Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy Read Free

around the Friesian islands, but the dénouement of his tale does not demonstrate that his two patriotic yachtsmen actually cause the Admiralty to take appropriate precautions. In Kipling’s marvellous
Kim,
ostensibly an unforgettable panorama of Indian life on the road but essentially a spy story, his hero does, unwittingly, help to frustrate a rising in one of the princely states, but the climax results in nothing more than his making fools of some Russian spies on the Himalayan border. In almost none of John le Carré’s brilliantly convincing constructions of spy and counter-spy life does he show an objective outcome for what his characters do. They are fighting the Cold War; but, after all their intricate delusions and deceptions, the Cold War goes on.
    The author might rightly say that he was representing reality; the Cold War thankfully did not have an outcome, certainly none in military terms, and it was the function of the intelligence services on both sides to see that it should not. They were playing a game, and the point was to keep the game going, not to win. No one would disagree with that or ought to complain, in the absence of a tangible result, that intelligence is a vacuous activity.
    The intelligence services of all states originated, nonetheless, in the efforts to avert an enemy’s achieving a military advantage but to achieve military advantage in return. In peacetime, intelligence services may merely tick over. In war, they are supposed to bring victory. How effective are they? How do they—or how do they fail—to do it?
    The novelists of intelligence have disseminated an enormous amount of information about intelligence techniques. Some of it is accurate, some is misleading. Few of them, however, even such writers who are as personally experienced in intelligence work as John le Carré, have set out in full the essential components and sequence of effective intelligence operations. That is understandable. Much intelligence practice is mundane and bureaucratic, unamenable to treatment in readable form. Even the most mundane, however, is essential if intelligence is to be useful. There are five fundamental stages.

1.
Acquisition
. Intelligence has to be found. It may be readily available in published but overlooked form. A former director of the CIA warned his analysts against what he called the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
factor: do not waste effort in seeking information which may freely be found in newspapers, scholarly journals or academic monographs. Stalin’s Russia took precautions to make information as difficult to acquire as possible, by restricting the distribution of such everyday material as telephone directories and street maps. As a general principle, however, it may be taken that information useful to an opponent is what may be called “secret” and has to be collected by clandestine means. The most usual methods are spying, in all its forms, now technically known as “human intelligence” or “humint”; by the interception of an opponent’s communication, which will probably require decryption, “signal intelligence” or “signit”; by visual surveillance or imaging, through photographic or sensory reconnaissance by aircraft or satellite.
2.
Delivery.
Intelligence once collected has to be sent to its potential user. Delivery is often the most difficult stage, particularly for the transmitter of humint. The humint agent may be watched, or may rightly fear overhearing or interception, or may be vulnerable to arrest at points of meeting. Moreover, the sender is always under the pressure of urgency. Intelligence goes stale or is overtaken by events. Unless sent in timely fashion, preferably in “real time,” which allows it to be acted upon, it loses its value.
3.
Acceptance
. Intelligence has to be believed. Agents who volunteer their services have to establish their credentials; they may be a plant. One’s own operatives may have been turned or may have fallen under the