Philip H. J. Davies, Kristian C. Gustafson Intelligence Elsewhere Spies and Espionage Outside The Anglosphere

INTELLIGENCE ELSEWHERE
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INTELLIGENCE
ELSEWHERE
Spies and Espionage outside the Anglosphere
PHILIP H. J. DAVIES
and
KRISTIAN C. GUSTAFSON
Editors
Georgetown University Press

Washington, DC
䉷 2013 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
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permission in writing from the publisher.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Davies, Philip H. J.
Intelligence elsewhere : spies and espionage outside the anglosphere / Philip H. J. Davies
and Kristian C. Gustafson, Editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-956-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Intelligence service—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Spies. 3. Espionage. I. Gustafson,
Kristian, 1974– II. Title.
JF1525.I6.D39 2013
327.12—dc23
2012021672
䡬
⬁ This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
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CONTENTS
Part I: Introduction and Theory

1 An Agenda for the Comparative Study of Intelligence:
Yet Another Missing Dimension 3
Philip H. J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustafson
2 Political Culture: Approaches and Prospects 13
Stephen Welch
Part II: Intelligence Culture outside the Anglosphere

3 Subversive Information: The Historical Thrust of Chinese
Intelligence 29
Ralph D. Sawyer
4 The Original Surveillance State: Kautilya’s Arthashastra and
Government by Espionage in Classical India 49
Philip H. J. Davies
5 Protecting the New Rome: Byzantine Influences on Russian
Intelligence 67
Kristian C. Gustafson
6 Origins of an Arab and Islamic Intelligence Culture 89
Abdulaziz A. Al-Asmari
Part III: Current Practice and Theory

7 Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence 115
Robert Johnson
8 Iranian Intelligence Organizations 141
Carl Anthony Wege
/ v /
vi / Contents
9 Intelligence and Security-Sector Reform in Indonesia 157

Peter Gill and Lee Wilson
10 A Reconstruction of Japanese Intelligence: Issues and Prospects 181
Ken Kotani
11 The Processes and Mechanisms of Developing a Democratic
Intelligence Culture in Ghana 199
Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, Emma Birikorang, and Ernest
Ansah Lartey
12 Intelligence Community Reforms: The Case of Argentina 219
Eduardo E. Estévez
13 Sweden: Intelligence the Middle Way 239
Wilhelm Agrell
14 Intelligence Culture, Economic Espionage, and the Finnish
Security Intelligence Service 265
Lauri Holmström
Part IV: Conclusion

15 Legacies, Identities, Improvisation, and Innovations of
Intelligence 287
Contributors 299
Index 303
PART I
Introduction and Theory

CHAPTER 1
An Agenda for the Comparative

Study of Intelligence
Yet Another Missing Dimension
I
n the decades since Christopher Andrew and David Dilks resurrected Sir
Alexander Cadogan’s description of intelligence as the ‘‘missing dimension
of diplomatic history,’’ scholars of intelligence have themselves been uncov-
ering assorted additional absent axes within the study of intelligence.1 Indeed,
there are moments when intelligence scholars begin to feel a little like quantum
physicists who find themselves wrestling with the idea of large numbers of dif-
ferent dimensions curled up, or ‘‘compactified,’’ in normal, three-dimensional
space.2 Among the compactified dimensions that have begun to unravel under
scrutiny are questions of organizational structure and behavior, cultural analy-
sis,3 and even foreign language competency.4 All these approaches have been
found wanting in a field dominated by historical study on one side of the Atlan-
tic and normative political and policy analysis on the other. This should come
as no surprise in a comparatively newborn field of study. Before the 1960s intel-
ligence and related activities such as covert action and protective security pol-
icy were so shrouded by strong formal and informally constituted rules of secrecy
that the necessary evidence base for intelligence studies simply did not exist.5
There was also a sense that the underhanded nature of espionage meant that
intelligence was not quite a respectable sphere of study for academics. However,
/ 3 /
4 / Philip H. J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustafson
there has since been a sea change both in the availability of information and in
perceptions of the need to have a scholarly understanding of intelligence—
accelerated in recent years by events such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on the United States and the furors over the role of intelligence in the
US decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
One of the compactified dimensions of the study of intelligence that still
needs to be properly examined (and that actually entails many different axes of
inquiry in its own right) is the comparative analysis of intelligence institutions
and processes in government. Comparative politics is, of course, a well-
established field. And the tools and conventions of overall comparative analysis
have been clearly articulated. But they have yet to be applied really vigorously
and systematically to the cross-national study of intelligence. Comparative
investigation has been widely advocated since the 1980s, but very little actual
in-depth, systematic comparative work has been undertaken.6 And yet compar-
ative analysis is one of the most powerful methodological tools available in the
contemporary social science arsenal.
Comparison as Protection
There is, to be sure, a tendency to view comparative methods as being mainly
a protection against the limitations of stand-alone cases. Scholars are fond of
invoking comparative analysis as a protection against ‘‘ethnocentrism.’’7 But
the idea of ethnocentrism is not particularly transparent, and it can all too
easily carry with it the pejorative suggestion of chauvinism rather than a merely
limitedly parochial perspective. In practical terms the main problem with exam-
ining cases in isolation rather than comparatively is that it can induce two
alternative but complementary optical illusions regarding the case at hand. It
is, for example, all too easy to approach a case with the conviction that it is
somehow unique and then develop a characterization of that case that suppos-
edly identifies distinctive features that are actually not unique at all. By the
same token, it is all too easy for one to assume that the way things are done in
one’s own community or context represents inherent criteria for the task that
must be echoed in every instance. This is perhaps the classic sense of ethnocen-
trism, but it might more usefully be thought of as the illusion of universality.
Thus one finds accounts of the US machinery of government built on organiza-
tional politics, and neoinstitutional paradigms of internecine organizational
relations,8 that take that internecine nature as not merely universal but also as
intrinsic to institutional processes.9 The problem here is that these approaches
work very well for poorly coordinated systems but fail entirely to account for
more orderly and integrated governmental machineries such as the UK central
government.10
An Agenda for the Comparative Study of Intelligence / 5
At the same time, one can find attempts to articulate phenomena that are
putatively particular or unique, such as Michael Turner’s 2002 effort to ar-
ticulate a distinctive US intelligence identity or culture. Among the distinctive
features of the American approach to intelligence are an emphasis on secrecy,
‘‘intelligence exceptionalism’’ (the idea that intelligence is a different order of
information from other sources), the separation of intelligence and law enforce-
ment, a multiagency ‘‘confederal structure,’’ the separation of intelligence from
policy, its role in policy support, debates over the merits of in-depth analysis as
against the demands of current intelligence, and the provision of ‘‘accurately,
timely and relevant intelligence’’ as among the distinguishing features of US
intelligence. Although other elements of Turner’s model—such as the ‘‘pri-
macy’’ of analysis (i.e., the broad as opposed to narrow view of intelligence that
will feature throughout this volume), competitive intelligence, and the so-
called can-do attitude—might be more pronounced in America than elsewhere,
the rest are pretty uniform to the intelligence communities of all the Anglo-
American liberal democracies. Certainly they are just as true of the United
Kingdom as they are of the United States. Though they may indeed be charac-
teristics of the US system, they are hardly particular to it; they are not actually
distinctive.11 Consequently, some sort of comparative effort is required to test
whether an issue is common or purely localized.
Comparison as Diagnostic
However, comparative analysis can do more. It can help articulate judgments
of degree in qualitative matters where articulating quantitative metrics may be
intractable for various reasons. In the absence of an absolute cardinal measure
of, say, more or less effective interagency coordination, one can make an ordinal
judgment that this case is more well ordered than that one and then set about
identifying variations between them and the relevance and consequences of
these variations. Indeed, this is the strength of the fundamental logic of the
comparative method that was originally articulated by John Stuart Mill in the
nineteenth century, in particular his notion of arguments from difference and
from similarity—in other words, taking two outwardly similar cases with a dif-
ferent outcome and then asking what drives them apart, or taking two different
cases with similar outcomes and seeking to understand what drives them
together.
It can be very useful to visualize comparative analysis in this role as being
loosely analogous to resolving multiple parallel equations in algebra. In algebra
one arranges the assorted equations with their shared variables in a common
order and then performs some elementary arithmetic manipulations to one by
one eliminate variables from expressions on the left hand side of the system
until one is left with one value for the remaining variable. In principle the
methods of similarity and difference are likewise also about eliminating vari-
ables. Where one has similar cases with different outcomes, one is in the busi-
ness of knocking out features that the cases have in common in order to be left
with those points of difference, some or all of which may drive the cases to
different outcomes. Conversely, one may eliminate differences between a num-
ber of cases to identify those properties that they share, some or all of which
drive them to a common outcome. Unfortunately, like most social science, such
logical strategies are not much more than heuristic in practice and are virtually
impossible to apply with the same rigor as in mathematics. Part of the problem
is that parallel equations are only resolvable when one has at least the same
number of equations as variables; otherwise, one is left with an ineradicable
residual uncertainty in the need to express at least some variables in terms of
other variables. And the real-world, comparative study of humanity is actually
always a situation where the number of potential variables in society and histor-
ical events exceeds the number of possible cases for which one could even
realistically hope.
To make matters worse, the ‘‘variables’’ in social sciences—such as political,
economic, physical, and personal impact—are not what mathematicians call
countable. That is, they cannot be treated as wholly separate, individually dis-
crete items. Instead they all have overlapping, fuzzy edges (and often fuzzy cen-
ters), where economic matters are also inherently political ones, the conduct of
individual personalities is inextricable from their institutionalized background
expectations and worldviews, and so on. As a result, even cataloguing the vari-
ables or factors one is trying to eliminate or include is a pretty rough-and-
ready affair and could entirely be reasonably articulated very differently from
an alternative analytical point of view. In principle, however, like alternative
mathematical solutions to a common problem (e.g., using algebra, matrices, or
integral calculus to solve a rectangular volume), those alternative articulations
should be at least homomorphic; the terminology may differ, and the workings
on paper vary, but the essential shape of the answer one reaches is logically
equivalent even if rhetorically seemingly far removed. Like Marxist concepts of
‘‘ideology’’ and ‘‘material forces’’ or ‘‘superstructure’’ and ‘‘base’’ placed along-
side functionalist notions like Talcott Parsons’s duality of ‘‘norms’’ and ‘‘condi-
tions’’ (in his earlier formulations12) or ‘‘information’’ and ‘‘energy’’ in later
expressions, there is actually a common underlying and basic idea of how the
world works, despite variations in normative perspective (consequently, much
theoretical debate involves thinkers actually and regrettably talking past one
another).13 And so, at some level, articulating a consistent framework for analy-
sis is almost more important than which framework one employs. And in a field
like comparative analysis, where trying to step outside the bounds of parochial
viewpoints is one of the principal goals, this is a natural point of departure.
Intelligence and Commensurability

In its way, intelligence is a subject especially well suited to comparative analysis.
Unlike many areas of government, which may depend on profoundly different
basic forms of social organization, the various functions and principal logical
components or steps of the intelligence field tend to provide a relatively com-
mon set of activities that can be identified and differing implementations that
can be examined methodically. In its way intelligence bears a closer resem-
blance to the study of very concrete public policy tasks like road building and
national accounts than to conceptually subtler issues such as constitutions or
judiciaries. As with transportation policy, there are common basic problems
that different governments need to resolve. In building roads one must lay
something down that gets from A to B and manages the flow of traffic as safely
and efficiently as available resources permit. In intelligence one must acquire
information, figure out what it means, and make sure that it gets to the places
and people who need it because that is why the information is required in the
first place. It makes relatively little difference if the information is about drug
cartels for the police, foreign trade negotiations for a foreign or economic minis-
try, or uncovering putative counterrevolutionary conspiracies to reinforce the
stability of some nouvelle regime. Like the iron ingot that can be forged as
plough or sword, or even heated, beaten, and reshaped from one to the other,
intelligence is not intrinsically good or bad; it may serve democracy or tyranny,
and it may be conducted in many walks of life, both within and outside
government.
The kind of built-in commensurability that makes intelligence a good
medium for comparative analysis is illustrated by what might be most usefully
termed the ‘‘core functions’’ of intelligence. In whatever form, or whatever
social locus, certain basic tasks—requirements, collection, analysis, and dissem-
ination—constitute common problems for doing intelligence. These are often
arranged sequentially as an intelligence cycle, but their relationship is more
fluid than the sort of procedural clockwork that the idea of a cycle suggests. To
be sure, one might subdivide the steps in analysis between the interpretation of
information and identifying its implications, as does the American approach,
which distinguishes between ‘‘processing’’ and ‘‘analysis,’’ or one might distin-
guish between ‘‘analysis’’ and ‘‘assessment,’’ as is done in the United Kingdom;
but one must interpret and understand that which has been collected.14 There
might be differences over whether the collectors decide for themselves what to
collect or should be given shopping lists by the people who use that information
to make decisions. But no one has the resources to scrutinize everything, every-
where at once, so some decisions must be made about requirements and priori-
ties. Dissemination might be an integral part of the analytical process or might
be passed on to briefing officers elsewhere, but the information also must get to
the user. If used in this fashion, the core functions paradigm should constitute
a case of the optical illusion of universality discussed above, because it is not
about uprooting one particular parochial institutional practice and finding par-
allels elsewhere; it is about basic functional tasks that can be chopped, changed,
and redistributed, but without which intelligence, however organized and insti-
tutionalized, cannot happen.
There may be cross-connections and feedback loops between the functions
of intelligence, with raw reports being presented hurriedly to national leaders
or analysts telling the collectors what they need to know and what needs to be
collected to make their appreciations sound. But the essential logical steps do
not simply evaporate; like dividing oncoming traffic into separate lanes or even
ensuring that the road surface is reasonably flat and smooth, they are basic
requirements of the task at hand. And of course the core functions of intelli-
gence may be performed more or less efficiently or competently, and sometimes
(like maintaining proper road surfaces or actually obeying the highway code)
may not happen at all. The presence, absence, or adequacy will have palpable
consequences—the policy and operational equivalents of road mortality rates.
Within these core logical functions there are likewise similar tasks: Informa-
tion must be acquired from sources, exfiltrated, evaluated for both truthfulness
and content if true; fragmentary reporting must be collated, and its net meaning
and implications must be identified. Any nation operating surveillance satellites
must cope with common technological and procedural processes; and any
nation trying to break codes must grapple with similar technical and managerial
challenges. All these activities must be managed institutionally, paid for one
way or another, and somehow fit into wider machineries of government or
governance—whether as subordinate gofers providing information support to
the decisions of others in Anglo-American liberal democracies or as Soviet-
style underpinning architectures of social control and political order in what
John Dziak has called ‘‘counterintelligence states.’’15 In the last analysis, there-
fore, one of the virtues of the study of intelligence is that it often provides
common axes of comparison between outwardly diverse individual cases.
The Aim and Structure of This Book

In the intelligence field there has, of course, been a substantial amount of area
studies work, with a sizable literature evolving on the Soviet and post-Soviet
systems, and a lesser body of work on France and China. There has even been
some work done looking at Latin American intelligence structures. But unfortu-
nately there has been little real comparative scholarship across nations. This
volume provides a first step toward remedying this shortfall.
This book deals with the comparative study of matters of national intelli-
gence and security outside the Anglo-Saxon and great-power Western European
mainstream. Much of the existing literature on intelligence is heavily focused

on the traditional intelligence powers of the ABCA (America–Britain–
Canada–Australia) countries, with sidelines for the major European players:
France, Germany, and, of course, Russia. This edited volume takes a different
approach. First, it starts with the deep historical and cultural origins of the
intelligence services of India, China, the Arab world, and indeed Russia, the
last via a route not normally followed in describing this former Cold War adver-
sary of the West. In all these chapters the point of origin is not, as with most
volumes, the beginning of the last century, but the last millennium, and even
still further back in history. This section of each chapter is underlined by a
foray into the comparative cultural approach to intelligence and its relevance
for understanding intelligence practice today. Next, we produce a range of
authors writing on intelligence practice in places not normally discussed, but
that show organizations that have been significantly different from those in the
mainstream: Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Japan, Ghana, Argentina, Sweden, and
Finland. Various chapters deal with matters of intelligence history, current
practice, and security-sector reform.
In short, this book has two simple themes: First, in the deep cultural origins
of nation-states and peoples, we find the roots of particular state behaviors, and
particularly in intelligence, ‘‘the second-oldest profession.’’ And the second
theme is that intelligence practice is not isomorphic. Simply, this means that
just because an intelligence agency in country B has the same duties and aims
as those in Western countries, this does not mean that they will look or behave
alike. These two themes mark the two main parts of this book. Part II thus deals
with intelligence culture, and part III deals with current practice. Prefacing
both is part I, which, along with chapter 1, the agenda for the study, includes
a methodological examination, chapter 2, by Stephen Welch. This chapter
explains not only the difficulties but also the great payouts of an approach to
comparative political studies that places an emphasis on cultural issues. It shows
what is meant by ‘‘intelligence culture’’ and how this culture meaningfully
alters how we understand intelligence practice elsewhere—that is, outside the
North Atlantic axis with which we are overly familiar.
To begin the analysis in part II, the historical section of the volume, in
chapter 3, the noted Chinese analyst Ralph Sawyer places the work of Sun Tze
in the context of intelligence and likewise shows that, as the aphorism goes,
‘‘still waters run deep.’’ Then, in chapter 4, we learn from Philip Davies the
origins of Indian practice in Kautilya, the often-forgotten ‘‘Indian Sun Tze.’’ In
chapter 5 Kristian Gustafson explains the error of many in assuming that Rus-
sia’s security practices would be democratized after the fall of the Soviet Union.
He shows that Russian behavior has deeper roots in Russia’s Byzantine political
inheritance, rather than from its (historically) brief diversion into Marxist-
Leninist rule. And in chapter 6 the Saudi Arabian diplomat Abdulaziz Al-
Asmari outlines for the first time how deeply the ancient practice of the
Prophet Muhammad, and the early caliphs, has impressed the current practice
of intelligence in the Arab and Muslim world. Assumptions have always been
that Arab countries’ practice reflected that of their Soviet or American advis-
ers, but Al-Asmari makes a compelling case for indigenous origins.
To open part III, in chapter 7 Robert Johnson undertakes a fascinating
examination of Inter-Services Intelligence’s enigmatic role within the Pakistani
state. In chapter 8 Carl Anthony Wege, an experienced analyst on Iran and on
terrorist issues, shows us how Tehran’s intelligence bureaucracies and various
clerical factions have become pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which ties
back to Al-Asmari’s discussion of the Islamic practice of intelligence. In chap-
ter 9 the volume continues its tour around the world, as Peter Gill and Lee
Wilson tackle security-sector reform in postauthoritarian Indonesia. Then, in
chapter 10, Ken Kotani of the Japanese Defense Ministry discusses the place of
intelligence within Japan’s self-defense forces and their problems adapting to
new challenges. In chapter 11 Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, Emma Birikorang, and
Ernest Ansah Lartey of the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Centre in Accra cover
the development of intelligence culture in Ghana, one of Africa’s most stable
states, in a postcolonial context. In chapter 12 Eduardo Estévez discusses the
increasingly stable intelligence culture in postdictatorship Argentina. In chap-
ter 13 the Swedish scholar Wilhelm Agrell shows how, despite his nation’s
strong bureaucratic tradition and socialist tendencies, its intelligence structure
has remained remarkably independent and powerful in comparison with those
of other modern states. And in chapter 14, the Finnish researcher Lauri Holm-
ström shows that though still European, Finland’s intelligence practices differ
greatly from those of other Western countries; he does so by looking at the
Finnish Security Service, and at how protection from economic espionage has
become a matter of national security concern. The book concludes with part
IV, consisting of chapter 15, which discusses the legacies, identities, improvisa-
tion, and innovations of intelligence.
As a final point, the editors note that this volume would not have been
possible without the support of a seminar series grant (RES-451–26–0480) from
the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Sciences Research Council, which
funded the original workshop at which a number of the papers that now make
up this book were originally presented.
Notes
1. Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, The Missing Dimension: Government and Intelli-
gence in the 20th Century (London: Macmillan, 1984), 1.
2. See, e.g., Philip H. J. Davies, ‘‘The Missing Dimension’s Missing Dimension,’’ Public
Policy and Administration 25, no. 1 (January 2010). However, the ‘‘organization piece’’ can be
traced back much further, to the beginnings of contemporary intelligence studies in the mid-
1960s and to Harold Wilensky, Organizational Intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 1967).
3. The culture issue became an active area of discussion in early 2000s with three schol-
ars articulating broadly similar approaches and ideas entirely independently of one another.
See Philip Murphy, ‘‘Creating a Commonwealth Intelligence Culture: The View from Cen-
tral Africa 1945–1960,’’ Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 3 (Summer 2002); Philip
H. J. Davies, ‘‘Ideas of Intelligence: Divergent National Concepts and Institutions,’’ Harvard
International Review 24, no. 3 (Fall 2002); and Michael Turner, ‘‘A Distinctive US Intelli-
gence Identity,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17, no. 1 (January
2004). Also, however, a substantial earlier contribution was made by H. Bradford Westerfield,
‘‘American Exceptionalism and American Intelligence,’’ Freedom Review 28, no. 2 (Summer
1997).
4. Hilary Footitt, ‘‘Another Missing Dimension? Foreign Languages in World War II
Intelligence,’’ Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 3 (June 2010).
5. The secrecy surrounding intelligence was often as much a function of consensual
taboos as official secrets legislation. The 1976 Church Committee final report noted that
the emerging pressure for openness on intelligence resulted in the first instance from the
breakdown of just such a consensus (chiefly because of Vietnam and Watergate); see, e.g.,
Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation (Lexington: Univer-
sity Press of Kentucky, 1985), 11. A somewhat paradoxical comparison is the United King-
dom, where the Official Secrets Act 1911 covered the entirety of Civil Service activity and
the particular concerns about intelligence were little more than a somewhat tenuous special
case; see K. G. Robertson, Public Secrets (London: Macmillan, 1984); and K. G. Robertson,
‘‘The Politics of Secret Intelligence: British and American Practice’’ in British and American
Approaches to Intelligence, edited by K. G. Robertson (London: Macmillan, 1987).
6. See, variously, Angelo Codevilla, ‘‘Comparative Historical Experience of Doctrine
and Organization’’ in Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Analysis and Estimates, edited by
Roy Godson (Washington, DC: National Strategy Information Center, 1986; orig. pub.
1980); Adda Bozeman, ‘‘Political Intelligence in Non-Western Societies,’’ in Comparing For-
eign Intelligence, edited by Roy Godson (Washington, DC: National Strategy Information
Center, 1985); Angelo Codevilla, ‘‘Comparative Historical Experience of Doctrine and
Organization,’’ in Intelligence Requirements, ed. Godson; K. G. Robertson, ‘‘Preface,’’ in British
and American Approaches to Intelligence, by K. G. (Ken) Robertson (London: Macmillan,
1987), xii; Kevin M. O’Connell, ‘‘Thinking about Intelligence Comparatively,’’ Brown Jour-
nal of World Affairs 11, no. 1 (Summer–Fall 2004); and Peter Gill, ‘‘Knowing the Self, Know-
ing the Other: The Comparative Analysis of Security Intelligence,’’ in Handbook of
Intelligence Studies, edited by Loch Johnson (London: Routledge, 2009).
7. See, e.g., Mattei Dogan and Dominique Pelassy, How to Compare Nations: Strategies in
Comparative Politics (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1984), 6, 8.
8. In wider defense, the classic illustration of this approach is taken by Graham T. Alli-
son, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 1971).
In the 1990s Amy Zegart applied the neoinstitutional approach to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
National Security Council, and Central Intelligence Agency; Amy Zegart, Flawed by Design
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
9. That sense of intrinsic conflict is a fundamental approach to the later, neoinstitu-
tional derivatives of the original organizational politics paradigm, such as the ‘‘garbage can
theory’’ articulated by James G. March (a founder of the original organizational politics
model) and Johan P. Olsen; see, e.g., James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, ‘‘The New Institu-
tionalism: Organizational Facts in Political Life,’’ American Political Science Review 78 (1984):
734–49. Also see M. D. Cohen, ‘‘A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,’’ Adminis-
trative Science Quarterly 17 (1972).
10. Philip H. J. Davies, ‘‘Intelligence and the Machinery of Government: Conceptualizing
the Intelligence Community,’’ Public Policy and Administration 25, no. 1 (January 2010):
39–40.
11. Turner, ‘‘Distinctive US Intelligence Identity.’’ It is important to stress that the issue
here is not the accuracy of Turner’s account but the suggested particularity of the specific
characterization.
12. Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1937).
13. Talcott Parsons and Jackson Toby, eds., The Evolution of Societies (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979).
14. Although the American direction–collection–processing–analysis–dissemination ver-
sion of the intelligence cycle is commonly seen, the distinction between analysis and assess-
ment within a common superclass of ‘‘processing’’ in the NATO version of the cycle is
articulated most explicitly by Lord Butler, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruc-
tion (London: TSO, 2004), 10.
15. John J. Dziak, Chekisty: A History of the KGB (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,
1985).
CHAPTER 2
Political Culture
Approaches and Prospects
Stephen Welch
T
he idea of ‘‘intelligence culture’’ is not a free-standing invention of intelli-
gence studies but rather is a projection into it of numerous applications of
the concept of culture in the social sciences, most obviously the concept
of ‘‘political culture’’ that has developed primarily (though not exclusively)
within political science. Neither, however, is ‘‘political culture’’ a free-standing
invention of political science; rather, it is the projection into it of wider cur-
rents of thought that have eddied around the concept of culture since it first
began to be used by historians and social philosophers around the time of, and
largely in reaction to, the Enlightenment. In the idea of intelligence culture,
therefore, we find an application of an already applied concept.
It does not, however, follow that one can find out all one needs to know
about the concept of intelligence culture by looking at the concept of political
culture; nor, by the same token, that the history of the uses of the concept of
culture would be a complete guide to the issues surrounding the concept of
political culture in political science. When concepts are transplanted, they
embark on a new phase of growth within their new environment of discipline
or field. At the same time, if the borrowing is anything more than the most
superficial deployment of a portentous phrase, various genetic legacies from the
donor fields will continue to make their presence felt.
/ 13 /
14 / Stephen Welch
All this is by way of situating the task of this chapter, which is to outline
the concept of political culture for the purpose of elucidating that of intelli-
gence culture. It is also by way of acknowledging how presumptuous it would
be to dictate to intelligence studies from the perspective of political science
how it should conduct its business with the new concept, not least because
political science has struggled to define its own applied ‘‘culture’’ concept, polit-
ical culture, in a manner that frees it from its genetic inheritance. It is by no
means a complete guide to the usage of ‘‘intelligence culture’’ to lay out how
political culture has been understood. But nor is it irrelevant; and it is the
premise of this chapter that it may be helpful. And, incidentally, the possibility
that the development of the derivative concept within intelligence studies may
in turn, reciprocally, offer useful cues for thinking about political culture should
not be overlooked.
In this chapter, then, I outline the development and current condition of
political culture research and offer a few words about its prospects. In noting
how the disciplinary setting of political science both inherits and modifies dis-
putes over culture more generally, I imply the same possibilities for the field of
intelligence studies as it works with the new concept of intelligence culture,
possibilities that are further considered in the remaining chapters of this
collection.
The Positivist Mainstream of Political

Culture Research: The Almondian Paradigm
It has become conventional, despite one or two earlier uses of the phrase ‘‘politi-
cal culture,’’ to situate the beginning of political culture research in modern
political science with the proposal by Gabriel Almond in 1956 that political
culture be seen as ‘‘a particular pattern of orientations to political action,’’ in
which ‘‘every political system is embedded.’’ Of particular importance, he also
said: ‘‘Because political orientation involves cognition, intellection, and adapta-
tion to external situations, as well as the standards and values of the general
culture, it is a differentiated part of the culture and has a certain autonomy’’
(emphasis added).1 Almond did two things with this coinage: He invoked the
connotations of ‘‘culture,’’ and he simultaneously tried to contain them.
Almond’s standing as the founder of political culture research is further
supported by his coauthorship with Sidney Verba in 1963 of The Civic Culture,
the first major empirical study using the new concept.2 Here, indeed, was the
real founding moment of political culture research in the variant that became
its mainstream. We need not look closely at the book’s argument, but its aim
and method are of interest. Its aim was to contribute to the empirical theory of
democracy by discovering what cultural orientations were necessary in order for
Political Culture / 15
a stable democratic political system to be successfully embedded. Political cul-

ture research is thereby implicitly established as a part of the study of compara-
tive politics; its units of analysis are countries. Its method was to discover these
orientations by administering attitude questionnaires, and to infer from the
correlation of orientations with political systems the set of orientations, or the
political culture, appropriate for stable democracy.
With the survey extending to only five countries, one might not be entirely
persuaded by the discovered ‘‘correlation’’ between one particular type of politi-
cal culture, dubbed the ‘‘civic culture,’’ and the democratic outcome. Questions
have also been raised about the construction of the model of the civic culture
itself. Nevertheless, Almond and Verba’s book remains important, because it
established a template for future use of the political culture concept. According
to this template, political culture could be seen as a variable, in part at least as
an independent variable—that is, a quantifiable cause of democratic stability.
It was made quantifiable by virtue of a particular ‘‘operationalization’’ (mode of
measurement) of the concept: the attitude survey. Needless to say, much has
happened by way of methodological refinement, and expansion of empirical
coverage, of the concept of political culture since 1963, not to mention some
ups and downs in its scholarly reputation. But the basic idea of the measure-
ment of mostly national political cultures using surveys and the correlation of
the results with general political outcomes has persisted.
The idea of measuring political culture using attitude surveys might seem
rather obvious and unproblematic. But looked at more closely, it is a little odd.
Political culture is not supposed to be the same as public opinion. Whereas
public opinion accounts for the rise and fall of particular political leaders and
governments (in democracies, typically), political culture is supposed to
account for broader phenomena, such as the persistence of democracy itself. It
is also often said to be psychologically ‘‘deeper’’—for instance, to be ‘‘taken for
granted,’’ to consist of ‘‘values’’ as opposed to fleeting opinions, and in general,
as Almond put it, to ‘‘tend to persist in some form and degree and for a signifi-
cant period of time.’’3 Yet it is measured by the same method as highly volatile
public opinion. The operationalization is nevertheless a crucial step, because it
is by means of the attitude survey method that political science seeks to estab-
lish the ‘‘certain autonomy’’ of its concept of political culture from ‘‘the general
culture.’’
Among the research programs that have descended from the Almondian
paradigm (using this word in Thomas Kuhn’s sense of an exemplary scientific
achievement),4 one might mention international survey projects such as the
Eurobarometer and the World Values Survey, and studies that have used the
resulting data such as Inglehart’s theory of the replacement of ‘‘materialist’’
by ‘‘postmaterialist’’ values (values emphasizing ‘‘belonging, self-expression and
16 / Stephen Welch
quality of life’’ rather than distributive economic issues).5 Transitions to democ-

racy, such as in Southern Europe in the 1970s and Eastern Europe in the 1990s,
have produced not only an incentive to study political cultures in terms of their
suitability to democracy but also the opportunity to do so by administering
surveys, contributing to one of the periodic revivals of political culture
research.6 The most recent of these revivals is in the form of a multicollaborator
and multivolume research project called, along with its key book, Culture Mat-
ters, which has looked at the contribution of political culture to economic
development.7
Political culture research in the Almondian paradigm therefore represents a
major element of present-day political science. But its development has not
gone unchallenged. Doubts about it have stemmed from two opposite quarters.
From the perspective of rational choice theory, a perspective derived from eco-
nomics that has become prominent across the social sciences during the last
two decades or so, political culture research still betrays some of the unscientific
wooliness of the more general concept of culture, a term described by Raymond
Williams as ‘‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English
language.’’8 Rational choice theory (and its derivatives game theory and public
choice theory) denies the significance of cultural difference and instead seeks
to explain political outcomes in terms of the interaction of preferences under
different starting conditions but universally similar capacities for rational calcu-
lation.9 For critics of this persuasion, when political scientists invoke culture,
they line up alongside various nationalist and often undemocratic thinkers and
leaders who try to resist democratization by suggesting the immutability of cul-
ture—as, for example, in the ‘‘Asian values’’ debate.10
However, such politically motivated exaggerations notwithstanding, it is dif-
ficult to dispense altogether with the idea of cultural difference, so numerous
are the cases in which similar arrangements or interventions seem to produce
quite distinct outcomes in different settings. The idea of intelligence culture,
for example, responds to the fact that functionally very similar governmental
purposes are put into effect quite differently, even in closely related and partly
integrated settings such as the intelligence apparatuses of Britain and the
United States. Almondian political culture research responds in general by
seeking to define and operationalize political culture in a way that makes it
respectable from a scientific point of view and particularly in line with the
positivistic aspiration to validate causal theories by correlating quantitative
variables. Indeed, political culture can be seen as the expression of the maxi-
mum reach of the ‘‘behavioralist’’ movement in political science, which sought
to extend its coverage from formal to informal aspects of politics, to extend the
geographical scope of the discipline, and to do all this while retaining the claim
to scientific validity by using objective and replicable measurement tech-
niques.11 More pointedly, the use of the survey method allows this expansion of
the scope of political science to take place without threatening its distinctive-
ness vis-à-vis other disciplines; the survey data become the discipline’s proprie-
tary materials, and it thereby wards off the threat of becoming a branch of any
of the other disciplines, such as anthropology, that claim expertise in the analy-
sis of culture. Thus the concept of political culture was an important resource
in the disciplinary consolidation of political science in the postwar period.
The opposite quarter from which critique of the Almondian paradigm has
been launched finds not a failure to live up to the highest standards of scientific
(particularly quantitative) rigor, but rather an error in aspiring to them in the
first place.
The Interpretive Alternative in Political

Culture Research: The Geertzian Paradigm
An interpretive alternative within political culture research arose at an early
stage; indeed, it could already be glimpsed nascently in the second major piece
of empirical political culture research, Pye and Verba’s Political Culture and Polit-
ical Development. In this book’s conclusion, Verba advocated a ‘‘broad and rather
loose definition’’ of political culture, intended to ‘‘direct attention to a general
area of concern,’’ recognizing that ‘‘if political culture is so generally defined, it
is of little use to say that the political culture of nation X explains why it has
political structures of form Y.’’12 In this usage, political culture already ceases to
be identified as a variable, though it remains unclear what its use will be. One
explanation of the difference in approach from the Almondian one (which was
a noteworthy difference, coming from Verba, Almond’s Civic Culture coauthor)
was no doubt the task faced by the Pye and Verba volume, which focused on
developing countries, of characterizing political culture without the benefit of
surveys. The same difficulty faced a group of authors who applied the concept
of political culture to communist states during the 1970s, and in this setting a
more explicit defense of an alternative way of looking at political culture was
advanced. Robert Tucker is the chief contributor in this vein, asking in 1973,
‘‘Might not the central importance of a concept like that of political culture be
that it assists us to take our bearings in the study of the political life of a society,
to focus on what is happening or not happening, to describe and analyze and
order many significant data, and to raise fruitful questions for thought and
research—without explaining anything?’’ (emphasis in the original).13
Tucker is important as an early promoter in political science of the work
of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, particularly his collection of essays The
Interpretation of Cultures.14 In the methodological debate that arose in commu-
nist studies between those who favored following the Almondian paradigm and
those who advocated an interpretive approach, Geertz was the authority most
often cited by the latter.15 He has also been an important source for the cultural
18 / Stephen Welch
historians who began their rise to prominence in this discipline at about the
same time.16 And his arguments have recently been restated forcefully, though
somewhat forgetfully of their earlier deployment, in a critique of political cul-
ture research by Chabal and Daloz titled Culture Troubles, whose specific critical
target is the Culture Matters book and project mentioned earlier.17 Geertz there-
fore merits closer scrutiny.
In the political culture literature, Geertz’s most often cited essay is ‘‘Thick
Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.’’ Probably its most
quoted passages are these: ‘‘Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal
suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in
search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.’’ Also: ‘‘Culture is
not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions or proc-
esses can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they
can be intelligibly—that is, thickly—described.’’18
From these passages and similar ones in Geertz’s later essays (though not his
earlier ones), one can get a clear idea of to what Geertz objects.19 The Almond-
ian search for the political-cultural variable that can be correlated with out-
comes such as stable democracy—a ‘‘science in search of law’’ that construes
culture as a ‘‘power’’ impeding certain outcomes and promoting others—is
firmly rejected. Indeed, Geertz goes further in a later essay, when he announces:
‘‘Calls for ‘a general theory’ of just about anything social sound increasingly
hollow, and claims to have one megalomanic.’’20 He instead embraces a ‘‘semi-
otic’’ or ‘‘hermeneutic’’ conception of culture. Its implications are stated more
explicitly in his ‘‘Deep Play’’ essay, where he says that his approach ‘‘shifts the
analysis of cultural forms from an endeavor in general parallel to dissecting an
organism, diagnosing a symptom, deciphering a code, or ordering a system . . .
to one in general parallel with penetrating a literary text.’’21
Geertz’s skeptical pronouncements tap into long-standing doubts about the
possibility of a scientific and particularly quantitative grasp of human social life.
These doubts first surfaced when aspirations to create such a science became
prominent around the time of the Enlightenment, when hopes were high that
the progress in natural science exemplified by Isaac Newton could be replicated
in the study of society. Indeed, it was the concept of culture that was a principal
vehicle for the expression of these doubts among anti-Enlightenment, ‘‘roman-
tic,’’ and ‘‘historicist’’ writers. One of these, Johann Gottfried von Herder, was
indeed the first to coin the term ‘‘political culture,’’ which ironically therefore
first appeared as a reaction against the current of thought that was to lead to
Almond’s political culture paradigm.22
Needless to say, this reactive current of thought has gone through many
twists and turns between its emergence in the late eighteenth century and its
expression by Geertz.23 Indeed, the twists have continued; Geertz’s work itself
has been criticized by subsequent anthropological critics who find the concept
of culture to represent all too confident an assertion of the ‘‘readability’’ of the
alien social setting, as if it were a text.24 Little of this complex story seems to
be known to the promoters of Geertz’s position in political science, who despite
their extradisciplinary reach, are perhaps as keen as Almond was to confine
that reach to a narrow range—like his, it is really more of an extradisciplinary
border raid.
This tends to leave Geertz as an unchallenged authority for his followers in
the study of politics. An ‘‘endeavour . . . in general parallel with penetrating a
literary text’’ is, however, in need of considerable further specification when it
is adopted as a method in political science. In Chabal and Daloz’s recent and
forceful restatement of the Geertzian paradigm, the emphasis is recurrently on
‘‘context,’’ understood as semiotic or interpretive context; on discovering what
politics means, how it is understood, in the alien locality, and taking care not
to import alien understandings such as those of Western political science. There
is something salutary in the warning against ‘‘dogmatic theory’’ that these
authors issue, but like Geertz they take an antitheoretical posture too far. As
was noted above, Geertz’s supposition that the anthropologist can achieve a
grasp of the context by immersion in a narrow locality for a prolonged period
has itself been challenged by later anthropological critics; but the difficulty of
achieving such a grasp must be considerably greater when one’s field of study,
as for Chabal and Daloz (and something similar can be said for students of
politics generally), extends to a context as large as that of Sub-Saharan Africa.
In such a case the method must be quite different from ethnographic field-
work. One cannot experience a context as large as a global region or even a
nation-state directly (if indeed one can experience any social context directly),
and it is therefore necessary for the interpreter of culture or political culture on
such a scale to work indirectly.25 What this typically means is drawing on exist-
ing general descriptions such as those of historians, journalists, diplomats, and
so forth. One gets to a Geertzian understanding of social life as a text by literally
reading texts. This is the set of methods previously known by the name of ‘‘area
studies’’—the source, indeed, of the contributions made to political culture and
political development, among other examples of political culture research.26 To
be sure, the practitioner of area studies would, like an ethnographer, need to be
well versed in the area, ideally to have lived there for a time, and to be able to
speak the local language. Opposing universal generalizations would be his or
her stock in trade. But quite wide local generalizations would nevertheless be
made, as expressions of the synoptic grasp that area studies would claim of the
cross-disciplinary range of materials (from history to theology and philology)
upon which it necessarily drew.
In the use of such a method, a large and visible role is played by the interpre-
tive contribution of the analyst. When one speaks of the ‘‘interpretive context’’
20 / Stephen Welch
therefore, as the Geertzian paradigm bids us do, a deep equivocation arises as

to who is doing the interpreting. And the contribution of the observer ulti-
mately stands in need of some kind of warrant. In the Geertzian paradigm this
can never be anything other than the sheer authority of the writer, or of some
other writer who is his or her source. Hence the tendency for Geertz’s somewhat
oracular sayings to be taken as a kind of interpretive holy writ.
Beyond the Dialectic of Paradigms?

