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Don't filter the analysts
How it's done matters. Trust builds over time, through getting straight about issues and refusing to put a finger up to the wind and cater to whatever the prevailing wisdom is.
At the CIA, that meant the director offered his own view to the president while staying out of the business of filtering what came up through people he respected, even when he did not always agree with the analysts' conclusions.
A system that punishes or drives out people who speak truth to power ends up making more bad choices than good ones. Autocratic regimes like the People's Republic of China tend to beat honest assessments of second and third order consequences out of people. That creates a closed loop, and Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine four and a half years ago came out of one.
How did Kennedy change after the Bay of Pigs?
The failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 left President John F. Kennedy convinced that his advisers had been too eager to agree. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, he gathered a group called ExComm and sometimes left the room so advisers could argue freely. Irving Janis, the psychologist who coined the term groupthink, contrasted the two episodes in his work. The group weighed options for nearly two weeks before choosing a naval quarantine.
How do analysts record disagreement?
Intelligence Community Directive 203 sets analytic standards for the American intelligence agencies. The standards call for analysts to state their confidence levels and to give alternative views where those exist. When agencies disagree, a formal assessment can note the dissenting view directly. The directive was issued in 2007 after reforms that followed the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq weapons assessments.
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