Secret Affairs 2 – literature summary
Herman, M. (1996). Intelligence power in peace and war.
Chapter: 11
Intelligence threats
Different forms of intelligence threats
Intelligence as a power threat
Intelligence has some effects as a threat on those who are conscious of being its targets. In
war and similar situations security reactions to intelligence threats restrict the reactors'
operational freedom of action and effectiveness, particularly the effectiveness of their
communications in permanent compromises between security and user-friendliness. Similarly,
in conditions of prolonged conflict the counterintelligence threat to the opponent's intelligence
limits its effectiveness. Most intelligence is an 'enabling' facility, helping the world of action
to exercise national power and influence. But power is sometimes described as 'power over'
others; and in this respect intelligence as a threat exercises some power over opponents.
Espionage
The record of Cold War espionage needs no recapitulation here. It was seen by each side as a
threat not just to national secrecy, but also to state and society, and the sheer scale and
intensity heightened these effects. perceptions. Espionage and counterespionage were left to
the professionals, but governments and public opinion on both sides were exposed to the long
succession of spy cases which brought intrusive intelligence to their attention. This inflicted
continual influence on the mutual 'enemy images' of irreconcilable hostility.
Intelligence collection and embassies
Cold War espionage was closely linked with the position of intelligence officers as agent-
runners and recruiters, operating from embassies under diplomatic cover. The growth of
embassy radio communications also gave increased cover for radio interception; sixty-two
Soviet embassies were said to be interception sites late in the Cold War. Embassies also
became the objects of bugging and many other kinds of short-range technical attack.
'Close access' technical operations
Features of such operations were close approaches to national territory, territorial waters and
airspace, and occasional penetrations into them. Even without actual intrusion, close
approaches could be seen as provocation.
Operational threats
Apart from the peacetime political results of intrusive intelligence, there are the results of
intelligence as an operational threat. Warning systems are 'threats' to surprise attack; at
least they make potential aggressors think twice about whether they can achieve surprise.
More substantially, all collection, non-intrusive as well as intrusive, leads its targets to
take security measures.
,At a practical level information security costs money and affects efficiency. It must take
the form mainly of rules based on pessimistic assumptions about the extent of the intelligence
threats. Initiative and short cuts on security matters must be discouraged since those
concerned cannot know if they are giving opposing intelligence a breakthrough.
Similar constraints apply to clandestine opponents in peace. Terrorism must be highly
security-conscious; it is forced by the intelligence threat to it to adopt cell structures and
maximum secrecy, with all the limitations these bring for the scope and flexibility of terrorist
action. Furthermore, the threat effect applies particularly to military command and
control and the associated communications. Security is often an argument against technical
innovation. The risk of radio interception is a good example, the struggle between security
and efficiency in communication 'must end in a complex compromise.
The counter-intelligence threat
These threat effects also apply within intelligence itself; indeed, hostile intelligence imposes
more constraints on the intelligence world than on the non-intelligence one, since intelligence
depends so much on its own source protection. Agencies take special security precautions
that are even more stringent than their users' restrictions on operational information.
Intelligence is kept in separate compartments and not shared; institutional memory is limited
by rules about destroying material after use; overseas liaisons are restricted by the risk that
foreign partners may be penetrated.
Chapter: 12
Intelligence cooperation
Development of the international dimension
History
Regular cooperation of this kind is a twentieth-century development, but exchanges of some
kind have a much longer history. Allies have always shared some information in war, and
information exchanges have always been part of diplomacy. Yet regular peacetime exchanges
did not take place until well after intelligence's nineteenth-century institutionalization. The
rise of Hitler then gave a special impetus to exchanges on the German threat.
A good example is the extensive UK-US cooperation. Key features in it were the concept of
combined intelligence assessments as agreed inputs to the Combined Chiefs of Staff; the
establishment of some UK-US intelligence organizations and staffs; the integration of
specialists from one nation within the organizations of the other; and the idea of 'divisions of
effort' whereby one country took on responsibility for selected areas and tasks on behalf of
both.
Professional-technical factors
Reasons for collaboration
One basic reason for cooperation is that there is always more information potentially
available than any agency can collect by itself. The appetite for information is insatiable,
,and even the US must collaborate with others to meet it. For Britain and others, access to the
United States' weight of resources, technology and expertise is an overwhelming attraction.
