STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTION; BASIC PRINCIPLES. BY WASHINGTON PLATT. (NEW YORK: F. A. PRAEGER. 1957. PP. 302)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP62S00346A000100180001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 8, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 1, 1957
• Content Type: MISC

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STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTION; BASIC PRINCI-
PLES. By Washington Platt. (New York: F. A. Praeger.
1957. Pp. 302.)
Brigadier General Washington Platt has been an intelli-
gence officer for some ten years, and he clearly loves his work.
It would be pleasant to record, therefore, that General Platt's
book, Strategic Intelligence Production; Basic Principles makes
a really significant contribution to the literature of intelligence.
However, although much of the book is rewarding and thought
provoking, it is.as a whole disappointing when viewed both
against the gaps in the present literature and against the
objectives which the author apparently sets out for himself.
The word "apparently" in the last sentence is used deliber-
ately, for the objective of the book is not entirely clear. The
preface contains the statement that the book is intended "as
one step toward the development of first principles in the field
of Strategic Intelligence Production." The first chapter makes
a similar statement, adding that the primary purpose of the
book is to present concepts pertaining to strategic intelligence
production. One might expect, therefore, that the book would
devote considerable attention to the theory and philosophy of
strategic intelligence, to the broad first principles which make
it what it is and which distinguish it from other kinds of intel-
ligence and from other fields of learning. Aside from scattered
statements, however, often in the nature of obiter dicta, one
looks in vain for a discussion along these lines.
Consider, for example, the term "strategic intelligence."
Strategic intelligence is defined formally in a single paragraph,
and its components are listed in another. Although the term
is used frequently thereafter and although methods and tech-
niques for strategic intelligence production are given, very little
else is said about its nature. What is strategic about strategic
intelligence? How does strategic intelligence differ from com-
bat intelligence and from other forms of intelligence, if any?
What is the relationship between strategic intelligence and
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policy? What is strategic intelligence supposed to provide for
the formulation of policy, and where does one end and the
other begin? Arty systematic discussion of these and other
important first principles is conspicuously absent.
To be fair to the author, it may not have been his purpose
to consider these broader aspects. The stated aim of the book
is to develop the principles of strategic intelligence production
(as opposed to strategic intelligence, period), and the emphasis
is put explicitly on the working level. Hence, when the author
speaks of principles, he may be thinking of bread-and-butter
principles designed to provide the reader with a "how to" book
or (perhaps unfairly) a sort of intelligence do-it-yourself kit.
To make a crude analogy, the author may not have intended to
talk about transportation but merely about how to assemble an
automobile. In any case, the result has been to divorce the
working principles of strategic intelligence production from the
broader theoretical and philosophical principles to which they
relate. In doing so, the author has omitted the kind of mate-
rial which probably most needs development in the literature
and has rendered the principles which he gives us less meaning-
ful and helpful than they otherwise would have been.
General Platt's book is essentially a presentation of certain
basic principles of strategic intelligence production and of
methods and tools useful to the intelligence analyst. Chapters
are devoted to the subject matter and methods of the social
sciences and the assistance they can give the intelligence officer,
to probability and certainty, and to forecasting. The author
also gives us discussions of the differences between information
and intelligence, of the scientific method and its application to
strategic intelligence production, and of intelligence production
as an act of creative thinking. The last chapter covers the
characteristics of the intelligence profession.
The book presents nine principles of intelligence production
said to be similar in their field to Clausewitz's principles of
war: namely, purpose, definitions, exploitation of sources, sig-
nificance, cause and effect, spirit of the people, trends, degrees
of certainty, and conclusions. One can scarcely quarrel with
the relevance and importance of these principles to the pro-
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duction of strategic intelligence. Agreeing with these princi-
ples, however, is much like agreeing, Coolidge-like, that sin is
bad and motherhood admirable. Although each of the prin-
ciples is elaborated elsewhere in the book, one is left with the
feeling that he has been given a skeleton without very much
flesh on it. The reason, I think, is fairly clear: here as else-
where the book concentrates on working principles and meth-
ods to the virtual exclusion of broader theoretical consider-
ations. As a result, we are given many fine hats, but no hat
rack on which to hang them. . The fact that the author may
not have intended to give us a hat rack makes the hats no
easier to handle.
