Intelligence Analysis: a Target-centric Approach

For nearly 50 years, facing a static enemy, American intelligence analysis was based on a hierarchical decision-making process that oftentimes insulated analysts from criticism and interaction with the ultimate consumers of their product. In countering asymmetric threats and non-state adversaries, the model is simply outmoded. A flatter, horizontal, networked solution has proven much more effective in today's world.

In his second edition, Robert Clark--former CIA analyst and executive in the Intelligence Directorate--explains how a collaborative, target-centric process both attends to the needs of the customer and promotes more effective collection. Based on feedback from users, early chapters introduce the concept of model synthesis more gradually. Recent intelligence events--with the Iraqi WMD Commission Report at center stage--illustrate the importance of target-centric analysis. This revision also includes broader treatment of collection strategies, systems analysis, and analyst-customer interaction as well as more attention to denial and deception, and to both counterterrorism and counterintelligence analysis.

This new edition contains updates of the practical information and day-to-day details from the previous book told as only an experienced intelligence hand could. Extensive descriptions of the art of target modeling and organizational analysis, as well as thoroughly detailed overviews of the quantitative and predictive techniques used in intelligence analysis make this book an essential tool for illuminating an often shadowy world.

Robert M. Clark has been an intelligence analyst for 36 years, currently serving as an independent consultant assessing threats to U.S. space systems. He helped develop and is a faculty member for the Intelligence Community Officers' Course. Clark is the former president and CEO of the Scientific and Technical Analysis Corporation. He served in the United States Air Force as an electronics warfare officer and intelligence officer, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel, and in the CIA as an analyst and as the chief of the Directorate of Intelligence's Analytic Support Group. Clark holds an SB from MIT, a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, and a JD from George Washington University. He is a presidential interchange executive, a member of the Virginia state bar, and a patent attorney.