Intelligence Professionals Research Articles

Spies or Heroes? Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s

The article focuses on the most successful period in the history of Soviet intelligence in the United States, namely the 1930s and 1940s. The reasons for this success are analysed, first and foremost being the worldwide enthusiasm for the ideas of communism and the achievements of the USSR in building a new socialist society, to which the propaganda of the Stalinist regime had contributed in no small measure. The author examines the activities of the Soviet secret services, which established an extensive covert network in the United States during those years. Members of the underground were collecting information, primarily in the field of the latest military technologies, including the secrets of the production of the atomic bomb. While the history of intelligence professionals has been sufficiently studied, the work of their American voluntary agents is less known. There were many communists and sympathisers among them; a significant proportion were Russian immigrants. The aim of the article is to explore their views, behavioural motives, and subsequent fate. The study draws on records from American and Russian archives opened to researchers in the 1990s: previously classified Soviet diplomatic correspondence, which, after being decrypted by the Venona project, was recognised as a communication channel between intelligence in the United States and the centre in Moscow; it was supplemented by the so-called “Vassiliev Notebooks”, containing documents from the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service (formerly the First Directorate of the KGB) as well as records from the Comintern archive at the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History (RTsKhIDNI). New sources offer a more comprehensive picture of the scale and methods of Soviet intelligence work, the activities of American agents, and allow to answer a number of questions that have caused controversy among historians, including the guilt of the Rosenbergs in the theft of nuclear secrets and whether Alger Hiss, a high-ranking US State Department official, was a Soviet intelligence agent.

Policy for promoting analytic rigor in intelligence: professionals’ views and their psychological correlates

ABSTRACT Following significant intelligence failures, the United States intelligence community adopted Intelligence Community Directive 203 (ICD203) to promote analytic rigor. We developed two psychometric scales to examine how strongly intelligence professionals (N = 108) endorsed the analytic standards comprising ICD203 and how strongly they believed their organizations complied with these standards. All ICD203 facets were highly endorsed and clustered into three principal components, and perceived organizational compliance was high. Facets reflecting intelligence aims were endorsed more strongly than those reflecting means. ICD203 endorsement was positively related to conscientious and actively open-minded thinking, whereas perceived organizational compliance was positively correlated with conscientiousness, job satisfaction, and affective and normative commitment.

Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Intelligence Professionals and the Public: A First Step Towards Democratising New Zealand’s National Security?

The secrecy surrounding intelligence work has meant the relationship between New Zealand intelligence professionals and the public they serve has always been somewhat problematic. Over the past decade, leaks, scandals and a deadly act of terrorism have certainly not improved the public’s trust and confidence in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau. While the Government has undertaken several measures to strengthen the credibility of those agencies, including initiating public inquiries and bolstering governance arrangements, its current approach is rather limited, has reached those limits and could now be counterproductive. In light of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 to increase public involvement in New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, we argue that it is time for this problematic relationship between intelligence professionals and the public to be rethought and reconfigured. To that end, we identify several concrete actions that parliamentarians and university leaders could consider taking to actively support intelligence professionals as they foster a society of informed citizens and create new opportunities to bring national security matters into the heart of democracy’s deliberative processes.

Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Intelligence Professionals and the Public: A First Step Towards Democratising New Zealand’s National Security?

The secrecy surrounding intelligence work has meant the relationship between New Zealand intelligence professionals and the public they serve has always been somewhat problematic. Over the past decade, leaks, scandals and a deadly act of terrorism have certainly not improved the public’s trust and confidence in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau. While the Government has undertaken several measures to strengthen the credibility of those agencies, including initiating public inquiries and bolstering governance arrangements, its current approach is rather limited, has reached those limits and could now be counterproductive. In light of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 to increase public involvement in New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, we argue that it is time for this problematic relationship between intelligence professionals and the public to be rethought and reconfigured. To that end, we identify several concrete actions that parliamentarians and university leaders could consider taking to actively support intelligence professionals as they foster a society of informed citizens and create new opportunities to bring national security matters into the heart of democracy’s deliberative processes. Keywords: terrorism, public inquiries, official secrecy, transparency, expertise.

Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Intelligence Professionals and the Public: A First Step Towards Democratising New Zealand’s National Security?

