Adding value to the intelligence community: what role for expert external advice?

ABSTRACT

Reviews of intelligence failures have recommended greater use of external expertise in challenging intelligence community assessments. External contributions were expected to augment covert collection and to provide open-source challenge to analysts, rather than to directly contribute to decision support. The structural limitations of the scope and machinery of intelligence have limited the value agencies can extract from external experts. Creating an Open-Source Intelligence Agency of commensurate size to primary intelligence organisations would enable decision support to be provided to all government departments. It would widen the pool of sources and experts, providing for greater extraction of value from experts who are only partially included in this government activity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. EUCOM, “The United States European Command”.

2. Eldridge et al, “Fusing Algorithms,” 392.

3. Hulnick described OSINT as peculiarly effective as a tool for early warning: Hulnick, “The Dilemma of OSINT,” 232.

4. The over-reading of the new-ness of globalisation is effectively rebutted by Justin Rosenberg. Rosenberg, “Globalisation Theory,” 450-82. Marret is credited with coining the term ‘glocal’ in relation to Al-Qaeda: Marret, “Al-Qaeda,” 543.

5. Barber, Jihad vs McWorld.

6. Mahbubani, Has China Won?

7. Davies and Gustafson, “Complexity, Uncertainty,” 1–20.

8. Whilst Steven Stollemyre discusses automated forms of crowdsourcing for intelligence, my argument here could be seen to align to Stolleymyre’s broad argument. “Solleymyre, HUMINT, OSINT or Something New?,” 580.

9. Peter Gill makes a persuasive case for the role of intelligence during and after the pandemic: Gill, “Intelligence Oversight,” 15.

10. UK Parliament, “COVID-19”.

11. Ibid.

12. UK Government Office for Science, Blackett Review. As far back as 2004 Stevyn Gibson, an MoD official had called for enhanced OSINT to support military planning, in the light of the Hutton Report: Gibson, “Open Source Intelligence,” 11.

13. Daily Telegraph, “Pandemic Unit Scrapped”.

14. ESRC Impact Accelerator Account – University of Leicester.

15. Davies, “Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure,” 519–20.

16. UKRI, COVID-19.

17. Clarke and Newman, “Brexit and the Paradoxes,” 101–16.

18. Nunan and Stanier et al, “Eliciting Human Intelligence,” 1-2.

19. See Manget’s excellent survey of this subject: Manget, F, “Law Enforcement Intelligence,” 189–211.

20. Wells & Gibson, “OSINT from a UK Perspective,” 84–96; Carter & Carter, “Law enforcement intelligence,” 139.

21. Dymydiuk, “RUBICON and revelation”; Dobson, “Operation Rubicon”; Walsh & Miller, “Rethinking Five Eyes Security”; Johnson et al, “Implications of the Snowden Leaks,” 793–810.

22. In an interesting article, Craig Dudley describes this approach as “information centric intelligence,” whilst he classifies the existing systems as ‘analysis centric’ intelligence. See: Dudley, “Information-Centric Intelligence,” 762.

23. Adam, “Simulations,” 316–8.

24. Gill, “Intelligence Oversight,” 10–1.

25. Betsch, Wieler “Monitoring Behavioural Insights,” 1255–65.

26. Jin et al, “Predicting Bank Failure,” 2811–9; Hellmich, “Creating the Ideology,” 112.

27. Clarke and Newman, “The Paradoxes of Brexit,” 101–16.

28. Samtani et al, “Cybersecurity as an industry”.

29. Steele, On Intelligence, 111–26.

30. Sims, “What is intelligence?” 5.

31. UK Cabinet Office, “Intelligence Assessment Academy,” 2019.

32. Dover & Goodman, “The Public Policy Role,” 342–51; Dover, Goodman and White, “Two Worlds, One Common Pursuit,” 461–77.

33. Glees’ fine history of the Stasi also initially underplayed the extent to which their officers were keen to overstate their successes, and he was not alone in this, including Markus Wolf’s own account of his time at the Stasi. He is right, though, to point out that his papers did see several Stasi agents uncovered in the UK. See: Glees, Stasi, 62–3; Miller, Narratives of Guilt, 3–5; Wolf & McElvoy, Spymaster, pp365.

34. Herman, Intelligence Power, 13.

35. Nunan and Stanier et al, “Eliciting Human Intelligence,” 1-2.

36. Miller, OSINT: An Oxymoron? 714.

37. The consequences when such an arrangement goes wrong are made clear by Nielson, “Whistleblowers,” 660–89.

38. For a contemporary discussion of this area see: Scott, “Contemporary Security Vetting,” 2020, 54–70.

39. Zegart and Morrell, “Spies, Lies and Algorithms,” 83–96.

40. Gill, “Intelligence Oversight,” 6–7.

41. Dymydiuk, “Rubicon and Revelation”; Miller, “OSINT: An Oxymoron?” 712.

42. Gibson, “OSINT,” 11.

43. Gentry, “The All Source Mix,” 649–50.

44. Lentzos et al, “Health Intelligence,” 465–76.

45. As told by Gordon Corera in his book on the subject. Corera, Shopping for Bombs.

46. Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, 15–34.

47. Aldrich et al, “Operation Rubicon”.

48. The Times, “Professor Rosemary Hollis: Obituary”.

49. These voices included notable area studies experts like Rosemary Hollis, George Joffé, Gareth Stansfield, Charles Glass, Toby Dodge and Eric Herring, who published widely in the academic and quality media on this subject, who provided evidence to Parliamentarians and who – in the case of Hollis – was able to brief officials directly. The Iraq Inquiry; Joffe, “Iraq Environment”; Dodge, “Causes and Consequences”.

50. Parker, “Cummings’ Job Ad”.

51. One notable attempt to do this can be found in: Cudworth & Hobden, Post-Human International Relations.

52. Private conversation with former CIA Officer, January 2020.

53. Steele, “Open Source Intelligence,” 144–7.

54. Kamali, S, “Informants”.

55. Graham et al, “Internet Geographies,” 58.

56. McCarthy, “NSA”.

57. Galloway, “Blink and They’re Gone,” 969.

58. Arthur Hulnick noted this nearly 20 years ago, and it remains a considerable challenge. Hulnick, “The downside of OSINT,” 570–2.

59. Harvey & Russell-Mundine, “Decolonising the Curriculum,” 789.

60. Garfield, “Citation Analysis,” 471–9.

61. The strongest work of this type was written by Patrick Porter, see: Porter, Military Orientalism.

62. Bendixen and Jacobsen, “Marketisation,” 20.

63. UK Government, “What works networks,” 2015

64. UK Cabinet Office, “Cross Government Advice Panel,” 2015.

65. UK Government, “Open Government,” 2015.

66. Williams and Blum, Defining 2^nd Generation OSINT, 40.

67. UK Parliament, ISC Report on Diversity, 65; and popularised by Matthew Syed: Syed, Rebel Ideas, 3–37.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Dover

Dr Robert Dover is Associate Professor of Intelligence and International Security at the University of Leicester. He is the Convenor of the UK Political Studies Association’s Specialist Security and Intelligence Studies Group, and a previous winner of the Political Studies Association’s Wilfrid Harrison Prize for the Best Article in Political Studies. He has written more than 60 papers on the governmental use of intelligence, the impact of intelligence and surveillance upon social relations, horizon scanning, and crisis communications.