BOOK REVIEW: The CIA Intelligence Analyst: Views from the Inside
By Roger Z. George and Robert Levine (editors and contributors) / Georgetown University Press
Reviewed by: Linda Weissgold
The Reviewer — Cipher Brief Expert Linda Weissgold retired from the Central Intelligence Agency with more than 37 years’ experience. Her final position was serving as Deputy Director for Analysis, responsible for the quality of all-source intelligence analysis at the CIA. She previously served as head of CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis and as a Presidential Intelligence Briefer. She is currently an adjunct professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC.
REVIEW — When I joined CIA in the mid-1980’s as an analyst, it was a blind leap of faith. I honestly didn’t know what a CIA analyst did. There was no CIA.gov website to help explain—heck, there was no Internet—and I don’t think that I had the luxury of knowing any CIA officers that I could ask. Despite genuine efforts to be more open about careers at CIA, today, there is still a paucity of accurate information about what it is like to be a CIA analyst. Sure, there are books and movies that depict analysts as near omnipotent Jack Ryans saving the world, or as evil geniuses hell bent on destroying it. And, there is historic reference material about CIA analysts either being prescient or at the heart of an intelligence failure. Somehow, we are always placed on one end of an extreme continuum, and never in the messy middle where we actually live. And, while there is an ever-increasing number of books on analytic tradecraft that try to make clear how difficult the job of delivering objective analysis can be, the question that I still find myself answering most often, particularly at universities, is not “how does a CIA analyst do their work”, but rather “what does a CIA analyst really do?”
With the recent publication of The CIA Intelligence Analyst: Views from Inside, edited by Roger Z. George and Robert Levine, I can now happily point inquiring minds to an authoritative resource on what it is like to be an analyst. Each chapter in this helpful and engaging book is written from real life experience by a senior CIA analyst. They each discuss their own discipline—think: political analysis, economic analysis, leadership analysis, military analysis, and many more—and they lay out the unique opportunities and challenges involved in their work. From my own experience, I can tell you that every politician thinks they can do political analysis, even though they often don’t have the regional expertise or time to track breaking events. These disciplines work together at CIA and across the Intelligence Community to provide multidisciplinary insights, but maintaining attention to each disciplinary expertise is part of the secret sauce behind CIA’s agility in covering breaking events. A military analyst well-versed in insurgencies, for example, can surge and be immediately useful in assessing conflict on any continent.
CIA’s credo is that “we are the Nation’s first line of defense. We accomplish what others cannot and go where others cannot go.” Having had the privilege of leading the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis, I have often said that CIA analysts honor this challenge every day by leveraging their expertise and access to information to deliver insights that others cannot, and by objectively saying what other might not. The CIA Intelligence Analyst: Views from the Inside is filled with personal anecdotes that bring to life the successes and failures of CIA analysis. The authors are honest and direct, as their training has taught them to be, about the personal satisfaction and challenges of public service. The book is not intended to serve as a recruiting tool, but it is a uniquely valuable resource for anyone considering a career as an analyst not just at CIA, but within the Intelligence Community.
The Cipher Brief participates in the Amazon Affiliate program and may make a small commission from purchases made via links.
Interested in submitting a book review? Send an email to [email protected] with your idea.
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
Search