- Julia Simone, a manager of a brothel previously raided, was arrested for a traffic violation and agreed to provide testimony against El Movi in exchange for a reduced sentence. - She described El Movi's origins and leadership, corroborating and expanding on details previously provided by another source. - El Movi was started by Jorge Alvarez, the son of a Mexican drug cartel member, who was sent to the US but formed his own criminal organization in Tucson using coercive tactics learned from the cartel world. He had a conflict with the MS-13 gang, who then installed Angel Martinez to run brothel operations in Tucson under their oversight in exchange for keeping other criminal activities separate.

1. Intelligence Reasoning
Three Approaches to Reasoning
As we have addressed several times in this course, intelligence
is a product manufactured from the exploitation of processed
intelligence information, which in turn is a result of the
collection of information by an intelligence collection platform.
Intelligence analysts must often create intelligence products
under conditions of incomplete or even inaccurate information.
To do so, we move back and forth between data points
represented in intelligence information and models representing
targets of interest to intelligence consumers; hence the reason
why in this course we have placed so much emphasis on
structured analytic techniques to manage information and
target-centric approaches to building and analyze models. One
way of looking at each side of this coin is by dividing it into
two styles of reasoning, called inductive and deductive.
Inductive Reasoning
In inductive reasoning, several specific observations (data) lead
to a generalized conclusion (theory) through a process
(summarizing). So, for example, if we look around and see that
every swan we see is white then we can use inductive reasoning
to generate the theory that all swans are white. In fact, for
centuries we in the Western world did think all swans were
white until we observed black swans for the first time in
Australia, which brings us to a key feature of inductive
reasoning: probability.
Inductive reasoning is inherently probabilistic, meaning that it
always allows for the possibility that a piece of data may come

2. to light that contradicts a general principle that has served very
well up until now to explain every other piece of data available.
One of the issues with using inductive reasoning is that analysts
sometimes forget that it is probabilistic. This means that the
results of inductive reasoning are openly acknowledged to be
the product of the data that have been included in the analysis,
with the understanding that new data might mean a revision of
the results.
A natural human bias, however, is to reject or discount
contradictory evidence in part because changing one’s position
on a subject incurs costs (remember our lecture on Appalachian
Mountain problems in Week 5).
A well-known philosopher by the name of Karl Popper was
reportedly in the company of a friend of his who was doctor. A
nurse came to the door and told the doctor that he had a new
patient waiting for an examination. The doctor asked what the
patient’s symptoms were and after the nurse described them, the
doctor declared the diagnosis and issued a prescription. After
the nurse left, Popper supposedly asked the doctor how he knew
what illness the patient had without even seeing him. The doctor
responded that he had seen 1,000 people with those symptoms,
to which Popper replied that the patient then must have been the
1,001st.
If analysts can keep in mind when they are (and are not) using
inductive reasoning, then they can leave more room in their
analysis for contradictory evidence, and therefore more room to
change their analytic assessments.
Deductive Reasoning
Whereas inductive reasoning summarizes data to arrive at a
theory, deductive reasoning tests a discreet fact to arrive at a
single datum. To undertake deductive reasoning, we start with a

3. theory and ask the question, “For this theory to be true, what
else must be true?” The answer is typically a series of different
elements, or aspects of the theory.
We identify which of these aspects we can test to see if they are
true or false for a situation or problem to which we are applying
the theory. In deductive reasoning, a generalization (theory)
leads to a specific conclusion (datum) through a process
(testing).
Remember during Week 1 when Chief Heaton gave us the
theory that cases involving brothels in Tucson were actually
part of some greater movement in organized crime? We handled
that by asking ourselves what symptoms indicate the presence
of organized crime involving human trafficking. We then ran
tests for those symptoms to see if they were present or not.
The first ‘symptom’ of organization we found was that the
variables of the age group and the nationality of the victims
were correlated to a level of statistical significance. The ‘test’
we ran was a Chi-Square Test of Means, and the results
supported the theory. After that, we ran other tests in that
confirmed these results. We did something similar in Week 2
only that time instead of looking for the symptoms of
organization in general, we looked for the symptoms of a
specific organization in particular – its ‘fingerprints’. This next
step required us to move from the theory that the brothels
represented organized crime to the theory that a criminal
organization behaves relatively consistent to modus operandi.
What if our tests did NOT demonstrate a pattern of organization
or behavior? What would we do then? Well, we would probably
keep looking. After all, we are accountable to a boss. But if we
kept coming up dry, then at some point we have to admit to
ourselves and Chief Heaton either that the brothel ‘industry’
was no industry at all, or that it was run by independent

