diversity than unity. Works of art can also fit this pattern. A pile of scrap metal presented as a piece of conceptual art and a piano sonata both have audiences in mind, but that pretty much exhausts their commonalities. A poem has a textual meaning that is missing from both the junk pile and the sonata. In what sense, then, would the artistic processes behind these exemplars be homogenous or even continuous with one another? Wittgenstein called the overlapping similarities of such loose groupings family resemblances. Things that are called art will share some but not all the characteristics commonly thought to be essential to the term. The products and processes of intelligence analysis do so as well. Although rich in family resemblances, they lack a core of defining properties. THE VARIETIES OF INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS In the spirit of Wittgensteins meditation on the diversity of games, the following intelligence products can be considered in trying to work out what they have in common: (1) a table of tides at a given beach, enabling a military officer to decide where and when a certain kind of vehicle can be offloaded for an amphibious operation; and (2) an intelligence estimate judging whether a foreign country is developing nuclear weapons. These products might be said to share a common orientation in that they focus on foreign entities: one is about a foreign invasion site, the other about a foreign governments intentions. Both products would involve structuring raw information in a way that highlights and clarifies what is most important to the consumer, but the structuring tasks would differ sharply. The tide table might require only the judicious, accurate placement of figures in a matrix. A narrative description of the beachs tides, even well-crafted and to

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the point, would be out of place. In contrast, the structuring of information in the nuclear weapons estimate would be more sophisticated and open-ended. It would include key textual passages, terse but stylish enough to hold a busy readers attention, along with appropriate graphs and charts. An objection might be: Despite their differences, the tide table and the nuclear estimate are structurally similar. They both deliver processed information about foreign entities to support an intelligence consumers decision. But this objection might reflect the urge, about which Wittgenstein warns, to impose uniformity rather than taking a close look to see how much is really thereto think first rather than look. Yet, it could also spur reflection to list more examples of analytic products and to think about the processes underlying them. Among other things, intelligence analysis could:
. . . . . . . . .

Describe a countrys electricity grid; describe it after a week being bombed; Profile a foreign leaders personality; Assess whether a five-ton truck can drive from village A to village B; Characterize a large countrys fiscal policy and its impact on the world economy; Determine the direction of lava flow from a volcano near a refugee camp;10 Estimate how many people might be killed by bombing a munitions factory at noon; or at midnight; Describe the general political situation of a foreign country for a visiting U.S. delegation; Monitor messages on pro-jihad Internet forums; Find a defeated countrys president who has become a fugitive.

Clearly, the analytical methods behind such products would vary widely. Assessing an electricity grid would involve schematizing its (purely physical) inputs, structure, processes, and outputs. Profiling a leaders personality would implicate much more dynamic factors of human behavior, such as decisionmaking or preference-formation. Estimating casualties at a factory at different times of day would involve human factors as well, but of an entirely different kind (work shift schedules, etc.). Summarizing a countrys general political situation would depend so heavily on general skills like seasoned judgment and economy of expression as to overshadow the utility of any special method. Police investigative techniques would come to the fore in the hunt for a fugitive ex-president. Significant differences also arise in the kinds of substantive expertise the various analyses would leverage. The Internet jihad monitor would need to know the contours of social media, several languages, jihad slang, and Islamic theology. The analyst evaluating routes from village A to village B would need to be expert in road surfaces, terrain features, and hydrology.

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And both analysts could do their jobs in utter ignorance of the macroeconomics necessary for assessing a large countrys fiscal policy. An argument for the unity of analysis could be retrenched to say the various instances of analysis share a common purposeto enhance national security. Even so, this unity would not align the analyses under the same rubric of work. To draw an analogy, the purposes of medicine and nutrition are the samepromoting healthbut this does not mean they draw upon the same techniques or should be based on similar professional models. A nutritionists written plan for cutting back on calories is vastly different from the surgeons gastric bypass procedure, despite their common aim. Moreover, the meaning of national security is too vague and fluid to neatly encompass all kinds of analysis. The consumers of the nuclear estimate are clearly contemplating matters of national security in the ordinary sense of the term. The commander of the beach operation, on the other hand, has only a derivative concept of it in mind in deciding when and where to offload transported vehicles. In any case, the scope of national security has expanded dramatically over the last twenty years to implicate an ever greater variety of intelligence requirements and, consequently, the requisite analytic processes to address them.11 DIFFERENT CONSUMERS, DIFFERENT ANALYSIS Different kinds of intelligence analysis have been developed to serve different kinds of consumers, whose unique requirements reflect their missions, operational priorities, and organizational cultures. In a 2011 article, Martin Peterson, a retired senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agencys (CIA) Directorate of Intelligence, observed that good intelligence analysis must be rooted in a strong understanding of the audience it is written for.12 This was not just the pithy professional advice of a veteran analyst. It reflected a bedrock principle of intelligence analysis. The scope, content, and granularity of any analytic product isor at least should bedetermined by the querying audience. Intelligence is first and foremost responsive. Even initiative production responds to the consumers mission-based requirements. Several years ago, on the first day of my new assignment to an airborne infantry brigade, my intelligence officer (G-2) summed up his concept of work in plain terms. Intelligence, he said, is for the war fighter. Most of what happens on the battlefield is determined by terrain and weather. Analysts should not ignore these basic constraints. Our brigade was a quick reaction force for evacuating non-combatants from areas at risk of going suddenly hostile, primarily large cities in unstable countries with U.S. embassies in them. Were the brigade to deploy, the G-2 told me, he would want to know whether the walls around the rallying compounds