There are, then, two antithetical modes of political culture research, deriving
from the different ways in which culture has been imported into political sci-
ence, and ultimately from a larger and longer-standing dialectic in the way
culture itself has been understood. One must at once acknowledge that this
dialectic is not always as open to view as it is, for example, in Chabal and
Daloz’s explicit critique of the Almondian mainstream of political culture
research. Somewhat more common, in fact, is the attempt, usually implicit, to
combine these approaches. This tactic relies on the deployment of explanatory
vagueness at crucial moments. Lucian Pye, for instance, writes (under the head-
ing ‘‘In Defense of Political Culture,’’ in case the presence or absence of the
adjective is thought to make a difference) that ‘‘culture is . . . a remarkably
durable and persistent factor in human affairs. . . . [It] resides in the personality
of everyone who has been socialized to it.’’27 But if from the use of the word
‘‘factor’’ one were to imagine the possibility of comparatively testing explana-
tory potency, Pye warns us that ‘‘probably the greatest weakness of social scien-
tists is their general inability to weigh the relative importance of causal
factors.’’28 No more help is offered by Pye’s invocation of socialization and psy-
chology, for to illustrate what constitutes the personality basis of culture, Pye
offers the analogy of a musical tradition, with its ‘‘inner ‘structure’ or ‘logic’ ’’
and ‘‘inherent ‘fit.’ ’’29
One can indeed sympathize with the desire to get past the seemingly endless
dialectic of approaches to culture, but I do not think this simple juxtaposition
of interpretive and causal language is the way to do it. It involves an avoidance
of the hard questions in cultural explanation. How does culture cause political
outcomes? The positivistic answer is that culture equates to psychologically
deep values that, in a seemingly contradictory maneuver, we can access using
surveys. The interpretive answer is to avoid the question of causation altogether
by supposing the connectedness of all the observable activity in an ‘‘interpretive
context,’’ some kind of semiotic unity, which is ‘‘grasped’’ by the skilled and
immersed observer—though in the end causal questions always creep back in if
one wants to say that this unity somehow exists in the setting studied and not
just in the mind of the analyst.
Political culture, as I said at the outset, is an applied concept of culture in
the sense that it seeks to make culture account for a set of outcomes in a specific
social field, the field designated ‘‘political.’’ The same is true of concepts such
as ‘‘economic culture,’’ ‘‘policy culture,’’ ‘‘strategic culture,’’ and of course
‘‘intelligence culture.’’30 The narrower these get, the easier it seems to be to
ignore the kinds of questions I have been airing.31 One might, for instance,
think of intelligence culture as a causal factor or variable, without doing any
surveys. Instead, one might draw on existing surveys, or recount in the interpre-
tive style established notions of, for instance, what it means to be British. My
claim, however, is that the problem of the dialectic of culture should not be
ignored, because ultimately it is a challenge to the theoretical adequacy of the
explanations offered.
I do not, however, wish to end here, with a reminder of the contested back-
ground in political culture research from which the idea of intelligence culture
draws, and of the further background shared by all such applied theories of
culture in the dialectical history of this concept itself. Instead, I offer the sug-
gestion that concepts like intelligence culture might offer some resources for
getting beyond the dialectic in ways other than by simply ignoring it or
unthinkingly juxtaposing its alternatives. Perhaps it is not the case that first the
concept of culture must be sorted out, then that of political culture, and finally
the narrower applications such as intelligence culture. Perhaps some enlighten-
ment can flow in the other direction.
I can make this case only very briefly in the space available. The first thing
to notice is the narrowness of the application of the concept of culture that
the idea of intelligence culture represents. This means that when looking at
intelligence culture, one is looking at a very highly delimited field of activity,
so that pretty much unavoidably, one is looking at human behavior quite
closely. To be sure, the special qualities of intelligence as a field of study include
the secrecy that surrounds the production of intelligence, so that intelligence
organizations are not going to be the easiest organizations to study. Still, the
scope of the concept does provide a strong incentive to think of the study in
terms of specific organizational locations.
Here one might make a quick jump to the idea of ‘‘organizational culture’’
as a resource for the study of intelligence culture. This is not of immediate
benefit, however, given that the study of organizational culture itself is riven by
the same disputes that I have been describing in the case of political culture,
even if these are not quite so visible and explicitly stated. There is something
akin to an Almondian paradigm in the work of the influential writer Geert
Hofstede, who employs surveys and points toward the assertion that organiza-
tional behavior in organizations such as the large corporation (IBM) that he
studied is the expression of one of a small set of value orientations that these
surveys reveal.32 But it has received criticism in somewhat Geertzian vein that
‘‘cultures have meanings which depend upon the entire context. No one ele-
ment in that context dictates meaning to the whole.’’33 In turn, this position
22 / Stephen Welch
encounters the problem of characterizing the ‘‘entire context,’’ which inevita-

bly moves the emphasis back to the virtuosity of the interpreter.
So organizational culture does not, any more than political culture, provide
a finished off-the-peg concept. Nor does it necessarily capture the advantage of
close scrutiny to which I have alluded. The advantage of close scrutiny lies in
what one can bring into view. Two kinds of things become visible, I suggest,
when one looks closely at behavior inside any organization. One of these is
standard operating procedures, routines, or habits. The other is how these are
represented, justified, or accounted for. It is important not to confuse these two
orders of things. In seeking to describe political culture by conducting surveys,
for example, research in the Almondian paradigm assumes that what people
say, or can say, about their motivations (i.e., their values) sufficiently explains
their behavior. When there is a mismatch, it means that the behavior is not
genuine—that, for instance, it is coerced, as in communist states where severe
penalties were attached to behavioral nonconformity. A Geertzian approach,
conversely, might indeed look at the behavior itself, but it seeks to interpret its
meaning. If this is not to turn into a variant of the Almondian approach, by
doing a survey to find out the meaning, it has the sole recourse of calling on
the interpretive skill of the analyst, and in effect substituting his or her intuition
of the participants’ motives for their own. This happens all the more clearly
when the scale of analysis is such that ethnographic fieldwork is out of the
question, as in most applications of political culture under the area studies
heading. Here, behavior might not be closely observed at all; attention turns to
general descriptions in history, literature, or comparative religion.
When looking closely, however, one has the opportunity to observe behav-
ior directly. One can see that it has a continuous and habitual character not
because of the values that cause it or the meanings that inform it, but because
it is simply self-perpetuating, locked into relatively unthinking routines by the
mutual adaptation to them of a number of individuals who rely on each other’s
capacity for coordinated action within these routines. Of course, they also talk
about their behavior, rather incessantly in fact in ‘‘clerical’’ organizational set-
tings. But the talk about behavior, or the rules written down to control it, need
not exhaust or fully explain the reality of behavior. As Ludwig Wittgenstein
pointed out in one of his most influential arguments, a rule never provides
complete instructions for following it.34 There are always instances lying beyond
the ones whereby one learned the rule. Following a rule is therefore not capable
of analysis in terms of the content of the rule; ‘‘knowing how to go on’’ in
relation to the rule is rather a ‘‘technique,’’ a ‘‘custom,’’ or a ‘‘practice.’’
The insight that what one does, and what one says about what one does,
are two different things does not at first seem to be a very penetrating one. Yet
it has powerful implications for how one thinks about cultural continuity and
cultural differences. Indeed, it has implications for how one understands the
very idea of an attitude, and therefore treats the method of the attitude survey.
Social psychologists in recent years have developed some interesting arguments,
quite substantially backed up by experimental studies, to suggest that very often
behavior is caused by factors of which the actors are not consciously aware; that
the causes of one’s actions and the motives one can bring to mind as attitudes
when asked to do so are two sets of phenomena running in parallel.35 This
means that surveys reveal not motives—that is, the real causes of behavior—but
rather the prevailing modes of accounting for behavior in the relevant setting.
Such theories of ‘‘dual attitudes’’ or ‘‘automaticity’’ lead one toward a dualistic
understanding of culture, an understanding that recognizes the duality of cul-
ture itself. And a theoretical understanding of the duality of culture is some-
thing very different from a recurrent and unresolved dialectic of approaches to
culture.
The study of intelligence culture, and of other applied forms of cultural
study on this kind of scale, encourages the sort of bottom-up theoretical con-
struction of political culture and culture more generally that I have briefly been
recommending. That is, it need not start with an understanding of a broader
cultural setting and try to read this in a narrower sense—to read intelligence
culture in Britain, for example, as an expression of British cultural values. It
might very well note that these are invoked, in one form or another, in the
accounts that participants give of their organizational practice, particularly
when they are asked to compare their organizational practice with that in agen-
cies elsewhere. It does not follow, however, that these accounts are an adequate
explanation of the continuities and differences that can be observed in practice.
These may have a simpler explanation in skills and habits, and their mutual
coordination, that form the standard operating procedures of the setting. When
these encounter friction or disruptions—as they are likely to when, for instance,
interagency contacts occur—there will be a natural tendency to account for
them in terms of prevailing cultural stereotypes. Depending on what sort of
friction is occurring, these may be stereotypes of, for instance, the ‘‘American
way’’ of thinking; or in other cases of the military mindset as contrasted with
the civilian one. In some cases there will be an incentive for participants to
think of intelligence culture as nationally varying; in others, one would tend to
think of it as a sui generis type of organizational culture (defined, perhaps, by
its vocation of secrecy or its concern with ‘‘national security’’), to be contrasted
with others not so defined. These are differences in accounts; they need not
constitute the actual causes of the observed frictions. Both the accounting and
the behavior of which it is an accounting constitute the dual reality of the
cultural process. Close scrutiny of this process in a narrow, applied context is
the particular advantage that the study of intelligence culture might be able to
realize.
24 / Stephen Welch
Concepts of Culture
To conclude, I outline the principal lines of debate within political science as
to the definition and use of the concept of political culture. This concept is an
application of the broader concept of culture, though the extent to which the
connotations of the broader concept should feed into the narrower one is one
of the main points of controversy. Intelligence culture is, in turn, an application
of the idea of political culture in the specific field of intelligence studies. As in
other applied fields of cultural analysis, such as strategic culture, the extent to
which serious attention is paid to the debates in the donor discipline is likely
to vary. My argument has been, however, that they are indeed relevant, and
problematic, for the new field.
Despite this, and more positively, I have argued that the study of intelligence
culture need not wait upon the unlikely prospect of a resolution of the long-
standing dialectic of cultural analysis. There may be ways, offered by the nar-
rowness of the setting of intelligence culture studies and the close scrutiny it
affords, of thinking differently about culture in this setting. The overt organiza-
tional design, the mission statements and explicit rules, and the everyday justi-
ficatory talk of actors in the intelligence setting are all worthy of study as the
discursive aspects of intelligence culture. So, too, are the operating procedures,
habits, and routines that will always outrun what the rules can encompass.
Whether the participants’ own discursive rendering of these behavioral patterns
emphasizes their national, intelligence, or specific agency characteristics, or
perhaps numerous others, depends on the kind of frictions that arise between
different sets of practices, and the availability of ways of accounting for them.
Such points of friction therefore become exceptionally interesting sites of study.
And in the field of intelligence, with its links to national security, its distinctive
reliance on secret information, and its proliferation of agencies—all in the
context of a perceived global threat that appears to mandate maximum coordi-
nation—such sites are not difficult to find.
Notes
1. Gabriel A. Almond, ‘‘Comparative Political Systems,’’ Journal of Politics 18, no. 3
(August 1956): 391–409, at 396.
2. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democ-
racy in Five Nations, abridged ed. (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989; orig. pub. 1963).
3. Gabriel A. Almond, ‘‘Communism and Political Culture Theory,’’ Comparative Politics
15, no. 2 (January 1983): 127–38, at 127.
4. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1970), 10f.
5. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Politi-
cal Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
6. See, e.g., Frederick J. Fleron Jr., ‘‘Post-Soviet Political Culture in Russia: An Assess-
ment of Recent Empirical Investigations,’’ Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 2 (March 1996):
225–66.
7. See Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, Culture Matters: How Values
Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000). And for a summary, see Lawrence E.
Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
8. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. (London:
Fontana, 1983), 87.
9. For a sample of these critiques, see William H. Reisinger, ‘‘The Renaissance of a
Rubric: Political Culture as Concept and Theory,’’ International Journal of Public Opinion
Research 7, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 328–52; and Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller, ‘‘A
Renaissance of Political Culture?’’ American Journal of Political Science 40, no. 3 (August
1996): 632–59. For a defense of political culture research against rational choice theory, see
Harry Eckstein, ‘‘A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,’’ American Political Science Review
82, no. 3 (September 1988): 789–804; and Harry Eckstein, ‘‘Culture as a Foundation Con-
cept for the Social Sciences,’’ Journal of Theoretical Politics 8, no. 4 (October 1996): 471–97.
For an attempt to combine political-cultural and rational choice approaches, see Ruth Lane,
‘‘Political Culture: Residual Category or General Theory?’’ Comparative Political Studies 25,
no. 3 (October 1992): 362–87.
10. See Fareed Zakaria and Lee Kuan Yew, ‘‘Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee
Kuan Yew,’’ Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (March–April 1994): 109–26; and Richard Robison,
‘‘The Politics of Asian Values,’’ Pacific Review 9, no. 3 (1996): 309–27.
11. See Stephen Welch, The Concept of Political Culture (London: Macmillan, 1993), 73.
12. Sidney Verba, ‘‘Conclusion: Comparative Political Culture,’’ in Political Culture and
Political Development, edited by Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1965), 518.
13. Robert C. Tucker, ‘‘Culture, Political Culture, and Communist Society,’’ Political Sci-
ence Quarterly 88, no. 2 (June 1973): 173–90, at 179.
14. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London: Hutchinson, 1975).
15. For discussions of this debate, see Archie Brown, ed., Political Culture and Communist
Studies (London: Macmillan, 1984); and Stephen Welch, ‘‘Issues in the Study of Political
Culture: The Example of Communist Party States (review article),’’ British Journal of Political
Science 17, no. 4 (October 1987): 479–500.
16. William H. Sewell Jr., ‘‘Geertz, Cultural Systems, and History: From Synchrony to
Transformation,’’ Representations 59 (Special Issue: ‘‘The Fate of Culture: Geertz and
Beyond’’; Summer 1997): 35–55.
17. Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Culture Troubles: Politics and the Interpretation
of Meaning (London: Hurst, 2006).
18. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 3–30, at 5, 14.
19. In the earlier essays gathered in Interpretation of Cultures, apart from another famous
one, ‘‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,’’ Geertz pays a good deal of homage to
Talcott Parsons and Piotr Sorokin, both social theorists who sought to incorporate culture
into explanatory theory.
20. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (London:
Fontana Press, 1993), 4.
21. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 412–53.
26 / Stephen Welch
22. F. M. Barnard, ed., J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, translated by F. M.

Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
23. Isaiah Berlin has been an important documenter of these twists and turns; see, e.g.,
Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, edited by Henry Hardy (Lon-
don: Pimlico, 1997).
24. See, e.g., James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and
Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); and Lila Abu-Lughod,
‘‘The Interpretation of Culture(s) after Television,’’ Representations 59 (Summer 1997): 109–
34. And for a response, see Christoph Brumann, ‘‘Writing for Culture: Why a Successful
Concept Should Not Be Discarded,’’ Current Anthropology 40 (Supplement, Special Issue:
‘‘Culture: A Second Chance?’’ 1999): S1–S27.
25. I do not think we can, any more than we can read a literary text without presupposi-
tions, as to, for instance, its genre and its period, and more generally as to the role of litera-
ture in our lives.
26. See, e.g., Lucian W. Pye with Mary W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural
Dimension of Authority (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985);
and Nicolai N. Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of Political Culture
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
27. Pye, Asian Power and Politics, 19ff.
28. Ibid., 13.
29. Ibid., 20ff.
30. For examples of the first three, see Paul Egon Rohrlich, ‘‘Economic Culture and For-
eign Policy: The Cognitive Analysis of Economic Policy Making,’’ International Organization
41, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 61–92; Jeremy Richardson, Policy Styles in Western Europe (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1982); and Alan Macmillan and Ken Booth, ‘‘Appendix: Strategic
Culture—A Framework for Analysis,’’ in Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region, edited
by Ken Booth and Russell Trood (London: Macmillan, 1999), 363–72.
31. E.g., in their ‘‘framework for analysis’’ of strategic culture, Alan Macmillan and Ken
Booth note briefly both the problem of the relationship of strategic culture and political
culture, and problems of definition in the latter—but do not seem to find these an impedi-
ment to research on strategic culture. Macmillan and Booth, ‘‘Appendix: Strategic Culture,’’
366.
32. Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Val-
ues (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980).
33. Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars, ‘‘Response to Geert Hofstede,’’
International Journal of Intercultural Relations 21, no. 1 (February 1997): 149–59, at 152.
34. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), §§ 143–242. In the next sentence in the text, the citations
are as follows: ‘‘technique,’’ § 150; a ‘‘custom,’’ § 198; and a ‘‘practice,’’ § 202.
35. See works by John Bargh, Timothy Wilson, and Daniel Wegner, and their respective
collaborators, and in particular John A. Bargh and Melissa J. Ferguson, ‘‘Beyond Behaviorism:
On the Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes,’’ Psychological Bulletin 126, no. 6 (Novem-
ber 2000): 925–45; Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2002); and Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Uncon-
scious (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). For an earlier discussion of some
of these arguments in relation to political culture research, see Stephen Welch, ‘‘Political
Culture, Post-Communism and Disciplinary Normalisation: Towards Theoretical Recon-
struction,’’ in Political Culture and Post-Communism, edited by Stephen Whitefield (New
York: Palgrave, 2005), 105–24.
PART II
Intelligence Culture outside

the Anglosphere
CHAPTER 3
Subversive Information
The Historical Thrust of Chinese Intelligence
Ralph D. Sawyer
Spying transcends human affairs. Spies must successfully undertake

actions beyond the capability of other men. How can their achieve-
ments be compared with merely assaulting a city, occupying terrain,
capturing an enemy’s flag, or killing a general? Their greatness is
incalculable, beyond words.
—Shi Zimei
F
or more than twenty-five-hundred years Chinese intelligence activities
have been marked by vibrant theorizing and dedicated practice—the for-
mer encompassed within the essentially continuous military writings; the
latter implemented throughout the virtually interminable warfare that plagued
China, whenever its nominal geopolitical unity was shattered and millenarian
movements ravaged the land.1 Internally directed security measures also prolif-
erated in both the fragmented states and overarching dynasties as the emperor
and local rulers sought to control not only the populace but also powerful
regional factions, royal family members, court minions, and the bureaucracy at
large. Surprisingly, rather than being dismissed as relics from an antique age,
they continue to be scrutinized by the military institutions of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) for viable methods and applicable techniques that
/ 29 /
30 / Ralph D. Sawyer
are in accord with the thrust to formulate and excel at a uniquely Chinese way
of warfare.2
Spies reportedly assisted the Shang Dynasty in overthrowing the Xia
Dynasty; oracular inscriptions indicate that intelligence gathering and report-
ing date back to the middle Shang (1200 bce), and historical vestiges confirm
that agents were employed in the Spring and Autumn Period (722–481), a time
when warfare dramatically escalated. Without accurate information of enemy
activities, any of the emergent states then increasingly entangled in the era’s
multiparty conflict would almost have certainly perished. Battlefield develop-
ments and the growing severity of the threat prompted experienced command-
ers, governmental authorities, and political thinkers to analyze military clashes
and ponder collateral diplomatic incidents in a quest to discern replicable
patterns and devise essential measures. Unfortunately, the earliest military
writings, which were essentially protobooks consisting of often-enigmatic
comments written on narrow bamboo strips, now exist only as scattered pro-
nouncements embedded in later works. However, when coupled with fragments
preserved in the first historical chronicles, the evolving nature of intelligence
activities visible in China’s earliest surviving military treatise—the Art of War,
attributed to the infamous Sunzi (referred to as Sun Tze elsewhere in this
volume), perhaps the world’s first professional security adviser—becomes
apparent.3
The Spring and Autumn Period

The dire situation confronting most rulers at the end of the Spring and Autumn
Period and the beginning of the aptly named Warring States Period (403–221,
during which Qin subjugated the remaining twelve states) prompted Sunzi to
commence the Art of War by asserting that ‘‘warfare is the greatest affair of
state, the basis of life and death, the Dao to survival and extinction.’’4 He then
appropriately concluded that not only ‘‘must it be pondered and analyzed,’’ but
also that it could not be undertaken without detailed planning and a compre-
hensive analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of both parties. In the
world’s first known net assessment procedure, detailed calculations were to be
undertaken that comparatively weighed seven major factors: ‘‘Which ruler has
the Dao? Which general has greater ability? Who has gained the advantages of
Heaven and Earth? Whose laws and orders are more thoroughly implemented?
Whose forces are stronger? Whose officers and troops are better trained? Whose
rewards and punishments are clearer?’’5
Later writers would expand the list of obligatory categories, but even in the
Art of War some forty mutually defined or otherwise interrelated pairs are
already apparent, including Heaven/Earth, hunger/satiety, rested/exhausted,
ordered/disordered, fearful/confident, and lax/alert. Deciding whether to under-
take an expeditionary campaign or engage an enemy in battle therefore became
Subversive Information / 31
a question of rationally determining the prospects for victory, all combat being
eschewed without certainty that the enemy can be conquered. Furthermore,
emotional factors should never become proximate causes for warfare: ‘‘If it is
not advantageous, do not move. If objectives cannot be attained, do not employ
the army. Unless endangered do not engage in warfare. The ruler cannot mobi-
lize the army out of personal anger. The general cannot engage in battle because
of personal frustration. When it is advantageous, move; when not advantageous,
stop. Anger can revert to happiness, annoyance can revert to joy, but a van-
quished state cannot be revived, the dead cannot be brought back to life.’’6
In concert with what might be termed the ‘‘ruthless practice of efficient
warfare’’ and the realization that ‘‘warfare is the Dao of deception,’’ the Art of
War stressed manipulating the enemy and shaping, or at least exploiting, the
battle space.7 Enemies must be tricked and maneuvered, lured and enticed,
frustrated and enervated until a local tactical imbalance can be created and the
army’s strategic power can be applied in an overwhelming manner analogous
to a whetstone crushing an egg.8 Effecting these measures requires thorough
knowledge of the enemy and oneself:
If I know our troops can attack but do not know the enemy cannot be attacked,
it is only halfway to victory. If I know the enemy can be attacked but do not
realize our troops cannot attack, it is only halfway to victory.
Knowing that the enemy can be attacked and knowing that our army can
affect the attack, but not knowing the terrain is not suitable for combat, is only
halfway to victory. One who truly knows the army will never be deluded when
he moves, never be impoverished when initiating an action.
Thus it is said if you know them and know yourself, your victory will not be
imperiled. If you know Heaven and know Earth, your victory can be complete.9
An often-quoted passage from the Art of War reiterating the need for mili-
tary and political intelligence elucidates some of the essentials: ‘‘The prosecu-
tion of military affairs lies in according with and learning in detail the enemy’s
intentions. Anyone who does not know the plans of the feudal lords cannot
forge preparatory alliances. Anyone who does not know the topography of
mountains and forests, ravines and defiles, wetlands and marshes cannot maneu-
ver the army. Anyone who does not employ local guides will not secure advan-
tages of terrain. Anyone who does not know one of these four or five cannot
command the army of a hegemon or a true king.’’10
Although often ignored in actual practice, the Art of War’s behest would be
reiterated by subsequent military and political thinkers in various forms, includ-
ing Qi’s well-known adviser, Guan Zhong: ‘‘Being ignorant about estimations
and calculations but yet wanting to undertake military affairs is like wanting to
cross over a dangerous river without a boat or oars. Anyone who is not knowl-
edgeable about the enemy’s government cannot make plans against them; any-
one who is not knowledgeable about the enemy’s true situation cannot
constrain them with agreements; anyone who is not knowledgeable about the
enemy’s generals cannot mobilize the army first; and anyone who is not knowl-
edgeable about the enemy’s officers cannot deploy an army against them.’’11
An esoteric text known as the Taibai Yinjing attributed to Li Quan states,
‘‘When the enemy is quiet observe their yang aspects (visible behavior), when
they move investigate their yin (silent, hidden) side. First observe their traces,
thereafter know the enemy’s mind.’’12 The dynasty’s most successful early mili-
tary commander, Li Jing, similarly stressed the importance of deliberately
acquiring knowledge of the enemy: ‘‘The measures for achieving decisive vic-
tory lie in investigating the opposing general’s talent and abilities; analyzing
the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses; determining the configuration and stra-
tegic advantages of terrain; observing the advantages of the appropriate
moment; and first being victorious, only thereafter engaging in combat and
defending positions without losing them. This is termed the Dao for certain
victory.’’13
Several later writers, echoing Sunzi’s broad condemnation of commanders
who failed to undertake the necessary intelligence-gathering efforts, also acerbi-
cally condemned rulers. In the late Song Dynasty (960–1279), Shi Zimei con-
clusively attacked both of them:14
Armies remain locked in a standoff for years to fight for victory on a single day,
yet generals begrudge bestowing ranks and emoluments of one hundred pieces
of gold and therefore do not know the enemy’s situation. This is the ultimate
inhumanity. Such a person is not a general for the people, an assistant for a
ruler, or the arbiter of victory.
Rulers easily acquire things, but the enemy’s true situation is especially dif-
ficult to know. If easily acquired things such as money and gold can be employed
to gain elusive information, how can anyone be parsimonious and not give them
in exchange? Furthermore, victory or defeat may be decided on a single momen-
tous day, so being incapable of employing agents to spy upon the enemy’s situa-
tion would be the greatest inhumanity!’’
In about the mid–sixteenth century an unknown author proclaimed that
‘‘any general who, having assumed the mantle of authority over the Three
Armies and controlling the fate of ten thousand men, confronts fierce enemies
or pursues them into the wilds to engage in a standoff but does not know the
enemy’s situation, is a blockhead. When two forces struggle to control each
other, anyone who does not undertake spycraft techniques is a wild animal.’’15
In ancient China, particularly during the Shang Dynasty, the prospects for
victory and thus the advisability of undertaking military actions were deter-
mined by consulting the ancestors through divination, a practice that contin-
ued to have a major impact in the Western Zhou Dynasty and often thereafter
when the Yi Jing came to be employed.16 However Sunzi, who advanced a strong
economic argument for deploying agents in the first paragraphs of his ‘‘Employ-
ing Spies,’’ banished esoteric methods in favor of human agency by boldly
asserting that ‘‘the means by which enlightened rulers and sagacious generals
moved and conquered others, that their achievements surpassed the masses, was
advance knowledge. Advance knowledge cannot be gained from ghosts and
spirits, inferred from phenomena, or projected from the measures of Heaven,
but must be gained from men, for it is the knowledge of the enemy’s true
situation.’’17
For Sunzi, this knowledge was both broad and highly detailed: ‘‘You must
first know the names of the defensive commander, his assistants, staff, door
guards, and attendants for any armies that you want to strike, cities you want
to attack, and men you want to assassinate.’’18 Therefore, only human agents
operating in the enemy’s environment can possibly acquire it. ‘‘You must have
your spies search out and learn them all.’’ In the middle of the fourth century
bce, the ‘‘Military Methods’’ compiled by Sun Bin, Sunzi’s brilliant descendant,
thus emphasized the importance of knowledge gained through spy activities:
‘‘One who does not use spies will not be victorious.’’19
The late Sung Dynasty Unorthodox Strategies, a much-pondered text in
recent PRC military science reformulation, similarly asserts: ‘‘Whenever plan-
ning to conduct a major military expedition you should first employ spies to
determine the enemy’s troop strength, emptiness or fullness, and movement
and rest, and only thereafter mobilize the army. Great achievements can then
be attained and you will always be victorious in combat.’’20 Continuity through
the Ming Dynasty is apparent in this paragraph from the mid-sixteenth-century
Toubi Futan, which coincidentally indicates the fundamentally active nature of
Chinese agents:
Attacking other states through their ruler is more intelligent than attacking
them yourself. Plotting against people through their ministers is more intelligent
than plotting against them yourself. Dispersing alliances and bringing allies
together in conflict is more intelligent than engaging them in combat yourself.
In this fashion you can attack others through their ruler, plot against men
through their ministers, disperse their alliances and instigate conflict among
them. But without agents, how can you investigate their true nature, without
spies how can you employ these techniques? Moreover, whenever two armies
stand off against each other, it is not just we who plot against the enemy, but
also the enemy who plots against us. To fail to gain accurate information about
the enemy’s situation but recklessly engage in battle is senseless.21
Such pronouncements are not just found in the military treatises but also War-
ring States Period works on statecraft, such as the work attributed to Han Feizi,
sometimes contemptuously disparaged in the West as ‘‘China’s Machiavelli.’’
Treatise on Spycraft
Whenever the Art of War was actually completed, the laconic ‘‘Employing
Spies’’ not only remains the world’s first theoretical treatise on spycraft but was
also the progenitor of all subsequent Chinese thought about covert agents and
activities. Later writers would expand the categories, detail the methods, offer
countermeasures, and even contradict the basic formulations, but never ignore
them.22 Minus the paragraphs already cited, this brief chapter may be translated
as follows:
When you send an army of a hundred thousand forth on a campaign, marching
them out a thousand li, the expenditures of the common people and the contri-
butions of the feudal house will be one thousand pieces of gold per day. Those
inconvenienced and troubled both within and without the border, who are
exhausted on the road or unable to pursue their agricultural work, will be seven
hundred thousand families.
Armies remain locked in a standoff for years to fight for victory on a single
day, yet generals begrudge bestowing ranks and emoluments of one hundred
pieces of gold and therefore do not know the enemy’s situation. This is the
ultimate inhumanity. Such a person is not a general for the people, an assistant
for the ruler, or the arbiter of victory.
Thus there are five types of spies to be employed: local spy, internal spy,
turned spy [double agent], dead [expendable] spy, and the living spy. When all
five are employed together and no one knows the Tao of their employment, it is
termed ‘‘spiritual methodology.’’ They are a ruler’s treasures.
Local spies employ people from the local district. Internal spies employ their
officials. Double agents employ the enemy’s spies. Expendable spies employ
them to spread disinformation outside the state. Provide our expendable spies
with false information and have them leak it to enemy agents.23 Living spies
return with their reports.
Thus, of all the Three Armies’ affairs, no relationship is closer than with
spies; no rewards are more generous than those given to spies; no affairs are
more secret than those pertaining to spies.24
Unless someone has the wisdom of a Sage, he cannot use spies; unless he
is benevolent and righteous, he cannot employ spies; unless he is subtle and
perspicacious, he cannot perceive the substance in intelligence reports. It is
subtle, subtle! There are no areas in which one does not employ spies.
If the mission is exposed before it has begun, the spy and all those he
informed should be put to death.
You must search for enemy agents who have come to spy on us. Tempt them
with profits, instruct and retain them, thereby obtaining and employing double
agents. Through knowledge gained from them you can recruit both local and
internal spies. Through knowledge gained from them the expendable spy can
spread his falsehoods and be used to misinform the enemy. Through knowledge
gained from them our living spies can be employed as the moment requires.
The ruler must know these five aspects of espionage work. Because such
knowledge invariably depends on turned spies, you must be generous to double
agents.
In antiquity, when the Shang arose they had Yi Yin in the Xia and when
the Zhou arose they had Lu Ya in the Shang. Thus enlightened rulers and saga-
cious generals who are able to get intelligent spies invariably attain great
achievements. This is the essence of the military, what the Three Armies rely
on to move.
Although Sunzi’s designations adequately characterize each agent’s role,

much can be learned from later commentaries and interpretations. First of all,
‘‘local agents’’ are far more encompassing than at first seems apparent, at least
in part because of the historical examples that would be cited in subsequent
writings and mentioned in the Art of War itself, Yi Yin and the Tai Gong (Lu
Ya). For example, the Taibai Yinjing lists seven examples through which ‘‘rulers
became emperors’’: ‘‘In antiquity when the Shang arose, Yi Yin was a cook in
the Xia; when the Zhou arose, the Tai Gong was a fisherman in the Shang;
when the Qin established imperial rule, Li Si was a hunter in Shandong; when
Han Gaozu ventured forth, Han Xin was an exiled soldier from Chu; and Cao
Cao found Xun Huo, Yuan Shao’s cast-off minister. Sima Tan became emperor
of Jin because Jia Chong had been entrusted with the government in Wei, while
Wei itself arose because Cui Hao had made Jin his home.’’
Rather than agents recruited in enemy areas who then engage in clandestine
spy work within a foreign state, a function normally performed by internal spies,
local spies or guides are knowledgeable individuals temporarily resident outside
their native habitant. They therefore included emigrants, experienced travelers,
and even peripatetic advisers who routinely integrate information about other
states into their persuasions. China’s first spies were actually exiles, essentially
defectors who could provide valuable general information about government
officials and local configurations of terrain. Du You commented that ‘‘by relying
on the enemy’s local people, one learns the enemy’s internal and external
affairs, his vacuities and substantialities.’’25
In contrast, he further noted that ‘‘living spies’’ are ‘‘often talented individu-
als of exceptional perspicacity who can be dispatched to foreign states, some-
times in diplomatic guise, to observe and then report back. They normally
comprise the greatest number of agents so as to provide the state with multiple
means for acquiring data. Rely on those among the enemy who have lost their
government positions, such as the sons and grandsons of those who suffered
corporeal punishment and families who have been fined. Rely on fissures in
order to successfully recruit them.’’ Zhang Zhao, another famous commentator,
advised that ‘‘among the enemy’s officials, there will be those who resent having
been dismissed for some offense, favorites and concubines no longer loved, those
who are not employed, and those who lack conviction and love profits. All of
them can be secretly lured in and forced to inform us about the enemy’s secret
affairs.’’
The two categories of expendable and double or turned agents occasioned
the most conceptual difficulty throughout Chinese history and therefore the
most extensive discussion. Sunzi’s original concept of expendable agents being
spies deliberately dispatched on missions likely to result in their deaths became
somewhat muddled over the centuries and eventually encompassed any agent
who died in the performance of their mission. It was generally assumed that to
be effective the agent would never know that they were about to be sacrificed
to accomplish some greater goal, and many of the most famous exemplars were
in fact unaware that they were doomed.
Enemy agents could also be deliberately deceived, provided with false infor-
mation and specious plans that they would report back to their masters, causing
them to be executed for their incompetence or apparent collusion with the
enemy when events unfolded or the truth was unveiled. Thus Du You com-
mented, ‘‘Undertake feigned and false affairs outside the state and leak them
about. Inform our agents about something and dispatch them into the enemy’s
midst so that they will divulge it when captured. When the enemy, believing
their accounts, follows up but our actions differ, the spy will be executed.’’
Zhang Zhao, who took a somewhat different approach, stated that ‘‘expendable
agents transmit disinformation outside the state. Have our spies learn of some-
thing and transmit it to the enemy’s agents. When their spies hear of it they
will report back to the enemy.’’ Citing this, Shi Zimei concluded that ‘‘this
should be understood as creating some sort of secret affair that is leaked to our
spies. Our spies in turn see that it is leaked to the enemy’s agents so that the
enemy will learn of this feigned affair. When it proves to be a ruse, the enemy’s
spies will be executed!’’ Even though they hardly fit into the category of
‘‘expendable agents,’’ the enemy’s spies are thus eliminated.
Sunzi’s definition of double or turned agents was premised upon them hav-
ing been dispatched by the enemy and subsequently and, most important, con-
sciously turned. However, as has already become apparent, the concept came to
entail the manipulation of enemy personnel whether they were active agents or
not, consciously recruited or not. Sunzi highly esteemed true double agents
because they were the most likely to provide extensive, detailed information
about the enemy’s internal situation. Shi Zimei subsequently observed:
Zhang Zhao said that ‘‘we employ agents to spy on others and other men also
employ agents to spy on us. It is vitally necessary to preserve deep secrecy and
not leak out the crux of affairs. For this reason when the enemy has agents spy
on us, we must strive to learn of their coming and turn them around to our own
use.’’ Probably it is normal human emotion that if we satisfy their desires they
will do what we want. If we coerce them with their anxieties, they will not
know that we are using them. When an agent who comes to spy on us can be
turned around and employed, it is as a double agent. If we are to recruit him to

work for us and spy on them, we must have techniques. Accordingly, lure him
with profits or lead and release him. In order to entice him through his desires,
you cannot begrudge rank, salary, or the hundred gold coins that will satisfy his
desires. To lead and release him, let him see our encampment’s fortifications
and actions in order to coerce him with anxiety. Open and lead him with affairs,
and then release him to report back.
Li Quan, writing in the Taibai Yinjing, advised that the enemy’s spies can be
converted into local guides: ‘‘We can capitalize upon the men dispatched by
the enemy to observe our defects by offering them higher ranks and making
their salaries more generous. Thereafter, investigate their words and compare
them with actuality. If they prove accurate, you can then employ them; if spe-
cious, you can execute them. Employ them as ‘local guides.’ ’’26
In the late Ming Dynasty, more than two thousand years later, the innova-
tive military thinker Jie Xuan expanded the list of jian, a term normally under-
stood as referring to human agents, to encompass several techniques and a few
inanimate objects. His explanation, which again shows the aggressive activities
envisioned for agents, marks the culmination of the intelligence tradition in
China:27
Those who enter among the enemy and implement unorthodox measures are
termed ‘‘agents.’’28 Agents strike fear in the enemy’s general staff, slay the ene-
my’s beloved generals, and cause chaos in the enemy’s estimates and strategies.
The methods for employing agents include living, dead [expendable], written,
civil, rumors, prophecy, songs, bribes, things, rank, the enemy, villagers [local
guides], friends, women, good will, and awe.
Spies [die] who are dispatched and then return are living agents. Those who
enter enemy territory but do not return are dead agents.29 Creating forged letters
is clandestine written action. Holding discussions that stupefy the enemy is
clandestine civil action. Sullying and contaminating the enemy’s generals is
clandestine action by rumor. Creating prophetic verses that circulate among the
people is clandestine action by prophecy. Songs used to disperse the troops is
clandestine action through song.
Using ten thousand ounces of gold to make bribes is clandestine action
through bribery. Sometimes seizing things, sometimes granting gifts, is clandes-
tine action through things. To promise rank and position is clandestine bribery
through rank. Allowing the enemy’s agents to return and report is clandestine
action though enemy agents. Forming connections with subordinates and parti-
san cliques with hamlets is clandestine action through local agents. Influencing
people through their friends is clandestine action through friends.
Bribes that penetrate the women’s quarters constitutes clandestine action
through women. Exploiting personal friendship is clandestine action through
goodwill. Inflicting bodily harm to implement plans is clandestine action
through awesomeness.
At the end of his explication Jie ruefully concluded that ‘‘it is not implementing
clandestine activities that is difficult, but employing men that is difficult.
Therefore employing agents is more difficult than employing the army.’’30
Assassination and Subversive Programs

