What are you using for readings?
In years past, when academics who taught courses on intelligence got together, one of the first questions they asked one another was, “What are you using for readings?” They asked because there was no standard text on intelligence. Available books were either general histories that did not suffice as course texts or academic discussions written largely for practitioners and aficionados, not for undergraduate or graduate students. Like many of my colleagues, I had long felt the need for an introductory text. I wrote the first edition of this book in 2000 to fill this gap in intelligence literature.
Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy is not a how-to book: It will not turn readers into competent spies or even better analysts. Rather, it is designed to give readers a firm understanding of the role that intelligence plays in making national security policy and insight into its strengths and weaknesses. The main theme of the book is that intelligence serves and is subservient to policy and that it works best—analytically and operationally— when tied to clearly understood policy goals.
The book has a U.S.-centric bias. I am most familiar with the U.S. intelligence establishment, and it is the largest, richest, and most multifaceted intelligence enterprise in the world. At the same time, readers with interests beyond the United States should derive from this book a better understanding of many basic issues in intelligence collection, analysis, and covert action and of the relationship of intelligence to policy.
This volume begins with a discussion of the definition of intelligence and a brief history and overview of the U.S. intelligence community. The core of the book is organized along the lines of the intelligence process as practiced by most intelligence enterprises: requirements, collection, analysis, dissemination, and policy. Each aspect is discussed in detail in terms of its role, strengths, and problems. The book’s structure allows the reader to understand the overall intelligence process and the specific issues encountered in each step of the process. The book examines covert action and counterintelligence in a similar vein. Three chapters explore the issues facing U.S. intelligence in terms of both nation-states and transnational issues and the moral and ethical issues that arise in intelligence. The book also covers intelligence reform and foreign intelligence services.
Intelligence has grown primarily out of courses that I have taught for many years: “The Role of Intelligence in U.S. Foreign Policy,” at the School for International and Public Affairs, Columbia University from 1994 to 2007; “Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy,” at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Johns Hopkins University since 2008; and “U.S. Intelligence” at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), beginning in 2015. As I tell my students, I provide neither a polemic against intelligence nor an apology for it. This volume takes the view that intelligence is a normal function of government: