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The scale of lethal violence in Mexico seen in the past decade has been a pressing concern for both Mexican and US officials, including law enforcement organizations, intelligence agencies, and policy makers. With much of the homicides being a result of the trafficking of illegal drugs, it has been suggested that the homicides in Mexico follow seasonal patterns tied to the drug trade, specifically to the cultivation of heroin. In this paper, conventional econometric time series methods are applied to test this hypothesis. Results demonstrate that not only do the drug-related homicides in Mexico display evidence of seasonality, but also that seasonality appears empirically related to the heroin trade. The paper makes the larger argument that time series and other statistical methods are an untapped resource that can complement standard intelligence analysis to support defensible judgments based on the scientific method of inquiry. However, a fuller integration of statistics and traditional analysis would require sufficient support structures be developed to encourage and promote such analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on intelligence analysis contains many references to the ‘review process’, the mechanism by which analysts’ drafts are converted into corporate products. Analysts whose drafts consistently navigate the process quickly and smoothly are regarded as star performers. Divining the practical meaning of organizational definitions of ‘good’ analysis and the personal preferences of specific senior reviewers is not easy, however. Analysts occasionally commit their understanding of reviewers’ stylistic preferences to paper, effectively providing style guides to help others. This essay presents and explains the development and implications of one such guide, which was designed to help analysts in CIA’s Office of Strategic Research in the early 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of an assault on the critical infrastructure of the United States is often referred to as a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor’. This implies that such an attack would come as a surprise. By 2016, however, few could claim to be surprised by such an event. This paper explains how the Clinton administration addressed cybersecurity in the 1990s as computers became an everyday item. With the benefits of this era, however, came potentially devastating implications for national security as the Clinton administration was required to confront a form of politically motivated violence unlike any that had been seen before Cyberterrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a summation of the emphases I place in my teaching about intelligence, both in academic settings and in courses presented to government and commercial clients. The main goal is to demystify and deromanticize intelligence, to present it as a normal function of government and one that has moral and ethical standards and can exist compatibly within a democratic government. The article also discusses suggested course readings, some successful term paper topics and the concept of graduate intelligence courses as a type of professional training. The article also notes some themes emphasized in courses on training new analysts in their required skill sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does strategic intelligence analysis have limited influence on American foreign policy? Intelligence analysis is frequently disregarded, this paper contends, because it is a duplicated step in the decision-making process and supplements but does not supplant policy assessment. Many intelligence analyses will confirm policy assessments and be redundant or – if the assessments are different – policy-makers will choose their own interpretations over those of intelligence analysts. The findings of this paper provide scholars with important insights into the limits of intelligence analysis in the foreign policy process as well as recommendations for increasing its positive impact on policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On 26 July 1962, the New York Times published a front-page story by reporter Hanson Baldwin which, among many things, showed the vulnerability of Soviet land-based missiles, in the event of a first strike by the US. Drawing at least indirectly from a National Intelligence Estimate, it also showed how US intelligence had obtained that information. The story infuriated President John F. Kennedy, who believed it harmed the security of the United States. This article details an aggressive FBI investigation of who had leaked to Baldwin, as well as an initiative at the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct its own future leak investigations inside the US, both authorized by President Kennedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the implications of U.S. cyber strategy of persistent engagement for the alliance and intelligence collection. Whilst the strategy may have benefits for certain alliance relationships, I identify four potential negative consequences; loss of allied trust, disruption allied intelligence operations and capabilities, exploitability of the strategy by adversaries, and the implementation (and justification) of persistent engagement by other countries. This paper concludes suggesting several ways forward, including the creation of a new NATO-memorandum of understanding on cyber operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cornerstone of US intelligence reform is 'information sharing' as a means of adapting to contemporary security challenges. It was a central recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, reflected in the wide-ranging 'Information Sharing Environment' mandated by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Yet the underlying logic of information sharing for intelligence reform has received little attention. Drawing on information and communications theory, this paper critiques the logic by highlighting problems of sense-making and interpretation overlooked amid the