Intelligence is the subject of many myths and misunderstandings. This, and Wellington's insight, get at the real meaning of intelligence.
Intelligence is just the process for finding out what one needs to know.
With that in mind, it is important to understand the distinction between intelligence and mere information . These definitions can be found online in the NATO glossary . Decision makers need knowledge that is focused on the decisions they have to make, accurate, and tells them what they need to know. That is what intelligence is all about - gathering information , sifting through the resulting raw data, piecing it together, drawing out the right conclusions, and feeding it to the leadership. To do all of those things, over the years intelligence professionals have developed what we call the intelligence cycle .