Intelligence Reports Research Articles

Interrogating TortureMoral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict. By Michael Gross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation. By Shane O’Mara. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, Findings and Conclusions, Executive Summary. US Senate Select Committee on

Interrogating Torture<i>Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict</i>. By Michael Gross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.<i>Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation</i>. By Shane O’Mara. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.<i>Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, Findings and Conclusions, Executive Summary</i>. US Senate Select Committee on

Reliable Chip &amp; Bond Wire QA Sampling, Counting &amp; Inspection by Implementing Multiple Magnification AOI

Reliable Chip &amp; Bond Wire QA Sampling, Counting &amp; Inspection by Implementing Multiple Magnification AOI

Between a rock and a hard place of geopolitically sensitive threats – critical incidents and decision inertia

ABSTRACTWhile the SAFE-T model of decision making emphasizes naturalistic decision making, its potential for cross-comparative analysis of incidents with global implications remains underutilized, which the current paper aims to address. To this end, it draws upon open-source reports from unclassified American, British and Russian intelligence reports to explore the management of three types of 10 high-profile geopolitically sensitive threats from across the globe (verifying potential terrorist identity, hostage rescue and national/international security). Defining features of such incidents include decision makers’ ability to prospectively model competing scenarios in which they must select between options and where every outcome looks aversive and high risk (‘damned if you do or damned if you don’t decisions’). A frequent consequence of such calculations is ‘decision inertia’ (a failure to execute an important, irrevocable decision resulting in non-optimal consequences), or ‘implementation failure’ (a failure to make a choice). Combining the benefit of the theoretical framework and hindsight knowledge of the analyzed incidents, the paper facilitates theoretical understanding of decision inertia and failures to act.Encouraging the consideration of multiple scenario endings contingent on a wide spectrum of factors and unique cultural-historical context, it also helps identify past decision errors in order to inform assessment and management of similar geopolitical threats in the future.

The Impact of Intelligence Provided to the Soviet Union by Richard Zorge on Soviet Force Deployments from the Far East to the West in 1941 and 1942

ABSTRACTAmong the most controversial questions associated with the German-Soviet War (1941–1945) is the degree to which intelligence information received from his agents abroad influenced the decision making of Josef Stalin, the Chairman of the Soviet Council of People’s Commissars and soon Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, particularly during the summers of 1941 and 1942, when Adolf Hitler’s German Wehrmacht conducted its strategic offensives code-named Operations Barbarossa and Blau. This article assesses this question by assessing the impact of intelligence reports Stalin received from Richard Zorge (Sorge in German), a Soviet agent situated in Tokyo, Japan, prior to and during the Barbarossa invasion.

The use of intelligence information in criminal procedure

Intelligence information that law-enforcement authorities may present as evidence in criminal proceedings is a questionable procedure. Intelligence reports are usually preventive and proactive measures for internal security and their discussion is important, in so far as they may be used as evidence and may have been acquired before the trial and even the prosecution phase. From the standpoint of defence rights, the use of such information undoubtedly calls for a review of criminal procedural principles; the accused and counsel cannot challenge such intelligence reports as the sources are secret and their introduction in a criminal proceeding circumvents the observance of the ordinary rules of criminal procedure. Despite the absolute absence of specific guidelines on national ordinary judicial procedure for the assessment of such intelligence information in Spain, a practical working arrangement has nevertheless evolved in the field. In this paper, the example of the Spanish panorama is described and some thoughts are advanced on a potential European approach. The concept of intelligence, whether such a concept is clearly identified in legal terms at a European and national level, as well as the practical ramifications of intelligence information used in criminal procedure with its consequences for the accused are all examined in the paper. The legal basis for the submission of such evidence both in Spanish legislation and in the judicial practice of the Spanish Supreme Court are also presented. The challenge is to ensure that the nature of such sensitive information and its assessment as evidence is at all times compatible with the observance of fundamental rights and, most especially, the procedural guarantees of the defendant.

