Marrin Intelligence Studies Centers Making Scholarship on Intelligence Analysis Useful 2011

Stephen Marrin. “Intelligence Studies Centers: Making Scholarship on Intelligence Analysis Useful.” Intelligence and National Security. Vol. 27. No. 3. June 2012. 398-422. Submission History: Submitted to Intelligence and National Security on 6 Sept 2010. Accepted 26 November 2010 subject to revisions. Revisions submitted 6 January 2011; accepted 7 February 2011.

Stephen MarrinPost-revision Draft 6 January 2011

Intelligence Studies Centers: Making Scholarship on Intelligence Analysis Useful

Improving intelligence analysis requires bridging the gap between scholarship and practice. Intelligence studies as an academic discipline is not very theoretical compared to the more established disciplines of political science and international relations. In terms of conceptual depth, levels of abstraction and theoretical development, even the theoretical portions of the academic Intelligence Studies literature could be described as policy relevant and potentially useful for practitioners, including intelligence analysts. Yet despite this orientation to the practitioner, there is still a substantial gap between scholars and practitioners, thus replicating within a more applied context the conventional theory/practice divide that exists in other fields. Those fields do, however, possess a variety of ideas and recommendations that could be used to bring scholarship on intelligence analysis closer to practice. If implemented, these ideas might help actualize the benefits of scholarship that are as yet still unrealized potential.

WHAT KNOWLEDGE DO INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS NEED? Intelligence analysis involves the interpretation of information about the adversary or environment for purposes of assisting decisionmaking. There are many different kinds of intelligence analysts in many different domains, from civilian national security to military to law enforcement and to business. Intelligence analysis as a professional discipline has practitioners all across the world, some of whom join professional intelligence analysis-related associations and explore the nature of the discipline in conferences and workshops, contribute to the growing dedicated literature on intelligence analysis, and even take college and university courses dedicated exclusively to exploring the nature and practice of intelligence analysis.

In order to successfully achieve their purpose, intelligence analysts need to possess both subject matter knowledge related to their specific analytic focus—the kind of knowledge necessary to describe, explain, evaluate and forecast the actions of the adversary or the environment--as well as process knowledge related to exactly how to do the work of analysis. To acquire subject matter knowledge useful for analyzing intelligence, one might look to area studies, comparative politics, international relations, and other subject matter disciplines. On the other hand, if one wants to acquire knowledge on the processes, concepts and context for understanding and improving the analytic process itself, one would look to the Intelligence Studies literature. It is this scholarship, particularly the subset of it that addresses intelligence analysis, which is the focus of this article.1

Intelligence Studies as a field of knowledge is about intelligence activities themselves, and the portion of it that overlaps analytics specializes in building up the kind of process knowledge that intelligence analysts require to do their jobs successfully. This knowledge includes how intelligence is collected, analyzed, processed, and distributed, all within group, organizational, cultural, and national contexts. This kind of knowledge can have value for practitioners at both the individual and managerial levels because just as individual analysts would use the knowledge to improve their processes for the better, so might managers and leaders of organizations take the knowledge and use it to create policies to help manage the analytic function better.

1 The purpose of this article is to evaluate the relationship between the scholarship on and practice of intelligence analysis. As such, other kinds of scholarship including that on the subjects which intelligence analysts might find relevant such as area studies, comparative politics, or international relations, will not be addressed in this article.


As with any other field, one of the driving goals of practitioners is ensuring that they are constantly improving their performance. To do this well requires being self-conscious about what the analytic process involves; the management, organization, and processes related to the performance of intelligence analysis. For example, answers to the following questions could be used to improve practitioner performance over time: How can we evaluate the quality of intelligence analysis, and what does an evaluation of past

performance tell us about whether intelligence analysis quality has been increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Can that performance be improved in the future and, if so, how?

What are the best methods to use in analyzing intelligence? And how can those methods be improved?

What are the characteristics of the best intelligence analysts, and what should they know or be taught to maximize performance?

What kinds of organizational structures and processes maximize the quality of the analytic product? What changes to organizational structure or process might improve the product in the future?

Do better practices exist in other fields that can be used to improve intelligence analysis and, if so, what are they?

Can intelligence analysis be improved systemically across the board, and, if so, how?

Answering these questions requires the creation, interpretation and exploitation of knowledge about intelligence analysis. While practitioners can and do develop this kind of knowledge,2 they do so primarily on an ad hoc, opportunistic basis and do not have the same kind of infrastructure for growing knowledge about process that exists in academia. As a result, the emphasis on process knowledge related to intelligence analysis should lead one automatically to the world of scholarly literatures.

SCHOLARSHIP CAN PROVIDE THAT KNOWLEDGEDespite the significant potential that scholarship on intelligence analysis can provide the practitioner, it has been portrayed as scarce by significant scholars in the field. Roger George and James Bruce, two former CIA officers and the editors of a recent book on intelligence analysis, report that “as of 2007, the body of scholarly writing on intelligence analysis remains…surprisingly thin.”3 In addition, Amy Zegart, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, has argued that intelligence studies has been ignored by academia, citing its failure to teach courses and publish works on intelligence.4 But is this really the case? Is the literature as scarce as these experts portray?

Fortunately, the state of the intelligence studies literature in general and the intelligence analysis literature specifically is not as bleak as these authors describe. When one surveys the extensive intelligence studies literature in all its variety over the 60 plus years of its existence, the literature can appear to be quite large indeed.5 Through books, journal articles, conference papers and the like, it is difficult for any scholar to master the large literature on intelligence analysis, and growing more

2 For example, see the programs of the 2005 International Conference on Intelligence Analysis sponsored by the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis; the 2007 Conference Program on Improving Intelligence Analysis sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) ; and the 2008 ODNI Strategic Concepts conference. 3 James B. Bruce and Roger Z. George. “Intelligence Analysis: The Emergence of a Discipline.” Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations. (James Bruce & Roger George, Eds). Georgetown University Press. 2008. 3. 4 Amy B. Zegart. “Universities Must Not Ignore Intelligence Research.” Chronicle of Higher Education. July 3, 2007. http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/07/2007070304n.htm 5 For example, see J. Ransom Clark’s online annotated bibliography of intelligence literature at http://intellit.muskingum.edu/ including its extensive breakdown of the analytic literature.

http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/07/2007070304n.htm


difficult every day. This ever-expanding literature makes up the body of knowledge in the field that practitioners can exploit to answer the questions necessary to improve analytic practice.

This literature has significant potential value for practice because, unlike other kinds of scholarship, the intelligence studies scholarship is much closer to practice than it is to theory. In other words, the literature itself is generally applied in nature. The questions asked generally address real-world, practitioner-oriented problems and the answers generally provide real-world, practitioner-oriented solutions.

