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.     

Handling and communicating intelligence information: a conceptual,historical and information design analysis

Effective communication of information is essential to intelligence work. This paper identifies the main obstacles to good communication: policy-related challenges; cognitive impediments; resource limitations; cultural and structural issues within intelligence communities; and technical information. To illustrate, it examines four cases when poor communication contributed to intelligence shortcomings. Via questionnaire and document survey, the study identifies the current state of practice in UK intelligence communities. The survey of visualization documents currently in use revealed errors against established principles of Information Design. Thus, to ensure better handling and dissemination of intelligence, there is a distinct need to apply Information Design principles.     

Bombing at the Speed of Thought: Intelligence in the Coming Age of Cyberwar

The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) puts new technology at the service of an old idea: the perfectability of intelligence. At least since the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, defense and intelligence officials have entertained fantasies of an ideal information environment in which a complete, impartial, and accurate picture of events dispels the fog of politics and war. Amid the enthusiasm among military futurists for ‘total information dominance’, it is worth asking why the intelligence community has this recurring dream.     

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.     

Unheeded warning of war: why policymakers ignored the 1990 Yugoslavia estimate*

This article examines the lack of policy response to the 1990 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that predicted the collapse of Yugoslavia. Contrary to common criticisms of estimative intelligence, the NIE was accurate and unambiguous. Why was good intelligence unheeded? For some policymakers, the analysis was not closely tied to their interests and competed with other priorities for attention; for those who were substantive experts, the NIE’s grim message was hard to accept. Moreover, policymakers read intelligence reports in the context of popular concepts – a lingering Cold War lens distorted more than it clarified. Finally, while the NIE made hard-hitting judgments, it did not include any analysis of opportunities to influence the outcome. Rather than pushing an already difficult estimate to the breaking point, including opportunities would likely have increased the odds of policymakers taking action. These lessons have broader implications for analytical tradecraft and the often-challenging relationship between intelligence and policy.     

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.     

Intelligence,reason of state and the art of governing risk and opportunity in early modern Europe

Abstract

Drawing upon primary and secondary historical material, this paper explores the role of intelligence in early modern government. It focuses upon developments in seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century England, a site-specific genealogical moment in the broader history of state power/knowledges. Addressing a tendency in Foucauldian work to neglect pre-eighteenth-century governance, the analysis reveals a set of interrelated processes which gave rise to an innovative technique for anticipating hazard and opportunity for the state. At the intersection of raison d’État, the evolving art of government, widespread routines of secrecy and a post-Westphalia field of European competition and exchange, intelligence was imagined as a fundamental solution to the concurrent problems of ensuring peace and stability while improving state forces. In the administrative offices of the English Secretary of State, an assemblage of complex and interrelated procedures sought to produce and manipulate information in ways which exposed both possible risks to the state and potential opportunities for expansion and gain. As this suggests, the art of intelligence played an important if largely unacknowledged role in the formation and growth of the early modern state. Ensuring strategic advantage over rivals, intelligence also limited the ability of England's neighbours to dominate trade, control the seas and master the colonies, functioning as a constitutive feature of European balance and equilibrium. As the analysis concludes, understanding intelligence as a form of governmental technique – a way of doing something – reveals an entirely novel way of thinking about and investigating its myriad (historical and contemporary) formations.     

The trouble with (supply-side) counts: the potential and limitations of counting sites,vendors or products as a metric for threat trends on the Dark Web

Many national security threats now originate on the Dark Web. As a result of the anonymity of these networks, researchers and policymakers often use supply-side data (i.e. the number of sites) as a threat metric. However, the utility of these data depends upon the underlying distribution of users. Users could be distributed uniformly, normally or in a power law across Dark Web content. The utility of supply-side counts varies predictably based upon the underlying distribution of users. Yet, the likelihood of each distribution type varies inversely with its utility: uniform distributions are most useful for intelligence purposes but least likely and power law distributions are least useful but occur most commonly. Complementing supply-side counts with demand-side measures can improve Dark Web threat analysis, thereby helping to combat terrorism, criminality and cyberattacks.     

