Advancing intelligence analysis: using natural language processing on East Pakistani intelligence documents

This article demonstrates how natural language processing (NLP) can be used by intelligence practitioners and scholars to analyse text. Using decades of unredacted East Pakistani intelligence reports declassified and released by the Government of Bangladesh, the article shows how machine learning can provide insight into intelligence documents. In particular, it provides a case study for how NLP can provide quantitative analysis that complements the work of qualitative analysis. Simultaneously, this article also demonstrates how NLP can provide historians with a quantitative methodology to better understand historical government records.