Ideology in Costume: A Growing Threat to Intelligence Studies

Abstract

Intelligence studies (IS) is a new and rapidly evolving academic discipline. Scholars periodically assess its status, noting considerable progress, but they have barely begun to assess the origins and implications of a significant recent development in IS: infiltration of the discipline by people determined to alter intelligence studies for ideological reasons. This commentary focuses on the destructive impact of neo-Marxian “critical intelligence studies” on IS generally. It addresses the origins and implications of this infection and suggests ways to inoculate IS against further damage.

Intelligence studies (IS) is a new and rapidly evolving academic discipline. Among positive recent changes are geographic expansion beyond the “Anglosphere” and scope extension from states’ foreign intelligence services to the intelligence activities of domestic law enforcement agencies, businesses, and other nonstate actors. Scholars have periodically examined the status of IS, focusing on such topics as definitions of intelligence and applicable research methods including those of historiography and social sciences.¹ But intelligence scholars have barely begun to assess the implications of a significant recent development in IS: infiltration of the discipline by people determined to alter intelligence studies for ideological reasons.

This trend has been lauded and criticized. This commentary, aiming to express both alarm and sadness, takes the latter view and focuses on the destructive impact of neo-Marxian “critical intelligence studies” (CIS) on intelligence studies generally. This perspective regards “critical” theory as a revolutionary, troublesome ideology but is not concerned about the wide range of left-of-center liberal views presumably embedded in many intelligence-related studies that employ traditional scholarly methods in pursuit of knowledge, not a political program. The complexity of “critical” writings cannot be covered fully in this short article and readers are asked to accept some generalizations. This commentary addresses implications of the Marxian infection of IS and suggests ways to inoculate intelligence scholarship against further damage.

ORIGINS OF CRITICAL THEORY

“Critical theory” originated at the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) at Goethe University Frankfurt, in Frankfurt, Germany.² The institute, founded in 1923, was originally called the Institut für Marxismus (Institute for Marxism) but changed its name after its leaders concluded that it would be controversial in a time of severe political strife in Germany.³ The institute nevertheless maintained close ties with the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. The institute was staffed mainly by well-educated Jews, several of whom were prominent academics. All were philosophical Marxists, but most were never members of a communist party. By charter, its director oriented the institute’s general intellectual focus. In the 1920s, its work reflected the orthodox, economically oriented Marxian views of its then directors.

The institute’s signature “critical theory” is a product of director Max Horkheimer (1930–1953). Recognizing the weaknesses of classical Marxism, he asserted a need to be “critical” of existing bourgeois society in order to produce reform-oriented “theories” about aspects of society, including its culture, that would enable action designed to produce radical social change consistent with the Marxian ideal of the unity of theory and practice (or praxis). Horkheimer agreed with Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who observed that Marx’s emphasis on economic fault lines had not generated the revolution he envisioned and that better ones were social in nature.⁴ Hence, “critical” theorists focused on finding, and ways of making, social divisions that would be useful to Marxian activists who were determined to overthrow Western, capitalist society.⁵ To repeat an important point, critical theory originally was, and remains, tied directly to Marxian revolutionary praxis. Participants in this work now are commonly known as members of the “Frankfurt School.”

Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, given his views of Marxism and Judaism, led the institute to move to Columbia University in New York City, which long has been a hotbed of left-wing scholarship. Columbia gave the institute-in-exile its own building, where it worked until the late 1940s. Some leading members, including Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, eventually veered away from political agitation. But Herbert Marcuse, a prominent institute member who, unlike most others, did not return to Europe after World War II, remained focused on fomenting revolution while teaching at four American universities until he died in 1979. Marcuse’s writings and activism significantly influenced the New Left movement of the 1960s.⁶

Marcuse, like many Marxists, urged violent revolution to overthrow capitalist governments, and he advocated techniques commonly used by Soviet disinformation specialists to shape targets’ perceptions of the world in ways designed to facilitate revolution. Among his prominent writings is “Repressive Tolerance,” which argues that liberal concepts of open-mindedness are actually oppressive because they make Marxian propagandizing more difficult; they should be suppressed in favor of his variant of neo-Marxian orthodoxy.⁷

Later Frankfurt School people, such as Jürgen Habermas, and others with different views of Marxism, including postmodernists and French “poststructuralists,” also influence contemporary “critical theory.” Among the latter are Louis Althusser, a communist with psychiatric problems who murdered his wife, and his student Michel Foucault. Postmodernists emphasize that reality is largely socially constructed through such means as language and culture.⁸ This plausible observation now is often carried much further, leading to assertions that there is no such thing as objective reality for all people except Marxists, who self-evidently know truth, and that the perceived reality of non-Marxists should be reconstructed to foster achievement of the ideological goals of Marxists. The “reframing” of history by the New York Times–sponsored “1619 Project,” which proclaims that the sole purpose of America since 1619 was/is the enslavement of Africans, and which has been widely described as nonsense by reputable historians, is a recent such ideology-driven narrative.⁹

Over time, critical theory spawned offshoots. For example, “critical legal studies” were invented in the 1970s and 1980s by American and British law school professors such as Derrick Bell, who argued that social conditions they did not like—especially the alleged oppression of black people—were inextricably linked to the law.¹⁰ They argued that the law should be a tool of praxis to facilitate achievement of their political objectives. Later, “critical race theory” proclaimed that all Caucasians inherently are racist and asserted that society must change to bring “equity” in all measurable ways to black people, even in such noneconomic or political ways as life expectancy.¹¹ Kimberlé Crenshaw asserted that European-origin, heterosexual, healthy men “oppress” all other people and urged “intersectional” groups, or persons from multiple demographic categories, to fight the “oppression” together.¹² To ensure that such ideas were adequately popularized, Marxists in the 1980s developed “critical pedagogy,” or doctrine on ways to teach teachers how to indoctrinate their students with Marxian ideas, which is now prominent in American universities’ schools of education.¹³ This program reflects the work of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, who aimed to “educate” people by playing to their grievances to instill them with Marxian perspectives.¹⁴ The primary goal of this “education” is political indoctrination of students, not traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic, which Freire derided as “banking” education that allegedly is an instrument of oppression.¹⁵ Social Marxists such as Antonio Gramsci long have noted the importance of Marxian indoctrination under the guise of education.¹⁶ Implementing techniques now include even the use of drag queens to promote alternative sexual and other realities to young children.

