re: "More Consulting"

Digger at Life After Jerusalem ("The musings of a Two-Spirit American Indian, Public Diplomacy-coned Foreign Service Officer") gave props to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).


Money quote(s):


"(S)peaking of INR (the speaker...keep up), I encourage you to get briefings with them. Too often, folks forget INR, and they are a font of knowledge. They can tailor a briefing to your clearance level, and let me tell you they are all awesome. You will only find experts of their calliber in the finest universities. And check out INR/OPN too. They do media analysis and polling in our countries. They will have some great unclassified info for you. I had two INR briefings today in addition to the Fulbrighter talk, one with the analyst and one with the analyst from OPN, and they were great.You will be better prepared for having done it."

Despite rumors to the contrary, all diplomats are not spies, nor are all U.S. diplomats secretly CIA agents. Not true. The U.S. diplomatic community is, by and large, distinct from America's intelligence community; that is, with two caveats and one exception-by-overlap.

Caveat 1: Diplomatic reporting is available for inclusion in all-source analysis just like all other sorts of reporting, such as open-source (i.e., press & media, books, &tc.), military, and actual intelligence collection products of whatever sort.

Caveat 2: Diplomats are also consumers of intelligence products. They'd be stupid not to be.

The exception, or overlap, between the diplomatic and intelligence communities is the Bureau of Intelligence and Research or INR. INR is the part of the State Dept. that's an actual part of the IC. While relatively small (as is DOS itself), INR has some very good analysts working for it and they have, within the overall IC, a reputation for "punching above their weight class." That's a good thing.


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