ABSTRACT
The information that is referenced in intelligence reports derives from data that physically exists in the world, and in many cases that data can be verified, but everything else having to do with the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence is a matter of subjective experience. The US Intelligence Community itself is a socially constituted process, in which institutions and norms make explicit and implicit claims to truth that function as signs referencing one another within a linguistic medium that must be interpreted by human beings. The grammar and syntax underlying any particular genre of analysis are governed by rules for how meaning is communicated, and should therefore be studied through the lens of semiotics.
