human rights including the actual use of weapons of mass destruction against his own people. The Committee has also gained an understanding of how intelligence analysts throughout the IC used that intelligence to develop their assessments on these issues, how those assessments were disseminated to policymakers, whether those assessments were reasonable, objective,

independent of political consideration, and whether any influence was brought to bear to shape their analysis to support policy objectives.

A. Understanding Intelligence Analysis

(U) Over a period of one year, Committee staff, many of whom are former intelligence analysts, reviewed over a decade of Intelligence Community (IC) assessments and the intelligence that underlay them. In all cases our staff endeavored, to the greatest extent possible, to disregard post-war discoveries concerning Iraq until after completing the analysis of the prewar intelligence material in order to replicate the same analytical environment IC analysts experienced prior to the war. The Committee's review surfaced strengths and weaknesses throughout the intelligence process. These are identified in the Report's findings and conclusions.

(U) Intelligence analysis is not a perfect science and we should not expect perfection from our IC analysts. It is entirely possible for an analyst to perform meticulous and skillful analysis and be completely wrong. Likewise, it is also possible to perform careless and unskilled analysis and be completely right. While intelligence collection is not an analytical function, it is the foundation upon which all good analysis is built. Problems with collection priorities and management will be discussed in detail throughout the report.

(U) The Committee, therefore, believes that it is important to understand the role of analysts and how they learn and apply their craft. With that background, the Committee hopes the reader can fully appreciate the content of this report.

1. Developing Professional Intelligence Analysts

(U) In order to give context to the Committee's review of the Intelligence Community's (IC) prewar analyses, Committee staff spoke with senior CIA officers at the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis at the CIA. The CIA relies on the Kent School to teach new analysts the trade craft of analysis. Committee staff members also drew on their own experiences working in the IC's analytic community.

(U) Kent School officials provided a briefing, slides, and a copy of the school's brochure to explain the school's approach and how analytic trade craft is presented to new CIA analysts. The training also address how the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) views the analytic process and the DI's structure.

(U) The CIA's Directorate of Intelligence requires its new analysts to complete a training program called the Career Analyst Program, or CAP. The CAP includes eleven weeks of classroom instruction and a five week interim assignment. The participants receive two weeks of training on analysis, three weeks on DI writing and one week each on briefing, teamwork, and the business of intelligence. (These are the core analytic trade craft areas.) The CAP also devotes time to task-force exercises and visits to U.S. military commands and other agencies to help the students develop a broader perspective on the role of intelligence analysis in policymaking. For the interim assignment, analysts consult with their "home offices" to choose an assignment that is relevant to the account they will cover as a DI analyst. They can work in other intelligence agencies, a policy office or in a law enforcement agency for their interim assignment.

(U) According to the school's brochure, "The CAP emphasizes the Directorate's goal: to produce analysis that is rigorous, well-reasoned, and appropriately caveated. The analytic thinking courses' focus on questioning key assumptions and considering possible explanations and outcomes. Analysts learn to be aware of psychological, cultural, and informational factors that affect their analytic judgments." Kent School officials stated that this training involves a very hands-on approach and many small exercises that help the analysts learn by doing. Instructors give the students a number of short classroom assignments, many of which are done in groups. Students receive extensive feedback from the instructors.

(U) The same is true for the development of the analysts' writing skills. The long brochure states, "DI writing style emphasizes the bottom line up front, precise and concise language, and a clear articulation of our judgments and our confidence in them." The analysts practice writing each of the types of products that the DI produces including situation reports and short and long papers. They also participate in a final four-day course on writing for the President and senior policymakers. The Kent School officials stated that many of these assignments use case studies, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the bombing of Khobar Towers, the break-up of Yugoslavia and the September 11 attacks.

(U) Kent School officials outlined the key analytic goals as:

providing timely, credible, and relevant intelligence analysis for the consumer; warning and identifying opportunities;

maintaining analytic integrity and objectivity; and

using all source intelligence.

They also described the analytic process as 1) dealing with facts and assertions, 2) testing assumptions and logic, 3) developing findings, 4) interpreting information, 5) developing scenarios (to include both high probability/low impact and low probability/high impact), 6) determining indicators, and 7) discussing options to determine opportunities, identifying vulnerabilities and revealing potential outcomes.