scholarly enthusiasm for an intelligence 'culture of sharing'. With their impersonal, technical, and highly bureaucratic approach, today's reforms may favor the flow of information and its sheer volume at the expense of the context and analytic tradecraft that render it meaningful, actionable intelligence. For effective information sharing, the paper suggests reformers pay more attention to the socio-technical environment of analysis when interpreting ambiguous, uncertain information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does one design and sustain interdisciplinary, cross-sector collaboration to improve intelligence results for twenty-first century security threats? This paper will analyse five past and present initiatives designed to create interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral collaboration within different agencies of the US Intelligence Community (IC). We will discuss key features of each effort, their successes and challenges, identify common themes and, propose which collaborative model might be most advantageous for a particular type of project based on project constraints. In so doing, we provide direction for IC leaders seeking to improve academia–industry–intelligence partnerships for future planning on intelligence-funded collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reexamines President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 competitive review of Cold War strategy known as Project Solarium. It argues intelligence played a key role in this exercise and in the design of NSC 162/2, Eisenhower's ‘New Look’. Intelligence professionals were involved in all aspects of Project Solarium. Intelligence products provided a common baseline of analysis while stimulating debate. The process – a transparent system of structured deliberation among experts – encouraged a thorough consideration of intelligence and productive dissent. These findings underscore the need for a broader reexamination of the role of intelligence in the design of national security strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on liberal communitarianism to analyze two National Security Agency programs: the bulk phone records collection program and PRISM. Specifically, the paper addresses the following questions: Does the threat to national security justify such programs? Can this threat be addressed through standard criminal procedures favored by civil libertarians? Are the programs effective? To what extent do they violate the privacy of American citizens? What are the rights of non-Americans with respect to the programs? Are the programs in line with the Constitution and the various laws that govern them? Is there sufficient accountability and oversight of these programs? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, government leaks have brought many alleged potential privacy violating intelligence collection programs to the public arena. Intelligence collection can affect the privacy rights of citizens from any country. While the concept of privacy is a complicated one, United States citizen privacy is protected by various policies and laws. This paper reviews these alleged intelligence collection programs, as well as specific laws set in place to protect privacy. Also presented are discussions on public opinion and whether or not digital intelligence collection are providing a safer environment for Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on how pre-existing policy priorities and goals among policy elites in the US, UK, and Australia encouraged the blurring of strategic and tactical intelligence assessment as a mechanism for legitimising the Iraq invasion. Through the selective use and interpretation of sometimes vague or unsubstantiated tactical and technical intelligence and the many uncertainties it contained, proponents of the war were able to undermine existing strategic assessments on Iraq by introducing a range of possible, but largely unsubstantiated, threat scenarios as justification for military action. The paper argues that in so far as intelligence reforms are needed, they should be focused primarily on the interface between analysis and policy making, and the issue of how policy makers interpret and understand the uncertainties that intelligence assessments necessarily contain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have writers of spy fiction been able to turn an inherently dubious profession into a breeding ground for heroes and heroines? Drawing from a letter written to the first writer who ever used a spy as a central character, indeed, a hero, this paper suggests that such a transformation is made easier when, among other things, well-meaning people present obstacles to the spy's work - people who meddle in the business of spying. The paper concludes, after a survey of several contemporary writers, that they have done so by turning Congress into the meddler. With very few exceptions, writers of spy fiction in the United States, since the creation of congressional oversight, have made Congress the source of most obstacles in the conduct of espionage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the relevance of intelligence gathering as an essential prerequisite for any political or military decision, and the resulting special relationship between rulers and spies, through a theoretical comparison between renowned classics and niche literature on strategy, literature, philosophy and political science belonging to several periods and historical contexts. Findings suggest that criticism on intelligence does not concern its utility, but rather the reliability of the sources, the obstacles presented by intelligence gathering and the ethics of spying. Spies are often described as ‘ramifications’ of the ruler, to whom they are tied by a special relationship of trust, rooted in a spirit of sacrifice, adequate remuneration and honours. