MacEachin's university major was economics, but he also showed great interest in philosophy. His Agency career--like Gates'--included an extended assignment to a policymaking office. He came away from this experience with new insights on what constitutes "value-added" intelligence usable by policymakers. Subsequently, as CIA's senior manager on arms control issues, he dealt regularly with a cadre of tough-minded policy officials who let him know in blunt terms what worked as effective policy support and what did not.Psychology of Intelligence AnalysisBy the time MacEachin became DDI in 1993, Gates's policy of DDI front-office pre-publication review of nearly all DI analytical studies had been discontinued. MacEachin took a different approach; he read--mostly on weekends--and reflected on numerous already-published DI analytical papers. He did not like what he found. In his words, roughly a third of the papers meant to assist the policymaking process had no discernible argumentation to bolster the credibility of intelligence judgments, and another third suffered from flawed argumentation. This experience, along with pressures on CIA for better analytic performance in the wake of alleged "intelligence failures" concerning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, prompted his decision to launch a major new effort to raise analytical standards.
That’s for sure. As for the fall of the Soviet Union, we did miss that. The main reason was the fellow in charge of Soviet analysis was named Doug MacEachin, and guess what he’s doing now. He’s one of the most important staffers on the 9/11 commission.