Intel Community Directed to Make Greater Use of Outside Experts

'Elements of the IC should use outside experts whenever possible to contribute to, critique, and challenge ...'

A new directive from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell orders analysts to begin cultivating relationships with subject matter experts outside the Intelligence Community in academia and the private sector "whenever possible" in order to improve the quality of intelligence analysis.

A progressive thinker, McConnell’s directive didn’t come as a surprise to veteran intelligence practioners who know him, some of whom have been calling for greater utilization of “outside” experts they believe could be very valuable to the intelligence analysis process.

Some intelligence reformers have even called for greater use of private sector subject matter experts “and thinkers” than McConnell’s directive calls for. If the new order is successfully implemented, these reformers might just see increased outreach to more “unconventional” thinkers who could bring unique viewpoints and approaches to the subject of a given analytical piece.

McConnell's July 16 directive on "Analytic Outreach" establishes the specific procedures for how to implement such outreach, including incentives and rewards for successful performance.

"Analytic outreach is the open, overt, and deliberate act of an IC [intelligence community] analyst engaging with an individual outside the IC to explore ideas and alternate perspectives, gain new insights, generate new knowledge, or obtain new information," the directive states.

"Elements of the IC should use outside experts whenever possible to contribute to, critique, and challenge internal products and analysis...."

"Sound intelligence analysis requires that analysts... develop trusted relationships" with "experts in academia; think tanks; industry; non-governmental organizations; the scientific world; ...and elsewhere."

“There are, however, significant limits to any such relationships,” pointed out Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

"Analysts in the IC shall never discuss classified or sensitive information with outside experts who are not appropriately cleared," the directive warns.

“But since almost everything in intelligence is considered classified or at least sensitive,” Aftergood noted, “that does not leave much room for analysts to 'engage’ and share information with outside experts who are not interested in a cleared contractual relationship with an intelligence agency.”

Aftergood pointed out that the CIA insists that even unclassified, non-copyrighted publications of its Open Source Center should be "treated as copyrighted" and "must not be disseminated to the public.”

“Under such circumstances and without a modicum of reciprocity between analysts and outside experts, there can be no ‘trusted relationships,’" Aftergood wrote in Secrecy News.

McConnell’s directive states that “unnecessary or unreasonable restrictions that discourage collaboration with outside experts may increase the likelihood that alternate perspectives will not be considered and debatable judgments will remain unchallenged."

It’s not clear how the problem of not being able to discuss crucial classified intelligence with outside experts will be overcome to the extent necessary to make use of these experts like McConnell intends for them to be utilized.

Some authorities have suggested that certain experts should be given some level of security clearance or that otherwise classified analyses be sanitized in order that it can be shared with civilian experts.

Meanwhile, a new report by the Project on National Security Reform states that interpersonal trust is frequently a prerequisite for voluntary information sharing not only between government officials and members of the public, but even among government officials themselves.