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FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE
With an acceptable definition of “intelligence” in view, the next requirement becomes
the identification of its fundamental principles. Fundamental principles are the underlying
ideas or core values from which essential work processes are derived. Customers dictate
our core values, defining what our service provides that is valuable to them. Although customers
often require help in defining their intelligence requirements, determining what
our customers value is simple: listen to their complaints.
After rigorous analyses of current doctrinal publications and over ten years of direct
customer liaison, I propose a set of six fundamental principles: Accuracy, Objectivity,
Usability, Relevance, Readiness, and Timeliness. 54 These principles are defined in
tonebox below.
OVERVIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTELLIGENCE
ACCURACY: All sources and data must be evaluated for the possibility of technical error,
misperception, and hostile efforts to mislead.
OBJECTIVITY: All judgments must be evaluated for the possibility of deliberate distortions
and manipulations due to self-interest.
USABILITY: All intelligence communications be in a form that facilitates ready comprehension
and immediate application. Intelligence products must be compatible with the customer’s
capabilities for receiving, manipulating, protecting, and storing the product.
RELEVANCE: Information must be selected and organized for its applicability to a consumer’s
requirements, with potential consequences and significance of the information
made explicit to the consumer’s circumstances.
READINESS: Intelligence systems must be responsive to the existing and contingent intelligence
requirements of customers at all levels of command.
TIMELINESS: Intelligence must be delivered while the content is still actionable under the
customer’s circumstances.
To understand the efficacy of this set of principles, consider our customers’ point of
view. Our customers need information that is relevant and timely. When customers com-
54 These principles are similar to the Attributes of Intelligence Quality in Joint Doctrine for Intelligence
Support to Operations (Joint Pub 2-0), suffer from poor definitional rigor, circular error and gross ambiguity.
In addition, the authors of Joint Pub 2-0 overlooked the basic significance of the Principles of Intelligence,
specifying rules-of-thumb for intelligence actions rather than the basic values that the actions support. See
Captain William S. Brei, Assessing Intelligence by Principles of Quality: The Case Study of Imagery Intelligence
Support to Operation PROVIDE COMFORT, Unpublished thesis, Washington DC: Defense Intelligence
College, July 1993.
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