By the time of the earliest recorded literature, it had become apparent that
military measures that relied on mobilizing the populace and fielding masses of
chariots and infantry forces constituted expensive solutions to problems of state
and that other, less disruptive solutions might prove more efficacious. The great
Warring States general Wu Qi—who identified the four vital points of warfare
as qi (spirit), terrain, affairs, and strength—defined ‘‘affairs’’ in terms of causing
dissension within the enemy’s ranks as ‘‘being good at controlling clandestine
operatives, forcing rulers and ministers to feel mutual annoyance, and higher
and lower ranks to reproach each other.’’31
Although unrecorded, clandestine activities such as bribery, estrangement,
and deception apparently began simply and early. By the end of the Spring
and Autumn period, typical objectives for covert operations included sowing
dissension, causing misperception, assassinating key personnel, ruining public
confidence, bribing officials, estranging key advisers, debauching important
people with women and music, and mounting other political measures to sub-
vert enemy governments and undermine their ability to wage war.32 As theorists
began to ponder the nature and implication of these hitherto extemporaneous
efforts, they came to envision coordinated programs designed to weaken and
even topple their enemies, and thus achieve Sunzi’s ideal of balking plans,
thwarting alliances, and conquering the enemy completely, without combat.33
Murder had long been widely employed in palace strife, court intrigues, and
private vendettas, whereas brief references in the Art of War suggest that politi-
cal and military assassination had already become an accepted practice. Five
famous assassins were subsequently lionized in a dedicated Shiji chapter, includ-
ing Juan Zhu, who enabled King Holu to seize the throne from his uncle before
going on to employ Sunzi as his national security adviser and preside over Wu’s
political and military ascension at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period.34
Although every imaginable object might be employed as a weapon, includ-
ing specially cast wine ladles,35 assassination attempts generally relied upon
direct stabbing attacks or, in the case of female operatives, poison.36 Great per-
sonal sacrifice was required to achieve the intended goal, and assassins fre-
quently resorted to mutilating themselves or implementing the stratagem
known as ‘‘suffering flesh,’’ whereby they voluntarily underwent horrendous
tribulations to create a credible legend and thereby gain access to their targets.37
For example, in order to assassinate the ruler of Zhao, Yu Rang blistered his
body with lacquer to disguise his appearance and swallowed charcoal to alter
the sound of his voice.38 Even more heinous, Yao Li reportedly had King Holu
conspicuously execute his own wife and children, burn their bodies in the mar-
ketplace, and chop off his right hand to establish a reason for his hatred and
thus be welcomed by the valiant son of Holu’s uncle, then in exile.39
Although imperial China resorted to assassins to eliminate troublesome
external enemies, particularly those out on the steppe, and to silence threats
within the country, this readiness to employ covert agents for assassination
purposes was particularly manifest during periods of fragmentation when
numerous states were contending for power.40 Nevertheless, the most famous
instance remains Jing Ke’s botched attempt late in the Warring States Period
to stab the king of Qin with a dagger concealed in a map case.
Prince Dan of Yan adopted this desperate measure to forestall an imminent
invasion by overwhelming Qin forces. The exploit, which is preserved in the
Shiji’s ‘‘Assassins’’ and provided the impetus for recent movies, struck such a
responsive cord in subsequent Chinese generations that the name of the warrior
chosen for the task, Jing Ke, became a common term for ‘‘assassin.’’41 It hap-
pened that a disfavored Qin general had recently sought refuge with the prince,
so the subterfuge of offering his head and a map of Yan was employed to gain
access to the heavily isolated emperor. To ensure that the extremely sharp dag-
ger would prove lethal, the prince even had it drenched with poison and ‘‘tried
out on men whereupon it was found that if their clothes were stained by blood
they immediately died.’’
When the crucial moment arrived, rather than stabbing the emperor, the
heroic Jing Ke unexpectedly decided to extort an agreement and was eventually
struck down by a physician who used his medicine bag as a weapon. Thus,
despite the absence of armed guards on the dais and the emperor’s inability to
draw his own long sword, the effort devolved into an exercise in righteous
futility. Moreover, it compelled the king of Yan to execute his own son for
having initiated the plot and to present his head to Qin in an attempt to
preserve the state—though to little avail, because Yan was executed five years
later in 222 bce.
The Art of War initiated consciousness of the importance of disinformation,
but it was the authors of the late Warring States work known as the Six Secret
Teachings (Liutao) who compiled two explosive chapters on clandestine pro-
grams that were designed to systematically undermine enemy states, and even
overthrow or subjugate them without conflict, thereby realizing the Art of War’s
ideal of victory without combat.42 As late as the Ming Dynasty, these two chap-
ters, coupled with the Art of War’s ‘‘Employing Spies,’’ continued to be viewed
as the very foundation of spycraft.43 The first, titled ‘‘Civil Offensive,’’ though
purportedly a program developed by the Tai Gong to undermine the Shang
emperor, preserves material of such historical and contemporary importance

that it merits being reproduced almost completely:44
There are twelve measures for civil offensives. First, accord with what the ruler
likes in order to accommodate his wishes. He will eventually grow arrogant and
invariably mount some perverse affair.
Second, become familiar with those he loves in order to fragment his awe-
someness. When men have two different inclinations, their loyalty invariably
declines.
Third, covertly bribe his assistants and foster a deep relationship with them.
While they still bodily stand in his court, their emotions will be directed
outside.
Fourth, assist him in his licentiousness and indulgence in music in order to
dissipate his will. Make generous gifts of pearls and jade and ply him with beau-
tiful women. Speak deferentially, listen respectfully, follow his commands, and
accord with him in everything.
Fifth, treat his loyal officials very generously but reduce the gifts you provide
to the ruler. Delay his emissaries; do not listen to their missions. When he
eventually dispatches other men, treat them with sincerity, embrace and trust
them. The ruler will then again feel you are in harmony with him. If you then
manage to treat his formerly loyal officials very generously, his state can be
plotted against.
Sixth, make secret alliances with his favored ministers but visibly keep his
less favored outside officials at a distance. His talented people will then fall
under external influence while enemy states encroach upon his territory.
Seventh, if you want to bind his heart to you, you must offer generous pres-
ents. To gather in his assistants, loyal associates, and loved ones, you must
secretly show them the gains that they can realize by colluding with you. Have
them slight their work, and then his preparations will be futile.
Eighth, gift him with great treasures and make plans with him. When the
plans are successful and profitable, he will have faith in you. This is what is
termed ‘‘being closely embraced.’’
Ninth, honor him with praise. Do nothing that will cause him personal
discomfort. Display the proper respect accruing to a great power and your obedi-
ence will certainly be trusted. Magnify his honor, being the first to gloriously
praise him, humbly embellishing him as a Sage.
Tenth, be submissive so that he will trust you and thereby learn about his
true situation. Accept his ideas and respond to his affairs as if you were twins.
Once you have learned everything, subtly gather in his power.
Eleventh, block up his access by means of the Tao. Among subordinates
there is no one who does not value rank and wealth nor hate danger and misfor-
tune. Secretly express great respect toward them, and gradually bestow valuable
gifts in order to gather the more outstanding talents. Accumulate your own
resources until they become substantial while manifesting an appearance of
shortage. Covertly bring in wise knights and entrust them with planning great
strategy. Attract courageous knights and augment their spirit. Even when they
are sufficiently rich and honored, continue to increase them. When your faction
has been fully established, you will have attained the objective referred to as
‘‘blocking his access.’’
Twelfth, support his dissolute officials in order to confuse him. Introduce
beautiful women and licentious sounds in order to befuddle him. Send him
outstanding dogs and horses in order to tire him. From time to time, allow him
great power in order to entice him to greater arrogance.
When these twelve measures are fully employed, they will become a military
weapon.
The measures expounded for undermining enemy rulers in the considerably

shorter ‘‘Three Doubts,’’ though consistent, tend to focus upon isolating and
debauching the ruler. For example:
Cause the estrangement of his favored officials by using his favorites, and dis-
perse his people by means of the people. If you want to cause his close supporters
to become estranged from him, you must do it by using what they love, making
gifts to those he favors, giving them what they want. Tempt them with what
they find profitable, thereby making them ambitions. Anyone who covets profits
will be extremely happy at the prospects, and their remaining doubts will be
ended.
Now without doubt the Tao for attacking is to first obfuscate the king’s
clarity and then attack his strength. Debauch him with beautiful women; entice
him with profit. Nurture him with flavors and provide him with the company of
female musicians. Then after you have caused his subordinates to become
estranged from him, you must cause the people to grow distant from him.
Several of the later military writings include at least a few passages on tech-
niques that might be employed to adversely affect, if not fatally subvert, enemy
rulers, including Li Quan’s ‘‘Techniques for Secret Plots,’’ in which economic
measures are visible:
Subjugating the enemy’s forces without engaging in combat is the pinnacle of
excellence. The pinnacle employs plots and plans, the next highest human
affairs, while the lowest conducts warfare by attacking. Those who employ plots
and plans mystify and confuse the enemy’s ruler; secretly influence his slander-
ous ministers to affect his affairs; muddle him with sorcerers and soothsayers;
and cause him to respect ghosts and serve spirits. They cause him to indulge in
colors and embroidery while cheapening the value he places on grains and food-
stuffs, thereby emptying out his granaries and warehouses. They send him beau-
tiful women to unsettle his mind and dispatch skilled carpenters to inveigle him
into constructing palaces, rooms, and high towers in order to exhaust the state’s
wealth and dissipate their strength in labor, thus changing the ruler’s nature
and inducing licentious practices.
When you block off the ruler’s access to external information and debauch
him with licentiousness, attack him with the lure of profits, pleasure him with
music, nurture his tastes, and cause him to regard the deceitful as the trustwor-
thy, the trustworthy as deceitful, the loyal as rebellious, and the rebellious as
loyal, then those who offer loyal remonstrance will perish while sycophants will
be rewarded.
When he exiles worthy men to the wilds, retains menial men in official
positions, issues urgent orders, and imposes brutal punishments, the people will
not sustain his mandate to rule. This is termed overthrowing the ruler through
secret plots without fighting. When the destruction of his state has been
achieved, if you follow up with troops the ruler can be captured, his state subju-
gated, his cities seized, and his masses scattered.45
Other chapters that advocate causing consternation in the enemy include

the aptly titled ‘‘Putting the Enemy in Difficulty,’’ in the Song Dynasty Huqian
Jing, and this entry on ‘‘focus,’’ in the late Ming Dynasty Bingfa Baiyan:
What the enemy invariably relies upon for their movement is termed their focus.
You must first observe the location of the enemy’s focus and then seize what
they rely upon. If the enemy takes their strategists as their focus, concentrate
upon expelling them. If they take their enlightened generals as their focus, con-
centrate upon eliminating them. If they take their intimate, trusted ministers as
their focus, you can estrange them. If they take fame and righteousness as their
focus, you can destroy them. Extract their roots; strike their strategic points;
defeat their secret plans; alienate their reliable allies; strip away their basis; and
destroy their customary profits.
The chapter concludes by advising that, at a minimum, capable commanders

should be eliminated through rumor, aspersion, and slander, techniques that
were employed with great success in antiquity to dramatically reverse inimical
strategic circumstances.46
These pronouncements were not simply theoretical but rather thoughtful
elaborations based at least in part upon numerous individual historical in-
stances and, by the time of the Six Secret Teachings, Yue’s annihilation of Wu.
Initially, after several years of draconian efforts in preparation for avenging his
father’s death at Yue’s hands, King Fuchai of Wu vanquished Yue in battle.
However, King Goujian was allowed to retain a small enclave where he con-
ducted sacrifices to Yue’s ancestors. While visibly humbling himself and con-
spicuously serving Wu, he determinedly nurtured the state’s remnant strength
and embarked upon a systematic program to debauch Fuchai and subvert his
state. Although many of the diabolical measures are known only from semi-
historical accounts too extensive to recount here, they exerted inestimable
influence upon later military thinkers and therefore deserve at least brief
summation.47
As portrayed in the WuYue Chunqiu chapter known as ‘‘Goujian’s Secret
Strategy,’’ Yue commenced by corrupting the sycophantic minister Bo Pi, who
then strove to negate the effects of any criticism directed against Yue and pre-
vent the imposition of restrictive measures.48 Wen Zhong then formulated the
following nine-point program intended to strengthen the state and subvert
Wu’s government:
First, revere Heaven and serve ghosts in order to seek their blessings. Second,
make generous presents and monetary gifts to the ruler and numerous presents
and bribes to please his ministers. Third, make the five grains expensive in order
to empty their state, take advantage of what the ruler desires in order to weary
his people. Fourth, present the ruler with beautiful women in order to befuddle
his mind and confuse his plans. Fifth, send the ruler skilled artisans and excel-
lent materials to stimulate him to undertake palaces and mansions and thereby
exhaust their wealth. Sixth, dispatch sycophantic ministers, causing the ruler to
become easily attacked. Seventh, stiffen those ministers who dare to remon-
strate, forcing them to commit suicide. Eighth, enrich your country and prepare
the implements of war. Ninth, discipline your soldiers in order to exploit the
ruler’s perversity.
The effects of these machinations and Fuchai’s profligacy were vigorously

opposed by the loyal Wu Zixu, but he was marginalized, slandered, and finally
cast aside before dying ignominiously just before Wu’s vanquishment. Other
than depleting the state’s energy in the construction of magnificent palaces
with materials sent by Yue, one of the key measures was exploiting Fuchai’s
licentious tendencies. Two surpassingly beautiful women, the subsequently
famous Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, who ‘‘were adorned with the finest silks, taught
manners and bearing, and educated for three years,’’ were eventually presented.
Even though there were historical precedents for the state’s being destroyed
though the deliberate submission of courtesans—the Xia through Mei Xi, the
Shang through Da Ji, and the Zhou through Bao Si—they were not only
accepted but even seen as proof of Goujian’s loyalty.
Other Means of War

Even more imaginative was what appears to have been the first Chinese use of
ecological warfare in a plot that would be condemned as heinous and dastardly
for two thousand years. It was implemented by first pretending to be suffering
from a grain shortage and borrowing a large quantity from Wu, then repaying
it with seeds for a supposedly much-improved, higher-yielding variety that had
actually been secretly heated to prevent germination. Wu therefore suffered
from a famine that severely enervated it, opening the way for an invasion.
Ironically, as only three of the nine measures were ever implemented over the
course of many years, when Wen Zhong suffered the fate of many overly clever
individuals and was about to be executed, Goujian sarcastically ordered him to
employ the remaining six on behalf of his forbearers against Wu’s ancestors,
who were already resident in the netherworld. Although Goujian’s measures

required many years before Yue could strike and obliterate Wu, this unimagin-
able reversal of fortunes created an indelible impression upon subsequent gener-
ations, convincing them that systematically implemented subversive programs
could achieve epochal results.
Covert methods intended to subvert other states—encompassing bribes,
rumors, and estrangement techniques, having proven highly successful—rapidly
proliferated in the Warring States period. However, the most thorough exploi-
tation of bribes, estrangement, and even assassination was undertaken by the
state of Qin out in the western hinterland.49 Initially an insignificant, semicivi-
lized state on the periphery of Zhou culture, Qin emerged from the ruthless
strife of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods as the realm’s
dominant power by manipulating, battling, and subverting the remaining six
powerful contenders. Although Qin’s military juggernaut still had to wrest final
victory on the battlefield, bribery proved to be the most effective covert practice
amid the era’s lethal circumstances. When employed as an adjunct to false
rumors designed to besmirch and disparage, it ensured the exile and execution
of many loyal officials and meritorious commanders. It also empowered the
highly successful, systematic policy of disinformation and subversion that was
implemented by Qin’s persuasive double agents, including the infamous Su Qin.
Aggressively employing bribes to facilitate the achievement of world domi-
nation was initially proposed after Qin’s enemies convened a ministerial meet-
ing for the purpose of forming an obstructive strategic alliance. Believing that
‘‘sumptuous entertainments’’ and an ‘‘ostentatious display of gifts’’ could mollify
adversaries and estrange potential allies from each other, the king appropriated
five thousand catties of gold for the task. Even before the allotted amount had
been expended, the realm’s high officials reportedly fell to fighting among
themselves.50 Slightly later Qin again resorted to these measures when the piv-
otal states of Han and Wei were targeted by ‘‘the king of Qin who provided
Dun Ruo with ten thousand catties of gold. Dispatched eastward, he traveled
among the states, where he brought Han and Wei’s generals and ministers under
Qin’s influence. Then he went north to traverse Yan and Zhao, where he
effected the death of General Li Mu. Thus, when the king of Qi paid a diplo-
matic visit to Qin, the four other states had to follow.’’51 This laconic account
understates the significance of the achievements. Li Mu and Sima Shang,
Zhao’s last capable generals, had recently inflicted heavy casualties on Qin’s
armies when they successfully repelled several Qin onslaughts. They were elimi-
nated by ‘‘making generous gifts of gold to Zhao’s favored ministers and employ-
ing them as turned agents who claimed that Li Mu and Sima Shang wanted to
betray Zhao and join Qin in order to receive generous fiefs. Becoming suspi-
cious, the king had them replaced before executing Li Mu and exiling Sima
Shang. Three months later, Wang Jian extensively destroyed Zhao’s army
through a sudden fervent strike, slew Zhao’s commanding general, and captured
both the king and his generals. Qin then extinguished the state of Zhao.’’52
About 237 bce the noted strategist Wei Liaozi similarly advised the king to
systematically employ bribes to weaken the other feudal states and ‘‘confuse
their plans.’’53 Concurring, the king appointed him as an adviser, whereupon Li
Si, who wielded the government’s power, added a lethal dimension by ‘‘secretly
dispatching strategists bearing gold and jewels to offer as presents as they wan-
dered among the feudal lords exercising their persuasions. Famous officials in
the courts of the feudal lords who might be tempted by material goods were to
be entangled with abundant gifts; those unwilling to collaborate were to be
assassinated with sharp swords. Whenever his plan to estrange the feudal lords
from their ministers proved successful, the king of Qin would then have his
expert generals follow up with attacks.’’54
In conjunction with the successful implementation of these subversive mea-
sures, the specter of Qin’s awesome military power, augmented by its reputation
for ferocity, cowered many states into abandoning ‘‘provocative’’ military prepa-
rations and adopting policies of appeasement. Whether they remained ignorant
of the threat’s extensiveness or simply wished to avoid antagonizing the king of
Qin, they not only failed to conclude strategic partnerships but also stupidly
inflicted substantial losses on each other by battling among themselves. Sunzi’s
ideal of ‘‘thwarting their alliances’’ having been realized, the isolated states were
then sequentially defeated with comparative ease, which illustrates well the
dual emphasis of traditional Chinese intelligence practice: information coupled
with active subversion.
Notes
1. In contrast with the West, spycraft was a much-discussed topic in Chinese antiquity.
For earlier Western practices, see N. J. E. Austin and N. B. Rankov, Exploratio: Military and
Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople
(London: Routledge, 1995).
2. For a discussion of how traditional theory and historical practice are being employed
in contemporary China, see Ralph Sawyer, ‘‘Chinese Strategic Power: Myths, Intent, and
Projections,’’ Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 9, no. 2 (2006); and the final chapters of
Ralph Sawyer, The Tao of Deception: Unorthodox Warfare in Historic and Modern China (New
York: Basic Books, 2007).
3. Historians continue to debate whether the Art of War (or at least the core of the text)
was composed by Sunzi at the end of the sixth century bce, compiled by his disciples shortly
after his death, or created from lessons derived from fifth-century and early-fourth-century
warfare in the mid–fourth century. For an overview, see ‘‘Historical Introduction,’’ in Ralph
Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).
4. Ibid., ‘‘Initial Estimations.’’
5. Ibid. According to Michael Handel, Sunzi was ‘‘the first to explicitly discuss the role
of what is today termed net assessment.’’ See ‘‘Intelligence in Historical Perspective,’’ in
Michael Handel, Go Spy the Land (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 179–80.
6. Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War, ‘‘Incendiary Attacks.’’

7. Ibid., ‘‘Initial Estimations.’’
8. The crucial concept of what might best be termed the ‘‘strategic configuration of
power’’ is elucidated by ibid., chap. 5. The effects are imagined as the cascade of pent-up
water in chap. 4 and the whetstone as well as a boulder rolling down a mountain in chap. 5.
9. Ibid., ‘‘Configurations of Terrain.’’ The admonition to know the enemy is the chief
reason that the Art of War serves as a crucial inspiration for cyber warfare practitioners.
10. Ibid., ‘‘Nine Terrains.’’
11. Guanzi, ‘‘Seven Standards.’’ An eclectic work traditionally attributed to the great
Spring and Autumn governmental adviser Guan Zhong, the Guanzi was probably composed
during the fourth and third centuries bce.
12. ‘‘Temple Victory.’’ The chapter’s title refers to undertaking these calculations in the
temple, as in Sunzi’s time, and the text quotes heavily from Art of War passages referring to
them.
13. Li Weigong Bingfa.
14. In the middle of the Southern Sung Dynasty, Shi Zimei penned a series of commen-
taries to the Seven Military Classics so extensive as to merit the title of lectures. They were
extensively studied and reprinted in both Japan and China over the centuries.
15. Toubi Futan.
16. For a discussion of the Yi Jing’s employment in the Spring and Autumn period, see
Kidder Smith, ‘‘Zhouyi Interpretation from Accounts in the Zuozhuan,’’ Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies 49, no. 2 (1989): 421–63.
17. Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War, ‘‘Employing Spies.’’ Despite Sunzi’s efforts and the strong
attack made upon otherworldly methods by the Warring States, Wei Liaozi, prognostication
would continue to flourish within the military tradition. For a brief discussion, see Ralph
Sawyer, ‘‘Paradoxical Coexistence of Prognostication and Warfare,’’ Sino-Platonic Papers 157
(August 2005); for examples, see Sawyer, ‘‘Martial Prognostication,’’ in Military Culture in
Imperial China, edited by Nicola Di Cosmo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2009).
18. Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War, ‘‘Employing Spies.’’
19. Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War, ‘‘Selecting the Troops.’’ The Military Methods was recently
rediscovered after being lost for two thousand years. For a complete translation, see Ralph
Sawyer, Sun Pin Military Methods (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
20. Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War, ‘‘Spies in Warfare.’’
21. Ibid.
22. The five basic categories of agents are essentially replicated in such writings as the Li
Weigong Bingfa and the military section of the Changduan Jing, a composite text that dates to
the first quarter of the eighth century ce that heavily quotes the Art of War’s five categories
before illustrating them with intriguing historical examples. Even Jie Xuan, compiler of the
late Ming Dynasty Bingfa Baiyan, acknowledged that his twelve agents were essentially con-
gruent with Sunzi’s five.
23. This restatement may be commentary that has become intermixed with the text.
24. Space precludes any consideration of the important topics of secrecy, operations and
control, and especially counterintelligence for which Ralph Sawyer consulted, The Tao of
Spycraft (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
25. Du You is one of the important commentators in the well-known Ten Commentaries
edition of the Art of War.
26. ‘‘Zingren,’’ which might be translated as ‘‘Roving Agents.’’

27. ‘‘Agent’’ (jian) in the Bingfa Baiyan. Although they entail some translation prob-
lems—requiring something like ‘‘agency through’’ or ‘‘clandestine action through’’—Jie’s
concept is clear and the sixteen categories of activities are comprehensive.
28. The concept of the ‘‘unorthodox,’’ first articulated in the Art of War’s ‘‘Strategic Mili-
tary Power,’’ is a cornerstone of both traditional and contemporary Chinese military science.
For a study of the ‘‘unorthodox,’’ see Ralph Sawyer, The Tao of Deception: Unorthodox Warfare
in Historic and Modern China (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
29. This differs from Sun-tzu’s concept because they are not deliberately sacrificed.
30. Jie and other late writers often contemplated the character of men to be employed as
spies, and they generally concluded that they should be drawn from all walks of life, not
restricted to the intelligent and morally upright.
31. Wuzi, ‘‘Tao of the General.’’
32. For an extensive recounting of these measures as they emerged and were practiced
from about the eighth through fourth centuries bce, see Sawyer, Tao of Spycraft, first few
chapters.
33. The ongoing nature and implications of these programs, especially their exploitation
in peacetime as well as wartime, might well be noted.
34. China’s first comprehensive history, the Shiji—a work that has exerted inestimable
influence over the past two millennia not just in China but also in Korea and Japan—was
compiled around the end of the second century bce by Sima Qian and his father, Sima Tan.
35. An example appears in the Zhanguoce’s Yanyü.
36. Jujubes were sometimes employed; e.g., see Shishuo Xinyu, ‘‘You Hui.’’
37. The stratagem of suffering flesh numbers among those included in the now-infamous
Thirty-Six Stratatgems rediscovered about a century ago.
38. The incident is described in the Shiji chapter on assassins.
39. According to the semihistorical WuYueh Chunqiu, Yao managed to fatally wound Qing-
ji in a boat before chopping off his remaining hand and feet, falling on his sword, and dying.
40. E.g., the Former Han employed an assassin to remove the rebellious king of Loulan.
See Han Shu, ‘‘Fu Chang, Zheng Gan, Chen Duan.’’
41. A complete translation is given by Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian, Qin
Dynasty (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 167–78.
42. They were subsequently condemned by Confucian-oriented literati for their supposed
inhumanity and perverse approach to warfare, both held to be inconsistent with antiquity’s
great sages, prompting Ming Dynasty writers to marvel that they had survived.
43. E.g., Wang Mingle, an experienced, high-level Ming Dynasty commander and author
of the Dengtan Bijiu, in ‘‘Ji Jiandie Shuo.’’
44. For a complete translation of the Six Secret Teachings with historical introduction and
analysis, see Ralph Sawyer, Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1994); and Ralph Sawyer, The Six Secret Teachings on the Way of Strategy (Boston:
Shambhala, 1996).
45. Taibai Yinjing.
46. E.g., the loyalty of the great general Yue Yi was questioned by double agents, resulting
in him being removed from expeditionary command despite having swiftly conquered all but
two of Qi’s cities during the Warring States period. For a recounting, see Sawyer, Tao of
Spycraft, 102ff. Similarly, Chen Ping eliminated Chu’s chief strategist during the quest to
establish the Han Dynasty.
47. The highly melodramatic story of Fuchai and Goujian’s conflict quickly became the
stuff of legend, streetside tales, and operas, and thus known to everyone, strategists as well as
peasants. Core materials may be found in Wu Zixu’s biography in the Shihji.
48. The WuYue Chunqiu is a somewhat fictionalized account probably written in the first
century ce of the dramatic conflict between the two states of Wu and Yüeh. Although the
reliability of its dialogues is highly questionable, the author may well have had access to oral
transmission and records no longer extant, and was thoroughly knowledgeable about the
area.
49. Contemporary Chinese strategists have particularly focused on the rise of the Qin as a
model for emulation.
50. ‘‘Qinyu, 3,’’ Zhanguoce.
51. ‘‘Qinyu, 4,’’ Zhanguoce.
52. ‘‘Zhaoyu,’’ Zhanguoce.
53. For a discussion of the incident and a complete translation of the book attributed to
Wei Liaozi, see Sawyer, Seven Military Classics.
54. Shi Ji, ‘‘Li Si Liezhuan.’’ The king referred to in the passage is the eventual unifier of
all China, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty.
CHAPTER 4
The Original Surveillance State

Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Government
by Espionage in Classical India
Philip H. J. Davies
The arrow shot by an archer may or may not kill a single man; but
skilful intrigue devised by wise men can kill even those who are in
the womb.
—Kautilya
A
lthough research into ever-more-archaic antecedents of contemporary
thought in fields like political theory and strategic thought is well estab-
lished, only recently has a comparable effort been made with regards to
intelligence. In such discussions the typical point of departure is China’s Sun
Tze whose chapter on the ‘‘divine skein’’ of military intelligence and his taxon-
omy of spies is often taken as the oldest nonscriptural account of espionage.1
That discourse has been examined and expanded upon most intensively in
recent years by Ralph Sawyer (see chapter 3).2 More fragmentary information
has also been examined to try and draw out a picture of intelligence in classical
Rome, but close examination of other traditions such as the Arab and Islamic
worlds and Byzantium has had to wait very much for the chapters in the present
volume to receive at least some of the attention that they warrant.3 Much the
same might also be said of the Sanskrit tradition of intelligence thought as a
/ 49 /
50 / Philip H. J. Davies
branch line within ancient Indian writing on strategy and statecraft. Although
there are passing references to the Kautilya, probably the leading figure in this
lineage, there has been no detailed attempt to bring that tradition into the
wider discussion of intelligence theory.4 This is long overdue: India has been
steadily emerging as one of the globe’s leading powers, a crucial (and demo-
cratic) counterweight to mainland China in the Asian balance of power, and a
major intelligence player in the current international arena.
Kautilya’s Arthashastra represents one of the oldest treatises on strategy and
statecraft. From an intelligence studies point of view, it has two main bases for
relevance to the study of so-called intelligence theory. In the first place, unlike
Sun Tze’s work, the Arthashastra is a comprehensive textbook on statecraft,
domestic governance, diplomacy, and foreign affairs as well as war. Conse-
quently, it provides an intelligence doctrine relevant to peacetime as well as
war and deals with domestic intelligence as well as foreign surveillance issues.
This provides a breadth of intelligence doctrine that the ‘‘divine skein’’ does
not need to articulate: domestic counter-espionage, criminal intelligence plus
covert political and psychological operations, and what today we would term
‘‘disruptive action’’ all feature in the work of Kautilya’s ‘‘institutes’’ of spies.
Second, the work of spies is a theme that runs through the entire document in
a way that Sun Tze’s doctrine of what amounts to operational and tactical
intelligence alone does not. For Kautilya, espionage underpins almost every
domain of government activity. His ‘‘institutes of espionage’’ play key roles in
everything from trading standards, taxation and revenue and criminal investiga-
tion to civil service performance monitoring, let alone national and regime
security concerns more familiar to intelligence scholarship. Kautilya’s vision is
not merely of a counterintelligence state but an untrammeled espionage state
where surveillance and provocation are as essential to the work of government
as coinage and road building.
With this in mind, it is impossible not to reflect on what aspects of the
Kautilyan tradition may have been resuscitated and carried forward in subconti-
nental politics since independence. For the most part, a detailed examination
of the current influence of Kautilya on intelligence theory and practice on the
subcontinent lies beyond the purview of the current discussion apart from some
preliminary observations and speculations at the end of this chapter. Neither
does the present author pretend to be an authority on Sanskrit or Indian culture
and politics. Rather, the goal in the present discussion is to lift out a range of
key concepts and lines of reasoning from the Arthashastra so that they may
be placed alongside other traditions and lineages of and general issues within
‘‘intelligence theory.’’ The source text used herein is the fourth edition of
Rudrapatnam Shamasastry’s translation, published in 1951. Even with the lim-
ited ambitions of the current work, however, it is apparent that a profound
understanding of Kautilya’s thinking on intelligence awaits a return to, and
The Original Surveillance State / 51
mining down into, the original Sanskrit to unpack subtleties and details of the
original that may well have escaped the original translator. Shamasastry was
an Orientalist and antiquarian and not a military or intelligence scholar or
practitioner.5 In this capacity, the following discussion should be read as a
purely preliminary exploration of the question, and as an exhortation to those
with the necessary combination of linguistic and intelligence studies compe-
tencies to perform the kind of thorough archaeology of Kautilya’s theory of
intelligence that it so richly deserves and strategic thought in the globalized
twenty-first-century world so seriously needs.
Kautilya’s Context
Since Shamasastry’s rediscovery of the manuscript of the Arthashastra at the
turn of the last century, the exact identity of its author and provenance of its
specific contents has been subject to considerable uncertainty and debate.6 In
some discussions Kautilya’s authorship is accepted as a working hypothesis,7
whereas in others it is simply taken as a given.8 However, the actual provenance
of the Arthashastra is virtually irrelevant to its impact and perceived credibility
and consequently its authority and influence in shaping contemporary Indian
strategic thought. What matters is the intellectual credibility and authority the
Arthashastra holds in subcontinental military and strategic thought, and that is
more than evident.9 For the present intents and purposes, it is sufficient to say
that the conventional account is that Kautilya was the eminence grise behind
the founder of the Maurya Empire, Chadragupta Maurya. The Maurya Empire
lasted from approximately 321–185 bc, and was the first empire to consolidate
the lion’s share of the subcontinent under its third ruler, Ashoka the Great.
Kautilya, also known in various contexts as Vishnugupta and more commonly
Chanakya, supposedly mentored Chandragupta in establishing the empire, then
subsequently served as his prime minister. The Arthashastra, which means
roughly ‘‘science [shastra] of politics [artha],’’ was one of three texts attributed
to Kautilya as manuals for Chandragupta and his successors on the conduct
of government and the economy. The other texts dealt primarily with moral
philosophy and so fall outside the current discussion.
Despite its antiquity, the Arthashastra was by no means the first Indian text
to discuss the role of spies in politics and war. Apart from internal evidence in
the text in which Kautilya appears to debate the wisdom of prior authors, the
use of spies is discussed in the Rigveda religious text, which dates to the second
millennium bc and in which spies serve the deities Varuna, Agni, and Soma.10
The Arthashastra does, however, appear to predate the Baghavad Gita, which
also sees spies playing a role in the conflict between the two great houses of the
Pandavas and the Kauravas.11 It also predates another main text on statecraft,
the Ordinances of Manu, which were written in response to the political strife
that followed the collapse of the Mauryas. This suggests an attitude toward
espionage at least paralleling if not deriving directly from that of Kautilya. As
Richard Popplewell has noted of the Arthashastra, ‘‘Though a prescription for
ideal government, [it] undoubtedly describes a state of affairs approximating
reality,’’ which was emulated not only by Chandragupta but also by his greatest
Maurya successor Ashoka the Great and later by the Islamic Mogul emperors
(although they were also inheritors of the Arab and Islamic intelligence tradi-
tion discussed elsewhere in this volume).12
The Arthashastra subsequently appears to have been lost in or around the
twelfth century until found by Shamasastry circa 1904. The discovery was virtu-
ally by accident, as Shamasastry was sorting through palm-leaf manuscripts at
the Oriental Research Institute in Mysore. After having discovered and recog-
nized the document for what it was, Shamasastry edited and published the
Sanskrit text in 1909, and then followed with an English translation in 1915.13
Despite its interval of obscurity, however, Kautilya’s text can be said to have a
pivotal and formative role in the development of Indian political thought in
the early and medieval periods.
The Institutes of Espionage

The core of Kautilya’s intelligence doctrine—or rather, espionage doctrine—is
the role of several different so-called institutes of espionage. The term ‘‘insti-
tutes’’ is confusing because what Kautilya actually appears to be talking about
is standardized classes or categories of spy rather than institutes in the sense of
agencies or organizations. The term appears to be an artifact of Shamasastry’s
translation of the Sanskrit word samstha, which is used in current parlance to
refer to an association or group. This usage seems to have confounded Indian
authors as much as anyone else, and they have typically passed over the puzzle
by simply treating the use of the term in Kautilya as equivalent to ‘‘class’’ or
‘‘category.’’14 These categories consist of ‘‘spies under the guise of a fraudulent
disciple (kapatika-chhatra), a recluse (udasthita), a householder (grihapatika), an
ascetic practicing austerities (tapasa), a classmate or a colleague (satri), a fire-
brand (tikshna), a poisoner (rasada), a mendicant woman (bhikshuki).’’ The cate-
gorization is further complicated by the fact that fraudulent disciples, recluses,
ascetics, householders, and mendicant women are clearly forms of cover; the
notion of a ‘‘classmate’’ spy refers to a particular recruitment pool, and the
‘‘firebrand’’ or ‘‘fiery spy’’ and poisoner are particular roles in special operations
and irregular warfare.
A further distinction is drawn between principal informant networks that
operate in particular vicinities and ‘‘wandering spies’’ who are roaming freely
throughout the kingdom. Wandering spies were expected to communicate their
information to their masters in government through cipher writing and cutouts

(often drawn from members of the resident networks).15 The two systems are
intended to act as cross-checks on one another’s reporting, and consequently
Kautilya is adamant that neither the regular nor wandering spies should have
any knowledge of each other.16 That being said, both the resident and wander-
ing networks are composed of the five basic types of spy. In parallel, agents from
the resident networks could be deployed as roaming spies in their own right
under various pretexts. Consequently, Kautilya recommends triangulating what
amount to three separate field organizations: resident ‘‘institute’’ spies, wander-
ing spies, and select resident ‘‘institute’’ agents dispatched in a roaming role.
The goal here is validation and verification of the lines of reporting generated
by the different espionage systems. He recommends: ‘‘When the information
thus received from these three different sources is exactly of the same version,
it shall be held reliable.’’ The same strategy was to be used to detect deception
or incompetence because ‘‘if they (the three sources) frequently differ, the spies
concerned shall be either punished in secret or dismissed.’’17
Of the eight ‘‘institutes’’ or classes of spy elaborated in the Arthashastra, half
of them are essentially forms of religious cover. India, of course, is a pervasively
and intensely religious and spiritual culture, with holy figures from a variety of
indigenous and imported faiths who have very real degrees of privileged status
and mobility. The traditional Hindu caste system of social stratification was
intimately interwoven into the Vedic religious tradition and regulated ritual,
political, and economic activity at a very fine level of granularity and with far
higher degree of rigidity than either the vassalage and manorialism of European
feudalism or the Confucianist classes of imperial China. This meant that access
and therefore surveillance across multiple professions and communities were
often delimited by constraints imposed by the boundaries of the four principal
castes, or varna, of the system, which consisted of the religious Brahmins, the
politico-military Kshatriyas, the trade and artisan Vaishyas, and the agricultural
Sudras.18 The defining principles of the caste system were, however, articulated
and legitimated through religious doctrine. Consequently, religious cover would
offer a comparatively high degree of legitimacy and freedom of movement to
access the various strata of Hindu society, particularly the social, political, and
military leaderships that few other status roles would permit.
Kautilya therefore recommends recruiting ‘‘recluses,’’ who are ‘‘initiated
into asceticism’’ and ‘‘possessed of foresight and good character.’’ The monarch
should then support the recluse with funds to provide agricultural land and
facilities to support not only himself but also ‘‘many disciples’’ who also serve
as subagents under the recluse and recruit their own subordinate subagent net-
works. All the resulting information should then be channeled through the
recluse. In much the same fashion, a ‘‘man with a shaved head . . . or braided
hair’’ but who is in need of money can be deployed ‘‘under the guise of an
ascetic practicing austerities.’’ Like the recluse, the ascetic is expected to recruit
disciples as subagents, but he is also expected to make a show of living in
poverty as a sign of their holiness—although, Kautilya adds, ‘‘he may take in
secret his favorite foodstuffs.’’ In a similar fashion, agents may join the retinue
of a public or religious figure to serve as ‘‘fraudulent disciples’’ and report on
their nominal masters.19 Wandering female spies were also supposed to employ
religious cover. For targeting the upper two castes, the Brahmins and Kshatriyas,
Kautilya recommends a ‘‘poor widow of Brahman cast, very clever and desirous
to earn her livelihood.’’ Such an agent would be ‘‘honored in the king’s harem
[and] shall frequent the residences of the king’s prime ministers’’ reporting on
the intimate lives of the highest political elites. Equivalent monitoring of lower-
caste communities could be secured by recruiting women from the Sudra caste
who would shave their heads and affect a spiritual and ascetic lifestyle.20
Among the middle-class Vaishya caste of traders and farmers, the Arthshastra
recommends recruiting ‘‘cultivators’’ who have fallen on hard times as ‘‘house-
holder spies.’’ Provided the individuals in question are gifted, like the recluse,
with ‘‘foresight and pure character,’’ they should be provided with funds and
assistance to reestablish themselves in exchange for acting as informants.21 Mer-
chants should also be recruited, not only for the information they provide but
also to reinforce the cover of agents using religious cover by becoming supposed
disciples of recluses and ascetics. In this capacity they could widely attribute
supernatural powers to their supposed spiritual leader and also collude with the
ascetic in choreographing fraudulent public demonstrations of such powers.
This, in turn, would strengthen their reputations and improve the access of
recluses and ascetics and of their subagents serving as full-time disciples.22
The notion of ‘‘classmate spies’’ (satri) is a more idiosyncratic concept. Not
so much a form of operational cover as a recruitment pool, satri are described as
‘‘orphans (asambindhinah) who are necessarily fed by the state and are put to
study science, palmistry, . . . sorcery, . . . the duties of the various orders of
religious life, legerdemain, . . . and reading of omens and augury.’’23 From within
these professions, satri could report on what they observed, but they could also
serve as agents provocateurs flushing out opponents of the regime by pretending
to be ‘‘opposing factions shall carry on disputations in places of pilgrimage . . .
in assemblies, houses, corporations, . . . and amid congregations of people.’’24
Besides providing their own information, satri were also designated as the pre-
ferred couriers for the various wandering spies.25
Kautilya places a heavy emphasis on provocation and special operations.
Consequently, a particularly central role is occupied throughout the Arthashas-
tra by tikshna, so-called firebrands or fiery spies. Firebrands are colorfully
described as ‘‘brave desperados of the country who, reckless of their own life,
confront elephants or tigers [and] fight mainly for the purpose of earning
money.’’26 Firebrands were to be recruited to serve as saboteurs, assassins, and
provocateurs. Another class of spies employed in the special operations field

were ‘‘poisoners’’ (rasasa). Poisoners were bluntly described by Kautilya as
‘‘those who have no trace of filial affection left in them and who are very cruel
and indolent.’’27 Their task was, for example, to poison opponents of the regime,
or to murder others and arrange for suspicion to be cast on nominal subversive
elements.
The result was supposed to be a surveillance network covering the entire
country. Within that network one would find ‘‘merchant spies inside forts;
saints and ascetics in the suburbs of forts; the cultivator and the recluse in
country parts; herdsmen in the boundaries of the country,’’ while tribal chief-
tains in the outlying districts and wilderness would be paid to watch the fron-
tiers. At the same time, informant networks within households were to be
recruited in the form of ‘‘hump-backed dwarf, the eunuch, women of accom-
plishments, the dumb’’ along with ethnic Dravidians who did not subscribe to
the Vedic faith and were designated the ‘‘Mleccha’’ caste.28 Once earmarked as
agents, Kautilya recommends that
those who are of good family, loyal, reliable, well trained in the art of putting
on disguises appropriate to countries and trades, and possessed of knowledge of
many languages and arts, shall be sent by the king to espy in his own country
the movements of his ministers, priests, commanders of the army, the heir-
apparent, the door-keepers, the officer in charge of the harem, the magistrate,
. . . the collector-general [of taxes], the chamberlain, . . . the commissioner, . . .
the city constable, . . . the officer in charge of the city, . . . the superintendent
of transactions, . . . the assembly of councillors (mantraparishad), heads of
departments, . . . the commissary-general, . . . and officers in charge of fortifica-
tion, boundaries and wild tracts.29
Hardly any walk of life was to pass unobserved and unreported. Besides watch-
ing domestic developments activities, the network would also hold a counterin-
telligence brief, in which ‘‘spies sent by foreign kings shall also be found out by
local spies; spies by spies of like profession.’’30 In many respects the intelligence
machine was actually the foundation of the rest of the government apparatus
to ensure effectiveness, efficiency, and—above all—control.
Espionage in Routine Government

An important distinction between Kautilya and Sun Tze is that whereas the
‘‘divine skein’’ of espionage occupies one chapter in The Art of War, espionage
is a recurrent, even pervasive theme throughout the Arthashastra. It is a central
concern at every level of government, from the selection of key ministers and
protection of the monarch from all threats—including those self-same minis-
ters—through military activities and law enforcement down to the implemen-
tation of commercial standards such as weights and measures. It would not
be an exaggeration to describe Kautilya’s intelligence doctrine as not merely

espionage within government but government by espionage.
Indeed, Kautilya even locates espionage as a central element in the king’s
daily routine, for which he goes so far as to provide a recommended hour-by-
hour schedule. According to the Arthashastra,
During the first one-eighth part of the day he [the king] shall post watchmen
and attend to the accounts of receipts and expenditure; during the second part,
he shall look to the affairs of both citizens and country people; during the third,
he shall not only bathe and dine but also study; during the fourth, he shall not
only receive gold . . . but also attend to the appointments of superintendents;
during the fifth he shall correspond in writs . . . with the assembly of his minis-
ters and receive the secret information gathered by his spies; during the sixth, he may
engage himself in his favorite amusements or in self-deliberation; during the
seventh, he shall superintend elephants, horses, chariots, and infantry; during
the eighth part, he shall consider various plans of military operations with his
commander in chief. At the close of the day, he shall observe the evening
prayer.31
Thus not merely did intelligence form a central component of the ruler’s daily
routine; he was also fully expected by Kautilya to act as his own intelligence
officer.
Although the Arthashastra covers domestic and foreign policy and security
in considerable depth, Kautilya takes the view that domestic threats ‘‘should
first be got rid of; for . . . internal troubles, like the fear from a lurking snake,
are more serious than external troubles.’’ As a result, internal and regime secur-
ity occupy the opening chapters of the book, whereas the later portions are
concerned with foreign relations and war. This also means that to understand
Kautilya’s view of intelligence, it is also necessary to take internal security and
domestic policy as the point of departure for understanding his approach to
espionage and intelligence, even when conducted abroad.
Regime and State Security

A major role of spies in Kautilya’s approach to government was concerned with
testing the reliability and loyalty of court and government officials. Indeed,
espionage, provocation, and entrapment provided the foundation for a mon-
arch’s appointment of the entire upper echelons of the machinery of govern-
ment. Assisted by his prime minister and high priest, the monarch is advised to
test prospective senior officials with a range of ‘‘allurements.’’ Under ‘‘religious
allurement,’’ a priest might be dismissed ostensibly for refusing to perform a
given ritual for an ‘‘outcaste person.’’ The dismissed priest would then send
‘‘classmate spies’’ to various candidate ministers, who would suggest that the
king was unrighteous and should be overthrown. Likewise, a general in the
military notionally dismissed for corruption would offer others ‘‘monetary

allurement’’ to assist him in arranging regicide. Under ‘‘love allurement,’’ sug-
gests Kautilya, a ‘‘woman-spy, under the guise of an ascetic’’ and ‘‘highly
esteemed in the harem’’ of leading ministers would tempt those ministers with
the suggestion that ‘‘the queen is enamored of thee and has made arrangements
for thy entrance into her chamber; besides this, there is also the certainty of
large acquisitions of wealth.’’ In another especially ruthless stratagem, the king
would arrest an entire cohort of officials on trumped-up charges. Once they
were imprisoned, ‘‘a spy, under the guise of a fraudulent disciple, pretending to
have suffered imprisonment, may incite each of the ministers thus deprived of
wealth and rank, saying that ‘the king has betaken himself to an unwise course;
well, having murdered him let us put another in his stead. We all think like
this; what dost thou think?’ ’’ Unsurprisingly, this was termed ‘‘allurement under
fear.’’32
The result was not merely a variety of ‘‘sickener’’ test to identify those who
could be most fully trusted by the king. It actually became a scheme for assign-
ing ministerial tasks. Thus those who passed the religious test would supervise
‘‘civil and criminal courts.’’ Individuals resistant to financial temptation ‘‘shall
be employed in the work of a revenue collector and chamberlain,’’ whereas
candidates resistant to ‘‘love allurement’’ were to ‘‘superintend the pleasure
grounds.’’ Potential ministers who did not give way to fear after being falsely
arrested were to become what Shamasastry translates as ‘‘immediate service,’’
which perhaps refers to direct employment in the service of the court. Above
and beyond these individual tests, ‘‘those whose character has been tested under
all kinds of allurement’’ would be employed as the monarch’s ministers. This
did not mean that those failing were simply dismissed or banished, however.
Instead, safe positions were found for them overseeing ‘‘mines, timber and ele-
phant forests, and manufactories.’’33
Such vetting of the national leadership was to be merely the leading edge
of a more general approach to managing the state and society at large. ‘‘Assisted
by the council of his ministers tried under espionage the king shall proceed
to create spies,’’ according to the doctrine outlined in the previous section.34
Thereupon, ‘‘having set up spies over his [cabinet] ministers, the king shall
proceed to espy both citizens and country people.’’35 The resulting apparatus
would monitor the lower echelons of government as well as urban and rural
populations and would also ensure that ‘‘treacherous opponents of sovereignty
shall be silenced.’’
Revenue, Commerce, and Law Enforcement