FACTORS INFLUENCING LEGISLATORS'USE OF POLICY INFORMATION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PROMOTING GREATER USE

Despite a tremendous growth in the volume of policy analysis in the past decade, recent research indicates governmental decisionmakers make little direct use of such research; at best, policy-oriented research alters a decisionmaker's conceptualization of the policy problem over the long term. Previous efforts to explain policymakers'limited use of policy research have generally not considered the opportunities and constraints presented by specific decisionmaking contexts. To a large extent, the research utilization literature has focused on attitudinal and demographic characteristics of decisionmakers and has adopted as a central focus the "two-communities" theory which asserts that frequent, direct use of policy research by policymakers is unlikely because of the competing worldview and belief systems of policy researchers and policymakers. While the two-communities theory may partially explain the limited use of policy research, it ignores the institutional incentives motivating decisionmakers. More specifically, this earlier research does not consider the different motivations of policymakers and their relative impact on use of policy information. To expand the explanation of decisionmakers'use of policy information, I postulate a model of legislators'use of policy information that includes four types of factors that influence legislators'propensity to use policy information. These factors-worldview and attitude toward social science, perception of the way policy issues are considered in the legislature, perception of the legislative structure, and legislative orientations-combine two-communities type of independent variables and perceptions of the legislative environment. In this way, policymakers'use of policy information can be examined more realistically and comprehensively.     

工业技术革命背景下世界幼儿教育的发展历程

以社会生产力的发展水平为参照系，本将世界幼儿教育的发展划分为与社会生产力的发展相对应的三个历史阶段，即与以使用蒸汽机为标志的第一次工业技术革命相联系的初创阶段，与以使用电机为标志的第二次工业技术革命相联系的确立阶段，与以信息革命为标志的第三次工业技术革命相联系的进一步发展阶段，从而对世界的幼儿教育的发展历程进行一次系统的梳理。     

Reducing Sexual Orientation Discrimination: Experimental Evidence from Basic Information Treatments

We study basic information treatments regarding sexual orientation using randomized experiments in three countries with strong and widespread anti-gay attitudes: Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Participants who received information about the economic costs to society of sexual orientation discrimination were significantly more likely than those in a control group to support equal employment opportunities based on sexual orientation. Information that the World Health Organization (WHO) does not regard homosexuality as a mental illness increased social acceptance of sexual minorities, but only for those who reported trust in the WHO. Our results have important implications for policymakers aiming to expand the rights of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people worldwide.     

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.     

Mapping the northern frontier: Canada and the origins of the US army's Military Information Division, 1885–1898

In 1885, the United States Army established its first official peacetime intelligence organization, the Military Information Division (MID), at least in part to collect intelligence enabling it to strike Canada in the event of conflict with Great Britain. Examining MID's leadership, information collection methods, intelligence objectives, organizational structure, and officer recruitment criteria during its first dozen years of existence reveals that it devoted significant resources to mapping the Canadian border, restructured its organization in part to increase the efficiency of those scouting expeditions, and selected officers to lead MID and conduct its reconnaissance missions based on their topographical skills, their knowledge of Canada, and their ability to keep their work quiet.     

Halfway down the road to supervision of the Spanish intelligence services

For most of its history the United Nations was reluctant to deal with intelligence and major powers were reluctant to share intelligence with it. But as the UN's peacekeeping operations intensified in some of the world's hot spots in the early 1990s, the UN found it both necessary and wise to create an information analysis capability at UN headquarters in New York. To funnel selected intelligence to the headquarters, several countries (including the US, UK, France and Russia) loaned intelligence officers to the UN's Situation Centre on a secondment basis. This paper describes the activities of the SitCen's Information and Research (I&R) Unit that existed from 1993 to 1999 under the informal motto ‘Keeping an Eye on the World’. Using a case study of I&R reporting on the situation in Eastern Zaire (1996), where UN-run refugee camps were under attack, it is possible to examine the nature and utility of the intelligence provided by the intelligence officers to UN decision-makers and the planners of the Canadian-led multinational force in the region. It reveals that the Unit provided significant and useful intelligence about arms shipments, belligerent activities, and the status of refugees and made several prescient predictions and warnings. The Unit sought to minimize national bias and incomplete information, though both problems were still in evidence. Still, in many ways, the I&R Unit remains a useful model for the development of a future intelligence capability.     

