•  
  •  

Home > Open Access Journals > JSS > Vol. 8 > Volume 8, No. 3, Special Issue Fall 2015: Intelligence: Analysis, Tradecraft, Training, Education, and Practical Application

 

Author Biography

Dr. James B. Bruce is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He retired from CIA at the end of 2005 as a senior executive officer where he served nearly 24 years. In the National Intelligence Council he served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Science and Technology. Formerly a senior fellow at CIA’s Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, he has held management positions in both CIA’s Directorates of Intelligence (now Analysis) and Operations. His unclassified publications have appeared in Studies in Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Journal, World Politics, and several anthologies. He co-edited, with Roger George, Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’ Perspectives, 2nd ed. (Georgetown University Press, 2014). He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University where he has taught graduate courses on intelligence since 1995, and also previously at Columbia and American Universities. A member of the board of directors of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, he received his Ph.D. from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.

Dr. Roger Zane George is Professor of National Security Practice at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Previously, he was Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College in Washington DC. He retired from the Central Intelligence Agency after thirty years as an intelligence analyst. During that time he also has served in the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, the National Intelligence Council, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He received his Ph.D in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has taught at the Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies since 2005. His major publications include Intelligence and the National Security Strategist, co-edited with Robert Kline (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), Analyzing Intelligence: Practitioners’ Perspectives, co-edited with James B. Bruce (Georgetown University Press, 2014), and The National Security Enterprise: Navigating the Labyrinth, co-edited with Harvey Rishikof (Georgetown University Press, 2011). A second and significantly updated edition of The National Security Enterprise is forthcoming.

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.8.3.1454

Subject Area Keywords

Intelligence analysis, Intelligence studies/education

Abstract

This article examines the current state of professionalism in national security intelligence analysis in the U.S. Government. Since the introduction of major intelligence reforms directed by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) in December, 2004, we have seen notable strides in many aspects of intelligence professionalization, including in analysis. But progress is halting, uneven, and by no means permanent. To consolidate its gains, and if it is to continue improving, the U.S. intelligence community (IC) should commit itself to accomplishing a new program of further professionalization of analysis to ensure that it will develop an analytic cadre that is fully prepared to deal with the complexities of an emerging multipolar and highly dynamic world that the IC itself is forecasting. Some recent reforms in intelligence analysis can be assessed against established standards of more fully developed professions; these may well fall short of moving the IC closer to the more fully professionalized analytical capability required for producing the kind of analysis needed now by the United States.

Download

Share

COinS