Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis

by the authors of Psychology of Intelligence Analysis and A Tradecraft Primer

Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis is a unique and far reaching compilation of 50 techniques that analysts can use to improve the rigor of their analysis. Use of the techniques almost always saves analysts time and facilitates collaboration, especially at the start of a project. The techniques are largely drawn from the intelligence world, but are also practical tools for analysts in a wide variety of professions such as law enforcement, medicine, finance, and business. In addition to defining the role and scope of Structured Analysis as a distinct form of analysis, the book systematically walks readers through a taxonomy of eight distinct categories of techniques that shape a robust analytic process. Each of the 50 techniques includes step-by-step instructions, a description of both when to use the technique and the value it adds to analysis, and potential pitfalls to be avoided when using it. Examples of the technique and an explanation of how it relates to others in the book are also included in many of the descriptions. The authors augment this extensive set of techniques with chapters on effective analytic collaboration, how to validate the effectiveness of Structured Analytic Techniques, and a vision for how to achieve a more robust analytic climate in the future. By defining the domain of structured analytic techniques, providing a manual for teaching these techniques, and outlining the research that needs to be done on these techniques, the book lays a common ground that will enable analysts to work even more effectively and efficiently.

Intelligence Analysis: How to Think in Complex Environments by Wayne Michael Hall and Gary Citrenbaum

Intelligence Analysis: How to Think in Complex Environments fills a void in the existing literature on contemporary warfare by examining the theoretical and conceptual foundations of effective modern intelligence analysis—the type of analysis needed to support military operations in modern, complex operational environments. This volume is an expert guide for rethinking intelligence analysis and understanding the true nature of the operational environment, adversaries, and most importantly, the populace.

Intelligence Analysis proposes substantive improvements in the way the U.S. national security system interprets intelligence, drawing on the groundbreaking work of theorists ranging from Carl von Clauswitz and Sun Tzu to M. Mitchell Waldrop, General David Petraeus, Richards Heuer, Jr., Orson Scott Card, and others. The new ideas presented here will help the nation to amass a formidable, cumulative intelligence power, with distinct advantages over any and all adversaries of the future regardless of the level of war or type of operational environment.

Advanced Analysis - In Detail:

• Decomposition
• Critical Thinking
• Link Analysis
• Pattern Analysis
• Trend Analysis
• Anticipatory Analysis
• Technical Analysis
• Tendency Analysis
• Anomaly Analysis
• Cultural Analysis
• Semiotics Analysis
• Aggregation Analysis
• Recomposition
• Synthesis

Developing STORM, a Methodology for Evaluating Transit Routes of Transnational Terrorists and Criminals by Mark T. Clark and Brian Janiskee

In July 2008, a California State University (CSU) consortium became the first academic organization to accept a “challenge project” from the NSA’s Institute for Analysis (IFA). A challenge project consists of a question for which the IFA seeks a fresh answer from outside the Intelligence Community (IC). The challenge process begins with individual NSA analysts who approach the IFA with particularly vexing questions. IFA then evaluates these for their importance, timeliness, and suitability to outside research. Once the IFA approves a question for a challenge project, the question is reframed to make it suitable for open-source research by whatever group is assigned the project.

Challenge projects vary in complexity. Some involve a direct, one-time answer to a highly specialized question. Others, however, are more extensive and require the group taking the challenge not only to answer the question but also to provide a reproducible methodology. Customarily, these challenges are contracted out to private firms. However, the IFA recently opened the process to universities identified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as “Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence” (IC CAE).1 The CSU consortium is one of these centers and accepted the first such challenge offered to a university group.

Intelligence Integration in Palantir: An Open-Source View of the Afghan Conflict

In this video, Palantir explores a number of ways that Palantir can help commanders and analysts to achieve the information advantage required to win the Afghan counterinsurgency battle:

• Enabling information flow from the bottom up, ensuring that the critical knowledge gained on the ground reaches all who need to know
• Combining data on insurgent groups and local populations into one common operating picture
• Enriching traditional intelligence with the insights of local leaders, UN officials, NGOs, Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and Civil Affairs officers
• Providing a framework for collaboration in remote and austere environments
  

Download the WMV (54 MB)Note: All data contained in this video are unclassified and open-source.

