Another First For Mercyhurst! School Of Intelligence Studies and Information Sciences Announced Today!

Tom Ridge, Former PA Governor and first Secretary of Homeland
Security, speaks at the opening of the School of Intelligence
Studies and Information Sciences

Today, Mercyhurst University announced that the Department of Intelligence Studies would be merged with the Department of Math and Computer Science and the Department of Communications to form the seventh school within the University:  The Tom Ridge School of Intelligence Studies and Information Sciences.

Named after former Pennsylvania governor and first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, the new school takes its place among more traditional schools such as the School of Social Sciences and the School of Business...

(Sounds like a damn press release.   If your readers wanted that, they should go here.  You should give them a feel for what this really means...)

This is a big deal.  A really big deal.

In the first place, there is no other University in the country (perhaps in the world) that has a school dedicated to a vision of Intelligence Studies as an applied discipline, that teaches students how to get intelligence done and not just how to talk about it.

Secondly, it is going to allow us to grow our programs exponentially.  First up is a new and complementary masters degree that will focus on data analytics - so-called "big data". My own hope is that we will soon begin to offer a doctorate - but not a PhD - in Applied Intelligence.  I don't know what the new Dean of the School, Dr. Jim Breckenridge, wants it to look like, but I want it to be a professional doctorate, like an MD or a JD, that will focus not only on intelligence analysis but also on the special challenges of leading and managing the intelligence enterprise.

Third, it validates the vision of Bob Heibel, the founder of the Mercyhurst program.  Twenty-two years ago, long before 911, before even the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Bob had the radical idea that academia could do a pretty good job educating the next generation of intelligence analysts.  Almost 1000 students have graduated from our residential, online degree, or certificate programs since then.  These alumni are today employed throughout the national security, business and law enforcement intelligence communities.

Governor Ridge said today that the nation owes a debt of gratitude to Bob for what he has contributed to the safety and security of the US and, through our international students, of the world.  It is a testament to what one person can do when he really believes in something.

How A Course In Early Christian And Byzantine Art Saved My Life (Or: Why Intelligence Belongs At A Liberal Arts University)

It was 1994.  I had just been sent to the Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia (FYROM to
everyone in the government at the time and Macedonia to all the Macedonians) by my new boss, a one-star general by the name of Michael Hayden.

Macedonia had just declared its independence and the US had  deployed a handful of soldiers in isolated outposts up and down the Serb-Macedonian border. They were part of a UN mission to lessen some dangerous tensions brewing between the new Macedonian state and Serbia.  The Macedonians called us "saviors."  The US soldiers, in their highly visible outposts and facing a robustly armed and equipped Serb army, had another name for themselves - "speed bumps."

I was the liaison between the US diplomatic mission (we didn't have an embassy there yet) and the US European Command. What this meant in practice was that I had a beat up old rental car and lots of freedom to go where I thought I needed to go and see what I thought I needed to see.

It was great.

One day, I was driving northeast of Kumanovo (see the map).  This area had a large concentration of Serbs, Serbs who had been cut off from Serbia and from their extended families who (now) lived right across the border.  Like everything in the Balkans, this one wasn't easy but it also wasn't out of control yet.  

GPS was still a couple of years away and I was finding my way around the area the old fashioned way - with a map.  The only maps we had were 1:50,000 scale maps that had actually been given to the US by the former Yugoslavia (before the break up) and local, highly inaccurate, tourist maps.

I say I was finding my way around the area but actually I was just plain lost.  Not so lost I had no idea where I was, but lost enough to feel like I had to pull over and talk to someone.  My Serbian was good enough in those days to communicate but my accent marked me hopelessly as an American.  

The locals I spoke with were none too happy to see me and one made a point of letting me see the shotgun he was carrying.  Pointedly, they asked (demanded, really) to know what I was doing there.

Well...I wasn't doing anything.  I was just driving around.  I didn't know if anything was going to happen on the border but if it did, I didn't want to have to describe what it looked like from a desk in Skopje.  I wanted to have seen the terrain before it became famous.  

