INTELLIGENCE CIC

A CIC would simply consist of all observations from all sources brought to a point and not just listed but expressed as a conclusion.

It comes from this sort of thing: The lookout in the crow's nest sees two enemy battleships and a destroyer operating sixty miles away from the CIC and he has spotted two squadrons of enemy airplanes and they are proceeding toward his point and so. Then somebody on a shore base has picked up an enemy agent who has been active in trying to count the number of torpedoes being loaded on ships. And all of these pieces of information don't come in and become a digest which says "A battleship was seen at two, squadrons of airplanes were seen." There's a report from enemy agents about counting torpedoes out of here and that's not it. That is not a CIC.

Those things come together and the digest of that information is that there is a concentration of enemy forces.

It isn't just everybody repeating idiotically everything everybody hears idiotically everywhere.

It comes down to a conclusion: There is a concentration of enemy forces.

Now, in view of the fact that courses and speeds have been spotted from three or four or five or six or eight or twelve or fifty different points, it says that the enemy is going to try to force Formica Straits. That is the conclusion and it is inevitable and leaves only one action remaining—you're going to get a force there to reinforce Formica Straits. Your conclusion is so precise, if your information is properly brought to one point and coordinated, that you've got nothing left to do but what it says right there.

And that is a CIC.

If you paste a whole bunch of stuff up on a blackboard that is all just a duplication of everything that came in, you've got nothing. Somebody has to digest it. It hasn't been brought to a central board obviously if it's still in its native, undigested state.

Stop trying to handle isolated pieces of information which are not coordinated against any program or any action or anything of the sort, because you just wind yourself up in a ball.

So, what is an intelligence digest? When all of the information is in, you have an inevitable conclusion.