Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis

approach ensures that a topic or issue is thoroughly, logically, and
objectively developed. Their continuum provides qualitative metrics
to inform the thinker and others who may evaluate the object of the
thinking along with the process employed. Each standard is related
to but independent of the others. The object of consideration might
be vaguely or clearly presented. But it also might be inaccurate. An
example of this would be “the world is flat.” This clear statement
of reality is false.
The reasoning or its object might be clearly and accurately
presented but remain imprecise, the level of detail required depending
on the issue itself. Precision becomes important in assessing the
location of an adversary or a threat as in “terrorists placed the
improvised explosive device (IED) near the highway.”
It is possible to create clear, accurate, and precise answers that
are irrelevant. If one is considering the IED along the highway but
the issue is how best to fly the troops in question from one location
to another then the answer is irrelevant. Similarly, topics and their
accompanying reasoning need to consider both the complexities
involved (depth) and other points of view (breadth). 19
Such reasoning
becomes essential when systems must be assessed because in systems
“chains of consequences extend over time and many areas: The
effects of action are always multiple.” 20
Intelligence often must assess
such systems – terrorist networks are but one example. Additionally,
as sociologist Emile Durkheim observes, the combinations of elements
related to an issue “combine and thereby produce, by the fact of
their combination, new phenomena.” 21
When the correct phenomena or questions – and related
alternative explanations – are not fully considered, intelligence failures
occur. For instance, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
19 Elder and Paul, Analytic Thinking, 7.
20 Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10. Cited hereafter as Jervis, System
Effects.
21 Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (Glencoe, IL: Free Press,
1938), xlvii.
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