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could stop small arms fire, how many helicopters of various types could land in the designated landing zones, etc. He would not care to know the ideology of those shooting at him. He then handed me a copy of The Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) and told me not to do any analysis until I had digested it. If I didnt know the MDMP, he said, I didnt know what military intelligence was for. Commanders need particular kinds of intelligence inputs at particular decision points in an operation. Any analysis I did outside those bounds would be noise, more likely to distract than enlighten. The G-2s guidance was essentially the same voiced by Peterson: without understanding what the consumer needs, the analyst cannot produce useful intelligence. Intelligence always has a context, which is itself heavily influenced by the consumers goals and decisional criteria. Taking this theme a step further, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis Thomas Fingar argued in 2011 that the ultimate goal of intelligence analysis is to be useful to those we support, and being useful requires detailed understanding of what specific customers want to accomplish. . . . It also requires detailed knowledge about decision timelines of ones primary customers and sensitivity to developments that could affect the goals [they] set. 13 Indeed, time is perhaps the most salient feature of decisionmaking. The anticipated pace and sequence of events is crucial for determining how much information a decisionmaker can take on when going into a risky situation, how much more can be absorbed while implementing a decision, and how big a role update and feedback can play in follow-on decisions. In illustrating this point, two semi-fictitious characters can be considered: the fastest moving and the slowest moving intelligence consumers in the national security community, labeling the fighter-bomber pilot on a ground attack mission the fastest moving intelligence consumer. In approaching a target at mach speed, the pilot is rapidly processing intelligence information about flight safety (e.g., terrain avoidance), air-toair and surface-to-air threats, the location on the ground of the target to be attacked, and its signature on the jets onboard sensors. (The pilot is, of course, processing an abundance of other, non-intelligence information, on communications, battle management, and the aircrafts flight performance, for example.) The intelligence products enabling the mission performance must be attuned to the near-superhuman cognitive workload of piloting supersonic aircraft in combat. Whatever intelligence information the pilot brings on board has either been memorized from pre-mission study and a pre-launch briefing or can be referenced with a glance at kneeboards. The reams of threat- and target-intelligence supporting the pilots midair decisionmaking have been reduced to their clearest, simplest terms: which threats are likely present along the route of flight; where; which

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countermeasures can defeat them? While the pilot may return to the squadron study room to review intelligence lessons after the mission, little if any role for intelligence update and feedback is available while performing the mission. All the requisite analysis has been compressed for frontloading into the decisionmaking process. Now, with no prejudice to the service being rendered to the country, the slowest moving intelligence consumer in the national security community can be considered: a national policymaker. On his or her desk is a national intelligence estimate (NIE) on an issue of strategic importance that looks two years, perhaps longer, into the future. The near-term motive for consuming the NIE is to keep up with peers in an ongoing policy debate unfolding over weeks or months. Among the longer-term motives, the policymaker may wish to advocate for a particular policy decision, shape legislation having to do with the topic at hand, or anticipate budget changes in line with his or her policy preference. Whatever the goal, slow, careful deliberation is a professional virtue, which is reflected in the substance and style of the proffered analysis. Just as the onboard intelligence is calibrated for the pilots particular decisionmaking demands, so is the policymakers estimative intelligence. It not only elaborates key judgments on which to base complex policy positions that unfold over time, it also signals the availability of a well-informed cadre of analysts to produce further intelligence inputs to the decisionmaking process. Fingar argued that setting up this feedback relationship is perhaps even more important than the actual publication of the estimative intelligence products themselves.14 The policymakers relatively large time budget even allows a selectivity about the intelligence to be consumed. The opinions of scholars, think tanks, and veteran journalists can be considered alongside the ICs findings. Because estimative intelligence essentially competes with the messages from outside experts, it must go toe-to-toe with them in terms of production values and even brand recognition. The rise of private intelligence has turned certain kinds of intelligence analysis into a commodity, subject to competitive market pressures. INTELLIGENCE IS FOR OPTIMIZING POWER INSTRUMENTS Time is not the only constraint on decisionmaking. Its salience does, however, highlight how consumers decisionmaking criteria shape the outputs of intelligence analysis. Useful intelligence must be calibrated for the decisionmaking behind the use of particular power instruments. Military intelligence supports military power; diplomatic intelligence supports diplomatic power, and so forth. Useful here is positing the existence of distinct analytic families corresponding to the power instruments they subserve. Like Wittgensteins game players, these cadres will share certain

