Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [87]
Thus, the intelligence community has greater analytic capabilities in some areas than in others. The situation can be ameliorated to some extent by moving analysts around from issue to issue, but sacrificing depth for breadth can result. The point remains that all analysts have limitations that can curtail the ability of the intelligence community to respond as expected and as the community would prefer.
ANALYST TRAINING. Until recently, the intelligence community did not spend a significant amount of time on analyst training. Training is most useful in giving incoming analysts a sense of what is expected of them, how the larger community works, and its ethos and rules. No amount of training, however, can obviate the fact that much of what an analyst needs to know is learned on the job. Analysts arrive with certain skills garnered from their college or graduate school studies or their work experience (a significant number of analysts now come to the intelligence community after having begun careers in other areas) and then are assimilated into their specific intelligence agency or unit. They learn basic processes and requirements, the daily work schedule, and preferred means of expression, which vary from agency to agency. They become familiar with the types of intelligence with which they will be working.
The minimum skills for all analysts are knowledge of one or more specific fields, appropriate language skills, and a basic ability to express themselves in writing. A senior official used to ask his subordinates two questions about new analysts they wished to hire: Do they think interesting thoughts? Do they write well? This official believed that, with these two talents in hand, all else would follow with training and experience.
The basic skills are a foundation on which better skills must be built. Some of the new skills to be mastered are parochial. Each intelligence agency has its own corporate style that must be learned. More important, analysts must learn to cope with the wheat versus chaff problem and to write as succinctly as possible. These two skills reflect the demands of current intelligence and the fact that policy makers are busy and prefer economies of style. The bureaucratic truism remains that shorter papers will usually best longer papers in the competition for policy makers attention.
Training analysts about collection systems appears to fall short of desired goals, given the ignorance expressed by even some senior analysts about this important topic. Furthermore, until 2006, the U.S. intelligence community had no common training for analysts. Each agency trained its own analysts, in effect creating stovepipes at the outset of analysts’ careers. As of 2007 there are now two parallel training efforts. There are small cross-community classes and a continuation of the individualized training in each agency.
Another important skill that analysts must learn is objectivity. Although intelligence analysts can and often do have strong personal views about the issues they are covering, their opinions have no place in intelligence products. Analysts are listened to because of their accumulated expertise, not the forcefulness of their views. Presenting personal conclusions would cross the line between intelligence and policy. Still, analysts need training to learn how to filter out their views, especially when they run counter to the intelligence at hand or the policies being considered.
A more subtle and difficult skill to master is cultivating the intelligence consumer without politicizing the intelligence as a means of currying favor.
Finally, there is the question of how far training (or experience) can take a given analyst. Any reasonably intelligent individual with the right skills and education can be taught to be an effective analyst. But the truly gifted analyst—like the truly gifted athlete, musician, or scientist—is inherently better at his or her job by virtue of inborn talents. Being able to analyze and synthesize intuitively