Glimpses into the Gems of American Intelligence: The President's Daily Brief and the National Intelligence Estimate

The two most prestigious products prepared by the US intelligence agencies for use by decision-makers in Washington, DC, are the President's Daily Brief and the National Intelligence Estimate. The Brief, an example of ‘current intelligence,’ adds value to what policy officials in Washington can learn about world affairs from the best newspapers, especially in the domains of foreign weaponry, activities within closed societies, and the machinations of terrorist organizations. The National Intelligence Estimate, an example of ‘research intelligence,’ has added value, too, on occasion, but has often been wrong. Each of these forms of intelligence has their critics, and the NIE in particular is frequently considered too long a document and too diluted in content. The production of NIEs has varied over the years since 1950, averaging twenty-three a year with a low of five (in 1976) and a high of fifty-six (in 1992).     

Britain and the Missile Gap: British Estimates on the Soviet Ballistic Missile Threat, 1957–61

Between 1957 and 1961, American National Intelligence Estimates overestimated the Soviets’ capabilities to produce and deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles, creating the ‘missile gap’ controversy. This article examines the contemporaneous estimates of British intelligence on the Soviet ballistic missile program, which were based upon very similar, if not the same, raw intelligence. It demonstrates that British estimates of the Soviet ICBM program were more accurate. However, this success did not continue in the analysis of the medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missile (M/IRBM) threat, which was relatively poor for most of the period. It concludes that the reasons for this lie in the different assumptions held by intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, and a degree of conservatism in both intelligence establishments.     

Military Intelligence and Controversial Political Issues: The Unique Case of the Israeli Military Intelligence

Contrary to intelligence services in other democracies worldwide, the activity of the Israeli Directorate of Military Intelligence, AMAN, is not merely centered around collection and research regarding military intelligence matters. Instead, AMAN covers the majority of intelligence activity arenas, including intelligence regarding state-related issues. This field of activity presents a situation where AMAN's officers, and predominantly, its research division, are compelled to deal with sensitive issues embedded well within Israeli political and public controversy. This is commonly illustrated in the field of ‘Intelligence for Peace’ in general and more specifically in the Palestinian arena. Intelligence research surrounding the question of Palestinian commitment to peace throughout the Oslo Process and following the onset of the al Aqsa Intifada – activity classified as ‘Intelligence on Intentions’ – placed AMAM at the heart of political debate in Israel and resulted in bitter internal disagreements in AMAN as well as tensions between the intelligence service and the political leadership. Throughout the years, numerous recommendations have been repeatedly voiced to end AMAN's monopoly over Israel's national intelligence assessment (including aspects of intelligence regarding state-related issues). These recommendations were based predominantly on hindsight evaluations, such as AMAN's repeated failures in intelligence assessments. This paper calls for gradual termination of AMAN's activity of intelligence regarding state-related issues, in light of its contradiction with the appropriate military–political separation in a democratic society. Moreover, it places AMAN at the heart of the political debate dividing Israeli society.     

‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’: diversity and scholarship in Intelligence Studies

This study takes stock of the field of Intelligence Studies thanks to a quantitative review of all the articles published in the two main journals in the field: Intelligence and National Security and the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. Particular attention is paid to the diversity of the authors publishing in these two journals and the evolution of the issues they discuss. Publications in the field are widely authored by males based in the United States and the United Kingdom who write about Western intelligence and security organizations. Recent years have seen a slight diversification in the field but further efforts will be necessary to develop a more eclectic body of researchers and research on intelligence and national security.     

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.     

When Casey’s blood pressure rose: a case study of intelligence politicization in the United States

This article contributes to the debate on the politicization of intelligence with a case study of a major attempt of politicization that so far largely escaped academic attention: the Special National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union’s role in international terrorism produced by the US Intelligence Community in spring 1981. Despite direct and indirect manipulation by members of President Reagan’s Cabinet, this case differs from those usually discussed in a decisive way – politicization failed. Based on the empirical analysis, a theoretical model of intelligence politicization is introduced that extends Joshua Rovner’s oversell model, which can explain why policymakers demand intelligence support but is insufficient due to its exclusive focus on the consumers of intelligence, by integrating the incentives of intelligence producers and specifying the determinants of whether politicization succeeds or fails.     

Plot and counter‐plot in revolutionary Russia: Chronicling the Bruce Lockhart conspiracy, 1918

In 2009, a review of the New Zealand intelligence community, the Murdoch Report, recommended increased coordination and reform to the operation of agencies. Since then, the experience of increasing coordination in New Zealand has been more constructive than in other capitals. Reorganizing the intelligence community revolves around relocating multiple agencies within Pipitea House and the creation of a ‘one community, many agencies’ dynamic. The creation of the Intelligence Coordination Group and an expanded role for the National Assessments Committee plays a vital role in aligning agency priorities. Agencies have also begun to slowdown the assessment process and are introducing new procedures for the analysis and discussion of intelligence products.     