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Looking at trends of professionalization of intelligence analysis within the United States Air Force as a subset of the broader US Intelligence Community, this paper calls for a re-evaluation of the professionalization of intelligence analysis away from a bureaucratic ‘corporateness’ approach examining the traits of a profession. Instead, reform of intelligence analysis should focus on the unique expertise and responsibility that define the profession. It identifies the analyst's unique expertise as managing adversary information to reduce a decision maker's uncertainty, and the responsibility in striving to improve capabilities within the profession while ensuring both the strengths and limitations of intelligence analysis are understood by intelligence customers. By focusing on corporateness, the community jeopardizes reform efforts by moving professionalization toward ‘getting the right answer’ and away from a broader understanding of the strengths and limitations inherent in the field of intelligence, where getting the right answer isn't often attainable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Intelligence is a critical component for all counter-proliferation activities. It allows us to assess and determine what makes up the current threat environment in terms of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology. When informed with an accurate assessment of the situation, policy-makers are better suited to counter the proliferation threat. However, success and failure hinge upon how well information is managed during the intelligence process. The intelligence process as it relates to estimating nuclear capabilities or intentions is wrought with many challenges and complications. The denial and deception techniques employed by states running covert weapons programs and the dual-use nature of many weapons components create many difficulties for intelligence organizations. Additionally, illicit transnational networks obscure the situation further by serving as a source, for both nation states and non-state actors, for acquiring dual-use commodities and technologies. These challenges can lead to the miscalculation of a state's capabilities or intentions, as witnessed with the case of Iraq in 2003 when western intelligence services grossly overestimated the capabilities of Saddam's regime. This paper presents a comparative analysis of three cases of nuclear proliferation: India's 1998 nuclear tests, the exposure of the A. Q. Khan network and Iran's nuclear program. Drawing from the analysis, the authors examine the lessons learned and propose recommendations for future counter proliferation policy and strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various policy options have been proposed for slowing or halting the spread of nuclear weapons, yet all rely on sound intelligence about the progress of nuclear aspirants. Historically, the United States' record of estimating foreign weapons programs has been uneven, overestimating the progress made by some proliferators while underestimating others. This paper seeks to catalogue and evaluate the intelligence work surrounding 16 of the 25 states that are thought to have pursued nuclear weapons and to provide a framework for evaluating the causes of distorted intelligence estimates of nuclear proliferation. In particular, we identify 12 specific hypotheses related to politics, culture, bureaucracy and organizational culture, then explore how they play out in practice through two case studies (North Korea and Israel). We find that the US has overestimated nuclear programs much more frequently than it has underestimated or correctly estimated them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way to explore the question of whether and how intelligence influenced the course of the Cold War is to review its impact within a defined arena of political–military activity. This paper investigates several areas in which intelligence analysis influenced the superpower strategic competition: forging of military doctrines, the design of weapons systems, and the progression of international crises. The analysis focuses on the United States case, where it finds cases in which US intelligence had beneficial effects but others in which intelligence performance proved more problematic in either shortening the Cold War or reducing its dangers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Colonel Edward M. House, the close personal confidant of American President Woodrow Wilson, disembarked in Great Britain in January 1916 on a mission to bring the First World War to a close under the auspices of American mediation. Although his mission, which culminated in a secret pact between the United States and Great Britain known as the House-Grey Memorandum, has been studied by several scholars, the involvement of British intelligence with respect to that mission has never received more than cursory attention. Through a careful analysis of the surviving documents, this article reconstructs British intelligence's activities with respect to House's mission, examines the countermeasures that House employed as he attempted to protect the secrecy of his negotiations, delineates the role played by different British intelligence agencies and assesses their response to their findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the autumn of last year the National Intelligence Council issued a National Intelligence Estimate that states (in a portion of the NIE that has been published) with 'high confidence' that Iran years ago suspended its development of nuclear weapons. This paper questions the wisdom of a consensus intelligence document bound to be published in one form or another, and the soundness of the analysis in it, which pivots on speculation about Iranian decision making and on an ambiguity in the very meaning of 'suspending' a nuclear-weapons program while continuing to produce highly enriched uranium. These questions lead in turn to questions concerning the ambitious reorganization three years ago of the US intelligence system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication of a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury, though they did contain a complex combination of both fact and fiction, was