Objectives
- Translate vague words into ranges
- Avoid certainty words the evidence cannot carry
Lesson
Words like likely, probable and possible carry different meanings for different readers. Intelligence practice attaches rough ranges to those words so a reader knows what was meant; the exact bands matter less than stating them.
Write assessments the way you would want to read them: state the judgment, the confidence, and what would move it. “Probable, moderate confidence, would change if the inspection report shows otherwise” is a usable sentence. “Everyone knows” is not.
Terms
Faculty
Analytic Standards
US Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Analytic tradecraft standards, sourcing, expressions of likelihood and confidence
The standards are taught as a writing and reasoning discipline that any investigator can adopt. Nothing about the institution that publishes them is endorsed or defended here.
An institution can hold good standards and still fail to follow them. The 2005 review of the pre-war Iraq assessments is taught in this section for that reason.