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overlapping family resemblances, but each one will exhibit its own unique traits, evolved under the pressures of task-specialization. The unique characteristics of military intelligence illuminate the connection between analysis and operational decisionmaking. The U.S. Army bases operational decisions on the principles of war, which include, among other things, surprise, mass, simplicity, and objective.15 These criteria impose specific demands on intelligence analysis, shaping its underlying processes and the organizational culture of the analytic corps. A main purpose of military intelligence is helping the commander maximize combat power at a critical time and placeClausewitzs Schwerpunkt . In the rules of the military game, overwhelming ones enemy (albeit not at the expense of achieving other objectives) through mass, initiative, and surprise is desirable. Diplomacy, by contrast, has no clear correlates to this kind of competition. It follows different, even if sometimes similar, rules. Although lining up allies to maximize lobbying force can be imagined, in an international body like the UN, the idea of overwhelming an enemy would stretch the metaphor beyond meaning. And what of surprise? Would marche have a better effect than a predictable one? How a surprise de would surprise or mass play into designing a public diplomacy campaign? Analysts supporting diplomatic power draw from a different set of operational principles and inherit an organizational culture attuned to diplomatic values. The same follows, mutatis mutandis , for analysts supporting informational, economic, and law enforcement decisionmakers. Each family of analysis accretes its own core competencies. Just as the players of Wittgensteins various kinds of games would be good at their game but not the whole range of them, so too are analytic families best at what they do habitually. These are not tasks that other families of analysts are incapable of doing, but things which particular families master through a requirements-driven process of repetition, adaptation, and acculturation. A State Department analyst should be better than most at understanding the vagaries of foreign opinion polling, as polls can provide critical indications of how U.S. policies are perceived. A law enforcement analyst will master the techniques of investigative analysis through the intelligence tools used to discover criminal networks. As such, months might be spent constructing and poring over link-analysis charts the likes of which a military analyst might never use. The process known as intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) will appear esoteric to non-military analysts, and would offer them little professional utility, but the military analyst will know IPB inside-out and use it productively. As the scope of national security broadens to include things like lone-actor terrorism, climate change, economic stability, food security, and so forth, an increasing number of specialized tasks will fall into the ambit of intelligence analysis, deepening some of the functional differences between analytic

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families. The emergence of cyber-warfare is already driving this kind of specialization. Analysts supporting the nations informational power instruments are developing new analytic techniques to counter cyber threats at a dizzying speed. Also, as digital technology drives change in analytic tools, some analytic families and disciplines will change more than others. Today, a geospatial analyst must be equally adept at data management as at imagery interpretation. Economic intelligence analysts can process financial datasets on a scale unknown ten years ago. In broadening its remit and deepening its technical expertise, each analytic family will increasingly speak its own language and potentially find it harder to talk to its relations. THE LONG SHADOW OF STRATEGIC ESTIMATIVE INTELLIGENCE By thinking of analytic families in terms of their corresponding power instruments, an appreciation is gained as to why strategic estimative intelligence sits atop the professions methodological hierarchy and has a privileged place in the public imagination. While the specialized analytic families subserve specialized power instruments, strategic estimative intelligence, or centralized intelligence, is for optimizing their coordinated use. In this way it mirrors the integrated, holistic way ordinary people solve problems. Without really thinking about it, reasonably intelligent people assume that a normal range of tools and techniques is at their disposal for planning goal-directed actions. No rational person artificially focuses on only one tool (I will only meditate before the big exam; I will not study.), but the specialized analytic families do precisely this out of professional obligation. Specialists stake out the maximum utility of their power instrument: coordinating its application with others is up to policymakers.16 Thus, military analysts may develop in-depth intelligence support to an operational plan that, as events unfold, is changed significantly or displaced entirely by the National Command Authoritys use of non-military power instruments. In taking a broad view of all options, strategic estimative intelligence has a narrative harmony with ordinary life that the specialized families lack. Strategic estimative intelligence frequently stands out because it often addresses issues Sun Tzu characterized as matters of national life and deaththreats the country cannot afford to let slip by. While assessing an enemy accurately in determining how to fight him (a matter of military intelligence) is certainly important, of greater importance is determining whether to fight him, and for what. A military analyst might devote an entire career to discovering the research and development of foreign militaries conventional weapon systems. This demanding intelligence work is critical for the U.S. military to keep its edge, but in itself it does not

