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

FINDINGS
production cycle, information load, a shift in product focus, and organizational
norms regarding promotion have had an impact on analytic work and
intelligence analysis itself.
Finding: “Tradecraft” Versus Scientific Methodology
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in
the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very
much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the
medium of expression for their society…The fact of the matter is that
the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the
language habits of the group…We see and hear and otherwise experience
very largely as we do because the language habits of our
community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
Edward Sapir 8
The Intelligence Community, in its culture and mythos and in its literature,
tends to focus on intelligence operations rather than on intelligence analysis.
Open literature about the community certainly does so. Along with time constraints
and the analytic production cycle, the private and public focus on
operations has had an effect on intelligence analysts and analytic methodology.
The principal effect is the spread of the concept of “tradecraft” within the
analytic community.
Community members quite often used the word “tradecraft” to describe
intelligence analysis during the interviews, observations, training programs,
workshops, and actual analytic tasks that I performed for this study. Analysts,
managers, instructors, and academic researchers employed the word “tradecraft”
as a catchall for the often-idiosyncratic methods and techniques
required to perform analysis. Although the intelligence literature often refers
to tradecraft, the works tend to be a collection of suggestions and tips for writing
and communicating with co-workers, supervisors, and consumers instead
of focusing on a thorough examination of the analytic process and techniques.
The notion that intelligence operations involve tradecraft, which I define as
practiced skill in a trade or art, may be appropriate, but the analytic community’s
adoption of the concept to describe analysis and analytic methods is not.
The obvious logical flaw with adopting the idea of tradecraft as a standard of
practice for analytic methodology is that, ultimately, analysis is neither craft
nor art. Analysis, I contend, is part of a scientific process. This is an important
8
Edward Sapir is best known for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which asserts linguistic/cognitive
relativity (language and thought are inseparable; therefore, different languages mean different
ways of thinking). Edward Sapir, Language.
17