Consortium for the Study of Intelligence

The Consortium for the Study of Intelligence was founded in 1979 as a project of the National Strategy Information Center.

"It acted as a catalyst in the founding of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association; the Security and Intelligence Studies Group of the UK Political Studies Association; and the Canadian Association for the Security and Intelligence Studies. Hundreds of faculty members from universities and military colleges throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK have attended Consortium faculty seminars. The Consortium also sponsored numerous publications and studies, and its members continue to make significant individual contributions to the literature on intelligence."

The Future of US Intelligence

In 1996, two senior associates at the National Strategy Information Center, Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt produced a report for the Consortium entitled The Future of US Intelligence.

The document recommended the establishment of "competing analytic centers" with "different points of view" that could "provide policymakers better protection against new 'Pearl Harbors', ie, against being surprised". Rather than a narrow focus on information collection, "intelligence analysis must ... make it more relevant to policymakers by emphasizing the forces that shape a given situation", the authors contend.

The study's overall conclusion was that the "future of intelligence" depended on building a new model that would offer "greater flexibility in the collection process" and produce the "big picture" of security threats. Ultimately, Shulsky and Schmitt concluded, the purpose of analysis is to help the policymaker shape the future, not predict it. Intelligence analysis should go beyond simply identifying security threats and assessing the military capabilities of a present or future enemy or a competitor nation; it should be "opportunity analysis" that anticipates chances to advance US interests.

The report's recommendations have been seen as prefiguring the strategy which Shulsky would pursue as director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans.

Founding Members, 1979

• Richard Betts, Columbia University
• Richard E. Bissell, Foreign Policy Research Institute
• Adda Bozeman, Sarah Lawrence College
• Ray Cline, Georgetown University
• Stephen Gibert, Georgetown University
• Roy Godson, Georgetown University
• Samuel Huntington, Harvard University
• John Norton Moore, University of Virginia
• Myres McDougal, Yale University
• Robert Nisbet, American Enterprise Institute
• Robert Pfaltzgraff, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
• Richard Pipes, Harvard University
• Antonin Scalia, University of Chicago
• Paul Seabury, University of California, Berkeley
• Richard Starr, Hoover Institution
• Frank Trager, New York University
• Allen Weinstein, Smith College
• James Q. Wilson, Harvard University

Staff

Director of Research

• Dr Richard H. Schultz Jr

Conferences

• Colloquium on Analysis and Estimates, 30 November - 1 December 1979
• Colloquium on Counterintelligence, 24-26 April 1980
• Colloquium on Clandestine Collection, 30-31 December 1981
• Colloquium on Intelligence and Policy, 9-10 November 1984
• Colloquium on Intelligence Requirements for the 1990s, 4-5 December 1987