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(U) Write Right: Opening the Traffic Fairy's Packages
FROM:
of the Reporting Board (S12A)
Run Date: 08/15/2005
(U) We return this month to our old friend the Traffic Fairy. Last
spring (see link ) we dealt with the misapprehension that all
information contained in a single piece of traffic is reportable; we
now address a related delusion: that all such information must be
reported in a single product.
(U) The phrases "in other matters" or "in possibly related
matters..." usually indicate the second misunderstanding; an
infallible indicator is the egregious "in unrelated activity." If it's
unrelated, what business does it have in that product? Just
because the Traffic Fairy delivered it at the same time and in the
same package does not mean it all belongs in one report.
(C//SI) An intercept of, for instance, a report to a head or a
ministry may contain information dealing with a number of
separate issues, not all of which may be related, and not all of
which should be reported in one product. It may be easier to
repeat a list than to separate information by topic, but it does not
serve customers well to make them deal with a jumble of items,
some of which may not answer their requirements. Find the most
significant issue, using your knowledge of the customer's
Information Needs ; put it together with all relevant material,
including collateral, and leave the rest for either separate reports
or your background files. Don't confuse customers, or waste
their time, by including irrelevant material, or by implying
or forcing connections where there are none.
(S//SI) You're also making more work for yourself and for the
customer, since different issues must be flagged by different
Information Need (IN) indicators and Topic and Area Guide (TAG)
tetragraphs, and both of these markers affect product distribution.
SID's ultimate -- if distant -- goal is to have the content of the
report dictate the distribution automatically, but until that day
comes, we must be careful to avoid sending, for instance, a report
that deals mainly with agricultural matters to a military customer
because the intercept contained a mention of jet aircraft (we didn't
make that example up, by the way).
(U) This is particularly important when composing sanitizations,
which are supposed to be boiled down to essentials for a particular
customer set. No tear-line or sanitized lead should include
unnecessary material, as our field representatives and customers
keep telling us. We recently found a report that included an "In
possibly related matters" statement -- information with a tenuous
connection at best -- in the tear-line. Ask yourself what the
warfighter or the policy-maker thought of that. Do you want your
customer to think you don't know what's important?
(U) So determine whether the "other matters" are related, and
then determine their importance, before writing your report. Seek
help from your senior reporters or your URS center to develop your
SERIES:
(U) Write Right '05
1. Write Right : Too
Much Redundancy is
Redundant
2. Write Right -SIGINT Myths: The
Traffic Fairy
3. Write Right : There
Is No Index of
Forbidden Words
4. Write Right :
Avoiding SIGINTisms
5. Write Right : A Note
on Validity Wording
6. Write Right : Brevity
Can Impede Clarity
(or, A Capital
Situation)
7. Write Right :
Opening the Traffic
Fairy's Packages
8. Write Right :
Management Theory
Applied to Reporting
9. Write Right : Give
the 'Key Points' Style
a Try
10. Write Right : Still
More on the Traffic
Fairy
judgment. Don't assume that SIGINT reporting is like one of those
competitions wherein chefs are handed a bag of groceries and
required to use each ingredient in the resulting dish. Your
customers don't want to find, for instance, anchovies in their ice
cream.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108