Levels of abstraction employed in the intelligence literature are minimal, and even what little intelligence and intelligence analysis theory exists is primarily derivative of an effort on the part of intelligence practitioners to understand and explain the intelligence function. Specifically, “in 2005, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in partnership with the RAND Corporation convened a one-day workshop . . . to discuss how theories underlie our intelligence work and might lead to a better understanding of intelligence.” 6 A byproduct of this workshop included four subsequent panels at International Studies Association (ISA) conferences all addressing intelligence theory,7 as well as the book “Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates.”8

As for how all of this relates to intelligence analysis, this means that embedded in the scholarship are answers to questions that relate to the kinds of process knowledge that would be most effective in improving intelligence analysis. This scholarly literature on the methods and processes of intelligence analysis begins in the 1940s with George Pettee, Sherman Kent, and Willmoore Kendall’s perspectives on the subject, is continued in the 1950s by Roger Hilsman and Washington Platt, is deepened in the 1960s by Klaus Knorr and Sherman Kent, then in the 1970s is extended directly into analytic methods by Richards Heuer and others. By the 1980s, the scholarly literature on intelligence analysis had become well-established, and even though coverage was relatively spotty the kinds of questions asked were increasing in variety and answers increasing in depth. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, particularly due to increasing openness of the intelligence community after the end of the Cold War, the literature on intelligence analysis exploded in terms of variety and quality of contributions to scholarship.

A careful reading of the accumulated literature on intelligence analysis would provide a practitioner with substantial amount of useful knowledge, including criteria and metrics for evaluating analytic quality, best practices in terms of employing analytic methods to support inferences and judgments, guidance for how to develop core competencies necessary for the production of quality intelligence analysis, an understanding of the significance of organizational structures and processes in the

Also see William J. Lahneman’s The Future of Intelligence Analysis, Vol II, Annotated Bibliography: Publications on Intelligence Analysis and Reform, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, 10 Mar 2006. In addition, older listings of the intelligence analysis literature—from 1945 through 1990—can also be found in Neal H. Petersen’s American Intelligence, 1775-1990: A Bibliographical Guide. Claremont, CA: Regina Books: 1992.6 One of the stated objectives of the workshop was ‘to bridge the divide that has long separated intelligence scholars and practitioners’. See: Gregory F. Treverton, Seth G. Jones, Steven Boraz and Phillip Lipscy, Conference Proceedings: Toward a Theory of Intelligence Workshop Report (RAND National Security Research Division 2006) p.iii, 5 http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/2006/RAND_CF219.pdf4. 7 The 2006 International Studies Association (ISA) panel titled “Creating Intelligence Theory: New Approaches,” the 2007 panel titled “Theories of Intelligence: The Next Steps?,” the 2008 panel titled “Future Directions for Intelligence Studies,” and the 2010 panel titled “Theories of Intelligence for an Age of Reflexivity.” 8 Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin, and Mark Phythan (Eds). Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates. Routledge. 2008.


development and aggregation of different kinds of analytic expertise in a team or unit context, and so on.

Unfortunately, despite the potential inherent in this literature, a significant gap between scholarship and practice prevents the potential value of the former for the latter from being realized.

GAP BETWEEN SCHOLARSHIP AND PRACTICE Intelligence analysts should be able to benefit from the scholarship on intelligence analysis that is produced but many, perhaps most, do not. While both scholars and practitioners are involved in the world of evaluating information, there is a significant functional differentiation that separates the two fields, as well as a resulting personality differentiation of the people who choose to go into them. Scholars are contemplative and conceptual, primarily because their primary mission is to understand and explain; to maximize the growth of knowledge. Relative to scholars, intelligence practitioners, even intelligence analysts, are focused on getting the job done.

As a result of the differences between the worlds of academia and practice, intelligence analysts have a tendency to roll their eyes at the word “literature” as the touchstone of the irrelevant academic. In some cases they have a point. Sometimes theory is overly removed from the day-to-day issues of the practitioner, and while it can help in the process of understanding and explaining big issues it may not have much relevance for the working level practitioner immersed in highly detailed minutiae.

In addition, the culture of the intelligence field is infused with a distinct orientation that the best way to learn is by doing; that reading about what is involved in doing intelligence or intelligence analysis is in some way ineffective or inefficient; that somehow academia and its emphasis on developing, documenting, and disseminating knowledge is a lesser form of learning and that the only real knowledge worth having is that gained by experience. But what is experience other than a trial and error process of learning from your own mistakes? In order to gain a lot of experience, you have to make a lot of mistakes. On its face, that seems to be a pretty ineffective way to learn.

Another way to learn is from the experiences and mistakes of others. And where do you find those lessons? By reading what others have written, in the literature. While some literatures—such as parts of the international relations literatures--are deeply theoretical and derivative of an ivory tower completely separated from the average intelligence practitioner, others have direct applicability to practitioners and the intelligence studies literature is one of those.

In the intelligence field, much of the literature consists of lessons derived from the experiences of practitioners who then became academicians (or vice versa), and did what academicians are good at: developing, documenting, and disseminating knowledge consisting of their understandings and explanations for what they were doing as practitioners and how they could have done it better. Their goal was not to create abstractions for the purposes of navel-gazing, but rather to conceptualize the function of intelligence in such a way as to make its practice easier to manage and improve. The literature thus provides the mechanism for knowledge transmission to change from verbal transmission through lore to a more structured process of formalized education that enables current and future practitioners to learn from the mistakes of those who came before them.9

For the practitioner, the literature on intelligence analysis should be viewed as a knowledge repository, where they can go to find out what people have learned about intelligence analysis thus far. Yet the pernicious effects of functional differentiation—even when complementary and geared to

9 For more on the significance of knowledge aggregation and accumulation in the professionalization of intelligence analysis, see: Stephen Marrin. “Intelligence Analysis: Turning a Craft Into a Profession.” Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Intelligence Analysis. McLean, Virginia. May 2005.


achieve the same goals—frequently leads to competition, rivalry, and “us versus them” thinking that progresses to a form of stereotyping.10 In the case of intelligence studies and the scholar/practitioner differentiation, because there are so few scholars and because so many of them are former practitioners, most of the stereotypes are held by practitioners reflecting on the irrelevance of scholarship to the practice of intelligence.

When scholars and practitioners get together, sometimes there is collaboration and sometimes there is competition. In terms of the latter, on multiple occasions it has been suggested that those scholars who do not have previous experience as intelligence professionals should not teach intelligence studies because they bring very little useful knowledge to the table, with the obvious implication that experience in the field of intelligence trumps knowledge about intelligence. For example, in February 2008 a contributor to the listserv of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) suggested that practical experience in intelligence was the key criterion for being considered an “intelligence expert” and that all others—to include scholars since “studying and critiquing alone do not count”—who did not have practical experience in the field were the equivalent to “back seat drivers.”11 In response, Geneva College professor Thomas Copeland suggested that such a definition was overly limiting, and that while experience in the practice of intelligence is “vital,” he believes that “at least a few academics have had some useful things to say” about the practice of intelligence.12 He also pointed out that if scholars cannot be considered experts on intelligence issues, then intelligence analysts cannot be considered experts on international issues or situations that they have not experienced first hand, such as terrorism or drug trafficking.13

Interestingly, Copeland’s defense of the scholar in the face of practitioner preference for “real world” experience addresses exactly the same challenges that intelligence analysts have faced vis-a-vis policymaker questions about their value. For much of their history, intelligence analysts have been perceived by policy officials as irrelevant ivory tower academics with book knowledge but no real sense of how policy was made and no real world experience. As described by Roger Hilsman in the early 1950s, these policy officials “distrust” the intelligence analyst, seeing him or her “as a long-haired academic, poring over musty books in dusty libraries far front the realities of practical life. On the other hand, they think that "practical" experience is the true--in fact, the only-- path to knowledge and judgment.”14

If the value of knowledge produced by intelligence analysts has value to the policymaker, then the value of knowledge produced by the scholar may have the same kind of value for the intelligence analyst. The failure of practitioners to listen to the knowledge available to them may prevent them from performing at peak levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

But how many practitioners are aware of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom available to them in the scholarship? Apparently not enough of them due to the failure to bridge the gap.