The secrecy surrounding intelligence work has meant the relationship between New Zealand intelligence professionals and the public they serve has always been somewhat problematic. Over the past decade, leaks, scandals and a deadly act of terrorism have certainly not improved the public’s trust and confidence in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau. While the Government has undertaken several measures to strengthen the credibility of those agencies, including initiating public inquiries and bolstering governance arrangements, its current approach is rather limited, has reached those limits and could now be counterproductive. In light of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 to increase public involvement in New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, we argue that it is time for this problematic relationship between intelligence professionals and the public to be rethought and reconfigured. To that end, we identify several concrete actions that parliamentarians and university leaders could consider taking to actively support intelligence professionals as they foster a society of informed citizens and create new opportunities to bring national security matters into the heart of democracy’s deliberative processes. Keywords: terrorism, public inquiries, official secrecy, transparency, expertise.

The intelligence professional: A new career profile in Librarianship and Information Science studies? Analysis of LIS study plans in Spain

Librarianship and Information Science (LIS) studies have undergone a decline in many countries that is visible in various ways, among which are the disappearance of these degree courses in different universities around the world. These studies need to seek new scenarios to avoid becoming obsolete in a world in which information is undergoing constant change. The profile of the Head of Intelligence in general, and of the Intelligence Analyst in particular, can serve to develop new areas of study and research, and new professional careers. This work analyses the training of Intelligence professionals, the organisms related to that field, and the role those professionals play in the Intelligence Cycle in Spain. The main objective of this study was to determine whether the subjects taught in the LIS Degree courses offered in Spanish universities make it possible to highlight a profile that has never as yet been recognized as a career opportunity within these studies – that of the figure of the Intelligence Professional in general, and of the Intelligence Analyst in particular. An exhaustive and detailed content analysis was carried out of the teaching plans of all the subjects in the curricula of the eleven LIS Degree courses taught in Spain during the 2019/2020 academic year in terms of their adaptation to the phases of the Intelligence Cycle. There was found to exist an important set of subjects related to that cycle, which have the possibility of giving rise to a new professional profile in the LIS field: the Intelligence Professional.

“Don’t keep mum”: critical approaches to the narratives of women intelligence professionals

ABSTRACT Drawing upon a rise of women’s publicly shared narratives in the UK and US in the previous two decades, this article aims to challenge traditional perceptions of intelligence employment, finding that gender is an influential factor in career experiences and trajectories. We can gain unique insights into organizational practices and cultures by analyzing the ways in which women speak about their careers. Narratives are valuable but underutilized sources in intelligence studies. In incorporating critical approaches to women’s narratives, the intention is to move beyond the ‘finding’ of women in intelligence history to reveal a more nuanced understanding of intelligence work.

Ordinary lives behind extraordinary occupations: on the uses of Rubicon for a social history of American intelligence

This article will evaluate the possible uses of fiction—specifically TV series—for a social history of American intelligence. Drawing on methodological debates within intelligence studies, as well as contemporary philosophy, it argues that certain TV series allow viewers to hypothetically experience the everyday life of ordinary intelligence professionals by permitting in-depth descriptions of specific routines and practices. Such a claim will be illustrated using the example of Rubicon (AMC, 2010), an American TV series that was praised for its realism by professionals and scholars alike. By making visible the ordinary life of professionals (coffee and lunch breaks, daily briefs, interminable waits etc.), Rubicon successfully demystifies the everyday life of intelligence analysts, without normalizing the extraordinary nature of the secret world (secrecy, mistrust, and extreme violence). In addition to challenging the clear-cut and often overly simplistic distinction between the factual and the fictional when it comes to secret intelligence, this contribution will also broaden our understanding of the hidden side of government by shedding light on cultural perceptions (including self-perceptions) of intelligence professionals.

Integrating Open Source Intelligence into the Brigade Combat Team at Combat Training Centers

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is a rapidly expanding intelligence discipline in the Intelligence Community (IC), both in scope and impact to national security. US Army organizations conduct pre-deployment training and validation at combat training centers (CTC) across the full spectrum of warfare. Military intelligence professionals are tested on their ability to collect and analyze data using each of the intelligence disciplines. However, OSINT is the only intelligence discipline that is not currently graded at CTCs. Although there are various reasons why OSINT is not being sufficiently evaluated, this project focuses on the lack of defined OSINT evaluation criteria and endeavors to develop defined task, conditions, standards, and evaluation criteria for the planning and execution of OSINT operations. This project is sponsored by the Army OSINT Office (AOO) who is the proponent and capability developer for Army OSINT.

Academic-intelligence relationships: opportunities, strengths, weaknesses and threats

ABSTRACT Academics and practitioners interact on the basis of formal and informal mechanisms. This article examines these mechanisms as opportunities for collaboration, identifies their key strengths and weaknesses, and discusses the threats that make academia a sensitive ground for exploitation. The first section is focused on the contributions of academia to the intelligence profession and is organized around the primary functions identified in the intelligence cycle. The second section is focused on the contributions of the intelligence profession to academia, and is organized around four themes, namely the education of professors and students, the education and training of future intelligence professionals, public debate and the development of a disciplinary body of knowledge. The final section discusses threats that endanger the independence, integrity and freedom of academia.