The efforts have borne fruit as educators and their students now display, according to polling data, decidedly more leftist political views than their elders. For example, in 2014, the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles found that 60% of American university professors self-identified as politically “liberal” or “far-left,” up from 42% in 1990, while in the same period “moderates” declined from 40% to 27% and “conservatives” declined from about 18% to about 12%.¹⁷ By the 2020s, teachers’ unions were among the most left-leaning in the United States. Reflecting these trends, a YouGov poll conducted in 2019 found that 36% of American millennials (then persons aged 23 to 38) approved of communism, up from 28% in 2018, and 70% were extremely or slightly likely to vote for a socialist candidate in the future.¹⁸

According to defectors from their intelligence services, the USSR and Russia especially target(ed) universities as part of their “active measures” programs designed to destabilize Western countries from within, knowing that education is the best way to proselytize young people enough to achieve the disintegration of target countries.¹⁹ The Soviets, from the 1950s, developed ways to manipulate military and political targets into making independent decisions consistent with their wishes, an ability Russian theorists now call “reflexive control.”²⁰ Western academics have verified the effectiveness of such efforts.²¹ Through these and other efforts, many university professors in the West, many teachers of younger students, and young people generally in recent years developed stridently left-wing views. Some of these people gravitated toward intelligence studies. As good Marxists, CIS persons reconstruct and reinterpret intelligence history and practice in ways consistent with Marxian theory and praxis.

CREEPING INTO INTELLIGENCE STUDIES

Critical theory reached intelligence studies only recently, after penetrating other academic disciplines. Critical, postmodern, poststructuralist, and related perspectives of Sigmund Freud infiltrated sociology, international relations scholarship, and “critical security studies” by the late twentieth century. Scholars of the latter group, especially, migrated to CIS, which began to appear appreciably in the 2010s.²² Loch K. Johnson and Allison M. Shelton’s survey of the editorial board of Intelligence and National Security (INS) about the then-current state of IS, published in 2013, did not mention CIS.²³ Early “postmodern” articles on intelligence did not impress INS’ board members and most IS scholars, many of whom once were intelligence practitioners, because they reflect poor understanding of intelligence and often make assertions that are little more than ideological diatribes. For example, political scientist James Der Derian published in 1993 an extremely confused piece about allegedly needed approaches to studying U.S. intelligence:

The power of surveillance is transparent and pervasive, more “real” in time than space, and produced and sustained through the exchange of signs not goods, rendering its political effects resistant if not invisible to traditional and re-formed theories of international relations. Hence, a post-structuralist approach is called for, to help us to understand the discursive power of new chronopolitical and technostrategic forces in intelligence that elevate chronology over geography in their political effects; that use and are used by technology for the prevention and preparation of war; that produce and are sustained by historically transient statements which mediate our relations with empirical events. (emphasis in original)²⁴

Unhelpful although he remains, Der Derian is popular with “critical” theorists such as Hamilton Bean (University of Colorado, Denver), who has written several articles advocating intelligence-related political activism consistent with Frankfurt School logic and neo-Marxian goals.²⁵ Bean defined “critical” intelligence studies:

The term “critical”, as it is used here, refers to studies where power is “integrally constitutive of the scholarly questions and political goals of scholarship”. Critical theorists conceptualize power as a defining and ubiquitous feature of social relationships that can lead to harm, waste, injustice, and distorted decision-making—but also to productive social change.²⁶

Making the activist goals of “critical theory” clear, he wrote, “Scholars who invoke critical theory typically aim to identify, critique, and transform conditions of oppression, domination, and inequality.”²⁷

Berma Klein Goldewijk (Utrecht University and the Netherlands Defence Academy) similarly reflected a Marxian perspective:

The term “critical” as a prefix to “studies” … does not merely stand for thinking critically, and it does not just raise questions or challenge prevailing views. As taken here, the “critical” reflects various theoretical positions linked to transformative challenges: it is part of intellectual combat to redefine concepts, theories, and methods, and contests practices that (implicitly) maintain or institute injustice and inequality.²⁸

Klein Goldewijk makes a key point here: for many “critical” persons, CIS are a form of “intellectual combat,” not scholarship.

Oliver Kearns (University of Bristol, UK) described the ideological agenda of his “research” program, which reflects the Marxian fixation on relationships of power, referenced repeatedly herein, and neo-Marxism’s chronic “reframing” of events, in his case in ways inconsistent with any credible history of British or American intelligence:

I am currently finishing a book which argues that United States and British intelligence analysis since the Second World War represents an emergency intellectual response to decolonization. National liberation movements and post-colonial governments posed an enormous challenge because they rejected the idea that Britain and the U.S. had the right to sit at the top of international hierarchies of wealth and power. Those two states’ intelligence agencies saw their job as not to give objective analysis but to defend their states’ privilege, to maintain the inequality of the postwar world.²⁹

The Marxian outlooks of many CIS writers reflect training outside of IS, but a prominent book by Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, a coeditor of Intelligence and National Security (INS), first published in 2006, gave such notions implicit endorsement within IS by advocating “critical realism” as an analytical approach.³⁰ While accepting, unlike many postmodernists, that there are aspects of discernable reality in the world, they argued that a “critical” approach owing to Frankfurt School logic, but without all of its tenets, is needed. What might be called critical-lite intelligence studies are desirable. They asserted that “… ultimately, choice [of analytic technique] will be finalized on the basis of the personal beliefs and objectives of the analyst.”³¹ The personal methodological preferences and political objectives of ostensible “researchers,” not established standards of scholarly work, evidently are acceptable. Virtually by definition, Marxists of all variants have more ambitious political objectives than most academics. Gill and Phythian averred that while postmodernism, one of the legacy concepts of the Frankfurt School, is not always helpful, it has many useful insights.

They also asserted that intelligence is best defined as “surveillance,” a special theme of Michel Foucault, and is primarily about “power.” Both claims are staples of the “critical” Left. Gill and Phythian ignored the fact that military and warning intelligence protect against tangible foreign threats.³² Intelligence supports foreign policy decisionmaking, arms control negotiations and monitoring, diplomacy broadly, and counterterrorist activities. The education of decisionmakers is a core intelligence function. Many scholars also have long known that intelligence extensively evaluates open-source information, which is not “surveillance” in most countries, although, in the wake of the Snowden revelations of 2013, it has become so considered in the United Kingdom, where Gill and Phythian live.³³ CIS advocates conflate Max Weber’s concept of bureaucratic “surveillance” (such as tax collection, census data, and birth and death registers) with targeted surveillance for intelligence and investigatory purposes. While British treatment of this issue is unique, misuse of definitions of “surveillance” is endemic in CIS.³⁴ Similarly, “power” implicitly consists of even the mundane authorities of states, which are troublesome because they support social/political systems that Marxists hope to overthrow.