But there are more specific reasons for cooperation >
1. Most states can carry out some unique collection with unique results. Some
collection for example can only be carried out by the local intelligence organization,
with its physical surveillance of people and premises, its access to police etc.
2. The significance in Sigint and other technical collection of local geography. One
reason for this is that many emissions were not otherwise interceptable.
Unique local assets and local geography merge into wider kinds of burden-sharing and joint
operations. If the collaborator has the necessary technical competence, his contribution can be
to assume responsibility for geographic areas or subjects. Or there can be burden-sharing and
divisions of effort between close partners or between major powers and their clients.
Restraints on collaboration
There are constant reasons for professional caution. International relationships cost time and
effort; material received from abroad is not altogether a free good. All organizations have the
usual institutional conviction that no-one else's work is as reliable as their own. Small
organizations also have an instinct that cooperation with big foreign ones runs the risk of
being swallowed up by them. Above all there are the risks to sources. Every new foreign
exchange is a new risk, through intelligence penetration of the foreign agency or its users, its
careless handling or public leaking of the material, or its deliberate use of it in trading with its
other intelligence contacts.
Political dimensions
Political influences on intelligence liaisons
Intelligence is influenced by foreign policy but also influences it. Quite often the political and
professional-technical factors point in the same direction. Occasionally it may be so vital to
plug national intelligence gaps that requests for help from foreign liaisons are put at a
national political level, as when Israel asked for US intelligence during the 1973 Yom
Kippur. Generally, however the picture is of the political and professional levels operating
separately but reinforcing each other. Thus, major flows of intelligence tend to be natural
corollaries of politico-military alliances, as in NATO. The same applies to international
political collaboration on specific subjects such as international sanctions, the
dissemination of advanced military technology, nuclear proliferation.
Chapter: 16
The production processes
In the second world war, British Sigint success came not only from cipher breaking, but also
from fast exploitation and delivery of the product. Other intelligence is moving in the same
direction, and this change brings the need for management which aims at effectiveness and
efficiency, to search for quality.
, Intelligence cycle
1. Those who use intelligence, the 'consumers', indicate the kind of information needed.
2. These needs are translated into concrete 'requirements' by senior intelligence
managers.
3. The requirements are used to allocate resources to the 'collectors' and serve to guide
their efforts.
4. The collectors obtain the required information or 'raw intelligence'.
5. The 'raw intelligence' is collated and turned into 'finished intelligence' by the 'analysts'.
6. The finished intelligence is distributed to the consumer and the intelligence managers
who state new needs, define new requirements, and make necessary adjustments in the
intelligence programs to improve effectiveness and efficiency
However, it is said that these ‘requirements’ do not always accurately reflect what the
consumer needs, but rather what the intelligence supplier thinks that the consumer needs, or
what they think their organization can provide them.
Limitations of requirements
1. Users do not know what they do not know, so their requests are not always well-suited
for the situation they are in, as they make assumptions themselves on what intel they need.
Although users’ opinion is important, it should be a dialogue between user and provider.
2. Requirements are still competed; collection and analysis have to be optimized and
depend on the opportunities presented by oppositions weaknesses and you own technical
capabilities. It is all in all a cost-benefit analysis, e.g. low priority soft targets may be more
cost-effective than near-impossible high priority ones.
3. Technical needs for indirect approaches. E.g. in WWII British tried to crack the low-grade
ciphers used in German dockyards, to provide new insights in the cracking of the high priority
Enigma code.
The real intelligence cycle
For large scale intelligence, producers are the driving force. Instead of the users
modifying their requirements, the producers study the reactions of the users when presented
with intel and based on that adjust the collection of intel. So, this deals with the unreliability
and incompleteness of the user’s requirements.
This is the difference between ‘entrepreneurial’ market and a command economy
driven by requirements, as now one ‘produces and sells’ the desired information to the
‘customer’, where customer service and contact is very important.
Pushes: when intelligence agencies ‘push’ information on user as they think it is valuable.
Pulls: Information that is requested by the user.
Problems in measuring intelligence quality
Intelligence externals are the measurable outputs of intelligence, such as the number of
photographs of a satellite. First, intelligence’s value comes not from externals, but from
internals: the information it provides. Lots of data says nothing; it is the content that counts.
