DC Based CI Courses Now Open For Registration (Shameless Self Promotion)

How would you like to take counterintel courses for graduate credit from some of the most experienced CI professionals in the world?  Now you can...

Mercyhurst University has been teaching counterintelligence courses in the DC area for a number of years.  Traditionally, we have done this in coordination with a government or private partner.  Last year, though, we opened these classes up to qualified students throughout the DC area.

These courses (there are three of them) make up our Graduate Certificate in Counterintelligence.  All of the classes are accredited, of course, and are taught one per quarter for three quarters.  If you want the certificate, you would need to take all three and take them in series.  If you are just interested in learning more about the CI field, then you could opt to take just the first course -- it is entirely your call.

The first course in this series will be offered in early September and run for approximately 10 weeks.  The course is not offered online and will meet once a week in the evening at a location in the vicinity of Tyson's Corner.  There are no pre-requisites other than a bachelors degree from an accredited university.

The courses are taught by Ray Batvinis, Bob Stephan and Tim Almon.  Stephan is the author of Stalin's Secret War and has over 20 years experience with CIA, DIA and the USAF; Batvinis spent 25 years at the FBI working on CI issues at the highest levels, Almon spent 25 years at the FBI before becoming the Director of Counterintelligence and Security Programs on the National Security Council Staff for Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Because of their experience and contacts, one of the unique aspects of these classes are the kinds of guest speakers they can draw.  For example, they have been able to bring together Plato Cacheris and John Martin (the defense attorney and the federal prosecutor in the Robert Hanssen case) for a one-of-a-kind roundtable.

This brief note cannot do either this course or the guys teaching it justice.  If you want more information, please do not hesitate to contact the director of our online and distance learning programs, Linda Bremmer, at 814 824 2170 or lbremmer at mercyhurst dot edu.

Registration is now open!

Entry-level Competitive Intelligence Analyst Jobs Report Out Now!

Here it is!

The 1st Annual Entry-level Hiring Projections For Competitive Intelligence Report!

This final report completes our series which also includes:

• Hiring projections for entry-level intelligence analysts for the national security community
• Hiring projections for entry-level intelligence analysis in law enforcement

All three reports take a look at the market for entry-level analysts for the next 12 months.  The primary source of our information is a survey we conducted of professionals in all three sub-disciplines of intelligence who had direct or significant indirect knowledge of hiring intentions within their firm or organization (Many thanks once again to all who participated!).  We added to that information a variety of secondary sources to help us draw our conclusions.

All three reports were put together by one of our top quality grad students, Whitney Bergendahl (full credit to Whitney for sticking this thing through - None of us knew just how difficult it was going to be...) with an assist from another grad student for editing and packaging and from my colleague Prof. Shelly Freyn.

We intend to conduct the same survey in the fall so keep an eye out for it.  Finally, and as always, send your comments to me or leave one below!

Entry-Level Intel Analysts In Law Enforcement Jobs Report Now Available For Download!

Last fall, we began a quest to capture the hiring prospects over the next 12 months for entry-level intelligence analysts (the kind we produce) in each of the three major sub-disciplines of intel:  National security, law enforcement and business.

Today we are putting out the 2012 Entry-Level  Hiring Projections for Law Enforcement Intelligence report (click on the link to download).

The report was compiled by the same analyst who produced the national security report to rave reviews, Whitney Bergendahl.

This report contains, in addition to Whitney's analysis, the collected wisdom of all the hiring managers and intelligence professionals who took our survey on job prospects.  I would particularly like to thank the International Association of Crime Analysts and the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts for circulating our survey among their members.

Of course, we welcome your feedback (send it directly to me or leave a comment below).   For those of you interested, in December, 2011, we put out the national security report and you can still find the details here.  We look forward to publishing the last installment on the business market for jobs next week some time.

Modern Spies, An Excellent BBC Documentary

One of our sharp-eyed alums just informed me of an excellent new BBC series called Modern Spies.  It appears to be focused primarily on the HUMINT side of the business but it does include interviews from active officers in MI6, MI5, the FBI and CIA.  The full series does not appear to be available through the main website to people outside the UK but episode 1 (embedded below) is available through YouTube.

Advanced Analytic Techniques Is Back! (ADVAT.blogspot.com)

It has been some time (almost two years) but I am back teaching one of my favorite electives - Advanced Analytic Techniques.

This course is unlike any of the other courses I teach.  Rather than focus on a specific body of knowledge, this course allows students to explore their own interests while learning to use, and more importantly, evaluate various analytic techniques used by intelligence professionals.

While each student is hyper-focused on a single technique and topic, each week we take a quick look at a technique that no one in the class is examining; something the class is interested in that we would otherwise not be able to get to.

The week starts with each student going out and finding relevant articles from peer reviewed journals and elsewhere which they then summarize and post to the Advanced Analytic Techniques blog.  Each student then reads the summary and votes on whether or not they thought the article was "interesting" or not.  They are also required to post a couple of comments in order to get the dialogue going and to give the original poster some feedback.

From these articles, we are trying to get a sense of the technique -- How to describe it, what are the technique's strengths and weaknesses, how to actually use it in practice, etc.  We are also trying to begin to evaluate the technique.  We are not trying to evaluate the technique in general, though.  Rather, we are trying to evaluate the technique with respect to its utility in intelligence analysis.

Specifically, we are looking to see if the technique actually improves forecasting accuracy, if it is relatively simple (or, at least, if complex, does that complexity pay off with remarkably better results), can it be used across intelligence disciplines (i.e. is it flexible), if it works well with the kinds of unstructured data typical to intelligence analysis and, finally, if the technique facilitates the communication of the results to a decisionmaker.

Once we get into class, one of the teams conducts an exercise utilizing the method.  The exercise is designed primarily to give us a feel for how the technique works in practice.  Due to time constraints, we typically try to keep this exercise focused on the core elements of the technique.

Finally, we put together the posts that summarize what we have learned about the technique over the week.  Since I have a fairly large class (large, at least for a graduate seminar...), I have two teams that work mostly independently on their posts.  Comparing these two views of the same topic, based on the same journal articles and the same exercise, but with often dramatically different interpretations, is often a learning experience to itself.

So far this term we have looked at

• Multi-criteria Intelligence Matrices
• Decision Trees
• Role-playing

I would certainly encourage anyone interested in intelligence analysis techniques to follow along and comment as you deem fit.   We certainly don't claim to be experts in any of these techniques that we briefly examine and review each week and we would welcome your contributions.  Likewise, if you are new to these techniques yourself, this is a great place to start and learn more!