Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 99

The Challenge of Evaluating and Testing Critical Thinking in Potential Intelligence Analysts
and challenged with greater frequency
internally in the IC and externally by
the President, federal agencies, and academics
over the last twenty years, especially
as national academic scores have
declined. To combat this, on June 21,
2007, the DNI signed and implemented
ICD 203, Analytic Standards, regulating
and providing baseline competencies
for the production and evaluation
of intelligence analysis and analytical
products, mandating critical thinking
standards in the IC. This occurred
after the IC was called to task in the
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
Commission Report. The report stated,
“Perhaps most troubling, we found an
Intelligence Community in which analysts
had a difficult time stating their
assumptions upfront, explicitly explaining
their logic, and, in the end,
identifying unambiguously for policymakers
what they do not know. In sum,
we found that many of the most basic
processes and functions for producing
accurate and reliable intelligence are
broken and underutilized” (Pigg 2009).
These accusations have continued
to haunt the IC. Since his election,
President Trump has also questioned
their reliability and aptitude, tweeting
in April 2019, “They are wrong! Perhaps
intelligence should go back to school!”
(Trump 2019). This was in response to
DNI Dan Coats and other senior intelligence
leaders contradicting President
Trump’s assertions on Iran, North Korea,
and ISIS. At a news conference on
Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s death in October
2019, President Trump commented,
“I’ve dealt with some people that aren’t
very intelligent having to do with intel”
(Baker 2019). While the President’s
apprehensions are part of his straightforward
style, the IC has reasons to be
concerned.
In a study by the National Defense
Intelligence College on critical
thinking and IAs, David Moore examined
repeated intelligence failures, including
Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile
Crises, the invasion of Kuwait, and
WMD. He states, “While hindsight is
an imperfect mirror for reviewing the
past, one conclusion to be drawn from
a review of the evidence is that critical
thinking could have minimized many of
the ensuing crises” (Moore 2007). “For
example, the Senate noted in its review
of the failure [of WMD] that [rather]
than thinking imaginatively and considering
seemingly unlikely and unpopular
possibilities, the IC, instead found
itself wedded to a set of assumptions
about Iraq, focusing on intelligence reporting
that appeared to confirm those
assumptions” (Moore 2007). In his article,
Moore also mentions a graduate of
the National Security Administration’s
critical thinking and structured analysis
class, who attended an IC seminar
on counterintelligence that included
representatives from all branches of
the IC, including Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of
Investigation case officers. During the
class, the instructor used a case study
for students to use to decide how best
to analyze and investigate data to find
a mole. Differing opinions surfaced,
but a common thread appeared among
the case officers: follow your gut feeling
and collect evidence to support that assumption
(Moore 2007). From a critical
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