FIXING THE PROBLEM: LOOKING TO POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR IDEASTo improve the practice of intelligence analysis requires bridging the gap between scholarship and practice, but how should we go about doing so?

10 A clear illustration of this is the competition that military services have with each other, and the stereotypes that members of each branch of the military hold of the members of the other branches.11 Email to the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) listserv, 6 February 2008.12 Thomas Copeland email to IAFIE listserv, 6 February 2008.13 Thomas Copeland email to IAFIE listserv, 16 April 2009.14 Roger Hilsman Jr. “Intelligence and Policy-Making in Foreign Affairs.” World Politics No. 3 (April 1953). (1-45). 9.


Ernest Wilson suggests that conceptualizing a policy problem can require “the analyst to think outside the box, that is, to reconceptualize issues beyond the necessarily narrow boundaries of bureaucratic demands and organizational standard operating procedures. It means looking beyond the conventional short-term definitions of what constitutes a policy problem, and scanning the environment broadly looking for medium- to long-term connections that may not be immediately visible in the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy. These are skills and intuitions that researchers and analysts outside the government are most likely to bring to bear. They do not come automatically, however, to all policy scholars since they also require a synoptic vision beyond the conventions of a single academic discipline.”15

It is here, looking beyond “a single academic discipline,” that other literatures can help provide insight precisely because this gap between scholarship and practice is not unique to intelligence studies. Studying how other fields address and bridge the gap may provide ideas for how it can be bridged in an intelligence analysis context as well.

Specifically, the same kind of gap between scholarship and practice exists in both political science and international relations. Over the past few decades, a discussion has developed regarding the failure of scholarship to have much relevance for practice, the reasons for this lack of relevance, and how the problem might be solved. In general, this discussion consists primarily of scholars bemoaning their lack of influence on policy despite the fact that, as Georgetown University Professor Joseph Lepgold and University of California-Davis Processor Miroslav Nincic put it, “theory in the study of politics, including world politics, has traditionally been intended to guide practice” and that while contemporary scholarship “ought to be useful to practitioners, little of it is.”16 They go on to say that practitioners believe much of the scholarship is “useless and arcane.”

The predominant voice in these discussions has been Stanford University’s Alexander George, who initiated this discussion in 1993 with his book titled ““Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy.”17 Alexander George points out that both scholars and practitioners look askance at each other through prisms made up of stereotypes that color their interpretation of the other. To practitioners, scholars think in irrelevant abstractions; that the academy, as the University of Virginia’s David Newsom put it, is “an irrelevant ivory tower” 18 made up of scholars who have “little inclination or ability to communicate their knowledge in terms comprehensible to policymakers.”19 To scholars, practitioners can, according to Swedish scholars Johan Eriksson and Bengt Sundelius, appear to be overly self-righteous in their arguments that they live in the “real” world and as a result are, as George describes, “too aconceptual and atheoretical, even anticonceptual and antitheoretical” 20 while at the same time unaware that in implementing policy they are frequently using theory if perhaps in an unsophisticated way.

Those who have been on both sides of the scholar/practitioner divide, including Harvard University’s Joseph Nye and David Newsom, can see the perspective of the other most clearly. Perhaps best

15 Ernest J. Wilson III. “How Social Science Can Help Policymakers: The Relevance of Theory.” Being Useful: Policy Relevance and International Relations Theory. Eds. Miroslav Nincic and Joseph Lepgold. 2000. (109-127). 122.16 Joseph Lepgold and Miroslav Nincic. Beyond the Ivory Tower: International Relations Theory and the Issue of Policy Relevance. Columbia University Press; New York. 2001. 1-2. 17 Alexander L. George. Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy. United States Institute of Peace Press. Washington, DC. 1993.18 David D. Newsom. “Foreign Policy and Academia.” Foreign Policy. 101 (Winter 1995-96). 52, 55.19 George, 7.20 George, 11.


articulated by Ernest Wilson, a former professor at the University of Michigan who had an appointment in the White House in the 1990s, he felt “frustration with policymakers when I was an academic, and (an) even greater frustration with academics when I was a policymaker. From my campus perch…. Washington decision makers seemed distant, insufficiently aware of the latest empirical data or scholarly debates, and far too focused on the short term and immediate. From my White House chair, my former university colleagues seemed out of touch with reality, dangerously naïve, and hopelessly long-winded. There seemed to be big gaps between the promise and performance of the contribution social science could provide to practical policy-making.”21

This gap between scholars and practitioners has been explained as the result of the functional and cultural differentiation between them. According to Lepgold, scholars and practitioners “often frame questions differently, face different kinds of deadlines, and usually seek different kinds of answers.”22 Harvard University’s Stephen Walt observes that they “have different agendas. Social scientists…seek to identify and explain recurring social behavior, but policy makers tend to be concerned with the particular problems they are facing today.”23 As Newsom says, for practitioners “the objective of action is to resolve or manage a problem. Their motives are operational, not intellectual…The scholar, less pressed by time, is basically an observer, endeavoring to discover an event or a series of events verities that may apply to other situations.”24

Others have also observed that the functional differentiation has been exacerbated by cultural practices that reinforce the divides between the two communities. According to George, each has “different socialization experiences that shape an individual’s career orientation and professional style in the worlds of academia and policymaking.”25 Over time, these socialization experiences have been increasing the gap between the fields. As Nye puts it, “the growing specialization of knowledge, the increasing scientific methodological orientation of academic disciplines, and development of new institutional transmission belts helps to account” for the widening gap between scholars and practitioners. 26 Lepgold and Nincic describe this as part of the professionalization of political science, and its emphasis on methodological rigor over substantive knowledge.27

As this professionalization process has developed, theory construction has acquired pride of place because it is the unique value added of academia, displacing policy relevance as the dominant objective to be achieved. This has led, according to Duke University political scientist Bruce Jentleson, to the “disciplinary privileging of general theory…over middle-range theory”28 even though this latter kind of knowledge, as Nye suggests, is the “most accessible and most useful in practice.”29 In the end, as Walt points out, the broader fields of political science and international relations have conformed “to the norms and incentives of the academic profession rather than the needs of policy,” and those norms and incentives are

21 Wilson, How Social Science, 109.22 Joseph Lepgold. “Scholars and Statesmen Framework for a Productive Dialogue.” Being Useful: Policy Relevance and International Relations Theory. Eds. Miroslav Nincic and Joseph Lepgold. 2000. 75-106. 7623 Stephen M. Walt. “The Relationship Between Theory And Policy In International Relations.” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 8 (2005), (23-48). 3724 Newsom, 55.25 George, 1526 Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Policy. Political Psychology. Vol. 29. No. 4 (2008). (593-603). 598. 27 Lepgold and Nincic, 1228 Bruce W. Jentleson. “The Need for Praxis: Bringing Policy Relevance Back In.” International Security. Vol. 26. No. 4. (Spring 2002). (169-183), 17329 Nye, “Bridging the Gap,” 599


now embedded in the acculturation of new scholars.30 As Walt says, this theoretical scholarship “is often impenetrable to outsiders, largely because it is not intended for their consumption; it is written primarily to appeal to other members of the profession” rather than those in the policy world.31

Yet even as the gap between scholars and practitioners appears to be growing, some have argued that bridging the gap can provide significant benefits to the policy and practitioner communities. 32 In the end, the key question is not whether to bridge the gap, but precisely how to do so.