4. operators rather than a criminal organization. And that brings us
to a key characteristic of deductive reasoning: determinism.
Deductive reasoning is inherently deterministic, which means
that if our premise is false then our conclusion is false, as well.
By ‘premise’ we mean the body of discrete facts against which
we test our theory. Granted, we may run one test that comes
back negative (false) but not throw out multitude of other tests
that come back positive (true), but that is why we have to
identify from the outset what our goals are and establish
thresholds for when we are going to accept or abandon our
theory (a.k.a. our alternative hypothesis).
In most statistical tests for criminal justice we will use a
confidence threshold of 95%, meaning that if 95% of our results
come back true, then we are willing take the 5% risk that we are
wrong. Our criminal justice system for major crimes, however,
requires a much higher threshold because in the United States
we have built a system based on an openly acknowledged
willingness to risk letting a guilty person go free rather than to
convict an innocent person. If we were doing human subjects
research on, say, fetuses, children, the elderly, or many other
categories of vulnerable populations, then we would certainly
use a confidence threshold at or above 99%.
Abductive Reasoning
It is very important for an analyst to be mindful of when he or
she is working within the context of inductive or deductive
reasoning. When the DEA told us in Week 4 that they believed
El Movi was a drug-related organization because Daisy (our
HUMINT source) had up until that point been involved in drugs,
they were operating on the theory that informants who have a
reporting history on one topic probably do not have access to
information of intelligence value on another, unrelated topic.

5. The error in this way of thinking was that they were not
sufficiently accounting for the probabilistic nature of inductive
reasoning. In fact, they (probably) thought they were drawing a
line of reasoning from one fact to another, rather than from a
fact to a theory. On the flip side, the FBI were starting from the
theory that terrorists have passed into the United States through
Southeast Arizona from Mexico.
From this theory they surmised El Movi was probably a
terrorism-related organization, but – as we now know –
deductive reasoning demands that we construct a test for that
and other facts based on the theory and then evaluate the results
of that test to draw a conclusion rather than simply making an
analytical assumption.
If we are not paying attention then our analysis is subject to the
kinds of errors we addressed in Week 4, but that does not mean
we cannot benefit from the advantages of operating within a
well-reasoned framework of inquiry using a more fluid
approach.
In reality, most of us are moving back and forth between
inductive and deductive reasoning constantly even if for no
other reason than that sometimes we start from a theory we are
going to test and other times we start with data for whose
characteristics we seek an underlying explanation simply by the
nature of the problems we are attempting to solve. Analysis can
begin at any point, and if we think of inductive and deductive
reasoning as operating in a cycle, then we can see that the cycle
does occur in only one direction (Figure 1).
Treating inductive and deductive reasoning as two, interrelated
processes – as opposed to two, mutually contradictory ways of
thinking – is called abductive reasoning. Through abductive

6. reasoning we treat each side of the cycle as if its output served
as an input for the other side.
We summarize data points to produce theories that we break
into smaller parts that we test in order to arrive at data points
we can use to produce theories – and the cycle goes on and on.
For the sake of clarity, lets try an example starting with some
facts that we will treat as a body of data. Lets say we, as
analysts, are trying to solve a series of murders. We have
information about multiple murders that seem to have similar
characteristics.
We theorize that the best explanation for the murders is a serial
killer. So we establish a profile for who this serial killer may
be, what motivates him or her, where he or she lives, etc. When
we identify someone that seems to meet these aspects of our
theory, we can test them to determine whether they are, indeed,
the person we are looking for or not.
Perhaps more importantly, abductive reasoning contains an
auditing function, which an analyst can use to walk backwards
through the cycle. If a theory is questionable then the analyst
can locate the different observations that led to the creation of
that theory, and interrogate the summarizing process to
investigate whether, for example, a piece of information exerted
an undue influence on the creation of the theory, or if the
summarizing process included spurious information, or if
information that should have been included in the summarizing
process was ignored, for whatever reason.
If a specific piece of information needs to be examined, the
analyst can interrogate the testing process to determine if, for
example, the testing process itself failed to address the aspect
of the theory that was relevant to the analyst’s purpose, or if the
testing process used a standard that as so high it inadvertently
eliminated useful results, or if the theory itself is composed of

