Intelligence Failure and Reform: Evaluating the 9/1l Commission Report, by Joshua Rovner and Austin Long, is relevant to the topic of imagination and the role of analysts. It is worth reading.
"There is a significant gap between the Commission’s theory of insufficient imagination and its proposed solutions. It is unlikely that any of the major changes will help generate analytical imagination. The creation of national intelligence centers is a costly enterprise that rests on unrealistic faith in policymakers’ objectivity. The call for a larger and more diverse community of analysts may perversely drive down the quality of its work. And there is no reason to expect that the DCI will be more able to stimulate imagination after he is stripped of his title as principal intelligence advisor.
More sensible proposals in the Commission report are only peripheral to the imagination problem. These include expanding the FBI’s intelligence capabilities and mandating regular DOD and DHS threat and readiness assessments. These plans build upon existing resources and should offer some gain. One recommendation, declassifying the intelligence budget, was both logical and clearly relevant to the theory of failure. Ironically, this was the proposal Congress chose to reject."
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