Regardless of the actual conduct of intelligence globally, unmasking the allegedly evil power of Western intelligence services’ “surveillance” of their own people, and the need to check that power, are core themes of CIS.³⁵ This effort to denigrate and weaken Western intelligence services is consistent with the program of the Soviet-sponsored World Peace Council (WPC), created in 1949, and other Cold War–vintage Soviet front organizations established mainly in Western countries, which encouraged Westerners to demand the unilateral disarmament of their own allegedly warmongering governments—but not of the USSR and other Warsaw Pact states.³⁶ Intelligence is, as is commonly noted, a first line of national defense. Now based in Athens, Greece, the WPC is still run by communists and still agitates against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization long after the Soviet Union collapsed.³⁷

CORE CLAIMS OF CIS

Like other varieties of “critical” studies, the CIS literature chronically features claims that are Marxian in ideological orientation, are “framed” misleadingly, or both. Marxian perspectives on intelligence often are camouflaged as “alternative” approaches that allegedly complement the supposedly narrow-minded writing of intelligence scholars and practitioners who actually (usually) write authoritatively. For example, CIS writers frequently claim that they aim merely to expand the perspectives of IS, to help it. Simon Willmetts (Leiden University, Netherlands) offered an instructive, unusually obvious example. Appealing to readers from traditional backgrounds to accept that he really is trying to help IS, he immediately thereafter explicitly adopts the Marxian perspectives of Louis Althusser.³⁸

Taking an unfortunate cue from Gill, Phythian, and more overt Marxists that intelligence is about power, many CIS publications assert unpersuasively that power-focused assessments enable understanding of intelligence. Of course, there is an element of power in states’ intelligence services; they help national leaders make better decisions. The CIS literature addresses this topic in many ways that generally ramble vaguely about the undefined but certainly evil intelligence power of Western democracies (but not of authoritarian governments). But discussions of “power” contribute nothing to the understanding of intelligence unless they specify accurate details and institutional contexts, which the CIS literature rarely does.

A core belief of critical ideology is that the language used to interpret and understand the world builds in assumptions, values, and beliefs peculiar to contemporary society/culture and power structures. Liberal-democratic concepts of rights, freedoms, private property, and of law and justice allegedly serve undesirable social hierarchies and should, per the logic of Herbert Marcuse and others, be suppressed. Instead, other perspectives and “theories”—Marxian ones—are needed. CIS “theorists” therefore frequently talk about the need for use of unspecified “alternative” epistemologies and ontologies, which in practice means advocacy of Marxian thought processes and terminology. That Marxian perspectives also are socially constructed matters not; they alone are purportedly “scientific”—and true. Marxists also commonly argue that intelligence, like other subjects, should be examined more self-consciously, more critically, more “reflexively”—that is, through a “critical” lens that enables actors to more effectively influence themselves and their environments.³⁹ The Russian idea of “reflexive control,” discussed above, is a related concept.

In fact, the purposes, nature, and appropriate methods of studying intelligence have been debated for decades in traditional IS without using terms common in “critical” studies or in philosophy generally. Practitioners typically do not use terms from philosophy out of respect for the wishes of intelligence consumers, most of whom dislike such perceived ostentations, and former practitioners similarly prefer commonly understood terms in their public writing. But then–senior practitioner Mark Lowenthal assessed the epistemology of U.S. intelligence in 1993.⁴⁰ INS ran a special issue on the philosophy of intelligence in 2022 (Vol. 37, No. 6).

Frankfurt School logic shapes the CIS push into “cultural” studies.⁴¹ Some crits, as some of them call themselves, claim the cultural assertions of CIS are new and insightful. They are neither. As noted, Frankfurt School personnel from the 1930s extensively studied cultural aspects of capitalist society “reflexively,” looking for ways long-standing concepts, language, and normative beliefs could be coercively or deceptively reshaped by Marxian praxis. Implicitly asserting the ascendance of CIS by claiming a “cultural turn” in intelligence studies, Willmetts also inaccurately and incongruously compared the secrecy that all intelligence services globally maintain for well-understood reasons to mere conspiracy theories.⁴² He advocated study of the allegedly untouched issue of the public relations activities of intelligence, a topic addressed well conventionally by Christopher Moran and others.⁴³ He also asserted that “mentalities” should be addressed, ignoring the large literature on the “mindsets and biases” of individual intelligence officers and intelligence organizations, notably addressed by Richards J. Heuer, Jr.⁴⁴

In fact, practitioners long have written introspectively about the cultures of their agencies and even subcomponents of them.⁴⁵ Intelligence analysts also have long recognized that it is important to understand, or “empathize” with, the cultures of studied countries, groups, and leaders, meaning that language skills also are important. And former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates advised Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts to better understand the U.S. government—the one they serve.⁴⁶ Understanding the ever-changing wants and quirks of intelligence consumers, the need to stay as objective as possible, and why consumers sometimes do not appreciate intelligence analyses, have been emphasized in the IS literature for many decades.⁴⁷

Critical theorists frequently emphasize the importance of “narratives” and “discourse,” which are said to be ways of thinking and communicating that define reality and thus control societies. Marxists therefore often refer to the importance of shaping, or “framing,” discourse about social phenomena in ideologically desirable ways. This was Marcuse’s purpose in advocating his own variety of “repressive tolerance,” in which non-Marxist perspectives should be vigorously suppressed in favor of Marxian doctrine.⁴⁸ Especially when camouflaged as novel and helpful discussions, this framing can have significant propaganda value, which the Chinese Communist Party recognizes by referring to “discourse warfare” and “discourse power.”⁴⁹ The value of alternative narratives is clear. Neo-Marxists, like their classical predecessors and per Paulo Freire, aim to reeducate the masses—and the professors who teach some of them—to generate enthusiasm for revolution. Marxists’ “intellectual combat” for control of intelligence studies therefore should be seen as a skirmish in a long and much bigger war of ideas.

In fact, narratives and distinctive cultural and psychological orientations of persons and organizations, traditionally defined, have been common themes of the intelligence literature for decades as part of discussions of what is euphemistically known as “producer-consumer relations” in the United States and in many discussions of reasons why intelligence consumers globally are receptive to intelligence or not.⁵⁰ The late Robert Jervis of Columbia University, who understood national decisionmaking and the quirks of the intelligence business very well, referred repeatedly to the “Rashomon Effect” on situations in which participant actors in interactive international relations see events dramatically differently than other actors in close proximity to them.⁵¹ He took the name from the Japanese movie Rashomon, produced in 1950, in which people involved with a crime see their roles and those of others very differently.