(U) By using case studies and providing the CAP participants with the intelligence cables used by analysts to build their assessments, the instructors are able to help the new analysts develop their ability to weigh information and become accustomed to the format of the reporting and source descriptions. They also learn to task collectors, structure data for presentations, and recognize indicators of activities. They also learn to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the various "INTS" - human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT).

(U) The Kent School also incorporates a module which alerts new analysts to the pitfalls of assumptions and biases in their own analysis and in the work of others. Recognizing one's own bias is extremely difficult, however. Therefore, it is critical to develop a workforce of analysts that are comfortable questioning each other. While it is stressed in the initial training provided by the CAP, it appears to be the lesson that analysts neglect first.

(U) In her February 11, 2004 address to the Directorate of Intelligence, the Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) stated:

I want to focus on the danger of inherited assumptions. That may be the single
most important aspect of our trade craft that needs to be examined. That is
something I speak about to every new CAP class: How do we ensure that we are
not passing along assumptions that haven't been sufficiently questioned or
examined?

2. An Analyst's Daily Taskings

(U) In terms of day-to-day work, intelligence analysts review raw reporting, draft assessments, and disseminate those assessments to policy makers. Each written assessment may be drafted by one or several analysts who have reviewed raw reporting over a period of time. Intelligence collected by the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Security Agency (NSA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and in some cases, State Department diplomatic reporting, is reviewed daily by intelligence analysts using computer software that searches the various agencies' databases and produces a daily electronic read file for each analyst that is specific to their area of responsibility. In many instances, analysts from regional and functional offices, which cover issues that span across regions, such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and humanitarian issues, will read the same material and draw conclusions relative to their interests and responsibilities.

(U) Each IC agency that has an all-source analysis capability or responsibility will have one or more analysts reviewing intelligence reporting on the same issues. In an ideal situation, these analysts will be in regular contact over secure communications to discuss new information, to share ideas and to brainstorm about how the information can be presented to policymakers to best satisfy their requirements, however, this exchange does not always occur. The analysts are responsible for sifting through large amounts of information and drawing connections or reaching conclusions about the implications of the information at their disposal. Depending on the product, the analysis may be coordinated with other IC members, but in many instances, each agency produces its own finished products which are subject to review and editing by its own internal management.

3. The Finished Product

(U) Analysts create their products for intelligence consumers, including policy makers and warfighters, to name two of many. While DIA products are generally intended for the Secretary of Defense, CIA products for the White House, and the State Department's Bureau Intelligence & Research products for the Secretary of State, most products are available to policy makers at each of these agencies regardless of the author's organization. The vast majority of intelligence products are available to the Congress as well.

(U) It is important to note that in many cases the manager responsible for approving the final product may not, and often does not, review the raw intelligence upon which the assessment is based. Kent School officials who have worked as branch chiefs or division managers stated,

however, that products are reviewed more carefully when the drafter is a relatively new analyst. When the drafter is a more senior, well-established analyst, the product will often be edited, but not substantively reviewed before it goes up the chain to the policymaker. If the intelligence product was not coordinated with other intelligence agencies, it is entirely possible that one analyst's views may be presented to high-level officials including the President of the United States without having been reviewed by other analysts with the same depth of knowledge. This is a dynamic we found on a number of occasions in the course of this review.

B. Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities

(U) The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) related sections of the report recount the Committee's efforts to evaluate the quantity and quality of the intelligence underlying prewar assessments. Each section contains its own set of conclusions. There is also a separate section on the issue of objectivity which addresses whether analysts were pressured to reach specific conclusions to support a particular policy objective. This report does not address the question of accuracy regarding WMD. When the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) completes its work in Iraq, we will then be able to evaluate to the maximum extent possible the accuracy of the IC's judgments prior to the war.

(U) The Committee focused its evaluation of the Intelligence Community's WMD analysis primarily on the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. This document was selected for several reasons:

First, according to the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Director of Central. Intelligence (DCI), National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) are the IC's most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues. The process by which the IC produces NIES - including the one on Iraqi WMD – has been honed over nearly 30 years. According to the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) webpage, it is designed to provide policymakers in both the executive and legislative branches with the "best, unvarnished, and unbiased information – regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to U.S. policy."

Second, the 2002 NIE addressed all of Iraq's WMD programs and was a coordinated community judgment in which all agency views were represented and dissenting opinions were noted.