The Market for Human Smuggling into Europe: A Macro Perspective

The public discourse on human smuggling into the European Union often evokes the presence of a few all-powerful ‘Mr Bigs’ who are able to ‘mastermind’ illegal operations. This article takes a closer look at the recent trends in relation to two key smuggling routes—the Eastern and the Central Mediterranean—with the aim to identify the analytical and empirical features of the markets for smuggling services. It shows that these markets have the ability to expand considerably and often over a short period of time. It then argues that this is consistent with the presence of many competitive enterprises, low barriers to entry, low skills and (relatively) low capital requirements. This is a far cry from how the public discourse is often framed. The costs to the smugglers of monitoring agents and clients are also likely to be modest—particularly in comparison with human trafficking. The article concludes by discussing some policy implications, including the adoption of land-based policies (regarded as more effective than naval operations) and a suggestion for a change in the terminology adopted in policy and intelligence reports.

Пропагандистское обеспечение германского «Нового порядка» на оккупированной территории Курской области, октябрь 1941 г. – сентябрь 1943 г. По материалам разведывательно-агентурных сводок и донесений УНКВД по Курской области

Пропагандистское обеспечение германского «Нового порядка» на оккупированной территории Курской области, октябрь 1941 г. – сентябрь 1943 г. По материалам разведывательно-агентурных сводок и донесений УНКВД по Курской области

The Senussi movement in Africa in the light of a secret British report issued in 1908 AD

The research deals with an unpublished secret British report issued in 1908 AD on the history of the Senussi movement and its relations with local and international forces during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is basically a collection of British military intelligence reports.

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 and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

COMMENTING IN 1950 ON THE ACCURACY OF intelligence reports and assessments that the U.S. public expected the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to produce, newly appointed director Walter Bedell Smith purportedly remarked that Americans “expect you to be on a communing level with God and Joe Stalin, and I’m not sure they are so much interested in God.”1 Smith exaggerated, but not by much. Americans’ expectations (both within and beyond the Beltway) about the value of intelligence for conducting foreign policy and promoting national security are uniformly unrealistic. Collecting intelligence is hard, and analyzing it is even harder. The most one can expect from intelligence, in the words of a veteran official, is to “reduce uncertainty, identify risks and opportunities, and by doing so, deepen understanding so that those with policymaking responsibilities will make ‘better’ decisions.” Done right, intelligence can provide policymakers with a “decision advantage.”2 Intelligence, particularly strategic intelligence, was not done right during the lead-up to and conduct of either the Iraq war or the Afghanistan war. It thus did little to reduce policymakers’ uncertainty or to provide them with a decision advantage. This judgment begs questions about who was responsible for this failure and, therefore, for its consequences. This article argues that although the Intelligence Community (IC) did not perform well, its customers—America’s policymakers—are primarily culpable for the grief that befell the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan. (Currently, 16 agencies make up the IC, most notably, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bureau of Intelligence and Research; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is often included as the IC’s seventeenth element, although its responsibilities are primarily managerial.) First in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and then when waging two wars, the architects of America’s national security relied far too little on intelligence in reaching their decisions, forfeiting the advantage it could have provided them.

“We Swallowed the State as the State Swallowed Us”: The Genesis, Genealogies, and Geographies of Genocides in Somalia

ABSTRACTThis article theorizes both the causes and the consequences of the state-sponsored genocidal campaigns leveled at the Isaaq clan-group, which can be considered as a case of a “forgotten genocide.” Little is academically known about the various uses of political violence by the Somali State with regard to suppressing armed political oppositions and its repercussions. The article assesses the central significance to the militarized state power to reveal ways in which the Mohamed Siad Barre military regime (1969–1991) unleashed state terror on civilians and argues that the legacy left behind by the regime created unforgivable memories for those who were terrorized during the state terror. By transecting both internal and external dimensions, the article explains the roots of the predatory power and selective genocides that culminated in the communal clan convulsions of the 1990s and how the genocidal campaigns in the North led victims of the violence to resort to secession in Somaliland. Using intelligence reports, ethnographic interviews, and visual evidence to ensure triangulation, backed by author’s direct observations of living in Somalia at the height of the wars, the article provides a nuanced explanation of the legacies of the military regime. Apart from the contribution to the studies of the postcolonial genocides in Africa, the aim of the article is to open up a discussion and debate about what precipitated Somalia’s state collapse to find solutions.