given a significant degree of credibility by the pubic images of CIA activities portrayed in a variety of Hollywood movies. This paper argues that these movies, whether accurately portraying CIA activities or not, helped sustain racially based paranoia that took on a life of its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Robert Ludlum's novel, The Bourne Identity, and the film based on the novel. It argues that Ludlum and the makers of the film version of The Bourne Identity incorporated a variety of aspects of reality into their plotlines. Some of these aspects are not entirely factual, while others stick very closely to the truth. Congressional oversight, ethical dilemmas tied to assassination and real-life antagonists play significant roles in both the novel and the film. In the book the antagonists are terrorists, particularly Carlos the Jackal, but in the movie version the 'bad people' are CIA officials. Although the antagonist changes between the novel and the film, they both are realistic aspects that draw the audience in. Not only do these three aspects of reality contribute to the plots of the novel and the film, but they also make the audience reflect on issues brought up in the film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an introduction to a series of articles on spy films including "Hollywood, don't you go disrespectin' my culture: The Good Shepherd versus real CIA history," "Spies in the American Movies: Hollywood's take on Lese Majesté," "Intelligence in fiction," "The Bourne actuality: A look at reality's role in the Bourne Identity novel and film," "Crack in the lens: Hollywood, the CIA and the African-American response to the 'Dark Alliance' series," "The depiction of congressional oversight in spy film and fiction: Is congress the new meddler?," and "The truth of espionage is stranger than fiction."

Theoretical work involves explanation and prediction, but thus far there has been little scholarly work explaining and predicting the role of intelligence analysts in support of foreign and national security policies. Without a theory of intelligence, it becomes difficult to decide what the appropriate substantive analytical responsibilities of the intelligence community should be. Accordingly, a theory of foreign intelligence analysis is necessary. This paper presents a theoretical framework developed during the immediate post-Cold War timeframe to explain why there was such a wide variety of perspectives regarding the future need for intelligence, embeds these ideas within the existing intelligence theory literature, applies this framework more generally in a way that can be used to explain variations in the substantive coverage of intelligence analysis in the past and predict possible variations in the future, and then tests the theory's ability to explain the analytical focus of domestic intelligence organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of its history the United Nations was reluctant to deal with intelligence and major powers were reluctant to share intelligence with it. But as the UN's peacekeeping operations intensified in some of the world's hot spots in the early 1990s, the UN found it both necessary and wise to create an information analysis capability at UN headquarters in New York. To funnel selected intelligence to the headquarters, several countries (including the US, UK, France and Russia) loaned intelligence officers to the UN's Situation Centre on a secondment basis. This paper describes the activities of the SitCen's Information and Research (I&R) Unit that existed from 1993 to 1999 under the informal motto ‘Keeping an Eye on the World’. Using a case study of I&R reporting on the situation in Eastern Zaire (1996), where UN-run refugee camps were under attack, it is possible to examine the nature and utility of the intelligence provided by the intelligence officers to UN decision-makers and the planners of the Canadian-led multinational force in the region. It reveals that the Unit provided significant and useful intelligence about arms shipments, belligerent activities, and the status of refugees and made several prescient predictions and warnings. The Unit sought to minimize national bias and incomplete information, though both problems were still in evidence. Still, in many ways, the I&R Unit remains a useful model for the development of a future intelligence capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1954, the United States launched a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of State declassified new documents pertaining to the fall of the Arbenz regime. In this paper I argue that although the new information does not substantially alter the overall debate about the causes and consequences of the action, it offers a portrait of the operation which is richer and more complex than what has been seen before. The documents reveal details of the operation which have been hidden for half a century. They illustrate how the mission faltered under the weight of security breaches and miscommunications. They also offer a fascinating glimpse at a shadowy figure in the plot to topple the Arbenz regime who has until now largely evaded the public record. In the end the documents affirm what many scholars had previously concluded, that at the end of the day it was the actions of the Guatemalan Army that made the difference between victory and defeat in the crusade to oust a democratically elected head of state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women have had a long tradition of using their supposed greater interest in peace as the basis for their claim to an increased political role, expressing the belief that their "natural" desire, if matched with political power and influence, would inevitably result in a more peaceful world. The experience of World War II aroused many women across the world to a newfound sense of activism. The article focuses on attempts by the U.S. government to identify organizations as tools of the Soviet peace offensive, which has made the maternal interest of women in peace a vital part of their campaign.

