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.     

What's the Harm? The Ethics of Intelligence Collection

Abstract

As the professional practice of intelligence collection adapts to the changing environment and new threats of the twenty-first century, many academic experts and intelligence professionals call for a coherent ethical framework that outlines exactly when, by what means and to what ends intelligence is justified. Reports of abuse at detention centres such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the ever increasing use of technological surveillance, and the increased attention on the use of torture for intelligence collection purposes have all highlighted a need to make an explicit statement about what is and what is not permissible intelligence practice. In this article an ethical framework will be established which will outline under what circumstances the use of different intelligence collection activities would be permissible. This ethical framework will first underline what it is about intelligence collection that is ‘harmful’ and, therefore, should be prohibited under normal circumstances. The ethical framework then outlines a set of ‘just intelligence principles’, based on the just war tradition, which delineate when the harm caused can be justified. As a result, this article outlines a systemic ethical framework that makes it possible to understand when intelligence collection is prohibited and when it is permissible.     

Reflections on Technology and Intelligence Systems

Abstract

The impact of individual technological innovations on intelligence operations is often discussed, but the influence of technological change per se on intelligence systems remains less well understood. The historical literature on this topic is uneven – filled with detailed narratives on certain aspects, but also with surprisingly little attention to larger trends and their meaning. This is significant for two reasons. First, it means we have an incomplete understanding of what happened in the past, particularly for the ‘analog revolution’ in intelligence in the twentieth century. Second, it leaves us with few clues for understanding another wave of technological change washing over the intelligence profession at this time (a ‘digital revolution’). Looking at the second revolution in the light of the first can give us important clues to what to watch for in coming years.     

Introducing Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT)

Abstract

We introduce the latest member of the intelligence family. Joining IMINT, HUMINT, SIGINT and others is ‘SOCMINT’ – social media intelligence. In an age of ubiquitous social media it is the responsibility of the security community to admit SOCMINT into the national intelligence framework, but only when two important tests are passed. First, that it rests on solid methodological bedrock of collection, evidence, verification, understanding and application. Second, that the moral hazard it entails can be legitimately managed. This article offers a framework for how this can be done.     

The future of the intelligence analysis task

Abstract

Information technology will have a significant impact on the intelligence analysis workflow, skills, and organization in the next couple of decades. In future, instead of ingesting information themselves, analysts will use a range of information tools to add value to data. Future analysts will need less knowledge of subject matter, and more general reasoning skills. The future task will involve more creativity, and less focus on detail, than today.     

The Unmet Potential of Interdisciplinary Research: Political Psychological Approaches to Voting and Public Opinion

Since its founding, political science has embraced interdisciplinary research. Yet there exist few, if any, systematic assessments of the success of these endeavors. We assess what is often seen as a paradigm of interdisciplinary collaboration: political psychological research on voting and public opinion. Surprisingly, we find little evidence of true interdisciplinary work; instead, we uncover misused concepts and scant evidence of conceptual or disciplinary integration. We conclude with suggestions for how to improve interdisciplinary research on voting and public opinion, and more generally.     

The Joint Intelligence Bureau: (Not So) Secret Intelligence for the Post-War World

Abstract

In 1946 veteran British intelligence officer Kenneth Strong undertook the Directorship of a new intelligence organization, the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB). The JIB absorbed the responsibilities of several wartime intelligence organs, and was responsible for economic, topographic, and aspects of scientific intelligence on an inter-service basis. Its responsibilities grew over the following 18 years; most notably, it absorbed atomic intelligence in 1957. When the Defence Intelligence Staff was created in 1964, absorbing the JIB and the individual Service agencies, JIB was at its heart and Kenneth Strong its first Director. The organization conducted key work in the early Cold War, was at the centre of an international network of Joint Intelligence Bureaux, and was an important stepping stone in the movement to centralize military and military-relevant intelligence in Britain – but the historiography pays it surprisingly little attention. This paper introduces the JIB and various aspects of its work, and demonstrates that its low profile in the historiography is unjustified.     

