Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies

While the role of intelligence is to reduce uncertainty for decision-makers, a role of intelligence scholarship is to highlight uncertainty, that is, open up possibilities for ethical reflection and deliberation that conventional wisdom, institutional inertia, and mainstream research have closed off. Along these lines, this essay argues for the development and use of rhetorical and critical/cultural perspectives within the field of Intelligence Studies. It describes what rhetorical and critical/cultural research entails and explains how associated perspectives benefit the field.     

Organizational Culture and US Intelligence Affairs

Both US intelligence officials and intelligence studies scholars claim that ‘organizational culture’ is a cause of ‘intelligence failure’ and the proper locus of post-9/11 intelligence reform efforts. This essay uses a postmodern perspective to demonstrate how the dominant discourse of ‘organizational culture’ shapes stakeholders' understandings of accountability and what constitutes necessary, correct, or effective intelligence reform. By exploring institutional struggles over the meanings of ‘culture’ and ‘accountability’, this essay calls for reconsideration of the ways US intelligence officials and intelligence studies scholars talk about ‘organizational culture’ vis-à-vis post-9/11 intelligence reform.