What Afghanistan Can Learn from Colombia by Robert Haddick

Source:Posted by Robert Haddick on January 11, 2010 10:55 AM on smallwarsjournal.com

The United States will not succeed in Afghanistan if Afghanistan’s own security forces don’t eventually secure the country. Few analysts dispute this point. But do the U.S. and Afghan governments have the right plan for building up Afghanistan’s security forces? In an essay I wrote for The American, a journal published by the American Enterprise Institute, I assert that the U.S. and Afghan governments can learn a lot by studying how over the past decade Colombia reformed its army and greatly improved its security situation.

An excerpt:
Ten years ago, Colombia faced a security crisis in many ways worse than that which Afghanistan currently faces. But over the past decade, Colombia has sharply reduced its murder and kidnapping rates, crushed the array of insurgent groups fighting against the government, demobilized the paramilitary groups that arose during the power vacuum of the 1990s, and significantly restored the rule of law and the presence of the government throughout the country.

With the assistance of a small team of U.S. advisers, Colombia rebuilt its army. In contrast to [General Stanley] McChrystal’s plan for Afghanistan, Colombia focused on quality, not quantity. Colombia’s army and other security forces have achieved impressive success against an insurgency in many ways similar to Afghanistan.

I discuss the similarities and differences between the security challenges in Afghanistan and Colombia. I then argue that Colombia’s relatively small but elite professional army, its emphasis on helicopter mobility, and its local home-guard program provide a powerful model for reforming Afghanistan’s security forces.

Click here to read the essay.

How Crime Pays for the Taliban by Aryn Baker (TIME article)
Taliban: An Organizational Analysis by Major Shahid Afsar, Major Chris Samples, Major Thomas Wood

Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

Working Paper from the Center for New American Security http://www.cnas.org

Authors: Major General Michael T. Flynn, Captain Matt Pottinger, Paul D. Batchelor.

This report critically examines the relevance of the U.S. intelligence community to the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. The authors - Major General Michael T. Flynn, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence in Afghanistan; his advisor Captain Matt Pottinger; and Paul Batchelor, Senior Advisor for Civilian/Military Integrations at ISAF - argue that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate in and the people they are trying to protect and persuade.

Quoting General Stanley McChrystal, the authors write that "Our senior leaders - the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States - are not getting the right information to make decisions with ... The media is driving the issues. We need to build a process from the sensor all the way to the political decision makers."

This report is the blueprint for that process. It describes the problem, details the changes, and illuminates examples of units that are "getting it right." It is aimed at commanders as well as intelligence professionals in Afghanistan, the United States and Europe.

The Evolution of Structured Analytic Techniques by Richards J. Heuer, Jr.

Presentation to the National Academy of Science, National Research Council Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security, Washington, DC, December 8, 2009.

Primary Source: Text and mp3: http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bbcss/DNI_Heuer.html
Available on IAFIE Website as PDF and DOC.

Mr. Heuer has 58 years of experience working for the US Government in both operations and analysis for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1951 to his retirement in 1979, as an independent contractor for CIA from 1979 to 1995, and a consultant for the Department of Defense Personnel Security Research Center from 1995 to the present. He is the co-author of Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence scheduled for publication February 2010, author of the 1999 book Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, and editor of the 1978 book Quantitative Approaches to Political Intelligence: The CIA Experience.