BRIDGING THE GAP IN POLITICAL SCIENCEThe traditional model of transmission of ideas from scholarship to practice, or bridging the gap, is not direct influence33 but rather an indirect “trickle down” model. As Nye puts it, “In the traditional model, professors produced theories that would trickle down (or out) to the policy world through the articles they wrote and the students they taught.”34 Walt goes on to say that “the trickle-down model assumes that new ideas emerge from academic ‘ivory towers’ (that is, as abstract theory), gradually filter down into the work of applied analysts (and especially people working in public policy ‘think tanks’), and finally reach the perceptions and actions of policymakers.”35

While the debate dichotomizes the roles of scholars and practitioners, the reality is that there is, according to Lepgold, “a far wider range of…activities and groups than the simple theorist-practitioner dichotomy suggests” and that “the institutions and professional networks that support the varied activities of these groups have already created the framework for a transmission belt that could be used to link theory and practice more easily and visibly.”36

This transmission process involves the translation of knowledge through different intermediaries, each playing a different role in the production of knowledge or its application in the real world. For example, both Lepgold and Wilson have each created a scale of knowledge, ranging from pure theory as created only by scholars, to pure practice as used exclusively by practitioners.37 Each describes the scale in a slightly different way, but both have four stages that could be roughly described as theory construction, theory application, problem conceptualization, and problem solving. As Lepgold put it, “these activities are supported by institutions and professional networks that create a potential transmission belt that runs from “pure” theory to “pure” policymaking.”38 Operationalizing this transmission belt would mean looking first to traditional academic departments for theory construction, applied or public policy academic departments for theory application, think tanks and consultants for conceptualization, and then government for practice.

30 Walt, 3831 Walt, 3832 George, Xviii and 145; Lepgold and Nincic, 22; Jentleson, 18033 Although in terms of direct influence, Wilson has observed that “Sometimes overlooked when considering channels of influence through which social science theories make themselves felt are the abundant commissioned studies contracted from think tanks, universities, and consulting firms by various foreign policy agencies.” Wilson, How Social Science, 114 34 Joseph S. Nye, Jr. “The Costs and Benefits of ‘In and Outers.’ International Studies Review (2008). 10, (156-160)., 15835 Walt, 40. As cited in Nye, Costs and Benefits, 158. 36 Lepgold, 7537 Lepgold’s actual categories are: General Theory, Issue-Oriented Puzzles, Case-Oriented Scholarship, and Policymaking. See Lepgold, 78-81 Also see Wilson, How Social Science, 116-118. 38 Lepgold, 78


The main conclusion that both Lepgold and Wilson come to is the complementarity of different kinds of knowledge. As Lepgold put it, “the point to bear in mind is that all four types of literatures can help policymakers understand the ‘real world,’”39 or, according to Wilson, a practitioner “badly needs bold, clear, and policy-relevant work that draws officials’ attentions to the shape of the new forests as well as to the details of the trees and weeds.”40

The best way for scholars to know what kind of knowledge practitioners need is, according to Wilson, to first identify it, and then provide it to them.41 Successfully doing so is not easy, however. In addition to making the policy-relevant contributions stand out from increasing competition from think tanks and journalists, scholars have to adapt their writing and delivery to that most easily digested by busy practitioners.42

Doing this requires an emphasis on communications skills43 because, as Ohio State University Professor Joseph Kruzel points out, “because people in government do not read books….marketing really makes a difference. An academic who wants to bridge the gap has to sell himself and his ideas.”44 Suggested platforms for marketing include emails, faxes, op eds in newspapers, briefings, workshops, conference presentations, and—perhaps most significantly--conversations.45

Beyond the ways that individual scholars could make their work more accessible to practitioners, other recommendations include:

Changing the Culture of Academia: If part of the problem stems from an overly professionalized academic culture that values abstract theory and method over practice, a number of scholars have suggested that the academy loosen these requirements in order to promote policy relevance. For example, Nye and Walt suggest that the professional ethic embedded in graduate programs should be modified in order to give greater weight to policy-relevant coursework, research, publications and career paths.46 As Jentleson puts it, “ultimately it is about an ethic, about what is valued, about how professional success and personal fulfillment are defined.”47

Shifting the Emphasis from Traditional Academic Departments to Public Policy Schools: If traditional academic departments fail to change their culture and instead continue to play to their strengths in terms of theory construction and abstraction, then perhaps the production of policy-relevant research should shift to public policy schools which “focus on professional training rather than generic knowledge for its own sake.”48 According to Wilson, the strength of public policy schools in terms of policy relevance comes from their “interdisciplinary orientation and concern for

39 Lepgold, 8140 Wilson, How Social Science, 11941 Wilson, How Social Science, 11342 For more on increased competition, see: Nye, Costs and Benefits, 158. For more on making content more easily digestible, see: Nye, Costs and Benefits, 158; and Lepgold and Nincic, 2043 Johan Eriksson and Bengt Sundelius. “Molding Minds That Form Policy: How to Make Research Useful.” International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 6 (2005): 52.44 Joseph Kruzel. More a Chasm Than a Gap, but Do Scholars Want to Bridge It?” Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Apr., 1994). (179-181). 18045 See Kruzel 181 and Nye, Costs and Benefits, 158. 46 Walt, 41-42; Nye, Bridging the Gap, 59947 Jentleson, 18348 Lepgold, 80. Wilson suggests that this is already happening; See: Ernest J. Wilson, III. “Is there Really a Scholar Practitioner Gap? An Institutional Analysis.” PS. January 2007. (147-151). 147.


context” as well as their “embrace of scholar-practitioners, individuals with strongly-scholarly credentials who have demonstrated strengths as practitioners who periodically move into government.”49 With public policy schools serving as “linking pins between university research and policy making”50 particularly through the “proliferation of policy journals providing outlets for the new kind of writing and thinking,”51 the end result—according to Wilson—is that “policy-makers need not look to core university departments of political science or international affairs as their main source of ideas and analysis.”52

An added value that public policy schools can provide is training for current or future practitioners. Since public policy schools emphasize practical knowledge over the theory and method of more traditional departments, Eriksson and Sundelius in particular emphasize the significant value that teaching and training can play in the knowledge transmission process by educating current and future practitioners.53 Or, as Newsom says, “teachers plant seeds that shape the thinking of each new generation; this is probably the academic world’s most lasting contribution.”54

Encouraging “In-and-Outers”: Encouraging people to move from the world of scholarship to the world of practice and vice versa creates a pool of possible transmission belts: “in-and-outers.” According to George, “individuals who have had experience in both worlds are in a particularly good position to contribute to bridging the gap between scholarly research on international relations and the practice of foreign policy.”55

