Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present

In Challenges in Intelligence Analysis, Timothy Walton offers concrete, reality-based ways to improve intelligence analysis. After a brief introduction to the main concepts of analysis, he provides more than forty historical and contemporary examples that demonstrate what has, and what has not, been effective when grappling with difficult problems. The examples cover a wide span of time, going back 3,000 years. They are also global in scope and deal with a variety of political, military, economic, and social issues. Walton emphasizes the importance of critical and creative thinking and how such thinking can be enhanced. His 2010 book provides a detailed and balanced idea of intelligence work and will be of particular interest to students who are contemplating a career in intelligence analysis.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Problems and Possible Solutions: 1. The main challenges for intelligence analysis; 2. Attempts to deal with the challenges; Part II. From the Ancient World to Modern Times: 3. Moses sends spies into Canaan; 4. The Athenian campaign in Sicily; 5. Caesar's campaigns in Gaul; 6. Sun Tzu; 7. The Spanish Armada; 8. George Washington; Part III. The First Half of the Twentieth Century: 9. Wilson and the Paris Peace Conference; 10. Estimating the strength of the Luftwaffe in the 1930s; 11. Stalin assesses Hitler; 12. Pearl Harbor; 13. Targets for the Allied bombers; 14. The German V weapon; Part IV. The Cold War: 15. Atomic bomb spies; 16. The outbreak of the Korean War; 17. Counterinsurgency in Malaya; 18. Soviet strategic weapons; 19. The Cuban Missile Crisis; 20. Aspects of the Vietnam War; 21. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; 22. Finding spies: Ames and Hanssen; 23. Breakup of the USSR; Part V. Other International Security Issues, Other Places: 24. The Yom Kippur War; 25. Fall of the Shah; 26. Nuclear weapons tests; 27. A. Q. Khan; 28. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; 29. Violence in Iraq; Part VI. Domestic Law Enforcement: 30. The Lindbergh kidnapping; 31. Breaking the mafia; 32. Airline tragedies: Pan Am Flight 103 and TWA Flight 800; 33. Aum Shinrikyo; 34. Colombian drug cartels; 35. Wen Ho Lee; 36. 9/11; 37. Anthrax attacks; 38. DC snipers; Part VII. Medicine and Business: 39. SARS; 40. New Coke; 41. Japan in the US car market; Appendix A: further recommended reading.

About the Author :
Timothy Walton is an adjunct professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst College and on the roster of subject matter experts at Omnis Inc., an intelligence training consulting firm. The author of The Spanish Treasure Fleets, he served in the U.S. Navy and spent twenty-four years as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Review :
“Serious students of intelligence learn far more from examining the successes and failures of actual cases than they do from abstract theorizing. They want to hear it from someone who has been there and who can speak from firsthand experience. In my opinion, it would be hard to find anyone with better credentials to write a book on intelligence analysis from a practitioner’s standpoint than Tim Walton.” – James M. Olson, The Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, and former Chief of CIA Counterintelligence “Timothy Walton has written the best beginner’s guide to the complex world of intelligence analysis with a historical perspective that also deserves to be pondered by experienced analysts.” – Christopher Andrew, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 and The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West “Timothy Walton offers in these pages a readable and reliable survey of secret intelligence operations, from Biblical times through the contemporary efforts of the Western nations to thwart global terrorist activities perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its allies. The work is a rich mosaic of espionage down through the years, filled with images of shadowy figures and dazzling spy machines.” – Loch K. Johnson, University of Georgia