Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2016 | Page 12

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
[M]ay be able to test out of or spend less time in basic courses offered
by the IC, and resources can be redirected to advanced and career IA
[intelligence analysis] courses. The question then becomes how best
to prepare students for eventual work in the IA community and, at the
same time, reduce the burden of training for the IC? (Breckenridge
2010, 320–321)
What such content can and should be remain quite open questions, and this
article will give a better, if preliminary, sense of what university intelligence educators
do, and feel comfortable doing, in the realm of training and tradecraft.
Training and Analytic Tradecraft in the U.S. Intelligence Community
As William C. Spracher observes, intelligence tradecraft can mean quite
different things to different stakeholders and organizations (Spracher 2009). In his
2005 ethnographic study of analytic culture and practice in the U.S. IC, Rob Johnston
found analytic tradecraft to be a “catchall” term for a wide range of “idiosyncratic”
techniques (Johnston 2005). In fact, Johnston objects to the use of the term tradecraft to
describe analytic methods. To him, such terminology suggests mysterious, inscrutable
techniques—and perhaps an effort to bolster prestige vis-à-vis intelligence collection
and operations. But rather than an opaque process not accessible to outsiders, analytic
tradecraft shares many creative features of social science research, such as hypothesis
generation and refutation (Johnston 2005).
While analytic tradecraft could in some ways be a misnomer, it should probably
not be surprising that analytic techniques were so divergent in the IC that Johnston
studied (it seems they still are). Formal analytic training in the IC is still a surprisingly
new phenomenon, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) first introducing
more extensive approaches in just the last two decades (Marrin 2003). As of 2003,
CIA analytic training stressed critical thinking, writing and briefing, collaboration,
the business of intelligence, organizational issues, and agency history and values. It
provides introductions to other intelligence functions and emphasizes the works of
Richards J. Heuer and Sherman Kent. Kent’s “Principals for Intelligence Analysis”
include a number of facets that would connect rather comfortably to the IC’s current
Analytic Tradecraft Standards, including efforts to bolster intellectual rigor, avoid bias,
consider alternative judgments, and recognize personal and analytical shortcomings
(Marrin 2003).
Other agencies have certainly followed suit (Campbell 2011; Marrin 2003)
and the National Intelligence University has expanded its offerings (Spracher 2016).
However, regarding the various IC programs in this area, James B. Bruce and Roger Z.
George have commented:
Individual agency-developed training programs vary enormously in
scope, depth, duration, and quality; some agencies support new analyst
training for several months and some shorter mid-career courses in
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