According to Nye, “one of the most effective transmission belts for ideas to travel from the academy to government was in the form of “embedded capital” in the minds of “in and outers.”” As he goes on to say, “political science theory was crucial to the way in which I framed and crafted solutions to practical policy issues.”56 But as George points out, this intellectual capital can soon be exhausted; “work in government provides most of them with little opportunity for replenishing and updating their knowledge…. More than one policymaker has expressed concern that one eventually uses up and exhausts one’s intellectual capital.”57

The solution, therefore, is to encourage a subset of scholars and practitioners to transition back and forth between academia and government, creating and then using their intellectual capital on an as-needed basis. As George says, they become “informal intellectual brokers” and “to the extent that they accept this role they are in a position to draw on and adapt the results of academic research for use in policymaking and, also, to familiarize academic specialists with the kinds of information and knowledge required by policymakers.”58

Supplementing Academia with External Think Tanks. Think tanks are often a useful intermediary between academic theory and practice, and play a significant role in the transmission of knowledge from one to the other. According to Lepgold, “think tanks operate at the boundary between

49 Wilson, Is There Really, 14850 Eriksson and Sundelius, 62.51 Wilson, Is There Really, 14952 Wilson, Is There Really, 14953 Eriksson and Sundelius, 62.54 Newsom, 6555 George, 135 56 Nye, Costs and Benefits, 15957 George, 1258 George, 17


government and the part of the academic community with a sustained interest in policy.”59 Lepgold also points out that they bring together varied knowledge and expertise, and disseminate it through multiple channels and “as a result, think tanks and policy programs are the major places where people move back and forth from more theoretical to more applied activities and roles.” Playing the role of both competitor and complementor to academic programs, think tanks provide a separate transmission belt for knowledge to flow from academia to practice.

Each of these ideas for bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners in political science and international relations also has potential to do the same in an intelligence analysis context.

APPLYING IDEAS TO BRIDGING THE GAP ON INTELLIGENCE ANALYSISBecause some parts of the “bridging the gap” discussion in political science and international relations apply to intelligence studies and others do not, intelligence scholars should be careful in terms of deriving lessons and best practices to apply to their domain. Nonetheless, there are some best practices identified in the literature that could have applicability for bridging the gap between intelligence scholars and practitioners.

The starting point for intelligence scholars is to identify what kinds of knowledge are useful for intelligence analysis practitioners. George poses three questions that are significant for the evaluation and resolution of the gap between scholars and practitioners in the intelligence field. If one replaces the terms ‘policymaking,’ ‘policy,’ and ‘policymakers’ in the following questions with ‘intelligence analysis’ and ‘intelligence analysts,’ the utility of this approach is obvious: “(1) What contributions can knowledge make to policymaking? (2) What types of knowledge are most relevant for policy? (3) How can this type of knowledge be developed by scholars and research specialists and how can it be employed effectively by policymakers?”60

As Wilson suggests, scholars should “go out and ask actual practitioners what they really want, and what kinds of scholarly contributions would be most helpful in the conduct of their work.”61 Once the kinds of knowledge relevant for purposes of improving intelligence analysis are identified, then scholars can help build research programs to develop this kind of useful knowledge.

Emphasize Process Knowledge and Learn From FailureIntelligence practitioners have for many years reached out to academia on an as-needed basis, but usually that outreach has been to those fields that possess substantive subject matter expertise (language, area studies, engineering, etc). The problem is that this kind of outreach provides only some of the knowledge that intelligence analysts need. While this substantive knowledge can be useful in a mission-specific way, other kinds of knowledge could be useful as well. For example, while George emphasized primarily subject matter knowledge he also addressed process knowledge in a way that has direct applicability to the gap between intelligence studies scholars and intelligence analysts.62

59 Lepgold, 80. For more on the role of think tanks, see Wilson, Is There Really, 150. 60 George, xxvi; 135-13661 Wilson, Is There Really, 149. It is significant to note that this kind of conversation frequently occurs on the margins of the ISA conferences, where the voluntary nature of paper and panel submissions means that it is possible for governmental experts to solicit contributions or content from academia that would have direct utility for them. 62 Alexander George distinguished “substantive theory” from “process theory” and suggested that while both “have important contributions to make to the improvement of foreign policy, he believed that substantive theory was more important. See George, xxi-xxiii.


George defines process knowledge as “how to structure and manage the policymaking process to increase the likelihood of producing more effective policies,”63 and explains that his interest “on these matters was stimulated by studies that pointed to various malfunctions of the US policymaking system that often lowered the quality of policy decisions.”64 This equivalent in intelligence analysis terms might be reframed as “how to structure and manage the analytic process to increase the likelihood of producing more accurate or higher quality analysis” specifically by studies of previous intelligence analysis “malfunctions” or failures that lowered the quality of analytic products.

The study of failure, however, may not be sufficient for intelligence analyst practitioners as a way to improve their performance. As Newsom points out in the political science context, while the study of failure and error can be useful, “academic work too often seeks blame rather than an understanding of the forces and dilemmas behind an event or decision.”65 The same dynamic also exists in intelligence analysis as well. Rather than study the past to assign or apportion blame, a better use of the study of failure may involve a deeper appreciation of the complexities of the analytic task, the wide range of obstacles and hurdles that analysts must overcome in order to succeed, and positive recommendations regarding what they can do to avoid future failure.

In general, such research will emphasize analytic method and process in various contexts because they are crucial to the quality of the final analytic product. According to Eriksson and Sundelius, process knowledge is important because “process matters as much as content” in terms of determining policy outcomes.66 For example, intelligence analysis can be studied based on (1) the methods used to establish analytic requirements, (2) its analytic processes and methodologies, (3) the organizational context in which it takes place, to include organizational structure and standard operating procedures, and how they affect analytic expertise, (4) the dynamics involved in internal organizational coordination or managerial review processes (akin to bureaucratic politics), (5) organizational leadership, (6) inter-organizational relations and how they might play out in terms of the drafting of an intelligence community product like a National Intelligence Estimate, and so on.

Analytic processes can be studied in many different ways, at many different levels of analysis. As Eriksson and Sundelius put it, “the discussion here implies that research looking inside the ‘‘black box’’ of policy making”—or as this paper argues, intelligence analysis-making—“is particularly relevant.”67 They also point out that this kind of process knowledge has direct benefits for the organization design, and redesign, of both the structure and process of foreign policy construction, and the same argument can be made about intelligence analysis as well: that process knowledge can have direct impact on the managers of the intelligence enterprise and the kinds of intelligence policy they create to optimize the analytic product.

As argued previously, this kind of knowledge can already be found in academia. As with other professional fields, this body of knowledge is a way for intelligence analysts to accumulate knowledge of their own activities in order to learn from both successes and failures. But how are these lessons communicated from the scholars who develop them to the practitioners who should apply them?

Some Bridges Already Exist

63 George, xxii, 20. 64 George, xxii65 Newsom, 5766 Eriksson and Sundelius, 60.67 Eriksson and Sundelius, 60.


Unlike bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners in a political science context, doing so for intelligence analysis does not require the “changing the culture of academia” because the field in general, particularly in the United States, is much closer to practice than it is to theory. The scholarly discipline of “intelligence studies” has not professionalized to the degree that other more traditional academic disciplines have, and as a result does not have the same ethos or culture that prizes theoretical contributions over policy-relevant ones.