An End-User Metadata Model on Object and Element Levels for Business Intelligence Users

The effective use of metadata can offer end users an improved understanding and greater level of assurance during the Business Intelligence (BI) report analysis process. This paper reports key findings from a case study that investigates critical end-user metadata issues in a large Australian organization. The findings led to the development of an end-user metadata model on object (report and cube) and element (term and column) levels, which can support effective BI use and potentially increase user satisfaction at the case organization. The adoption and use of BI applications by business stakeholders may be improved by incorporating the end-user metadata model.

Social Network Analysis With Data Fusion

This paper reports on the utility of social network analysis methods in the data fusion domain. Given fused data that combine multiple intelligence reports from the same environment, social network extraction and high value individual (HVI) identification are of interest. The research on the feasibility of such activities may help not only in methodological developments in network science but also in testing and evaluation of fusion quality. This paper offers a parallel computing-based methodology to extract a social network of individuals from fused data, captured as a cumulative associated data graph (CDG). To obtain the desired social network, two approaches including a hop count weighted and a path salience approach are developed and compared. A supervised learning framework is implemented for parameterizing the extraction algorithms. Parameters utilized in the extraction algorithm consider paths between individuals within the social network, weighing relationships between these individuals based on the count weighted and the path salience calculation methodologies. An overall link strength value is then calculated by aggregating path hop count weights and saliences between unique individual pairs for the hop count weighted and path salience approaches, respectively. Ordered centrality-based HVI lists are obtained from the CDGs constructed from the Sunni criminal thread and Bath’est resurgence threads of the SYNCOIN data set, under various fusion system settings. The reported results shed light on the sensitivity of betweenness, closeness, and degree centrality metrics to fused graph inputs and the role of HVI identification as a test and evaluation tool for fusion process optimization. The computational results demonstrate superiority of path salience approach in identifying HVIs. The insights generated by these approaches and directions for future research are discussed.

How Quantifying Probability Assessments Influences Analysis and Decision Making: Experimental Evidence from National Security Professionals

National security is one of many fields where public officials offer imprecise probability assessments when evaluating high-stakes decisions. This practice is often justified with arguments about how quantifying subjective judgments would bias analysts and decision makers toward overconfident action. We translate these arguments into testable hypotheses, and evaluate their validity through survey experiments involving national security professionals. Results reveal that when decision makers receive numerals (as opposed to words) for probability assessments, they are less likely to support risky actions and more receptive to gathering additional information, disconfirming the idea of a bias toward action. Yet when respondents generate probabilities themselves, using numbers (as opposed to words) magnifies overconfidence, especially among low-performing assessors. These results hone directions for research among both proponents and skeptics of quantifying probability estimates in national security and other fields. Given that uncertainty surrounds virtually all intelligence reports, military plans, and national security decisions, understanding how national security officials form and interpret probability assessments has wide-ranging implications for theory and practice.

Making intelligence more transparent

This paper attempts to make a critical cognitive analysis of US strategic intelligence reports and aims at investigating language strategies and cognitive biases that occur in the reports and how the reports create the “realities” that may influence policymakers’ decisions. The data for analysis include seven reports released by US Intelligence Community which analyze, more or less, the Sino-US relations currently and in the foreseeable future as well as the implications of a rising China on US policies. The analytic framework is built up by integrating Critical Metaphor Analysis, Conceptual Blending Theory and Discourse Space Theory, each of which deal with different aspects of the discourse and on the whole provide a comprehensive analysis of it. The critical cognitive analysis of intelligence reports could disclose the views that analysts hold on particular issues, providing valuable reference for understanding or evaluating their reports’ contents, and reveal the ideology inherent in US strategic thinking, helping to estimate US strategic policies in the long term.

