Psychology of Intelligence Analysis

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Author’s Preface
This volume pulls together and republishes, with some editing,
updating, and additions, articles written during 1978–86 for internal
use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. Four of the articles also
appeared in the Intelligence Community journal Studies in Intelligence
during that time frame. The information is relatively timeless and still
relevant to the never-ending quest for better analysis.

The articles are based on reviewing cognitive psychology literature
concerning how people process information to make judgments on incomplete
and ambiguous information. I selected the experiments and
findings that seem most relevant to intelligence analysis and most in need
of communication to intelligence analysts. I then translated the technical
reports into language that intelligence analysts can understand and
interpreted the relevance of these findings to the problems intelligence
analysts face.

The result is a compromise that may not be wholly satisfactory to
either research psychologists or intelligence analysts. Cognitive psychologists
and decision analysts may complain of oversimplification, while
the non-psychologist reader may have to absorb some new terminology.
Unfortunately, mental processes are so complex that discussion of them
does require some specialized vocabulary. Intelligence analysts who have
read and thought seriously about the nature of their craft should have
no difficulty with this book. Those who are plowing virgin ground may
require serious effort.

I wish to thank all those who contributed comments and suggestions
on the draft of this book: Jack Davis (who also wrote the Introduction);
four former Directorate of Intelligence (DI) analysts whose names cannot
be cited here; my current colleague, Prof. Theodore Sarbin; and my editor
at the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, Hank Appelbaum.
All made many substantive and editorial suggestions that helped greatly
to make this a better book.
—Richards J. Heuer, Jr.