In fact, in the United States the policy-relevant contributions to academic intelligence studies are prized more so than the theoretical contributions are. Contrary to the observations of Lepgold and Nincic that “academic fields…tend to shrink into ever-smaller areas of specialization and expertise” and that “novelty is achieved by looking for new, usually smaller questions within broadly traveled approaches and areas,”68 the intelligence studies and intelligence analysis literatures are specifically welcoming of contributions that deepen and broaden the knowledge in the field. As a result, while there is a gap between scholars and practitioners, it is not nearly as wide nor as difficult to bridge as the gap that exists in other fields.

In terms of direct transmission belts between intelligence scholars and practitioners, some already exist. Nye had previously observed that the US intelligence community—and especially the National Intelligence Council--is particularly good at holding “regular unclassified seminars and conferences with academics,”69 as well as providing internships and fellowships for possible prospective future practitioners. Wilson also observes that “the intelligence community, from the National Intelligence Council to the National Security Agency, has begun regularly to invite academics and others to organize substantive seminars, and even to give lectures on site.”70

In addition, while Newsom recommended the promotion of governmental research grants as a way to bridge the gap in political science,71 these kinds of grants or contracts already exist in a number of different forms as a way to build knowledge about intelligence analysis processes. For example, Wilson helped organize a series of government-funded seminars as well as the publication of a two-volume report on the “Future of Intelligence Analysis” in 2005 and 2006 through a contractual relationship between the ODNI and the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies.72 In addition, in 2009 a series of studies and a report were commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences on behalf of the ODNI’s “Analytic Integrity and Standards” staff to produce knowledge necessary to improve analytic quality.73

Others have also recommended that the government fund more projects like this. Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the ODNI, with its “financial clout and technical-support staff” could either implement or fund the implementation of “forecasting tournaments that would shed light on the relative performance of competing approaches” as a way “to discover superior analytical strategies” because “even small improvements in its prediction accuracy

68 Lepgold and Nincic, 1569 Nye, Bridging the Gap, 601.. 70 Wilson, Is There Really, 14971 Newsom, 6772 The Future of Intelligence Analysis, Vol I, Final Report, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, 10 Mar 2006. and The Future of Intelligence Analysis, Vol II, Annotated Bibliography: Publications on Intelligence Analysis and Reform, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, 10 Mar 2006.73 See information on the “Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security,” available on the National Academy of Sciences website: http://www7.nationalacademies.org/BBCSS/DNI_White_Paper.pdf and http://www7.nationalacademies.org/BBCSS/DNI.html

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/BBCSS/DNI_White_Paper.pdf


can translate into billions of dollars and millions of lives saved.”74 Whether the intelligence community will do so is unknown at this point, although a recent call for proposals put out through the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) addresses many of the specific issues that Tetlock highlighted including evaluating innovative analytic methods for their quality and utility in an intelligence context.75

In addition to research contracts, Newsom also recommended an active scholar-practitioner program in government as a way to bridge the gap in political science.76 Again, this already exists in the form of scholars-in-residence in the intelligence community. These scholars have played a significant role in bringing academic knowledge into CIA, first providing a platform for Rob Johnston (an anthropologist) to enter the intelligence community and write his ethnographic study of CIA’s analysts, and then for Steven Rieber, a former philosophy professor at Georgia State University, to enter via CIA’s Kent Center prior to his shift to the ODNI’s Analytic Integrity and Standards staff.77 Both Johnston and Rieber have made significant contributions to both the scholarship and practice of intelligence analysis, and would not have been able to do so absent the kind of “scholar-practitioner program” that Newsom recommended.

Finally, Newsom also recommended that senior officials participate in major scholarly association meetings.78 The presence of Peter Lavoy, the current Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, at the 2010 ISA conference is an example of how the intelligence community is already engaged with academia.79 In general, ISA’s Intelligence Studies Section (ISS) has provided both scholars and practitioners with a valuable platform to bridge the gap on an annualized basis. Beginning in the mid-1980s, ISA’s ISS has been the focal point for intelligence scholarship, and the papers presented at their annual conferences provide significant feeder material for the two primary private sector intelligence journals (International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and Intelligence and National Security). In addition to its value in developing intelligence scholarship, ISA conferences also provide a useful neutral venue for conversations between scholars and practitioners over the nature of the discipline and the knowledge requirements of practitioners. In contrast to the annual conferences of the American Political Science Association, which has only a handful of intelligence related papers presented each year, ISA conferences provide the opportunity for up to 100 scholars and practitioners to present papers on intelligence related issues each year. These papers range from the highly granular, tactical description of the intelligence practitioner up

74 Philip Tetlock. “Reading Tarot on K Street.” The National Interest. September/October 2009. http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22040 75 See IARPA Request for Information (RFI): Forecasting. Solicitation Number: IARPA-RFI-10-01. Posted 1 February 2010. 76 Newsom, 67.77 For example, see Steven Rieber. “Intelligence Analysis and Judgmental Calibration.” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 97-112.; Steven Rieber and Neil Thomason. “Toward Improving Intelligence Analysis: Creation of a National Institute for Analytic Methods.” Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 4 (2005): 71-77.; Rob Johnston. Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2005.; Rob Johnston. “Developing a Taxonomy of Intelligence Analysis Variables: Foundations for Meta-Analysis.” Studies in Intelligence 47, no. 3 (2003): 61-71.; Rob Johnston. “Integrating Methodologists into Teams of Substantive Experts: Reducing Analytic Error.” Studies in Intelligence 47, no. 1 (2003): 57-65. Also, another scholar-in-residence was Bruce Berkowitz, who subsequently wrote "The DI and 'IT': Failing to Keep up with the Information Revolution." Studies in Intelligence 47, no. 1 (2003): 67-74. 78 Newsom, 67.79 DDNI (Analysis) Peter Lavoy chaired the 20 February 2010 ISA panel titled “Connecting Intelligence Scholars and Practitioners;” see program posted at: http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/neworleans2010/Preliminaryprogram.pdf

http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/neworleans2010/Preliminaryprogram.pdf

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22040


through the most abstract efforts to create intelligence theory or apply other kinds of theory to improve understandings of intelligence as a function of government.

As for bridges between intelligence scholars and practitioners in other countries, there are some although not quite as many as in the US. In the UK, for example, the Study Group on Intelligence and the Oxford Intelligence Group together provide formalized venues for discussions to take place between intelligence practitioners and academicians. The UK also has an equivalent to ISA’s Intelligence Studies Section in the form of the Security and Intelligence Studies Group at the UK Political Studies Association and the Intelligence and Security Working Group at the British International Studies Association, although these groups tend to be less active in sponsoring intelligence scholarship than their American counterpart. Canada has a more active counterpart organization facilitating discussions between intelligence scholars and practitioners known as the Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) while Australia’s equivalent, the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) is a bit more oriented to the practitioner than the academic.

So a good number of bridges already exist, providing an opportunity for productive interactions between intelligence scholars and practitioners.

Creating Other BridgesIn terms of the other ways to bridge the scholarly and practitioner communities, fortunately many of the same approaches recommended for bridging the gap in political science can also be applied to intelligence analysis.

Encouraging “In-and-Outers”: Unlike traditional political science where, as Walt observes, there are fewer in-and-outers because “policy relevance is simply not a criterion that the academy values,”80 there are many in-and-outers in the intelligence analysis field and their contributions are particularly prized.

