Imagery in the UK: Britain's troubled imagery intelligence architecture

Copyright © British International Studies Association 2009.This article examines the status, role and development of imagery intelligence in the UK government. It is argued that imagery intelligence occupies a subordinate and marginalised position compared to other forms of intelligence, chiefly from human sources and the interception of communications. The origins of that position are recounted, and the problems arising from internal struggles over control of imagery examined. It is concluded that the existing approach to imagery represents a serious problem and that a substantial restructuring and upgrading of imagery intelligence is essential if UK foreign policy decision-making is to be properly informed in the 21st Century.The Leverhulme Trus

Intelligence and the machinery of government: conceptualizing the intelligence community

This article argues that the failure to address intelligence agencies as public organizations part and parcel with the overt machinery of government constitutes a significant lacuna both in the specialist study of intelligence and the broader discipline of public administration studies. The role and status of intelligence institutions as aspects of the machinery of central government is examined, along with the prospects of certain key paradigms in the field for understanding those institutions are considered. Finally, the implications for the wider study of decision-making, policy and public management will be examined

The intelligence cycle is dead, long live the intelligence cycle: Rethinking intelligence fundamentals for a new intelligence doctrine

In the spring of 2009 the UK Ministry of Defence elected to undertake a review of the existing military Joint Intelligence Doctrine. The existing doctrine, Joint Warfare Doctrine 2-00 (JWP 2-00) Intelligence Support to Joint Operations had been promulgated in 2003 largely on the basis of coalition-oriented expeditionary and peace support operations in the Balkans, Middle East and Afghanistan. This had replaced an earlier, first edition of JWP 2-00 issued in 1999

The problem of defence intelligence

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Intelligence and National Security on 12 Feb 2016, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2015.1115234The following article argues that defence intelligence in general, and Britain’s Defence Intelligence organization in particular, represents an area in intelligence studies that is significantly under-investigated. It makes the case that the significance of understanding defence intelligence and DI lies not only in a general lack of illumination but because DI is subject to and prompts a range of difficulties and challenges that are either especially acute in the defence context or have ramifications for the wider intelligence community that remain to be fully appreciated. Particular attention is given to DI’s remit being divided between Ministry of Defence and national requirements, problems of fixed-sum resourcing an intelligence function with national responsibilities that is subordinate to Departmental spending structures and priorities, fraught positioning of defence intelligence in Departmental line management and finally a chronic lack of public or official interest or scrutiny. The article concludes that the UK’s experience has echoes elsewhere, notably in the United States, and that wider international study of defence intelligence is both long overdue and may have implications for understanding of national and wider intelligence institutions and processes

Twilight of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee?

In the last few years, a number of significant, and often troubling, changes to the top-level management structure of the United Kingdom’s (UK) national intelligence machinery have taken place. The conventional understanding of the British system is that, since the dark days of the Blitz, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) has provided a continuously operating, tried and true apparatus for coordinating and managing Britain’s national intelligence effort.1 The JIC is composed of the heads of the three national security and intelligence agencies, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, and representatives of a number of policy departments, with strong leading figures in the form of the JIC Chairman and an Intelligence Coordinator (whose formal title has varied somewhat over time). According to this orthodoxy, the JIC, in conjunction with the machinery under it known collectively as the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO), coordinates the national intelligence and security agencies—Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the Security Service (MI5) — sets their requirements, issues national intelligence appreciations or ‘‘assessments’’ that inform the decisionmaking of government ministers and senior civil servants, and helps formulate the annual national intelligence budget. But for some time, this has not, in fact, been an accurate description of how British intelligence is actually run. Since the summer of 2009, in particular, the JIO’s functions have been steadily divided and redistributed within the Cabinet Office, and the JIC has itself been increasingly marginalized and ineffectual. For seven decades, the JIC has been seen as an enviably successful example to the rest of the intelligence world, with even American observers often looking to its collegiality and atmosphere of trust and mutual support as desirable, albeit not necessarily easy to emulate. That the UK has effectively abandoned such a tried and true formula is, therefore, somewhat surprising, still more so that such significant changes should have been undertaken with so little real debate and deliberation both within government and without

The FAN TAN File: Quebec Separatism and Security Service Resistance to Politicization 1971-72

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