Just the Facts M'am': Why Sergeant Friday is not an Intelligence Officer

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Abstract: A discussion of discordant philosophies of analysis, information, and decision making - Law Enforcement and Intelligence: Since the events of September 11 a broad consensus has developed in favor of closer integration of the Intelligence Community and Law Enforcement Community. Specifically, policymakers have greatly accelerated the already developing processes of information sharing, analytic cooperation and operational integration between the two communities. Most of the attention to this subject has focused on the civil liberties concerns raised by such integration. However, it is perhaps as important to look at the systemic, structural and cultural obstacles that will hinder efforts to bring the two communities closer together. One area where this is manifest is in the deeply held understandings of the meaning of "information" which the two corporate cultures maintain. I would argue that the Law Enforcement Community, because of its deep roots in the Anglo-Saxon system of justice, sees information as personally held and bounded in relevance to a particular case. In contrast, the Intelligence Community sees information as corporately held, and infinite in relevance. Because of the conceptual variance between the two corporate cultures, and meaningful integration of the two will require rigorous analysis, and effective articulation, of the similarities and differences between the two. In addition to focusing on the intelligence community, the talk and discussion will address how these issues are related to, and in many cases directly analogous to, issues in addressing sustainable development. As we head toward major reform of the intelligence community we should not ignore research and thinking that has been going on for years in the social and policy sciences in many different issue areas.