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address a life-or-death strategic threat. The public is likely little aware how much of the IC is occupied with such workaday, problem-solving intelligence, and how small is the analytic cadre that incorporates such information into strategic estimates aimed at helping the nation avoid crippling surprises. A non-trivial reason for outlining the long shadow of strategic estimative intelligence is available. Its (legitimate) predominance feeds the (less legitimate) idea that a single professional model can guide all analysis. Too often, media commentators and even professional experts reinforce the false impression that the whole analytic corps produces, or should produce, strategic estimative intelligencethat all are in the same analytic family. In the wake of 11 September 2001 (9=11), questions were asked about how all (then) sixteen of the ICs agencies could have failed to connect the dots indicating the impending attack.17 In a parallel vein, an article in the New York Times in 2004 credited the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) for going against the grain of its bigger IC peers to produce sound pre-war intelligence on Iraqs WMD program. 18 While a measure of praise was due the INR, it masked a flawed assumption that the apportionment of analytic priorities is roughly uniform across the IC. Of course, this is not the case. The Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, for example, does not and should not address the same priorities as the ICs (now) sixteen other agencies. When Thomas Fingar set about transforming U.S. intelligence analysis in 2004, he self-consciously started with the flagship products of strategic estimative intelligencethe NIE and the Presidents Daily Brief (PDB).19 This starting point could be too easily interpreted to imply strategic estimative intelligence is a fount from which flows all methodological virtue. If analystseven those who will never contribute to an NIE or PDBwould emulate its rigor, they would inevitably raise their specialized professional game. Indeed, the virtues of good strategic estimative intelligence may trickle down to the specialized forms of analysis, but they do not necessarily embody the full range of professional intellectual virtues or provide a good methodological focal point for all analysts. Analysts simply do too many things to follow a single program of professional improvement. If the applicable range of professional intellectual virtues is a moving target, shifting in concert with ever-changing requirements, no single professional model can zero in on it. MANY MODELS At the end of the day, intelligence analysis is probably sui generis. No other established vocation seems to offer sturdy analogies to guide, inspire, or regulate analysts work, as fluid and diversified as it is. The idea of

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modeling analysis on medicine may be helpful for generalists who produce strategic estimative intelligence, but less so for specialists supporting military, diplomatic, economic, informational, or law enforcement power instruments. But the elusiveness of a single model is only a philosophical itch as opposed to a real problem, the sort of thing Ludwig Wittgenstein would recommend that should be ignored rather than solved. If an expert panel were to determine tomorrow whether analysis is more art or science, analysts professional self-improvement would carry on undisturbed by the result, or any other high theorizing for that matter. Analysts hone ad hoc problem-solving techniques that draw promiscuously from multiple sources of intellectual virtue and professional specialization. Those gripped by professional soul-searching would do better to embrace cognitive diversity than to seek out a theoretical unity that serves no practical purpose. Analytic virtues change by assignment. So should the models that are kept in mind. A good analyst on one day is like a good journalist, capturing an item of current intelligence succinctly, in sharp, readable prose. But that same person might be more of an actuary the next day, tallying data points, extrapolating trends, and describing risks in context. When out of his or her depth but pressed to inform, the analyst is a broker of expertise, able to guide the consumer to the required information despite not having personally mastered it. Much analytic work proceeds along the same methodological lines as academic history. The historian must meticulously attribute factual claims to sources of varying reliability, and make intellectually transparent judgments about their meaning, filling in gaps with reasonable assumptions or postulates, and sometimes even making estimates of where historical trends are pointed. Indeed, often when commentators laud scientific values or methods as the right ones for intelligence analysis, they have explicitly in mind the virtues of good historyobjectivity, rigor, balance, openness to revision, etc. The scientific method, such as it is, is primarily a set of guidelines for designing a valid, repeatable laboratory experiment. While science sounds good as part of a catch phrase, its methodological nuts and bolts have little applicability to intelligence analysis. But analysis is richly philosophical. I earlier argued in these pages that it can be seen as a form of applied epistemology, in which the main professional directive is to delineate a clear record of what an analyst knows, thinks, and even doesnt know about a topic of relevance.20 A Personal Assessment Intelligence analysts do not have one voice: we have as many as the decisionmakers we serve. Nor do we have only one professional model: we

