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

FINDINGS
Finding: Focus on Current Production
The present daily production cycle and the focus on current intelligence
also affect group interactions and the analytic process.
Group Interactions:
It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a piece myself or if I’m coordinating
a piece with some group. We don’t sit around and test hypotheses,
because we’re too busy writing. We’ve got serious deadlines here.
If, by group analysis, you mean the senior expert in the room tells
everybody what he thinks, and then we generally agree so that we
can get back to our own deadlines, then, sure, there’s a group process.
We used to have groups that did current reporting and different
groups that did longer term products. We still have some of that, but
it is very limited. I couldn’t say what happened exactly, but we’re all
doing current production now.
The Analytic Process:
People seem to have confused writing with analyzing. They figure
that if you just go through the mechanics of writing something, then
you must have analyzed it. I don’t know about everybody else, but it
doesn’t work that way for me. I need time to think through the problem.
Our products have become so specific, so tactical even, that our
thinking has become tactical. We’re losing our strategic edge,
because we’re so focused on today’s issues.
Alternative analysis is a nice concept, but I don’t have the time to do
it. I’ve got to keep up with the daily traffic.
I use several analytic techniques that are relatively fast. Scenario
development, red teams, competing hypotheses, they’re all too time
consuming.
We’ve got Bayesian tools, simulations, all kinds of advanced methods,
but when am I supposed to do any of that? It takes all my time
to keep up with the daily reporting as it is.
I don’t have time to worry about formal analytic methods. I’ve got
my own system. It’s more intuitive and a lot faster.
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