Bringing Intelligence About: Practitioners Reflect on Best Practices

Abstract : This book is the product of studious self-reflection by currently serving intelligence professionals, as well as by those who are in a position, with recent experience and continuing contacts, to influence the development of succeeding generations of intelligence personnel. The title chosen for this book carries two meanings. The more straightforward interpretation of "Bringing Intelligence About," and the principal one, refers to the book's coverage of wide-ranging sources and methods employed to add value to national security-related information - to create "intelligence." A second meaning, not unrelated to the first, refers to the responsible agility expected of U.S. intelligence professionals, to think and act in such a way as to navigate information collection and interpretation duties with a fix on society's shifting but consensual interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. This volume helps us move down the long and difficult road of helping identify how to produce good or better intelligence - intelligence that is of use to policymakers and is better than other intelligence by being so used. The authors have across a range of areas of interest identified some of the practices that work best to produce or, more aptly, "to bring about" good intelligence. Finally, it is also important to understand that this book focuses on the issue of analysis.