A gift from the Central Intelligence Agency
Our inimitable CIA has released the full text of its book, “Psychology of Intelligence Analysis,” in HTML and PDF. From the author’s preface:
This volume pulls together and republishes, with some editing, updating, and additions, articles written during 1978-86 for internal use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. Four of the articles also appeared in the Intelligence Community journal Studies in Intelligence during that time frame. The information is relatively timeless and still relevant to the never-ending quest for better analysis.
The articles are based on reviewing cognitive psychology literature concerning how people process information to make judgments on incomplete and ambiguous information. I selected the experiments and findings that seem most relevant to intelligence analysis and most in need of communication to intelligence analysts. I then translated the technical reports into language that intelligence analysts can understand and interpreted the relevance of these findings to the problems intelligence analysts face.
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, HTML, table of contents
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, full PDF version, 1.9 MB direct link
(Another hat tip to BoingBoing!)