From Combined Arms to Combined Intelligence: Philosophy,Doctrine and Operations

‘Combined arms’ operations have been a central tenet of military planning for nearly a century. They call for the integration of land, air and sea forces to achieve battlefield synergies. This philosophy has equal application to intelligence. The article advances the combined arms concept as a way to foster synergies across the intelligence disciplines – geospatial, signals, measures and signals, human, and most recently open source intelligence. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of each discipline in forming an analytical foundation for such a ‘combined intelligence’ and calls for developing theory to integrate the intelligence disciplines. The authors suggest that combined intelligence would confer several benefits, including more effective collection efforts and stronger countermeasures against adversary denial and deception. The article closes by calling for development of concepts and doctrine to put combined intelligence into practice.     

The Church Committee Investigation of 1975 and the Evolution of Modern Intelligence Accountability

Since 1975, lawmakers have displayed four responses to the call for greater intelligence accountability on Capitol Hill. Some have taken the approach of ‘ostriches’, content to bury their heads in the sand and continue the earlier era of trust when members of Congress deferred to the decisions of the executive branch within the domains of intelligence. Others – indeed, a majority – have chosen to become unalloyed boosters for intelligence –‘ cheerleaders’ who view their job primarily as one of explaining the value of intelligence to the American people and supporting intelligence missions with robust funding and encouragement. Taking the opposite approach, another set of lawmakers – the ‘lemon-suckers’ – have consistently found fault with America's attempts to spy on adversaries or overthrow regimes that fail to accommodate US interests. Finally, some lawmakers have been ‘guardians’, striking a balance between serving as partners of the intelligence agencies on Capitol Hill and, through a persistent examination of budgets and operations, demanding competence and law-abiding behavior from these agencies. The guardian model fits best into the framework of democratic theory.     

Harry Howe Ransom and American intelligence studies

In this interview Harry Howe Ransom, a leading American scholar of intelligence studies over the past 50 years, discusses how he entered the field and his views regarding some key intelligence topics. Foremost on his research agenda has been the study of whether in democratic societies secret agencies can operate side-by-side with an otherwise open government without violating basic civil liberties – the difficult balancing act between the need for security, on the one hand, and the cherished value of liberty, on the other. He has also been a leading critic of intelligence politicization, noting in this interview that there is a tendency for intelligence systems to provide information they think their top bosses want to hear, and for the top bosses – more often than not – to do what they wish in spite of intelligence to the contrary. Professor Ransom began his research into intelligence as a young political scientist at Harvard University and continued this work throughout his subsequent distinguished career at Vanderbilt University and into his retirement years.     

Objective intelligence or plausible denial: An open source review of intelligence method and process since 9/11

Since 9/11 there have been a series of reports criticizing the American Intelligence Community for its lack of foresight and inaccurate intelligence prior to the Iraq invasion of 2003. It is argued here that this is not a new phenomenon, but a replay of other periods of self-doubt and introspection within the Intelligence Community. The criticism of organizational structures and individuals – however relevant that may be – does not address the real, and enduring, problem with US intelligence-gathering bodies. The very process of intelligence theory, definition and practice needs to be fundamentally reviewed. Eschewing the dogmatism that has hindered intelligence reform, this article suggests three methods as a starting point for a new approach.     

Too Little,Too Late: The CIA and US Counteraction of the Soviet Initiative in the Six-Day War, 1967

The authors' previous research has established that the 1967 Arab–Israeli Six-Day War resulted from a deliberate Soviet plan to provoke Israel into a pre-emptive strike, which would legitimize and trigger a massive Soviet military intervention to aid an Egyptian–Syrian counteroffensive. However, US documents released until recently provided no evidence that the American intelligence community, and particularly the CIA, detected this threat or informed the political leadership about it – even though some indications were picked up at the field level. A newly declassified, retrospective report appears for the first time to show that there was awareness of major components of the Soviet operation (preparations for a naval landing and parachute drop). But closer scrutiny finds that this report reflects Soviet propaganda more than factual intelligence – thus further tarnishing what has hitherto been held as an outstanding achievement for the Agency and its chief.     

Connecting Intelligence and Theory: Intelligence Liaison and International Relations

Intelligence liaison increased exponentially during the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Today it continues as the most significant dimension of intelligence, including impacting on accountability and oversight considerations. Nevertheless, the intelligence liaison phenomenon remains largely under-studied and substantially under-theorized. In this article, preliminary suggestions are offered concerning how this dearth of theory can be addressed. Firstly, the relevance of international relations theory and other bodies of theory, together with significant approaches concerning how international relations – extending to how intelligence and intelligence-related phenomena (such as, in this article, intelligence co-operation) – can be studied, are explored. These theories, and equally, approaches, are arguably most appropriate when deployed in an arrangement of ‘complex co-existence plurality’ across the different interrelated levels of experience and analysis, and they offer more effective explanations when intelligence liaison is disaggregated into at least eight systemic attributes or variables. More broadly, the suggestion that international relations theory, and indeed theory generally, is ‘irrelevant’ to intelligence studies is simultaneously challenged.     

