Policymakers and intel analysts: can this marriage be saved?

RAND recently published the findings from a conference it hosted on long-term and strategic analysis (“Making Strategic Analysis Matter”).

Much of the report focused on the cultural differences between intelligence analysts and the policymakers who are the consumers of the analysts’ work product. The cultural gap is especially wide between the producers of long-term and strategic intelligence and policymakers, who, with their inevitable focus on day-to-day problems, often find long-term and strategic analysis an entertaining luxury that they simply can’t fit into their hectic schedules. Many of the participants at the conference seemed focused on a marketing problem – how to convince policymakers to pay attention to their long-term and strategic research.

A table from page 19 of the report (which I adapt) tries to summarize the cultural differences between analysts and policymakers:

Has the recent appointment of two policymakers/operators (Leon Panetta and David Petraeus) to CIA had any effect on the transmission or reception of long-term and strategic intelligence from analysts to policymakers? A hypothesis would be that experienced operators like Panetta and Petraeus, once at CIA, would have a better grasp of what strategic intelligence was most useful to top policymakers and would have better credibility convincing their bosses to pay attention to that intelligence. If this hypothesis is true, it might say something about how to get top policymakers to pay more attention to long-term and strategic intelligence.