The Psychological Assessment of Political LeadersSecurity Council to identify leaders of priority interest. The results of
the surveys were an important factor in establishing priorities for the
CAPPB's program, although politico-military crises and other unex-
pected international events often led to crash requirements for an
assessment of a political leader. Much embassy reporting would be
concerned with political, economic, or military matters, but little
attention was paid to leader personality. Yet there was often sub-
stantial untapped knowledge concerning the leaders of concern.
Because biographic files typically began with the leader's ascension
to power, the very background features important to a political psy-
chologist were often missing. But these gaps could often be filled
with queries to the embassy. Similarly, a search of open source mate-
rial often produced a rich lode of material from local periodicals. The
opportunity to meet with senior embassy officials who had had con-
tact with the individual of concern was particularly valuable, for
these sources were often gifted observers who had never been
debriefed from the perspective of political psychology.
As the academic interdiscipline of political psychology emerged,
the name of the CAPPB was changed to the Political Psychology
Center, and subsequently to the Political Psychology Division. The
analytic approach of the division was systematically examined and
refined with the assistance of a senior panel of prominent academic
political psychologists to ensure that the needs of senior policy con-
sumers were being met by the studies.
An important aspect of the approach was the continuing emphasis
on ensuring that the subjects analyzed were appropriately anchored
within their respective societies. This was accomplished by regularly
teaming a psychologist or psychiatrist with an area expert. Thus in
assessing a leader from sub-Saharan Africa, for example, a cultural
anthropologist with particular expertise in culture and personality
would be a core member of the analytic team; similarly, for the study
of a South Asian leader, a political sociologist with particular exper-
tise in the region would be a core member of the analytic team.
The dissolution of the Soviet empire and the end of the cold war
led to a major reduction in the intelligence budget, especially
resources devoted to human intelligence in comparison to techno-
logical intelligence. With this cutback, the scope of the resources
devoted to developing in-depth political personality profiles was