Intelligence Analysis

American intelligence analysts have been severely criticized for failing to anticipate the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks and for the ill-advised invasion of Iraq. The resulting Intelligence Community reorganization, intended to repair these presumed deficiencies, reflects a misunderstanding of what intelligence analysts can do and where responsibility for political and military decisions lie. In fact, the Intelligence Community is far more diversified in its tasks than is generally realized. Where analysis is done and for whom makes a large difference in its effectiveness. Moreover, changing technology is altering how it is done, where, and by whom. The border between what is ‘strategic’ or ‘national’ intelligence and ‘tactical’ intelligence is much diminished. At the same time, intelligence analysts all too often fail to incorporate the growing amounts of open source information, as well as analytic concepts and theories available from academic and scholarly literature.     

Why strategic intelligence analysis has limited influence on American foreign policy

Why does strategic intelligence analysis have limited influence on American foreign policy? Intelligence analysis is frequently disregarded, this paper contends, because it is a duplicated step in the decision-making process and supplements but does not supplant policy assessment. Many intelligence analyses will confirm policy assessments and be redundant or – if the assessments are different – policy-makers will choose their own interpretations over those of intelligence analysts. The findings of this paper provide scholars with important insights into the limits of intelligence analysis in the foreign policy process as well as recommendations for increasing its positive impact on policy.     

GCHQ and British External Policy in the 1960s

This study examines the role played by GCHQ during the 1960s. It looks at GCHQ's overseas Sigint collection network, its relationship with the NSA and the problems caused by decolonization, economic crisis and military withdrawal from East of Suez. The paper also discusses GCHQ's intelligence targets in the 1960s, its codebreaking successes and assesses how important Sigint was for British policy towards France, Egypt and Indonesia. It concludes that while Sigint gave Britain tactical benefits in dealing with France and Egypt it was only in the case of Indonesia that Sigint helped Britain to achieve its strategic goals.     

The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis

Abstract

The 9/11 terrorist attacks have been intensively examined as both tactical and strategic intelligence failures but less attention has been paid to the policy failures which preceded them. Perhaps this is due to the presumption that intelligence analysis influences decision-making as a precursor to and foundation for policy. This assumption about the influence of analysis on decision deserves a much closer examination. The 9/11 terrorist attacks provide a good case to study for greater understanding of the influence, or lack of influence, that intelligence analysis has on decision-making. Specifically, the 9/11 Commission Report identifies as a significant failure the lack of a National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat between 1998 and 2001, and implies that if one had been produced it might have helped enable decision-makers to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In other words, a failure of strategic intelligence analysis lay at the foundation of the failure to prevent 9/11. But was this really the case? This article takes a closer look at the case of the missing National Intelligence Estimate by first evaluating what decision-makers knew about the threat prior to the 9/11 attacks, the policies they were implementing at the time, and the extent to which the hypothetical National Intelligence Estimate described by the 9/11 Commission would have mattered in terms of influencing their judgement and policy for the better. It concludes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were more a failure of policy than strategic intelligence analysis.     

Seeing things differently: contrasting narratives of British and German photographic intelligence during the Second World War

This study examines Anglo-American narratives of British and German photographic intelligence (PI) in Europe during the Second World War. According to these narratives, Germany relegated PI to tactical and operational applications; by contrast, Britain performed these same functions but also made strategic use of the discipline. This paper reevaluates how British and German PI actually differed. It further examines whether each side’s successes and failures were within the ‘agency of agencies’ – how much did PI successes and failures directly result from intelligence organizations’ choices and actions? Finally, this paper identifies implications of these narratives for comparative intelligence studies and historiography.     

Post factum clarity: failure to identify spontaneous threats

This study explores an information interpretation explanation of strategic surprises using a non-traditional national security threat: a popular uprising. To explain why this type of assessments fail, I emphasize the role of information relevance when evaluating intelligence about civilian unrest. I posit that the dynamic nature of relevance is crucial for signals of popular dissent becoming dominant indicators that are incorporated into security assessments. A case study and observational data analysis of the Palestinian uprising (Intifada, 1987) demonstrate how information relevance contributed to the Israeli intelligence failure and how it affects the potential for strategic surprises facing a civilian threat.     

Colombia's FARC: A Portrait of Insurgent Intelligence

Abstract

The literature on intelligence little describes or comparatively analyzes the intelligence services of insurgent groups. This article partially fills the gap by assessing the intelligence activities of FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. FARC intelligence displays similarities to, as well as sharp differences from, the intelligence activities of other insurgent groups and established states. Like FARC as a whole, FARC intelligence is decentralized. Its strength is its focus on tactical military intelligence. Collection on strategic political issues, analysis, and counterintelligence are relatively weak. FARC's intelligence weaknesses limit its prospects for strategic success and its intelligence-related vulnerabilities offer the Colombian government opportunities to exploit.     

