analytic pathologies report

Dear reader, my task in this foreword is to shackle your attention to the challenge of getting through Jeffrey Cooper’s monograph that follows. Your attention is deserved because the subject—what we label with deceptive simplicity “intelligence analysis”—is so important and so interesting. The scope of this monograph, like that of the analytic profession, is broad and deep, from support to military operations to divining the inherently unknowable future of mysterious phenomena, like the political prospects of important countries. Jeff Coopers study, as befits the work of one who has long been an acute observer of the Intelligence Community and its work, is packed with critiques, observations, and judgments. It would be even more satisfying if the study could be further illuminated by clinical case studies of failures and successes. In principle, this lack could be remedied if the hurdle of classification could be cleared. In practice, it cannot currently be fixed because an adequate body of clinical, diagnostic case studies of both successes and failures and lessons learned, particularly from the most relevant, postCold War intelligence experience, simply does not now exist. Not surprisingly, Mr. Cooper, along with many other critics and reformers, such as the SilbermanRobb Commission (of which he was a staff member), recommends the institutionalization of a lessonslearned process in our national intelligence establishment. This is but one of a rich menu of admonitions to be found in this study. Mr. Cooper has provided a good, thematic summary of the main points of his monograph. I shall not attempt to summarize them further in this foreword. But some overview comments are in order. This study is fundamentally about what I would call the intellectual professionalization of intelligence analysis. It is about standards and practices and habits of mind. It is about inductive (evidencebased) analytical reasoning balanced against deductive (hypothesisbased and evidence tested) reasoning. It extols the value of truly scientific modes of thinking, including respect for the role of imagination and intuition, while warning against the pitfalls of “scientism,” a false pretense to scientific standards or a scientific pose without a scientific performance. It talks about peer review and challenging assumptions and the need to build these therapeutic virtues into the analytical process. Mr. Cooper makes reference to the standards and practices of other professions with a high order of cerebral content, such as law and medicine. Other recognized authors, such as Stephen Marrin and Rob Johnston, have written persuasively on this theme. I am struck by how frequently Mr. Cooper—and others—refers to the example of medicine, especially internal medicine, which has much to offer our discipline. But I am not surprised. When I was very young in this business, I was fretting about its difficulties in the company of my uncle, an old and seasoned physician. He walked to his vast library and pulled out for me a volume, Clinical Judgment, by Alvan Feinstein, a work now often cited by intelligence reformers. I later asked my mother, my uncles younger sister, what made Uncle Walt such a great doctor. Her answer: He always asks his patients at the beginning, “how do you feel?” and he never makes it home for dinner on time. The model of internal medicine is a great one for critical emulation by intelligence analysis: science, training, internship, expertise, experience, and then seasoned judgment, intuition, unstinting diligence, and valued second opinions.