Haslam, Jonathon Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (review)

REVIEWS 361 Le Blanc takes Trotskii’s major works, and explains them to the reader, with no attempt at analysis or criticism. My Life is ‘an activist’s resource’ (p. 73); The History of the Russian Revolution is a ‘literary masterpiece’ constructed around the ‘conceptual framework of the theory of permanent revolution’ (p. 77); The RevolutionBetrayedillustrateshowtheSovietSectionoftheFourthInternational would lead the masses in the revolutionary overthrow of ‘the bureaucracy’ (p. 109). Le Blanc’s agitprop efforts become fantasy pure and simple when he writes: ‘In 1937 small groups of dissident communist heroes and heroines, the men and women of the Left Opposition, waged their final struggle against the bureaucratic and murderous authoritarianism of the Stalin regime in the USSR, and for the original ideas of the Russian Revolution of 1917’ (p. 117). The final two sentences say it all: ‘Long after his death, Trotsky’s passion and his ideas have continued to resonate. Whether they will again animate multitudes, reaching for a hopeful future, remains to be seen’ (p. 186). This is not a serious academic study, but a primer for the faithful. Central and East European Studies Geoffrey Swain University of Glasgow Haslam, Jonathon. Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2015. 366 pp. Map. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £20.00. Jonathon Haslam’s intention with this book is to condense our expanding knowledge of Soviet intelligence into a single accessible volume, which can also function as a window onto the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet system itself. This is an excellent idea, for Soviet intelligence has hitherto been a relatively obscure subject — in part, of course, because of the challenge of getting reliable sources on the theme. The remit of the volume is broader than the widely-acclaimed works on the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. It aspires to cover all branches of intelligence: the KGB (civilian intelligence) and the GRU (military intelligence); human communications and cryptography; and foreign and counter-intelligence. As Haslam explains, this integrated approach is important for a number of reasons: much has been written on the KGB, but the GRU is less well-known; cryptography needs adequate attention, because the exaggerated emphasis on human intelligence in the Soviet Union was very costly for the regime; and counter-intelligence has been less studied because the relative paucity of defectors in this area has meant fewer memoirs to build upon. Haslam outlines the institutional history of the KGB and GRU in some detail, at the same time emphasizing their independence from one another and recurring rivalry; and in doing so he challenges any temptation we may have SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 362 to see Soviet intelligence as a single cohesive operation. Another important theme of his book is the way Stalin’s paranoia at times undermined the Soviet intelligence effort. The Terror took its toll on the intelligence community, as it did in other areas of Soviet life. Of course, Stalin’s most disastrous mistake was his decision not to heed warnings about the imminent Nazi invasion in 1941. But the regime’s failure to invest adequately in cryptography was also rooted in his misjudgements. Of course, this failure links the history of intelligence with the wider history of Soviet science; the USSR’s technological deficit in intelligence had its roots in the personalized nature of the system, just as did its failures in the spheres of genetics and agriculture. Other figures also come in for criticism alongside Stalin, including Beria — ‘the most disastrous head of intelligence the Soviet Union ever had’ — and Khrushchev’s first choice as head of the KGB, Ivan Serov — ‘a natural bully, but innately clever’. Haslam makes it clear that it is impossible to understand some of the key events in Soviet history without understanding the relevant intelligence history: for example, the Polish interception of Soviet signals was a vital factor in checking the Bolshevik advance on Warsaw in 1920; already in 1941 intelligence reports were reaching Moscow from the West on the emerging project to create an atomic bomb; the Soviet victory at the battle of Kursk owed much to the information passed to them by British...

The Challenges of Security Agencies on Jos North Crisis: Interrogating the Nigerian Security Architecture and Capacity for Conflict Management and Peace Enforcement.

