Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2016 | Page 16

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
techniques. The following quotes demonstrate variations or points along this spectrum,
with some fully disavowing training and others fully embracing it.
We make it specific that we don’t do training.
We really don’t [do training]…I’m a firm believer in education, not the
training side…We tend to stray away from the training aspect because…
that piece is far less enduring than…the educational piece.
We don’t want to be, and we’re not good at, training them to do exactly
what the CIA does in certain analytic tradecraft…So we expose them to
it, but, really the emphasis is getting back to the liberal arts, social science
methodology type emphasis we have.
No, we’re very academic-oriented…they get real-time work, there’s a
training aspect in that they learn the important things, the basics, and
the advanced techniques for analysis and research…they do learn about
writing for intelligence…otherwise it’s a full academic program…the
graduate program, purely academic.
Our program is an academic program, but it still has that practical, what
I would call training, aspect to it. I find it to be, I would say, a very good
combination of traditional training and academics.
A number of respondents viewed certain (other) programs as being heavily, even
fundamentally, training-oriented, and as the quote immediately above demonstrates,
some openly took on that identity. These programs were described as focusing on
analytic tradecraft to be applied to “hands-on,” “hard” security issues and problems,
a key distinction some interviewees noted between different kinds of academic
intelligence programs. Some of our respondents praised this approach, though more
were critical. Some called this a philosophical difference and were also skeptical about
how the IC viewed such programs. Along these lines, some of our respondents said:
Unlike many, my impression is most programs, we are not following, “let’s
pump out fully trained intelligence analysts out the other side”…that was
done strategically, the notion being that that doesn’t go over super well
with employers.
Theirs is far more hands-on, OJT [on-the-job-training] type stuff. They’re
just going to get you ready to start the job…we resist that tendency, that
push.
Most of the intelligence educators we spoke with would not suggest that their
program is intended to produce immediately job-ready intelligence professionals.
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