The use of intelligence by insurgent groups: the North Vietnamese in the Second Indochina War as a case study

The need to define intelligence is understandable because the secrecy surrounding it can almost make it appear too amorphous to study. In most definitions, the authors not only attempt to define what intelligence is but also who does it. Until recently the focus has been on the state with occasional focus on sub-state actors such as law enforcement agencies. After 9/11 there was a shift from the study of inter-state intelligence to the use of intelligence against non-state actors such as Al Qaeda. The literature still treated these non-state actors as something to be acted upon rather than intelligence actors in their own right. By examining the North Vietnamese use of intelligence during the Second Indochina War this article takes a step to redress that oversight. This article will discuss the North Vietnamese use of intelligence in the context of definitions of intelligence and intelligence actors and will use John Gentry’s proposed model of violent non-state actor intelligence as its analytical framework.     

Book reviews

Oscar Wilde captures the deep challenges relating to intelligence when he states that, ‘it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors’. This statement elucidates the negative force of cognitive closure on intelligence, as well as bringing attention to the importance of an understanding of the human factor in intelligence production, and its relationship to discourse failure. Intelligence literature after 9/11 has focused on the causes and nature of intelligence failure, though few inquests have conceived intelligence as a deeply cognitive, and therefore mental and moral landscape that needs to be explored in all its complexity. Intelligence operators, like art spectators, perceive reality filtered through all sorts of implicit and explicit ideological prisms, and these ideologies, whether they are political assumptions or social orthodoxies, manifest themselves as cognitive closure, and shape the discourse in intelligence organizations, as well as between these organizations and society at large. This paper consequently argues that discourse failure is increased because of a flaw in the epistemic process among intelligence operators and consumers.     

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.     

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.     

Counter-Terrorism,Security and Intelligence in the EU: Governance Challenges for Collection,Exchange and Analysis

In this article we seek to address the emerging role of the European Union (EU) as a security and intelligence actor from the perspective of counter-terrorism. Intelligence as a process and product has been strongly promoted by the EU as a useful and necessary tool in the fight against terrorism, radicalization, organized crime and public order problems. A range of agencies has been established that collect, analyze and operationalize intelligence in view of strategically defined security threats. Examples are Europol and Frontex. This article makes an inventory of their roles and competences in the field of intelligence and looks at the list of instruments that encourage the sharing of intelligence between different law enforcement and security agencies. Moreover, it is argued in this article that as intelligence becomes more hybrid and as the EU only holds light powers of oversight on ownership and integrity of data, considerable governance challenges lurk around the corner. As ‘intelligence’ is usually a complex and sensitive product, it often travels outside formal bureaucratic channels, which undermines accountability and transparency of where, how and for what purpose the intelligence was gathered.     

What News on the Rialto? The Trade of Information and Early Modern Venice’s Centralized Intelligence Organization

This article explores one of the earliest centrally organized state intelligence services in world history. Contrary to the orthodoxy that sees systematized intelligence as a modern political phenomenon, this was developed in early modern Venice. The article reveals the complex organization of Venetian systemized intelligence that distinguished it from other contemporaneous states’ espionage networks. It also shows how Venetian authorities commodified intelligence by engaging citizens and subjects in a trade of information for mutual benefits. Ultimately, the article challenges our understanding of early modern political communication and offers a fresh vista of intelligence as a business trait and economic necessity.     

Is there Something Wrong with Intelligence in France? The Birth of the Modern Secret State

The lack of academic interest in intelligence in France partly explains the prevalence of many preconceived ideas about French Intelligence. This article deals with the slow building of France's intelligence machinery in the nineteenth century, as part of a study of the modern French State. At this time, intelligence practices were transformed by the appearance of several intelligence bureaucracies. Studying three dimensions of the development – informal practices, formal organizations and statutory rules – the article demonstrates the closeness of intelligence to politics. Doing so it suggests that intelligence needs to be considered not only as an instrument of policy-making but as an actor at the centre of the modern French state, a part of its very essence.     

Bletchley Park and the Holocaust

A common substantive topic in intelligence studies is the analysis process. The addition of active-learning techniques to reinforce key concepts like competitive analysis, ‘wheat’ versus ‘chaff’, and the different ‘ints’ of intelligence can be an important supplement to existing teaching methods. Moreover, a deeper appreciation of the intelligence analysis process is likely to be best achieved through simulation learning. Drawing on the growing literature that recognizes active learning and simulations as important pedagogical tools, this teaching note presents an original active-learning simulation for the college-level intelligence studies classroom in which students face an analysis challenge that highlights different components of the analysis process. This simulation increases appreciation for intelligence analysis and serves as a student-friendly method for enhancing intelligence studies pedagogy.     