Interpreting national security and intelligence in geographic exploration: Explorers and geographers in America's early republic

‘Intelligence’ connotes the collection of information in furtherance of policy and strategic security objectives. Intelligence practitioners tend to look primarily to the histories of battlefield reconnaissance and court intrigue for their profession's discursive precedents. For the Western state, the mastery of territory has also been an important security objective since the Age of Exploration. Specifically, in the American case, territorial expansion and the subduing of new territory long lay at the heart of America's viability as a state. Thus, the intelligence field ought also to recognize geographical exploration as deeply implicated in Western national security discourse and as sharing an epistemological similarity with intelligence gathering. Both intelligence gathering and geographical exploration rely upon ‘Humint’, that is, informants penetrating distant and hidden places and reporting on the features found therein. America's early Republic period offers key examples of this fundamental similarity.     

Partisan Improprieties: Ministerial Control and Australia's Security Agencies, 1962–72

Partisan behaviour and abuses by intelligence and security agencies have often been attributed to the fact that agencies have become ‘out of control’ or ‘rogue elephants’. But a detailed empirical study of the politicization of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) over ten years shows that the agency was not ‘out of control’ but very much under the control of its minister. The partisan use of security information arose from directives issued through the ‘democratic’ control exercised by a government. On the basis of this study, prevention of abuses by tighter governmental control is unlikely to work. A combination of government control, autonomy of the agency and independent scrutiny by an inspector-general is more likely to succeed.     

National Intelligence University: a half century educating the next generation of U.S. Intelligence Community Leaders

Founded in 1962, the National Intelligence University has evolved over more than five decades into living up to its current vision as ‘The Center of Academic Life for the Intelligence Community.’ With the intelligence reforms post-9/11 and the development of the NIU concept, the mission has changed from a military-centric focus of instruction to educating a more diverse audience from throughout the IC, both military and civilian, full-time and part-time, active and Reserves, with an emphasis on taking higher education to an interagency clientele spread globally and desiring different learning outcomes. The result is a rapid growth in offsite academic centers and a resurgence of certificate programs geared to professionals who already have a degree but wish to enhance their credentials in intelligence specialty fields. There is also an effort to revive concentrations and programs of study. This article outlines the steps NIU is taking to make itself more flexible and marketable to a growing and demanding academic audience that is much more than the uniformed DoD students who matriculated in the past with full-time resident study as their only option.     

Geospatial intelligence and the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842): reframing the history of U.S. Naval Intelligence

This paper reframes the U.S. Exploring Expedition (USEE, 1838–1842) as a naval/geospatial intelligence collection activity. By charting the Pacific, the USEE furthered U.S. commercial interests, while also building a picture of the ‘maritime operational environment’ on which all other forms of intelligence were (and are) based. Viewing the USEE in this light broadens the opportunities open to historians of U.S. Naval Intelligence and historicizes contemporary concerns about climate change and resource scarcity. It suggests that ‘knowledge of the environment’ has long coexisted with ‘knowledge of the enemy’ as a priority for the U.S. Navy.     

Recognising Politicization: The CIA and the Path to the 2003 War in Iraq

The concept of ‘politicization’ of the US intelligence services, and in particular the CIA, has been debated by scholars for many years. However, it has also been easily dismissed by those investigating recent US foreign policy, as in the Robb-Silberman Commission's assurance over the 2003 Iraq War that ‘the Intelligence Community needs to be pushed’. This essay seeks an extension of the critique of politicization by considering the historical context since the formation of the CIA. It seeks an application of that critique by putting forth, when evaluating the policy and operations of the George W. Bush administration, the notion of an ‘alternative network’ within the government. The argument is that politicization must be linked to a conception of ‘Executive power’, both within the American bureaucracy and in the projection and rationalization of US aims overseas.     

Intelligence reform: The logic of information sharing

A cornerstone of US intelligence reform is ‘information sharing’ as a means of adapting to contemporary security challenges. It was a central recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, reflected in the wide-ranging ‘Information Sharing Environment’ mandated by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Yet the underlying logic of information sharing for intelligence reform has received little attention. Drawing on information and communications theory, this paper critiques the logic by highlighting problems of sense-making and interpretation overlooked amid the scholarly enthusiasm for an intelligence ‘culture of sharing’. With their impersonal, technical, and highly bureaucratic approach, today's reforms may favor the flow of information and its sheer volume at the expense of the context and analytic tradecraft that render it meaningful, actionable intelligence. For effective information sharing, the paper suggests reformers pay more attention to the socio-technical environment of analysis when interpreting ambiguous, uncertain information.     