But there was no telling that to my new-found "friends", though.  An American with passable Serbian running around in civilian clothes and a rental car just had to be a spy, didn't he?  So I said the first thing that came into my head: "I'm here to see the frescoes."

Because I had excellent instruction in early Christian and Byzantine art while attending Florida State University for my masters degree, I knew that was actually a pretty safe answer anywhere in the Balkans.  You are never too far away from a stunningly beautiful Byzantine era church usually decorated with frescoes or mosaics from the 1100's or earlier.

My escorts may have thought the same thing because they made sure I got to the church (less out of courtesy and more as a way of testing me).  It was not until the local priest and I became involved in a rather lengthy discussion of the Passion Cycle depicted on the walls of the nave, pictures of which I had also seen repeatedly in class from a wide variety of Byzantine churches, that these nervous Serb townsfolk began to drift away. 

I'll never know for sure if that art class saved my life of course, but, to me at least, it does prove a point.  Intelligence is the most interdisciplinary of disciplines.  Analysts are routinely expected to understand data from diverse fields such as economics, politics, cultural anthropology, military affairs, history, public health, the hard sciences and, yes, even art.

A good liberal arts university provides the kind of depth and breadth that intelligence analysts need.  When Bob Heibel started the program at Mercyhurst over 20 years ago, I know he saw the need for analysts to have a wide range of experiences and knowledge ranging from language and rhetoric to statistics and computer science.  Today, it is easy to see that Bob's vision was correct.  As counter-intuitive as it may seem to some, the applied discipline of intelligence studies is most at home in a liberal arts setting.

Mercyhurst College Is Now Mercyhurst University (WOOT!)

For the last several years Mercyhurst has been going through the administrative process of changing our status from a "College" to a "University".  Yesterday, we received notice from the State of Pennsylvania that our application had been approved. 

(Note:  I am going to talk about what I think this means and some of the new things that are likely to emerge as a result but I am also interested in what you have to say. so please leave a comment if you have one!)

This process actually began even before the first piece of paperwork went in.  We changed our Carnegie Classification a number of years ago to better represent the courses, degree programs and research opportunities we offered.

Now that the status issue is resolved, we are all dealing with the inevitable administrative details that result from  such a change, the first of which is our name.  The Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies (MCIIS) is likely to change to the overwhelmingly favored Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst University (IIS-MU) at some point.  The institute's website (mciis.org) will likely get an upgrade at about the same time.

More interesting than the administrative details are some of our longer range initiatives.  The University (going to take me awhile to get used to writing that...) intends to pursue doctorate programs in some of our majors, for example.  Our hope is to be one of the first.  I don't think we want to pursue a PhD type program, however, as there are already a number of PhD programs that would allow a student to focus on the academic aspects of studying intelligence.

Rather, I think we should, like MDs and JDs, offer a professional doctorate (DI? ID? InD?).  The focus of  such a degree, if I had my way, would be on application -- the actual doing of intelligence analysis -- rather than just talking about it.  Specifically, I would like us to provide our doctoral students a chance to become better leaders and managers in addition to gaining increased skills as analysts.

We are obviously some distance from this objective but the conversation about the future direction of the intelligence studies program is starting.  Now is the time to chime in!

Mercyhurst Students, Faculty, Alums, Friends: IAI? Or IIS? Help Us Decide!

It is shaping up to be a heckuva year for intelligence studies at Mercyhurst.  This fall we are welcoming our largest freshman class ever (we now have over 400 students in the program!), next summer we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary and 12 months from September 1, we should be moving into a new building.

One other major development that could also occur impacts more than just our little slice of heaven, though -- Mercyhurst College could become Mercyhurst University (though the timeline for this is much more variable, obviously).

With all this happening, it occurred to several of the faculty that we ought to re-examine our name.  It started with the genuine naming problem presented by having an "MU" to deal with but expanded into a fairly deep (for us, that is) discussion of who and what we are.

With that in mind, I decided to see what our students, faculty, alumni and friends might think of our two current top choices.  Using the wonderful Swayable tool, I put it to you:  Which do you prefer, the more traditional "The Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst University"? Or the alternative, "The Institute for Applied Intelligence at Mercyhurst University"?  Cast your vote below!