CIS papers frequently cite questionable sources and invoke red herrings—important tools for creating “alternative” narratives and effective “discourse.” For example, Hager Ben Jaffel (French National Centre for Scientific Research), incongruously citing new citizen of Russia Edward Snowden as a purported authority, claimed that critical approaches are needed to replace the allegedly uniformly “functionalist” approaches that all IS scholars take in embracing the “intelligence cycle” model as a description of intelligence generally.⁵² In fact, Snowden is no theorist, and IS scholars widely recognize the weaknesses of the intelligence cycle model.⁵³ Such assertions are badly mistaken, but they help the Marxian narrative. Ben Jaffel also coedited a book⁵⁴ that former CIA analyst Diana Bolsinger, an experienced intelligence officer, concluded is a “muddle of valuable insights and ideological rants”—a characterization applicable to many CIS “studies.”⁵⁵ In July 2023, Ben Jaffel and her coeditor published an article advocating broad use in intelligence studies of the ideology-laden approaches of their book.⁵⁶

A common, incorrect CIS claim is that most intelligence officers believe that for all situations there is a single, knowable truth. T. W. van de Kerke and C. W. Hijzen (both of Leiden University), for example, asserted that many IS scholars accept an alleged “[Sherman] Kentian ‘conviction that for any situation, for every occurrence, for every phenomenon there exists a single truth’, which intelligence can detect.”⁵⁷ Kent never asserted any such thing. Van de Kerke and Hijzen erroneously attributed to Kent an opinion of Anthony Olcott about Kent—another example of ideologically helpful “discourse” management.

In fact, experienced intelligence officers know that intelligence is about the future, which means only some unknowns can be accurately anticipated. Errors are inevitable. Princeton University professor and CIA advisor Klaus Knorr employed the term “batting average” in 1964 to reflect the fact that even good intelligence services are not “right” all the time, just as good batters in baseball do not always get hits.⁵⁸ Similarly, then chief of the CIA’s analysis directorate Bruce Clarke told a congressional hearing in 1980 that it would be an “unexpected achievement” if the CIA at any time in its history had been right “50 percent of the time.”⁵⁹ Thomas Fingar, a well-respected former head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, titled his book Reducing Uncertainty to emphasize that truth is not the goal of intelligence analysis and usually is unattainable.⁶⁰ These are prominent proponents of widely accepted views. But “critical” persons, like Mao, know that lies repeated often enough frequently generate some credibility, furthering the “critical” narrative.

Some CIS studies contain elements of reputable work as well as ideological spiels, thereby earning some credibility. For example, Hager Ben Jaffel wrote plausibly on Britain’s police counterterrorism intelligence cooperation with European agencies while also asserting incorrectly that intelligence once was only about “counter-espionage” and that an intelligence “doxa”—a term for behavioral practices taken for granted that was favored by Marxian sociologist Pierre Bourdieu—holds that Britain shares intelligence only with the United States.⁶¹ She also effusively praised the purported intellectual virtues of Bourdieu, who was not an intelligence specialist but emphasized aspects of societal power—the perpetual Marxian fixation. Other studies have more usefully examined European intelligence cooperation without Ben Jaffel’s ideological trappings.

Much of the CIS literature also reflects the “intersectional” claims of oppression common elsewhere in neo-Marxian theory. These include rote assertions that women are discriminated against by all intelligence services globally⁶² and injection of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minorities politics⁶³ into intelligence studies.

In sum, most of the assertions of “critical” writers are claims of methodological rectitude designed to reshape IS ideologically. Few do much more than pontificate or rephrase existing studies using Marxian terminology or misleadingly claim ideologically derived insights about topics well covered by the existing literature. They often contain obvious factual errors.

DEMOGRAPHICS OF “CRITICAL” PERSONS

Adherents of “critical theory” come in varieties. Some of what might be called the hard-core are readily identifiable by the critical, postmodern, and poststructuralist theorists they cite and the Marxian terminology they use. Several are cited herein. Others, like Marxists for many years, undoubtedly are hiding their true political beliefs in order to avoid alienating nonbelievers. There also are many varieties of hangers-on—people who think “critical” perspectives actually offer new and/or useful ways to assess intelligence issues. Some are fellow travelers in the sense that they accept most of the Marxian agenda embedded in critical theory without explicitly adopting the label of “Marxist”—proponents of “critical realism,” for example. Others are less ideologically committed—people whom Lenin reputedly called “useful idiots” and Stalin called “naïve dupes.” These people are not literally “idiots,” but many surely are naïve, and they help the Marxists by increasing numbers of people who claim to hold “critical” perspectives and use the term respectfully, thereby lending it credibility. Marxists therefore try to recruit many such people, whom they effectively control intellectually. Soviet Committee for State Security active measures specialists consistently marveled at how easy it was to manipulate people sympathetic to leftist causes with even crude disinformation, an assessment that remains accurate.⁶⁴ Among IS people who claim critical perspectives and use “critical” logic while demonstrating incomplete willingness to warp facts in pursuit of ideological goals—a core characteristic of hardcore “critical” studies—is Julie Mendosa (National Intelligence University, USA), who opined, “A critical perspective focuses on critique of dominant ontologies and epistemologies, allowing a wider selection of approaches for understanding intelligence issues.”⁶⁵

Actually, as noted, the Marxian aim is not expansion of intellectual thought. It is replacement of conventional scholarly approaches with Marxian dogma. Such naïveté (or misrepresentation) helps the cause.

“Critical” theorists as Marxists, and most of their sympathizers, are political leftists, not liberals. They appear to be more female than the general population of intelligence scholars. In 2022, 124 women comprised 29.7% of the membership of the intelligence studies section of the International Studies Association/Intelligence Studies Section (ISA/ISS), and a 2016 study found that women had written 9.1% of articles published in the two main intelligence journals from 1986 through 2015.⁶⁶ Several are associated with intelligence services or defense ministries (such as Eleni Braat, Irena Chiru, Peter de Werd, Berma Klein Goldewijk, Cristina Ivan, Sebastian Larsson, Tom Lundborg, and Julie Mendosa), suggesting that some counterintelligence agencies may be inattentive. But most have no experience in government, let alone intelligence, and none evidently have retired from any intelligence service. (While such experience is not essential, the inherently secretive nature of intelligence activities makes understanding intelligence more challenging than some academic studies, meaning most former practitioners who have become intelligence scholars, including this writer, think their practical experience is helpful.) Many, but not all, are fairly young, evidently reflecting the indoctrination increasingly common in universities as they have shifted leftward politically in recent years. Many also are from continental Europe, where Marxian traditions are strong and whose submissions to INS are handled by sympathetic coeditor Mark Phythian.⁶⁷ Several CIS writers are recent graduates of King’s College London, students of Didier Bigo, a Marxian sociologist and “critical” security theorist. But none evidently are from Israel, where intelligence is an essential national security tool and fantasies that intelligence is awful because it surveils innocent citizens are luxuries Israel cannot afford.