Congressional Intelligence Oversight: The Electoral Disconnection

This article seeks to reconcile congressional oversight models in theory with oversight realities in intelligence. For nearly three decades, political scientists have argued that Congress controls the bureaucracy – and in surprisingly efficient ways. Yet the history of intelligence oversight suggests the opposite. We take a fresh look at the logic and empirics of police patrol and fire alarm models and find that neither explains intelligence oversight well. Both rely on assumptions, such as the presence of strong and plentiful interest groups, which characterize domestic policy but not US intelligence policy. Our data – comparing committee hearing activities, legislative productivity, and interest groups across different policy domains between 1985 and 2005 – reveal that oversight varies dramatically by policy issue, and that intelligence almost always ranks at the bottom. Ironically, the same electoral incentives that generate robust oversight in some policy areas turn out to be far weaker in intelligence.     

Intelligence,crises and security: Lessons from history?

The scholarly study of intelligence has grown steadily into what is now a distinct sub-field of history and political science. Recent events – notably jihadist attacks on the US, Spain and the UK and the war on Iraq and its aftermath – have generated debate and controversy about the use and representation of intelligence. A plethora of official inquiries have fuelled debates into the ‘intelligence failures’ involved. This essay explores how lessons might be learned from the history of intelligence for contemporary debates and controversies. An overview of the issues includes discussion of how different approaches are apparent between American and British perspectives. Challenges and opportunities for applying lessons from the past are explored and a case is made for greater engagement between academia and officialdom.     

Missing the Wake-up Call: Why Intelligence Failures Rarely Inspire Improved Performance

After major intelligence failures it is often asked why intelligence and security officials failed to heed the many ‘wake-up calls’ that had been provided by earlier failures and surprises. This article addresses this question by examining intelligence failures as ‘focusing events’, which is a concept used in the literature on government policy making to explain how disasters and crises can stimulate policy change and help organizations and decision-makers learn. It argues that in order for an intelligence failure such as a major terrorist attack to inspire improved intelligence performance – to be a true wake-up call – that failure must not only act as a focusing event to bring more attention to the threat, but it must also lead to increased intelligence collection and greater receptivity toward intelligence on the part of decision-makers.     

Is the Department of Homeland Security an Intelligence Agency?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) applies a variation of the intelligence cycle – the process of planning, collecting, processing, analysis, and dissemination of information characteristic of intelligence agencies – to mitigate the risk of terrorist attack and respond to national security breaches. The intelligence cycle helps DHS encourage voluntary security measures, serve its customers, and avoid economic disruption, but the Department's program setbacks and failures illustrate the difficulty of applying the intelligence model to the needs of homeland security. The Department's particular means of producing intelligence and information challenge the conventional conception and definitions of the intelligence cycle.     

Eberstadt,Dulles and NSC 50: The Impetus for CIA Evolution through 1953

Despite outward appearances, the CIA's evolution between 1945 and 1953 was influenced by two objective investigations – the Eberstadt Task Force and Dulles Commission – and was accelerated, but not instigated, by the shock of the Korean War. The role of these two investigations, which ultimately resulted in NSC 50 and the establishment of the CIA as a viable member of the US intelligence community, has been overlooked in recent literature. While these panels played a critical role in shaping the CIA's organization during this period, the Truman administration never achieved its goal of establishing a truly ‘central’ intelligence organization. This article examines the formation of the CIA, discusses both reports, national policy changes enacted in response, and relevance to the US intelligence community's current operations.     

On Estimating Post-Cold War Enemy Intentions

In the winter 1978 issue of International Security, Raymond L. Garthoff authored a seminal article outlining common fallacies in United States government estimates of enemy intentions during the Cold War. Now, given the significant changes in threat over the past 30 years, it seems appropriate to take a fresh look at fallacies – evaluating old ones and introducing new ones – in enemy intentions estimates pertaining to post-Cold War (and post-9/11) security dangers. Based on its assessment, this article concludes that the challenges to accurate intelligence assessment of enemy intentions, and the need to move away from dysfunctional standard operating procedures, have never been higher.     

Regulation,the Regulatory State and European Politics

For the past 15 years or so, the claim of a rise of the regulatory state in Europe has been a dominant theme in public policy research. This paper critically reflects on this claim and the associated scholarship by considering four key questions. First, what is the significance of the supposed rise of the regulatory state for the state in Europe and how can this trend be explained? Second, what insights have been gained from the study of phenomena associated with the regulatory state, both in terms of EU and national levels of government as well as in terms of process and organisational understandings of policy analysis? Third, does the regulatory state represent a stable arrangement or does it suffer from its own peculiar dilemmas that fundamentally affect the nature of European states? Fourth, and finally, this article develops three scenarios – those of withering away, plodding along, and rejuvenation – for the future of the (study of the) regulatory state in Europe.     