Foreign policy by commission: Reforming the intelligence community

Can presidential commissions serve as a source of significant policy innovation in the area of intelligence analysis? This study shows that intelligence commission recommendations present a decidedly mixed bag. We cannot speak of a linear movement toward improving the quality or management of intelligence analysis in which one problem is solved and attention then is turned to the next. Yet presidential commissions looking into intelligence analysis cannot be mere symbolic window dressing. Many of their recommendations have been listened to. It would be more accurate to see them as having in each instance narrowed the range of policy choices receiving serious consideration as means of improving the intelligence product.     

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.     

An historical theory of intelligence

This article consists of three parts. First, ‘The past’ defines physical and verbal intelligence and maintains that intelligence, after centuries of insignificance, rose to prominence in modern times as a consequence of the increase in intelligence targets and the growth of verbal intelligence. Second, ‘The present’ explains that the function of intelligence is to optimize resources, that it is but an auxiliary element in war, and that it is necessary to the defense but is only contingent to the offense. Third, ‘The future’ articulates intelligence's two perpetual insoluble problems: foretelling everything and getting leaders to accept information that they do not like.     

Big Data and Strategic Intelligence

This article examines the intersection of Big Data and strategic intelligence from a theoretical-conceptual viewpoint. Adopting Popperian refutation as a starting point, it approaches methodological issues surrounding the incorporation of Big Data into the intelligence cycle, and argues that Big Data analytics is best used to discern long-term developments, generate intelligence hypotheses, and adduce refuting facts. The article then briefly examines the use of Big Data via social media, an increasingly fertile platform for intelligence analysis. Finally, the article argues that despite its potential in filling our epistemic gaps, Big Data should continue to complement traditional subject-matter expertise, supported by game theory, as part of a tripartite analytical framework for strategic intelligence consisting of ‘subtext’, ‘context’ and ‘metatext’. In this respect, Big Data may well become the midwife for more open modes of intelligence management and, ultimately, a more open society.     

A New American Way of War? C4ISR,Intelligence and Information Operations in Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’: A Provisional Assessment

This work examines publicly material available released as of 2 September 2003 on the role of intelligence for the Coalition side during the 2003 Gulf War. It assesses how far the Coalition side practised deception, psychological warfare, and information operations during that conflict, and how far intelligence served the needs of military forces. It focuses on failures as well as successes. It compares the real performance of intelligence during the conflict with the role forecast for C4ISR and Information Operations by theorists of the RMA, and modern strategy. It concludes that the Coalition forces practised Information Operations very well, but that at the operational level, there had been no revolution in military intelligence.     

Intelligence by consent: on the inadequacy of Just War Theory as a framework for intelligence ethics

This article contributes to the current discussions concerning an adequate framework for intelligence ethics. The first part critically scrutinises the use of Just War Theory in intelligence ethics with specific focus on the just cause criterion. We argue that using self-defence as justifying cause for all intelligence activities is inadequate, in particular in relation to the collection and use of intelligence for preventive purposes. In the second part of the paper, we tentatively suggest an alternative moral framework for preventive intelligence, understood as intelligence activities with no specific suspicion or aggressor. We suggest that the moral permissibility of such activities requires a civilised moral framework, in which openness, transparency and informed consent constitute crucial elements.     

James Bond,Ian Fleming and intelligence: breaking down the boundary between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’

This article looks to answer the question of why the James Bond novels and films should matter to scholars of intelligence and national security. We argue that Bond is important because, rightly or wrongly, and not without inaccuracy, it has filled a public knowledge vacuum about intelligence agencies and security threats. On another level, this article explores the unexpected yet important interactions between Bond and the actual world of intelligence. We contend that the orthodoxy dictating that Bond and spying are diametric opposites—one is the stuff of fantasy, the other is reality—is problematic, for the worlds of Bond and real intelligence collide, overlap and intermesh in fascinating and significant ways. In short, Bond is important for scholars because he is an international cultural icon that continues to operate at the borders of fiction and reality, framing and constructing not only public perceptions but also to some degree intelligence practices. Core narratives of intelligence among not only the public but also policymakers and intelligence officers are imagined, sustained, deepened, produced and reproduced through and by Bond. We conclude that Bond and intelligence should be thought of as co-constitutive; the series shapes representations and perceptions of intelligence, but it also performs a productive role, influencing the behaviours of intelligence agencies themselves.     