Spies and the Virus: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Intelligence Communication in the United States

This paper introduces a crucial parameter to the novel coronavirus response in the United States, by shedding light on the early-warning role of intelligence agencies. It argues that the intelligence components of the federal government's Biological Defense Program offered actionable forewarning about an impending pandemic in the years leading to the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet, almost from the opening stages of the pandemic, senior US government officials, including President Donald Trump, have repeatedly claimed that the virus “came out of nowhere” and that “nobody saw it coming.” We show that these assertions contradict more than 15 years of pandemic preparedness warnings by intelligence professionals, and disregard the existence of intelligence-led federal pandemic response strategies of every US administration in our time. However, rather than simply placing blame on the White House for discounting these warnings, we advance a conceptual analysis of what many in the US Intelligence Community view as a critical breakdown in strategic communication between intelligence professionals and key government decision-makers. This study agrees with those who suggest that the White House disregarded its own pandemic experts. However, it also posits that the means of strategic communication employed by intelligence experts to alert the White House to the threat were unproductive. These alerts were communicated largely through the President's Daily Brief, an archaic, and ineffectual method of communication that is not designed to facilitate the kind of laser-focused, unequivocal exchange of information needed when potentially catastrophic threats confront the world. This study suggests that the Intelligence Community must implement more direct, immediate and conclusive methods of communicating intelligence to decision-makers, and should seriously consider creating a new line of products that addresses existential challenges to national security. Lastly, we contend it is time to re-evaluate existing rules that prevent intelligence analysts from offering advice on policy. Although we agree that intelligence professionals should refrain from providing policy advice on routine matters, we question the value of preventing these highly knowledgeable experts from communicating strategic policy advice to decision-makers when it comes to threats of a catastrophic nature, which may prove potentially existential for the US, its allies, and the world.

The impasse of competitive intelligence today is not a failure. A special issue for papers at the ICI 2020 Conference

The impasse of competitive intelligence today is not a failure. A special issue for papers at the ICI 2020 Conference

Herbert O. Yardley revisited: what does the new evidence say?

The story of Herbert O. Yardley by now is very well known: After his Cipher Bureau is abolished in 1929, he writes The American Black Chamber which appalls and offends intelligence professionals everywhere with its cryptologic content. Henceforth, he becomes a pariah in the cryptologic community, a stigma that he never completely overcomes. Against this backdrop, NSA in 2019 released 220+ documents about Yardley, some of which are probably new to the public. The author, in reviewing the material, addresses three major themes: (1) Yardley’s relationship with an early rival, William F. Friedman; (2) his attitudes and approaches toward technology and collection; and (3) his supposed employment with Japan. While unlikely to change anyone’s mind about Yardley, the new releases do indeed add nuance to the story of one of modern history’s most controversial cryptologists.

Counter-terrorism & the intelligence network in Europe

The European intelligence space is reaching a new level of maturity because of an increasingly consolidated transgovernmental network of intelligence professionals. What explains the change in this key security network, especially given the challenges inherent in intelligence sharing? The overall strengthening of the European transgovernmental intelligence network is a product of both informal, bottom-up networking and formal, top-down policies to enhance intelligence sharing. Yet, it is clear that the informal side is of utmost importance given the difficulties inherent in trusting outsiders with valuable information. It is through informality that the transgovernmental network shares best practices and knowhow, strengthening the backbone of the European intelligence space. At the same time, there is a realm of intelligence sharing that is still subject to deep secrecy, the dynamics of which are very difficult to truly know. As a result, there is a disjuncture between expert-level intelligence sharing and community governance practices.

Using routine data to benchmark quality and outcomes of diabetes care in the EU HEALTHPROS project

