ABSTRACT

The US intelligence community and its many critics both well intentioned and not have struggled to find ways to improve intelligence analysis. Although this chapter is primarily about US intelligence, it is worth noting that our British colleagues share an intellectual basis in their activities. The nature and longevity of the struggle with the Soviet Union also fostered a strong intellectual undergirding to intelligence. Several factors have led to what M. M. Lowenthal call the budding anti-intellectualism of intelligence. The most obvious was the victorious conclusion of the Cold War. Soviet studies became antiquarian and strategic studies seemed quaint at best. The Presidents Daily Brief (PDB) goes back to the Kennedy administration but the PDBs overwhelming importance in US intelligence stems from the George W. Bush administration. US intelligence would be better off, once again, in following the lead of the Army, which has the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL).