Intelligence Studies

The U.S. Intelligence Community plays a key role in informing decision-makers and shaping the terms of reference for policy debate in Washington, DC. Its rules, methods, standards, attitudes, and behaviors are increasingly influencing the activities of foreign counterparts, private companies, political campaigns, policy advocates, and humanitarian organizations.

Joshua Yaphe, Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a former senior intelligence analyst, hosts the podcast Key Judgments. The program explores the world of Intelligence Studies with a range of guests who provide insights into the many ways the field affects both government and society. Josh’s most recent book, Time and Narrative in Intelligence Analysis: A New Framework for the Production of Meaning (Routledge, 2025), offers both a close examination of the assumptions that underpin intelligence culture in the United States and a demonstration of how analysts navigate the constraints of their tradecraft.

Key Judgments Podcast

Episode 1: The Book Launch with Paul Saunders

KJ1: The scientific paradigm that dominates the field of Intelligence Studies in the United States must be examined for the assumptions it carries about the relationship between the analyst and the job.

KJ2: The Intelligence Community is at a crossroads, facing a strong pull toward artificial intelligence and pressure from the U.S. administration to reform.

Paul Saunders, President of the Center for the National Interest, interviews Josh about his new book and the reasons for publishing it now.

Episode 2: Intelligence Reporting with Warren Strobel

KJ1: Reporters play an important role in the intelligence process—from highlighting stories that prompt policymakers to issue taskings, to provoking debate about the need for oversight and reform.

KJ2: Good reporters focus on getting the story right, not leaking sensitive information, and that has value for any administration.

Warren Strobel of The Washington Post is part of a rare group of reporters covering the Intelligence Community, bringing four decades of journalism experience in Washington, DC.

Episode 3: Policymakers and Intelligence with Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad

KJ1: Among all the different aspects of intelligence, operations present the greatest challenges in terms of their impact on policy, which is partly a consequence of the difficulties of coordination.

KJ2: The one thing a policymaker needs above all else is to be able to pick up the phone at any time and speak securely with a trusted expert who has spent a lifetime on a portfolio and knows the issue at first-hand.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad served as U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation from 2018 to 2021 and before that held multiple posts in the George W. Bush administration as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2007-09), to Iraq (2005-07), and to Afghanistan (2004-05).

Episode 4: Intelligence and Academia with Thomas Juneau

KJ1: Many of the debates that take place within the academic field of Intelligence Studies are far removed from the day-to-day concerns of practitioners.

KJ2: Intelligence professionals struggle most of all with understanding their audience, and nothing in their training really prepares them for learning how to relate to the policymaker.

Thomas Juneau is a professor at the University of Ottawa, a former analyst with Canada’s Department of National Defence, and the co-author of Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making: The Canadian Experience.

Episode 5: Intelligence Cultures in Israel and America with Itai Shapira

KJ1: There is an intelligence culture that government institutions establish for the sake of organizing the workforce, communicating a set of values, and projecting an image to lawmakers and the public, but it is not the same as the intelligence culture that collectors, operators, and analysts experience in their day-to-day lives.

KJ2: The biggest gap between Israeli and American intelligence cultures is in the concept of intuition, in that the Israel prizes creative thinking and firsthand experience to the detriment of theorizing, while the America prizes the scientific method to exclusion of subjectivity.

Itai Shapira is an academic and consultant with over 25 years of service in Israeli Defense Intelligence, and the author of Israeli National Intelligence Culture: Problem-Solving, Exceptionalism, and Pragmatism.

Online Resources

Agencies: ODNI Reports and Publications, CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, NSA Declassification & Transparency Initiatives, FBI FOIA Library, The Vault, State FOIA Library, SSCI Reports and Miscellaneous Publications

Archives: NARA OSS Records,TNA Intelligence and Security Services, NATO Archives Online, GWU National Security Archive, Wilson Center International History Declassified

News: Intelligence Online, IntelNews.org, Intelligence Community News

Journals: International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence (IJICI), Intelligence and National Security, Journal of Intelligence History, Global Security and Intelligence Studies (GSIS), American Intelligence Journal (AIJ), Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies (JEAIS)

Associations: International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE), Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), AFCEA Intelligence, Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), Strategic Consortium of Intelligence Professionals (SCIP)

Supplementary Book Materials

Time and Narrative in Intelligence Analysis: A New Framework for the Production of Meaning (Routledge, 2025) challenges the prevailing wisdom within the U.S. Intelligence Community that an analyst’s role is to adopt a purely clinical approach to the scientific presentation of objective facts. In doing so, it presents several case studies drawn from declassified source materials that are in the public domain.