It is interesting that the author compares his nine principles
not only with Clausewitz's principles of war but also with the
Ten Commandments. It may be remarked that during New
Testament times the Pharisees, among others, were criticized,
not because they disobeyed the Ten Commandments, but be-
cause they obeyed them rigidly, literally, and pridefully, and
without spirit, compassion, or understanding. The user of
General Platt's nine principles faces a similar risk, for although
adherence to these principles is a necessary condition to the
production of good strategic intelligence, it is not a sufficient
condition.
The author states that the book is "purposely discursive"
because such discursiveness is necessary in a field with "so little
unity of background, or systematic development of general
principles." However much this may be true, the book is not
well organized or put together and frequently does not develop
its themes systematically or comprehensively. Moreover, the
presentation is often not as clear or as convincing as it should
be and is sometimes downright irritating or dangerously incom-
plete. The book discusses at some length whether or not there
is a group or a national character and, if so, whether or not
information can be gained about it. It gives a yes answer to
both of these questions. A closely related question - how
foreign are foreigners? - is not given a yes or no answer, but
it is clear that the author believes there is some "foreignness"
in foreigners. I wish that the author had gone one step further
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(and incidentally; in so doing, better pulled his discussion to-
gether) by warning the intelligence officer that he is fatally and
irrevocably lost ii! he does not put himself in the context of
thought and/or action of the people or events which he is
studying. Elsewhere the author attempts to quantify the de-
preciation of the "`inherent value" of various kinds of intelli-
gence with time by stating, for example, that strategic
intelligence depreciates 10 percent per month in wartime,
so that at the end of 6 months it has lost half its value and at
the end of 9 months nearly three-fourths. These rates of de-
preciation are presented out of hand, and despite a qualifying
footnote, not as orders of magnitude, but as more or less fixed
and immutable laws. It is difficult to decide whether to be
horrified, or amused. As a final example, the author discusses
the normal curve of frequency distribution and suggests that
a bimodal curve makes it practically certain that the group
studied was in fact two groups of diverse origin. The reader
is left with the impression that the normal curve is the most
common kind of curve encountered in the social sciences and
that deviations from it merely reflect the mixture of two uni-
verses or inadequate sampling. Actually the analyst in many
of the social sciences will only rarely encounter a normal curve,
not because he has mixed universes or developed bad samples,
but simply because the universe with which he deals does not
group itself in the manner described by the so-called normal
curve.
On the positive side, many of the principles and methods
developed in the book are decidedly well worth stating and
ought to be part of the mental makeup and box of tools of
every producer of strategic intelligence. None of these prin-
ciples is strikingly new, but each is at least useful and often
more than that, and together they constitute a helpful collec-
tion of tools and techniques. For example, the author dis-
cusses two important differences between the usual kind of
creative scholarship and the kind required for the production
of strategic intelligence. The importance of these differ-
ences - usefulness and timeliness - can scarcely be overem-
phasized, not only to those newly entering intelligence work,
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but also to its current practitioners. The author makes a
quite useful distinction between information and intelligence,
which is discussed at some length. Another chapter attempts,
although not entirely successfully, to develop the relationship
between the social sciences and strategic intelligence. This
portion of the book points up the similarity between the sub-
ject matter and methods of the social sciences and intelligence
and suggests that a thorough grounding in one or more of the
social sciences is a most useful background for the strategic
intelligence officer. The book also contains in one chapter,
entitled "Probability and Certainty," and in another, entitled
"Forecasting," a number of specific tools of analysis which can
be of considerable use to the intelligence analyst.