The CIS community has grown to the point that it has begun to display a characteristic of other academic disciplines variously known as “scientific cartels,” or “citation cartels,” which feature groups of scholars with similar perspectives who recurrently cite other group members as credible authorities while adding carefully selected references to established authorities, thereby appearing to follow conventional academic research methods while largely ignoring mainstream literatures inconsistent with their pet beliefs. CIS writers also reach back in time to their few predecessors who remain lightly regarded by mainstream intelligence scholars because they so weakly understand intelligence. Examples include Der Derian’s confused venture into intelligence, cited above, and Andrew Rathmell’s less incoherent concept of “post-modern intelligence,” which little resembles the intelligence activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), about which he ostensibly wrote.⁶⁸ Rathmell asserted, for example, that “the modern intelligence community” reflects the “concept of the ‘intelligence factory’ that captured the similarity of intelligence to Fordist modes of production.”⁶⁹ The extent to which the cartels are now influencing peer-reviewers’ recommendations to intelligence-focused journal editors and book publishers is unclear but seems likely to be considerable.

REJOINDERS TO DATE

To date, only a few people have publicly opposed these trends. Arguably, the clearest voice is that of Philip H.J. Davies, who warned in 2009 against accepting the assertions of critical theories. For Davies, perspectives associated with constructivism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and Marxism are “a slippery slope into metaphorical speculation, woolly reasoning and disingenuously packaged dogma.”⁷⁰ Davies has not changed his mind. In 2022, he wrote:

My aversion to “critical < insert otherwise legitimate topic here > studies” remains as trenchant as ever. The critical posture, as it were, depends on smuggling in an a priori political ideological position as a presupposition. If that premise fails to stand up to rigorous evidential and logical scrutiny, and I’m fairly convinced most Marxist, Freudian or derivative theories will so fail, then the theory entails a presuppositional fallacy and so all consequent fails on basic logical grounds.⁷¹

This perspective remains insightful.

Clearly, many sound scholars are worried about recent trends in intelligence studies but have not spoken of their worries. Hopefully, Davies’ observations and this commentary will encourage other people to publicly express their concerns and to demand continued rigor in intelligence studies.

EDITORS’ VIEWS OF THESE TRENDS

Critical theory is now embedded in the two major intelligence-focused journals. INS ran a special issue on critical theory in 2021 (Vol. 34, No. 4) and a “forum” on CIS, written overwhelmingly by “critical” persons, is scheduled to be published in late 2023. Many other individual articles have been published there in the past decade. Although less penetrated, the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence (IJIC) ran a special issue on “diversity and inclusion” (“D&I”) in 2022 (Vol. 35, No. 4), which has an appreciable critical slant, and published “critical” articles in May 2022 and July 2023.⁷² Editors of, and authors contributing to, these two special issues overlapped. Most obviously, Cristina Ivan and Irena Chiru (both of “Mihai Viteazul” National Intelligence Academy, Romania), and Rubén Arcos (University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain), who coauthored an article in the INS issue on critical theory and who were the guest editors of IJIC’s issue on D&I, said their approach to organizing the issue was “critical.”⁷³

Given the growing number of published articles featuring aspects of the Marxian agenda, a key research question concerns the attitudes of intellectual leaders of IS toward the infiltration of critical perspectives. Therefore, current and immediately past coeditors of INS and editors-in-chief of IJIC were asked to discuss their philosophies on accepting submissions and running special issues: Mark Phythian (INS, 2015 to present); Stephen Marrin (INS, 2019 to present); Loch K. Johnson (senior editor of INS, 2002 to 2019); Jan Goldman (IJIC, 2019 to present); and Richard R. Valcourt (IJIC, 1997 to 2019).

Phythian explained his views of critical theory, saying he saw his role as a journal editor as being to promote different academic approaches to the study of intelligence.⁷⁴ He does not believe there is a single identifiable approach that constitutes “critical” or that submissions can be categorized as either “critical” or not, but rather that there is a range of “critical” approaches to aspects of intelligence, including its representation, that could be considered to exist on a spectrum. In a sense, he asserted, all academic analyses are “critical.” Given this, he would not treat a submission that drew on critical approaches or sought to make a contribution to debates in the field of CIS any differently from any other submission. INS, he wrote, is committed to publishing the best current research in the broad area of intelligence studies. He reconfirmed his commitment to “critical realism,” described above. He said he did not see himself part of the “critical project” in the sense that some of the people mentioned herein see themselves. But his unusual “conclusion” to the CIS special issue noted above—journal editors normally do not write such summaries or conclusions—is a full-throated embrace of CIS.⁷⁵

Stephen Marrin, who also chaired the ISA/ISS, the largest international group of IS scholars, from 2013 to 2018 and was an ISA/ISS program chair from 2008 to 2013, wrote:

I would think the broadening of content in INS (if that premise is accurate) is for the same reason that ISA/ISS broadened out internationally and in terms of topics over time. At ISA/ISS, expanding from 10 panels to 30 panels over 10 years meant significant expansion of number of perspectives … national, disciplinary, etc. … to include kinds of questions asked and answered.

I would think the same would go for publication venues. INS used to publish 4 issues per year. … [I]t now publishes 7 issues per year. Like with ISA/ISS, you don’t choose who submits and proposals or on what topics. … [Y]ou respond to the submissions and work with that. The filters in place are topic (intelligence studies, broadly defined, per aims of journal) and quality, not content.

That’s how the process works in terms of special issue topics too. They aren’t “selected” as such. We receive a proposal and work with the proposal as submitted. The filters are topic and quality. And we don’t have a content filter as such. If it’s within the aims and scope, we work with it.

A lot of the increasing variety of content is (I think) a byproduct of a field that is growing, to include both national and disciplinary perspectives … or at least that would be my working hypothesis.⁷⁶

Jan Goldman said IJIC aims to publish sound, academically rigorous intelligence studies that also are useful to practitioners.⁷⁷ In addition to such high-quality submissions, he also receives tradecraft-related manuscripts and theoretical, often quantitative submissions of sorts done by academic political scientists. To the extent that IJIC submissions have “critical” components, they fall in the latter category, he said. Goldman said that, through November 2022 no overtly “critical” manuscripts had been submitted to IJIC. The relative dearth of critical submissions to IJIC to date, compared to INS, may reflect its practitioner focus or that Phythian offers an especially congenial venue at INS. Goldman said he tries to reflect the broad range of thought in IS and gave consideration to the fact that the special issue on diversity was organized by people from three countries.

