Establishing a Framework for Intelligence Education and Training

In January 2010, Major General Michael T. Flynn, in conjunction with Captain Matt Pottinger and Paul D. Batchelor, published a paper that made the U.S. Intelligence Community IC stand up and shout. Titled Fixing Intel A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan, the paper attempted to address the weaknesses the authors saw in the collection and use of intelligence in the field. For Flynn and his colleagues, the tendency to overemphasize detailed information about the enemy at the expense of the political, economic, and cultural environment that supports it highlights the difference between tactical and strategic thinking. This dichotomy betrays the essence of a debate that underscores the importance of mental flexibility and agile adaptive behavior. For while training equips a person with necessary skills and attributes that can be robotically replicated, education allows an individual to move beyond the instructions and adapt to incorrect or poorly written instructions, or none at all, and to improvise training to get the job done. The National Defense Intelligence College, now being redesignated the National Intelligence University NIU, is chartered to provide intelligence education to members of the IC. Its programs are focused on national security challenges, including the more traditional intelligence goal of understanding adversarial capabilities and intentions, along with broader intelligence challenges such as sociocultural trends and conflicts, failed and failing states, terrorism, proliferation, and the rise of nonstate actors. However, creating and implementing education programs that address the broad and divergent needs of the IC to allow it to successfully carry out its mission necessitate an understanding of intelligence, the importance of training, the need for and nature of intelligence education, and the ability to synthesize all of these elements.