Targeting 101: Emerging Targeting Doctrine by LTC David N. Propes

Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations by Roger Z. George

Drawing on the individual and collective experience of recognized intelligence experts and scholars in the field, "Analyzing Intelligence" provides the first comprehensive assessment of the state of intelligence analysis since 9/11. Its in-depth and balanced evaluation of more than fifty years of U.S. analysis includes a critique of why it has under-performed at times. It provides insights regarding the enduring obstacles as well as new challenges of analysis in the post-9/11 world, and suggests innovative ideas for improved analytical methods, training, and structured approaches. The book's six sections present a coherent plan for improving analysis. Early chapters examine how intelligence analysis has evolved since its origins in the mid-20th century, focusing on traditions, culture, successes, and failures.The middle sections examine how analysis supports the most senior national security and military policymakers and strategists, and how analysts must deal with the perennial challenges of collection, politicization, analytical bias, knowledge building and denial and deception. The final sections of the book propose new ways to address enduring issues in warning analysis, methodology (or 'analytical tradecraft') and emerging analytic issues like homeland defense. The book suggests new forms of analytic collaboration in a global intelligence environment, and imperatives for the development of a new profession of intelligence analysis. "Analyzing Intelligence" is written for the national security expert who needs to understand the role of intelligence and its strengths and weaknesses.Practicing and future analysts will also find that its attention to the enduring challenges provides useful lessons-learned to guide their own efforts. The innovations section will provoke senior intelligence managers to consider major changes in the way analysis is currently organized and conducted, and the way that analysts are trained and perform.

Technical Surveillance Countermeasures Handbook

Cascade-based attack vulnerability on the US power grid

Authors: Jian-Wei Wang and Li-Li Rong

Safety Science, Vol. 47, No. 10. (16 December 2009), pp. 1332-1336

The vulnerability of real-life networks subject to intentional attacks has been one of the outstanding challenges in the study of the network safety. Applying the real data of the US power grid, we compare the effects of two different attacks for the network robustness against cascading failures, i.e., removal by either the descending or ascending orders of the loads. In one case, our investigation by the numerical simulations leads to a counterintuitive finding on the US power grid that the attack on the nodes with the lowest loads is more harmful than the attack on the ones with the highest loads. In addition, the almost same effect of two attacks may be useful in furthering studies on the control and defense of cascading failures in the US power grid.

The Peoples Liberation Army and China in Transition Stephen J. Flanagan and Michael E. Marti, Center for the Study of Chineses Military Affairs, National Defense University

Preemptive Strikes Crucial in Limited High-Tech Wars. Lu Linzhi
Unrestricted Warfare. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui

Company Intelligence Support Teams by Rod Morgan

The mission of the company intel cell is to describe the effects of the weather, enemy, terrain, and local population upon friendly operations in order to reduce the commander’s uncertainty
and aid in his decision making. - Headquarters, Department of the Navy, U.S. Marine Corps X-File 2-1.1, Company Intelligence Cell in Stability and Support Operations (SASO), GPO, Washington, DC, 17 December 2004.

Overwatch Tactical Operations Company Intelligence Support Team (CoIST) software suite: It is generally accepted that while conducting counterinsurgency (COIN) operations killing the enemy is relatively easy; however, finding him is much more difficult. In fact, finding the enemy is rapidly becoming a process of think-to-contact versus actual movement-to-contact to develop the timely (actionable) intelligence traditionally lacking at the lowest tactical levels. Even more difficult is not creating more insurgents than you kill or capture. Full spectrum operations, both lethal and non-lethal, are the key to successful COIN operations. Such operations rely on accurate, timely information derived from the bottom up through patrol debriefings, sensitive site exploitation, tactical questioning, tips, and other sources, analyzed and exploited at the lowest level.

National Intelligence Support Teams
JP 2-01 Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations

Introduction to Social Networks by Robert A. Hanneman and Mark Riddle

This on-line textbook introduces many of the basics of formal approaches to the analysis of social networks. The text relies heavily on the work of Freeman, Borgatti, and Everett (the authors of the UCINET software package). The materials here, and their organization, were also very strongly influenced by the text of Wasserman and Faust, and by a graduate seminar conducted by Professor Phillip Bonacich at UCLA.

UCINET
UCINET Reference Manual
UCINET Users Guide
ANTHROPAC

Analytic Technologies Software

The Content Analysis Guidebook by Kimberly A. Neuendorf

Content analysis is an indepth analysis using quantitative or qualitative techniques of messages using a scientific method (including attention to objectivity-intersubjectivity, a priori design, reliability, validity, generalizability, replicability, and hypothesis testing) and is not limited as to the types of variables that may be measured or the context in which the messages are created or presented.

The Content Analysis Guidebook Online