DETECTING POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: May 2, 1979
• Content Type: MEMO

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/01 : CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3 -EGIB'
2 May 1979
ie Requirements and
Evaluation Staff/NFAC
SUBJECT Detecting Political and Social Changes
1. our suggestion, I have consulted with Professor
at Princeton about suitable academics to
assemble or a discussion of methods for detecting political
and social change of consequence for estimative efforts.
- Princeton (Africa)
- Chicago (Middle East)
- Univ. of Washington (India)
- Pennsylvania (India)
- Harvard (Brazil)
- UC Berkeley (Far East)
- UCLA (Africa)
- SAIS (Urban Violence)
- Yale (Southeast Asia)
- Yale (Latin America)
- Wisconsin (Zaire)
- Princeton (Egypt)
- Chicago (Africa)
2. All of these people are experts on general problems
of political development as well as area specialists.
3. I do not know whether or not they would want to make
themselves available. I happen to know that
once turned down the CIA on consultation. I a so know
definitely that there would be no problem on this ground
Senior Review Panel
STAT
STAT
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18 April 1979
Senior view Panel
Evaluation Staff/NFAC
ie Requirements and
1. The Intelligence Community recently has suffered con-
siderable criticism about its ability to detect significant
social and political changes in several countries. The most
recent examples have been the PDRY, Afghanistan, and Iran. The
unsophisticated critics of the craft of intelligence probably ex-
pect too much from us in this regard but, at the same time, there
is a wide-spread feeding in the Intelligence community that we
could do better than our recent track record.
2. The D/DCI/NFA recently requested that I look into
this problem with emphasis upon:
defining popular movements, political instability,
social movements portending change and instability
formulating specific collection requirements for
use by field collectors
determining feasibility of collecting useful infor-
mation on social/political change
developing a model for such a collection program
selecting a country where we could test the model
either by simulation or with a pilot collection
program.
I
25X1
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/01 : CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3
SLTBJEC T : Detecting Political and Social Changes
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/01 : CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3
3. Please review the attached draft work plan with your
colleagues and then we could exchange some ideas. After reviewing
the work plan, I contemplate discussing it with Bob Bowie before
involving other people.
4. This memorandum and its attachment are classified Secret.
Attachment:
As stated
-2-
S E C R E T
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/01: CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/01 : CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3
I. Establish core group to follow project from beginning to end:
-- Representatives from OPA, DDO, OCR, FBIS, State, and
Senior Review Panel.
-- Discuss information potentially available, Sources,
applicability of available information to intelligence
problems, timeliness of potential information.
-- Assemble list of academics who have done pertinent
research in methodologies related to determining social/
political change and those who have done country/regional
analysis of social and political change.
II. Reports from academics specializing in social/political change:
-- Group meetings on this subject should be sponsored by
State to avoid public CIA involvement.
-- Selected academics, those of special interest and appro-
priately cleared, could meet under CIA auspices if we
need to hold in-depth discussions.
III. Core group reviews results of consultations with academics:
{ov
-- Sift academic experience frdn common themes and methodologies.
-- Identify academic successes and failures.
-- Relate academic techniques to operational environment and
collection opportunities.
-- Relate potential information to production requirements.
IV. Core group selects one or two countries for testing its findings.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/01 : CIA-RDP98S00099R000501010019-3