Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) - CIA

CHAPTER TEN
Survey Methodology
This study included 489 interviews with intelligence professionals, academics,
and researchers throughout the Intelligence Community. It also involved
participation in intelligence training programs, workshops, and focus groups;
direct observation of intelligence analysts performing their duties, and participant
observation in a variety of analytic tasks. My access was not restricted to
specific people, locations, or organizations. I was allowed to observe, interview,
and participate in whatever manner I thought would be most beneficial
to the research project.
Unlike other academic studies of the intelligence discipline (case studies or
topic-specific postmortems, for example), this study was process oriented. It
also differed from the work of Sherman Kent, Richards Heuer, and other intelligence
professionals concerned with the process of intelligence analysis. 1
Rather than having an intelligence professional looking out to the social and
behavioral sciences, this study had a social scientist looking in at the intelligence
profession. Although some of the conclusions of this work may be similar
to previous studies, the change in perspective has also led to some
different findings.
It is important to keep in mind that cultural anthropology is a qualitative
discipline and that, in general, its findings are descriptive and explanatory
rather than inferential or predictive. The use of ethnographic methods to
describe a culture, the environment in which that culture operates, and the
work processes that culture has adopted is designed to generate testable theory
that can be investigated experimentally or quasi-experimentally using other
1
Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy; Richards J. Heuer, Jr., Psychology
of Intelligence Analysis.
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