The routine tasks of government, which concerned economic and fiscal policy
as well as law enforcement, figure centrally in the Arthashastra. In this regard
Kautilya’s thought is more detailed than equivalent other thinkers, and espio-
nage plays a central role in all three areas. As Kautilya warns his student com-
paratively early on, a ‘‘government officer, not caring to know the information
gathered by espionage and neglecting to supervise the dispatch of work in his
own department as regulated, may occasion loss of revenue to the government
owing to his ignorance, or owing to idleness.’’36 The significance of espionage
arises because the misappropriation of funds has fewer obvious indicators than
other property crimes like theft. Indeed, concludes Kautilya, ‘‘cases of embezzle-
ment . . . can be ascertained through spies alone.’’37
As a result, a central figure in Kautilya’s doctrine of intelligence is the
collector-general of taxes. Besides the usual tasks of collecting taxes and for-
warding the revenue to the Treasury, the collector-general was expected to
recruit networks of spies targeted at a number of different requirements. The
first target for this activity was to verify that households were contributing their
allotted taxes and not underreporting revenues and assets. Toward this the
collector-general was to recruit householder spies whose task it was to ‘‘ascer-
tain the validity of the accounts (of the village and district officers) regarding
the fields, houses, and families of each village—the area and output of produce
regarding fields, right of ownership and remission of taxes with regard to houses,
and the caste and profession regarding families.’’ These spies were also to ‘‘ascer-
tain the total number of men and beasts . . . as well as the amount of income
and expenditure of each family.’’ Above and beyond this, they were expected
to ‘‘find out the causes of emigration and immigration of persons of migratory
habit, the arrival and departure of men and women of condemnable . . . charac-
ter,’’ explained by Shamasastry as including ‘‘dancers, actors, and the like.’’
Finally, they were also to report on ‘‘the movement of (foreign) spies.’’38
The second arm of this organization was to be provided by merchant spies.
Their role was to report on ‘‘quantity and price’’ of items ‘‘such as minerals, or
products of gardens, forest, and fields, or manufactured articles.’’ Additionally,
these agents were to monitor incoming foreign merchandise ‘‘of superior or
inferior quality’’ and report to the collector-general on costs to foreign traders,
such as road tolls, transportation fares, warehousing fees, and the subsistence
costs of those traders.39 A third network was to be established to keep tabs on
the criminal underworld. This consisted of ‘‘spies under the guise of old and
notorious thieves with their student bands’’ based at locations as diverse as
crossroads, religious sites, bathing houses, and areas of the wilderness (‘‘desert
tracts, mountains, and thick-grown forests’’). From these vantage points they
were to report on ‘‘the causes of arrival and departure, and halt of thieves,
enemies [of the state]’’ and, slightly oddly, ‘‘persons of undue bravery.’’40 The
resulting trio of networks would, therefore, provide the collector-general with
the means to check reported revenues in the peasant agricultural sector, indus-
try and trade in the cities and across frontiers, and finally the black and gray
economies.
Another one of the collector-general’s main tasks was detecting individuals

who made a ‘‘wicked living through foul means’’ or abusing the powers of any
office they held. Thus a range of agents under a bewilderingly diverse assort-
ment of recommended covers—ranging from ascetics and travelers through
bards and ‘‘buffoons’’ to ‘‘deaf, idiots,’’ cooks, and various tradesmen—were to
‘‘ascertain the fair or foul dealings of villagers, or of the superintendents of
villagers, and report the same.’’41
As always, however, provocation and entrapment figured centrally in Kau-
tilya’s methods. The collector-general’s spies were to encourage judges to accept
bribes to favor a putative associate, incite ‘‘a congregation of villagers’’ to help
extort money from a local figure, or bribe individuals to bear false witness
against someone. In much the same manner, suspected counterfeiters were to
be encouraged to produce false coinage. In all these cases, of course, the agent
would report the target’s compliance and banishment of the wrongdoer
promptly follow.42 The collector-general was instructed to then ‘‘exhibit in pub-
lic places these and other arrested criminals, and proclaim omniscient power of
the king and among the people at large.’’43
Senior urban administrators were also exhorted to maintain their own agent
networks at the municipal level. Consequently, a city superintendent was
expected to recruit his own spies who carried an ongoing roving brief to ‘‘make
a search for suspicious persons in the interior of deserted houses, in the work-
shops or houses of vintners and sellers of cooked rice and flesh, in gambling
houses, and in the abode of heretics.’’44
Kleptocracy
Even as Kautilya recommended espionage to ensure the forthrightness of the
monarch’s underlings, he also offered it as a means for fraud and theft against
those self-same underlings by the monarch. In a chapter titled ‘‘Replenishment
of the Treasury,’’ the Arthashastra advises that a king ‘‘who finds himself in a
great financial trouble and needs money may collect’’ revenue through fraud
conducted by the very covert machinery used to ensure commercial integrity.
Toward this end he recommends an assortment of ploys to squeeze additional
funds from his populace by deception and manipulation. For example, the mon-
arch should arrange for a highly visible group of benefactors who publicly make
a show of paying ‘‘handsome donations, and with this example, the king may
demand of others,’’ whereas ‘‘spies posing as citizens shall revile those who pay
less.’’ Fraudulent ‘‘sorcerers’’ should stage false infestations of spirits to panic
townsfolk and then demand money to ‘‘propitiate’’ those demons. Other spies
might arrange for the spectacle of ‘‘a serpent with numberless heads in a well
connected with a subterranean passage,’’ which is, in fact, a ‘‘drugged cobra,’’
and then would ‘‘collect fees’’ from curiosity seekers who wish to view the
monstrosity.45
More elaborate frauds included setting an agent up as a wealthy businessman

who touts for investors from the populace or secures a sizable assortment of
loans. Then, once a suitable amount of funds has been accumulated, ‘‘he may
cause himself to be robbed of that amount’’ by other agents of the king. The
‘‘examiner of coins’’ and state goldsmith could also conduct a similar fraud.46
Another route was to employ provocation and confiscation. Prostitutes
‘‘under the garb of chaste women’’ could be recruited to become ‘‘enamored of
persons who are seditious.’’ Then the dissenters could be lured to the prosti-
tutes’ residences, the latter unmasked and the former imprisoned for immoral
conduct and their wealth and possessions seized.47 In a similar fashion ‘‘a spy,
under the garb of a servant of a seditious person, may mix counterfeit coins
with the wages . . . and pave the way for his [the master’s] arrest.’’ Alternatively,
an agent ‘‘under the garb of a goldsmith, may undertake to do work in the house
of a seditious person, and gather in his employer’s house such instruments as
are necessary to manufacture counterfeit coins.’’48 In a similar, obliquely
phrased ruse, one spy ‘‘attending as a servant of a seditious person’’ should plant
‘‘certain articles necessary for the installation of a king’’ and letters from the
ruler’s enemy on their putative master and then openly call upon a second spy
in the household to explain their presence.49 In both cases such planted evi-
dence would provide the basis for imprisonment and appropriation, rather effi-
ciently providing simultaneous remedies to concerns of both fiscal and regime
security.
As something of an afterthought, however, Kautilya adds that ‘‘measures
such as the above shall be taken only against the seditious and the wicked, and
never against others.’’50 It is far from clear whether this is a concern for propri-
ety and proportionality or simply a caution not to manage the personal goal of
framing and incarcerating one’s own sources of political support and legitimacy.
Espionage in Diplomacy and War

As the epigraph to this chapter suggests, Kautilya shares Sun Tze’s conviction
that the highest level of strategic skill is to defeat a foe without ever engaging
in a clash of arms. Kautilya is more direct in some respects, and he specifically
advocates intrigue and subterfuge as the principal instruments of state policy
for which the use of military force is essentially a fallback option. Indeed, his
approach to foreign espionage is conditioned by an assumption similar to the
Byzantine philosophy explored by Gustafson in chapter 5 that war rather than
peace is the natural state of affairs between governments. Consequently, diplo-
macy and espionage are treated as being part of a continuum of intrigue, the
only question being at what level the conflict is being conducted. Paradoxically,
though discussion of diplomacy and war might be the point at which one could
reasonably expect Kautilya and Sun Tze to most resemble one another, it is, in
many respects, one of their most significant points of divergence. For though
spying as information collection figures centrally in the Arthashastra’s approach
to diplomacy, spying in wartime is described primarily in terms of sabotage,
assassination, and irregular warfare—as special operations rather than special
intelligence.
Kautilya outlines the role of envoys and their use of spies comparatively
early in his volume (as compared with warfare, which is relegated to later but
substantial chapters), and he places covert collection at the center of the
envoy’s role. Apart from assessing a potential adversary by direct observation in
his accredited role, the running of espionage networks is taken as a basic task
of the diplomatic envoy. In part this was to acquire information that was not
overtly available, but it was also partly to verify the envoy’s impressions from
open sources and liaison: ‘‘Whatever information [the envoy] thus gathers he
shall try to test by intrigues.’’51 Toward these ends, the envoy was enjoined to
secure the services of ‘‘ascetic and merchant spies’’ and their disciples, ‘‘spies
under the disguise of physicians, and heretics’’ and ‘‘individuals receiving sala-
ries from two states.’’ These informants would also inform the diplomat of the
activities of groups either favorable or hostile to his own monarch. As a result,
in the Arthashastra the diplomat’s tasks are to include not just the usual above-
board tasks of conveying top-level messages and negotiating treaties, but also
‘‘gaining of friends, intrigue, sowing dissension among friends, fetching secret
force’’ as well as kidnapping the relatives of foreign leaders, ‘‘gathering informa-
tion about the movements of [enemy] spies, treaty violations and subversion by
winning over the favor of envoy and government officers of the enemy.’’52
By the same token, Kautilya warns his readers to be on the outlook for
attempts to subvert their state by foreign envoys or covert actors. Thus he rec-
ommends deploying spies who warn off his own citizens being wooed by the
representative of a foreign power. Failing this, spies ‘‘in the garb of traitors’’
should mix with genuine traitors and distinguish domestic from foreign subver-
sives. As a follow-up, ‘‘fiery spies’’ should then intervene and, having ‘‘made
friendship with traitors,’’ then ‘‘kill them with weapons or poison,’’ and then
murder and expose the ‘‘plotting foreigners.’’53
Although the chapters on war outline the making of encampments, troop
configurations, and the choice between set-piece battles and hit-and-run
‘‘treacherous’’ warfare, there is no equivalent to a chapter on the role of spies
in war for operational or tactical intelligence support. Perhaps this is because
the preexistence of espionage networks set up by embassies, envoys, and expatri-
ate residents before the outbreak of any conflict is taken by Kautilya as a given.
Instead, there are various stratagems for using spies to set foreign states against
one another, or for dividing groups and factions within an adversary’s polity
among themselves. Setting groups against one another over marital relation-
ships plays a central role in much of this,54 culminating in a chapter concerned
entirely with what is termed the ‘‘battle of intrigue,’’ in which a weaker king
uses such disruptions as jealousy, kidnapping, and planting evidence of atroci-
ties by the rival’s troops against his own people to undermine a stronger foe.55
There are proposed schemes for using fiery spies to engineer the assassination
of the rival potentate either directly or by prompting members of his court to
consider regicide, divide his military and political leaders, and even encourage
‘‘wild tribes’’ to attack and pillage the opponent on a new front.56
There is also an extended discussion of the use of spies to conduct a sabotage
campaign. Suggested techniques include using agents to poison food and drink
supplies, both for human consumption and that of livestock. Some spies dis-
guised as cowherds or hunters should release dangerous animals to cause chaos
and confusion. ‘‘Secret spies,’’ it is also suggested, ‘‘may slay from behind the
chiefs of infantry, cavalry, chariots, or elephants or they may set fire to the chief
residences of the enemy.’’ At the same time, ‘‘traitors’’ as well as wild tribes
could initiate fighting and try to devastate the countryside and vulnerable
transportation routes. Psychological ruses included having spies enter the ene-
my’s capital, blow a large number of trumpets, and falsely claim that the city
has fallen. In the confusion they might then kill the king or arrange for others
to ambush him in the panic.57 Spies occupy much the same roles when besieg-
ing a city.58
The Legacy of the Arthashastra

What Kautilya’s Arthashastra constitutes is not merely a doctrine of espionage
within wider statecraft but also one of statecraft built upon espionage as its
basic means of internal governance as well as instrument of external strategy.
At a certain level, this might seem unremarkably consistent with feudal prac-
tices in the West. Elizabethan intelligence under Walsingham and Cecil was as
much concerned with uncovering domestic conspiracy as warning of foreign
aggression. Moreover, a number of scholars writing on early modern England
have noted the equally pervasive but oddly anodyne role of domestic intelli-
gence and reporting networks under the Stuarts. Both Peter Fraser,59 and Alan
Marshall four decades later,60 noted of the Stuart monarchs how domestic sur-
veillance of the political classes had less to do with regime protection than the
government of the day simply trying to measure the temperature of public opin-
ion in an age before the mass media and MORI polls. But this is not really
comparable to the Arthashastra. Kautilya’s ‘‘institutes’’ were routinely directed
not merely toward detection but also provocation and disruption both at home
and abroad. Indeed, much of the time the use of the term ‘‘spy’’ in Shamasastry’s
translation is somewhat misleading; a more accurate but less wieldy term might
be ‘‘clandestine operators,’’ for whom espionage is but one of a range of tasks
and not necessarily the most central or significant one. As a result, though at
some level the surveillance state of the Arthashastra might have required its
spies to perform the same basic domestic understanding role as the Stuarts,
there was definitely an intrusive and ruthless political ethos above and beyond
knowing one’s national political self. K. J. Shah has argued in some detail that
one must see Kautilya’s stratagems as being set in the moderating moral context
of dharma.61 But even then he is forced to acknowledge that Kautilya’s pursuit
of an artha that meets the standards of dharma does so in terms that are ‘‘authori-
tarian and without the institution of rights.’’62
Although the original Arthashastra may have been lost for more than seven
centuries between the twelfth and early twentieth centuries, it was in circula-
tion and was influencing Indian thought on statecraft and intelligence for some-
thing like twice that duration after it was written. As one Indian scholar has
noted of Kautilya’s immediate intellectual successor: ‘‘The King was advised by
Manu to constantly ascertain the strength of his enemy as well as his own
through spies, through display of energy and through actual conduct of opera-
tions.’’63 Thus Kautilya’s espionage state provides the underlying context for
Popplewell’s observation that ‘‘one of the most notable differences between the
two empires was the unwillingness of the British to continue Mogul practice of
controlling both civil service and population through the extensive and system-
atized use of espionage.’’64 In many respects, however, the intelligence agencies
of the subcontinent appear to have returned to the Sanskrit pattern of espio-
nage. India’s agencies, especially the domestic Intelligence Bureau and external
Research and Analysis Wing, have reputations for what might be termed an
‘‘action orientation,’’65 après Douglas Porch discussing the French agencies.66
Much the same might also be said of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus and
its sponsorship of Jihadist militants in Khashmir and elsewhere over the decades
as what Kautilya would label tikshna or ‘‘firebrand spies.’’67 Even though it passed
into obscurity for a substantial interval, the Arthashastra’s legacy and influence
have been substantial throughout the evolution of politics, strategy, statecraft,
and intelligence on the Indian subcontinent, and they remain so today.
Epigraph and Acknowledgment

Kautilya, Kautilya’s Arthashastra, edited and translated by R. Shamasastry
(Mysore: Sri Raghuveer Printing Press, 1951) (hereafter, Arthashastra), 405. I
am deeply indebted to Pal ‘‘Paul’’ Dosaj of Trent University’s Department of
Philosophy for originally bringing Kautilya to my attention as an undergraduate
in 1983.
Notes
1. There are a number of renderings of this particular concept; Griffith’s choice of
this phrase is a usefully evocative one; see Samuel B. Griffith, ed., Sun Tzu: The Art of War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 145.
2. See, variously, Ralph D. Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Oxford:
Westview Press, 1993), esp. 145–86; and Ralph D. Sawyer, The Tao of Spycraft: Intelligence
Theory and Practice in Traditional China (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004).
3. See, e.g., Daniel A. Fournie, ‘‘Harsh Lessons: Roman Intelligence in the Hannibalic
War,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17, no. 3 (Fall 2004). Also see
various works by Rose Mary Sheldon—e.g., Rose Mary Sheldon, ‘‘The Ancient Imperative:
Clandestine Operations and Covert Action,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-
intelligence 10, no. 3 (Fall 1997); Rose Mary Sheldon, ‘‘Caesar, Intelligence, and Ancient
Britain,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 15, no. 1 (Spring 2002);
and Rose Mary Sheldon, ‘‘The Spartacus Rebellion: A Roman Intelligence Failure?’’ Interna-
tional Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 6, no. 1 (Spring 1993).
4. See, e.g., Richard Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and
the Defence of the Indian Empire 1904–1924 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 8–9; and David
Kahn, ‘‘An Historical Theory of Intelligence,’’ Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 3
(Autumn 2001): 80.
5. Similar debates ran for decades concerning the relative merits of the various transla-
tions of Sun Tze.
6. The debates and uncertainties concurrent with Shamasastry’s various editions of the
work can be charted in successive prefaces to the Arthashastra, vii–xxxiii.
7. See, e.g., Rashed Uz Zaman, ‘‘Kautilya: The Indian Strategic Thinker and Indian
Strategic Culture,’’ Comparative Strategy 25 (2006): 233–35. I am indebted to Kristian Gus-
tafson for this reference.
8. See, e.g., K. J. Shah, ‘‘Of Artha and the Arthashastra,’’ in Comparative Political Philoso-
phy: Studies under the Upas Tree, edited by Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith (New Delhi:
Sage, 1992), 141–62.
9. Kautilya’s authority and authorship are likewise taken as a given by Bhakar, Dikshitar,
and Sarkar.
10. S. K. Bhakari, Indian Warfare: An Appraisal of Strategy and Tactics in War in the Early
Medieval Period (Calcutta: Munshiram Manoharlal, n.d.), 87; V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar,
War in Ancient India (Madras: Macmillan, 1944), 351–52; Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Art
of War in Medieval India (Calcutta: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1983), 176.
11. Dikshitar, War, 352–53. Current estimates date the Gita to the first century bc rather
than somewhere between the fifth and second centuries, as had previously been believed.
12. Popplewell, Intelligence, 9.
13. A. V. Narasimha Murthy, ‘‘Centenary of Arthashastra’s Publication R Shamasastry:
Discoverer of Kautilya’s Arthashastra,’’ Organiser, June 21, 2009; Arthashastra, iii–iv.
14. E.g., Bhakari, Indian Warfare, 86, refers to ‘‘an organisation [samstha] consisting of five
categories or institutes’’ of agents, while Dikshitar, War, 354, takes a similar view of samstha,
referring to a central espionage agency with ‘‘four important chapters on [sic] this institu-
tion.’’ However, as will be seen below, Kautilya actually describes several different intelli-
gence collection offices in departments as diverse as the Treasury, the military, and the
monarch’s private staff. Shamasastry himself gives the Sanskrit in the Arthashastra text in a
manner that strongly indicates that samstha refers to the categories of spy and not their
controlling headquarters, e.g., Arthashastra, 19. This is a typical point where an effective
understanding of Kautilya still awaits a new interpretation of the original Sanskrit and cross-
referencing to other manuscripts of the Arthashastra that were located after Shamasastry’s
original discovery.
15. Arthashastra, 20, 21.

16. Ibid., 21.
17. Ibid.
18. Significantly, the list excludes the ‘‘outcaste’’ Dalit communities.
19. Arthashastra, 17–18.
20. Ibid., 20.
21. Ibid., 18.
22. Ibid., 18–19.
23. Ibid., 19.
24. Ibid., 22.
25. Ibid., 20.
26. Ibid., 19; the original text here incorporates what appears to be a typographical error,
reading instead ‘‘confront elephants and tigers in fight mainly. . . .’’
27. Ibid., 20.
28. Ibid., 21.
29. Ibid., 20.
30. Ibid., 22.
31. Ibid., 37.
32. Ibid., 15–16.
33. Ibid., 16–17. Somewhat confusingly, Shamasastry employs the term ‘‘prime minister’’
to refer both to a singular first minister and to the equivalent of Cabinet ministers in the
plural. Judging from his annotations to the translation, the Sanskrit term mantri, which
generically means ‘‘minister,’’ is apparently used in both contexts.
34. Ibid., 17.
35. Ibid., 22.
36. Ibid., 62.
37. Ibid., 69.
38. Ibid., 159.
39. Ibid., 159–60.
40. Ibid., 237–38.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 238.
43. Ibid., 241.
44. Ibid., 162.
45. Ibid., 273.
46. Ibid., 274.
47. Ibid., 274, infra.
48. Ibid., 275.
49. Ibid., 275 infra.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., 31.
52. Ibid., 30, 31.
53. Ibid., 380.
54. Ibid., 407–10.
55. Ibid., 413–15.
56. Ibid., 415–17.
57. Ibid., 418–19.
58. Ibid., 429–32.

59. Peter Fraser, The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and Their Monopoly of Licensed
News 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).
60. Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
61. Shah, ‘‘Of Artha,’’ 148–51.
62. Ibid., 161.
63. Sarkar, Art of War, 177.
64. Popplewell, Intelligence, 9.
65. Rigorous academic study of contemporary Indian intelligence remains an underdevel-
oped branch of the field. There has been a succession of would-be exposés of varying degrees
of credibility, e.g., D. Raman, The Kaoboys of the R&AW: Down Memory Lane (New Delhi:
Lancer, 2007); and Ashok Raina, Inside RAW (New Delhi: All India Press, 1993), which
have not really been addressed by more sober discussions (I am indebted to Alayna Ahmad
for bringing these sources to my attention). Rahul Roy-Chaudhury’s contribution to Stuart
Farson, Peter Gill, Mark Phythian, and Shlomo Shapiro, PSI Handbook of Global Security and
Intelligence: National Approaches, Volume 1: The Americas and Asia (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2008), 211–29, is, to be sure, informative in fairly bare-bones terms about the management
and administration of the Indian community but in many respects amounts to little more
than an elaborated organogram and does not address the more fraught questions of Research
and Analysis Wing (R&AW) or Intelligence Bureau clandestine activities.
66. Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995).
67. See, e.g., Rahul Bedi, ‘‘Infiltration Continues on Line of Control,’’ Jane’s Intelligence
Review 14, no. 7 (July 2002): 30–31.
CHAPTER 5
Protecting the New Rome

Byzantine Influences on Russian Intelligence
Kristian C. Gustafson
When we mentally picture Byzantinism, we see before us . . . the

austere, clear plan of a spacious and capacious structure. We know,
for example, that in politics it means autocracy. In religion, it means
Christianity with distinct features, which distinguish it from Western
churches, from heresies and schisms. In the area of ethics we know
that the Byzantine ideal does not have that elevated and in many
instances highly exaggerated notion of terrestrial human individual
introduced into history by German feudalism.
—Konstantin Leontiev, Byzantism and Slavdom, 1875
O
ne of the great hopes of the last generation was that Russia, once freed
from the bonds of communism, would rejoin the family of nations as an
equal, free, and democratic state. Russia’s progress since the collapse of
the USSR has of course not proceeded as some might have expected. As Dimitri
Obolensky has commented, ‘‘There is much in contemporary Russia that seems
unfamiliar and puzzling to the modern Western observer—ideas, institutions,
and methods of government that seem to run counter to the basic trends of his
own culture.’’1 With economic and demographic collapse followed by boom,
and with the progress of democracy questionable at times, the early hopes of
1991 have long since faded, replaced with a realization that Russia would not
/ 67 /
68 / Kristian C. Gustafson
ever be a mirror image of any Western state. Though Russia is presumably

through the worst of its times, on many counts it strikes many in the West as
not a reliable partner but still a potential enemy. ‘‘A new Cold War’’ has been
detected by some.2 One matter that causes particular concern in the West is
the behavior of Russia’s security services and their relationship with the central
authority of the state.
It is clear that the security services in Russia today are as critical and central
as they were under communism. As an analyst at one American think tank has
stated, Russia is ‘‘a state defined and dominated by former and active duty secur-
ity and intelligence officers.’’3 One Russian researcher has noted that more than
25 percent of Russia’s current governing elites have backgrounds in either the
military or security services, including former president and current prime min-
ister Vladimir Putin as a former KGB and FSB officer.4 The question posed by
several thinkers since the collapse of the USSR is if there has been any real
change in the management of Russia and its security services.5 As Amy Knight
commented in the mid-1990s, there had been cosmetic change in the security
services, but they remained substantially the same structures because ‘‘Lubianka
still stood and, although there had been changes at the helm inside, the long-
awaited reform of the security services had yet to happen. Indeed, by August
1995, the security services had recaptured much of the ground lost in the first
days after the August 1991 coup.’’6 Part of the answer to the question of ‘‘why
have the Russians not changed their political behavior significantly since the
end of communism?’’—really the question that runs throughout the work of
Amy Knight and, more recently, that of Edward Lucas—can be answered by
saying that Russia’s political behavior between 1917 and 1991 did not seem
peculiar to the West because it was communist but because it was Russian.
Accordingly, if we want to understand Russia’s political behavior now, we must
understand its cultural origins. Russia has political traditions that did not
develop out of the Renaissance and Reformation in Western Europe, and before
that from the political and religious traditions of Rome. Rather, Russia’s tradi-
tions originate from a source largely forgotten in the West: the Byzantine
Empire.
One can make more sense of Russia’s security and intelligence culture—as
opposed to specific communist or postcommunist cultures—by tracing their
common philosophical and historic roots back to their point of origin, between
five hundred and a thousand years ago in Constantinople and its empire, the
long-lived eastern successor of the Roman Empire. The Byzantines had a
strongly bureaucratized and institutionalized intelligence and security culture,
which formed the heart of their overall political system, and which strongly
influenced the behavior of Tsarist and Communist Russia—and likely still
influences it today. ‘‘There can be no doubt,’’ wrote the Russian Byzantinist
Dimitry Obolensky, ‘‘that the influence of Byzantium on Russian history and
Protecting the New Rome / 69
culture was far more profound and permanent than that of the Turko-Mongol
hordes and more homogenous than that of the modern West.’’7 If not the sole
driver, Byzantium is a key driver of Russian political, strategic, and intelligence
culture. Thus, understanding the Byzantine security culture can help one
understand Russian security culture even today. As we note elsewhere in this
volume, culture may not suggest what a people will do, but it may suggest how
they might do it.
The Byzantine Mark in Russian Political Culture

The tsars of Russia considered their state the legitimate and direct political
successor of the Byzantine Empire. As the great Russian-born historian of
Byzantium, George Ostrogorsky, wrote in his seminal History of the Byzantine
State:
Ivan III, the great liberator and consolidator of the Russian lands, married the
daughter of the Despot Thomas Palaeologus, the niece of the last Emperor of
Byzantium. He assumed the imperial Byzantine two-headed eagle in his arms,
introduced Byzantine ceremonial into Muscovy and soon made Russia the leader
of the Christian East as Byzantium had once been. Russia became the obvious
heir of the Byzantine Empire and it took over from Constantinople Roman
conceptions in their Byzantine form: if Constantinople was the New Rome,
Moscow became the ‘‘Third Rome.’’ The great tradition of Byzantium, its faith,
its political ideas, its spirituality, lived on through the centuries in the Russian
Empire.8
Whether one agrees completely with Ostrogorsky’s specific point—and
many do not—is not entirely relevant, because what we see in Russia through
the first Russian Empire is an emulation of Byzantine norms and, especially,
Byzantine political thought, through whatever motivation.9 Key aspects of this
thought included the close pairing of the Church to the state to a degree not
seen in the Western traditions surrounding Rome, with the tsars of Moscow
regarding themselves ‘‘as the successors of the Byzantine emperors, and as the
representatives of God upon Earth.’’10 This dual conception is referred to by
modern theorists as caeseropapism: the political combination of temporal and
spiritual control in the hands of a strongly centralized or despotic head of
state.11 It is a political idea often perceived in the ‘‘Byzantine Commonwealth’’
(roughly the modern Orthodox world), and it is perhaps unsurprising that the
Byzantine clergy were keen to spread it as they proselytized in the Slavic world
‘‘as the Byzantines must have looked on the doctrine as a particularly advanta-
geous export.’’12 Ultimately, it pointed all converts to the Holy City of Con-
stantinople, and thus to the power of their patriarch and their emperor.13
Through their overlapping existence the Russians adhered to the religious
leadership of Constantinople, the ‘‘second Jerusalem,’’ and their patriarchs were
appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople until near the end of the empire.
Only when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 did the Russians seize the
mantle both as the temporal inheritors of the empire and also the spiritual
inheritors, Kiev and then Moscow assuming leadership (in their minds, if not
that of the patriarch in Constantinople) of the Orthodox world. The Soviet
scholars I. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspensky commented that ‘‘it is characteristic
that the idea of Moscow, the Third Rome, could quite soon be transformed into
the idea of Moscow, the Third Jerusalem,’’ implying in Russia, as in Byzantium,
a sense of universal authority and the duty to spread their Right Belief (the
meaning of the Greek word ‘‘Orthodox’’) to the rest of the world.14 The late-
nineteenth-century political theorist Konstantin Leontiev positively used the
term ‘‘Byzantism’’ to describe the type of society that the Russian Empire
needed to counter the ‘‘degenerating’’ influence of the West. Leontiev praised
the Byzantine Empire and the tsarist autocracy as societies with a political
system that comprised the authoritative power of the monarch and devout fol-
lowing of the Russian Orthodox Church.15 A number of scholars have pointed
out these traits in the communist empire of the Soviets that succeeded the
Russian Empire. Obolensky says ‘‘it would be difficult to resist the impression
that there is at least something in common between the religious messianism
of the Second and the Third Rome and the belief of the Russian Communist
in the exclusive truth of the Marxist Gospel, immortally enshrined in the col-
lective works of Marx.’’16
John Dziak, scholar of Soviet security systems, observes that in the Soviet
Union one saw something resembling the idea of Christian Empire, but with
the Christianity replaced by an alternate ideology: ‘‘In a sense a secular theoc-
racy was born in which a priesthood (the party), served by a combined holy
office and temple guard (the Cheka), sought to exercise its will.’’17 Toynbee saw
in the inheritance of Byzantine political theory the seeds of totalitarianism in
Russia and the USSR.18
Modern Russia is certainly not a modernized simulacrum of Byzantium; this
would take the comparison too far, ignoring the many other influences—
Eastern, Western, and indigenous—on Russia since the collapse of Byzantium
and its ‘‘commonwealth.’’19 This chapter attempts to make the comparison on
a much more restricted scale, by looking primarily at the Byzantine culture of
intelligence and security. If we are to discern whether there is some noticeable
or significant remnant of Byzantine intelligence and security culture left in
modern Russia, we first must establish what that Byzantine culture looked like.
We can point, however, to a number of incidents that have led many commen-
tators to say that postcommunist Russia is a very similar polity to the USSR
before it: Putin’s autocracy and near-permanency at the head of government,
deeply flawed elections and press censorship, Russia’s behavior in Chechnya and
Georgia, its often lethal treatment of political critics of the regime domestically
and abroad, and even the persecution of non-Orthodox religious groups.20 One
can take the constructivist view that Russia’s political culture is greater than its
particular political ideology—whether imperial, communist, or officially federal
and democratic—and that it is this culture that most greatly influences how
the state handles such matters as security.
The Byzantine Culture of Intelligence and Security

The Byzantine Empire itself was the direct political successor to the Roman
Empire (‘‘Byzantine’’ is, in fact, a modern term, and these people at the time
thought of and called themselves Romanoi, Romans). Indeed, there is no clear
agreement on when ‘‘Roman’’ ceases and ‘‘Byzantine’’ begins in terms of empire,
though one might say either 324 (the founding of Constantinople) or 395 (the
death of Theodosius I). The Byzantines lived alongside what most imagine as
the classical Roman Empire of its eponymous city for a troubled century, then
continued its evolution from that point, eventually becoming a political entity
sui generis, with the politically centralized state organs of the Romans overlaid
with the religious/ideological mantle of Orthodox Christianity.
The root of this political system, we must recall, clearly comes in the inheri-
tance of the Roman Empire. The role of the government in Rome was to pro-
vide for the security of the polity. In Byzantium we have the addition of the
Christian God, and his close association with the emperor, allowing the new
theory ‘‘that the purpose of action of any kind was to foster the smooth opera-
tion of the state machine, of the empire by the grace of God.’’21 Thus the infra-
structure of the state was there primarily for purposes of what we would now
call security, specifically that of God through the person of the emperor—not
directly for the welfare of citizens. One might look for a modern political equiv-
alent in what Dziak calls the ‘‘counterintelligence state.’’22 He describes this as
a political system that displays ‘‘an overarching concern with ‘enemies’ both
internal and external. Security and extirpation of real or presumed threats
become the premier enterprise of such systems.’’23 The fixation on security, as
he describes it, demands that ‘‘all societal institutions’’ are constructed for the
aim of security. In this structure, he says, the ‘‘security service is the principal
guardian of the party; the two together constitute a permanent counterintelli-
gence enterprise to which all other major political, economic and social ques-
tions are subordinated.’’24 Replacing the word ‘‘Church’’ for ‘‘party,’’ Dziak’s
description of the Soviet state holds up remarkably well when compared with
the structures of the Byzantine state.
Byzantium’s existence was always precarious. It was the single biggest politi-
cal entity in the Mediterranean for most of the period from the ninth to twelfth
centuries, and was certainly the richest as late as the twelfth century.25 It had
no firm allies, and hungry upstart competitors like the Lombards, Normans,
Bulgars, and Turks sought to take from its riches. It was almost constantly at
war during the 1,100 years of its existence, and its views on intelligence would
have been conditioned by the fact that no foreign (i.e., non-Orthodox and,
later, non–Greek-speaking) person or state could be trusted. Indeed, one might
argue that the Byzantines would have viewed war as the natural state of being,
with peace as an aberration, rather the opposite of the current mindset in the
West. What is more, the Byzantines knew that war was expensive and danger-
ous. As John Haldon has written, the Byzantine self-image ‘‘was one of a belea-
guered Christian state fighting the forces of darkness, with foes against whom
it had constantly to be on its guard.’’26 This mindset—of constant, dangerous,
expensive conflict—naturally put the Byzantines’ thoughts toward how to avoid
war despite its prevalence.27 As Haldon continued, the Byzantines sought to
‘‘evolve a whole panoply of defensive techniques, among which warfare was
only one element, and by no means necessarily the most useful.’’28 Intelligence,
covert action, trickery, and gold-lubricated diplomacy were thus the natural
recourse of a state that sought to manage the threats to God and emperor that
lurked at every single border.
Byzantium was, in short, paranoid—and justifiably so. In Constantinople
the whole machinery of state was geared to security: State infrastructure served
to facilitate the movements of armies and the intelligence that triggered their
deployments; the functionaries of state—both internal and external, and cen-
tral and provincial—had as their main duties the detection of enemies or their
destruction; and the Orthodox Church, the source of religious legitimacy for
the emperor, played a central role in the security of the state through actual
intelligence functions as well as offering strong diplomatic entrée abroad. As
with Dziak’s description of the USSR, in the Byzantine world all the organs of
state were designed to ensure the ‘‘self-perpetuation’’ of the state rather than its
well-being.29 Examining this infrastructure in detail helps in understanding its
pervasiveness in the medieval state.
One piece of security infrastructure inherited by the Byzantines from its
Rome-based antecedent was the postal system. The sixth-century historian Pro-
copius notes in his Secret History that the ‘‘earlier emperors, in order to gain
the most speedy information concerning the movements of the enemy in each
territory, seditions or unforeseen accidents in individual towns, and the actions
of the governors and other officials in all parts of the Empire, and also in order
that those who conveyed the yearly tribute might do so without danger or delay,
had established a rapid service of public couriers.’’30 If a modern Westerner were
to be told that their state’s postal system was there primarily to spy on external
enemies, governors, and citizens alike, they would likely be slightly concerned,
but this system was a natural consequence of the strategic and political environ-
ment in which the state existed and which was the cause of its elaborate gover-
nance. As a system designed for purposes of security and intelligence, it should
not be a revelation that those who worked for the post were in turn security
functionaries, the agentes in rebus (literally ‘‘agents for things,’’ perhaps best
translated as ‘‘general agents’’). Their duties included the supervision of the
roads and inns of the cursus publicus (later the Hellenized δημουσος δρ
μος),
the carrying of letters, and verifying that a traveler was carrying the right war-
rant (evectio, δρνθημα) while using the cursus. Other tasks of the agentes
included supervising the provincial bureaucracy and delivering imperial com-
mands, often staying in the area to ensure their implementation. Being outside
the control of the provincial governors, some agentes, the curiosi (Greek:
διατρχοντες), were appointed as inspectors and acted as a sort of secret police
reporting to the emperor.31 They were used, also, to supervise the arrest of
senior officials as required, to escort senior Romans into exile, and so even to
assist in the enforcement of government regulation of the Church—a require-
ment of the caeseropapist state.32
The public post was part of a larger internal security structure. The tenth-
century great hetaeriarch (μγας ταιρειρχης), or captain of one of the guard
units, was the chief officer responsible for protecting the emperor against plots.33
One might presume that it was these officers who ‘‘at once informed’’ Emperor
Alexius I of the senatorial/military plot against him in 1083, the officers’ plot
of 1091, the nobles’ plot of 1094, and half a dozen other plots besides.34 Byzan-
tine history is infamous and eponymous for its endless cycle of plots—the con-
temporary chronicler Michael Psellus describes some nineteen serious plots
against emperors in the period 976–1081—and in reading the various Byzantine
primary texts, one sees how often these were smashed, often based on what the
chroniclers describe only as the information ‘‘of a peasant,’’ perhaps ‘‘a priest,’’
or often just ‘‘somebody.’’35
Ultimately, Byzantium resembles to a good degree Dziak’s ‘‘counterintelli-
gence state,’’ where people were constantly searching for plots that were
assumed to always be present—which in the case of Constantinople they likely
were. It was a dangerous business being a Byzantine emperor; between the years
395 and 1453 there were 107 Byzantine emperors, with an average of ten years
on the throne. Only 34 of these emperors died natural deaths. Psellus recounts
the advice given to the great warrior-emperor Basil II (who would convert the
Kievan Slavs to Christianity and begin the great relationship between the Byz-
antines and the Russians) from his would-be overthrower, Sclerus: ‘‘Cut-down
the governors who become over-proud. . . . Let no generals on campaign have
too many resources. Exhaust them with unjust taxations to keep them busied
with their own affairs. Admit no women to the imperial councils. Be accessible
to no one. Share with few your intimate plans.’’36
One might think these words were those Stalin himself might have uttered.
We can surmise that Alexius I, founder of the Comnene Dynasty, ran a large
network of agents to protect his reign. With regard to plotting, phrases such as
‘‘the Emperor, however, was not unaware of it’’ or ‘‘he had reliable information’’
from ‘‘many informants’’ dot the Alexiad; indeed, they are pointedly made by
Anna Comnena in her The Alexiad to show her father’s shrewdness in beating
the enemies of the state through superior information.37 The eleventh-century
provincial official Kekaumenos offers this advice in his Strategikon: ‘‘If you hear
of [an accusation] against your official, that he is plotting against your majesty,
do not let the evil lie hidden within your soul and aim to destroy him. Instead,
make a thorough investigation, at first keeping things secret. But if you then
discover the truth, the charge against him should be made openly.’’ Failing to
collect all the evidence with enough skill, the text then seems to say (it has
lacunas), ‘‘You then make [him] your enemy and many other [enemies] on
account of him.’’38 Being clever enough to weed out and condemn plotters had
a practical and social value in Byzantium. A sound-minded Byzantine ruler,
Kekaumenos suggests, always distrusts the motivations of his servants and
actively works to protect against their plotting. We should add that this is not
a uniquely Byzantine view of Byzantine life; the Crusaders who came into con-
tact with the empire almost uniformly viewed the Byzantines as perfidious,
treacherous, and undependable, as well as unmanly for being so.39
Let us go back to the official security structures of the state, which may have
helped emperors such as Basil II and Alexius I secure their thrones for so long.
As the Byzantine Empire moved past the near-fatal crisis of the Arab invasions
of the seventh and eighth centuries, the administration of the postal system
evolved, with the senior officer becoming the senior minister and principal
adviser to the emperor until superseded in the twelfth century by the logothete
of the secreton (offices or bureaus, μογοθτης το σεκρτον), a position not
unlike the ‘‘principal secretary’’ post filled by Sir Francis Walsingham in Eliza-
bethan England.40 Thus effectively, the roads and the post—the intelligence
infrastructure—were managed by the closest thing the Byzantines had to a com-
bined foreign minister and prime minister, which shows the importance of
security and intelligence gathering in the governance of the state. Perhaps more
interestingly, for our purposes here, it was administratively grouped either with
or alongside the Scrinium Barbarorum (βρβαρος), or Bureau of Barbarians.
Mistaking the Bureau of Barbarians as an espionage office, as has been done
by some, betrays a Western cast of mind: that such duties are entrusted to a
single agency, whereas in Constantinople security intelligence was the job of
much of the government.41 Regardless, the bureau was established in the mid–
fifth century, and it is first mentioned in the Constitution of Theodosius II.42 It
was still in existence at the time of Philotheos in the tenth century, and it is
presumed by J. M. Bury to have ‘‘exercised supervision over all foreigners visit-
ing Constantinople.’’43 Although, on the surface, it was a protocol office—its
main duty was to ensure that foreign envoys were properly cared for and
received sufficient state funds for their maintenance, and it kept all the official
translators—it clearly had a security function as well. Though not directly asso-
ciated with the Bureau of Barbarians, an anonymous work called On Strategy
from the sixth century offers advice about foreign embassies and envoys that
was no doubt shared by the Bureau: ‘‘[Envoys] who are sent to us should be
received honorably and generously, for everyone holds envoys in high esteem.
Their attendants, however, should be kept under surveillance to keep them
from obtaining any information by asking questions of our people.’’44 This was
the job likely fulfilled by the bureau. A twelfth-century Italian ambassador to
Byzantium, Bishop Liudprand of Cremono, spits venom about his Greek mind-
ers, whom, he perceived accurately, were there as his jailers rather than his
protectors.45 We know such surveillance failed from time to time; the Arab
hostage Al Jarmi sent back to the caliphs of Damascus a detailed Byzantine
order of battle in the year 845.46
The Byzantines knew well that embassies and envoys were as much for intel-
ligence purposes as for diplomatic, that indeed the former was a precondition
for the latter.47 A number of Byzantine texts thus speak of the role of envoys and
how they should be selected and trained, with a premium placed on religious
orthodoxy and reliability: ‘‘The envoys we send out should be men who have
the reputation of being religious, who have never been denounced for any crime
or publicly condemned.’’48 This same work stresses that the envoy must be able
to dissemble and lie about Roman intentions, and not to give too much of the
empire’s intentions away if he happens to find the receiving state unexpectedly
unfriendly. Theophanes offers the example of Daniel of Sinope, an envoy sent
to Emir Walid of Syria not really to discuss terms, but ‘‘to make a precise exami-
nation of the Arabs’ move against Romania, and their forces.’’49 Above all, the
envoy was there to protect the security of the emperor (and thus empire) in any
way he could. As Bréhier notes: ‘‘It was above all in the relations with the
established states, whose power could menace Constantinople, that imperial
diplomacy had to deploy all its resources, following with attention the evolu-
tions of their internal politics and producing intelligence on their forces, in an
era where the idea of permanent embassies did not exist. Thanks to its strong
traditions and its ability to discover the weak points of its enemies, [Byzantine
diplomats] several times preserved the existence of the Empire, in instances
where [information] proved more advantageous than military force.’’50
For the Byzantines diplomacy was the handmaiden of intelligence, and
intelligence was the shield of the state. It seems the polities within the Byzan-
tine sphere of interest understood this well. On receiving a Byzantine envoy in
the tenth century, the khagan of the Central Asian Turks asked, ‘‘Are you not
those Romans who have ten tongues and one deceit?’’51
The Church, as well as diplomats, was always a potential source of intelli-
gence for the Byzantines. Interestingly, it was monks who were involved in the
most famous case of Byzantine industrial espionage: the theft of silkworms from
China. According to Procopius and Theophanes, two Nestorian monks offered

