Former Air Force intelligence officer, evaluator of intelligence, and frequent contributor of articles on IC history descrives efforts during the 1970s to bring greater imagination to the intelligence analysis process. Some ideas will be familiar. The efforts brought out the humor in some analysts with penchants for waxing poetic:
Ode to Creativity
To be creative is oft taken for granted,
If you’re a Brahms, a Poe or a
Rembranted . . .
In Elysian fields, a muse may be hid,
To inspire tomorrow’s PDB, CIRL
or NID.
We report and write in prose Miltonic,
Of agents run on gins and tonic,
In Maputu, London, Quito, or Madras,
We pledge to create or we’ll cover
our…
Written by students in a CIA midcareer
training course ca. July 1977 and transmitted in a memo to the Acting Deputy
Director of Central Intelligence.