If you don't like either one, leave a comment below!

Mercyhurst Intel Program Growing Again! New Faculty, New Building! (Shameless Self-promotion)

These are heady times on the shores of Lake Erie!  Within the next six months, we are set to hire at least two new full time faculty members and to break ground on a new building to house (among others) the Intelligence Studies Department and the Center For Intelligence Research Analysis And Training.

As for the faculty, we are currently looking to hire two new full time professors for next year.  For more information about the positions, the Chronicle of Higher Education has the complete details.  For anyone interested in the program, I recommend www.mciis.org, or in the college, I recommend www.mercyhurst.edu.  For those interested in (or nervous about) Erie, I recommend this amazing post.

Those of you who have made the pilgrimage to Mercyhurst know that we are bursting at the seams in our current digs.  The new building will not only give us room to stretch our legs in a state-of-the-art facility but also allow us to more easily interact with the faculty and students of other departments -- an opportunity that I think we all are excited about. 

The latest sketch of the new building is in the picture above.  For those of you familiar with the campus, the building is set to be north and east of the library in the very front of the campus.  The bridge on the third floor (visible in this picture) will connect the new building to the library.  The funding for the basic version of the building, as I understand it, is largely complete.  We are now looking for some generous donors to make it even more awesome...

So, students, parents, alumni and friends of the program, what do you think?  Leave a note in the comments!

Intelligence Studies At US Universities: Who Does It? Who Does It Well? Where Is It Headed? (Dissertation)

One of the questions that seems to pop up with increasing frequency on the fora, blogs and email lists I frequent/subscribe to is "I am interested in a career in intelligence; where can I get a degree?"

William Spracher's recent dissertation, National Security Intelligence Professional Education:   A Map of U.S. Civilian University Programs and Competencies, not only answers this important question but also provides the first comprehensive snapshot of intelligence studies programs in the US.

NOTE:  The full text of the dissertation is embedded below or you can download the dissertation here.

Of particular interest to potential students will be Bill's descriptions of 14 of the most fully developed intel studies programs (beginning on page 136 with a handy summary chart on page 137) and the results of his survey of young intelligence professionals (beginning on page 76). 

Senior leaders within the intel community are probably going to be interested in the entire dissertation but I found the "crosswalk" of course offerings with ICD 610's intel core competencies (at Appendix C on page 235) to be particularly interesting.

Once caveat, though.  This dissertation, as useful as it is, is, in my opinion, just a snapshot of a quickly evolving target.  The dissertation was finalized in 2009 and I am sure that some of the info Bill uses was collected even earlier.  Bill recommends that the DNI stay on top of the trends in this field and, given the changes I have seen in just the last year or two, it is a recommendation with which I heartily concur.

National Security Intelligence Professional Education: A Map of U.S. Civilian University Programs and Com...

Free Intel Studies Book! (MCIIS Press)

We have just published a new book, Walking Through The Halls Of Intelligence, and, in keeping with our philosophy, we have made a PDF version free to download.

The book summarizes the results of 12 recent graduate theses and covers topics such as:

• A Predictive Model For Clandestine Nuclear Programs


• Is China Stable?


• Accountability: Process And Outcome Systems For Intelligence Analysts


• Personality Types Of Intelligence Analysts

You can also buy a copy of the book (it is a great coffee table book -- with hard cover and dust jacket). All of the profits from the sale of the hard copy go to support graduate level research here at Mercyhurst.

The book was originally a class project in my graduate level class in Intelligence Communications last year. I wanted students to become familiar with the thesis process and the thesis results of previous graduate students (much of which covers topics not previously or, at least, not widely covered in the intelligence studies literature). I also wanted the students to produce an integrated document and to make that document readable.

As a result, I had them write a book...

Their guidance for the individual chapters was to mimic the feature writing style from good news and science magazines (such as Newsweek and New Scientist) and to compile all of the articles into a book length document.

In addition to reading the theses, contacting the original authors for more info, speaking with the thesis advisors and others regarding the importance of the work, they also had to make a variety of group decisions such as settling on a common format and make numerous production decisions (such as cover artwork and layout).