7. individual aspects that are inaccurate or imprecise that caused a
fatal flaw in an otherwise valid test. In our serial killer example
we may find we need to reassess the data or gather more data to
refine our profile (i.e., our theory). Or we may find we are
looking for the right indicators of our serial killer but not in the
right way, so we need to reassess our testing methods.
Analysis of Competing Hypotheses
The reading for this week covers a structured analytic technique
known as analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH). We have
seen individual hypotheses at several points in our course, both
generating them and testing them. More often than not,
however, we deal with situations where we must consider the
likelihood of more than one hypothesis at a time.
In fact, we should always be looking for opportunities to come
up with multiple theories simply because otherwise we fall into
the trap of deciding the truth rather than discovering the truth.
When we expend resources to investigate a theory, we are
simultaneously investing in that theory, which can cause us to
resist responding effectively to new data or to new ways of
looking at the data we have.
Biases are not always a bad thing. As humans we are constantly
bombarded with infinite amounts of information (and especially
so if you are an intelligence analyst, hence the TPEDs problem).
Without a means to filter information we would be
overwhelmed to the point of immobilization. As we grow up we
learn rules of thumb to make it easier to survive as a limited
being in a world of unlimited data.
For example, if you are lost in the woods and need to find
which direction to travel, you can use the old saying, “The sun
rises in the east and sets in the west,” to orient yourself. Of
course, the saying is untrue: the sun does not move! But in that

8. situation, our rule of thumb – our bias – might be the difference
between getting home and staying lost. We also usually work
under conditions of incomplete information, requiring us to fill
in gaps between data.
We have to use rules of thumbs about how we believe the world
works in order to make analytical leaps that get us from one
piece of data to another. We have to be mindful of when we are
doing this, lest we lose track of the assumptions we have made,
confusing them with the actual data themselves.
Lets say we are dealing with a case where we have a less than
ideal amount of information – basically every case we deal
with, actually.
We go over the data, back and forth, forward and backward,
until over time we start to develop a story for what has taken
place. Perhaps unthinkingly we start assigning attributes to the
story based on other cases we may have worked.
We assume things about the people involved based on people we
have met, and maybe not under the most amicable conditions.
Information comes in that contradicts the story we have built,
and we focus our energy on justifying all the reasons why we do
not need to revise our story in light of new facts. ACH forces us
to generate new theories in spite of our tendency to find one
story and stick to it.
It also requires us to break up the pattern-filling function of our
biases by looking at the contribution one piece of data makes
for or against each hypothesis rather than allowing us to
evaluate hypotheses as a complete storyline that can blind us to
our own influence in its construction.
Briefing the Commissioner

9. Last week you applied techniques from social network analysis
to interpret El Movi’s communication network based on SIGINT
information acquired through a warrant authorizing the TPD to
conduct wire tapping of the organization’s telephones. Your
interpretation led you to produce a recommendation for Chief
Heaton indicating which members of El Movi should be targeted
to bring down the organization most efficiently.
Scenario
Guess what: Remember Mario and Julia from the brothel in
Week 1 that started all this? Well, we found Julia – Julia
Simone, actually – just outside of Flagstaff. She was pulled
over by the Arizona Highway Patrol for speeding, found to be
intoxicated, and was arrested. During her processing, she gave a
different address to the officer at the station than the one on her
driver’s license. When that officer ran the address, she found
that it was the location of a brothel that had been taken down
about a month ago. Oops!
After some further digging, the officer discovered Julia Simone
matched the description of the “Julia” reported by the victims at
the brothel as one of its managers. When Julia awoke the next
morning an investigator interrogated her about the brothel,
during which she could have invoked her right to remain silent.
Instead, she agreed to testify against El Movi in exchange for a
reduced sentence, apparently motivated by the fact that when
she and Marco contacted Angél for assistance after the raid, he
told them to get out of Tucson and never come back.
Later that day she was sent back to Tucson to face charges
waiting for her there, at which point an investigating officer
debriefed her about her knowledge of El Movi. Shortly after
leaving town, Marco (whom we now know as Marcus “Marco”
Wheatley) disappeared, taking most of their money with him.