The First MBA President: George W. Bush as Public Administrator

President Bush was praised early in his first term as a tough-minded decision maker who knows how to get things done. This essay argues that President Bush possesses formidable political skills that have helped him achieve many of his policy goals, focusing on his most important national security policies: the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism and the treatment of detainees, the use of intelligence leading up to the war, and the reorganization of the executive branch. In the end, however, President Bush's deficiencies as a public administrator have undermined his policy successes.     

Public intelligence: Leaks as policy instruments–the case of the Iraq war

The study of intelligence has focused almost exclusively on ‘secret’ intelligence in its analysis of intelligence failures and the relationship of policy and intelligence. This is not surprising since intelligence analysis takes place in secret. Yet sometimes intelligence becomes public. It does so in ways that hold implications for the quality of the overall intelligence product. In order to develop a complete understanding of the relationship between intelligence and policy we need to more systematically examine the nature of public intelligence. This article provides a framework for doing so, presents historical examples from the American experience and applies the framework to the intelligence used in justifying the Iraq War.     

When generals consume intelligence: the problems that arise and how they solve them

Strategic intelligence is a critical input to national security decision-making. Research indicates decision-making is negatively affected when strategic intelligence creates cognitive problems. In this qualitative study, the opposite was found to be true. Twenty-one very senior landpower generals with command experience in Iraq and Afghanistan were interviewed. Their problems with strategic intelligence – resulting from their perceptions of contradictions – had a positive affect on decision-making. The generals resolved problems using a three-prong, socially embedded, hierarchically diverse, problem solving strategy consisting of self-learning, learning from others, and mentoring others. Such a strategy could be incorporated into professional military education throughout an officer’s career.     

Libra rising: Hitler,astrology and British intelligence, 1940–43 1

During the Second World War Nazi Germany presented British intelligence with two intellectual challenges: to acquire its tactical‘secrets’ and to comprehend the strategic ‘mysteries’ of its commanding elite. The former were hidden, but knowable through the miracles of Ultra. The latter – Hitler's strategic intentions – were by contrast virtually impenetrable. Consequently, between 1940 and 1943 British intelligence used the talents of an astrologer, Louis de Wohl, who claimed – wrongly – that Hitler's strategic plans were astrologically inspired. However, as de Wohl's star began to wane he was talent-spotted by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which employed him to disseminate black propaganda. He consequently travelled to the United States where, in tandem with British Security Co-ordination, he undermined American confidence in the invincibility of Hitler through astrological prognostications. This article aims to demonstrate that although Britain had unprecedented access to Germany's tactical ‘secrets’, the ‘mysteries’ of Hitler's strategic mind-set remained just that.     

The Fate of an Orphan: The Hawley Board and the Debates over the Postwar Organization of Medical Intelligence

The US Army's medical intelligence program developed during World War II to meet the requirements for information on the medical threat facing soldiers deployed in the first truly global military conflict. The war served as a proving ground for the application of medical intelligence on a strategic, operational and tactical level. However, hasty postwar demobilization decimated many wartime intelligence programs, including medical intelligence. The US intelligence community recognized the utility of medical intelligence as part of the overall strategic scientific and technical intelligence program and sought ways to rebuild the program. During the post-World War II debates over the unification of the military services and the responsibilities of the nascent CIA, the ‘Hawley Board’ was one of several committees which studied the problems facing the medical intelligence program. Although there was broad consensus on the need for better coordination of medical intelligence, the intelligence community ultimately failed to adopt the recommendations of the Hawley Board. The principal reasons behind the failure of the Hawley plan were the re-emergence of prewar interservice rivalries, the dominant role of the Army medical intelligence program, and the lack of a joint military–CIA vision of a centralized medical intelligence service.     

Post-9/11 wartime intelligence analysis

A few years into the Iraq War, those engaged in that fight realized that the methods of intelligence analysis, refined in Cold War, were not sufficient for wartime. To manage the massive increase in intelligence data new analytic tools were adopted for unearthing and connecting key developments and individuals hidden from view within it. Only then could the secret networks of Iraqi insurgents be uncovered. Several of these changes were put into practice by the US counterterrorism force that deployed to Iraq as Task Force 714. The study describes what these changes encompassed, and how they were employed to support those given the mission of attacking and dismantling Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s networked underground.     