Former editors are more concerned about current trends. Loch K. Johnson wrote that it was his policy to publish only articles that met traditional scholarly standards:

… ideology has no place in scholarly research. [Coeditor] Mark [Phythian] and I were strict on demanding objective, evidence-based research (unless, in a few rare cases, we carefully labeled more normative presentations as precisely that—although they were in the realm of suggestions about future research courses for Intelligence Studies …).⁷⁸

Richard R. Valcourt said he sought in his many years as editor to maintain balanced perspectives, consistently published “well-researched” papers, “didn’t mind taking chances” on controversial but knowledgeable analysts and promising but not yet established scholars, and often urged authors to beef up their sourcing.⁷⁹ Valcourt did not publish special issues because he believed their focus tended to be too narrow. He also deplored what he called the growing politicization of IS. He blamed the emergence of CIS mainly on universities’ indoctrination of students in recent years, whereby, he said, they depart from factual assessments and instead infuse classroom materials with “social justice” interpretations of events and policy preferences. Valcourt did not expect improvement until university administrations and their faculties abandon their ideological agendas and resume the serious education of students. For that to happen, he said, “the political climate needs to change.”⁸⁰

In addition to Marrin, two persons recently associated with programming intelligence-related sessions of ISA conventions were asked to express their views of recent trends. Both displayed considerable acceptance of the introduction of ideology into IS. Erik Dahl (Naval Postgraduate School, USA), who was ISA/ISS chair in 2018–2021, wrote:

I didn’t try to guide the program chairs beyond the general encouragement to think broadly, both in terms of people on panels, and topics for papers and panels. … I’m happy with where the study of intelligence is going, and where ISA and the intelligence studies section is headed. It’s refreshing to see new approaches being tried, whether they involve critical studies, feminist approaches, or many other approaches and areas of study. There will always be room in our discipline for more traditional scholarship, often conducted by more traditional scholars, such as me; but I’m happy to see that our community is attracting others who are often younger and more diverse, and who think and write about topics that sometimes may make some of us uncomfortable, but will help us all increase our understanding of intelligence.⁸¹

Dahl’s successor as ISA/ISS chair was Damien Van Puyvelde (2021–2023), who previously was a program chair, and who selected Rubén Arcos and Melissa Graves (The Citadel, USA) as his program chairs. In 2021, Van Puyvelde published a moderately accurate, ideologically correct complaint about the alleged lack of demographic diversity in the U.S. IC.⁸² In 2022, he moved to Leiden University, where several CIS contributors work. During their tenure, more “alternative” methods sessions were added to ISA’s intelligence programs. Presenters and discussants of these panels were mainly, if not completely, sympathetic to critical perspectives. As noted, Arcos is a self-acknowledged “critical” person. He was an editor of the now-defunct International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs. He also is now ISA/ISS vice chair and will be section chair from 2025 to 2027, when he will be able to appoint program chairs.

Van Puyvelde responded for the group in a lengthy e-mail that made traditional statements about wanting to keep scholarship open to new ideas and accessible to all who want to contribute.⁸³ He also made a number of points relevant to the discussion of this perspective. Like Dahl, Van Puyvelde argued that inclusion of new approaches of many sorts is positive for IS. Like Dahl, he incongruously did not acknowledge the obviously close ties CIS has with Marxism but accurately said that many “critical” theorists now use the term in ways that go beyond original interpretations of Marxist philosophy provided by founders of the “critical” movement. He said, “Critical security studies also has more normative elements that, by definition, develop value judgments. There is also a place for this kind of research. I am a pluralist, when it comes to research, I have always felt the more approaches colleagues explore, the better for the field.” For Van Puyvelde, all scholarship is political because “[d]eciding to conduct research on one and not the other issue is a form of political decision.” But, in principle, no approach is more political than others, he asserted. He said, “I don’t think that any emerging trend is, per se, more or less prone to issues of academic integrity.” This view is markedly different from the ideologically driven goals that many “critical” writers pointedly and publicly proclaim, as repeatedly noted herein. Hence, Van Puyvelde and Dahl provide a formula for the continued politicization of IS: flood the proposal stream to ISA/ISS, and implicitly manuscripts to journals, with many purportedly “new” ideas because they get the same or better treatment as traditional scholarship that supposedly is equally political in nature.

RAMIFICATIONS FOR INTELLIGENCE STUDIES AND A CALL FOR AWARENESS

The injection of ideology into IS has many ramifications, all of which, contrary to Phythian, Dahl, and Van Puyvelde, are negative. Critical theorists consistently misrepresent intelligence institutions and practices, sometimes evidently due to inexperience and resulting ignorance, but frequently in ways consistent with purposeful Marxian discourse management techniques. Hence, errors of fact and interpretation are increasingly embedded in the IS literature. Citation cartels may be making both situations worse.

The rising volume of “critical” publications posing as legitimate scholarship merits a systematic evaluation of recent trends by reputable scholars, remembering always that it is a long-established practice of many communist activists to hide or misrepresent their true beliefs to avoid alienating potential recruits or allies and that “critical” persons are conducting “intellectual combat,” not scholarship. “Paint it White,” through the use of front organizations with reputable noncommunists in figurehead positions and Reds in charge in the background, is a longstanding Marxian organizational and disinformation technique.⁸⁴ So is individuals’ hiding of their ideological allegiances to avoid tipping off their targets. In scholarship, equivalent claims include disingenuous assertions that critical studies are no more political than all others. There are several ways to identify, debunk, and inoculate against varieties of “critical” approaches to intelligence studies, acknowledged and not.

The first priority is to make clear to all IS scholars that critical “theory” is not really theory, as traditionally defined, at all. Per Max Horkheimer, the lack of orthodoxy of fellow travelers and the confusion of naïve dupes notwithstanding, “critical” is code for an ideology-driven action program. This means that the purported contributions of CIS to legitimate intelligence studies always are suspect. The claim of some critical theorists that they merely want to improve IS, that skeptical persons should accept their good intentions, is disingenuous or naïve and should be rejected. Assertions that “critical” arguments are not more political than traditional scholarship are obviously incorrect. It is crucial that scholars learn more about the “critical” agenda and neo-Marxian disinformation and deception techniques. Conventional scholars also need to remember explicitly that crits’ “intellectual combat” amounts to attacks against their work and them personally. ISA/ISS members should use such knowledge to ensure that the section leaders they elect have balanced perspectives on intelligence scholarship. An unfortunate linguistic coincidence is that intelligence professionals, scholars, and teachers of intelligence courses long have valued “critical thinking” skills, which actually oppose what CIS “scholars” generally display.