to steal the secret of silk from China so that the Byzantines could cultivate it
themselves.52 Other priests, monks, and religious figures appear in Byzantine
intelligence practice, and this is reflected even in the Arabic record, as Al-
Asmari notes in chapter 6 of this volume. In 756 and 757, Theodore, the patri-
arch of Antioch, was exiled by Salim of Damascus for ‘‘revealing their affairs to
the Emperor Constantine by letters.’’ Theophanes hastens to note that this
was a false accusation.53 In the compilation on governing commissioned by
Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus, we read that itinerant monks acted as secret
messengers, and perhaps spies, for the empire in the intrigues against the Arme-
nian princes.54 One should not be terribly surprised by the role of the religious
establishment in the intelligence role. In part, one can point to the intense
association of Orthodox Christianity with the throne, making sense of the
actions of Patriarch Theodore, who would have viewed Constantine as the pro-
tector of the faith against the satanic ‘‘Agarenes’’ (i.e., the ‘‘Sons of Hagar,’’ as
the Byzantines often called Muslims, and a term still used in the Russian Ortho-
dox Church).55
This same ‘‘symphony’’ of Church and state made the Byzantine clergy and
monastic community inevitably part of the administrative systems of the
empire56 —and, from 1039 to 1448, when Constantinopolitan bishops served in
Kiev and Moscow, the main part of the Russian administrative system as
well57—and thus both intimately part of the security state and at times even
attached to various factions of government. They were most intimately involved
when the Church felt the security of the state threatened by heretical sects.
When the Church detected heresy, the whole weight of the state’s force was
laid against them. An Orthodox state was one that took spiritual direction from
the patriarch of Constantinople, and because the emperor was the protector of
the Church, any truly Orthodox state was by definition an ally of the empire—
Bulgaria became an enemy in the tenth century by declaring its Church auto-
cephalous, that is, independent from Constantinople. So the work of men such
as Constantine (‘‘Cyril’’) and Methodius in composing Cyrillic, and keeping
parts of what is now Moravia and Romania within the imperial fold while
excluding the influence of Rome, was key in turning potential foes into loyal
subjects of the one true ‘‘holy catholic and apostolic Church’’ of Constantino-
ple.58 This is very much akin to the Soviet ideal of spreading Communist ideol-
ogy to ensure allies, both diplomatic and military, throughout the world, and
the vitriol spread by Moscow against any divergent ideology was as strong as
that of the Patriarchate against heterodox churches, which included its peer-
competitor, Rome. The existential role the Church played in the security of the
empire cannot possibly be overstated.
The empire, however unitary and centralized it appeared, depended inevita-
bly upon its governors and generals. By the reign of Emperor Constans II (641–
68) the empire was defended by what was called the ‘‘thematic’’ system, themes
being provinces ruled by military governors and defended by militias of settled
ex-soldiers.59 The thematic armies were thus largely static and nonprofessional,
and were bolstered by the Tagma, the smaller imperial professional field force
kept near the capital. Worse, from the mid-seventh to early tenth centuries, the
empire was on the defensive on many fronts, surrounded by enemies, and with
never enough troops to deal with everyone at once. Accordingly, much of the
day-to-day defense of the empire was delegated to the thematic governors, who
had to absorb attacks as best they could, conduct guerrilla and small-unit
harassment as they could, and hope the tagmatic forces might show up in time
to assist in the destruction of the enemy as it retreated loaded with booty.60
Edward Luttwak argues persuasively that this ‘‘elastic’’ defensive system suited
the empire’s more limited military means and naturally placed a premium on
intelligence.61
Moreover, the enemies of the state varied, and field army commanders
needed to know who they were fighting to know how they were going to fight.
As the great warrior-emperor Maurice (582–602) says in his Strategikon: ‘‘We
must now treat of the tactics and characteristics of each race which might cause
trouble to our state. The purpose of this chapter is to enable those who intend
to wage war against these peoples to prepare themselves properly. For all nations
do not fight in a single formation or in the same manner, and one cannot deal
with them all in the same way.’’62
Following this is a description of the tactics, techniques, and procedures of
many of the neighboring peoples, and in this we can perceive the great intelli-
gence structures the Byzantines maintained. Constantine VII’s De Admin-
istrando Imperio is a critical guide to foreign policy and diplomacy written for
the emperor’s youthful son, and spends much of its substantial length giving
detailed descriptions of the empire’s neighboring peoples, their internal politics,
and thus how the empire could best deal with them. Romilly Jenkins, an editor
of the work, notes how some of the material in this ‘‘secret and confidential
document’’ is clearly derived from secret sources.63 We also know that though
Constantine authored this work in his long years of enforced idleness, some of
the material is drawn from other, preexisting sources.64 Was there in Byzantium
a system whereby information from diplomats, governors, the Church, the
Bureau of Barbarians, the logothetes, and other sources was compiled and pushed
out to consumers in government and in military commands? We have no infor-
mation to indicate whether this was the case, but it is possible that it existed at
points before the early thirteenth century.
To understand the fullness of the Byzantine approach to intelligence, one
therefore needs to look to the numerous military manuals published for the
edification of both emperors and governors alike. In the defensive centuries of
the empire, a premium was placed on knowing the enemy and on trying to
predict its aggressive actions, in order to make the thematic-tagmatic system of

defense function. The military governors needed to have information superior-
ity over their opponents in order to allow their smaller forces to cope effectively
with the larger field armies of their varied enemies. Spying was thus viewed as
part and parcel of both governorship and military strategy. In the first instance,
these military manuals place great weight on the standard military practice of a
‘‘good number of competent and trustworthy scouts.’’65 But scouting is not the
complete solution for defense, notes another tenth-century work titled Cam-
paign Organization, given that ‘‘actual spies, however, are the most useful. They
go into the enemy’s country and can find out exactly what is going on there and
report it back to those who sent them.’’ What is interesting is the universality of
the responsibility to spy, and among whom: ‘‘The Domestic [the Byzantine
equivalent of the commander of land forces was titled the ‘‘Domestic of the
Schools’’] and the generals along the border should be sure to have spies not
only among the Bulgarians, . . . [but also among all neighboring peoples, even
those at peace,] so that none of their plans will not be known to us.’’66 Espio-
nage was a job of all field commanders, both central and provincial, and against
all neighboring nations. Everyone was a potential enemy or ally.
The texts spend some time discussing the tradecraft of spying. We have seen
how the Byzantines conducted espionage under diplomatic cover at the highest
level; at the lower level they also made use of business or commercial cover.
They understood that they were working in hostile environments and had to
pay special attention to security protocols. On Strategy’s author notes:
Before leaving on his assignment each spy should speak in secrecy about his
mission to one of his closest associates. Both should agree upon arrangements
for communicating safely with one another, setting a definite place and manner
of meeting. The place could be the public market in which many of our people,
as well as foreigners, gather. The manner could be on the pretext of trading. In
this way they should be able to escape notice of the enemy. One offers our goods
for sale or barter, and the other gives foreign goods in exchange and informs us
of the enemy’s plans against us and of the situation in their country.67
Because of the nature of communications in the ancient world—high-speed

imperial couriers notwithstanding—the thematic governors had to maintain
relations with their corresponding magnates in neighboring provinces. These
relations should be used, Nikephoros notes, for the purposes of intelligence.
Playing on the deceits that earned the Byzantines such disdain from the later
Western Crusaders and Victorian historians, the local governor ‘‘should pretend
to make friends with the emirs who control the castles in the border regions.
He should also write to them and send out men with gift baskets. As a result,
with all this coming and going, the general might be able to get a clear picture
of the plans and intentions of the enemy.’’68 Like the author of On Strategy, the
emperor suggests that the governor ought to attempt redundant coverage of the
foe: ‘‘He ought also to have the businessmen go out’’ to spy.69 Byzantine leaders
were not too class conscious, however, and also ‘‘sent spies disguised as beggars,’’
as Leo the Deacon says.70
The Byzantines, as one can see, had a very highly developed conception of
the role and practice of intelligence. Unlike any other organized polity until
the modern era, they maintained bureaucratically organized security structures
(though never intelligence organizations specifically), which century after cen-
tury ensured a constant flow of information about the external and internal
enemies of the state to leader and field commanders. All levels of the state
leadership were engaged in spying on the emperor’s ubiquitous foes, in what
closely matches Dziak’s description of the counterintelligence state. The role of
the entire structure of governance was ‘‘to put it briefly, to make sure that
nothing which [the enemy] might be thinking of will escape us.’’71 Because
everyone who was not Orthodox or Byzantine was almost by definition a foe,
intelligence needed to be an ongoing and natural part of governance. Luttwak
argues persuasively that two key tenets of Byzantine ‘‘operational code’’ were
‘‘gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his move-
ments constantly’’ and ‘‘subversion is the path to victory.’’72 This ongoing and
ambient need for intelligence, and the stress on covert action, made the Byzan-
tines distinct from their predecessors in Rome, Greece, and elsewhere—and
were part of what links them to modern Russia.
The Reflections of Byzantine Intelligence in Modern Russia

Knowing that there is a strong Byzantine link in general Russian culture, and
then coupling that with what we can construct of the Byzantine intelligence
tradition, we might thus be able to see if there are noticeable artifacts of Byzan-
tium’s security state within recent and current Russian practice. To reiterate the
point made in the introduction to this volume about political inheritance, ‘‘the
people and the rulers of the Kievan State had good opportunities of becoming
acquainted with the main principles of Byzantine political philosophy, . . . [and]
it can be seen that many Byzantine ideas were incorporated into the political
structure of the State of Kiev, and that they became a basis for Russia’s further
evolution.’’73 Establishing direct antecedence is not the purpose of this chapter,
and is really not possible anyway. It is also clear that Byzantine writings on
things such as espionage and intelligence are actually quite restricted within
the overall restricted literary legacy of Byzantium—we should likely never say
that political Russia was ever directly influenced by Byzantine military treatises,
for instance. What is being argued here is that the way the Byzantines managed
their security and intelligence was a function of the political culture of the
state, the same political culture that was inherited later by the Kievan and then
the Russian state, and that has served the Soviet and subsequent post-Soviet
Russian state.
There are links that show the Tsarist and then Soviet security apparatus to
have a Byzantine pedigree based on inherited political culture. The secret chan-
cery, or prikaz tainykh del, is described by Russian historians as the personal
chancery of the tsar in the seventeenth century. Initially, it was led by a secret
clerk called a d’yak. This word is interesting because it is etymologically derived
from the Greek work diakonos (deacon), a monastic or Church rank that hints
at the strong role of Byzantine Church governance in Kievan and early Musco-
vite Russia. The main function of the secret prikaz was to supervise both other
prikazy and other officials of the tsar, such as diplomats and military officers.
The d’yak reported directly to the sovereign.74 A subsequent organization was
the eighteenth-century Tainaya rozysknykh del kantselyariya. Under the leader-
ship of A. I. Ushakov, a veteran from the previous secret chancery, this office
supervised the investigation of political suspects throughout the empire and
took immediate responsibility for the most dangerous delinquents.75 These
offices bear a resemblance, in bureaucratic terms, to the logothetes and secretum
of tenth-century Byzantium, not surprising given the clerical origin of both. It
is in these organizations, modeled at least in part on Byzantine methods of
government, that we find the predecessors of the modern Russian security appa-
ratus.76 The Cheka, the NKVD, and eventually the KGB were all the successors
of the Ohkrana ‘‘in at least equal size and in more merciless temper, if in some-
what different form.’’77 The FSB and SVR would emerge from the Soviet struc-
tures much more seamlessly.
One can draw no specific indication of Byzantine bureaucratic organization
in the organization of the Soviet and subsequent Russian state, but in spirit, the
way the Soviets organized their government for security purposes is still quite
Russian. Few would argue that in his control of the security organs of the state,
Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union behaved in an imperial fashion and forms the
model of Dziak’s counterintelligence state. Like the Byzantine system, Amy
Knight observed that in early post-Soviet Russia ‘‘the president ‘directs the
activity’ of the security services, and [the law] diminishes the role of parliamen-
tary oversight entirely.’’78 Other observers have noted, as mentioned above, that
modern Russia’s government and elites come in large part from the security
services.79 Like their Byzantine forebears, the Soviets drew no particular distinc-
tion between ‘‘overt’’ and ‘‘covert’’ in the persecution of the enemies of the
state. Diplomacy in the Western usage tries to draw a broad line between its
proper functioning and the underhanded methods of the state’s intelligence
agencies, to the point where organizations such as the UK Secret Intelligence
Service (a.k.a. MI-6) are entrusted with the specific task of ‘‘secret diplomacy’’
where their Foreign Office colleagues could not tread.80 The Soviet term ‘‘active
measures’’ (activinyye meropriatia) took in both overt and covert actions to
influence foreign countries, whereas most other terms used in the West focus on
the covert.81 As Richard Shultz and Roy Godson point out, the terms ‘‘special
activities’’ and ‘‘covert actions’’ tend to indicate that they are made of separate
stuff from the substance of foreign policy, but ‘‘in the Soviet view, . . . no
such distinctions are apparent.’’82 Whereas a Western ambassador might balk at
purposefully deceiving an interlocutor for fear of losing credibility, the Byzan-
tine, Russian, or Soviet diplomat would not, as might be witnessed in the story
of Soviet diplomatic disinformation surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Of the purges and show trials of Stalin’s Russia, we have ample evidence in
the Byzantine state. Theophanes notes Justinian’s behavior after discovering a
plot against him by one Herakleios, who
was brought in bonds from Thrace along with all the other officers who were his
comrades. Justinian hanged them all on the wall. He also sent men into the
interior who rooted out many more officers and killed them, those who had
been active against him and those who had not alike. . . . Justinian blinded the
patriarch Kallinikos and exiled him to Rome. . . . [He] destroyed an uncountable
number of political and military figures; many he gave bitter deaths by throwing
them into the sea in sacks. He invited others to a fine meal and hanged some of
them when they got up; others he cut down. Because of all this everyone was
terrified.83
If one were to change the names from Herakleios and Kallinikos to Tukachev-
sky and Zinoviev, and substitute Stalin for Justinian, this story retains a fright-
ening degree of fidelity. Such Soviet-sounding stories are repeated in
Comnena’s The Alexiad, who notes even her adored father’s use of torture to
uncover plots against him.84
The Russians and Byzantines also share a penchant for disposing of dissi-
dents in particularly brutal fashion. As with the assassination of Georgi Markov
in London by the Bulgarian secret police, or the assassination of Leon Trotsky
in Mexico by the NKVD, so the Byzantines were willing and able to destroy
enemies of the state abroad. After making a peace treaty with the Bulgarians,
Emperor Constantine V ‘‘sent men into Bulgaria who seized Sklabounos the
ruler of Sebereis, a man who had worked many evils in Thrace. Christianos, an
apostate from Christianity who headed the Skamaroi, was also captured. His
hands and feet were cut off at the mole of St. Thomas. . . . [He was eviscerated]
and then he was burned.’’85 Look at what is described here: Imperial agents did
not just execute a traitor, they also kidnapped him and returned him to imperial
territory so that he could be executed spectacularly. Examples of such ‘‘extraor-
dinary rendition’’ are noted several times in Byzantine texts. The poisoning of
Alexander Litvinenko, as it is suggested, by his former Chekist peers would not
seem strange to the Byzantines in any aspect other than the particular
method.86 They would likely heartily agree with the assassination’s necessity.
For the Byzantines, various populations along the borders were troublesome,
and so they were forcibly uprooted and moved to parts of the empire where
they had less opportunity to cause harm. The heretical Athenganoi, the Pauli-
cians, and much of the Armenian aristocracy were relocated between the eighth
and tenth centuries ‘‘to remove recalcitrant elements which, if left in their
homeland, might have become serious sources of trouble.’’87 Such forced move-
ments of populations, most often minority groups perceived as security risks,
were a frequent recourse of Stalin, who took thirteen entire minority nations
that ‘‘totaled more than 2 million people [and] deported [them] to internal
exile.’’88 This has even occurred in post-Communist Russia, though to a much
smaller degree.89 Beyond these, however, is a general climate of security. Like
the Byzantines, Russia has for most of its political existence viewed itself as
being surrounded by threats. As George Kennan put it in his famous ‘‘Long
Telegram,’’ at bottom a ‘‘neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and
instinctive [part of the] Russian sense of insecurity.’’90 Causation and correlation
are hard to distinguish here. Do the Byzantines and the Russians look alike
simply because they share, randomly, a similar worldview? Or do they share a
similar worldview because of a shared religious/ideological background? Here
the ‘‘layer cake’’ of culture and the thickness of the intervening centuries of
history make it hard to give a definitive answer.
One of the most curious aspects of the current Russian security environment
is the resurgence of religion. In the 2000 National Security Concept, the Putin
administration stated, ‘‘assurance of the Russian Federation’s national security
also includes protecting the cultural and spiritual-moral legacy and the histori-
cal traditions and standards of public life, and preserving the cultural heritage
of all Russia’s peoples. There must be a state policy to maintain the population’s
spiritual and moral welfare, prohibit the use of airtime to promote violence or
base instincts, and counter the adverse impact of foreign religious organizations
and missionaries.’’91 Here we have the highest authority directly relating the
health of Russia’s traditional religion, Orthodoxy, to the security of the state.
Several significant works of scholarship have identified that this ‘‘tendency to
see religious difference as, at least in part, a potential security threat is shared’’
by both the Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin, and presumably the current
government.92 Equally interesting is the fact that Putin, an apparently practic-
ing Orthodox Christian himself, ensured that in 2002 the Federal Security
Agency (FSB) rededicated its traditional Orthodox chapel in the Lubyanka.
This, wrote Julie Elkner, ‘‘set the seal on the special relationship between the
FSB and the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).’’ Deputy FSB
director Vladimir Shul’ts hailed the consecration of the church as a ‘‘truly
emblematic event,’’ which, Elkner suggests, should be ‘‘viewed in the light of
the complex and dramatic history of relations between the secret police and
the Orthodox Church.’’93 One commentator has convincingly described how
the Russian Foreign Ministry has been harnessing the Orthodox Church as a
tool to control expatriate Russian communities outside Russia via the reuniting
of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia with the Patriarchate in
Moscow.94
Although John Anderson relates this increasing state Orthodoxy to the
politicized Patriarchate under Peter the Great, it is clear on review that the
tradition of politicized state religion has a longer pedigree indeed, and one
can note the similarity to Byzantine views on the subject going back nearly a
millennium. What will be interesting to see is if this view continues with the
current degree of energy once Putin has left the political scene. Regardless, that
Orthodoxy should be so resurgent in Russia after seventy years of enforced athe-
ism shows the resilience of cultural habit over the longer term. It reinforces our
argument in the conclusion of this volume that culture is an indicator not of
what but how.
Echoes of Empire
By no means is it the case that Russia is solely bound by its Byzantine heritage,
for though there are many similarities, differences abound as well. As was noted
in the introduction to this volume, there are simply too many unaccountable
variables that scholars simply cannot untangle. At each stage of Russia’s history
since the founding of the Kievan and Muscovite states, the Russians as a people
have been a unique and independent force in European and Asian history.
There have been many influences on Russia over the centuries, each piling on
top of the other like layers in a cake: Byzantine, Mongol, Western European,
and the powerful rules of men like Ivan IV, Peter the Great, Lenin, and Stalin,
who shaped history and culture with sheer force of personality. But just as
biblical scholars and paleographers seek the ‘‘ur-text’’ as they trace their work’s
history, so in the field of intelligence and security one can seek some original
source of behaviors that predate any future evolutions. In Russia one has a clear
source of this in the history of the Byzantine Empire.
The importance of this particular argument can neither be overstated nor
ignored. As explained above, it must be clear that the Russians are their own
people, with a political and social volition beyond their cultural antecedents.
When the nations of the West, conversely, try to understand the behavior of
the Russian state—or the historic behavior of its Soviet or Tsarist predeces-
sors—some keys need to be provided to unlock the behavior and make sense of
it. Especially when dealing with the behavior of Russia in its security culture
and its manifestation in intelligence, a heritage significantly different from that
of the Western European and Anglo-Saxon states is clearly at work. It is in the
parallels to the great empire of Constantinople where one may begin to see
inside, or rather deeply behind, many Russian behaviors.
Can one extend the argument made here about Russia’s Byzantine inheri-
tance to other states of the Byzantine Commonwealth, such as Romania, Bul-
garia, Serbia, and the closest inheritor, Greece? Perhaps to some degree. Here
one would also need to account not only for the reimported Russian influence of
the Communist era but also for more than five hundred years of the Ottomans’
occupation—and the latter featured rule by their dragoman and hospodar client
rulers, often Phanariote Greeks, which, though strongly Hellenic, was more
clerical in tone.95 Greece under the colonels was strongly authoritarian and had
all the features of a police state, and Bulgaria and Serbia have clearly had their
troubles with authoritarian security cultures since their post-Communist inde-
pendence; yet just as clearly, states such as Romania (noted for its strong Phana-
riote political culture as late as the nineteenth century96) have altered their
political culture radically since the end of communist rule and cut a hard course
toward democracy and an accountable security structure in a Western European
mold.97 Ultimately, as quoted elsewhere in this volume, as W. Somerset
Maugham asserted, it is clear that ‘‘tradition is a guide and not a gaoler.’’
Epigraph and Acknowledgment

Dimiter G. Angelov, ‘‘Byzantinism: The Imaginary and Real Heritage of Byzan-
tium in Southeastern Europe,’’ in New Approaches to Balkan Studies, edited by
Dimitris Keridis, Ellen Elias-Bursać, and Nicholas Yatromanolakis (London:
Brassey’s, 2003), 3. The author acknowledges that an earlier version of this
chapter was published as ‘‘Echo of Empires,’’ Journal of Slavic Studies 23, no. 4
(2010): 574–96.
Notes
1. Dimitry Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1994).
2. Edward Lucas, The New Cold War (New York: Palgrave, 2008).
3. Reuel Marc Gerecht, ‘‘A Rogue Intelligence State? Why Europe and America Cannot
Ignore Russia,’’ European Outlook (American Enterprise Institute), no. 2 (2007): 1.
4. Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, ‘‘Putin’s Militocracy,’’ Post-Soviet Affairs
19, no. 4 (2003): 289.
5. See Amy Knight, Spies without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1998), in passim; Gerecht, ‘‘Rogue Intelligence State?’’; and
Kryshtanovskaya and White, ‘‘Putin’s Militocracy.’’
6. Knight, Spies without Cloaks, 244.
7. Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs, 83.
8. G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, translated by J. Hussey (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957), 509.
9. For a less sanguine view of Byzantine influence on early Russia, see J. L. I. Fennell,
Ivan the Great of Moscow (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 319–20.
10. Cornelius Krahn, ‘‘Messianism-Marxism,’’ Journal of Bible and Religion 31, no. 3 (July
1963): 211.
11. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd
ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 218. See also Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strat-
egy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 137.
12. Dimitri Stremooukhoff, ‘‘Moscow the Third Rome: Sources of the Doctrine,’’ Specu-
lum 28, no. 1 (January 1953): 85.
14. J. S. Duncan, Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2000), 11.
15. Stephen Schenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies and Movements (London:
M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 29; Richard Pipes, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in
Political Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 148–49.
1988), 4.
18. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press,
1948), 320–408; on Caesaro-Papism, see 164–83.
19. Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe 500–1453 (London:
Phoenix, 2000).
20. Zoe Katerina Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after
Communism (London: Routledge, 2004), 170–71.
21. Nikolas Oikonomides, ‘‘The Role of the Byzantine State in the Economy,’’ in The
Economic History of Byzantium, edited by Angeliki E. Laiou (Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks, 2007), 973, www.doaks.org/resources/publications/doaks-online-publications/byzantine-
studies/the-economic-history-of-byzantium/ehb44-state-and-the-economy.
22. Dziak, Chekisty, 2.
23. Ibid., 1.
24. Ibid., 2.
25. Branko Milanovic, ‘‘An Estimate of Average Income and Inequality in Byzantium
around Year 1000,’’ Review of Income and Wealth 52, no. 3 (September 2006): 450. See also
Angeliki E. Laiou and Cecile Morrisson, The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), chap. 4 passim.
26. John Haldon, Byzantium at War (New York: Osprey, 2001), 74.
27. Luttwak, Grand Strategy, 416.
28. Haldon, Byzantium at War, 74.
29. Dziak, Chekisty, 2.
30. Procopius, Secret History, xxx.
31. Alexander Kazhdan, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991), 37. See also Louis Bréhier, Les Institutions de l’Empire Byzantin (Paris: Editions
Albin Michel, 1949), 327.
32. William J. Sinnegen, ‘‘Two Branches of the Roman Secret Service,’’ American Journal
of Philology 80, no. 3 (1959): 238–54.
33. John Bagnall Bury, Philotheus: The Imperial Administrative System of the Ninth Century,
with a Revised Text of the Kletorologion of Philotheos (London: Oxford University Press, 1911),
106.
34. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, translated by E. R. A. Sewter (New York: Penguin,
2004), 186, 261, 282.
35. Comnena, Alexiad, 201, 384.

36. Michael Psellus, ed., Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, translated by E. R. A. Sewter (New
York: Penguin, 1996), 43.
37. Comnena, Alexiad: ‘‘was not unaware,’’ 184, 202, 278, 297; ‘‘reliable information,’’
130; ‘‘informants,’’ 142.
38. Kekaumenos, Strategikon, para. 78. www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/MARS/Kekau
menos.pdf.
39. Peter Edbury, ‘‘Crusader Sources from the Near East,’’ in Byzantines and Crusaders in
Non-Greek Sources 1025–1204, edited by Mary Whitby (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007), 29.
40. Kazhdan, Oxford Dictionary, 1248.
41. Michael Antonucci, ‘‘War by Other Means: The Legacy of Byzantium,’’ History Today
43, no. 2 (1993): 11–13.
42. Theodosius II, Novitia. 21.
43. Bury, Philotheus, 93.
44. Anonymous, On Strategy, in Three Byzantine Military Treatise on Strategy, edited by
George T. Dennis (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985), para. 43/p. 125.
45. Liudprand of Cremona, ‘‘The Embassy of Liudprand of the Cremonese Bishopric to
the Constaninopolitan Emperor Nicephoros Phocas on Behalf of the August Ottos & Adel-
heid,’’ in The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona, translated by Paolo Squatriti (Wash-
ington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 238.
46. Warren Treadgold, ‘‘Notes on the Numbers and Organisation of the Ninth-Century
Byzantine Army,’’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 21 (1980): 269.
47. Bréhier, Institutions de l’Empire, 307.
48. On Strategy, para. 43/p. 126.
49. Theophanes, The Chronicle of Theophanes, translated by Harry Turtledove (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), para. 384/p. 80.
50. Bréhier, Institutions de l’Empire, 316; author’s translation.
52. Procopius, De Bello Gothico, 4.17. Cf. David Jacoby, ‘‘Silk Economics and Cross-
Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian West,’’
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 198.
53. Theophanes, Chronicle of Theophanes, para. 430, 119.
54. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, edited and translated by G.
Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins, book 46, 50–60.
55. John Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982), 93. See also A. Laiou, ‘‘On Just War in Byzantium,’’ in
Studies in Honor of Speros Vryonis Jnr, edited by S. Reinert, J. Langdon, and J. Allen (New
Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1993), I, 153–74; N. Oikonomides, ‘‘The Concept of
‘Holy War’ and Two Tenth-Century Byzantine Ivories,’’ in Peace and War in Byzantium: Essays
in Honor of George T. Dennis S.J., edited by T. S. Miller and J. Nesbitt (Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), 62–86.
56. Meyendorff, Byzantine Legacy, 8.
58. Dimitri Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),
12–13.
59. John Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 208ff.; some scholars say it was established under Emperor Heraclius, by 640.
See Treadgold, ‘‘Notes,’’ passim; and Romilly Jenkins, Byzantium: The Imperial Centuries
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 16.
60. J. F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, ‘‘The Arab-Byzantine Frontier in the Eighth and Ninth
Centuries: Military Organisation and Society in the Borderlands,’’ in The Byzantine and Early
Islamic Near East, edited by H. Kennedy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 79–81.
61. Luttwak, Grand Strategy, 5–6, 416.
62. Maurice, The Strategikon, translated by George T. Dennis (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984), book XI, para. 1, 113.
63. Constantine VII, 13.
64. Constantine VII was first under the regency, then the rule, of the former admiral
Romanus Lecapenus, who made himself emperor and ruled from 922 to 940. Only on Roman-
us’s death did Constantine VII rise to be sole emperor.
65. Nikephoros Phokas, attrib., On Skirmishing, in Three Byzantine Military Treatises, trans-
lated by George T. Dennis, 163.
66. Anonymous (ca. 960 CE), Campaign Organisation, in Three Byzantine Military Treatises,
293.
67. On Strategy, para. 42, 123.
68. On Skirmishing, para. 7, 163.
69. Ibid.
70. Leo the Deacon, The History, translated by Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis Sullivan
(Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2005), book VII, para. 5, 168.
71. Campaign Organization, para. 18, 293.
72. Luttwak, Grand Strategy, 416–17.
73. Francis Dvornik, ‘‘Byzantine Influence on the Kievan State,’’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers
9 (1956): 76.
74. Daniel Tarschys, ‘‘Secret Institutions in Russian Government,’’ Soviet Studies 37, no.
4 (October 1985): 528.
75. Tarschys, ‘‘Secret Institutions,’’ 529.
76. Ibid., 532.
77. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (London: Hod-
der & Stoughton, 1998), 28.
78. Knight, Spies without Cloaks, 221.
79. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s
Security State (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 28–29.
80. Len Scott, ‘‘Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy,’’ Intelli-
gence and National Security, 19, no. 2 (2004): 335.
81. Ibid., 323.
82. Richard Shultz and Roy Godson, Dezinformatsia: The Strategy of Soviet Disinformation
(New York: Berkley Books, 1986), 16.
83. Theophanes, Chronicle of Theophanes, para. 375, 71–72.
84. Comnena, Alexiad, 384.
85. Theophanes, Chronicle of Theophanes, para. 436, 125.
86. See Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alex-
ander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB (London: Free Press, 2007).
87. Peter Charanis, ‘‘The Transfer of Population as a Policy in the Byzantine Empire,’’
Comparative Studies in Society and History 3, no. 2 (January 1961): 151.
88. J. Otto Pohl, ‘‘Stalin’s Genocide against the ‘Repressed Peoples,’ ’’ Journal of Genocide
Research 2, no. 2 (2000): 267.
89. B. Nahajlo, ‘‘Forcible Population Transfers, Deportations and Ethnic Cleansing in the
CIS: Problems in Search of Responses,’’ Refugee Survey Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1997).
90. George Kennan, ‘‘The Long Telegram,’’ cable, Embassy in Moscow to State Depart-
ment, February 22, 1946.
91. Vladimir Putin, ‘‘2000 Russian National Security Concept,’’ www.russiaeurope.mid
.ru/russiastrat2000.html.
92. John Anderson, ‘‘Putin and the Orthodox Church: Asymmetric Symphonia?’’ Journal
of International Affairs 61, no. 1 (2007): 195.
93. Julie Elkner, Spiritual Security in Putin’s Russia, History and Policy Paper 26, July 2005,
www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-26.html噛summ.
94. Daniel P. Payne, ‘‘Spiritual Security, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian
Foreign Ministry: Collaboration or Cooptation?’’ Journal of Church and State 52, no. 4 (2010).
95. L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (London: Hurst, 2002), 270. The Phanar was
the neighborhood in Constantinople left to the Greeks after the conquest of 1453, and
repopulated in the decades after by Greek speakers from other parts of the Ottoman Empire,
often traders. Their language skills were harnessed by the Ottomans, and the term ‘‘Drago-
man’’ means ‘‘translator,’’ the representative of the Ottoman governor, who himself would
remain distant from the local population.
96. Ibid., 692.
97. Larry L. Watts, ‘‘Intelligence Reform in Europe’s Emerging Democracies: Conflicting
Paradigms, Dissimilar Contexts,’’ Studies in Intelligence 48, no. 1 (2004).
CHAPTER 6
Origins of an Arab and Islamic

Intelligence Culture
Abdulaziz A. Al-Asmari
I
n his epistle ‘‘Secret Keeping and Mincing Words,’’ the prolific ninth-century
Arab writer and philosopher Al-Jahiz says that it is human nature ‘‘to seek
news and intelligence.’’1 According to Al-Jahiz, humanity’s search for news
is as old as history. The reason is not difficult to see. Life, or rather survival,
requires constant responses to questions and queries that must be answered if
one is to protect oneself and prepare for unforeseen eventualities. Arabs, like
other nations of the world, used intelligence and engaged in a variety of espio-
nage activities during peacetime as well as wartime. Understanding the religious
and ideological basis of any given society is a prerequisite for any effective
engagement with that society. This is no less true of the Arab and Islamic
worlds than of anywhere else, especially given that, though religion underlies
basic beliefs in most parts of the world, ‘‘it is not normally toxically linked with
politics in the same way as it is in the Middle East.’’2 It is also essential in a
broader context than the Middle East because Islam is a global religion, and
many communities and governments in Africa, Asia, the Trans-Caucasus, and
other regions are as much inheritors of an Islamic intellectual and intelligence
legacy as they may be of indigenous, pre-Islamic influences.
This chapter demonstrates that there is an Arab concept of intelligence
that dates back long before the rise of Islam in the first half of the seventh
century, more specifically to the Age of Jahiliya (Ignorance) of the second and
third centuries and beyond. During those ancient times the Qahtani tribes of
/ 89 /
90 / Abdulaziz A. Al-Asmari
Southern Arabia, like all inhabitants of the northern and central parts of the
Arab Peninsula, had their own networks of spies and secret agents, who were
quite active during both war and peace. In the early stages of Islam,3 the Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) and his followers first made use of and later enriched and
developed those intelligence notions and practices that they had inherited from
their Arab predecessors.4 As Richard Gabriel has observed, the Prophet
Muhammad was not merely ‘‘a tactician, military theorist, organizational
reformer, strategic thinker, operational-level combat commander, political-
military leader, heroic soldier and revolutionary, inventor of the theory of insur-
gency and history’s first successful practitioner’’; he was also ‘‘a master of intelli-
gence in war, and his intelligence service eventually came to rival those of
Rome and Persia, especially in the area of political intelligence.’’5 That being
said, a pre-Islamic Arab tradition underpins the subsequent Islamic approach
to intelligence, which has since spread with that religion well beyond the Arab
world.
Arabic Intelligence Terminology

The Arabic equivalent of the English word ‘‘intelligence’’ is mukhabarat or istikh-
barat, both of which are derived from the same Arabic triliteral root, khabar.
As a noun, this word can be used in a wide variety of contexts, meaning, for
instance, any of the following: ‘‘news,’’ ‘‘account,’’ ‘‘advice,’’ ‘‘hearsay,’’ ‘‘mes-
sage,’’ ‘‘rumor,’’ ‘‘knowledge,’’ ‘‘answer,’’ ‘‘response,’’ ‘‘reply,’’ ‘‘report,’’ and
‘‘story.’’ It can also be used to mean ‘‘having a great deal of news’’ or ‘‘having
great depth of knowledge and expertise.’’ This noun may also refer to one’s final
story or news, that is, death. The subject noun mukhbir, a derivative of khabar,
means ‘‘he who transmits news’’ or ‘‘he who spies on others’’ for whatever rea-
son, although the term is normally associated with state-sponsored agents.6 The
present-day term mukhabarat is almost exclusively used to mean ‘‘intelligence,’’
although it was also used during the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate (seventh
to fifteenth centuries) to mean ‘‘correspondence,’’ ‘‘reports,’’ ‘‘letters,’’ ‘‘writ-
ing,’’ and ‘‘contacts.’’7 In the Arab world today, both mukhabarat and istikhbarat
may be used interchangeably to mean ‘‘intelligence,’’ although the latter is
commonly reserved for military intelligence, whereas the former is used for all
types: domestic, foreign, military, nonmilitary, and counterintelligence.8
Although in English the word ‘‘spy’’ can variously be used to describe foreign
or local agents who observe, investigate, or engage in secret observation, Arabic
makes a clear distinction between those who spy for their own people, state, or
interests and those who are employed by an enemy, a rival, or a foreign power.
The Arabic word jasous is reserved primarily for those who are employed as
agents and spies for foreign rivals. Colloquially, it is used to describe those who
seek unflattering, debasing, or embarrassing information about others, for the
Origins of an Arab and Islamic Intelligence Culture / 91
purpose of defamation, embezzlement, or blackmail, or any such ignoble

purpose.9 In the collective consciousness of the Arabs, the word is therefore
laden with negative and derogatory implications. Namous, conversely, is nor-
mally, although not exclusively, reserved for those who are especially aware,
conscious, knowledgeable, and cognizant of the deep and hidden secrets of
others. In its broader implications namous is used to describe men of wisdom,
learning, and sagacity. The word is sometimes used as a synonym for ‘‘integrity’’
and ‘‘honor.’’ In a special sense, in Islam, it is universally used to denote the
greatest source of ‘‘news’’ and ‘‘intelligence,’’ the Angel Gabriel, whom Muslims
believe to have been sent by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad in order to
convey Divine commands and reveal the words of the Quran.10
To distinguish spying for a good cause from ‘‘sniffing out’’ information for
evil ends, Arabs use two different words. Tajassasa is normally used to describe
the act of attempting to acquire any secret or covert information. Although the
noun jasous (spy) does not appear in any Quranic text, its root, the verb tajas-
sasa, appears in a verse in the surah (chapter) of Hujurat (Chambers), where
Muslims are enjoined not to engage in this activity; it is normally associated
with, but not confined to, the undercover work of anyone who spies for some-
one else, especially for an enemy or a foreign power.11 Jasous is also used to refer
to the act of detecting private information for selfish reasons, material gain, or
any other nonbenevolent purpose. Tajassasa is used in the Quran to admonish
believers to ‘‘avoid suspicion (as much as possible), for suspicion in some cases
is a sin; and not to spy on each other, or speak ill of each other behind their
backs.’’12 Conversely, the verb tahassasa is used specifically to denote the act of
acquiring information for one’s own use, for a good cause, or for some generally
benevolent or benign purpose. It is in this sense that Jacob uses the verb in the
Quran when he asks his other sons to search for their brother Joseph, enjoining
them to ‘‘Go ye and inquire about Joseph and his brother, and never give up
hope of Allah’s Soothing Mercy.’’13
Throughout Arab history, a spy, whether a foreign agent or a local opera-
tive, has most commonly been referred to as ain (pl., uyoun), which literally
means ‘‘eye.’’ The resemblance, both semantically and figuratively, between the
Arabic word and its English counterpart, the verb ‘‘espy,’’ is quite apparent.
Ain, which has been in circulation for the last two millennia in Arabic, is still
used extensively in a variety of contexts, chief among which is the intelligence
field. It refers, among other things, to a herald, to a person who is dispatched
to explore a situation, to one who brings back tidings, to a secret observer,
and to a collector of information. Arab historians and lexicographers such as
Muhammad Murtadha Al-Zabeedi argue that ain (which also means ‘‘a bird of
prey’’ and, by extension, ‘‘having very keen vision’’) was applied to spies and
informers because much of their work depended on what they observed, particu-
larly with their eyes.14
Other Arabic terms denoting spies or undercover agents include dasees,

daleel, talee’ah, rabee’ah, muharwil, hawas, fuyouj, sheefa, and baghiyah. The noun
dasees is derived from the verb dasa, which may be used to mean any of the
following: ‘‘creep in,’’ ‘‘encroach unnoticed,’’ ‘‘blend in,’’ and ‘‘intervene.’’ In
general, dasees means ‘‘he who is involved in clandestine reconnaissance,’’ who
‘‘intervenes’’ or ‘‘who enters any territory (literally or figuratively) without the
knowledge or consent of others.’’ The link between this sense and ‘‘espionage’’
is self-evident.15 Daleel, conversely, is most commonly used in the sense of
‘‘guide,’’ ‘‘scout,’’ ‘‘lookout,’’ or ‘‘herald,’’ but it is also quite often used euphe-
mistically to mean ‘‘spy.’’ The term was originally applied to those who pos-
sessed accurate knowledge not only of the intricate network of overland routes
across the desert, and the locations of wells, springs, and pastureland, but also
the rivalries and alliances between different tribes.
Rabee’ah, which denotes a hilltop or an elevated place, is used figuratively
for scouts whose missions would naturally become easier when they operated
from a high vantage point. The term was quite common, appearing frequently
in a number of ancient Arabic documents, especially in poetic texts antedating
Islam by some decades. The pre-Islamic poet warrior Urwa bin Al-Ward (d.
594) illustrates the vital role played by the rabee’ah in the deserts of Arabia,
when, in one of his poems, he writes: ‘‘Before we stealthily descend upon a
watering place, we (normally) dispatch a rabee’ah [scout], who, like a tall tree,
stands erect to keep a proper lookout.’’16 In a reference to the terrible conditions
under which the rabee’ah operated, another poet, Aws bin Hajar (530–620),
describes a dejected lover as ‘‘lurking behind the curtains of nature like a spying
rabee’ah, parched, and frightened.’’17 An interesting category of rabee’ah was the
‘‘naked scout.’’18 This somewhat odd title derives from what such scouts nor-
mally did in an emergency when they discovered an imminent danger but had
no time to communicate a warning to their fellow tribesmen. They would
remove their clothes and then, mounted on their horses, would wave them as
improvised warning flags.
The term taleah, which is derived from the verb tala, may refer to any of
the following: ‘‘pioneer,’’ ‘‘he who is at the front,’’ ‘‘pathfinder,’’ ‘‘forerunner,’’
‘‘explorer,’’ and ‘‘reconnoiter.’’ This could be extended to include a ‘‘person
who knows [secrets] first,’’ presumably through espionage. The task of the
talee’ah, which may be translated into English as ‘‘advance scout’’ or ‘‘secret
herald,’’ involved infiltrating enemy ranks in order to collect as much tactical
information as possible about the targets, their exact location, state of prepared-
ness, terrain, provisions and water resources, and the numbers of camels, horses,
and other livestock, and their strengths or weakness. The talee’ah enjoyed some
sort of recognition as an elite group, in that they carried out their duties inde-
pendently and reported directly to the commander of the army. Their most
desired qualities were speed and sharp eyes; they did not have to be master
horsemen or swordsmen. The duties of the rabee’ah, conversely, involved

observing enemy movements and reporting any developments to the army com-
manders. Such observations were normally carried out from a vantage point
such as a hill in a neutral zone or no man’s land. The rabee’ah would then send
reports to his commanders through the use of a variety of methods such as
drums, fire, or smoke signals.19
Fuyuj literally means ‘‘he who walks fast or runs from one place to another.’’
Because speed is of vital importance in the transmission of intelligence, the
term has come to be applied to spies and agents. A related Arabic term is
muharwil, which literally means ‘‘runner,’’ ‘‘one who moves briskly,’’ or ‘‘scram-
bler,’’ but was also used for a spy. Sheefa is derived from the verb shafa, which
originally meant ‘‘yearn for something,’’ but with the passage of time came to
refer to lifting one’s head in order to see clearly, and to being at the front and
in a position to see more clearly than others. The connection between ‘‘yearn-
ing to know secrets’’ and ‘‘spying’’ is self-evident. This word is reserved for
civilian uses, whereas rabee’ah is intended for military purposes. Because the
primary duty of a spy is to seek and acquire classified information, the Arabic
term baghiya—which means ‘‘the seeker,’’ ‘‘he who is on a special quest,’’ or ‘‘he
who demands to know or possess something’’—was occasionally used to refer to
clandestine collectors of information.20 Another word that was widely associ-
ated with spies is munafiq, which is reserved specifically for Arab and non-Arab
but putatively Muslim spies who operate under the guise of Islam in order to
subvert it from within through the dissemination of disparaging rumors and
falsehoods. The Quran uses the word in this sense several times.21
To ensure that they were fully aware of the arrival of newcomers to their
communities, especially under cover of darkness, the ancient Arabs entrusted
the task of monitoring arrivals and departures to special night sentinels or
watchmen, called suh-har. This Arabic word is derived from the verb sahara,
which means ‘‘stay wakeful’’ or ‘‘watchful,’’ especially during the night. The
vigilant suh-har frequently lurked in the dark, usually at the approaches to a
market town, a crossroads, or any location where it was believed that a stranger
or suspect would be arriving.22 It was customary for the feuding tribes of Arabia
to employ uyoun in order to spy on competitors or rivals. Before executing a
raid or a reprisal attack, a tribe would, as a matter of course, deploy a number
of lookouts in order to reconnoiter the situation. However, spying was not lim-
ited to gathering military intelligence in times of war; agents would also provide
valuable security and economic information in peacetime.
On the domestic front, the uyoun—sometimes called ruwwad (pioneers) in
this context—were responsible for inspecting property and for finding pasture-
land and water, especially during droughts.23 Intelligence relating to the avail-
ability of water and pastureland suitable for grazing livestock has always been of
vital importance throughout the arid peninsula. Many wars across history have
been waged by the tribes of Arabia for no other reason than to control or
monopolize wells and water resources. Scouting for water and pastureland was
not only customary but necessary before a Bedouin group could fold camp and
move on.
Special mention must be made of the early Arabic term bareed. This widely
used word—which has always denoted ‘‘news reporting’’ or, more broadly,
‘‘post’’ or ‘‘mail’’—signifies the interest shown by the early Arabs in this activ-
ity. The term appears in a number of ancient documents and poems, most
famously in a poem written by the sixth-century Arab poet Imru’ al-Qais. The
Prophet Muhammad also used this word in one of his sayings when he enjoined
his followers to give earnest and careful consideration to such reporting.24
Early Arab Records of Espionage