In-and-outers have traditionally dominated the intelligence analysis field in the US, with Sherman Kent, Roger Hilsman, Mark Lowenthal and Greg Treverton playing significant roles in both academia and government. Recently, inners that became outers include Richard Russell, Roger George, Jennifer Sims, James Bruce, and John McLaughlin, while outers that became inners include Rob Johnston and Steve Rieber. Much, perhaps most, of the literature on intelligence analysis has been written by those who have some knowledge of practice leavened by the conceptualization skills of academia. ODNI personnel in particular have been in-and-outers, including ADDNI’s for Analytic Integrity and Standards (Richard Immerman, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker), as well as DDNI’s for Analysis (Thomas Fingar and Peter Lavoy).

The presence of in-and-outers also exists in other countries, specifically the UK and Australia. In the UK, a handful of former intelligence officers are affiliated with academic institutions, such as Julian Richards at the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies and Geoffrey Oxlee at the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University. Similarly, in Australia there are a number of former intelligence officers teaching in universities, including Jeff Corkill at Edith Cowan University, Patrick Walsh at Charles Sturt University, and others.

The prevalence of in-and-outers in intelligence analysis means that there is a continual transmission belt of ideas running between the worlds of scholarship and practice. One of the best ways to encourage in-and-outers to play their role as “informal intellectual brokers” is to ensure that there are

80 Walt, 39.


institutionalized platforms for their work to take place on the margins of both academia and government. That means building up intelligence-related think tanks and public policy schools.

Bolstering Minimal Contributions from Think Tanks: Just as in the conventional political science and national security realms, think tanks have the potential to play a significant role in knowledge construction related to the needs of intelligence practitioners. As John Hamre, the current president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense), put it: “Bureaucracies elaborate old ideas, but rarely invent new ideas. It is hard for governments to invent new ideas, so every government, and every form of governance, struggles with this question—where do they get new ideas. Governments have found different solutions to this question. Think tanks are one of the solutions.”81

Unfortunately, think tanks have played a marginal role in the development of useful knowledge on intelligence analysis in marked contrast to the role they have played in creating knowledge more broadly. With the exception of infrequent reports published through a handful of think tanks,82 the primary intelligence-related think tank is RAND with its Intelligence Policy Center directed by John Parachini and the significant presence of in-and-outers Greg Treverton and James Bruce on staff.83 According to RAND, it has recently produced reports on “Improving US Intelligence Decisionmaking and Management,” “Improving Intelligence Analysis and Information Integration,” and “Managing the Intelligence Community Workforce.” Most of RAND’s intelligence-related reports that are released publicly do not, however, make much of a contribution to the scholarship or to the knowledgebase on intelligence. They are more derivative of ideas already in the scholarship: essentially, part of the transmission belt that takes existing scholarship and gists it for purposes of easier practitioner consumption. Nor have think tanks played much of a role in the development of useful knowledge on intelligence analysis outside the United States.

Increasing the role of think tanks in providing useful knowledge for intelligence practitioners will require that their capabilities be bolstered through additional funding and contracts. Think tank funding can be acquired bottom-up from private sector donations, or top-down from the governmental authorities who desire the knowledge, but absent funding think tanks will provide minimal contributions to the practitioner knowledge base. To ensure that these think tanks receive the funding that they need, government officials responsible for intelligence community management should consider increasing (if perhaps on the margins) the portion of the budget dedicated to support external sources of research and knowledge that could be useful for intelligence practitioners. While such knowledge, according to Alexander George, would “make only an indirect, limited contribution to policymaking, its contribution will nevertheless often be critical for the development and choice of sound policies.”84

Shifting Emphasis from Traditional Departments to Public Policy Schools: For intelligence analysts, the new intelligence studies departments or programs in various colleges and universities

81 John J. Hamre. “The Constructive Role of Think Tanks in the Twenty-first Century.” Asia-Pacific Review 15, no. 2 (November 2008): 2-5.82 For example, for less significant works, see: “New Information and Intelligence Needs in the 21st Century Threat Environment.” The Henry L. Stimson Center. Report No. 70. September 2008. 1-54; and Kenneth Lieberthal. The US Intelligence Community and Foreign Policy: Getting Analysis Right. Brookings Institution. September 2009. 1-66. For an example of an important contribution, see: “In From the Cold: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of US Intelligence.” The Twentieth Century Fund Press. New York. 199683 RAND National Security Research Division, Intelligence Policy Center. Accessed 10 February 2010. http://www.rand.org/nsrd/about/intel.html 84 George, 139

http://www.rand.org/nsrd/about/intel.html


across the world are becoming an intelligence equivalent to public policy schools for purposes of centralizing knowledge about intelligence analysis and teaching it to current and prospective practitioners.85 These schools bridge the gap between, as Newsom put it, “the practitioner’s emphasis on experience versus the scholar’s emphasis on research” 86 by providing students with both the knowledge base and the applied skill set.

These programs can more properly be conceptualized as “Intelligence Analysis Schools” akin to Law Schools and Medical Schools; consisting of a preparatory curriculum intended to produce practitioners with the knowledge, skills and abilities required for entry into the intelligence community as analysts, as well as conceptual context for the analytic function itself. This could include study of analytic methods themselves, as well as historical successes and failures all supported by the relatively rudimentary understandings of intelligence theory. In addition, student research projects, particularly graduate theses, provide a platform for intelligence-specific, practitioner-relevant knowledge production to occur. This mix of theory and practice also provides the optimal environment for the in-and-outers and academicians of the intelligence analysis world to overcome the perception that scholars do not have much to contribute in terms of understanding and improving practice.

Other kinds of public policy schools could also address intelligence issues, if within a broader security studies context. Examples include the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, the variety of security specializations within the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and others.87 Because these security studies programs are by definition both broader and deeper than the intelligence-specific programs they could provide a similarly applied context for learning about intelligence analysis if emphasizing context and subject matter knowledge over the more specific training approach taken by many “intelligence analysis schools.” The kinds of knowledge produced in these schools would also provide contextualization for the more specific intelligence-related knowledge produced in intelligence analysis schools.

Both forms of public policy schools (intelligence-specific and broader security studies) serve as “linking pins” between traditional university research and the intelligence community, if perhaps with different emphasis on the practitioner skill set, intelligence-specific knowledge, and subject matter knowledge. The end result is knowledge complementarity even if the academic institutions sometimes set themselves up as competitors.88

85 These programs include those funded by the Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence

grants, as well as those that have sprung up without government funding. For more on these recent developments in intelligence training and education, see: Stephen Marrin. “Training and Educating US Intelligence Analysts.” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Vol. 22. Issue 1. (Winter 2008-2009). 131-146; Martin Rudner. “Intelligence Studies in Higher Education: Capacity-Building to Meet Societal Demand.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence,22:1 (2009).110-130; James G. Breckenridge. “Designing Effective Teaching and Learning Environments for a New Generation of Analysts.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. V23. I2. 2010. 307-323; William C. Spracher. Teaching Intelligence in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The Intelligence Studies Encyclopedia. (Ed. Robert A. Denemark). 2010. 86 Newsom, 5587 For Georgetown’s CPASS, see: http://cpass.georgetown.edu/ . Other security studies public policy schools that might provide good venues for developing knowledge useful for intelligence practitioners include the Bush School at Texas A&M; the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford; Harvard’s Program on Information Resources Policy; The Grand Strategy Seminar at Yale; Ohio State’s Mershon Center; the Maxwell School at Syracuse University; and a wide variety of others88 Some in intelligence-specific programs are so focused on developing the analytic skill set that they do not consider programs like Georgetown’s CPASS to be practitioner-oriented, but rather as theoretical as traditional