Iraq: The Mother of all intelligence failures

The most important American intelligence failure in Iraq was the widespread belief among top administration officials that Saddam could be overthrown at little cost and successfully replaced by a pro-American regime. We trace the causes of these and related intelligence failures to the administration's hubris. It led the Secretary of Defense and Vice President – the men most responsible for the Iraq decisions – to formulate unrealistic expectations about America's ability to impose its will in the Middle East and to rig the feedback networks in the military and intelligence communities to provide them with confirming estimates while downplaying discrepant information.     

Intelligence to counter terror: The importance of all-source fusion

The modern digital environment has made terrorism and other transnational crimes vastly easier to coordinate on a worldwide scale than was possible before World War II. It has also exacerbated a most serious challenge: governments attempting to stop terrorists – particularly democracies – are expected to do so without undermining the laws, representative principles and informal confidences upon which a culture of democracy depends. The purpose of this article is to examine the modern intelligence requirements for countering terror in order to appreciate this challenge in greater depth and to develop a reasoned basis for balancing counterintelligence capabilities with civil liberties. It begins by considering the nature of the terrorists we face and the requirements for good intelligence operations against them. Historical examples illustrate those lessons that can be learned from the defeat of similar threats in the past, including the recurring ways in which challenges to civil liberties arise as democracies optimize intelligence in the name of security. In discussing the special opportunities and challenges modern technology poses in this contest, the analysis suggests an essential next step for democracies threatened by terrorists in their midst.     

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.     

Framing the Oxymoron: A New Paradigm for Intelligence Ethics

Despite some arguments to the contrary, I argue that because ethics benefit, rather than harm, the intelligence profession they should be considered an inherent part of intelligence studies. The literature largely presents intelligence ethics as a two-sided debate between teleologists and deontologists. I propose that ethical justifications should instead be considered along a progressive spectrum drawn from the work of moral psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. Such a spectrum has numerous applications for gauging the moral arguments of individual practitioners of intelligence. I illustrate this using the dilemma of targeted political assassination – first in a hypothetical context, and finally using examples from the investigations of the 1975 Church Committee.     

The Spanish Intelligence Community: A Diffuse Reality

The functioning and composition of the Spanish Intelligence Community is not regulated in detail by any legal regulations, and neither the intelligence service nor the government have specified these despite the repeated references they make to them. This article sets out to establish what actually constitutes the Intelligence Community in Spain; thus, after a brief theoretical discussion in which the two major categories of members – consumers and producers – are identified, a model of the intelligence community in Spain is set forth on the basis of the interrelations between its members and their roles in the decision-making process. In its preparation, besides analyzing the existing legislation, 52 interviews were carried out with individual participants in all the structures, so as to reach an understanding of the role played by each one, to evaluate its performance and to propose some guidelines for improvement.     

Reading the Riot Act: The Schlesinger Report, 1971

The difficulty of satisfying competing needs of both national and sub-national officials and commanders for intelligence support capabilities that are too sensitive and expensive to duplicate for both sets of requirements emerged with the growth of industrial-scale imagery and signals intelligence assets and production during the Cold War. The literature of intelligence history and intelligence studies covers the symptoms of this problem, but says less a rigorous and well-documented nature on its causes. Thanks to recent declassifications in the United States, however, we can now read key documents in an American attempt to understand and deal with the dilemma. A study prepared for President Richard Nixon in 1971 and now dubbed the ‘Schlesinger Report’ has been published virtually intact by the US Department of State. In addition, the Central Intelligence Agency has released two official histories which indirectly have added significant detail to the story. With these new releases, it is now possible to explain the genesis of the Report and chart its effects through the remainder of President Nixon's presidency. The Schlesinger Report marked a watershed for the intelligence community, helping the Nixon Administration to conceive and enact reforms that were both consequential in themselves and presaged the findings of later surveys and inquiries. A better understanding of the Report's background, text, and results can shed light not only the policymaking process in the Nixon Administration but also the trajectory of the intelligence community – and of foreign intelligence establishments that may, in some respects, be following in its path.     

The British experience with intelligence accountability

This article assesses the British experience with intelligence accountability through an analysis of the principal mechanism that exists to provide for it – the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. It discusses the context within which oversight proposals emerged, the debate surrounding the nature of the new oversight body, and assesses the performance of the Committee over the first decade of its existence. It concludes that while the Committee has secured some important advances with regard to the accountability of the intelligence and security services, there are nevertheless significant limitations and weaknesses, many of which were evident in the Committee's 2003 investigation and report into pre-war intelligence on Iraqi WMD. In this context, the debate as to whether the oversight body should have select committee status, discussed at length in the article, remains highly relevant.