This study interrogates the causes and course of the protracted conflicts among the various sub-ethnic and lingua-cultural groups in Jos North Local Government area of Plateau State in Nigeria. It examines the interplay of ethnic composition and configuration of settlement pattern[s], migration dynamics, colonial policies, psychological issues that conflate in the region that eventuate in virulent, intermittent, and violent conflicts since 1994. The conflict actors in this area are the Hausa-Fulani, Fulani Herdsmen, popularly known as ‘Bororo’, Afizere, Anaguta, and the Berom. The study also examines the challenges posed to the nation’s security community and the factors responsible for the failure in combating the intractable increasingly protracted conflict. The work is an explorative, micro and empirical study. It adopts the social survey design, as data were drawn from the people in respect of their beliefs, attitudes, and understanding of the conflict. Questionnaires were distributed to respondents in the study area. Other methods employed by the study are interactive methodologies, such as, Focus Group Discussion, Key Informants Interviews and Participatory Rural Assessment. The study identifies political exclusion, pervasive extreme poverty, fear of domination and deprivation of the indigenes by the settlers, that is, the [Hausa-Fulani], dissatisfaction of indigenes with the sociopolitical system, religion as a tool of mobilization for violence etc. as some of the factors responsible for the conflict. The study also finds out that the security agencies, particularly, the Department of State Security, is encumbered by inadequate numerical strength, ineffective deployment of security agents when the need arises, inadequate technical operations, emotional and sentimental attachment of security agencies and government officials in the ethno-religious crises, insufficient inter-agency collaboration and the failure of state actors to respond promptly and appropriately on early warning signs and intelligence reports at critical periods of the Jos North crisis. The study concludes that appropriate interventions in the areas of poverty alleviation/empowerment programmes through capacity building and skill acquisition for the residents, mass education and enlightenment, and dispassionate implementation of reports and recommendations of various investigative panels on the conflicts, would go a long way to resolve the lingering and destructive crisis. The security architecture of the country should also be reviewed with a view to making it more effective and proactive.

NATO Trident Juncture on Twitter: Public Discussion

NATO conducted one of its largest exercises over the past decade, Trident Juncture, from October 21st to November 6th 2015. The exercise included over 36 thousand troops from over 28 allies, 9 partner nations, and engaged 18 observations and 12 international and non-governmental organizations and aid agencies. As part of this exercise, the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) at Carnegie Mellon was asked to assess, in partnership with the Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab at Arizona State University, the social media response to Trident Juncture. We collected data from Twitter and VK to provide daily updates and intelligence reports on the social media discussion surrounding Trident Juncture and NATO. We focus on three distinct collections of Twitter data: geo-tagged tweets, tweets by Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs), and news media tweets. This is our summary report for the time period from October 1st through November 15th. The report includes as appendices our briefings made during the exercise.

Comparing OBD and CAN Sampling on the go with the SensorHUB Framework

In this paper we present our VehicleICT platform, which we use for comparing the OBD-II and CAN bus data from vehicles. VehicleICT platform is based on the SensorHUB framework. We present a novel measurement tool called ObdCanCompare that collects vehicle sensor data and shows them on our smartphone. Meanwhile the data gets aggregated, processed and loaded into a Hadoop-based data store. There we can develop business intelligence reports, various charts and dashboards. Using the measurements our goal is to decide which interface will be used for our connected car-based application called Social Driving.

Accuracy of Intelligence Forecasts From the Intelligence Consumer’s Perspective

Accurate forecasting is a vital part of intelligence assessment. Only recently has intelligence forecast accuracy been quantitatively tracked. Mandel and Barnes reported on a long-term study of intelligence forecasts that examined accuracy from the analysts’ perspective using numerical probabilities that were not reported to intelligence consumers. The present research reassessed the accuracy of those forecasts from an intelligence consumer’s perspective using findings from an experiment that elicited from subjects’ numerical probability equivalents for the linguistic probabilities that consumers would have read in intelligence reports. Forecast accuracy was undiminished when assessed from the consumers’ perspective (inferred from subjects’ median numerical equivalents) because the intended meaning of the probability terms used by the intelligence unit corresponded well to the average meaning assigned by subjects. The findings also showed that interpretations of linguistic probabilities are context-dependent. Linguistic probabilities were discriminated better when applied to outcomes that represented successes rather than failures.