The author first touches upon another important issue al-
most casually. Early in the book he states that "In part I ...
we recognize intelligence as one of the social sciences." Far
from explicitly providing and justifying this recognition, how-
ever, Part I does not even consider this question. The last
chapter of the book discusses at some length the character-
istics of the intelligence profession compared with other pro-
fessions. Here the author states that "perhaps it would be
more correct to say that as at present practiced intelligence
has the makings of a profession, rather that it is a profession"
(emphasis in the original). A discussion then follows in which
the author states that intelligence now lacks most of the char-
acteristics of a learned profession, the key elements of which
he lists and discusses. In short, the author asserts that intelli-
gence is at once a social science and not a profession.
Although the author asserts early in the book that intelli-
gence is one of the social sciences, he seems to write subse-
quently as though it were not. Intelligence is conspicuously
missing from his list of the social sciences. The author invari-
ably refers to the social sciences and never to the other social
sciences, even when, if intelligence is a separate social science,
the context calls for the latter expression. Finally, the author
discusses what he believes to be a desirable undergraduate cur-
riculum as preparation for an intelligence career and pleads
for professional schools of intelligence at the graduate level.
WOMOM
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It is notable that his list of undergraduate fields includes only
courses provided by the conventional social sciences such as
modern history, geography, and economics. His graduate
school, which is to provide advanced studies "specifically in
[the intelligence] profession," is to teach "the underlying
philosophy and improved [sic] methodology of intelligence,"
and "to do systematic research into intelligence production
methods or to explore the basic principles of this greatfield of
human activity" (emphasis in the original). Nowhere, how-
ever, is a particular course or field of study laid out, nor does
the author describe exactly what is to be taught.
In the first issue of Studies in Intelligence, Sherman Kent
wrote a lucid and stimulating article on the need for intelli-
gence literature. Dr. Kent argued that "intelligence has be-
come, in our own recent memory, an exacting, highly skilled
profession and an honorable one . . . . Intelligence today is
not merely a profession, but like most professions it has taken
on the aspects oi' a discipline : it has developed a recognized
methodology; it has developed a vocabulary; it has developed
a body of theory and doctrine; it has elaborate and refined
techniques. It now has a large professional following. What
it lacks is a literature." Kent says, then, that intelligence is
definitely a learned profession and close to being a discipline.
General Platt, in contrast, concedes to intelligence that higher
order of development to a discipline but does not believe it yet
to be a profession.
Dr. Kent's article has stimulated considerable discussion of
whether intelligence in fact has the attributes of a separate
discipline and, if sso, what these attributes are. General Platt's
belief that intelligence falls short of being a learned profession
should stimulate even more. The issues are much too complex
to be considered here, even if the reviewer felt competent to
do so. The reviewer believes, however, more or less intuitively,
that intelligence is without question a separate profession, and
a learned profession at that, because in Kent's terms it requires
1 "The Need for an Intelligence Literature," Studies in Intelligence,
September 1955, pp. 1-11.
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native intelligence, rigorous training, and both general compe-
tence and intensive specialization. With respect to whether or
not intelligence is a separate discipline, it may be noted that
the recognized disciplines, in addition to possessing a body of
theory and a methodology and vocabulary, also deal with a
particular subject matter which is more or less distinct from
the subject matter of the other disciplines. Strategic intelli-
gence, however, deals with a variety of events and circum-
stances encompassing almost every form of human activity,
which are also the concern of the conventional natural and
social sciences. Most of us believe, however, intuitively at
least, that intelligence is more than the parroting of any one
of these disciplines and more than their simple sum. Must
we not then discover what this "more" is, and, just as im-
portant, record it for all to see, before we can know who we are
and where we belong?
To some, all this may seem a mere jousting with windmills
or a playing with words, particularly since the job to be done
seems so clear and the time it allows for speculation so dis-
couragingly small. Surely, however, this is not the case.
Issues such as these must be faced as part and parcel of that
looking at ourselves which marks our growing up. Until we
face them, make up our minds about them, and write down our
thoughts and our conclusions, we cannot really know about
ourselves. General Platt has attempted to do this, although
only partially successfully, and he is to be commended for
trying.
25X1A9a
MOW
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