The Future of Civil–Military Intelligence Cooperation Based on Lessons Learned in Iraq

As part of the infrastructure for monitoring the movements of Private Security Companies (PSCs) in Iraq, a unique intelligence interface has been constructed to enhance cooperation between the military and PSCs. Using a wide range of existing intelligence-sharing agreements and guidelines for handling classified information, PSC contractors working with the US military have been able to provide unclassified intelligence products to the wider PSC community. Using lessons learned in Iraq as a contractor building this interface, the author explains how institutional difficulties were overcome and argues that the US military should be better prepared to share intelligence with the wide range of organizations it can expect to work with in future unconventional warfare or nation-building operations. Some of the lessons learned in Iraq can also be applied to the US Department of Homeland Security's Regional Fusion Centers, where many of the same difficulties with intelligence-sharing and integration with commercial organizations are being encountered.     

Analytic Outreach for Intelligence: Insights from a Workshop on Emerging Biotechnology Threats

This article describes a new effort to engage in analytic outreach between academic scholars and intelligence analysts on the issue of emerging biotechnology threats to US national security. The context of this outreach was a September 2012 meeting in London to explore possibilities for enhanced analytic outreach in relation to emerging biotechnology threats, supported by the UK Genomics Policy and Research Forum. This meeting consisted of a mix of current and former intelligence practitioners and policy officials, and social science and scientific experts, from both the UK and the US. As will be described below, this unique pairing of experts and subjects revealed new insights into how to improve intelligence assessments on biotechnology and bioweapons threats. It also revealed continuing challenges in reforming assessments within existing intelligence work routines.     

Something Old, Something New: A Historical Perspective on the Butler Review

Simon Case and Catherine Haddon demonstrate the value of contemporary history by looking at the recent Butler Report into intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in its historical context. Intelligence failures form the most visible activity of the intelligence services, yet from the policy-maker's perspective it is important that the intelligence process remains undisturbed so that the intelligence product remains useful. The intelligence effort on Iraqi WMD, as with previous changes in intelligence targets, shows the difficulties in establishing good intelligence on a new threat. Increases in demand and the centrality of intelligence put more pressure on the intelligence services. Butler has set a precedent for public awareness and therefore a desire for accountability that must be internalised by government and the intelligence services. The problems experienced over Iraq show the need for continual reappraisal by both producers and users of intelligence products, particularly in light of defence policy changes and the wider machinery of government.     

Missing revolution: the American intelligence failure in Iraq, 1958

Why were American officials caught by surprise with the military coup and later revolution in Iraq on 14 July 1958? Drawing on American intelligence and diplomatic records as well as multilingual sources, this article argues that the US intelligence failure is the product of two factors: the collection of information from too few and too similar human sources of intelligence in Iraq’s ruling regime, and the unreceptivity of US officials to assessing new information and their unwillingness to update assessments of local Iraqi developments. It revisits America’s intelligence failure in Iraq and suggests important lessons for the study of intelligence.     

The Use of Force in British Foreign Policy: From New Labour to the Coalition

This article studies the ideational underpinnings of the UK Coalition government's ‘liberal conservative’ foreign policy. It begins by suggesting that an Iraq‐centric account of Blair's foreign policy suggests a grand vision on the prime minister's part that was lacking from his earlier foreign policy adventures, which relied on a more conventional form of British statecraft. The second section contends that the Gordon Brown years 2007–10 and, since the end of New Labour, Coalition foreign policy, can be seen as a response both to the substance and style of Blair's highly personalised stewardship of foreign policy post‐9/11. The war on terror and the invasion of Iraq were accompanied by a seemingly open‐ended democracy promotion around the globe which was quite out of character with past British practice. The article argues, therefore, that under Brown and Cameron cautious pragmatism has tended to win out over the proclamation of grand strategic ambition.     

Creatively interpreting policy to move science forward: Implementing participatory technology assessment at NASA

Entrepreneurial strategies and tactics are often subtle and indiscrete, adding to the mystery of how one goes about being an entrepreneur, particularly within bureaucratic agencies that are often set up to constrain such behaviors. The authors use a case study of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s public engagement practices to examine how entrepreneurs shift policy interpretations with administrative agencies. Findings describe three entrepreneurial strategies and tactics: (1) using one-on-one or small group meetings to connect to different audiences across organizations; (2) tying new policy interpretations to existing ones, so changes seem less radical; and, (3) positioning oneself in the middle of the action to control both narrative and progress. Conclusions discuss both practical mechanisms for shifting away from the status quo, and the theoretical contributions to a growing body of literature on strategic and tactical approaches of bureaucratic entrepreneurs in democratic systems.     

Citizenship and preemptive war: The lesson from Iraq

This paper argues that citizens should be wary of a policy of Reformed Preemption such as is found in the National Security Strategy of the United States. This policy is too permissive with regard to the use of force and it suffers from epistemological difficulties. The war in Iraq is examined in an effort to see how the new policy of Reformed Preemption will be employed in practice. This case shows us two risks of the new policy: it permits wars even when the threats are vague and merely potential; and it allows for disproportionate use of force.