In the end, the book was good enough that we decided to publish it using the same model that we used with the Analyst's Style Manual (still available for both free download and purchase).

It is licensed under a Creative Commons license which means you can download it, share it, use it in classes -- whatever.

While you are there, you might also want to check out the new Mercyhurst College Institute Of Intelligence Studies website. We are still adding content but the look and feel are entirely different.

We have also done a better job of integrating the MCIIS website with the college's main site (for example, if you know a high school student that you think should be thinking about a career in intelligence, there is a link directly from the MCIIS website to a "request for information" page).

Finally, the last time we did this, you crushed our servers with requests, so, if you can't get to the download page immediately, I suggest you wait ten minutes and try again.

Evaluating Intelligence (Original Research)

(This is another in a series of posts that I refer to as “experimental scholarship” -- or using the medium of the internet and the vehicle of this blog as a way to put my research online for more or less real-time peer review. Earlier examples of this genre include: A Wiki Is Like A Room..., The Revolution Begins On Page 5, What Is Intelligence? and What Do Words Of Estimative Probability Mean?.

In addition, astute readers will note that some of what I write here I have previously discussed in other places, most notably in an article written with my long-time collaborator, Diane Chido, for Competitive Intelligence Magazine and in a chapter of our book on Structured Analysis Of Competing Hypotheses (written with Diane, Katrina Altman, Rick Seward and Jim Kelly). Diane and the others clearly deserve full credit for their contribution to this current iteration of my thinking on this topic.)


Evaluating intelligence is tricky.

Really tricky.

Sherman Kent, one of the foremost early thinkers regarding the analytic process in the US national security intelligence community wrote in 1976, “Few things are asked the estimator more often than "How good is your batting average?" No question could be more legitimate--and none could be harder to answer.” So difficult was the question that Kent reports not only the failure of a three year effort in the 50’s to establish the validity of various National Intelligence Estimates but also the immense relief among the analysts in the Office of National Estimates (forerunner of the National Intelligence Council) when the CIA “let the enterprise peter out.”

Unfortunately for intelligence professionals, the decisionmakers that intelligence supports have no such difficulty evaluating the intelligence they receive. They routinely and publicly find intelligence to be “wrong” or lacking in some significant respect. Abbot Smith, writing for Studies In Intelligence in 1969, cataloged many of these errors in On The Accuracy Of National Intelligence Estimates. The list of failures at the time included the development of the Soviet H-bomb, the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Missile Gap. The Tet Offensive, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Weapons of Mass Destruction fiasco in Iraq would soon be added to the list of widely recognized (at least by decisionmakers) “intelligence failures”.

Nor was the US the only intelligence community to suffer such indignities. The Soviets had their Operation RYAN, the Israelis their Yom Kippur War and the British their Falklands Island. In each case, after the fact, senior government officials, the press and ordinary citizens alike pinned the black rose of failure on their respective intelligence communities.

To be honest, in some cases, the intelligence organization in question deserved the criticism but, in many cases, it did not -- or at least not the full measure of fault it received. However, whether the blame was earned or not, in the aftermath of each of these cases, commissions were duly summoned, investigations into the causes of the failure examined, recommendations made and changes, to one degree or another, ratified regarding the way intelligence was to be done in the future.

While much of the record is still out of the public eye, I suspect it is safe to say that intelligence successes rarely received such lavish attention.

Why do intelligence professionals find intelligence so difficult, indeed impossible, to evaluate while decisionmakers do so routinely? Is there a practical model for thinking about the problem of evaluating intelligence? What are the logical consequences for both intelligence professionals and decisionmakers that derive from this model? Finally, is there a way to test the model using real world data?

I intend to attempt to answer all of these questions but first I need to tell you a story…

Tomorrow: A Tale Of Two Weathermen

Top 5 Intelligence Analysis Methods (List)

(Note: I was recently asked to name and describe my top 5 intelligence analysis methods. As I began to think about it, what seemed like a fairly straightforward question morphed into what I could only think of a series of blog posts. So, here they are...)