Abstract Background The EU-funded Marie Curie project HEALTHPROS aims to foster a new generation of “Healthcare Performance Intelligence Professionals” through a cohesive stream of 13 doctoral projects (www.healthpros-h2020.eu). Over 48 months, researchers will investigate key levers of healthcare improvement in 7 different countries, using methods drawn from the diverse fields of biostatistics, medical informatics and health services research. Objectives To describe barriers and enablers in the conduction of two doctoral projects aimed at exploring the impact of personal risk factors and organizational arrangements on lower extremity amputations in diabetes, through the use of large-scale databases from England, Scotland, Denmark and Germany. Results The research plan included a systematic review, structured comparison of data sources, predictive modelling and software development for automated international comparisons. Barriers encountered by researchers were: knowledge and access to data sources from different countries, dealing with data protection rules and the ability to carry out international comparisons when individual records are not easily allowed to leave national boundaries. Enabling factors included: a targeted educational process for risk modelling in diabetes and a multidisciplinary support team to help doctoral students overcoming the above barriers across different sites. Further clinical insight and contextual knowledge of data systems in place at different locations were needed in addition to the statistical, epidemiological and technical skills initially foreseen by the program. Conclusions The success of studies within a general educational program on health systems performance may depend from the continued support of a multidisciplinary team helping students in their educational process as well as with the practicalities of their research. International comparisons using routine data may require prioritisation to meet the tight timelines of doctoral theses. Key messages Academic programs for international comparisons in health care may be hampered by different type of barriers including technical aspects, legal regulations and a range of contextual factors. The establishment of multidisciplinary support teams may be essential for training doctoral students aiming to conduct international comparisons using routine data.

The effects of big data over the analytical activities of strategic intelligence professionals in Brazil

Abstract The strategic use of information is at the core of the intelligence activity whose focus has been largely directed to the use of technology for data analysis. However, the cognitive aspects are the ones that most seem to challenge the transformation of information into intelligence, as they are associated with the psychological dimensions. This paper aims to examine how the big data phenomenon is perceived and influences the activities of strategic intelligence (SI) professionals in Brazil. The research was conducted as a qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 leading individuals in the field of strategic intelligence in Brazil followed by a content analysis technique for the data analysis. The results show the effects of big data are less influential over the cognitive dimension of the analyst, particularly in the skills to keep their open-mindedness and in the self-confidence to admit and learn from analytic errors.

The Role of Strategic Intelligence in the Post-Everything Age

ABSTRACTClassical intelligence has little sense outside the normal, modern world where it was born and developed. Intelligence, in general, and strategic intelligence, in particular, are having difficulties to adapt to a new world where objectives are different and the rules of the game, if they still exist, are continuously changing. Faced with the growing competition from alternative providers of strategic insight, intelligence is trying to adapt to the changing requirements of new times. Intelligence professionals may sometimes be disappointed with their limited influence on real decision-making, but nevertheless they have succeeded in retaining a remarkable ability to make themselves useful. Typically, top-level decision-makers still trust intelligence with some essential functions at the strategic level. Interestingly enough, they are not always those functions intelligence professionals would like to carry out.

Competitive intelligence failures

PurposeCompetitive intelligence failures have devastating effects in marketplaces. They are attributed to various factors but seldom explicitly to information behaviour. This paper addresses causes of competitive intelligence failures from an information behaviour lens focussing on problems with key intelligence and information needs. The exploratory study was conducted in 2016/2017. Managers (end-users) identify key intelligence needs on which information is needed, and often other staff members seek the information (proxy information seeking). The purpose of this paper is to analyse problems related to key intelligence and information needs, and make recommendations to address the problems.Design/methodology/approachThe study is placed in a post-positivism research paradigm, using qualitative and limited quantitative research approaches. In total, 15 participants (competitive intelligence professionals and educators/trainers originating from South Africa and the USA) contributed rich data through in-depth individual interviews.FindingsProblems associated with articulation of information needs (key intelligence needs is the competitive intelligence term – with a broader scope) include inadequate communication between the person in need of information and the proxy information searcher; awareness and recognition of information needs; difficulty in articulation, incomplete and partial sharing of details of needs.Research limitations/implicationsParticipant recruitment was difficult, representing mostly from South Africa. The findings from this exploratory study can, however, direct further studies with a very understudied group.Practical implicationsHowever, revealed valuable findings that can guide research.Originality/valueLittle has been published on competitive intelligence from an information behaviour perspective. Frameworks guiding the study (a combination of Leckie et al.’s 1996 and Wilson’s, 1981 models and a competitive intelligence life cycle), however, revealed valuable findings that can guide research.

A Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Work Life Balance Professionals - A Conceptual Perspective

A Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Work Life Balance Professionals - A Conceptual Perspective

Experiencing the art of intelligence: using simulations/gaming for teaching intelligence and developing analysis and production skills

This article discusses the use of experiential (or active) learning methods – specifically the use of simulations, exercises, and games – to enhance student learning in intelligence courses at universities to prepare students for careers in intelligence organizations. The article argues that most disciplines and academic fields employ laboratories, simulations, internships, and practical exercises when the learning objective is to develop the required skills to successfully practice a professional discipline. The use of active learning techniques challenges prospective intelligence professionals to learn by exercising previously learned concepts, frameworks, and tools in simulated ‘real world’ scenarios, leading them to gradually become more technically skillful and effective.