‘Consistent with an Intention’: The Far East Combined Bureau and the Outbreak of the Pacific War, 1940–41

Abstract

From 1934, Britain expanded its military and naval intelligence agencies against Japan. At the outbreak of war in Europe, they, and most of their personnel, were moved from Hong Kong to Singapore, and joined into an interservice organization, the Far East Combined Bureau. Much of the evidence about the Far East Combined Bureau is lost, but the surviving record illustrates what intelligence was available to decision-makers in Singapore during 1940–41, thus illuminating every debate about this disaster. Even more: it enables a reconceptualization of the relationship between intelligence and the outbreak of the Pacific War as a whole.     

British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi: What the Stasi's Records Show about the Operations of British Intelligence in Cold War Germany

Abstract

The German parliament's Law on the Stasi Records, passed in 1991, extended the principle of freedom of information to the records of a Communist security service. By so doing, it has given historians, former targets of Stasi intelligence collection and others an unprecedented insight into the operations of such a service. Enough records of the Stasi's trials department have been made available to reconstruct a picture of the work of British intelligence agencies in the years 1945–61, and above all the work of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). They show that SIS was a very skilful service which obtained the high-grade intelligence it sought. However, SIS's work in East Germany was undone in the late 1950s by the treason of the KGB's penetration agent in it, George Blake.     

Critical Theory and the Two-Level Account of Recognition - Towards a New Foundation?

Abstract

Axel Honneth makes initial and promising steps towards what could be called a two-level account of recognition, according to which the normatively substantial forms of recognition represent various manners in which the primordial acquaintedness with others is expressed. It will be argued that Honneth's promising approach must be revised in regard to the issue of intentionality, which may be achieved by reference to earlier critical theorists such as Adorno and Arendt. With such a foundation, critical theory can enter into new fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue.     

American intelligence and the Soviet ICBM build‐up: Another look

Abstract

Since the events of 9/11 the terms ‘threat’ and ‘risk’ have entered the daily lexicon to a greater extent than ever before. News media report on changes to national threat assessments, commenting when the threat level rises from ‘Moderate’ to ‘Substantial’, in the case of the United Kingdom. The British government recently released a document that provided details of the issues that pose the highest risk to the national infrastructure. All of these are based, so we are told, on the work of the national intelligence agencies. But what are these indicators actually telling us and what is the relationship between threat assessments and risk assessments? These are both important questions because important decisions are made as a result of changes in these assessments. National defence and security planning is based upon perceived threats and risks. An entire risk management industry has grown up in the business world that covers everything from health and safety to financial risk. It is not only governments and businesses that base decisions on these indicators, but individuals as well. Tourists planning holidays in Europe were alarmed when the British, French and German governments increased their threat levels in response to intelligence that suggested that an attack against tourist sites in their respective capitals was imminent. Some will have changed their plans and travelled elsewhere, to the detriment of the tourist industry, while others will have chosen to defy the terrorists and travel anyway – potentially placing themselves in harm's way. With so much at stake, both nationally and individually, it is therefore important that we understand the difference between a ‘threat’ and a ‘risk’ and, as scholars of intelligence, the role that intelligence plays in assessing them.     

Explaining the depth and breadth of international intelligence cooperation: towards a comprehensive understanding

ABSTRACT

Despite neorealism's predominance in the academic debate, it is too narrow a basis for the comprehensive understanding of present-day international intelligence cooperation. This approach is perfectly capable of explaining what is currently not happening in international intelligence cooperation and why this is the case. However, it is inadequate to understand what does happen in international intelligence cooperation. To explain international intelligence cooperation, especially in long-standing multilateral arrangements such as the EU and NATO, additional approaches are needed. This article advocates stepping beyond a state-centric approach of international intelligence cooperation, viewing it as a process and using a sociological perspective.     