Presents a study which examined the scientific intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Great Britain during the Occupation of Germany from 1945 through 1955. Exchange of paper and ideas between London and Washington D.C.; Flow of atomic intelligence in 1946; Exchange of scientific and technical intelligence.

This article uses recently declassified CIA documents to examine Soviet defectors of the 1950s, with a focus on US programs to court, receive, and utilize defectors against their homeland in espionage and psychological warfare operations. Eschewing the tendency at the time and in later scholarship to emphasize defectors’ ideological motivations, the piece argues that defectors often crossed over the Iron Curtain for reasons of self-preservation or self-advancement. Once in the West, defectors were mistrusted and badly assimilated into host societies. For these reasons, Soviet defectors rarely proved to be the committed anti-communists that American policy-makers expected them to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the code words and euphemisms which protected Anglo-American communications intelligence (Comint) during the Cold War. It explains how the code word security system operated and identifies the main Comint code words and euphemisms in effect from 1946 to 1999. The article then uses these code words and euphemisms to interpret declassified American documents and reveal more information about Anglo-American Comint on the Congo, Bolivia, Indonesia, South Vietnam and China in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explains how flawed intelligence assessments of Iraq's aluminum tubes became ‘Exhibit A’ in the Bush administration's case for the Iraq War. The assessments seem to have begun as a consequence of a debate within the administration over US Iraq policy in early 2001. The neoconservatives wanted intelligence that would help them argue for regime-change. A WINPAC ‘Red Team’ analyst analyzed the tubes using the same methodology as 1976's infamous Team B panel, which skewed intelligence to support neoconservative policies. The Red Team analyst erroneously concluded the tubes were for a nuclear program thus countering assessments that they had a non-nuclear purpose. After the attacks of September 11 and President Bush's embrace of regime-change, the Red Team tubes assessment began to become the official position of the Intelligence Community. In September 2002, the President cited the assessment publicly, forcing the Intelligence Community to adopt it as the majority position in the Iraq NIE. ‘Exhibit A’ in the case for war was thus the product of a Red Team and, as such, was essentially propaganda masquerading as intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an intelligence case gone bad during the Second World War, when the United States decided to drop a three-man OSS group into Hungary. Hungary, a close ally of Germany, after seeing that the war was not going to end with an Axis victory, wished to seek contact with the Western Allies in order to try to find a way out of its precarious situation. The study, based mainly on archival research, shows the evolution of the Sparrow Mission, whose goals are still unclear today. Both the preparations and the timing of the mission seem to indicate that the plan had some influence on the German decision of occupying Hungary in March 1944, and such a German move helped the Normandy landing of the Allies a few months later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As part of the infrastructure for monitoring the movements of Private Security Companies (PSCs) in Iraq, a unique intelligence interface has been constructed to enhance cooperation between the military and PSCs. Using a wide range of existing intelligence-sharing agreements and guidelines for handling classified information, PSC contractors working with the US military have been able to provide unclassified intelligence products to the wider PSC community. Using lessons learned in Iraq as a contractor building this interface, the author explains how institutional difficulties were overcome and argues that the US military should be better prepared to share intelligence with the wide range of organizations it can expect to work with in future unconventional warfare or nation-building operations. Some of the lessons learned in Iraq can also be applied to the US Department of Homeland Security's Regional Fusion Centers, where many of the same difficulties with intelligence-sharing and integration with commercial organizations are being encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncritical acceptance of the findings of the 9/11 Commission has obscured how the commission intentionally misrepresented pre-attack strategic intelligence on the threat from Al Qaeda. The commission staff used such techniques as highly selective use of material, partial truths, irrelevant references, plays on words, quotations out of context, and suggestive language leading to false inferences to portray as weak what had been a strong strategic analytical performance. The commission's misrepresentation corrupted history, damaged public understanding of the role of intelligence in counterterrorism, and helped to build support for a reorganization scheme that has made US counterterrorist intelligence worse rather than better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is occasioned by public interest in reported tensions between CIA analysts and policymaking officials