In some of these intelligence products, the authors skillfully navigated the system’s rules and norms to produce analytical conclusions of exceptional insight and foresight. In other cases, however, the authors failed to break free from their training and ultimately made the wrong analytical judgments.

Below are images of the documents, as well as links to websites containing them. An open-access digital copy of the book is available free of charge under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND) and can be downloaded from the publisher’s website.

Chapter 2: Case Study on South Africa

Intelligence Report 6009, “Race Relations in South Africa,” was issued by the State Department’s Office of Intelligence and Research (OIR) on October 21, 1952. At the time of drafting, South Africa was witnessing the first widespread, organized campaign of defiance against the new discriminatory laws enacted by the Nationalist Party.

The report, intended as a long-term forecast of South African instability, concluded that the relatively new policy of apartheid would eventually result in the country’s diplomatic isolation, declining foreign investment, and sudden outbreaks of violence with spillover effects in other parts of Africa. The author was almost certainly William Oscar Brown, a senior analyst with wartime experience in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Brown had earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago on the subject Race Prejudice: A Sociological Study and had worked at the Julius Rosenwald Fund. He later taught at the University of Cincinnati, Howard University, and Boston University, and went on to serve as president of the African Studies Association.

Attachment: IR6009

All images are credited to Joshua Yaphe and are not for reproduction. The documents are declassified and in the public domain. They are available to the public at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, as part of Record Group 59, Entry Number A1-449.

Chapter 6: Case Study on Iraq

The George H.W. Bush administration made the strategic decision to halt at the Iraqi border following the successful 1991 Operation Desert Storm campaign, which removed Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. The hope was that a pivot to diplomatic isolation, multilateral sanctions, support for dissident groups abroad, and eventually the imposition of no-fly zones (NFZs) would gradually weaken regime loyalists and strengthen popular opposition. Saddam, however, proved adept at turning the situation to his advantage.

National Intelligence Estimate 92-7, “Saddam Husayn: Likely to Hang On,” was part of a now-declassified series of assessments commissioned by the National Intelligence Council and produced by the CIA, many with Judith Yaphe as lead author. The document is available at the George Washington University’s National Security Archive, along with many other Iraq-related materials.

Dr. Yaphe earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a dissertation on the 1920 Revolution in Iraq. She later taught at Goucher College, National Defense University, and George Washington University.

Chapter 8: Case Study on the Sino-Soviet Split

An extensive body of literature examines the roots of the conflict that erupted into a border war between the Soviet Union and China in 1969, focusing on the competition for leadership of the Communist bloc, the pressures of revisionism after Stalin’s death, and historical grievances dating back to the Korean War and earlier. Several former CIA analysts have written in unclassified publications about their experiences attempting to forecast Sino-Soviet divisions in the mid- to late 1950s, as well as the frustrations of working with significant information gaps and skeptical policymakers.

Less often noted is that analysts and outside experts associated with the Intelligence Community were writing about the potential for conflict as early as 1949, at the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Using a highly narrative style, they relied heavily on inferences about the political psychology of leaders in both capitals—despite a lack of direct sources and a general caution against overly bold assertions—as demonstrated by the State Department’s Intelligence Report 5101, “The Status of Mao Tse-Tung as Theoretician and Leader.”

Attachment: IR5101

Chapter 12: Case Study on Argentina

In September 1955, after months of military plotting and show trials, confrontation with the Catholic Church, and discontent among labor unions, the government fell to a military coup that sent Juan Domingo Perón into exile. Declassified intelligence reports reveal that throughout 1954 and 1955, multiple analysts in Washington repeatedly assessed Argentina as highly stable, with Perón firmly in control.

The 1952 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and the 1954 NIE on Probable Developments in Argentina are both available to the public via the CIA’s FOIA Reading Room website. As late as July 21, 1955, the State Department’s Intelligence Report 6989, Probable Course of the Perón Regime, was still predicting a relatively stable trajectory for a Perón government reconstituted around a more moderate core.

Attachment: IR6989

All images of IR6989 are credited to Joshua Yaphe and are not for reproduction. The documents are declassified and in the public domain. They are available to the public at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, as part of Record Group 59, Entry Number A1-449.