Intel culture

US Intelligence and The Eye of Sauron


Last year I had the opportunity to do something most intelligence professionals never do: I took a year off away from the community, and I studied analysis as an academic subject. In researching the topic, I also got to think a lot about what it means to create strategic intelligence and how well we really do it. Much of that year’s thinking was channeled into a graduate course on analysis that I’ll be teaching this summer through American University.

Looking in-depth at our history and our culture revealed more to me than nine years of working down in the trenches—and that’s telling. Granted, without those trench years, I wouldn’t have the foundation of experience to question or validate outside perspectives. But at the same time, it revealed the degree to which our culture and our processes inside the IC blind us to a honest evaluation of our capabilities, our strengths, and our shortcomings. That blindness is so routine that it has become part of our worldview.