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have as many as we need to guide us through an ever-expanding thicket of production challenges. Freed from the need to align our professional standards with those of art, science, or something else, analysts can get on with multifaceted methodological self-help from the bottom-up. My purpose herein has been purely negative: to argue for dropping the search for a single, apt model. But pragmatism demands at least a rough indication of where to go from here. What would be the main institutional implications of cultivating the cognitive diversity I claim is good for intelligence analysis? At least the following: Analysts would focus primarily on their consumers decisionmaking processes. Far too often, analysts and planners are compartmented from one another, passing notes through chinks in high institutional walls, but not interacting freely and extensively. The right training and assignments could help change this situation. Second, the ICs human resource managers would target cognitive diversity by profiling and seeking analysts from several desirable backgrounds, a few of which I have mentioned. Finally, training would be rebalanced to improve the specialized problem-solving skills typifying what I have called analytic families, rather than focusing exclusively on the general skills characteristic of strategic estimative intelligence. All analysts certainly need to improve at sorting data, forming arguments, and communicating conclusions, but most of us serve specific instruments of national power, which make correspondingly specific demands on our tradecraft. While no magic formula exists for balancing these special skills with general ones, the weight of our analytical training should always tip toward the specific. REFERENCES
1

2 3 4

5 6

Not all opinions are in as to whether intelligence was the major failure in each case. See, for example, Paul R. Pillar, Think Again: Intelligence, Foreign Policy, January=February 2012. Josh Kerbel, Lost for Words: The Intelligence Communitys Struggle to Find its Voice, Parameters, Summer 2008, pp. 102112. Ibid. See, for example, Stephen Marrin and Jonathan D. Clemente, Modeling an Intelligence Analysis Profession on Medicine, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 20062007, pp. 642665; Erik J. Dahl, Pinball Wizards and Professors: Competing Models of Intelligence Analysis, paper presentation at the International Studies Association annual convention, San Diego, California, April 2012. Josh Kerbel, Lost for Words, p. 107. Ludwig Wittgenstein outlines this dogma in TractatusLogico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922). In it he claimed,

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Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly (pp. 7879). 7 Ludwig Wittgenstein developed his later perspective in Philosophical Investigations , trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell, 1953). The title of my essay was inspired by the argument posed in this book that language evinces a motley of rules and techniques, which are heavily influenced by context. This position contrasts sharply with Wittgensteins earlier view that language has a single ultimate purpose, to describe the worlds constituent facts (p. 66). 8 Ibid., p. 88. 9 Ibid., p. 66. 10 This example is borrowed from Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 2829. 11 Ibid., pp. 910. 12 Martin Peterson, What I Learned in 40 Years of Doing Intelligence Analysis for US Foreign Policymakers, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 55, No. 1, March 2011, pp. 1320, at p. 13. 13 Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty, p. 38. 14 Ibid., p. 68. 15 U.S. Army Field Manual (AFM) 30, 411415. 16 Important nuances exist on this point. In stability operations, for example, commanders must coordinate the application of (kinetic) military force with the use of softer, non-kinetic power instruments under their control, for example civil engineering or medical services. FM 30 outlines this approach at the strategic level: The instruments of national power complement and reinforce each other. By understanding the influence of other agencies, commanders can add diplomatic, informational, and economic depth to their military efforts. Ibid., pp. 218. 17 See, for example, Malcolm Gladwells discussion of this perception in Connecting the Dots: Paradoxes in Intelligence Reform, The New Yorker, 10 March 2003, p. 83. 18 Douglas Jehl, The Reach of War: Intelligence; Tiny Agencys Iraq Analysis is Better than Big Rivals, The New York Times, 19 July 2004. 19 Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty, p. 16. 20 Matthew Herbert, The Intelligence Analyst as Epistemologist, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence , Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 20062007, pp. 666684.

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