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Earlier this week I spoke at a conference organized by State/INR and co-sponsored by ODNI/IC Lessons
Learned staff. The goal of the conference was to explore different dimensions of what it takes to learn
from the past in terms of improving all source intelligence analysis. There were something like 60-70
attendees. The agenda of the conference is copied below FYI....

The gist of my remarks was that academia is very good at identifying, storing, building and disseminating
knowledge.....in fact, that is its purpose....but that even the academic study of intelligence (ie. literature on
intelligence studies) is poorly understood and poorly developed, leading to an inability to gain greater
understanding of the discipline over time. In particular, I cited the content of Hilsman's 1953 article, Platt's
1957 book, Knorr's 1964 monograph, and Hughes' 1978 booklet as providing better understanding of
intelligence than most articles written today, and why it would behoove current intelligence practitioners to
be familiar with these works...

My recommendation was that the intelligence community should emphasize the value of learning from our
own past by doing a better job studying the best of the intelligence scholarship, while at the same time the
organizations within government that are involved in building knowledge (ie. the ODNI Lessons Learned
staff) should model some of their practices on what academia does to grow knowledge over time....

The talk seems to have been well-received. At this point going forward, I'll probably adapt the remarks
into some sort of a publishable article....probably combined with the remarks I intended to provide at the
IAFIE conference....to make the case for the importance and value for intelligence practitioners (and
prospective intelligence practitioners) of studying the intelligence literature.

Additional information on those intended remarks for the IAFIE conference forthcoming shortly...

The question posed here is: for those who teach intelligence, what is the optimum balance between
scholarship and practice? In my presentation for IAFIE, I planned to talk about the "Reeces Peanut Butter
Cup" approach to intelligence education. Intelligence studies emphasizing aggregated scholarship is the
peanut butter, and 'intelligence school' (emphasizing practitioner proficiency, like medical school) is the
chocolate.

Each is fine on its own, to the exclusion of the other. For example, professors have been teaching
intelligence courses in liberal arts colleges for decades, focusing exclusively on scholarship. And there is
a value to that. And training programs in government organizations have existed for decades as well,
focusing on practitioner proficiency. And there is a value to that as well.

But when you mix the peanut butter and chocolate together....a combination of intelligence studies and
intelligence school....that provides the opportunity to create something that is more than the sum of its
parts. But when you do that, what is the optimum balance between peanut butter and chocolate? It might
be possible to create chocolate flavored peanut butter, or peanut butter-flavored chocolate, but is that
really what you want? Or do you want something that capitalizes on the best of both, but is distinctly
different?

So what parts of the intelligence studies scholarship should be emphasized in intelligence studies
programs? What is the best way to acquint our students with the best knowledge that has been
developed on intelligence issues thus far?

c
As a final thought, IAFIE is intended to be an overarching association that speaks to the needs of all the
communities above (which are more national security than anything else, because that is the community I
came out of) as well as many others. We should be able to identify not just a single model of intelligence
education, but rather a series of different kinds of models, that range from the peanut butter/chocolate
variations described above, as well as to their law enforcement, military, and business intell equivalents.
There is room for discussion and debate about the tradeoffs that each kind of program involves--that
every program has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses--while at the same time acknowledging that
there is no single 'best' model that will satisfy all the different purposes of intelligence education. Instead,
just like the generalist/expert debate, the answer is not one or the other, but rather how the different
kinds can work best in combination. (And, quite frankly, this is why I don't see the idea of IAFIE as a
certifying body going too far....there are just too many different kinds of programs serving too many
different purposes to be able to come up with a single set of standards that will mean anything....)

Thoughts?
Regards,
Stephen Marrin

-------------------------------------------------
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Bureau of Intelligence and Research
´




I.C. Lessons Learned Center ‘


 

  
   

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