Maintaining intellectual rigor in intelligence studies is more crucial than ever. “Critical” studies should be evaluated critically. Marxian diatribes are not worthy of respect solely because they reflect a “diverse” perspective. Scholars should pointedly critique CIS publications, noting errors like the many cited above and the many conventional studies that address their subjects far better using different terminology. This effort would identify where CIS publications address issues in new and useful ways and where, much more commonly, they repackage extant knowledge in Marxian trappings, invoke strawmen, are mistaken, or are transparently duplicitous in pursuit of ideological goals. A good example of how many of the points of “critical” theorists can be addressed insightfully but without their ideological baggage is the work of Robert Jervis. A political liberal, he eschewed the doctrinal language of the hard Left while running intellectual rings around what few insights critical and postmodernist observers of intelligence can claim and showing that conventional, positivist approaches to intelligence can, and largely have, addressed intelligence better than Marxian “alternative” analyses.

Journal editors and the leaders of ISA/ISS have important roles to play. Editors must not encourage special issues on ideologically motivated subjects and should maintain traditional standards of scholarship on all submissions. They must be cognizant of the political views of current and potential editorial board members and peer reviewers to prevent ideology-based “cartels” from replicating themselves or quashing trenchant critiques of “critical” publications. This is not a hypothetical concern; self-described “critical” persons now are on the editorial boards of both IJIC and INS and political correctness clearly already affects some peer reviewers’ recommendations. ISA/ISS leaders and program chairs should demand quality and balance differing perspectives while not advocating any solely under the rationale of encouraging “new” perspectives.

The discipline of intelligence studies faces a challenge that plagues other academic disciplines but which it had been fortunate to avoid for years. Sadly, that run of good fortune has ended, and solid scholars need to recognize clearly that Marxian proponents of CIS are now major threats who share several characteristics: They are activists with ideological agendas, many of whom chronically display substantial ignorance of intelligence matters, and they frequently assert intelligence “facts” that are untrue. But adopting the illiberal intolerance Marxists chronically display is not a good answer. Instead, maintaining traditional standards of scholarship, encouraging genuine intellectual diversity, and identifying and discrediting deceptive and ideology-driven appeals to erstwhile methodological diversity are essential. IS scholars should continue the historical practice of strictly partitioning extreme, incorrect, and ideologically motivated assertions from the mainstream of responsible intelligence studies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John A. Gentry

Dr. John A. Gentry is Adjunct Professor with the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He formerly was an intelligence analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Gentry has written extensively on intelligence and security topics. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

Notes

1 For example, Wesley K. Wark, “Introduction: The Study of Espionage: Past, Present, Future?,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1993), pp. 1–13; Miron Varouhakis, “What is Being Published in Intelligence? A Study of Two Scholarly Journals,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2013), pp. 176–189; Richard J. Aldrich, “‘A Profoundly Disruptive Force’: The CIA, Historiography and the Perils of Globalization,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 26, No. 2–3 (2011), pp. 139–158.

2 Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975).

3 Ibid., p. 8.

4 Gramsci is best known for his Prison Notebooks, written while in an Italian prison. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971).

5 Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, pp. 41–85.

6 For example, Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964); Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon, 1972).

7 Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in A Critique of Pure Tolerance, edited by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse (Boston: Beacon, 1969), pp. 81–123.

8 Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Tempe, AZ: Scholargy, 2004).

9 Adam Server, “The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not about the Facts,” The Atlantic, 23 December 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093

10 Derrick A. Bell, Race, Racism, and American Law, 6th ed. (Los Angeles, CA: Aspen Publishers, 2008).

11 For example, Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019).

12 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (1991), pp. 1241–1299.

13 For example, Antonia Darder, Rodolfo D. Torres, and Marta P. Baltodano (eds.), The Critical Pedagogy Reader, 3rd ed. (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2017).

14 Freire’s two most prominent works, translated into English, are Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Penguin, 2017), originally published in 1968, and The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1985).

15 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 7.

16 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 24–43.

17 Christopher Ingraham, “The Dramatic Shift among College Professors that’s Hurting Students’ Education,” Washington Post, 16 January 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/11/the-dramatic-shift-among-college-professors-thats-hurting-students-education/. See also Jon A. Shields, “The Disappearing Conservative Professor,” National Affairs, Fall 2018, https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-disappearing-conservative-professor

18 Shawn Langlois, “More Than a Third of Millennials Polled Approve of Communism,” MarketWatch, 2 November 2019, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/for-millennials-socialism-and-communism-are-hot-capitalism-is-not-2019-10-28

19 Yuri Bezmenov, Love Letter to America, 1984, https://ia800602.us.archive.org/11/items/love-letter-america/love-letter-america.pdf; Pete Earley, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War (New York: Berkley, 2007), p. 110; John A. Gentry, “Belated Success: Soviet Active Measures against the United States,” American Intelligence Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2 (2022), pp. 151–170.

20 Timothy Thomas, “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2004), pp. 237–256; Daniel P. Bagge, Unmasking Maskirovka: Russia’s Cyber Influence Operations (New York: Defense Press, 2019).

21 For example, Christopher Till, “Propaganda through ‘Reflective Control’ and the Mediated Construction of Reality,” New Media & Society, Vol. 23, No. 6 (2021), pp. 1362–1378.

22 Samantha Newbery and Christian Kaunert, “Critical Intelligence Studies: A New Framework for Analysis,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 38, No. 5 (2023), pp. 780–798.

23 Loch K. Johnson and Allison M. Shelton, “Thoughts on the State of Intelligence Studies: A Survey Report,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2013), pp. 109–120.

24 James Der Derian, “Anti‐Diplomacy, Intelligence Theory and Surveillance Practice,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1993), p. 29.

25 Hamilton Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2013), pp. 506–508.

26 Ibid., p. 498. See also Hamilton Bean, “Intelligence Theory from the Margins: Questions Ignored and Debates Not Had,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2018), pp. 527–540.

27 Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies,” p. 504.

28 Berma Klein Goldewijk, “Why Still Critical? Critical Intelligence Studies Positioned in Scholarship on Security, War, and International Relations,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2021), p. 477.

29 Kearns biography, https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Oliver-Kearns-ebdab90e-f6b0-4627-b55c-0364ece0be83/ (accessed 15 October 2022).

30 Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018), pp. 28–33.

31 Ibid., p. 28.

32 Gill has recognized the legitimacy of security-focused intelligence elsewhere.

33 Under UK law, “open-source intelligence” is now considered surveillance and therefore covered by Part 2 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and requires a Directed Surveillance Authorisation. Thanks to Philip Davies and an anonymous reviewer for clarification of this evidently complicated act and reinterpretation.