With the weakening position of the Eastern Roman Empire in Syria and north-
ern Mesopotamia during the mid–second century, early migrants from the Ara-
bian Peninsula gradually built the independent state of Manathira (or
Lakhmidi) along the Euphrates River.25 They also succeeded in establishing
another state known as the Ghassanids in Syria, where Jafnah bin Omar was
the first of a long line of kings who ruled over this northwestern corner of
Arabia. The Byzantines (as we may now call them, see chapter 5 in this volume;
the Arab word for Byzantium was Rūm, or Roman26) did not view the emerging
state of the Ghassanids as a rival power but as an ally against the Persians, with
whom they were for a long time locked in a continual state of warfare. The
Persians, conversely, considered the Manathira state, which stretched along
their western and northwestern frontiers, as a kind of buffer zone against their
Byzantine enemies. For strategic reasons, the Persians nurtured the new state of
the Lakhmids and ensured that it would not easily fall prey to foreign invaders.
In short, both the Byzantines and Persians saw the strategic benefits of main-
taining what John Glubb would later call ‘‘a system of Arab satellite princedoms
guarding the desert flanks of both empires.’’27
It was inevitable that rivalries and conflicts of interest would arise between
the two Arab states, supported as they were by the two rival powers in the
region. Relations continued to deteriorate, and the two sides often found them-
selves locked in engagements that were in most cases proxy battles fought on
behalf of the Persians and Byzantines. The most famous of these confrontations
was one in which the Ghassanid, Al-Harith bin Jabalah, scored a decisive vic-
tory over Munthir III, who was killed. The Byzantines considered this outcome
a victory for their own cause.28
Despite the close military links between these two Arab states and their
patron empires, there is very little documented evidence of cooperation
between them in the field of intelligence. One of the earliest references to
intelligence activities carried out by the Arab states appears in the multivolume
anthology and encyclopedia Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs), which was com-
piled in the tenth century by Abu Faraj al-Asbahani. According to al-Asbahani,
the most important task of the uyoun was to provide personal security for their
monarchs and superiors. Al-Asbahani relates the story of a Manathira spy who
was able to save the life of his king, Al-Naman bin Al-Munthir (ad 582–610).29
The spy, who was based deep inside the Ghassanid state in northern Arabia
(Syria), wrote to his master, warning that a rival had sent an agent for the
purpose of assassinating the king. With this vital intelligence, Al-Naman bin
Al-Munthir ordered his men to track down and shadow the newly arrived
would-be assassin. He was caught preparing for his deadly mission and killed
before he could carry it out.30
There is evidence that the Qahtani Arabs of southern Arabia engaged in
intelligence activities as early as the second century bc. Extant inscriptions
from the time contain references to such activities, which, despite the primitive
methods and tactics, were in many ways quite well organized. A recent study in
old south Arabian epigraphy shows that a high proportion of the ancient Qah-
tani army was charged with intelligence-related duties. Ten percent of all fight-
ing men were assigned to such activities as skirmishing, scouting, and
reconnoitering. As A. F. Beeston has shown, the Qahtanis recruited nomadic
Bedouins and a variety of mercenaries to carry out espionage missions, despite
the fact that these sources were not fully trusted or deemed reliable by their
handlers.31
With the possible exception of those living in Mecca and Medina, who
mainly worked as traders, the majority of the population of Arabia comprised
nomadic Bedouins, who moved from one place to another in search of water
and pasture. The early war records of the Bedouins of central Arabia contain
numerous references to the use of ain,32 rabee’ah,33 and talee’ah.34 This indicates
the existence of some sort of tactical intelligence, albeit in an undeveloped and
primitive form. The general system that governed Bedouin social relationships
was based on total allegiance to the leader of the tribe or clan. These tribal
communities—whose main occupation was keeping camels, goats, and sheep—
lived ‘‘in semi-isolation from the rest of the world . . . in a state of perpetual
war.’’35 Because these nomads were totally unmindful of the outside world, they
produced a culture in which, as Philip K. Hitti has put it, ‘‘the raid or ghazwa,
. . . otherwise considered a form of brigandage, [was] raised by the economic
and social conditions of desert life to the rank of a national constitution.’’ It
lay ‘‘at the base of the economic structure of Bedouin pastoral society,’’ in which
‘‘the fighting mood [was]a chronic mental condition’’ and ‘‘raiding is one of the
few manly occupations.’’ Hitti further quotes a poet of the period who observed
that ‘‘our business is to make raids on the enemy, on our neighbor and on our
own brother, in case we find none to raid but a brother!’’36 Although not on
the scale of a general war, the raids were so common that a new Arabic term,
su’louk, was coined to describe those involved in this specific form of attack, in
which numerous Arab poets took part. These poet brigands often boasted about
their exploits, which frequently involved scouts and spies.
Scouting and intelligence gathering were always an organic part of the skir-
mishes and clashes of su’louk. Before an attack was launched, one or more
rabee’ah elements would be called upon to scout the area and report any sight-
ings of the targets or any unusual happenings. The work carried out by desert
scouts and reconnoiters was considered more critical and perilous than that of
the ordinary fighting men. Severe punishments were meted out to those cap-
tured. The poet Aws bin Al-Hajar describes the rabee’ah as living ‘‘in perpetual
fear, chronically thirsty. So scared are they of the light, that when the sun
shines, they turn their faces the other way.’’37 The rabee’ah agents were so cen-
tral to these conflicts that one such conflict, the Basous War (494–534)
between the Taghlib and Bakr tribes, is also remembered as the ‘‘Days of the
Rabee’ah.’’ In his mammoth anthology of Arabic prose and poetry from pre-
Islamic times until the tenth century, Al-Asbahani writes of the efforts each
tribe involved exerted to trace and uncover the spies working in its midst. He
also recounts how the agents of the tribe of Bakr bin Wa’el managed to infiltrate
the ranks of the Ka’ab bin Rabee’ah tribe during the Falj War.38
Precisely because of the Bedouin raiding tradition, spies were also entrusted
with the vital task of protecting the commercial caravans across the vast deserts
of Arabia.39 Intratribal routes, overland arteries between the Bedouin areas and
urban centers, and the communication lines between the northern parts and
the southern frontiers of the Arab Peninsula were all under the close watch of
those early intelligence pioneers.40 The use of uyoun was sometimes dictated by
the need to honor the Quraishis’ treaty obligations with the many tribes whose
commercial caravans bound for Mecca or the north normally passed through
what was then a trading town called Yethrib but would later become the city of
Medina. To ensure that caravans and travelers might pass peacefully and with-
out incident in the vicinity of Medina, or indeed across the entire region con-
trolled by them, the Quraishis made extensive use of scouts, spies, and
watchmen. Chief among their targets were those who violated agreements, con-
spired against their implementation, or sought to incite other tribes to trans-
gress and breach the accords.
The early spies of Arabia underwent vigorous training in a range of arts and
skills. Above all else, they were trained to be patient and resilient, to bear
unexpected physical or psychological hardships, and to blend in with the target
community. Camouflage became an essential part of espionage. Significantly,
the chronicler and commentator Muhammed Ibn Al-Tabari (d. 923) speaks of
some undercover agents who carried dedication to their profession to great
lengths, when they underwent voluntary surgery in order to mask their identi-
ties, deceive the enemy, and be in a better position to carry out their duties.
Tabari explains how primitive surgical or noninvasive procedures were some-
times performed to alter the shape of the nose or ears of such agents.41
Prospective agents were also trained in survival and communications skills.
To communicate with their base or with each other, the early uyoun used fire
at night and smoke during the day. They also exchanged coded messages in
order to circumvent detection or exposure. An important and regular source of
information came from concubines and slaves,42 who were used to gather gen-
eral information and to provide valuable and accurate details about their mas-
ters’ plans, movements, contacts, and close associates.43 For verification
purposes, the early Arabs normally dispatched two spies on any particular mis-
sion.44 Spies were also used to entrap rivals and also in starting disinformation
campaigns designed to dispel specific perceptions and rumors and to frustrate
enemy efforts. Poison was occasionally used to eliminate enemies or those
deemed to pose a grave danger to the community.45
The Prophet Muhammad’s Sunnah and Intelligence

Many ideas, regulations, and practices relevant to intelligence that were
enshrined in the principles and injunctions of the Quran are further articulated
in the Hadith and Sunnah. The Quran contains the holy scriptures of Islam and
is considered by Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike, to be the most authorita-
tive and revered document in their history. Quranic legislation includes rulings
that can be applied to the practice of espionage and intelligence with concepts
of that which is ethically acceptable (sadar), such as surveillance of potential
threats, or forbidden (haram), such as prurient intrusions into personal privacy.
Just as the Quran is the most important source of intelligence legislation, the
Prophet Muhammad’s Hadith (sayings) and Sunnah (way of life) constitute the
second most important source. From Islam’s earliest days, the Hadith have been
carefully collated, studied, indexed, and discussed by various Islamic schools
of thought. They have also been thematically and chronologically catalogued.
Although scholars and religious authorities are not unanimous as to the authen-
ticity of some of the sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, the bulk of
these have, as far as the available sources would permit, been minutely checked,
verified, and carefully written down by specially trained scribes, giving Islamic
religious texts an apparent rigor and credibility matched by few other reli-
gions—an important consideration when understanding the strength of both
the moral and intellectual authority that these texts hold for believers.
And these in turn rest upon the Quran, which goes well beyond laying
down the general principles and rules. The Quran actually provides numerous
examples of intelligence work drawn from history and the lives of the prophets,
in which it is not difficult to see the intelligence cycle at work. In the Quran,
some references tend to suggest that intelligence operations carried out against
the enemies of Islam and in the interests of Muslims at large are quite legitimate
and admissible. This explains why contemporary Islamic groups—which base
their ideology on Islam and which strive to achieve a specific aim in the interest
of Muslims, such as liberating occupied lands, expelling colonialists, and spread-
ing Islam—view any attempt at undermining the enemy as not only legitimate
but also a religious duty. Conversely, spying on the private lives of individuals
is illegal and inadmissible according to the Quran. Islam also accentuates the
negative impact of espionage against the Muslim Umma (community), describ-
ing those planted amid the Muslims who work for the enemies of Islam as
munafiqoon, who are to be detested and severely punished.
These intelligence methods constituted part of the cultural heritage of the
Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam. The Muslims who inherited them
in turn developed them to serve their own needs and requirements. Clandestine
methods and organizational approaches have a particular relevance to Islamic
doctrines because of the role of covert activity in the earliest years of the reli-
gion’s development. During these years, when the Prophet Muhammad was at
risk from potentially violent persecution by the established Quraishi political
and religious leaderships of the day, his call to the new faith was shrouded in
secrecy. In particular, in the first three years, known in Islamic history as the
Secret Stage, all his movements, contacts, and meetings with his followers were
carried out clandestinely. This difficult period was followed by what Arab histo-
rians call the Open Stage, when Muslims embarked upon a vigorous, open
campaign aimed at spreading the word of Allah to their fellow Arabs. These
changes also reflect a shift from covert to overt conflict and from cold to hot
warfare.
The formative impact of clandestinity on Islam is reflected in the articula-
tion of moral regulations concerning espionage and practical, almost instruc-
tional exemplars of intelligence activities, especially human intelligence and
paramilitary special activities. In terms of what might be called concepts and
doctrines of intelligence, these latter activities are particularly instructive. The
Open Stage, of course, involved open conflict, and Muhammad’s organizational
skills and leadership proved quite competent and innovative here, especially in
his use of what may be called military intelligence, including the appointment
of one of the earliest recognizable dedicated intelligence (in modern parlance)
cells, which was headed by Umar bin Al-Khattab. The Haddith and Sunnah, in
conjunction with early Islamic historical narratives, provide an extensive and
detailed body of guidance on the conduct of clandestine human intelligence;
the exploitation of intelligence sources, including early materials exploitation;
and human source reporting and organization, and the implementation of oper-
ational and tactical military intelligence.
The Prophet Muhammad on Organization, Doctrine, and Tradecraft

In Islamic history, clandestine activity dates back to the inception of the new
religion. The Prophet Muhammad started his call to Islam by patiently and
silently collecting information on those whom he was hoping to win over to
Islam. Chief among the qualities which he was seeking in prospective converts
were honesty, trustworthiness, and the ability to keep a secret. Besides his wife,
Khadeejah, the Prophet Muhammad’s young cousin, Ali bin Abi Talib, and his
closest friend and confidant, Abu Bakr, were the first to respond surreptitiously
to his call and provide him with much-needed moral and material support.
During the early period of Islam, the theater of covert operations extended far
beyond Mecca and Medina to include areas as far as Yemen to the south and
Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) to the west. It was of course only natural that
in the beginning covert activities faced myriad problems. As Richard Gabriel
has noted, the Prophet Muhammad’s followers were ‘‘mostly townspeople with
no experience in desert travel.’’46 Thus, on some of the early operations, the
Prophet Muhammad had to rely on desert dwellers and Bedouin guides. Then,
as his foothold in Medina grew firmer, ‘‘his intelligence service became more
organized and sophisticated, using agents in place, commercial spies, debriefing
of prisoners, combat patrols, and reconnaissance in force as methods of intelli-
gence collection.’’ Muhammad himself, as Gabriel points out, seems to have
possessed a detailed knowledge of clan loyalties and politics within the insur-
gency’s area of operations and used this knowledge to good effect when negoti-
ating alliances with the Bedouins.’’47
The first Muslim to carry out clandestine collection was Abdullah, son of
Abu Bakr, whose secret reports in the first days of the Hijra, the journey made
by the Prophet and his companions to Medina, were of paramount significance
to the survival of the Prophet Muhammad and Abu Bakr. This young man was
directed by the Prophet Muhammad to mingle with the Quraishis of Mecca
during the day and then report to him at night on what he saw and heard in
the then hostile land. For three successive nights, this young ain would slip out
quietly from Mecca to the cave where the Prophet Muhammad was hiding
following the attempt on his life. There, Abdullah ‘‘would go to see [Muham-
mad and Abu Bakr] after dusk, stay the night there, apprise them of the latest
situation in Mecca, and then leave in the early morning to mix with the Mec-
cans as usual and not to draw the least attention to his clandestine activities.’’48
Abdullah was assisted in his mission by two people: his sister, Asma bint
Abu Bakr, and a trusted shepherd named Amir bin Furaihah. Besides updates
on the situation in Mecca, Furaihah, who tended his master Abu Bakr’s flock,
offered the Prophet Muhammad and his master an additional vital service. He
would ‘‘steal away unobserved, every evening, with a few goats to the cave and
furnish its inmates with a plentiful supply of milk.’’49 During the day, Furaihah
would mix with other shepherds in the area, carefully listening and memorizing
details of the stories and rumors they related to each other. These details would
reach the Prophet Muhammad and Abu Bakr by nightfall. Abdullah’s sister,
Asma, may be said to be the first female ain spy in Islamic history, as she too
carried out clandestine collection and reported to the Prophet Muhammad,
when her brother was for one reason or another unable to deliver his reports.
Informants included people from all walks of life—men and women; young
and old; rich and poor; close relatives and freed slaves; Muslims, Jews, and poly-
theists; Arabs and non-Arabs. Despite the many differences among these pre-
cursors of modern intelligence, what united them all was dedication to the
cause, adherence to secrecy, and respect for the unity of command.50 The
reporting network in Mecca, for example, was headed by the Prophet Muham-
mad’s own uncle, Abu Al-Fadhl Al-Abbas, and was undoubtedly the most
important source of intelligence during the period before its conquest by the
Muslims. But many other intelligence-gathering stations, as we would say in
modern parlance, were dispersed over most parts of Arabia. There was indeed
hardly a tribe or a clan that did not have a secret ain agent reporting on its
general affairs, alliances, and intentions. But the Prophet Muhammad had other
sources of information: recent converts to Islam and traveling Copts and Syri-
ans, as well as local merchants and traders. These often acted as valuable sources
of information, either voluntarily or for some form of material reward, such as
cash or weapons. The early Muslims also resorted to envoys and couriers to
gather information on the lands and people to whom they were dispatched.
The immunity conferred upon these men afforded them an opportunity to move
from one place to another with relative ease and to mingle more freely with
their targets.51
The Prophet Muhammad’s clandestine operators were also important in the
economic war that the Muslims launched against hostile Mecca. During the
period when the Prophet Muhammad was planning to impose a total economic
blockade on his religious adversaries, he did all he could to hinder and intercept
caravan routes linking Mecca to the outside world, especially the desert over-
land routes from Mecca and Syria in the north to Yemen in the South. When
he once learned of the approach of a Mecca-bound caravan belonging to Abu
Sufyan, one of the wealthiest and most influential Quraishi chieftains and the
main rival of the Prophet Muhammad on the battlefield, he immediately
ordered three men to go to Mecca in order to seek details of its exact destina-
tion.52 To tighten the grip around the Meccan polytheists, the Prophet Muham-
mad had to rely on the reports of lookouts and agents who were well dispersed
in and around Mecca and Medina. The raiding operations that were planned
and executed on the strength of their reports brought all Meccan foreign trade
to a standstill. Describing the tight blockade on Mecca, Thumamah bin Athal
al-Hanafi told his fellow Meccans: ‘‘By Allah, not a single grain of wheat
reaches you unless the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, permits it.’’53
On the eve of the Battle of Uhud, the Prophet Muhammad sent two agents
to scout the area around Medina and Mount Uhud and to collect as much
information as they could on the Quraishis, especially the number of fighting
men deployed against him and the areas in which they were concentrated. They
reported that the enemy had arrived at a place called Al-Aridh, northeast of
Medina, famous for its wide expanse of rich agricultural soil, but that its fields
and orchards had almost vanished and that the green areas had turned into a
wasteland. The sudden disappearance of the rich foliage, which was devoured
by the livestock and draft animals of the Quraishis, provided a clear indication
as to the size of the Quraishi battalions. Because the number of beasts of burden
and other animals was directly proportional to that of the advancing armies,
the Prophet Muhammad and his men concluded that they were facing a very
large army. Even after the end of fighting at Uhud, the Prophet Muhammad
continued his intelligence activities when he ordered that the Quraishi retreat
be closely monitored. He specifically wanted details of the means of transporta-
tion used by the Quraishis, especially the numbers and types of draft animals
they employed. He instructed his agent Saad bin Abi Waqqas to ‘‘bring us news
of their movements. If they have mounted the camels rather than the horses,
then this signifies that they have decided to depart. But if they have mounted
their horses rather than their camels, then most likely they are bent on attack-
ing Medina.’’54
Besides the deployment and operation of human intelligence sources, there
was also guidance on the validation and analysis of this intelligence. On the
eve of the Battle of Badr, the Prophet Muhammad dispatched three of his close
confidants and eminent companions—Ali bin Abi Talib,55 Al-Zubair bin Al-
Awwam,56 and Sa’d bin Abi Waqqas57—to reconnoiter the area that was to
witness the first major armed confrontation with his Quraishi enemies. The
three men headed toward a place known to be water-rich and frequented by
caravans as well as inhabitants of nearby lands. The scouts spotted two young
boys drawing water from a well, captured them, and led them to the Prophet
Muhammad’s headquarters, where it was hoped that the Prophet would extract
useful information from them. Finding that the Prophet was busy performing
his prayers, the three men began interrogating the captives. When asked for
whom they were carrying the water, the boys gave what sounded like an evasive
answer, saying that they were working for the Quraishi army advancing toward
Medina. This answer was not to the liking of the Prophet’s companions, who
had been under the impression that the boys belonged to Abu Sufayan’s cara-
van, which had suddenly changed course and vanished in the desert. To force
the boys to tell the truth, they started to beat them severely.58
These beatings compelled the young boys to say that they were in fact work-
ing for Abu Sufyan, leader of the richly laden Quraishi caravan, which was on
its way from Syria to Mecca. Upon this admission, they were then left alone.59
When the Prophet Muhammad finished his prayers, he was advised of what had
happened and how the boys had changed their story. Examining the details
carefully, the Prophet disapproved of what the three scouts had done to the
boys and felt that something was amiss. Censuring his companions, the Prophet
said: ‘‘When the boys utter the truth, you beat them, and when they tell a lie,
you release them!’’ He then decided to conduct the interrogation of the water
carriers himself. Without resorting to violence or the threat of force, the
Prophet Muhammad managed to extract crucial information about three areas
of interest to the Muslim army: the whereabouts of the Quraishi army, the
number of fighting men deployed by Quraish, and the names of their command-
ing officers.60
The Prophet Muhammad started by asking the boys where the Quraishis
had camped. He was told that they were behind the sand dunes at Adwa Quswa.
When he asked them how many fighting men there were, they said that they
did not know. To extract this vital information, the Prophet then asked the
young boys how many camels were slaughtered each day. They said ‘‘9 on one
day and 10 on another.’’ Given that camels were the main source of sustenance
for tribesmen during raids and battles, and that it was common knowledge
among all desert dwellers that a camel can feed between 90 and 100 people,
the Prophet indirectly learned that the advancing army numbered between 900
and 1,000 men. He then inquired about the leaders of the Quraishi army. He
was told that among the commanding officers were Utbah bin Rabee’ah, Shee-
bah Akhah, Umayya bin Khalaf, Al-Abbas bin Abdul-Muttalib, and Sahl bin
Amru. These names gave the Prophet a relatively clear picture of what to
expect, for he knew these men, their backgrounds, their points of strength, and
their tribal connections. The Prophet also realized that the opposing army was
three times larger than his own. When he finished the interrogation, the
Prophet turned to his companions and said: ‘‘Mecca has deployed the cream of
Quraishi fighters against you.’’ He then made his battle plans in the light of the
information obtained from the water carriers.61
Agents were also used for tactical and operational deception. This may
clearly be seen in what is now known as the Hamra’ Al-Asad operation. One
result of the Battle of Badr was the growing awareness among the Quraishis that
their commerce and caravan routes were under constant threat as long as
Medina remained in Muslim hands. Despite successes scored by the Quraishis
against the Prophet Muhammad’s army, the Battle of Uhud was far from deci-
sive. Both sides suffered heavy losses and retreated from the battlefield, the
Muslims toward their base in Medina and the Quraishis toward Mecca. But
each side kept a watchful eye on the other; just as the Muslims had numerous
uyoun in Mecca, the Quraishis had their own among the Muslims.
When the leader of the Quraishis, Abu Sufyan, ordered his troops to camp
at a place called Al-Rawha’, 14 kilometers from Medina, his military command-
ers met to discuss and review the events at Uhud.62 According to Al Tabari:
One group said to another: ‘‘You did nothing. Although you broke down their
[the Muslims’] force, you made no use of your achievement. . . . There are still
some distinguished men among them who will probably gather people up to
fight you again. So let us go back and annihilate them and crush their forces.’’
It was in fact a hasty decision taken by shallow-minded people who misjudged
the potential power and morale of both parties, which is why an eminent leader
of Quraish, Safwan bin Omaiyah, tried to dissuade his people from pursuing that
venture, saying: ‘‘O people. Do not do such a thing! For I fear that he [Muham-
mad] will gather up those who had stayed behind and did not fight in Uhud. Go
back home as victorious.’’ I am not certain about the outcome or about the turn
events might take if we return to reengage the Muslims in the battlefield.63
Through his own network of uyoun, details of these deliberations reached

the Prophet Muhammad. Fearful that a second Quraishi assault might have an
undesirable result, he decided to launch a campaign aimed at shaking the
morale of the Quraishis and deterring them from launching an assault. To this
end, he summoned all his troops and, following on the heels of the Quraishi
army, he led them to a place called Hamra’ Al-Asad, where he met one of his
uyoun, Ma’bad Al-Khuzai.
Ma’bad was well chosen for his role. He was not a Muslim and came from a
very large tribe that occupied much of the land between Mecca and Medina.
His presence in the area was therefore quite normal and did not raise any
suspicion. Furthermore, as an ordinary non-Muslim tribesman, unrelated to the
Prophet Muhammad or his tribe, he was likely to be believed. Ma’bad was
commanded to catch up with Abu Sufyan’s army in order to pass on some
disinformation and propaganda reports about the Prophet’s preparedness for
war, the condition of his troops, their psychological state, and their impatience
to avenge themselves. According to one traditional account, when he found the
opportunity to speak to Abu Sufyan, Ma’bad reported that
‘‘Muhammad . . . is marching to meet you with a large host of fighters; I have
never seen anything similar before. He has mustered all the troops who have
tarried and did not join in [the Battle of] Uhud. They surely regret what they
have missed and want to compensate for it now. Their hearts are filled with hate
and resentment.’’ Abu Sufyan said: ‘‘Woe to you! What do you suggest?’’ He
said: ‘‘By Allâh, I see that you would not leave till he comes and you see the
heads of their horses; or till the vanguard of his army appears from behind that
hill.’’ Abu Sufyan said: ‘‘By Allâh, we have reached a common consent to crush
the Muslims and their power.’’ The man, once more with an implied warning,
advised to the contrary. In the light of this news, the resolution and determina-
tion of the Meccan army failed. Panic and terror took firm hold of them. They
consequently deemed it safest to fold camp and complete their withdrawal to
Mecca.64
Agents were also employed in paramilitary operations, particularly in assas-

sination efforts against influential opponents and critics of the Prophet Muham-
mad and the Muslim cause. As Gabriel points out, ‘‘Political maneuver and
negotiation, intelligence, propaganda, and the judicious use of terror and assas-
sination were employed to wage a psychological warfare campaign against those
potential sources of opposition that could not yet be won by calculation of self
interest or ideology.’’65 To silence detractors and eliminate instigators and those
whom the Prophet Muhammad considered enemies to Islam, he launched many
covert operations, which were also intended to boost the morale of the Muslims,
influence the military decision of their enemies, and deceive his enemy’s
intelligence.66
Among the first to be targeted by the early Muslims were the poets, whose
role was equivalent to that of journalists, publicists, or public relations officers
today and who were greatly venerated by their fellow Arab tribesmen and
townsfolk alike, as great men of eloquence and sagacity. Islam, however, at
least during the early stages, placed certain constraints on poets and ultimately
denigrated their status. In pre-Islamic Arabia, each tribe had at least one poet,
who, more than the national bards or poets laureate of the West, acted as a
general spokesman of his tribe. The role of the ancient Arab poet was quite
complex. Besides promoting and defending the tribe’s image, the poet was also
a military spokesman. His judgments would sometimes ‘‘assume the strength
and authority of the judiciary,’’ and his influence might occasionally exceed
that of the tribal leader himself.67 On account of the rhyme, rhythm, and other
musical and linguistic devices used, a poet’s utterances were strongly etched on
the collective memory of the tribe. The Quraishi leaders, who were intent on
wiping out the new faith and countering the Prophet Muhammad’s increasing
popularity, naturally enlisted the help of their tribal poets, who obliged by
writing various poems attacking the Prophet and fueling hatred against Islam.
At first, the Muslims tried to win those eloquent men and women over to their
side, or at least to avoid being the object of their attacks. When these efforts
failed to produce the desired results, and when the damage inflicted upon the
Muslims was too great to tolerate, the Prophet had to respond violently. He
decided that those who attacked Islam and sought to undermine it should be
physically eliminated.
One such poetess was Asma’ bint Marwan, who belonged to the Aws tribe
in Medina and was especially outspoken in her tirades against the Prophet
Muhammad and the Muslims. Her razor-sharp jibes against the new religion
gained wide popularity among the tribes. In one of her poems she attacks Mus-
lims and those tribes that embraced Islam; ridicules the character of the
‘‘stranger,’’ the Prophet Muhammad; and calls upon her fellow tribesmen to
end the Muslim question by murdering the Prophet:
I despise Banu Malik and al-Nabit
And Auf and Banu al-Khazraj.
You obey a stranger who is none of yours,
One not of Murad or Madhhij.
Do you expect good from him
After the killing of your chiefs
Like a hungry man waiting for a cook’s broth?
Is there no man of pride who would attack him by surprise?
And cut off the hopes of those who expect aught from him?68
The man who eliminated this sharp-tongued satirist was Omeir bin Wahab
Al-Awsi, who managed to enter her home and stab her while she slept.69 This
assassination had not, however, been authorized in advance by the Prophet
Muhammad. When Al-Awsi met the Prophet and asked if he would be taken
to task for what he did to the poetess, however, he was assured that ‘‘no two
goats would butt over her death.’’70
Among the first poets to be silenced on the Prophet Muhammad’s instruc-
tions was Abu Afak, who had reportedly attained the age of 120 years and was
notorious for incitement against the person of the Prophet, for his venomous
denunciations, and for his denigration of Islam and Muslims. A very intricate
plan was prepared to silence him in the courtyard of his own house.71 The man
assigned to carry out the operation was one of the poet’s own tribesmen, so that
when the murder was uncovered, it would not lead to any tribal repercussions
or start an endless cycle of revenge.
Covert action was not confined to poets and influential figures; it was also
conducted against leaders of rival religious movements. Among those who were
assassinated for propagating what the Muslims considered a revisionist brand of
Islam was Al-Aswad al-Ansi, who claimed to be a prophet sent by Allah.72 The
Prophet Muhammad’s followers, however, considered him to be nothing more
than a magician or a fortune-teller:
But he was no minor magician or fortune-teller. . . . He was powerful and influ-
ential and possessed a strange power of speech that mesmerized the hearts of his
listeners and captivated the minds of the masses with his false claims. With his
wealth and power he managed to attract not just the masses but people of status
as well. . . . Al-Aswad’s tribe were the first to respond positively to his claims to
prophethood. With this tribal force he mounted a raid on San’a. He killed the
governor, Shahr and took his wife to himself. From San’a he raided other
regions. Through his swift and startling strikes, a vast region in southern Arabia,
from Hadramawt to At-Taif and from al-Ahsa to Aden came under his
influence.73
To silence Al-Aswad al-Ansi and stop his movement before any further
damage occurred, the Prophet Muhammad ordered his execution.74 He com-
manded Wabrah bin Yahnus to head for Yemen secretly in order to prepare an
assassination plan. Wabrah devised an intricate plan in which a number of
Muslims of Persian origin were to take part. Most crucial was the role played by
al-Ansi’s wife, Mirzabanah, who was known to harbor nothing but disdain and
hatred for Al-Ansi, who had killed her first husband and forced her to marry
him. Mirzabanah provided vital intelligence on Al-Ansi’s movements and facil-
itated the killers’ entrance to her castle, where the operation was successfully
carried out.75
Some covert action was intended to boost the morale of Muslims. An illus-
trative example of this may be seen in the operations aimed at retrieving the
body of Khabeeb bin Uday. Khabeeb was among the early Muslims who vigor-
ously supported the Prophet Muhammad and fought under his banner in the
decisive Battle of Badr, where he was reported to have killed a number of Mec-
can polytheists. Soon after this battle, the Prophet sent him on a reconnais-
sance mission to observe the movements of the Quraishis and check whether
they were, as reported, engaged in any military preparations. But Khabeeb and
his nine fellow scouts were discovered, tracked, and surrounded. Seven of them
died in the engagement that followed while Khabeeb and two other men were
tricked into surrendering in the hope that they would be set free. Instead, they
were sold to the Meccans, who, in order to exact revenge on Khabeeb for killing
so many of their men at Badr, crucified him and left his corpse to rot in the
desert.
Khabeeb’s fate grieved the Prophet Muhammad, who immediately ordered
one of his uyoun, Amru bin Ummaya Al-Dhamiri, to head for Mecca and
retrieve his body. As long as the decomposing corpse of the renowned fighter
remained on the cross, the morale of the Muslims was low, whereas that of the
Quraishis was boosted. Amru stealthily went to the spot where Khabeeb’s cross
had been erected, scaled it, and hastily detached the crucified corpse. He then
sped back to Medina, stopping only briefly to provide a proper burial for his
fallen comrade. When the Quraishis later discovered that the corpse had van-
ished, they were at a loss as to what had happened. The operation had a nega-
tive impact on their morale while boosting that of the Muslims.76
Muhammad’s Meccan enemies, however, did not lag behind the Muslims in
terms of intelligence. When Abu Sufyan inquired if anybody had spotted
strangers or heard of any spies working for the Prophet Muhammad, he soon
learned about two men who had been sent to spy on him. When he was shown
the spot where the two men had tied their camels, Abu Sufyan ordered his men
to bring him a sample of their dung, in which he discovered some palm date
stones. ‘‘This,’’ he declared, ‘‘is the fodder of [Medina]. The two men must be
the Prophet Muhammad’s spies.’’ He then ordered the caravan to change course
and make haste.77 Successive attempts at the life of the Prophet were also made.
One such attempt, which proved futile, was that of Omeir bin Wahab Al-Jamhi.
Consequently, counterintelligence and protective security were at a premium
in the Prophet’s intelligence operations.
Although the Prophet Muhammad himself was the overall commander-in-
chief of state security in Medina, Umar bin al-Khattab was effectively in charge
of running what we would call today the counterintelligence machinery, imple-
menting day-to-day orders and following up on security policies.78 In a more
productive application of robust interrogation than that of the two water carri-
ers referred to above, a suspected spy was taken to Umar who started to interro-
gate him by asking him first to identify himself and say where he came from
and what he was after. The man was quite economical in his responses. But
after a while he was pressured into revealing that he was actually a spy.79 He
also told his interrogators that he was carrying a message from the Ghaftanis to
the Jews of Khaibar in order to barter military help for palm-tree dates. When
asked if there were any fighting men on their way to succor Khaibar, the spy
then told them that there were two hundred men under the command of Wabar
bin Oleim. To avoid death, the man then cooperated with the Muslims and led
them to the area where they had kept their cattle. He led them to the Ghatfan
camp, but when the members of the Muslim detachment, led by none other
than Muhammad’s cousin Ali, arrived, they discovered that the camp had been
totally deserted.80
In another case, the Prophet Muhammad’s agents in the Islamic stronghold
of Medina unmasked an elaborate Byzantine plan to spy on the Muslims. Just
nine years after the Prophet had established his rule in Medina, the Byzantines
instructed one of their priests, Abu Amie Al-Khazraji, to declare that he had
converted to Islam. He was also directed to build a new mosque in order to
provide a secure venue for his agents. The choice of its location was quite
significant, in the same neighborhood and very close to the Qiba’ mosque,
which the Prophet’s men had constructed earlier. The ‘‘Muslim’’ monk asked
the Prophet to inaugurate the place of worship and bless it with his presence.
The Prophet responded by saying that he was quite busy and requested post-
ponement of the ceremony until he had accomplished a mission with which he
was preoccupied at the time. Meanwhile, the Prophet’s men, whose suspicions
had been raised, watched closely what happened in and around the newly built
mosque. When sufficient evidence was obtained, the Prophet ordered the
mosque to be demolished.81
Conclusion
The intelligence activities that were practiced by ancient Arabs constitute part
of the cultural heritage of the Arabian Peninsula. The Muslims who benefited
from the rich legacy left them by their forebears in turn ameliorated and devel-
oped them to serve their own needs and requirements in accordance with their
own topography and circumstances.
The Prophet Muhammad, from the start of his mission, was fully aware of
the vital role of intelligence in securing success for his operations and in achiev-
ing tactical and strategic goals. Throughout the various stages of his call to
Islam, the Prophet carried out all sorts of intelligence activities. During the
early Secret Stage of his mission, which lasted three years, he felt it necessary
to keep his movements and contacts quite confidential. To this end, he
approached only those whom he knew well and trusted. Good character and
personal qualities as well as certain strict criteria had to be met before a person
was invited to embrace the new faith. Once he had secured their allegiance,
the Prophet would embark on training and educating new recruits in the ways
of Islam, without fearing that he would be betrayed. This period was character-
ized by extreme secrecy, alertness, and caution so that the new religion would
not be crushed before it could grow.
During the subsequent Open Stage, the tactic of secrecy was abandoned.
Having established a small but firm base in Meccan society, the Prophet
Muhammad took fewer precautions and openly advocated his new faith, not
only to his fellow Meccans but also to those who came to Mecca for business,
religious, or personal reasons. The third stage began with the Prophet’s emigra-
tion to Medina, where he succeeded in establishing the first Muslim state. This
last stage witnessed intense and bloody confrontations between those who
responded to his call and adopted the new faith and those who adhered to
their ancestral religions and sets of values. It was during this stage that Islamic
intelligence work may be said to have come of age. New tactics and methodolo-
gies were employed to protect the fledgling state and spread the new faith out-
side the confines of Medina.
These intelligence activities—entirely conforming with Roy Godson’s clas-
sic ‘‘elements of intelligence’’ formula entailing clandestine collection, analysis,
counterintelligence, and covert operations—strongly affected the course of
Islamic history, especially in the struggle between the Prophet Muhammad and
his followers on one hand, and the enemies of Islam on the other hand.82 The
Prophet appears to have managed within a relatively short time to rejuvenate
Bedouin society and to create a new state based on the new faith. If we exclude
the spiritual dimension and divine intervention to which the Muslim faithful
attribute the Prophet’s successes, Muslim intelligence activities may be seen as
having played a decisive role in instilling, nurturing, and spreading Islam in the
deserts of Arabia. The activities, operations, and tactics employed during the
three stages of Islam have firmly established themselves in Islamic history as
part of the Sunnah and the heritage of Islam. And as part of the Quranic and
Islamic tradition, they represent a deeply rooted body of principles and practice
of intelligence that will inevitably inform the norms, values, and activities of
governments and substate actors who define themselves in terms of this tradi-
tion. If one is to properly understand the intelligence cultures of the Arab and
wider Islamic worlds, it is beneficial and indeed necessary to understand the
pre-Islamic Arab legacy of intelligence and the formative experience of intelli-
gence at the birth of Islam.
Notes
1. Fatih Abdul Salam Haroun, ed., Rasa’el Al-Jahiz (Al-Jahiz’s Epistles) (Cairo: Maktabat
al-Khanji, 1964), 1:145.
2. John D. Stempel, ‘‘The Impact of Religion on Intelligence,’’ International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 18, no. 2 (2005): 282.
3. A. F. L. Beeston, Warfare in Ancient South Arabia, in Studies in Old South Arabian
Epigraphy Series 3 (London: Luzac, 1976), 7–11.
4. Muslims are enjoined to use the honorific appendage ‘‘pbuh’’ (peace be upon him)
every time the name of the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned, whether orally or in writing.
Since the seventh century, this has become an established tradition in all manner of writings,
religious tracts as well as academic research and journalism. Its omission would imply not
only an anticlerical attitude but would also suggest disbelief atheism or apostasy.
5. Richard A. Gabriel, Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General, Campaigns and Command-
ers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), xviii–xix.
6. See Lisan Al-‘Arab Lexicon, 2:1090, under ‘‘khabar.’’ The word is often used in the
Quran in the form of ‘‘khabeer’’ as in the Surah of ‘‘Fatir,’’ verse 14: ‘‘None can inform you
like him who is aware’’ and the Surah of the ‘‘Ant,’’ verse 88: ‘‘And thou seest the hills thou
deemest solid flying with the flight of clouds: the doing of Allah Who perfecteth all things.
Lo! He is informed of what ye do.’’
7. See entries under ( ) in the following dictionaries and lexicons: Taj Al-‘Arūs, Lisan
Al-‘Arab , Al-Qamūs Al-Muh.it., and Al-Aghani.
8. However, some countries, such as the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, have adopted the
term ‘‘Istikhabarat’’ to refer to what the other Arab countries call ‘‘Mukhabarat.’’
9. See entries under ( ), ‘‘Jasous,’’ in Lisan Al-‘Arab.
10. See entries under ( ) in Lisan Al-‘Arab, Al-Qamūs Al-Muh.it., and Al-Aghani.
11. Muhammed bin Ali al-Shawkani, Fatah Al-Qadir (The Almighty’s Bestowment of
Victory) (Beirut: Dar Al-Fikr, n.d.), 40.
12. Surah of ‘‘Chambers,’’ verse 12.
13. Surah of ‘‘Joseph,’’ verse 87.
14. See Taj Al-‘Arūs, 13:303; 6:38.
15. See ‘‘ ’’ in Jaj Al-‘Arūs, Lisan Al-‘Arab, and Al-Aghani lexicons.
16. Urwa Bin Al-Ward Al-Abssi, Diwan Urwa Bin Al-Ward (Collected Poems of Urwa
Bin Al-Ward) (Beirut: Dar Al-Ketab Al-Arabi, 1994), 55.
17. Aws Bin Hajar, Al-Diwan (Collected Poems), edited by Muhammed Yousuf Najm
(Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.), 66.
18. Ali Izz Al-Din Ibn Al-Athir, Al-Kamil Fi Al-Tarikh (The Complete History) (Beirut:
Dar Sadir, 1982), 1:492.
19. Ibid., 33.
20. See entries in Taj Al-‘Arus, Lisan Al-‘Arab, and Al-Qamus Al-Muhit.
21. Surah of ‘‘Women,’’ verses 144–45.
22. Ali Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir, Al-Kamil Fi Al-Tarikh, 1:116.
23. Abu ‘Ubayd ‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz Al-Bakri, Mu‘jam Ma Ista‘jam (Lexicon of
Foreign Words) (n.p., n.d.), 1:80.
24. Lisan al-Arab, 16:5750.
25. Ali Izz al-Din Ibn Al-Athir, Al-Kamil Fi Al-Tarikh (The Complete History) (Beirut:
Dar Sadir, 1982), p. 139.
26. See chapter 5 in this volume, by Kristian Gustafson.
27. John Glubb, A Short History of the Arab Peoples (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969),
23–24.
28. Mohamed Bayoumi Mehran, Studies in the History of the Ancient Arabs (Alexandria:
Dar Al-Ma’rifa Al-Jami’iyya, 2005), 503–5, 508ff.
29. Kheireddine Zrcelli, Figures (Beirut: Dar Al-’Ilm Lil-Malayin, 2002), 2:153–54.
30. Abu Al-Faraj Al-Isbahani, Kitab Al-Aghani (The Book of Songs) (n. p., n.d), 12:158.
31. Beeston, Warfare, 7–11.
32. Abu ‘Ubayd ‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz Al-Bakri, Mu‘jam Ma Ista‘jam, 1:181.
33. Ibid., 1:882.
34. Ibid., 1:586.35. Glubb, Short History, 25.
36. Philip K. Hitti, The Arabs: A Short History (London: Macmillan, 1950), 13.
37. Aws bin Hajar, Al-Diwan (Collected Poems), edited by Muhammed Yousuf Najm
(Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.), 66.
38. Al-Asbahani, Al-Aghani, 5:22.
39. Abu Ubaidah Muammar Bin Al-Muthana, Ayyam Al-Arab Qabl Al-Islam: Naqa‘‘Idh
Jareer Wa Al-Farazdaq (Days of the Arabs before Islam: The Satires of Jareer and Farazdaq)
(Beirut: Dar Al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1908–9), 2:650–75, 781–84.
40. Rad Mahmud Ahmad al-Barhawi, Al-‘Uyūn Wa-Al-Jawasis fi Al-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah
Mundhu ‘ahd Al-Rasūl Wa-Ilá Nihayat Al-‘As.r Al-Umawi (Spies and Agents in the Islamic
State) (Irbid, Jordan: Dar Al-Mutannabi, 2002), 26.
41. Abu Ja’far Muhammed Ibn Jareer Al-Tabari, Tarikh Al-Umam wa Al-Mulook (History
of Nations and Kings) (n.p., 1960), 1:617–25.
42. Uthman bin Amru al-Jahiz, Al-Bayan wa al-Tabyeen (Eloquence and Poetic Devices),
edited by Abdul Salam Haroun (Kuwait: Al-Maktab Al-Arabi, 1968), 1:98.
43. Al-Bakri, Mu‘jam, 1:92.
44. Ibid., 2:411.
45. Mus.‘ab ibn ‘Abd Allah Al-Zubayri and Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Kitab Nasab Quraysh
(Book of Quraish’s Descendants) (Al-Qahirah: Dar al-Ma‘arif lil-T.iba‘ah wa-al-Nashr,
1953), 210.
46. Gabriel, Muhammad, xxv.
47. Richard A. Gabriel, ‘‘Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet,’’ Quarterly Journal of Military
History 47 (Summer 2007): 4.
48. Saifur Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtoom (The Sealed Nectar) (Al-
Riyadh: Darussalam, 1979), 80.
49. Ibid.
50. Al-Barhawi, Al-Uyoun wa Al-Jawasees, 82.
51. Ibid., 59.
52. Al-Tabari, Tarikh, 2:296.
53. Ibn Hisham, 1:420.
54. Muh.ammad ibn ‘Umar Al-Waqidi and J. M. B. Jones, Kitab Al-Maghazi ⳱ the Kitab
Al-Maghazi of Al-Waqidi [Kitab al-maghazi] (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 1:298.
55. Ali bin abi Talib, the first of the fedayeen in Islam, was Muhammad’s paternal cousin
and confidant. He took part in all the battles during the lifetime of Muhammad. Ali was the
fourth and last of the Rashidi caliphs, who ruled the state of Islam after Muhammad. His
caliphate lasted four years, eight months, and twenty-two days.
56. Al-Zubair bin Al-Awwam was the son of Muhammad’s aunt Safiya. He embraced
Islam at the age of seventeen and was one of the six-member Shura Council, who elected
Omar bin Khattab to be the second Rashidi caliph after Abu Bakr.
57. Saad bin Abbi Waqas was also one of Muhammad’s relatives on his mother’s side. He
too was one of the earliest converts to Islam and known in Islamic history as the first warrior
who used his arrows and spears to further the cause of Islam.
58. Al-Waqidi, Kitab Al-Maghazi, 1:52.
59. Abu Sufyan was one of the most cunning minds in Arab history. He was ten years
older than Muhammad and died aged ninety, almost twenty years after Muhammad’s death.
He had fought against Muhammad until the conquest of Mecca, when he embraced Islam.
61. Ibid., 1:53.
62. Al-Tabari, Tafsir Al-Tabari (Al-Tabari’s Commentaries) (Dar al-Maarifa, 1990), 4:68.
63. Al-Mubarakpuri, Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtoom, 129–30.
64. Ibid., 130.
65. Gabriel, Muhammad, xxi.
66. From a purely nonreligious standpoint, the Prophet Muhammad has been judged to
be a very astute leader, as has been attested to here by Gabriel, and by others elsewhere.
However, Muslims believe him to be a prophet, and in that context, it would only be right
to say that terminologies such as ‘‘assassination,’’ ‘‘maneuver,’’ ‘‘propaganda,’’ ‘‘psychological
warfare,’’ and others found elsewhere in this treatise must never be seen in separation from
his religious role. The things he performed would have been instructed to him by God, or
deemed by the prophet to be religiously correct. Seen under that light, and notwithstanding
his abstract brilliance as a commander, these deeds performed by the prophet have a deeper
meaning and a wider implication than what the mere military or intelligence analysis
implies.
67. Hanna Al-Farkhouri, Tarikh Al-Al-Adab al-Arabi (History of Arabic Literature), 8th
ed. (Beirut: Al-Matba’a Al-Bulsiya, 1961), 59. Commenting on the impact of the poets on
ordinary people, a Muslim scholar, Ibn Taimiya, points out that poetry, unlike prose, can
popularize anti-Islamic feelings and drive people away from the path of Allah. See Abu Al-
Fath Al-Shahristani, Mosuat Almell wa Madaheb (Encyclopaedia of Peoples and Sects), 1st
ed. (Beirut: n. p., n. d), 84.
68. Ibn Ishaq: Sirat Rasul Allah (A. Guillaume’s Translation of The Life of Muhammad),
675–76.
69. Al-Waqidi, 1:173. See also Sirat Ibn Hisham ([Muhammad’s] Biography by Ibn His-
ham, Al-Marji‘‘Al-Akbar Lil-Turath al-Islami (Greatest Primary Sources of Islamic Heritage),
1:414ff.
70. Sirat Ibn Hisham ([Muhammad’s] Biography by Ibn Hisham, Al-Marji‘‘Al-Akbar Lil-
Turath al-Islami (Greatest Primary Sources of Islamic Heritage), 1:418.
71. Yusuf ibn ‘Abd Allah Ibn Abdul Barr, Al-Isti‘ab fi ma‘rifat Al-As.h.ab (Comprehension
in Knowing Friends) (Al-Qahirah: Dar Al-Maarifah, 2006), 3:1218; Ah.mad ibn Yah.yá and
Muhammad Hamidullah Baladhuri, Ansab Al-Ashraf (Ancestry) (Al-Qahirah: Dar al-
Ma‘arif, 1987), 1:373.
72. Ali Muhammed Al-Sallabi, Sirat Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq: Shakhsiyatuhu wa Asruhu (A
Biography of the Life and Times of Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq) (Cairo: Muasasat Iqra, 2006), 162ff.
73. See ‘‘Fayruz Ad-Daylami,’’ at Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities,
Government of Dubai, website, www.dicd.gov.ae/vEnglish/detailnewspage.jsp?ar
ticleID⳱3627&page Flag⳱1.
74. Al-Tabari, Tarikh, 3:185.
75. Ah.mad ibn Yah.yá Baladhuri, Futūh. Al-Buldan (Conquests of Countries) (Beirut: Dar
al-Nashr lil-Jami‘iyin, 1958), 125–26.
76. Yusuf ibn ‘Abd Allah Ibn Abdul Barr, Al-Isti‘ab fi ma‘rifat Al-As.h.ab, 3:1383–85.
77. Battle of Badr, www.johina.net/vb/t13799.html.
78. Al-Barhawi, Al-Uyoun wa Al-Jawasees, 99–102.
79. The Arabic word used in the original text is . This can also be translated as
meaning ‘‘they were rough or severe with him.’’
81. Ibid., 3:1047.
82. See, for example, Roy Godson, Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Elements of
Intelligence (Washington, DC: National Strategy Information Center, 1979).
PART III
Current Practice and Theory

