TEST Simulation Model: Team-Working and Experiential Scenario-based Training

In this chapter, we outline a TEST (Team-working and Experiential Scenario-based Training) Simulation Model called “Secrets and Mysteries”. This is a day-long intelligence scenario exercise, embedded within a two-day workshop in which the first day allows students to explore issues of cognitive performance and analytical pitfalls. The framing for the workshop derives from the Butler Report in the UK, which resulted from an official inquiry into intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in the wake of the 2003 military campaign against Iraq. In this report, in a section entitled “The Limitations of Intelligence”, Lord Butler discussed the difference between “secrets” and “mysteries” and the importance for the analyst of recognising which was which. Butler noted that “intelligence can be expected to uncover secrets…but mysteries are essentially unknowable”