Spying on chaos: the Somali model of intelligence on failed states

Failed states pose ongoing strategic challenges for governments concerned with terrorism, poverty and uncontrolled migration. Policy approaches to failed states have ranged from state-building efforts to humanitarian debacles, and outright inaction. This article approaches failed states primarily as intelligence challenges, and uses Somalia as a model of targeting intelligence collection for failed states. This model demonstrates that economic activity offers an approach to intelligence gathering in such environments. In tracing Somalia’s economic successes from the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, this research shows how the business activity produces the needed intelligence opportunities that a strategy for a failed state requires.     

Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century

The transformation of intelligence architectures, particularly in the West, is no less profound than that of the weapons, platforms, warfighting systems and governments they are designed to support and inform. Moreover, the cumulative weight of the changes in prospect will redefine the way in which intelligence is used and conceived. The old demarcation lines between strategic and operational intelligence and between operations and intelligence, once starkly differentiated will blur. Decision-makers will have better access to intelligence as a result of advances in ‘pull’ technology which have made possible intelligence on demand while open source intelligence will enrich and add value to national intelligence databases.

Although information will become more plentiful and less of a privileged source in the global information environment of the twenty-first century, paradoxically the demand for timely, high quality strategic and operational intelligence will intensify rather than diminish. What will distinguish the successful practitioners of twenty-first century intelligence is the ability to fuse and integrate all elements of the process to provide seamless support for policy-makers and operational commanders. However, despite impressive advances in integration, technical collection and communications no intelligence system, no matter how efficacious, will ever be able to completely dispel the fog of war.     

De Gaulle,Colonel Passy and British Intelligence, 1940–42

De Gaulle's relationship with his secret intelligence and subversive services, the Bureau central de renseignements et d'action (BCRA) headed by Colonel Passy, as well as with British intelligence is examined in the light of the now declassified archives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the BCRA. These archives reveal that de Gaulle failed to interest himself seriously in secret intelligence or subversion before the arrival of Jean Moulin in London in October 1941. De Gaulle's subsequent relationship with the BCRA and British intelligence was defined by an obsessive need for political control, which only served to compromise the BCRA's otherwise successful collaboration with British intelligence.     

A weak pillar for American national security: The CIA's dismal performance against WMD threats

American preemptive or preventive military action against WMD-armed adversaries in the future will simply not be feasible without high-quality and timely intelligence. But is American intelligence up to this load-bearing task for the post-11 September national security? This article surveys the Central Intelligence Agency's record of gauging potential WMD threats for more than a decade and assesses its overall performance as dismal. The CIA's recent intelligence debacle against Iraq was one of the greatest in a long series of failures that has publicly exposed the Agency's profound weaknesses. These intelligence failures were due in large measure to the CIA's poor human intelligence collection and shoddy analysis, areas that cannot be remedied alone by the creation of the new Director of National Intelligence post. This article recommends steps needed to increase the quality of intelligence produced by CIA, or elsewhere in the new intelligence community, to move American intelligence in lockstep with military transformation to give the Commander-in-Chief realistic options for countering hostile nation-states or terrorist groups seeking or acquiring WMD.     

For Queen and Company: The Role of Intelligence in the UK's Arms Trade

This article analyses the role that the UK intelligence services (particularly Secret Intelligence Service [SIS or MI6], the Defence Intelligence Staff [DIS], Government Communication Headquarters [GCHQ] and associated agencies) play in the legal UK arms trade. The article shows that intelligence has been used in support of British-based private commercial businesses, and occasionally in providing intelligence on the negotiating positions of rival manufacturers. This raises important questions about the role of the state in the private sphere, particularly the use of a large number of government assets in support of private interests and the elision of British government interests with those of a section of the manufacturing industry. This article also challenges existing conceptions of how the UK's intelligence agencies operate and relate to their customers. Conventional typologies of UK intelligence have emphasised the importance of the 'central machinery', highlighting the Joint Intelligence Committee as the focal point of intelligence tasking and analysis in the UK. However, in this case the intelligence support provided to the sale of military equipment suggests a range of parallel practices that are much more decentralised and often informal. This research therefore suggests that our conception of the UK intelligence architecture requires some reassessment.