But these ideas including in-and-outers, think tanks, and public policy schools that have been derived from the political science literature for bridging the gap are not sufficient to address the information needs and knowledge requirements of intelligence analysts. Most of the resulting improvements would be ad hoc rather than institutionalized, and even if implemented the various intelligence communities would have no structured mechanism for communicating their process-oriented needs to academia. Nor would the intelligence communities have an effective mechanism for transferring existing knowledge to currently serving intelligence analysts, managers, and staffers. For those staff officers who help design, build and manage the circulatory and nervous system of each organization, the knowledge that exists in the intelligence studies literature about analytic process could be very useful. Unfortunately, there is no centralized focal point for them to know what kinds of knowledge already exist in the broader academic community or how to access it. One additional linking pin is required.

CREATING ACADEMIC INTELLIGENCE STUDIES CENTERS Each of the ideas drawn from the political science literature can be brought together in one recommendation that would provide a focal point for bridging the gap between intelligence scholars and practitioners. In particular, the absence of significant intelligence-related think tanks, which have traditionally been the sinew or connective tissue between scholars and practitioners, provides an opportunity to make one additional recommendation: the creation of academic centers or institutes with an intelligence or intelligence analysis-oriented focus as a way to supplement knowledge creation in both traditional academic departments and the newer public policy-oriented “intelligence schools.”

Creating useful knowledge in academia requires a more organized and dedicated effort to build and fund the kind of infrastructure that would create and test that knowledge. Some of this knowledge could come from traditional academic disciplines; for example, knowledge regarding management and organization could come from professors in business schools as well as organizational theorists. In addition, knowledge regarding new analyst selection and training could come from professors and researchers in public policy or education schools, or from equivalent processes in more established professions. But very little of this knowledge has been embedded in an intelligence context. To make this knowledge useful for understanding, explaining and improving intelligence analysis, intelligence scholars could best develop that knowledge within an intelligence context in the kind of Intelligence Studies Centers proposed here.

The creation of these academic Intelligence Studies Centers could draw on and pull together knowledge from all the various traditional academic departments across the university as an academic equivalent to a think tank. In so doing it could provide an institutional bridge between the kinds of knowledge resident in the scholarship and the informational or conceptual needs of analytic practitioners. These Centers could be populated with teams of in-and-outers and scholars who work together to create a repository of useful knowledge that is simultaneously conceptualized and contextualized. As George has pointed out, the combination of practitioner and scholar can be very effective in political science;89 the same argument can be made for intelligence analysis as well. If co-located with intelligence-related public policy schools, these Centers could also provide a focal point for disseminating the knowledge they create to both new entrants to the field as well as current

academia. Similarly, others in traditional academia view intelligence-specific programs as training programs inappropriately located in academia. Both perspectives are distorted. How one views the other parts of the transmission belt from theory to practice may depend on where on the belt one resides; an academic equivalent to the 1976 Saul Steinberg cover to the New Yorker “View of the World from 9th Avenue” in New York. See: http://www.saulsteinbergfoundation.org/gallery_24_viewofworld.html89 George, 5-6


practitioners through professional continuing education programs. As such, they could become a center of knowledge on intelligence analysis that practitioners could go to as an academic one-stop-shop for useful intelligence studies knowledge.

Fortunately, versions of these kinds of Centers already exist: the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies (BCISS) in London, England; the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies (CCISS) at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada; the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies (MCIIS) in Erie, PA; and the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research at the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington DC. Each is affiliated with an educational mission at the graduate level, and thus involved in the dissemination of knowledge as well as its production. While each of these programs has made significant contributions to the knowledge on intelligence analysis, there are many additional opportunities for practitioners to exploit the opportunities that these programs provide them with.90

For example, if governments provided funding for these Centers in a variety of ways including contracts, grants, or money for student scholarships or fellowships, it could pay back dividends in terms of providing them with a source of knowledge and expertise about intelligence analysis. These Centers could also provide their respective intelligence communities with a ready-made laboratory for experimenting with and evaluating analytic tools and techniques, as well as various ways to aggregate and integrate knowledge in analytic teams.

When the CIA University was originally proposed, part of the argument for its creation was that it could provide a place where “knowledgeable insiders could collaborate with insightful outsiders to develop both the theory and practice of intelligence analysis tradecraft and teach it to interested practitioners. Synergies resulting from the formal integration of analytical occupational standards; methodological training, and alternative and innovative approaches to intelligence analysis would result in greater conceptual variety, a pre-requisite for effective institutional change. The creation of the equivalent of a graduate program would provide the appropriate environment and resources for promising young intelligence officers to work with more experienced senior intelligence officers on projects developing new intelligence products, processes, and dissemination methods. From these projects could come the kernels of insight to foster improvements in intelligence analysis. In addition, such a structure would provide bureaucratic protection for the innovators and experimenters willing to use their insight and a trial-and-error approach to test concepts while allowing for failure but pursuing success.” 91

Rather than creating this kind of center in a government bureaucracy, however, a case can be made that academia provides a more appropriate home for these kinds of research-oriented institutions. While some governmental research centers can be useful for purposes of developing innovation, particularly within a classified context, academic centers for the study of intelligence provide additional benefits derived from academia’s comparative advantages in terms of openness, access to different kinds of knowledge including intelligence scholarship, and the ability to aggregate knowledge so that the end product is more than the sum of its parts. In the end, academic centers for the study of intelligence could provide government with the kind of knowledge it has difficulty developing for itself.

90 For Mercyhurst-specific proposals, see: Kristan Wheaton. Proposal For The Establishment Of A Sponsored Research Institute In Intelligence Analysis At Mercyhurst College. Working paper. 2007; and Robert Heibel. Proposal for a Mercyhurst Institute for of the Study and Application of Intelligence (MISAI). Working paper. 2004. 91 Stephen Marrin. ‘The CIA's Kent School: A Step in the Right Direction' The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies. V. 11, No. 2. (Winter 2000).: 55-57.


The study of intelligence began as an academic complement to the practice of national security intelligence; the contribution that higher education makes to interpreting its past, understanding its present and forecasting its future. New mechanisms for bridging the gap between scholarship and practice can only provide new and better ideas for improving intelligence analysis in the future. To adapt the argument made previously for the creation of CIA University, “just as other professional disciplines such as medicine and law developed through the accumulation of knowledge in centers of learning, and dispensed this knowledge to newly chosen practitioners through a formal program of education and accreditation, so might intelligence develop its own core university structure, and thereby develop into a self-conscious and structured discipline in its own right.” 92

92 Stephen Marrin. ‘The CIA's Kent School: A Step in the Right Direction' The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies. V11. No2. (Winter 2000): 55-57.

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Marrin Intelligence Studies Centers Making Scholarship on Intelligence Analysis Useful 2011