CHAPTER 7
Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence
Robert Johnson
I
n September 2011, ten years after the attacks in New York and Washington
by al-Qaeda, and the initiation of United States–led operations in Afghani-
stan, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen,
announced that a truck bomb attack against a NATO post south of Kabul, an
assault on the US Embassy, and a similar high-profile raid on the Intercontinen-
tal Hotel in the Afghan capital had been planned and conducted by the mili-
tant Jihadist Haqqani network with the support of the Directorate of Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).1 This accusation, he argued, was based on
‘‘credible evidence.’’ Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, stated: ‘‘I cat-
egorically deny it,’’ suggesting ‘‘we have no such policy to attack or aid attack(s)
through Pakistani forces or through any Pakistani assistance.’’2 Prime Minister
Yusuf Raza Gilani added that ‘‘we strongly reject assertions of complicity with
the Haqqanis or proxy war.’’3 Turning the accusations back against the Ameri-
cans, he continued: ‘‘The allegations betray a confusion and policy disarray
within the US establishment on the way forward in Afghanistan. . . . Pakistan
cannot be held responsible for the security of US–NATO–ISAF [International
Security Assistance Force] forces in Afghanistan.’’ When it was hinted the
Americans might enforce a principle of ‘‘hot pursuit’’ against Haqqani fighters
across the Afghan border, Malik reiterated that ‘‘the Pakistan nation will not
allow the boots on our ground, never,’’ citing Pakistan’s existing cooperation
with the United States in return for respect for national sovereignty.
/ 115 /
116 / Robert Johnson
These bad-tempered exchanges have deepened a popular anti-American

sentiment within Pakistan, but, curiously, they have not answered questions
about the exact role of the ISI nor enamored the organization to the Pakistani
people. During the years 2010–11 Pakistan had expelled some US military
trainers and had periodically prevented NATO logistics containers from cross-
ing the border. The Americans responded by suspending $800 million in mili-
tary aid from its usual budget of $2 billion. The Pakistan army and government
insisted that the Americans were dependent on them, not least with respect to
future negotiations in Afghanistan, but they also argued that Pakistan was frag-
ile. Many Pakistanis privately confide this fragility is caused by the policies
pursued by its own national elites, including the army and the ISI. The Pakistan
security forces state they are willing to cooperate with the United States against
al-Qaeda, but resource constraints prevent them from defeating the Taliban.
Those in the political establishment in Pakistan fear that the Americans will
demand too much and ‘‘humiliate’’ the country.4 Demands for cooperation
against Haqqani—coming close behind the US Special Forces raid that killed
Osama bin Laden, which appears not to have had any consent from the Paki-
stan government or security forces—were deeply unpopular. Concerns that, fol-
lowing the inevitable Western withdrawal from Afghanistan, India might
exploit its relationship with Kabul prompted a disclosure from General Ashfaq
Parvez Kayani, the chief of the army. He expressed his anxiety that Pakistan
might be squeezed on both its eastern and western borders. American assess-
ments are that the Pakistan army would like to maintain close ties with Haq-
qani as a tool against pro-Indian elements in Afghanistan. President Karzai is
seen as a pro-Indian leader, who, for his part, blames the ISI for the death of
his father.5 The detonation of a powerful vehicle-borne bomb adjacent to hos-
telries used by Indian aid workers and businesses in Kabul in 2010 increased
suspicions that the ISI lay behind an attempt to drive out Indian influence.
Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director of the ISI, admitted
there was ‘‘contact’’ with Haqqani, but not command and control.6 Some
American security personnel argue that the Pakistan army has been fought to a
standstill by Jihadist militants like Haqqani, but it is more likely that the army
has decided that it cannot fight all the militant groups of the border areas at
once, and a deal, the Shakai Agreement, was struck with Haqqani in 2004.
Under its terms, Haqqani was to act as an interlocutor with Jihadist groups in
South Waziristan and all ‘‘foreign fighters’’ were to be registered in tribal areas,
while being given funding support and a free hand to operate, which in effect
meant turning a blind eye to cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.7 Although
the 2004 agreement broke down and was renegotiated several times, the ISI
was in the front line of both talks and the fighting in the border areas.8 At
Miram Shah in North Waziristan, the truces have enabled Haqqani and army
bases to be colocated in the town without dispute.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence / 117
More important, from the American perspective, Haqqani is a force that

cooperates with the Quetta Shura, the senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban.
Nevertheless, the existence of the sanctuary for the Haqqani network inside
Pakistan is denied by Islamabad, fueling accusations of deliberate duplicity.
Afghan officials, eager to retain American support, are more blunt. Hanif
Atmar, the former minister of the interior, noted: ‘‘I think this is absolutely
well understood that the Afghan terrorists with support from the ISI and al-
Qaeda are purposefully and deliberately targeting Afghan politicians, govern-
ment sites and foreign forces.’’9 Afghans regularly argue that rather than insur-
gency in their country threatening to spill over into Pakistan, it is Pakistan that
is intentionally destabilizing Afghanistan.
The ISI has a reputation for brutality, arbitrary violence, the sponsorship of
terrorism, and interference in domestic politics, yet Western policymakers often
refer to its crucial, frontline role in combating al-Qaeda.10 The ISI has been
regarded as a renegade organization with rogue agents, but also as a critical
interlocutor with militant Jihadist organizations on the Afghanistan–Pakistan
border. It has been accused of intimidating democratic politicians and even of
the murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, but it is regarded as a vital
component in the preservation of Pakistan that can prevent the country’s
nuclear arsenal from falling into the wrong hands. It was accused of harboring
Osama bin laden until his death in a US Special Forces operation in May 2011,
despite cooperation with the West against elements of al-Qaeda that had taken
refuge in South Waziristan.11 Given the fragility of Pakistan’s democracy, insur-
gency in Waziristan and in neighboring Afghanistan, and the consequences of
violent militancy in the country, the ISI’s involvement in each of these areas
is of significant international interest.
The current Western concern is twofold. One, how loyal is the ISI to the
civilian democratic government of Pakistan, and would the failure of coopera-
tion open the way to the collapse of the Pakistan state? Two, how sincere is the
ISI in its cooperation with Western intelligence agencies against the broad
coalition of Jihadists that threaten the West or the coalition forces operating
in Afghanistan? Assessments of the ISI are notoriously partisan, and some ana-
lysts, particularly in India, have been eager to blame Pakistani intelligence for
terrorist operations across the region. Although some argue that the ISI is the
eminence grise of covert operations by militant Jihadists, some Pakistani officers
argue that their country is practically under siege and the ISI should work
closely with the army in trying to contain the threat. Less charitable critics
maintain that this situation is the result of the ISI’s own policies, a form of
‘‘blowback’’ after years of sponsoring and fostering violent groups. The sense
that the army and ISI are engaged in staving off each new threat as it emerges
as they struggle for the state’s survival is palpable in their vocabulary, but may
reveal only the tactical situation rather than a strategic agenda. If Pakistan’s
true strategic ends were its desire to survive a variety of threats and challenges—
economic, environmental, and military—then its use of the ISI to make agree-
ments, to co-opt allies, and to neutralize rivals would provide a persuasive
alternative explanation to that advanced by those apt to see only conspiracy.
The absence of reliable evidence fuels suspicions of complicity in terrorist out-
rages, although the absence of empirical evidence is a situation not unfamiliar
to scholars of intelligence elsewhere. Despite the problems of fragmentary evi-
dence, the ISI’s past record offers a glimpse of the organization’s track record
and might offer the opportunity to assess its culture in terms of ethos, methods,
and approach. Understanding the habitual, normative culture of the ISI might
move us toward a better appreciation of how its strategy and priorities are
shaped, although we should acknowledge that the culture of the ISI remains
subordinate to its primary function: the preservation of state power.
The ISI is directed by the senior figures of the Pakistan Army to serve the
interests of the state and the armed forces. The supremacy of the ISI mirrors
the paramountcy of the Pakistan army in the country’s political arena and the
economy. The ISI is a servant of the armed forces with a degree of its own
‘‘agency,’’ which is the result of its distinctive mission, and it has evolved
through a history of clandestine operations and the requirement to manage
intermediate groups or individuals. Despite sharing the ISI’s objective of pre-
serving the state, the army officer corps has often had a somewhat strained
relationship with its intelligence wing; service in it is sometimes seen as a
career-end appointment, detrimental to the unity of the army’s chain of com-
mand in operational planning and, formerly, too involved in religious or politi-
cal conspiracies. To many army officers, it has also lacked the prestige and
honor of other, more conventional appointments. However, the ISI has often
been at the forefront of efforts to confront Pakistan’s chief regional rival, India,
and it is seen as a useful tool for the formulation of military and strategic plans.
It has a great deal of experience working with leaders on the Pakistan frontier
and among insurgents from Afghanistan, which gives the Pakistan army ‘‘reach’’
beyond its own frontiers. It is therefore considered a useful organization for the
projection of Pakistan’s national interests into Afghanistan and Central Asia.
It has been an indispensable instrument for coercion in domestic politics in
order to protect the army’s interests and therefore those of the state, and its
actions are justified by rhetoric that gives the impression that it is able to pre-
serve the nation against a variety of existential threats.
Since the 1980s the ISI has built up a cadre of well-trained operatives who
are experienced in working alongside Jihadist organizations. Those hired by the
ISI as intermediaries operate with a great deal of independence. Despite offi-
cially distancing themselves from Jihadist movements, the militants are still
seen as potential allies in the pursuit of Pakistan’s national interests.12 In Kash-
mir the ISI fostered militant Jihadists to fight there when operations in Afghan-
istan throughout the 1980s were being wound down. Impressed by the utility of
proxy paramilitaries with a successful outcome against the Soviets, it was a

natural extension to fight the Indian government at its point of greatest vulner-
ability. Although Kashmir has the potential to become a battleground again,
operations there diminished in importance because of insurgencies in Afghani-
stan and in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and Federally Admin-
istered Tribal Areas after 2001. The ISI is deeply involved in the process of
negotiation, recruitment, and sometimes ‘‘direction’’ of militant groups, but
external pressures generate a national defense reflex in the Pakistan army and
the ISI. Coalition cross-border drone strikes and the covert mission that ended
with the death of Osama bin Laden in Abottabad fuel domestic debates about
how far Pakistan should cooperate with the West without jeopardizing its
national sovereignty and independent freedom of action.
It is clear that Pakistan security forces regard al-Qaeda as a threat.13
Although the Jihadist defense of Pakistan might appeal to the more idealistic
and ideologically inclined within the armed forces—a feature, incidentally, that
is vigorously denied officially—there is no affinity with the internationalism of
al-Qaeda. Fears that pro–al-Qaeda elements in the armed forces, following the
arrest of Jihadist sailors, had facilitated an attack on the Mehran Naval Air
Station in June 2011 led to dismissals but also public denials that there were
any al-Qaeda sympathizers within the services.14 Since 2001 there has been
some continuity in the decision to treat various militant groups in different
ways. The priority has been to manage its own internal militancy problem, to
deflect groups where necessary against external powers, but to neutralize those
that posed a threat to the state. Between 2003 and 2004 the ISI cooperated
with the United States to bring about the arrest of certain al-Qaeda operatives.
Despite accusations that the ISI harbored Osama bin Laden, there is as yet no
evidence of collusion, and it may have been unaware of his exact location.
Conversely, new evidence has emerged that the ISI was aware of the Lashkar-e
Toiba attack plan against Mumbai, at least in principle, if not its precise
details.15 Its ‘‘links,’’ at least in terms of its ability to communicate if not direct
operations, and its coerciveness have given rise to the image of an organization
that is nefarious and double-dealing. Syed Saleem Shahzad, a journalist mur-
dered in 2011, alleged that some former ISI and military personnel have joined
militant Jihadist groups, and that one, Major Haroon Ashiq, encouraged the
ISI and Lashkar-e Toiba to execute the Mumbai attacks in 2008 in order to
realign Pakistan’s attention against India and relieve pressure on militants in
the tribal areas of the North West.16
Yet, for all its reputation, the ISI has been a failure. Frequent setbacks and
miscalculations have encouraged the ISI to turn to coercion as a means to
compensate for its inability to control events, and the level of violence in Paki-
stan indicates just how much it has struggled to manage the consequences of its
own policies.
Organization, Strategy, and Culture

The literature on the existence and influence of ‘‘military culture’’ is extensive,
although the discourse on intelligence culture remains embryonic.17 Assess-
ments of culture are often at risk of overgeneralizing responses to specific histor-
ical circumstances, attributing distinctions that are fallacies, or constructing
relativist judgments that actually tell us more about the observers themselves
than the subjects they claim to have examined. A more reliable means to assess
culture might begin with an assessment of strategic objectives, the organization
of the institution, and some reference to its longer-term historical conditioning,
although the available space in this chapter precludes a full exposition of the
latter.
The official role of the ISI is to serve as the first line of defense by providing
the government with intelligence about threats to national security. Pakistan’s
strategy has been dominated by the desire to hold India’s vast armed forces at
bay, to maintain independence against foreign powers (requiring closer rela-
tions with China as a counterweight to dependence on the United States), and
to prevent further partitioning or separatism where, perhaps, ‘‘Pashtunistan’’ or
Baluchistan might follow the Bangladeshi model.18 Perceived threats to
national security from India, but also from internal separatist or democratic
movements that might reduce the power of the elites, particularly the army
itself, meant that the ISI extended its reach into the political life of the country
in the interests of national defense. The result was that its loyalty to those
civilian administrations of which it did not approve was sometimes in doubt,
whereas operations might be initiated in Kashmir or Afghanistan to preempt a
perceived emerging threat. The ISI has acted as one of the means to achieve
Pakistan’s strategic ends, and it has made use of militant groups as a cheap and
effective source of information and action. Alignment with militants has also
given the army Islamist credentials and legitimacy against ‘‘corrupt,’’ secular
politicians. The ways of achieving strategy via the ISI have been the most
controversial. Given the power of the United States and neighboring India, a
culture of deniability has developed. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar flatly
denied that the ISI had links with the Haqqanis in North Waziristan following
allegations by Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff, that the Jihadist faction was ‘‘the veritable arm’’ of the ISI inside Afghani-
stan. Khar argued that such allegations would compel Pakistan to abandon its
alliance with the United States, arguing that ‘‘you cannot afford to alienate
Pakistan; you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people.’’19 Aside from the
emotions raised by what Pakistanis feel is an arbitrary breach of their sover-
eignty, Javed Hussein, a former Pakistan army brigadier working as a security
analyst, was perhaps more revealing in his response. He argued that US opera-
tions in North Waziristan against Haqqani would be a ‘‘strategic blunder’’ in
that it would stir up a hornet’s nest at a time when the United States could not
afford to open another front against Jihadist militants.20 Rather than revealing
a conspiracy, the comment suggests perhaps that Pakistan is unable to contain
the militancy in its frontier districts.
In the 1980s and 1990s, during Pakistan’s sponsorship of insurgency in
Afghanistan and Kashmir, the ISI worked alongside Islamic extremists. When
the West withdraws from Afghanistan and its interest in the region diminishes,
then Pakistan will want to reassert itself and may use the same type of nonstate
actors to further its influence, to develop its strategic depth, and to keep India
distracted. The ISI is likely to be at the forefront of that effort. Pakistan is
working on developing closer relations with Iran and China while gaining what
it can through its somewhat strained relationship with the United States. It is
concerned about India’s interest in Afghanistan and believes that it is in its
strategic interests to have a compliant, pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul.
The ISI was the conduit through which Western support for the Afghan
Mujahideen was deployed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and
this cooperation occurred at a time when the ISI was increasingly influenced
by radical Islamist thinking, a fact that was officially sanctioned by General
Zia ul Haq and by successive chiefs of the ISI. During the Afghan Civil War
(1989–2001), the ISI played a key role in promoting Pakistan’s interests—
namely, establishing a regime in Kabul favorable to Islamabad so as to create an
imaginary ‘‘strategic depth’’ in any struggle with India. Its role was not limited
to intelligence gathering or the processing of neutral ‘‘product,’’ but took the
form of overt political sponsorship and covert operations. The ISI was also
active in the ultimately disastrous Kargil Operations against India in 1999.21
With Pakistan’s sudden abandonment of the Taliban and cessation of its
sponsored insurgency in Kashmir in light of 9/11 and Operation Enduring Free-
dom in 2001, President General Pervez Musharraf cut militant personnel gradu-
ally from the armed forces and intelligence services and cooperated with the
West in counterinsurgency operations in South Waziristan in 2004 following
insurgent attacks astride the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. Although Musharraf
was publicly critical of the Islamist agenda of previous governments, it was the
ISI that brokered deals with the militants in the frontier areas. The ISI facili-
tated the Shakai Agreement. In return for a cease-fire by insurgents and intelli-
gence on ‘‘foreign fighters,’’ the Pakistan government agreed to offer funds to
the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan. The agreement failed in
2009 when ‘‘Uzbek’’ fighters clashed with the Pakistan army, which also
involved South Waziristan local insurgents. The Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan
leader, Beitullah Mehsud, nevertheless miscalculated, and after renewed fight-
ing he was killed in August that year.22 The threat of fragmentation of the
militant movement was nevertheless prevented by the intervention of Sirajud-
din Haqqani, the Taliban leader based in North Waziristan, who was, ironically,
the chief interlocutor for the Pakistan Army. The ISI has tried to foster allies
among the Waziristan militants to take on Jihadist factions and foreign fighters,
and count on the support of the Abdullah Mehsud group, Mullah Nazir and
Turkistan Bhittani, as well as the Punjabi Taliban in Wana. In light of militancy
in Swat and unrest in the major cities—including the so-called Lal Masjid (Red
Mosque) uprising of 2007—the ISI and the Army feel that national security is
again at stake.23 The civilian government has struggled to come to grips with an
array of domestic problems, namely, insurgency in the frontier districts, violent
sectarianism, a long-standing low-intensity conflict in Balochistan, the conse-
quences of the Indus River’s flooding in 2011, and the global economic
downturn.
The ISI is today responsible for the gathering and processing of foreign and
domestic intelligence, and the coordination of intelligence between the armed
forces’ own branches. The ISI trains agents, provides security for its senior
officers, and protects the country’s nuclear weapons program. The ISI has also
been involved in more aggressive activities in the past, including foreign espio-
nage, counterintelligence, and ‘‘covert operations.’’ Its functions have included
telephone tapping and other signals interception, surveillance, the monitoring
of extremists, and interference in the democratic process, including election
rigging and the intimidation of politicians. It has also been alleged that it has
indulged in assassination, narcotics smuggling, and the sponsorship of terrorism,
although these are often impossible to verify. There have been accusations that
it carried out the assassination of Benazir Bhutto because she wanted to reduce
the political power of the armed forces in the country, and the ISI has been
regarded as the mastermind behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.24
The key point, in terms of the ISI’s role and culture, is that senior army
officers believe that the ISI and the army are there to ‘‘protect national secur-
ity,’’ a broadly defined concept that includes not only the defense of the sover-
eignty of Pakistan but also the interests and institutions of the army, navy, and
air force, which regard themselves as the central pillars of the nation and the
very embodiment of its culture. They believe that, without the armed forces
playing a central role in the life of the state, the nation would be weakened and
broken up by separatist forces, and, in that condition, would be overrun by
India. India’s size and proximity loom large in the minds of Pakistan’s com-
manders, and the involvement of India in the breaking up of East Pakistan and
West Pakistan in 1971 and in the protracted conflict in Kashmir has strongly
influenced their views of the country’s vulnerabilities.
There is no doubt that the political culture of a country affects the activity
of its intelligence services. In Pakistan, though the ISI has a professional ethos
and serves its commanders loyally, it regards civilian politicians with suspicion,
if not contempt, and it has frequently operated outside the law to achieve its
objectives. It regards its mission of national security as a higher calling, above
the authority of politicians and lawyers. It uses secrecy and the concept of
national security as the means to avoid infringements of its freedom of action.
Indeed, the intelligence services are a key component of the semimilitarized
state of Pakistan. The ISI has the role of coordinating the armed services’ intel-
ligence machinery as well as gathering, analyzing, and assessing foreign intelli-
gence, both military and nonmilitary. However, despite the existence of the
Intelligence Branch, the civilian intelligence organization under the Interior
Ministry with responsibility for internal security, the ISI has often processed
and acted on intelligence in domestic affairs. The ISI’s director-general is
always a serving officer of lieutenant general rank, as are the three deputy
directors-general, and even the Intelligence Branch is led by serving or retired
military officers.25 The ISI also has specialist units for its tasks that extend
beyond a purely ‘‘intelligence’’ function: The Joint Intelligence North sup-
ported insurgents that crossed the border into Indian Jammu and Kashmir, and
was the agency that backed the Taliban in the 1990s. The division also main-
tained links with Islamist organizations inside Pakistan, including Harkat-ul-
Mujahideen, Lashkar-e Toiba, Al Badr, and Jaish-e-Mohammad. The Joint
Intelligence Miscellaneous is also thought to have played a role in acquiring
nuclear technology and carrying out covert action. As in other intelligence
services, specialist branches appear, are retitled, and are reabsorbed depending
on their tasks.
The Islamization of the ISI in the Afghanistan-Soviet War

In Pakistan in the 1970s, when national cohesion and political legitimacy were
so fragile, Islamist views gained currency as a way of generating national unity,
but also of justifying state decisions that could not then be questioned. This
was a distinctive feature of the country’s political culture, and Pakistan’s ISI
primarily still used the ‘‘national security’’ argument to justify its activities and
to conceal its failures.
When military rule came to an end in 1973, Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto used the
rhetoric of radical Islam to win over the Pashtuns of the North West Frontier
Province and the Balochis in elections. In the Constitution he framed in 1973,
article 227 laid down that no law would be permitted that was ‘‘repugnant
to the injunctions of Islam.’’ Additionally, an Islamic Council was established
(although its powers were not defined), Islamiyat was placed on educational
curricula, and Bhutto replaced Sunday with Friday as the weekly holiday. How-
ever, Bhutto was more interested in the preservation of his power and the culti-
vation of his image as quaid-i-awam (leader of the people) in the style of Mao
Zedong or Kim Il-sung than in trying to be a religious icon.26 He was at heart a
secularist, and he thus invoked the concept of Muslim unity at the Lahore
Islamic Summit to win favor.
As his popular support ebbed away, Bhutto turned to a closer alliance with
the Islamists, purging the administration of certain secularists who threatened
national cohesion. Haunted by the specter of separatism, he exploited India’s
first nuclear weapons test to call for the creation of an ‘‘Islamic bomb’’ for
Pakistan.27 In the elections of 1977 Bhutto used the ISI to check all the candi-
dates and blocked certain opposition members from standing through police
orders. Protest rioters were attacked by the Federal Security Force. However,
the ISI and the Pakistan army, especially the junior ranks, were strongly influ-
enced by Islamist arguments that, in fact, Bhutto was undermining Islam and
was insincere in his politics. In July this cohort informed its senior officers that
they would no longer support the prime minister, despite a last-minute decree
that favored Islamist demands. The commander of the army, Zia ul Haq, there-
fore seized power in a coup d’état. Zia ul Haq continued the trend toward
Islamization for much the same reasons as Bhutto, although he was genuinely
more devout than the former prime minister. Zia established a Federal Shariat
Court and a Council of Islamic Ideology to decide on what, in legal terms, was
‘‘repugnant to Islam,’’ and he encouraged, promoted, and supported an Islamist
agenda.28 The decision to elevate theocratic forces to positions of constitutional
authority in the service of unifying political ideas severely damaged Pakistan’s
intelligence and security forces.29 At the tactical level Islamist thinking has
long been a strong motivational force for intelligence operatives and troops.
But, as so many other ideologically driven forces around the globe indicate, it
is this very thinking that clouds analysis, strategic calculation, and economy of
effort. Nowhere was this demonstrated more clearly than in the operations in
Afghanistan and Kashmir.
For Pakistan, controlling Afghanistan or at least having a compliant regime
there apparently offered ‘‘strategic depth’’ for two reasons: One, it held out the
possibility that Pashtuns of the region would assist in any conflict with India;
and, two, it neutralized the threat of an independent ‘‘Pashtunistan’’ being cre-
ated, a potential separatist phenomenon that threatened the territorial integrity
of Pakistan.30 The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 created the opportu-
nity of American assistance and thus support for the Zia regime. The Americans
regarded the containment of the Soviets as a far higher priority than any con-
cerns about Pakistan’s internal politics. Nevertheless, the United States could
not be seen to be supporting the Afghan resistance directly, and so assistance
to the Mujahideen was channeled through the ISI. To avoid detection, funds,
arms, and supplies were handled exclusively by the ISI’s Afghan Bureau, with
few checks on who received them.31 American personnel were not permitted
inside Afghanistan, so all guidance, munitions distribution, and advice also
fell to the ISI. The ISI’s director-general, Lieutenant General Akhtar Abdur
Rahman, was a ‘‘no-nonsense officer with a singular vision of fighting the Sovi-
ets and clearing them out of Afghanistan.’’ According to Shuja Nawaz, he
‘‘brooked little interference—even from the Americans—in the internal opera-
tions of the ISI.’’32 In addition, the ISI and Special Services Group trained
83,000 Afghan Mujahideen in bases inside Pakistan between 1983 and 1997.
In turn, ISI agents of the Covert Action Division received training by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States.
Mohammad Yousaf, a former ISI officer, wrote that the relationship between
the ISI and the CIA had been close, especially in the Reagan era, and there
was cordiality with the Saudi intelligence service, which was also backing the
Afghan effort, although there were no associations with the other Arab backers
or the Arab volunteers inside Afghanistan. However, it was not a relationship
without problems. Despite the huge amount of American funding, some $30
billion in 1987, most of the money was spent on arms purchases, so the ISI was
left struggling to support the Mujahideen in the country. The stores to support
the training camps cost $1.5 million every month in 1987, and there were
significant costs in providing trucks, mules, fodder, fuel, and rations across the
border. CIA operatives also displayed their ignorance of conditions inside
Afghanistan in terms of the equipment they sometimes supplied.
Yousaf noted that it was American intelligence that was the most valued.
Signals intelligence was particularly useful in assessing the morale and perfor-
mance of Soviet and Afghan government forces. Satellite photography assisted
in the selection of targets. CIA demolitions advice was a great asset. In terms
of a relationship with the United States, clearly some ISI officers had little
sympathy with American values, but Yousaf believes that, despite the suspicions
of their generous donors, there were few episodes of corruption.33 This can be
explained partly through the professional ethos of the organization, but also a
growing sense of affinity with the Mujahideen and its embattled cause, which
was often expressed in religious terms. Some regular Pakistani army personnel
operated inside Pakistan as members of the ISI. They tended to be men
recruited from the North West Frontier Province who were fluent in Dari,
Pashto, or Afghan Farsi, and, though styled ‘‘volunteers,’’ they were not always
as enthusiastic as their title suggests. They had strict instructions not to reveal
their identity if captured and were informed that they would be denied
anyway.34
The ISI and General Zia not only bypassed the Pakistan Foreign Ministry
on the Afghanistan issue; the army command was also not consulted. This may
have been due, in part, to their desire to get an Islamist government into power
in Kabul after the Soviets withdrew, to which the United States would not
have agreed.35 It also suggests that the ISI and its leadership will always put
national interests ahead of Pakistan’s alliance relationships, and will seek to

avoid accountability at home.
The ISI and the Hezb-e Islami/Gulbuddin

The ISI expanded during the Afghan conflict to circa 26,000 personnel, and its
financial autonomy meant that it developed a habit of independence in its
activities. Moreover, its ability to dictate which Afghan factions received sup-
plies and support meant that it was in a powerful position. Pakistan favored
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as its protégé in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, in fact, com-
manded little loyalty among the Pashtuns, even in Paktia, and his effect on
Soviet forces was minimal compared with other warlords, but what impressed
the ISI were his ruthlessness, the fact that he controlled territory close to the
border, and his Jihadist credentials.36 Moreover, Lieutenant General Hamid
Gul, the ISI’s director-general, was himself an Islamist and regarded the Jihad-
ists as protégés of Pakistan. Mindful of the post-Soviet war dispensation, Hek-
matyar carefully stockpiled his weaponry, insisted on the exclusion of Afghan
rivals from the refugee camps, and concentrated on cultivating his allies inside
Pakistan. The irony was that Hekmatyar, a declared anti-American militant,
was a recipient of arms, equipment, and supplies shipped via the ISI from the
United States. Despite Hamid Gul’s efforts to professionalize the Afghanistan
operations, the ISI’s autonomy and its support for Hekmatyar marked a further
erosion of its secular values and were to have major consequences.37
When the Soviets withdrew, Hekmatyar was proactive in trying to gain
power. One of his men, Syed Jamal, murdered thirty of Massoud’s leaders in the
so-called Farkhar Massacre in a clear attempt to neutralize a rival faction. When
the resistance captured Khost in March 1991, the ISI was quick to claim that
Hekmatyar’s faction had been responsible, even though it was not, in order to
attract Afghan popular support. However, these moves suggested that Pakistan’s
main proxy was not as powerful as he had seemed initially, even to the ISI.38
When an Afghan military leaders’ joint shura met in Pakistan in 1991, there
was a new determination to cooperate against the successor regime in Kabul,
and the United States agreed to support this military effort by supplying the
Mujahideen factions directly rather than through the ISI as in the past. This
removed the ISI’s ability to fund Hekmatyar using external means. Pakistan
turned instead to the support of another emerging Pashtun militia, the Taliban,
and this organization, backed by ISI intelligence, weapons, and logistics, gradu-
ally rolled back the other factions.39 The Taliban established its own regime
in Kabul, imposing Islamist doctrine and providing a secure platform for ISI
intelligence gathering on Central Asia.40 Only pockets of resistance survived in
the form of the United Front in the north and the Shias in the west. The ISI
participated in a major offensive against the northern Afghan allies in the late
1990s in an effort to secure a military victory for its faction. By contrast, the
Pakistani civilian government just wanted an end to the war. Nevertheless, it
was clear that the ISI and the army had developed an appetite for proxy opera-
tions using its Pashtun allies.
In 1993 the United States placed Pakistan on the watch list of states sus-
pected of supporting terrorism because Lieutenant General Javed Nasir, then
the head of the ISI, had made it impossible for the Americans to buy back
the FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles given to the Mujahideen during the
Soviet–Afghanistan conflict, and it was known that the ISI was supplying the
terrorist Harkat ul-Ansar organization, and possibly funding the radical
madrassa Markaz Dawa Al Irshad. Six months after America’s designation,
Nasir was retired and Pakistan was removed from the watch list. American focus
switched away from Pakistan and Afghanistan to threats in the horn of Africa,
Southeastern Europe, and the Middle East.
The ISI and Kashmir Operations