Prometheus embattled: A post-9/11 report card on the National Security Agency

Five years after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) has risen to the position of being the largest and most powerful intelligence agency in the US. Working in close conjunction with its English-speaking partners overseas, NSA is today the most prolific producer of top-quality intelligence information reaching senior US government policymakers and field commanders. But press reports over the past year concerning the Agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping program and problem-plagued modernization effort, have raised serious questions once again about the competency of the Agency's long-troubled management practices, as well as whether NSA, at the behest of the Bush administration, exceeded its legal authority by extending its operations into the US for the first time since the mid-1970s in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.     

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.     

National Assessment by the National Security Council Staff 1968–80: An American Experiment in a British Style of Analysis?

At a time of intense debate over the specific organizational arrangements of American national security agencies with new or refocused intelligence responsibilities, the relative proximity between intelligence producers and consumers is a key issue. Intelligence capabilities may have to be kept separate from decision-making because of organizational economies of scale and scope, but separation alone does not mean intelligence must be distant from decision-making. For example, the British style of analysis involves a much closer relationship between intelligence producers and consumers than exists in the American context. Efforts to improve the integration of intelligence into decision-making by closing the distance between them would do well to study the history and efficacy of this process as they look to create new ways of structuring the relationship between intelligence analysis and decision-making. Specifically, history demonstrates that the US National Security Council staff implemented a process in 1968 through 1980 that approximated the British style of analysis, and this may provide US policymakers with a model for bridging the gap between intelligence analysis and decision-making.     

Making Data Speak: Lessons for Using Numbers for Solving Public Policy Puzzles

There is a vast increase in the production of policy analysis in government, but behind the rising volume is a deep paradox: We are generating information faster than we are devising strategies for hearing what it tells us and helping policymakers act on it. There are 10 big issues in using numbers for solving policy problems, and they lead to important lessons: Analysts need to speak in a language that policymakers can understand, capture the inevitable ambiguity of analysis without muddying their message, use analysis to help policymakers discover the opportunities for collaboration across interrelated policies, and speak to the questions that policymakers most want to have answered, instead of the questions they most want to study. These are the keys to defining what an information‐age government truly means.     

Integration of strategic and operational intelligence during the Peninsular war

Wellington is well known for his understanding of the importance of intelligence, but so far history has recorded that he presided over a one-man intelligence department, himself being the only analyst of what proved to be a massive quantity of raw information. New research highlighted in this article reveals that this has been an inaccurate interpretation. The British government also acted to establish a civilian network of correspondents and agents communicating with the British ambassadors to Spain and Portugal. Wellington's main priority was to integrate the ‘strategic intelligence’ collected by government agents with his own ‘operational intelligence’. Instead, analysis was conducted more by Wellington's subordinates in the field, applying their personal localized expertise to the information they received. In this way, an early and primitive form of the staff system later developed by the Prussians was created in the Peninsular War.     

CIA's Leadership and Major Covert Operations: Rogue Elephants or Risk-Averse Bureaucrats?

The Central Intelligence Agency has often been accused of distorting intelligence analysis to encourage covert operations. However, there has been little systematic research done to determine, 1) if this problem actually exists, 2) whether it is better or worse under certain circumstances and, 3) what, if anything, can be done. I start by demonstrating that, in fact, the attitude of CIA leaders towards covert operations does cause them to distort the intelligence they deliver to policymakers. I test three hypotheses which attempt to explain why leaders' concern for promoting the Agency's interests leads them to adopt a particular form of bias at a particular time. Finally, I offer recommendations for mitigating the causes and effects of distorted intelligence.