Waking up on another September 12th: implications for intelligence reform

Abstract

After 9/11 the US Government tried to ‘fix’ intelligence by adopting the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA). Resources increased and, to varying degrees, performance improved – particularly in counterterrorism. This article, however, argues that the constellation of Intelligence Community authorities and organizations, either created or left in place by the IRTPA, coupled with the challenges of a complex security environment, leaves us ill-prepared to deal with the Country’s twenty-first century intelligence requirements. Should that critique prove accurate, and should future intelligence failure(s) be judged strategically and politically unacceptable, the second half of the article provides a framework for revising the IRTPA; the proposals substantially increase the authority of the head of the Intelligence Community, consolidate structures, and create centers of analytic critical mass necessary to meet the knowledge requirements for both regional and transnational security issues. Reflecting the Intelligence Community’s long standing tradition of questioning assumptions, the article is meant to foster reflection and debate about whether the Intelligence Community is postured to meet the needs of the Country, and if not, what needs to change.     

Intelligence expertise in the age of information sharing: public–private ‘collection’ and its challenges to democratic control and accountability

The emergence of a more elusive and uncertain threat environment has transformed the nature of intelligence, increasing its reliance on civil society partners. Once the work of an insular and carefully select few, intelligence production is now a networked, partially open and extensively public–private enterprise. Most poignantly, new practices of public–private ‘collection’ face Western intelligence services with novel questions about control and accountability – questions to which the services have responded with hopes that by standardizing ‘methodologies’, central command may be retained. Suggesting a more complex picture, this article argues that ‘managing uncertainty’ imply forms of interpretation and choices which cannot be pre-empted by rule-regulation: more than Weber’s ideal of the procedural and rule-bound, it may be his (once central, yet largely marginalized) emphasis on institutional and individual capacities for critical ‘judgment’ that is of relevance today.     

Early warning versus concept: the case of the Yom Kippur War 1973

This article begins with a definition of the terms ‘early warning’ and ‘surprise’, and examines whether the failure of Israeli Intelligence to warn Israeli decision-makers in 1973 conforms to these definitions. After examining the conventions of Israeli military intelligence regarding anticipating a surprise, and the conceptions on which these were based, the article demonstrates how events in late 1973 indicated a possible Arab attack on Israel, but also the manner in which the Concept used to measure these warnings proved more resilient than the warnings. Discussions in the few days preceding war, when information was accumulating, are subjected to particular attention. The development of a sub-conception, with the original framework allowed and changed the forecast from ‘no war’ to ‘low probability' of war. The persistence of the Concept is attributed to both strategic intelligence and also to the doctrine of deterrence. Like deterrence, intelligence success is hard to measure. One can never be sure that a surprise attack has been prevented as a result of early warning.     

Professionalizing Intelligence Analysis: An Expertise and Responsibility Centered Approach

Looking at trends of professionalization of intelligence analysis within the United States Air Force as a subset of the broader US Intelligence Community, this paper calls for a re-evaluation of the professionalization of intelligence analysis away from a bureaucratic ‘corporateness’ approach examining the traits of a profession. Instead, reform of intelligence analysis should focus on the unique expertise and responsibility that define the profession. It identifies the analyst's unique expertise as managing adversary information to reduce a decision maker's uncertainty, and the responsibility in striving to improve capabilities within the profession while ensuring both the strengths and limitations of intelligence analysis are understood by intelligence customers. By focusing on corporateness, the community jeopardizes reform efforts by moving professionalization toward ‘getting the right answer’ and away from a broader understanding of the strengths and limitations inherent in the field of intelligence, where getting the right answer isn't often attainable.     

Note on Teaching Intelligence

Over the last decade, intelligence has become one of the most widely taught subjects in higher education. In response to this, a sub-discipline has emerged within Intelligence Studies devoted to thinking about how the subject is actually taught. One of the most common arguments to come out of this literature is that there should be more practitioner involvement in the university teaching of intelligence. However, it is rarely specified what exactly intelligence professionals bring to the classroom, save the largely self-evident point that because they have ‘walked the walk’, they are uniquely qualified to teach the subject. Drawing on student questionnaires, as well as interviews with serving and retired intelligence officers, this article attempts to probe a little deeper and identify the specific benefits of incorporating practitioners into the university teaching of intelligence. It is argued that practitioners ‘put a face on the profession’ and help to remove some of the mystique and misperceptions that surround intelligence work. It is claimed that practitioners, especially with their ‘inside stories’, give added meaning to academic theories and make the subject more exciting. Finally, it is argued that practitioners enrich the broader ‘student experience’. In UK higher education, now under a new fees regime, students are looking for departments to go the extra mile not only in terms of their teaching, but also in areas like careers advice and support. In this context, intelligence professionals are enormously valuable.     

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.     

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.