10. Julia’s description of El Movi closely resembled that of
Daisy’s, but with the details only an insider could provide. The
man who started El Movi was named Jorgé Álvarez. He was the
son of a mid-level member of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel who
operated primarily along the coastline of the Mexican state of
Sonora, which borders Arizona. Jorgé got himself into some
kind of trouble sometime around the mid-2000s when the
Beltrán Leyva Cartel became embroiled in a conflict with the
Sinaloa Cartel.
Jorgé’s father sent him to the United States to get away from
the cartel business, but Jorgé was ambitious. He was visiting a
brothel in Tucson when it struck him as a good idea to transfer
the coercive tactics he knew from his life in the cartel to
building a business for himself in the city. While there were no
other cartels in Tucson for him to annoy, he did get on the
wrong side of a major transnational gang originally out of Los
Angeles named Mara Salvatrucha, a.k.a. MS-13, when he
attempted to cut into their drug activities in the area. MS-13
quickly “encouraged” Jorgé to return to Mexico, which he
promptly did.
In his place, MS-13 found Angél Martínez. Angél was not a
member of the gang, per se, but MS-13 did strike a deal with
him: He could make all the money he wanted in the brothel
business, but he had to keep human trafficking and all the
attention MS-13 figured brothels were bound to attract away
from MS-13’s drug business. MS-13 gave Angél the initial seed
money he needed to begin organizing his business – a loan he
has long since repaid, with interest – and El Movi was formed.
Julia did not know much about how the brothel’s victims were
recruited or transported out of Mexico, but she did know that
Michael Edwards and Jesse Hales arranged for the women to be
transported to the brothels. The victims were usually distributed

11. individually to the brothels in order to isolate them from anyone
they may know outside the house. The women were informed
that they would cook and clean in exchange for being sponsored
for a green card to work in the United States. They were closely
monitored for several months while they were made completely
dependent on the brothel managers until they could be slowly
introduced into the sex trade themselves. Most of the women by
this time were so dispirited, it only took a little persuasion to
push them into the business. After this point it was more matter
of keeping them busy and under control, which was the job of
the managers.
The managers generally divided their duties at the house
between them. The men managers kept the peace when
customers became aggressive or unruly. They were occasionally
called into to threaten the women, but that was rarely necessary
to keep them “working”. The men were also responsible for
finding customers and introducing them to the brothels. The
women managers made sure customers were happy and kept the
brothels’ victims in line. The managers had almost complete
control of how they handled financing their individual houses as
long as they kept a low profile and gave enough of their profits
to Christopher Thompson, Sidney Barrows, Adam Robles, and
Garrett Davenport when they came around at the first of each
month to collect the money.
Julia did not know where the other brothels were located, but
she provided the names of the other brothel managers as the
following:
Julia rarely interacted with Angél himself. She and Marco had
been seeing each other for a while when Sidney – a mutual
acquaintance at the time – introduced them to Angél. Angél
offered them a ‘business proposition’, and considering that it

12. paid well and offered free housing, food, and a car, it was an
easy decision. Angél had a few specific rules the couple had to
follow: First, they had to have a handgun in the house at all
times just in case it was needed for Marco to maintain security,
but only as a last resort.
Angél detested the use of violence because he thought it would
only cause more trouble for his business than it would solve.
The gun had to be registered in Julia’s name, although she did
not know why Angél insisted on it. Second, for all intents and
purposes, the couple had to live like a normal couple in a
normal neighborhood. Julia was to play the role of housewife
while Marco was to play the role of the faithful husband. Angél
was very clear that if they did not look and act like someone
who you would never suspect of running a brothel, then there
would be ‘consequences’. Third, the couple were given a smart
phone and forbidden to use any other forms of communication –
no Internet, no landline telephone, nothing. Julia could never
use the phone, but she could visit friends and family provided
she kept her attention on the brothel. Lastly, if they were
busted, they were on their own.
For a while things were going well until she and Marco got
greedy. They knew they could never get away with stealing
money from Angél, but they did convince him to let them move
into a bigger house than the others in order to keep more
women. They also started selling customers alcohol and keeping
the profits for themselves – breaking another of Angél’s strict
prohibitions against the use of drugs or alcohol in the house.
One night, things got out of hand between two drunken
customers. One shot the other in front of the house, and rest is
history.
Armed with this new information, Chief Heaton thinks it might
be time to prepare to bring down El Movi. Before he does this,
however, he wants you to assess all the information we have so

13. far and come up with a prioritized list of hypotheses about the
organization. Specifically, he wants to know what will be the
consequences of raiding the brothels. Is bringing down El Movi
really only a matter of bringing a local human trafficking ring
to an end? Will it spark a war between MS-13 and the police?
Will it spark a war between a cartel and the police? So on and
so forth.