34 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this point.

35 For example, Zygmunt Bauman, Didier Bigo, Paulo Esteves, Elspeth Guild, Vivienne Jabri, David Lyon, and R. B. J. Walker, “After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance,” International Political Sociology, Vol. 8 (2014), pp. 121–144.

36 For example, William Styles, “The World Federation of Scientific Workers, a Case Study of a Soviet Front Organisation: 1946–1964,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2018), pp. 116–129.

37 See WPC’s website at wpc-in.org.

38 Simon Willmetts, “The Cultural Turn in Intelligence Studies,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 34, No. 6 (2019), pp. 801, 804.

39 Peter de Werd, “Reflexive Intelligence and Converging Knowledge Regimes,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2021), pp. 512–526.

40 Mark M. Lowenthal, “Intelligence Epistemology: Dealing with the Unbelievable,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1993), pp. 319–325.

41 Willmetts, “The Cultural Turn in Intelligence Studies.”

42 Ibid., p. 806.

43 Christopher Moran, Company Confessions: Secrets, Memoirs, and the CIA (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2016).

44 Richards J. Heuer, Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999).

45 For example, Charles G. Cogan, “The In‐Culture of the DO,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1993), pp. 78–86; Anonymous, “The DI’s Organizational Culture,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 34 (1990), pp. 21–25.

46 Robert M. Gates, “The CIA and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 2 (1987–1988), p. 219.

47 Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Victor Mauer, “Postmodern Intelligence: Strategic Warning in an Age of Reflexive Intelligence,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2009), pp. 123–144; de Werd, “Reflexive Intelligence and Converging Knowledge Regimes.”

48 Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance.”

49 Larry Diamond and Orville Schell (ed.), China’s Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance (Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2019), p. ix; Clive Hamilton and Marieke Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World (London: Oneworld, 2020), pp. 250, 274.

50 Erik J. Dahl, “Why Won’t They Listen? Comparing Receptivity toward Intelligence at Pearl Harbor and Midway,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2013), pp. 68–90.

51 Shilpa Sajja, Jervis interview, 29 September 2020, https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2020/09/perception-in-politics-bpr-interviews-robert-jervis/

52 Hager Ben Jaffel, Alvina Hoffman, Oliver Kearns, and Sebastian Larsson, “Collective Discussion: Toward Critical Approaches to Intelligence as a Social Phenomenon,” International Political Sociology, Vol. 14 (2020), p. 324.

53 Arthur S. Hulnick, “What’s Wrong with the Intelligence Cycle,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 21, No. 6 (2006), pp. 959–979.

54 Hager Ben Jaffel and Sebastian Larsson (eds.), Problematising Intelligence Studies: Towards a New Research Agenda (Routledge, London, 2022).

55 Diana I. Bolsinger, “Intelligence Studies: Problem or Solution?,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence (2022). doi:10.1080/08850607.2022.2119797

56 Hager Ben Jaffel and Sebastian Larsson, “Why Do We Need a New Research Agenda for the Study of Intelligence?” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence (2023). doi:10.1080/08850607.2023.2222342

57 T. W. van de Kerke and C. W. Hijzen, “Secrecy, Evidence, and Fear: Exploring the Construction of Intelligence Power with Actor-Network Theory (ANT),” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2021), p. 528.

58 Klaus Knorr, “Failures in National Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Cuban Missiles,” World Politics, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1964), p. 460.

59 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA & American Democracy, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 226.

60 Thomas Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).

61 Hager Ben Jaffel, “Britain’s European Connection in Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Cooperation: Everyday Practices of Police Liaison Officers,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 35, No. 7 (2020), p. 1007.

62 Irena Chiru, Cristina Ivan, and Rubén Arcos, “Diversity in Intelligence: Organizations, Processes, and People,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 35, No. 4 (2022–2023), pp. 607–620.

63 Hamilton Bean and Mia Fischer, “Queering Intelligence Studies,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2021), pp. 584–598.

64 Gentry, “Belated Success,” p. 156.

65 Julie Mendosa, “Expanding Mental Models in Intelligence Through Diverse Perspectives,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 35, No. 4 (2022–2023), p. 633.

66 Damien Van Puyvelde e-mail to author, 21 November 2022; Damien Van Puyvelde and Sean Curtis, “‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’: Diversity and Scholarship in Intelligence Studies,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 31, No. 7 (2016), pp. 1041, 1044.

67 INS coeditors generally divide submissions on a geographical basis. Stephen Marrin handles submissions from people living in the Western Hemisphere and Phythian processes submissions from the rest of the world.

68 Andrew Rathmell, “Towards Postmodern Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2002), pp. 87–104.

69 Ibid., pp. 91, 94.

70 Phillip H. J. Davies, “Theory and Intelligence Reconsidered,” in Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates, edited by Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin, and Mark Phythian (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 200.

71 Davies e-mail to author, 7 November 2022.

72 Silviu Cristian Paicu, “Data-Driven Security and Democratic Intelligence: Key Role of Critical Engagement by Academia,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2023), pp. 711–728; Ben Jaffel and Larsson, “Why Do We Need a New Research Agenda for the Study of Intelligence?”

73 Chiru, Ivan, and Arcos, “Diversity in Intelligence,” p. 617.

74 Phythian e-mail to author, 5 May 2023.

75 Mark Phythian, “Conclusion: The Development of Critical Intelligence Studies,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2021), pp. 615–620.

76 Marrin e-mail to author, 21 October 2022.

77 Goldman conversation via Zoom with author, 9 November 2022, and telephone conversation 28 November 2022.

78 Johnson e-mails to author, 25 September 2022 and 7 May 2023.

79 Valcourt telephone conversation with author, 15 September 2022, e-mail 7 May 2023.

80 Ibid.

81 Dahl e-mails to author, 21 October 2022 and 5 May 2023.

82 Damien Van Puyvelde, “Women and Black Employees at the Central Intelligence Agency: From Fair Employment to Diversity Management,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 5 (2021), pp. 673–703.

83 Van Puyvelde e-mail to author, 21 November 2022.

84 This term is a legacy of the Russian civil war in which noncommunists were “Whites,” as opposed to the communist Reds. The term “paint it White” reflects the communist practice of hiding or misrepresenting their activities by hiding behind apparent noncommunist Whites. Examples include the Indochinese Communist Party’s use of the ostensibly nationalist Viet Minh front organization to hide its actual control of the war against France after World War II and East European communists’ claims that their regimes were “democratic.” See Calder Walton, Spies: The Epic Intelligence War between East and West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023), p. 151.