A New Definition of Intelligence

Intelligence is widely misunderstood. Too much is made of secrecy, and of covert operations and counter-intelligence (action domains informed by intelligence rather than integral to it). Intelligence is often focused on threats, missing opportunities for advantage. A standard definition is proposed for better understanding of intelligence by the academy, media and public. Intelligence is a corporate capability to forecast change in time to do something about it. The capability involves foresight and insight, and is intended to identify impending change which may be positive, representing opportunity, or negative, representing threat. Definitions which converge with this proposal are found in several intelligence settings.     

Problems in the Intelligence-Policy Nexus: Rethinking Korea,Tet, and Afghanistan

Accusations of failure by elements of the US intelligence community (IC) have followed in the wake of nearly every war and terrorist bombing since Japan's successful strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This article will illustrate how some problems that exist inside the ‘intelligence-policy nexus’ are beyond the control of the IC. By investigating the dynamics and tensions that exist between producers of intelligence (the IC) and the consumers of those products (policy-makers), we review three different types of alleged failure. First, by revisiting the Chinese intervention in Korea, we show that a rarely listed case in the literature is in fact a classic example of producer-based failure generated from within the IC. However, in our study of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War (1968), we show that the alleged intelligence failure by producers should be more accurately described as a ‘failure of intelligence’ by consumers. Third, by revisiting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), we conclude that there existed neither a producer nor a consumer failure. The Carter Administration made a conscious policy choice to act surprised (when it was not).     

The Threat Review and Prioritization trap: how the FBI’s new Threat Review and Prioritization process compounds the Bureau’s oldest problems

Abstract

In the nearly 15 years since the events of 11 September 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has undertaken a succession of efforts to become an agency capable of fulfilling the intelligence functions with which it has been entrusted. However, historically, the FBI’s experience with intelligence has been reactive due to a law enforcement culture that closed cases rather than identified ways to keep opportunities for collection open, as well as bureaucratic wariness due to the differing expectations from one Presidential administration to the next. The Threat Review and Prioritization (TRP) process is the most recent iteration of the Bureau’s attempt to organize as an intelligence service. However, TRP is informed not by a mission of developing intelligence that will help to disrupt emerging threats or exploit opportunities at both the strategic (policymaking) and tactical (arrests), but instead reactively focuses on the threats which have become fully manifest within the FBI’s own domain. TRP leaves the US at a disadvantage vis-à-vis state and non-state adversaries and competitors. Organizationally, it institutionalizes the shortcomings of reactivity and insularity that were the unfortunate characteristics of the pre-9/11 FBI.     

Antecedents or Processes? Determinants of Perceived Effectiveness of Interorganizational Collaborations for Public Service Delivery

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a framework of antecedents, processes, and perceived outcomes to evaluate interorganizational collaborations for children and family service delivery in Los Angeles County, California. The results showed that resource acquisitions, organizational legitimacy, partner characteristics, and supply-side preconditions for collaboration could affect perceived collaboration outcomes. The effects of most of antecedents on perceived outcomes were, however, mediated by collaborative processes and perceived effectiveness of collaborative ventures were mainly premised on the existence of processes for leveraging resources and building trust between partners.     

Reforming Egyptian Intelligence: Precedents and Prospects

Abstract

In 2011 intelligence reform became a timely and pertinent topic in Egypt with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak by mass demonstrations. Yet two outstanding questions persist: can Egyptian intelligence be reformed? What would intelligence reform entail in the Egyptian context? An examination of historical Egyptian intelligence reforms suggests that ‘reform’ in the Egyptian context usually means greater efficiency and centralization at the expense of public oversight and accountability. Prospects for fundamental intelligence reform are further hampered by Egypt's authoritarian traditions, its relatively weak legislature and judiciary, lack of an empowered civil society, censorship and an apparent official addiction to secrecy.     

