The Cycle of Intelligence

The intelligence community is the grouping of government sponsored agencies devoted to intelligence collection and analysis. Different members of the intelligence community may or may not work together on various projects. It is often desirable to have multiple agencies working together to collect and analyze the intelligence gathered, but for various security reasons, some agencies may be hesitant to reveal sensitive or secret data.

Whether or not the agencies are cooperating with each other, the process used to gather the intelligence is standard. The process of intelligence makes use of the Intelligence Cycle, which is the path which intelligence takes from random statements and facts to useful intelligence.

The intelligence cycle is as follows:

Step 1 - Planning and Direction: This phase involves the development of a strategy and desired end goal. This step answers why the intelligence is needed or what the intelligence agency needs to learn in order to ensure national security. Intelligence community leaders determine what needs to be learned or studied and assigns intelligence community members to the task.

Step 2 - Collection: After receiving the intent and assignment of their leaders, intelligence community members will begin work to collect the information needed to accomplish their tasks. Intelligence can be collected from human sources, electronic / technological sources or publicly available sources (like the Internet).

Step 3 - Processing and Exploitation: This step involves transforming the information gathered into a useful form for analysts. If the information is coded or otherwise hidden in some way, members will turn the difficult to understand information into an easily understandable format for analysts to study.

Step 4 - Analysis and Production: Analysis is the study of the information gathered and the formation of an assessment of the current state of a given subject matter. This step is where the dots are connected using various analytical methods to predict the likely plan of action of those which the intelligence was gathered on.

Step 5 - Dissemination: All of the intelligence gathered and analyzed is worthless unless it gets into the hands of our nation's policy makers. Intelligence which has made it to this phase of the cycle is called "finished intelligence".

The intelligence cycle is commonly considered a five step process. It is believed by intelligence community members that if any step in the intelligence process is missing, the intelligence will most likely become useless and the process has failed. For example, with no plan to direct collection, how do intelligence community members know what to collect? Without the collection, processors and analyzers have no information to process or analyze.

The intelligence process has long been the standard for the collection of intelligence within the intelligence community. It is successful because of its thoroughness and understanding of distinct steps and personnel involved to complete the process.

Sources:

The Intelligence Process. United States Intelligence Community.