Leadership intel analysis

How the CIA Profiles World Leaders

What does a leadership analyst do? They put together short leadership profiles — or “LPs” — of world leaders. They’re the humble versions of what we usually call biographers. However, while biographers produce lengthy, in-depth narratives about personalities and world events, leadership analysts tightly profile a foreign leader’s policy and career histories. These profiles help policymakers “get to know” the person before an important meeting.

LPs covering a range of topics, from the leader’s policies on economic reform to his or her views on the decades-long strife with a neighboring country. Thus, leadership analysts usually read everything. Unlike the political, military, or economic analysts, there’s really no separate leadership “compartment” of reading material. It can be a lot of reading of both open source and classified material. Those who love the discipline (like myself) have a ball working on these bios.