ABSTRACT
The dissemination process of intelligence includes considerations of those who use it, and how complex the decision-making process involved is, since ideological, personal, or political distortions as well as competing interests, bureaucratic resistance, and the inability to comprehend outside of habitual thought can skew this stage. The dissemination phase involves the transmission of intelligence reporting to those who make decisions and access the intelligences relevance, validity, and timeliness. This chapter focuses on a core area of intelligence that most often does not appear in the popular representations of intelligence, and may also be the most problematic or weakest area of micropolitics. Like academic research, professional intelligence analysis and assessment has well-defined methodologies, checks and balances and peer review procedures that can minimize the likelihood of failure. Peterson explains the difference between information, data collected for processing, and intelligence. It is also important to distinguish between intelligence from inference, speculation, and opinion and intelligence produced from operational information.
