@article{THESIS, recid = {11917}, author = {Kahl, Madeline}, title = {Missing the Forest for the Trees: US Intelligence, Threats, and Inter-Agency Disunity}, publisher = {University of Chicago}, school = {M.A.}, address = {2024-06}, number = {THESIS}, abstract = {Present academic treatment of the US intelligence community (IC) tends to treat the IC as a singular unit, or focus only on intelligence collection and analysis behavior in the case of the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet, the IC often confronts inter-agency contestation over analytical conclusions. Beginning from the premise of this historical disunity, I examine patterns of intelligence analysis. I use 6 historical cases of inter-agency disunity to assess trends of reliance on certain kinds of intelligence data in the resulting analysis. I find that agencies advocating views likely to face political pushback rely heavily on quantifiable indicators in war-related scenarios and qualitative, discourse-based indicators in bargaining, or diplomatic, scenarios. However, when the agency's analytical conclusions are consistent with conventional wisdom at the time, individual agencies rely on a more balanced combination of quantifiable and qualitative data in their analysis. }, url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/11917}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.11917}, }