Intelligence Analyst - Policy Maker Relations
Policymakers & Analysts
To paraphrase Sherman Kent, the relationship between analysts and policymakers "does not fall naturally in place, but requires careful thought to set right and constant efforts to keep effective" (Strategic Intelligence for National World Policy, 1949, sited in Davis). It is the nature of that careful thought and constant effort that is the subject of this paper.
Policymakers and analysts agree that "the quality and policy utility of analysis" must improve if intelligence is to help policymakers do their jobs[footnoteRef:1]. The desired improvements are unlikely to happen unless analysts can simultaneously achieve two important objectives: protection of the professional tradecraft and closer connections with policy action[footnoteRef:2]. The disconnection between the charge of policymakers and the deliverables of analysts has been an enduring one, and since the 1990s, a number of tactics have been implemented to address this matter. For example, analysts have experienced rotational assignments that take them into policymaker units, they have been assigned as personal briefing officers, and they have served as liaison officers for executive branch departments....
Less formally, analysts have spent more time making connections with policymakers by sitting on interagency groups and by creating opportunities for conversations. Good as these changes are, they are insufficient for addressing the magnitude of need for intelligence by national security policymakers and action-takers, the competition between insight and information providers, and a broadened policy base following 9/11[footnoteRef:3]. Five primary recommendations have since been developed, implemented, or established as standards for the transactions between intelligence analysts and policymakers. These recommendations are as follows: (1) Realistically define the analyst's mission; (2) know well Washington policymaking; (3) trust tradecraft; (4) adopt DI's best practices for crisis management and oral delivery of analysis, and (5) balance estimative and action analysis[footnoteRef:4]. [1: Jack Davis. "Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Analysts and the Policymaking Process" (Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis, Occasional Papers: Volume 1, Number 2, n.d.),] [2: Ibid.] [3: Ibid.] [4: Ibid., p. 7.]
An analyst's mission requires truth telling, but when the truth consists of just so many pixels, it is important to emphasize…
