Since 9/11, we’ve repeatedly seen and heard the words “failure to connect the dots,” and “connecting the wrong dots” from just about every news source on the planet. Joseph S. Nye Jr. of Harvard University said, “This important work provides the better understanding of analysis that is crucial for getting it right.”
Analyzing Intelligence is another timely and important intelligence book recently published by Georgetown University Press. The editors, Roger Z. George and James Bruce, are both CIA alumni and professors at Georgetown. This book, as recently as two generations ago, would have been published by the Defense Department or one of the military intelligence arms for several reasons. First, of course, very few people would have understood it. Second, who’d buy it? Nowadays, of course, we’ve become inured to seeing intelligence analysts on all the major television news channels, in specialty magazines, and even in general readership magazines. Intelligence has found its way into all facets of our lives, and businesses use intelligence analysis as much or more than the world’s militaries and governments.
So exactly what is intelligence analysis? In the book’s glossary, the editors give us a definition in nine lines, and that’s as bare-bones and concise a definition as you can find. People can and have written volumes on the subject, although it’s still one of the least understood subjects. Yet it’s also a subject we deal with daily, both in the news media as well as in our daily lives. Buying a new car? You’re using — one hopes! — intelligence. Choosing a graduate school? Likewise, intelligence. Intelligence comprises the entire picture, the entire being, all the knowledge available of whatever it is you’re studying, whether it’s your next new car, the best way to launch your new product in a new country, or how to invade that country. Doing something with those reams and reams of information is the job of the intelligence analyst.
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