Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies

Robert Dover, Michael Goodman, Claudia Hillebrand, Robert Dover, Michael S. Goodman, Claudia Hillebrand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134480364
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Intelligence et espionnage

The Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies provides a broad overview of the growing field of intelligence studies.

The recent growth of interest in intelligence and security studies has led to an increased demand for popular depictions of intelligence and reference works to explain the architecture and underpinnings of intelligence activity. Divided into five comprehensive sections, this Companion provides a strong survey of the cutting-edge research in the field of intelligence studies:

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• Part I: The evolution of intelligence studies;

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• Part II: Abstract approaches to intelligence;

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• Part III: Historical approaches to intelligence;

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• Part IV: Systems of intelligence;

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• Part V: Contemporary challenges.

With a broad focus on the origins, practices and nature of intelligence, the book not only addresses classical issues, but also examines topics of recent interest in security studies. The overarching aim is to reveal the rich tapestry of intelligence studies in both a sophisticated and accessible way.

This Companion will be essential reading for students of intelligence studies and strategic studies, and highly recommended for students of defence studies, foreign policy, Cold War studies, diplomacy and international relations in general.

PART I The evolution of intelligence studies

DOI: 10.4324/9780203762721-1

1 THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE STUDIES

Loch K. Johnson

DOI: 10.4324/9780203762721-2

Introduction

The topic of national security intelligence — which at its core encompasses the collection and analysis of information, covert action and counterintelligence — has long exercised a fascination on society, as the popularity of spy movies and novels attests. The reason for this widespread interest is easy to understand, for the motivations that lead to intelligence operations reside at the heart of the human psyche. Human beings, like other living species, seek security from threats; moreover, they hope to improve their station in life. Fear and ambition — here are powerful, primordial instincts that have driven kings, tyrants, prime ministers and presidents, while providing fodder for Shakespeare and countless other scribblers down through the ages.

Central to the safety of a nation is the possession of information about what threats may lurk in the byways that lie ahead; and, for advancement, a nation seeks an understanding of opportunities that may present themselves. Whether the goal is protection or prosperity, the collection and analysis (assessment) of information about the global setting is vital for effective decision-making by a nation's leaders. ‘Creating Decision Advantage’ is the motto inscribed on the wall at the headquarters of America's Director of National Intelligence (DNI), located at Liberty Crossing (‘LX’) in northern Virginia.

Critical to a nation's success, as well, may be a more aggressive use of intelligence agencies known as covert action — that is, efforts to intervene with a hidden hand in events aboard with the hope of nudging history in a more favourable direction. In this mode, a nation's intelligence agencies become secret weapons for propaganda, political, economic and paramilitary operations. Finally, with the mission of counterintelligence, a nation's secret agencies are called upon to act as a shield against the clandestine machinations of foreign intelligence services, terrorist organisations and internal subversives.

From Sun-Tzu and Machiavelli to the laptop-toting counsels of the modern era, the goals of war planners and political advisers alike have been to help their masters maintain a secure defence, achieve success on distant battlefields, and advance their strategic, political and economic objectives. The prescriptions offered by these advisers have inevitably included reliance on an effective intelligence capability, although with the caveat that an existential uncertainty about world affairs will forever haunt the best-laid plans of strategists. Not until recently, though, has the topic of national security intelligence moved from episodic treatment by a few insightful thinkers to become an academic discipline worthy of entry into university curricula and subject to the rigours of scholarly inquiry. While precise definitions of this new discipline known as ‘intelligence studies’ remain disputatious, British intelligence scholar Michael Herman offers a reasonable suggestion: ‘Think of the subject as a mixture of history and the study of intelligence institutions, and what they do, and not worry further about boundaries’ (2011: 1). One might only underscore that the intelligence missions of collection-and-analysis, covert action and counterintelligence are the core subjects of the field, along with the question of accountability (at least within the world's democracies).

The emergence of intelligence studies as an academic discipline

In the middle years of the twentieth century, only a few prominent scholarly works dotted the landscape of intelligence studies: the trail-blazing Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy by Sherman Kent (1949), a leading analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its early days and a former Yale University history professor; Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions by Roger Hilsman (1956), a former director of the Intelligence and Research (INR) Bureau in the Department of State; Central Intelligence and National Security and The Intelligence Establishment, both by political scientist Harry Howe Ransom (1958 and 1970, respectively), who began teaching courses on this subject at Harvard University in the 1960s; The Quiet Canadian, a study of Sir William Stephenson, Britain's spy chief in the United States during the Second World War, written by H. Montgomery Hyde (1962), a veteran of British intelligence (MI6 — the Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS); Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision by Roberta Wohlsetter of RAND (1962); The Invisible Government by journalists David Wise and Thomas Ross (1964); SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944, a path-breaking experiment in official British intelligence history, written by M.R.D. Foot (1966); The Codebreakers by David Kahn (1967), an American journalist and historian; and The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945 by J.C. Masterman (1972), a senior British counterintelligence officer during the Second World War and later Provost of Worcester College, Oxford University.¹ Stirring early interest, too, was an insider exposé, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, written by two former American intelligence officers, Marchetti and Marks (1974).

These gems aside, the distinguished historian and intelligence scholar Professor Ernst R. May of Harvard University observed that ‘the literature on intelligence was at or below the level of literature on business before the arrival of modern business history and business education’ (May 1995: 1).² Ransom similarly lamented the thinness of scholarly research on espionage and related activities during these years and earlier. The barren landscape was, however, about to change dramatically. In the wake of the Watergate scandal and allegations of CIA domestic spying, government investigators in the United States uncovered for public view a mountain of formerly classified documents about America's secret agencies and their operations. Professor Ransom recalls using a ‘pick and shovel’ to mine a few intelligence nuggets here and there; then, in 1975, the Church, Pike and Rockefeller panels of government inquiry deployed their ‘bulldozers’.³

Practically overnight, the subject of intelligence suddenly seemed amenable to systematic study by academic researchers. Across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, universities and colleges established full-blown courses on intelligence, or at least integrated this subject more explicitly into existing courses on foreign and security policy, as well as international affairs. In the place of a handful of such courses before 1975, more than 250 were up and running in the United States by the 1980s, and that number has steadily increased. Degrees hinged to intelligence studies began to appear. For example, the National Intelligence University, founded in 1962 and sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency, now offers a Bachelor of Science in Intelligence (BSI), and a Master of Science and Technology Intelligence (MSTI). Further, PhD concentrations in intelligence have been established at several American and British universit...