What's wrong with the Intelligence Cycle

In the modern era, almost all intelligence professionals will study the Intelligence Cycle as a kind of gospel of how intelligence functions. Yet it is not a particularly good model, since the cyclical pattern does not describe what really happens. Policy officials rarely give collection guidance. Collection and analysis, which are supposed to work in tandem, in fact work more properly in parallel. Finally, the idea that decision makers wait for the delivery of intelligence before making policy decisions is equally incorrect. In the modern era, policy officials seem to want intelligence to support policy rather than to inform it. The Intelligence Cycle also fails to consider either counter-intelligence or covert action. Taken as a whole, the cycle concept is a flawed model, but nevertheless continues to be taught in the US and around the world.     

An Update on the New Federal Expert Discovery Rule: The Expert's Perspective

In December 2010, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 (FRCP 26) was amended to protect certain communications between a litigating counsel and its experts from discovery. The rule protects communications and draft expert reports and lays out new disclosure requirements for the so-called “treating physician” expert. Attorneys and experts who first read the rule commonly agreed that the rule would make expert discovery more streamlined and cost-effective while preserving an opposing party's right to obtain facts and data that were considered by the expert in formulating its opinion. However, many commentators on the amended FRCP 26 warned practitioners not to fully embrace the literal meaning of the rule until it was field tested by litigating attorneys and the courts had the opportunity to interpret a number of loosely defined terms during the course of resolving federal discovery disputes. Now, almost a year after the rule's first official publication, several courts have interpreted the key terms that appear in the rule and have expressed their interpretations in written opinions. The judicial holdings of these cases cover different aspects of the rule, and it is still too early to determine how the majority of federal courts will ultimately interpret it. However, a review of current case law indicates that the courts have, thus far, taken a practical and literal view of the amended rule and have not expanded or limited its scope beyond what was generally believed to be the intent of the rule. As a result, practitioners are still hopeful that the rule will make working with an expert more efficient and less cumbersome, to the benefit of experts, attorneys, and ultimately their clients.