of the administration of President George W. Bush regarding the significance of ties between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al Qaeda terrorists, an important factor in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. No evaluation of the latter case is provided. The article addresses, instead, general patterns of tensions between intelligence analysts and policy officials in order to provide context for public assessment of the Iraq-Al Qaeda incident when the public record is more complete and enhance understanding of similar future instances of tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the trend of visual representation and the U.S. art policy in occupied Germany during the period from 1945 to 1949. The U.S. occupation of Germany in the immediate post-war period entails more than the control of the economy and the reconstruction of political institutions. The U.S. indifference towards the development of a new German fine arts movement stands in marked contrast with the attitude of the Soviet military government. The article concludes that the "anti-American" slant developed in due course, simultaneously with the U.S. decision to actively use the media in an information campaign to battle communism in Germany.

The article outlines the participation of the Bilderberg Group and the Atlantic Institute in the formulation of "Atlanticism." The Bilderberg Group started with an objective to provoke a constructive response towards European relations with the U.S. Compared to the Bilderberg, the Atlantic Institute has evolved at a slower pace from a nebulous idea to a substantial project. It had received regular but marginal attention in the first pan of the 1950s. Under the name "Atlantic Service Bureau," it has been associated with the program of the Atlantic Citizens Congress, an organization created by Hugh Moore.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played an important role during the late 1940s and 1950s during the Cold war. CIA specifically affected the British non-communist left. The U.S. attempts to influence polities of Cold War British trade unions have been part of a much broader effort to sway the political allegiance of European labor. This points to a dawning American realization that the left was to play an important if not dominant role in reconstructing the war-torn continent. Clearly, Great Britain has been a less important target of this campaign.

The popular origins of the modern US intelligence bureaucracy have largely escaped the scrutiny of historians. This article examines the critical public discourse over American intelligence and the clear domestic support for a new type of national intelligence system following World War II. The organization of American intelligence was thoroughly examined in newspapers, polling data, popular magazines, public speeches and lectures, petitions to government officials, and for the first time -- the medium of radio. This frank discussion, fostered to a large degree by William Donovan, undoubtedly influenced the tenor surrounding the establishment of the modern intelligence bureaucracy, but also resulted in an unwelcome public relations quandary for intelligence officials. This distinctly American postwar dialogue illustrates the great challenge of conducting intelligence in an open democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is cyber conflict more like war, intelligence, or something else? The stakes of this debate are not simply conceptual but institutional. United States Cyber Command emerged from the American intelligence community, but it has strong legal and organizational imperatives to explain its operations in military terms. Even though cyber operations are essentially a digital manifestation of classic intelligence practice, or secret statecraft, CYBERCOM is emphatically not an intelligence organization. This contradiction between the nature of the problem and the bureaucratic solution has the potential to complicate both intelligence and cybersecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic objectivity as a standard for the US Intelligence Community appears to have been drawn from idealized conceptualizations of the scientific method as a kind of value-neutral epistemological framework used to develop knowledge "objectively." But this embrace of objectivity provides a poor foundation for contemporary conceptualizations of the applied epistemology of intelligence analysis, as well as performance standards. Instead, intelligence analysts should embrace a more realistic goal of aspiring to but never actually achieving analytic objectivity through the reduction of subjectivity while embracing the values of honesty, neutrality, and integrity encapsulated in the phrase "calling it as you see it". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a true experiment conforming to the criteria of a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we found that intelligence analysts assign significantly more credibility to secret intelligence than to identical open-source intelligence. However, this was true only when the intelligence estimate constituted a 'complex' problem characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and not when the estimate constituted a 'simple' problem characterized by a low degree of uncertainty. Moreover, we found that intelligence analysts are significantly more confident in their own assessments when they process secret intelligence and more uncertain when they process identical open-source intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research can improve national security, yet the process by which findings flow from the ivory tower to intelligence agencies is not well understood by scholars. This article addresses this gap through an exploratory case study of when research impacted intelligence: the incorporation of cognitive biases research in intelligence analysis. The results of this study illustrate the importance of idea entrepreneurs—individuals who promote academic research—as well as the need for making academic findings applicable to intelligence practitioners. These results, while based on a single case, suggest new avenues for scholarship exploring knowledge utilization in intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of cognitive bias on the analytic output of the United States intelligence community during the Prague Spring. Utilising a range of primary sources, including declassified documents, oral history and contemporary accounts, this article argues that as a result of heuristic biases, analysts formed the mindset that the Soviet Union would not invade Czechoslovakia, and did not alter that assumption in the face of increasing evidence to the contrary. Consequently analysts possessed a distorted understanding of both Soviet intentions and the prevailing political environment and did not accurately convey the likelihood of military action to consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spies and scholars in the United States have had a close, largely hidden, relationship. Both professions are in the business of information acquisition. Spies, though, work for the government, while the allegiance of most scholars is to independent research and teaching. Moreover, spy organizations view students as potential hires; in contrast, scholars are likely to see students as young charges placed in their hands to educate and prepare for lives of consequence. One school of thought argues that, since spies and scholars are both citizens, they should work together in partnership: sharing knowledge to improve the intelligence product, training and recruiting students, warning of radical activities on campus. A second school counters that the university is meant to be a pure and open place, dedicated to unbiased learning and free of government ties - especially entanglements with secret agencies. Campuses can find themselves torn between the two schools, caught up in a swirl of practical and moral issues that lead to a sense of ambivalence about the proper relationship between the academy and a nation's secret services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1946, as the cold war deepened and American officials grew alarmed by the prospect of a communist-dominated France, US intelligence analysts began to report rumors of mysterious ‘parachutages’ of unidentified containers over the French countryside. Alongside equally sensational stories about the resurrection of international brigades and discoveries of hidden arms caches, these reports seemed to provide definitive evidence for widely held beliefs about communist intentions to seize power. This article investigates these claims and reveals the influence of a transnational network of informants hoping to stoke fears of revolutionary activity in order to encourage US involvement in postwar France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS) at North Carolina State University, funded by the National Security Agency, is a collaborative, long-term research enterprise focused on improving intelligence analysis using Big Data. In its work, LAS has recently begun dealing with the trade-off between the collection, storage, and use of large unclassified data-sets and analyst privacy. We discuss particular privacy challenges at LAS, analyze privacy principles in the life cycle of LAS unclassified data-sets, what intelligence analysts themselves think about these privacy concerns, and recommend possible best practices potentially applicable to LAS, as well as future Big Data laboratories and research centers that collaborate with intelligence communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structured analytic techniques (SATs) are intended to improve intelligence analysis by checking the two canonical sources of error: systematic biases and random noise. Although both goals are achievable, no one knows how close the current generation of SATs comes to achieving either of them. We identify two root problems: (1) SATs treat bipolar biases as unipolar. As a result, we lack metrics for gauging possible over-shooting—and have no way of knowing when SATs that focus on suppressing one bias (e.g., over-confidence) are triggering the opposing bias (e.g., under-confidence); (2) SATs tacitly assume that problem decomposition (e.g., breaking reasoning into rows and columns of matrices corresponding to hypotheses and evidence) is a sound means of reducing noise in assessments. But no one has ever actually tested whether decomposition is adding or subtracting noise from the analytic process—and there are good reasons for suspecting that decomposition will, on balance, degrade the reliability of analytic judgment. The central shortcoming is that SATs have not been subject to sustained scientific of the sort that could reveal when they are helping or harming the cause of delivering accurate assessments of the world to the policy community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]