The limited influence of competitive intelligence over corporate strategy in Israel: historical,organizational, conceptual,and cultural explanations

ABSTRACT

Strategic intelligence in national security enjoys an elevated status. Despite past failures and current challenges, its role in analysing the strategic environment is considered crucial for practising strategy. In the business world, competitive intelligence (CI) has evolved for a similar purpose: understanding the competitive environment, as a foundation for strategy. The current article focuses on the Israeli business world, where CI’s influence on corporate strategy is limited, reflecting the broader state of CI's immature academic and professional foundations. The article provides historical, organizational, conceptual, and cultural explanatory hypotheses for this minor impact of CI in Israel, a country where national intelligence is a highly influential institution. It thus broadens the scope of traditional intelligence studies and can contribute to CI scholarship.     

Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet War Scare: The Untold Story

Abstract

During the Soviet war scare of the 1980s, British intelligence shared vital information from KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky with its American partners. The US intelligence community, however, was suspicious of the message and the messenger, dismissing Soviet ‘war talk’ as disinformation. Some officials even believed that the British had tweaked their reports to influence US policy. President Ronald Reagan, however, on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, listened to Gordievsky rather than his intelligence advisors. The war scare had a profound influence on Reagan's thinking about nuclear war, Kremlin fears, and Soviet–American relations that led him to seek a new détente with Moscow and the end of the Cold War through diplomacy rather than confrontation.?Subsequent events and post-Cold War revelations vindicated Gordievsky. Reagan sought his advice on the eve of his first summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and later expressed his gratitude during a private meeting in the Oval Office.     

Party politics of the right: Neo‐populist parties and the future of the West European party system

Radical Right‐Wing Populism in Western Europe. By HANS‐GEORG BETZ. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Pp.x + 226, 22 tables, biblio. $18.95 (paper); $45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0–312–12195–4 and 0–312–08390.

Volkes Stimme? Rechtspopulismus in Europa. By Armin PFAHL‐TRAUGHBER with contributions by OLIVER SCHMIDTKE and CAS MUDDE. Bonn: Dietz, 1994. Pp.191, biblio. DM19.80 (paper). ISBN 3–8012–3059–7.

Wer wählt rechts? Die Wähler und Anhänger rechts‐extremistischer Parteien im vereinigten Deutschland. By JÜRGEN W. FALTER, in collaboration with MARKUS KLEIN. München: C.H. Beck, 1994. Pp.167, biblio. DM17.80 (paper). ISBN 3‐ 406–37442–5.

Rechtsextremismus in Deutschland. Voraussetzungen, Zusammenhänge, Wirkung. Edited by WOLFGANG BENZ. Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1994 (new exp. and rev. edition). Pp.331, index. DM18.90 (paper). ISBN 3–596–12276–7.

The Dark Side of Europe. The Extreme Right Today. By GEOFFREY HARRIS, foreword by GLYN FORD. Edinburgh University Press, 1994 (2nd edition). Pp.xi + 265, index, £12.95 (paper). ISBN 0–7486–0466–9.

Rechtsextremismus: weiblich ‐ männlich? Eine Fallstudie zu geschlechtsspezifischen Lebensverläufen, Handlungsspielräumen und Orientierungsweisen. By URSULA BIRSL, foreword by PETER LOSCHE. Leverkusen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. Pp.369, biblio. DM48 (paper). ISBN 3–8100–1204–1.

Rechtsextremismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit. Studien zur aktuellen Entwicklung. Edited by INSTITUT FÜR SOZIALFORSCHUNG. Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 1994. Pp.219, biblio. DM18 (paper). ISBN 3–593–35026–2.

Racism, Ethnicity and Politics in Contemporary Europe. Edited by ALEC G. HARGREAVES and JEREMY LEAMAN. Gower House, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995. Pp.296, index, £39.95 (cloth). ISBN 1–85278–8838–0.

Das Gewalt‐Dilemma. Gesellschaftliche Reaktionen auf fremdenfreindliche Gewalt und Rechtsextremismus. Edited by WILHELM HEITMEYER. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994. Pp.463, DM29.80 (paper). ISBN 3–518–11905–2.