Considerable emphasis has been put on improving the methods of intelligence analysis over the last six years. The 9/11 Report alluded to the need for it, the WMD Commission addressed it more directly and the DNI recently highlighted the continued requirement for advanced analytic techniques in its Vision: 2015 document.

Still, the intuitive method (also known as "read a bunch of stuff, think about it for a bit and then write something") remains the most popular method for producing intelligence analysis despite this method's well known tendency to permit a wide range of cognitive and systemic biases to corrupt the analytic product (see Heuer and Tetlock for excellent overviews of these problems).

Beyond the intuitive method (and the interesting defenses of it offered by books such as Blink and Gut Feelings), what, then, are the best methods for conducting intelligence analysis? Given the wide range of intelligence analysis problems (tactical, operational, strategic) and the large number of disciplines using intelligence analysis to support decisionmaking (national security, law enforcement and business) is there any chance that I can identify the five best methods?

My answer is, obviously, "Yes!" but before the fighting begins (and there will be fighting...), I intend to give myself a chance of convincing you by defining not only what I mean when I say "method", but also what makes for a good one.

What Is An Intelligence Analysis Method?

The word "method" is often used casually by analysts. When used this way, processes as different as brainstorming and Analysis Of Competing Hypotheses can both be seen as "methods" or ways to improve thinking. While such an informal definition might work at a cocktail party, it is not very helpful for professional purposes. "Method", in my opinion, should be reserved for processes that produce or substantially help the analyst produce estimative results.

Why?

It is simple, really. Estimative results are what decisionmakers want most from intelligence. It is nice to have a good description of an item of interest or a decent explanation of why something did or did not happen. Both provide useful context for the decisionmaker, but nothing beats a good, solid estimate of what the enemy or competitor or criminal is likely to do next. Defining method as something that produces estimative results means that I am connecting the most common term with the most desired result.

All the processes that help the analyst think but do not, by themselves, produce estimative results (such as brainstorming) I call "analytic multipliers". I get this from my military background, I suppose, where there are elements of combat power, such as armor or artillery, and combat multipliers, such as morale.

Analytic tools, then, are particular pieces of software, etc. that operationalize the method or the multiplier (or in some cases multiple methods and multipliers) in a particular way. For example, ACH is a method but the PARC ACH 2.0.3 software is a tool that allows the analyst to more easily do ACH.

I find these distinctions very useful in discussing the analytic process with students. If everything is a method -- if free association exercises are treated, linguistically, the same as multi-attribute utility analysis, for example -- then nothing, in the mind of the student, is a method. Clearly, not every process falls neatly into the method or multiplier camp (what is SWOT, for example, under these definitions?) but some generally agreed upon set of words to capture the large and easily recognizable differences between things such as ACH and brainstorming seems useful.

Tomorrow: What makes a good method?

Live Blogging The ISA Conference...

I will be out at the International Studies Association Convention in San Francisco most of next week. Many readers of this blog will be there as well but for those of you who can't make it, I intend to blog from the conference and I am looking for your input on what I should be blogging about.

There are a gazillion presentations at the ISA conference each year (You can download the full program here) but I will be focusing first on the panels in the Intelligence Studies Section (click on the document embedded below for a complete list of the ISS panels -- Thanks to Steve Marrin for forwarding!).

I don't get out to San Francisco until late Thursday of next week and I want to sit in on the 1545 presentations by my grad students, Josh Peterson and Rachel Kesselman (Josh has done some absolutely outstanding empirical research on the legitimate elements of analytic confidence and Rachel has done some first-rate work on identifying and understanding changes in the way words of estimative probability have been used in National Intelligence Estimates from the 1950's to the present).

All day Friday and most of Saturday, though, I am free to sit in on whatever you, dear readers, want me to sit in on (Saturday at 1545 I am presenting the final version of "A Wiki Is Like A Room...". That presentation is clearly going to be dwarfed, though, by the all-star panel of experts on global disease and analysis. If you have an early flight out, you might want to re-think it).

So, let me know (either in an e-mail or in a comment to this post) what you want me to go see. I will be happy to summarize what I hear about intelligence studies or in other panels and ask what questions you want me to ask. Just let me know!