India has long accused Pakistan’s ISI of fueling insurgency in Kashmir, and it is
worth noting that the internal security problem worsened once the ISI’s opera-
tions in Afghanistan had been scaled down. Indian analysts assert that—with
the recovery of identification details from militants who have been killed, to
the forensic examination of improvised explosive devices, communications
equipment, and weaponry—there is evidence that Pakistan directly supported
the insurgency. Indian officers remarked that there was a ‘‘step change in the
degree of sophistication in the insurgents’ ’’ attacks and in their capabilities
after 1989.41 Pakistan has always denied any support, but Indian analysts believe
that General Zia ul Haq initiated a proxy war using the ISI and that there was
a transfer of experienced personnel (under the euphemism ‘‘resources’’) from
the Afghan theater.42 An Indian Joint Intelligence Committee report in 1995
claimed that Pakistan spent 240,000 rupees per month on the insurgency cam-
paign, supporting about six major groups with a combined strength of between
5,000 and 10,000.43 There seemed to be a calculation by the ISI that covert
action would allow Pakistan to achieve its objectives without a more costly,
conventional war. The aim was to drain India of military resources and force it
to cut back on conventional war spending—thus reducing the threat on the
central front. Insurgency offered the opportunity to demoralize the Indian
security forces, and to precipitate heavy-handed reactions and thus drive the
Muslim Kashmiri population into the arms of Pakistan. India accused the ISI
of orchestrating a parallel political campaign, with propaganda, agitation, fund-
ing of radical groups, and the deliberate provocation of communal violence.44
India also believes that the ISI was behind Sikh agitation for an indepen-
dent Khalistan, and even unrest in the North East.45 To some extent, it is easy
to assume that conspiratorial agencies, like the ISI, are responsible for all epi-
sodes of unrest and terrorism inside India. However, after the recent bombings
of Mumbai, the available evidence suggested that ‘‘homegrown’’ Jihadists,
operating independently of Pakistan, were capable of carrying out attacks of
this nature. Much of the unrest in the North East of India is centered on specific
local and regional issues rather than a deliberate Pakistani policy of Balkaniza-
tion to reduce India’s power.
As so often is the case, intelligence agencies, particularly those with an
emphasis on covert action, create an exaggerated sense of their power and a
formidable reputation. This reputation, and their secrecy, serve to project their
influence and conceal their mistakes. The fact is that the sponsorship of insur-
gency in Kashmir did not achieve the ISI’s objectives, although it created more
misery for those who endured it and exasperated the Indian security forces. The
failure of covert action led to a far more dangerous escalation of the Kashmir
conflict in 1999. The Kargil operations of that year in turn generated calls for
nuclear deployments and necessitated urgent American diplomatic interven-
tion. Ironically, the escalation of the threat persuaded the ISI that it was the
key agency in the defense of national security. It could argue that it was taking
the fight to the enemy, but the operations in Afghanistan and Kashmir had
also rather conveniently given it the opportunity to obtain more funding,
expansion of its personnel, and greater freedom of action. It is important to
note that, for the Pakistan army and the ISI, the scale of the Indian threat has
been a key driver in its strategy for Kashmir and for the projection of its influ-
ence in Afghanistan.
The ISI and Nuclear Proliferation

When it was revealed that the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was the
mastermind behind the sale of nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea
in 2004, it suggested the ISI had either failed to monitor its own scientists or it
had been complicit in the whole operation.46 Despite much anxiety about Iran’s
nuclear program, Pakistan asserted that there could be no investigation by the
International Atomic Energy Agency into its own role in the development of
Iranian capabilities, which appeared to be a blunt attempt to conceal its
tracks.47 Musharraf acknowledged that considerable nuclear expertise and
equipment were dispatched between 1987 and 2003, but he claimed that the
twelve ‘‘greedy scientists’’ had acted alone. The International Atomic Energy
Agency was not permitted to interview those who were detained. Nevertheless,
it is difficult to accept that the armed forces, and the ISI’s Joint Intelligence
Miscellaneous, which were responsible for the nuclear program, did not know
of the sales and transfers, particularly when a Pakistani C-130 aircraft was pho-
tographed in Pyongyang alongside missile parts in 2002.48 Khan alleges that
Musharraf had full knowledge of the transfers.
There were concerns that the United States had turned a blind eye to Paki-
stan’s nuclear program until the matter came to light from Libyan sources.
However, the Americans were quick to seize on the intelligence from Libya, so
it is possible that the full extent of the illegal sales may not have been known
to the United States until they got the Libyan tip-off.49 The Americans were
able to intercept a German vessel carrying centrifuge parts en route to Dubai
in October 2003. However, it has also been alleged that the CIA had protected
Khan from prosecution in Europe (for the theft of nuclear secrets from the
Netherlands), and that their reassurances that they had him ‘‘under surveil-
lance’’ was really an excuse to give him a free hand, although no motive has
been advanced for this action. The Dutch judge, Anita Leeser, who oversaw the
case against Khan in 1983, remarked that key documents had ‘‘disappeared.’’
However, there was evidence to suggest that the ISI had set up front companies
in Europe to conceal Khan’s activities, and they had intermediaries working for
them in Dubai. It also appears that China was also assisting in the sale and
transfer of technical knowledge, following ISI requests. Even though he was
questioned about the alleged sale of secrets, Khan maintained that his opera-
tions had to be kept secret to avoid detection by the Americans. Shuja Nawaz,
who consulted army archives and interviewed leading officers, believes that
‘‘either the army was complicit in Khan’s activities or it had been derelict in its
security and surveillance duties.’’50 It seems inconceivable that the ISI did not
know about Khan’s dealings; but if it did not, then it reveals another failure of
considerable magnitude. There was some alarm in the West when Khan, who
had been under house arrest, was granted immunity from prosecution and
released in February 2009, while all eleven of his colleagues were released from
prison by May 2006.51 Pakistan’s attitude toward the Khan case reveals not only
the culture of security that pervades the establishment but also the culture of
secrecy that gives rise to accusations of double-dealing from its allies.
The ISI since 9/11

The United States’ approach to Pakistan is not a simple matter. There have
been genuine concerns not just about the sale of nuclear secrets but also with
the numbers of Jihadist organizations in the country and the degree of Islamist
infiltration in state institutions. Washington believed that Musharraf was a crit-
ically important ally in the global war on terrorism, that Pakistan was a ‘‘front-
line state’’ that had access to the Taliban, and that the Pakistan security services
had a unique opportunity to roll up members of al-Qaeda. The Americans
needed Musharraf’s help; but at the same time, they could make demands on
him to cooperate. In 2001, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, George W.
Bush insisted publicly that Pakistan withdraw its support for the Taliban in
Afghanistan and assist in the apprehending of al-Qaeda’s members via the ISI.
The deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, used ‘‘strong language’’ to

insist that Pakistan relinquish its support for the Taliban.52 Musharraf was forced
into a volte-face of policy, and, as a result of the unrest that followed, all parties
in Pakistan lost confidence in him.
Despite Musharraf’s change of policy, many in the ISI felt that Pakistan had
to act in its national interests against the United States. Some ISI officers were
advising the Taliban on American tactics and plans as late as October 2001.53
The ISI moved to protect Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom it regarded as a key strate-
gic asset, by sheltering him in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Nighttime airlifts were organized for Pakistani nationals within the Taliban
ranks from Kunduz.54 General Hamid Gul, the former director-general of the
ISI, even remarked that the ‘‘attacks on New York and Washington [9/11] were
an Israeli-engineered attempt at a coup against the government of the United
States.’’ He posited: ‘‘The destabilization of Pakistan is part of the US plan
because it is a Muslim nuclear state.’’55 Such ideas were surprisingly common-
place among both Islamists and educated ‘‘moderate’’ Pakistanis. This may have
been, in part, because they wanted to displace the horrific nature of terrorism
from any association with Islam and their own country, but also because it has
become ideological shorthand to blame the United States, or the CIA, for every
ill affecting society. Accidents, unrest, and even environmental problems are
frequently attributed to the American intelligence service.56 ISI–CIA complic-
ity is sometimes invoked as part of this fabric of conspiracy in Pakistan civil
society. After 9/11 many Islamists in Pakistan demanded to see evidence of
Osama bin Laden’s involvement. Once the Americans and their coalition allies
had secured Afghanistan, videotape and written evidence was provided, but by
then the Islamists had already been convinced by their own conspiracy theories.
The death of Osama bin Laden has further strengthened the suspicions about
the Americans and the degree to which the ISI is a coconspirator.
To reinforce the new direction of strategy, Musharraf purged the ISI and
leadership of the army of certain Islamists. The ISI director-general at the time,
Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, was replaced by Lieutenant General
Ehsanul Haq.57 In addition, 40 percent of the ISI was cut, partly a consequence
of the end of ISI activities in Afghanistan, but also because of a scaling back of
the Kashmir operations. Some senior officers objected, including the deputy
chief of the ISI, Mohammed Aziz Khan, but they were ‘‘retired’’ or, in the case
of Khan, promoted to the ‘‘ceremonial’’ post of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff Committee. In addition, there were 2,000 arrests of leading Islamists.58
However, there were some concerns. By May 2002 many militants had been
released without charge, and attempts to seize the assets of Islamist organiza-
tions were halfhearted, because of misplaced confidence in being able to control
these elements. Banned organizations reappeared under different titles or went
underground, where they continued fund-raising or training fighters. Without
doubt, some of the rank-and-file members of the ISI were still sympathetic to
their Islamist allies, and they shared a deep disquiet about any association with
America.59 Musharraf admitted, when pressed about a lack of commitment to
the war on terror, that renegade or ‘‘retired’’ ISI officers and agents may indeed
have been supporting the Taliban. However, he was at pains to point out that
Pakistan was playing a proactive role in defeating the Taliban and capturing al-
Qaeda. In South Waziristan in 2004, attempts by the Pakistan army to root out
foreign fighters caused defiance and then active resistance. As the army pro-
ceeded with its operations, it came under attack from local insurgents, many of
whom were Taliban veterans.60 There were heavy casualties, but the troops were
withdrawn because of the impossibility of achieving any political success with
a military campaign.
Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani and the ISI

The Haqqani network in North Waziristan became a crucial interlocutor for the
army and the ISI. Although the elder Jalaluddin, the experienced Mujahideen
commander, compelled a great deal of respect on both sides of the border, his
son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was requested to act as the intermediary with tribal
groups in South Waziristan, and in return he was given a free hand to operate
inside Afghanistan against the Americans. The Pakistan army and the ISI were
only too pleased to displace the insurgency from their own territory into the
American sphere. Fighting has not ceased for long, however. Foreign fighters in
South Waziristan created their own dynamic, and rival tribal groups made use
of the army, al-Qaeda, or the Haqqani network for their own ends. The ISI
does not seem to be able to control events and has been targeted by the insur-
gents. The Pakistan army and its security service have paid a high price in lives
lost in the struggle with Jihadists; so, too, has the civilian population caught in
the crossfire.
After the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, and
bombings in Kashmir shortly after, India mobilized forces and made accusations
that the state of Pakistan was behind the outrages. Musharraf argued that the
ISI and the army were fully under his control, and serving personnel certainly
had vested interests in supporting the military head of state. The outbreak of
violence at the Red Mosque and fighting in Swat, close to Islamabad, coupled
with mounting losses among the security forces in frontier districts, made this
statement more credible.61 The expressions of support for militancy tended to
come from the retired ISI officers, such as Khalid Khwaja. He stated that ‘‘we
have done the worst possible thing. We have been responsible for the miseries
of our brothers and sisters because we didn’t believe in God, but we believed in
Bush and Blair.’’62
It is not just the outbursts of Islamists that cause doubts amongst Western
governments. The cease-fire and negotiations with the Tehrik-i Taliban Paki-
stan (TTP) and allied tribal groups in Waziristan caused disappointment in the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Coalition forces in Afghani-
stan were unable to pursue the insurgents across the border into Pakistan and
turned to strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e., drones) instead. Effectively,
Pakistan frontier areas provide a ‘‘safe haven,’’ and attacks are still launched
across the international border. There have been disturbing reports that, in
October 2006, Coalition troops had to fight not only entrenched Afghan Tali-
ban south of Kandahar but also their Taliban reinforcements, who had arrived
in pickup trucks ‘‘waved on by Pakistani border guards.’’63 The Pakistan army’s
conclusion of its military operations in South Waziristan in 2004 certainly gave
the Taliban a crucial respite, but more active support of the Haqqani network
represents direct aid against American and Western interests.64 Shelling across
the Pakistani border into Afghanistan appeared to have been carried out with
the connivance of Pakistani troops or the ISI and seemed to be retaliation for
unmanned aerial vehicle operations and the strike against Osama bin Laden’s
compound in Abbottabad. In July 2011 the United States withheld a third of
its military aid to Pakistan in protest.
The United States–led coalition believed that it could trace Taliban support
to Pakistani training camps run by members of the ISI, with munitions dumps
and new weapons caches along the border and a Taliban headquarters based
near Quetta. It is estimated that in the battle with the ISAF in southern
Afghanistan in mid-2006, the Afghan Taliban fired a staggering 400,000 rounds
of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades, and 1,000 mortar shells—
quantities that in fact seemed likely to have come from outside Afghanistan.
Moreover, madrassas in Pakistan are dominated by the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, a
group that provided the spiritual impetus to hundreds of Taliban before 2001.
Migrant Pakistani laborers, who looked to get employment in the opium harvest
in the south of Afghanistan, were recruited at the end of every season to partici-
pate in the Jihad against Western forces and the Afghan National Security
Forces. The cost of the weapons stocks overrun by NATO in southern Afghani-
stan were estimated to be £2.6 million. This suggests that narco-dollars, or
perhaps vigorous fund-raising, was supporting the insurgency.
The Pakistan government nevertheless insisted that it had nothing to do
with supporting insurgency, and it is fair to say that the border areas have rarely
been firmly under Islamabad’s control. In 2004, the Pakistani army deployed up
to 80,000 troops in the region, while NATO had just 31,000 in Afghanistan.
Moreover, the ISI carried out more than 700 arrests of prominent Jihadists and
members of al-Qaeda, including Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of
9/11. Pakistan’s casualties from militancy totaled 3,600 in 2007, 8,400 in 2008,
and more than 4,000 in 2009, with a similar trend thereafter. Nevertheless,
Matt Waldman asserted, through a report based on interviews with several Tali-
ban, that the ISI was so complicit in supporting the Taliban that it was as
evident, in the fighters’ words, as ‘‘the sun in the sky.’’65 Musharraf was quick to
dispute the report, arguing that the Taliban could not have a headquarters at
Quetta and that it was contrary to the ISI’s interests to support the Afghan
insurgents. He was prepared to accept that ‘‘rogue elements’’ of former ISI offi-
cers could have been active. Some of those who worked for the ISI had the
same ethnic background and worldview as their Taliban comrades and had
many years’ experience sharing their hardships and cultural ethos, so the extent
to which they could be considered ‘‘renegade’’ seemed doubtful.66 However,
without explaining the motive, critics believe that the regular ISI could be
using these ‘‘rogue elements’’ as a convenient cover for its operations. When a
large vehicle-borne bomb was detonated outside Indian hostelries in Kabul in
2010, many local Afghans believed that it was an ISI operation delivered by
Haqqani.67 Musharraf had in fact tended to target al-Qaeda and foreign fighters
in Pakistan, rather than the Afghan Taliban, which enjoyed a strong following
in some of the frontier districts. This may have been due in part to the question
of limited resources, but it is also true that Musharraf had to tread a delicate
course between his Western allies and his own disaffected people, particularly
the Islamists, who were a useful political counterweight to the opposition.
The ISI may also have an eye on the future. It suited Pakistan’s national
interests to displace the focus of the TTP and Afghan Taliban into Afghanistan
and away from Pakistan. Grooming the Haqqani network offered the opportu-
nity for potential pro-Pakistani Afghan leaders in the future. At the very least,
the Haqqani could offer to continue to act as negotiators for the ISI, especially
in South Waziristan. Many in Pakistan expect the Western forces to pull out of
Afghanistan in 2014, and this begs the question of what political dispensation
will exist there. Some clearly feel that, once the ISAF has gone, some sort of
accommodation with the Taliban will be necessary, and this affects the current
handling of them.68 Equally, some, especially Indian analysts, believe that
extremists within the armed forces, following Musharaf’s resignation in 2008,
could effectively ‘‘Talibanize’’ Pakistan. However, this is a misconception.
Although a few of the senior officers subscribe to a conservative brand of Islam,
Tableeghi Jamaat, the vast majority of the officer corps are secular, professional,
and loyal. Since 2002, whenever the Pakistan army was attacked by the Taliban
and their allies in South Waziristan, the sympathies for Jihadists were no longer
guaranteed. Attacks on patrols in the area were seen as an attack on the institu-
tion of the army and the state. The army ‘‘closed ranks’’ against this threat.
Where there were episodes of indiscipline, they came from the Frontier Con-
stabulary, an organization with familial and ethnic ties to the tribesmen of the
region. The priority for the army and the ISI remains the preservation of the
state and the ruthless pursuit of Pakistan’s national interests.
Assessments
The army has been eager to contain Islamism, while pension, financial, or land
rewards ensure loyalty.69 The army and the ISI were always reliable agencies for
Musharraf, despite episodes of sectarian or communal conflict that broke out in
most major cities and tribal areas after 2001. The ISI will, no doubt, continue
to operate in its traditional roles, protecting the nation’s ‘‘security’’ by preserv-
ing the power of the armed forces, and projecting its influence beyond the
borders of Pakistan and treating Islamist proxies as secondary to its strategic
interests. However, as its record shows, it has not always been successful in
suppressing popular unrest, providing accurate intelligence on the threat, or
containing Islamism. Whether it is able to do so in the future, therefore,
remains in doubt. Democrats are nevertheless deeply disturbed by the effect of
such a powerful intelligence service. The Nation captured the complaint in an
editorial: ‘‘[The ISI] is a government within a government—the intelligence
agencies . . . [have a] virtually autonomous role in the political affairs of the
country. The baneful influence of the intelligence agencies has spread its
malign shadow over the political destiny of the country.’’70
This anxiety resurfaced with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Decem-
ber 27, 2007. Although the government was at pains to point out that the
assassins were members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, led by the
militant Beitullah Mehsud, members of the Pakistan People’s Party argued that
the ISI was behind the murder.71 Bhutto had written a letter herself on October
16, 2007, which named four men who intended to kill her, and they included
the head of the Intelligence Branch, Ijaz Shah, and Hamid Gul, the former
chief of the ISI. The Times subsequently carried a story of alleged renegade ISI
involvement in the assassination.72 Perhaps the tragedy is that a number of
groups had motives to kill her, including the TTP and the Jihadist militants of
the Punjab.
Religion is easily recognizable as a badge of identity, and therefore ‘‘culture’’
appears to be the most important element in dictating the radicalized fortunes
of the ISI and its support for Jihadist organizations in the 1980s and 1990s. But
state power is the real root of the ISI’s raison d’être. In Afghanistan, in Kashmir,
and the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, though religious rhetoric
could be invoked to win popular support, it was Pakistan’s preservation or pro-
jection of power that mattered most. The ISI’s support for the Afghan Taliban
was motivated by the realpolitik of dominating the region on Pakistan’s western
and northern approaches, rather than the ‘‘other worldly’’ cultural concerns of
building a caliphate based on the Sharia. As the free press and democratically
minded have already recognized, it is not Islamism but the ISI’s arbitrary exploi-
tation of power that is most feared. It is the elements that operate on the fringes
of the ISI, and independent extremists, that pose the most deadly menace.
The ISI became an important element in Pakistan’s politics and strategy

when it became financially independent and developed a habit for action that
was not subject to independent scrutiny. Nevertheless, despite its influence, it
remains a tool of the state and its military elite; it is not independent. In recent
years it has tapped into business and banking to sustain its wealth and indepen-
dence, and it still monitors politicians at home and overseas. These trends
suggest that it will continue to interfere in domestic Pakistani politics on its
own initiative and when directed by anxious military leaders. Current officers
claim that the army and the ISI ‘‘obey the government,’’ but this is unlikely to
last long, because they will become impatient with a civilian administration
unable to ‘‘solve’’ the financial crisis affecting the globe and which seems weak
in the face of destabilizing Islamist militancy. The army leadership is still very
conservative and not fully infected with Islamism, but there is a concern that a
new generation of officers might, like Gul and Nasir, be more willing to accom-
modate the TTP within Pakistan and other militant groups, particularly in light
of indecisive military operations on the frontier. Ahmed Rashid notes that
Pakistan army and ISI judgments about the near future are wrong, which will
precipitate a national crisis. He argues that debt and inflation will increase,
relations with the United States will continue to deteriorate, but, worst of all,
they will delude themselves that they can continue to manipulate militant
groups, crack down on ‘‘miscreants,’’ and keep the Americans at arm’s length
while maintaining their aid dependency.73
Despite its fearsome reputation, the ISI has been a singularly unsuccessful
organization: It lost control of the Taliban, Haqqani, and its other Islamist
protégés; it has periodically ruined Pakistan’s relationship with India over
covert operations in Kashmir; it has courted the most militant Islamist factions,
only to see its cities plagued by sectarian violence; and it has so damaged the
credibility of civilian politics that the army cannot escape its responsibility as
kingmaker. In terms of its tactics, it has a long record of illegal actions: Its
abuses have either been the result of a lack of control, oversight, and account-
ability, or desperation and survival. If Pakistan ever becomes a ‘‘failing state,’’
many Pakistanis believe that the army and the ISI will be largely to blame for
it. The ISI and the Pakistan army need to develop a more responsible and
accountable ethos, but they are unlikely to accept Western assistance in this
regard because of a passionate desire to avoid external interference, a point
underscored by difficult bilateral relations even with Pakistan’s most supportive
ally, the United States. Admittedly, the available and accessible sources make
drawing a conclusion extremely difficult and limited. However, until there is a
substantial reexamination of the ISI and the Pakistan army’s recent operations,
and a better understanding of Pakistan’s context and imperatives, it seems they
are likely to go on failing and, as in the past, turn to coercion and violence to
compensate for their lack of strategic success.
Notes
1. ‘‘Pakistan’s Spy Agency Is Tied to Attack on US Embassy,’’ New York Times, Septem-
ber 22, 2011.
2. Ibid.
3. ‘‘Pakistani PM Gilani Hits Back at the US Accusations,’’ Reuters, September 24,
2011.
4. ‘‘Pakistan Scorns US Scolding on Terrorism,’’ New York Times, September 23, 2011.
5. ‘‘Pakistan Spat Highlights Bitter Truths Facing the US in Afghanistan,’’ Time, Sep-
tember 26, 2011.
6. Thomas Ruttig, ‘‘The Haqqani Network as an Autonomous Entity,’’ in Decoding the
New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, edited by Antonio Giustozzi (London: Hurst,
2009); ‘‘Pakistan Scorns US Scolding’’; Carlotta Gall, ‘‘Former Pakistani Officer Embodies a
Policy Puzzle,’’ New York Times, March 3, 2010.
7. ‘‘Afghanistan Warns Pakistan against Border Fighting,’’ USA Today, September 25,
2011.
8. Cases in point are the February 2005 Srarogha agreement, the treaty with the Utman-
zai Waziris in September 2006, and separate agreements with the TTP in South Waziristan.
9. ‘‘The Endgame in Afghanistan: How Do We End the Proxy Wars?’’ Time.com, Sep-
tember 23, 2011.
10. On the fear and sensationalism that the ISI generates in India, see Lal Bhure, The
Monstrous Face of ISI: The Real Story behind the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan
(New Delhi: Siddharth, 2000); and Srinkanta Ghosh, Pakistan’s ISI: Network of Terror in
India (New Delhi: A. P. H., 2000).
11. Imtiaz Gul, The Most Dangerous Place (New York: Viking, 2010); Abdel Bari Atwan,
The Secret History of Al-Qaeda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
12. Steve Coll, ‘‘Don’t Look Back,’’ New Yorker, March 1, 2010.
13. Author’s interview with Jason Burke, October 18, 2011.
14. Dexter Filkins, ‘‘The Journalist and the Spies,’’ New Yorker, September 19, 2011.
15. Jason Burke, ‘‘Mumbai Spy Says He Worked for Terrorists, Then Briefed Pakistan,’’
The Guardian, October 18, 2011.
16. Hasan Zaidi, ‘‘The Changing Face of the Taliban,’’ InPaper Magazine, Dawn, Septem-
ber 2011; Dexter Filkins, ‘‘The Journalist and the Spies,’’ New Yorker, September 19, 2011.
17. Military culture has been much-debated as a concept; see Theo Farrell and Terry
Terriff, The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 2002), 3–21; Theo Farrell, ‘‘Culture and Military Power,’’ Review of International Stud-
ies, 24 (1998): 407–16; Ann Swidler, ‘‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,’’ American
Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (April 1986); and Peter Wilson, ‘‘Defining Military Culture,’’
Journal of Military History 71, no. 1 (2008): 11–43.
18. ‘‘Endgame in Afghanistan.’’
19. ‘‘Pakistan Warns That US Accusations May Cost Washington,’’ Los Angeles Times,
September 24, 2011.
20. Ibid.
21. For details of accusations of the degree of clandestine involvement in terror in India,
see Rajeev Sharma, Pak Proxy War: A Story of ISI, Bin Laden, and Kargil (New Delhi: Kaveri
Books, 1999).
22. Imtiaz Ali, ‘‘Beitullah Mehsud: The Taliban’s New Leader in Pakistan,’’ Jamestown
Terrorism Focus, January 9, 2008.
23. Zaidi, ‘‘Changing Face.’’

24. The allegation from India was that the ISI had orchestrated the Mumbai attack by
facilitating Lashkar-e Toiba, but Jason Burke argues that the ISI, though informed of the
operation in principle, did not know its details. Their interlocutor was ‘‘David Headley,’’
alias Daood Gilani, and the handler, allegedly, was Major Iqbal of the ISI. Stephen Tankel
suggests that the ISI would have liked to direct Lashkar-e Toiba but failed to control it.
Divisions and schisms within Lashkar-e Toiba emerged from interrogations of Gilani, and it
seems the operation became a ‘‘martyrdom’’ mission quite late in the planning stage. See
Jason Burke, ‘‘Mumbai Spy Says He Worked for Terrorists.’’
25. The ISI commanders are designated deputy director-general–political, deputy
director-general–external, and deputy director-general–administration. The ISI is further
subdivided into specialist divisions. The Joint Intelligence Bureau is responsible for both
internal and external open sources intelligence and human intelligence. The Joint Counter-
Intelligence Bureau also has both internal and external responsibilities. The Joint Signals
Intelligence Bureau monitors all communications intelligence. Joint Intelligence X adminis-
ters accounts; Joint Intelligence Technical examines technical intelligence and emerging
technologies, and the Special Wing is responsible for intelligence training in the armed
forces and for liaison with foreign intelligence agencies.
26. His desire to preserve power was in part due to a sense of siege. The ISI actually
assisted him in locating and thwarting a coup by military officers in 1972 that led to the
Attock Conspiracy Trial. The tribunal was led by General Zia ul Haq, who sympathized with
the accused officers.
27. Gorden Carrera, Shopping for Bombs (London: Hurst, 2006), 8–9.
28. Abdus Sattar Ghazali, ‘‘Islamic Pakistan: Illusions and Reality,’’ August 14, 1999,
www.ghazali.net/book1/chapter11a/.
29. After Zia, religious affiliation reports on each officer were dropped but the ISI still
briefed corps commanders on the political situation in the country, which created a habit
and expectation of interest.
30. This assumption seemed to have ignored the obvious point that the greater depth
would create a drain on already-stretched national resources.
31. The Afghan Bureau’s finances were not supervised. Proper accounting was not estab-
lished until Lieutenant General Hamid Gul took over. The Afghan Bureau consisted of
three branches—Operations, Logistics, and Psychological Warfare. It was supported by a
department for clothing and funds and for sending food and matériel to officers operating
inside Afghanistan.
32. Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 372. Gul took much the same line and wanted to keep the
Americans out.
33. The so-called Quetta Incident, where three officers were court-martialed in 1983 for
accepting bribes to give arms to one faction above its quota, was an exception according to
Yousaf. Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Beartrap: Afghanistan’s Untold Story (London:
Leo Cooper, 1992), 31. That said, early attempts to recruit Jihadists from refugees was a
failure because of rampant corruption. Ibid., 29.
34. Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 375.
35. Ibid., 392.
36. Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the
Taliban–Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970–2010 (London: Hurst, 2011), 72.

38. The turning point seems to have been Hekmatyar’s failure to take Jellalabad. Bhutto
claimed it was an ISI-inspired plan, formulated by the director-general of the ISI, Lieutenant
General Hamid Gul. Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 4–32 (based on an interview with Benazir
Bhutto).
39. Much has been written on the alleged creation, direction, and control of the Taliban
by the ISI, but evidence from the field suggests the movement had a long gestation, was
given support by the ISI once it had begun to establish itself in Kandahar, and was never
under the ISI’s control. See Linschoten and Kuehn, Enemy We Created, 120–21.
40. According to interviewees among the Taliban, while ISI officers and agents accompa-
nied the Taliban and were colocated with them, relations were fragile. Linschoten and
Kuehn, Enemy We Created, 122.
41. ‘‘Dangerous Game of State-Sponsored Terror,’’ The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/
kashmir/story/0,2763,722049,00.html.
43. John Pike, ‘‘Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence,’’ July 25, 2002, www.fas.org/
irp/world/pakistan/isi/.
44. Benazir Bhutto was clearly not part of this, and the ISI acted independently. When
she called for a cross-party meeting to deal with the issue, Nawaz Sharif called for a strike in
support of Kashmir. Her colleague, Sheikh Rashid, said he had set up a training camp for
Jihadists. Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 432.
45. B. Raman, ‘‘Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence,’’ SAAG.
46. The testing of Pakistan’s first nuclear weapon occurred in a chaotic and anxious atmo-
sphere. It is believed that the ISI invented the canard of an imminent joint Israeli–Indian
air strike, which pushed the civilian authorities to agree to the tests. See Shahid ur Rehman,
Long Road to Chagai: The Untold Story of Pakistan’s Nuclear Quest (Islamabad, 1999).
47. Brahma Chellaney, ‘‘A Quiet Burial of a Scandal That will Haunt Washington,’’ Japan
Times, May 13, 2006.
49. Gordon Correra, Shopping for Bombs (London: Hurst, 2006), 106ff.
51. At the time of writing, Khan was free to move around Pakistan and meet with friends
and family, but he is accompanied by a security team and it seems that he may not be
permitted to leave the country.
52. US Department of State, cable, ‘‘Deputy Secretary Armitage’s Meeting with General
Mahmud: Actions and Support Expected of Pakistan in Fight against Terrorism,’’ September
14, 2001, Secret, redacted, National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/⬃nsarchiv/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB325/doc04.pdf.
53. Linschoten and Kuehn, Enemy We Created, 237.
54. See Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Afghanistan, Paki-
stan, and Central Asia (New York: Penguin, 2009), 89; and Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant
Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale Nota Bene Books,
2001). Also see Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan and
Afghanistan (New York: Viking, 2012); Tim McGirk, ‘‘Rogues No More?’’ Time, April 29,
2002; and Linschoten and Kuehn, Enemy We Created, 244.
55. Arnaud de Borchgrave (United Press International editor), Newsweek, September 14,
2001.
56. The Pakistan army argued that Pashtuns were forced to retaliate against American
occupation and drone strikes; they blamed the United States for the energy crisis in Pakistan,
citing the delay to the Turkmenistan–Pakistan pipeline project caused by American opera-
tions in Afghanistan; they stated that drug abuse is increasing in Pakistan because of the
Afghan conflict, fueling domestic crime. The increase in attacks on the security services, the
rise in kidnapping as a tactic from Afghanistan and the ability of India to exploit a potential
‘‘second front’’ against Pakistan are all attributable to the United States’ policies. Author’s
interviews, 2011.
57. Mahmud Ahmed had told the Taliban’s ambassador, Abdul Salam Zaeff, in 2001:
‘‘We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this Jihad against America. We will be
with you.’’ Allegedly, President Zardari had addressed Taliban prisoners in a similar manner
in 2010: ‘‘You are our people; we are friends; and after your release we will of course support
you to do your operations.’’ Matt Waldman, ‘‘The Sun in the Sky: The Relationship between
Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents,’’ Crisis States Discussion Paper, London School of
Economics and Political Science, June 2010, 8.
58. Robert Johnson, A Region in Turmoil: South Asian Conflicts since 1947 (London: Reak-
tion Books, 2005), 231.
59. There were continuing supplies of weapons to the Taliban in September 2001. Owen
Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003),
241.
60. Anand Gopal, Mansur Khan Mahsud, and Brian Fishman, ‘‘The Battle for Pakistan:
Militancy and Conflict in North Waziristan,’’ New America Foundation, available at
Counter-terrorism.newamerica.net.
61. Imtiaz Gul, Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier (New York: Penguin,
2009), 171; Linschoten and Kuehn, Enemy We Created, 298.
62. Rory McCarthy, ‘‘Dangerous Game of State-Sponsored Terror That Threatens
Nuclear Conflict,’’ The Guardian, May 25, 2002.
63. Ahmed Rashid, ‘‘Nato’s Top Brass Accuse Pakistan over Taliban Aid,’’ Daily Telegraph,
October 6, 2006.
64. Steve Schippert, ‘‘Pakistan Cedes North Waziristan to Taliban,’’ September 6, 2006,
http://inbrief.ThreatsWatch.org/2006/09/pakistan-cedes-north-wazirista/.
65. Waldman, ‘‘Sun in the Sky.’’ For reactions, see ‘‘Pakistani Agents Funding and Train-
ing Afghan Taliban,’’ BBC, June 13, 2010.
66. Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop (London: Hurst, 2007), noted there
were those with long-standing experience of working in Afghanistan or with militants on
the frontier; Seth Jones referred to elements of the Frontier Corps and the ISI who were
engaged in supporting insurgents in Afghanistan; Seth Jones, ‘‘Counter-Insurgency in
Afghanistan,’’ RAND Counter-Insurgency Study 4 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corpora-
tion, 2008); Waldman, ‘‘Sun in the Sky,’’ 5.
67. Author’s interviews, March 2010.
68. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘‘Between Military and Militants,’’ World Today: Chatham House 63,
no. 4 (2007): 6.
69. Ibid.
70. The Nation, editorial, June 28, 1997.
71. Syed Faisal Shakeel, ‘‘PPP Demands Probe Based on Benazir’s Letter,’’ Dawn, Decem-
ber 30, 2007.
72. Jeremy Page, ‘‘Main Suspects Are Warlords and Security Forces,’’ The Times, Decem-
ber 27, 2007.
73. Ahmed Rashid, interview at King’s College London, June 2011.
CHAPTER 8
Iranian Intelligence
Organizations
Carl Anthony Wege
T
he Islamist government of Iran is rooted in a vision of Twelver (Ithna-
Ashari) Shi’ism, which traditionally asserted that any government other
than that of the hidden imam1 was necessarily illegitimate.2 Clerical
authorities came to govern Iran directly without intervening or parallel political
structures only following the historically unique 1979 Revolution.3 To para-
phrase Gabriel Almond, as quoted by Stephen Welch in chapter 2, the 1979
Revolution changed the ‘‘pattern of orientations to political action’’ wherein
‘‘every political system is embedded.’’ Revolutionary Iran became a neotheoc-
racy ideologically driven by a radicalized Shiism to foster regional revolution.4
The structure of Iran’s intelligence establishment derived from the imperatives
of this revolutionary state, whereas Persia’s renewed ambitions to further a Shi’a
Islamist imperium transformed political dynamics across the region.
Iran’s Security Architecture

Iran, like other governments across the Near East, relies on multiple overlap-
ping security organs to sustain its regime. Tehran’s Shi’a regime is characterized
by an interwoven network of competing security organs and clerical factions.
These security organs are often associated with individual clerics or specific
clerical factions, which are differentiated by varying degrees of adherence to
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s original version of Islamic jurisprudence
/ 141 /
142 / Carl Anthony Wege
(velayat-e faqih).5 The distinctive characteristic of Iranian intelligence is the

Islamist veneer that overlays both the structure and function of its intelligence
bureaucracies in their association with these clerical factions.
Iran’s prerevolutionary National Intelligence and Security Organization
(Sazemn-i Ettela’at Va Amniyat-I Kishavr, SAVAK), which was created by the
shah in 1957 with assistance from the US Central Intelligence Agency and
Mossad,6 is the antecedent institution of the modern Iranian intelligence estab-
lishment.7 Its orientation, focus, organization, and approach to the intelligence
enterprise were entirely secular. Although postrevolutionary Iranian intelli-
gence institutions go to great lengths to deny any association with the old
SAVAK, it nonetheless influenced the initial configuration of the Revolution’s
successor intelligence entities.
The Khomeini government in its first months relied on the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization for intelligence support.8 However, by August 1979 a Minis-
try of Intelligence and National Security (Sazamaneh Etelaat va Amniateh
Mihan, SAVAMA) had been created by Hojatolislam Mohammed Mufateh.9
SAVAMA was the immediate SAVAK successor organization developed under
General Hussein Fardust. Fardust, although closely associated with the shah,
organized the new service using the remnants of SAVAK, and he recovered most
of the SAVAK files on political dissidents.10 The institutional responsibility of
SAVAMA was foreign operations (the Revolutionary Guards were responsible
for internal security during the first years of the Islamic Republic of Iran).11 The
postrevolutionary intelligence establishment developed on the foundation of
both the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS, now called the Ministry
of Intelligence and National Security) and Mohsen Rezaii’s Iranian Revolution-
ary Guard Corps (IRGC; Pasdaran or Pasdan-e Inqilal-e Islami).12 MOIS func-
tioned more as an executive entity than an actual ministry, in that it was
directly responsible to the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic (Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei) and not to the Islamic or Islamic Consultative Assembly
(Majlis-e Shora-ye). Iran’s intelligence services, as they were maturing through
the 1990s, established relationships with foreign services such as the Russian
Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, SVR).13 The SVR
trained hundreds of Iranian intelligence personnel and was allowed to station
Russian personnel on Iranian soil.14 The traditional emphasis of the Russian
services on disinformation and the placement of agents of influence, particu-
larly during the time of the Soviet KGB, were continued by the modern SVR
and are sometimes reflected in MOIS’s operations. Illustrative of this practice
is the argument made by some scholars that Iranian disinformation operations
successfully persuaded the Western powers before the 2003 invasion that Iraq
was engaged in a significant program of weapons of mass destruction aimed at
its neighbors.15 Iran could thereby have used the United States to get rid of
Saddam Hussein and have thus removed a major military obstacle to Iranian
Iranian Intelligence Organizations / 143
expansion. The maturation of the Iranian services also resulted in especially

close relations with the services of Syria, and important relations with the
services of Sudan, Libya, and Tajikistan.16
The Ministry of Intelligence and Security (Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Aminat-e
Keshvar, VAVAK) was the successor organization to SAVAMA and was created
in August 1984, with Mohammed Rayshahri as the first minister of intelligence.
VAVAK instituted a system of regional bureaus, which created an internal Ira-
nian security matrix administered by the rapidly growing security services.17
Structurally, the early-twenty-first-century iterations of VAVAK boasted sixteen
separate directorates, of which three had direct responsibility for terrorist opera-
tions. The Directorate of Overseas Affairs was responsible for MOIS branches
abroad, with special emphasis on operations against the Peoples Mujahidin
Organization.18 The Directorate of Foreign Intelligence and Liberation Move-
ments participated in typical foreign espionage operations. The Directorate for
Security ostensibly engaged in internal security but was primarily responsible
for overseas assassinations of regime opponents.19 The French Center for
Research on Intelligence claims the MOIS staff numbers roughly 15,000, with
between 2,000 and 8,000 deployed outside the country at any one time either
covertly or under cover of official Iranian organizations (including government
corporations, embassies, etc.).20 Overseas VAVAK residents under embassy cover
are said to have served three- to five-year terms.21 More recently, the second tier
of VAVAK was divided into five elements: Analysis and Strategy, Homeland
Security (protecting state institutions), National Security (responsible for mon-
itoring overseas opposition movements), Counterintelligence, and Foreign
Intelligence (with analytical departments and geographic regional divisions).22
VAVAK’s cofounder, Abu al-Kassam Misbahi (sometimes called Farhad),
defected to Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst,
BND) in 1996, which opened an analytic window for the West on early itera-
tions of VAVAK’s internal organization.23 Iran’s German networks were its most
important in Europe, because they were derived from the special political rela-
tionship between Iran and Germany that has existed since the nineteenth cen-
tury. Germany led Europe in what was called critical dialogue, which sustained
an important German–Iranian commercial relationship and allowed German
political influence entrée into the Near East. Consequently, the working intelli-
gence relationship between Germany and Iran was one that both parties made
efforts to maintain.24 This German–Iranian relationship gave the German BND
insight into the Iranian government, but it is unlikely that much of that infor-
mation was shared with other Western powers.25 Before 1999, VAVAK opera-
tionally engaged in a regular practice of assassinating regime dissidents.26 This
practice became less frequent after the purge of relative hard-liners following
the conviction of supposed rogue agents of VAVAK in the so-called chain mur-
ders of dissident Iranian writers and intellectuals during the presidency of
Mohammed Khatami (1997–2005).27 VAVAK, during the 1990s, also came into
competition with the al-Quds element of the IRGC in establishing relations
with various militant Shi’a organizations outside Iran.28
Although the IRGC’s initial 1979 mission was to defend the regime from
internal enemies, it also acted directly in furtherance of the Islamic Revolu-
tion’s foreign policy goals.29 The Pasdaran, after attaining the status of an inde-
pendent ministry in 1982, emerged as a Praetorian Guard for both the Islamic
Republic of Iran and the clerics leading it. The IRGC and the regular armed
forces (Artesh), though integrated at the level of the national command,
remain competitor organizations. The rivalry was analogous with both Ger-
many’s Waffen SS of the Nazi era and the modern Chinese People’s Liberation
Army. The IRGC, like the Waffen SS, constituted an ideologically anchored
security force in political competition with the regular army for both resources
and political influence respecting national security policy. The Pasdaran, like
the People’s Liberation Army, had also entered the state economy at nearly all
levels, which created economic interests that the IRGC had to protect at the
policy level.
Within the IRGC the al-Quds security apparatus, consisting of about 1,000
men, undertook both intelligence gathering and covert action outside Iran.30
This was distinct from the larger al-Quds special operations forces, which num-
bered several thousand and served in Lebanon, Bosnia, Sudan, and elsewhere.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, following Syria and using the instrument of al-
Quds, expanded the use of state-supported terrorism as an instrument of foreign
and intelligence policy.31
A litany of public domain al-Quds operations outside Iran is unnecessary
except to note that the IRGC al-Quds demonstrated a global reach in support
of Iran’s national foreign policy goals. The African hub that Tehran established
in Sudan illustrates this global reach. Iran’s efforts began early, when Hassan al-
Turabi’s National Islamic Front’s successful 1989 Islamist coup in Sudan caused
Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, joined by the IRGC along with
Hezbollah’s Imad Mugniyah, to visit Khartoum.32 The result of the 1991 meet-
ing was the transfer of approximately 2,000 IRGCs into Sudan, where they
organized twelve terrorist training camps in the eastern part of the country
while reorganizing the country’s security services.33 Sudan became a focal point
that allowed Iranian intelligence to co-opt and service networks of Sunni Islam-
ists. Iran understood early on that cooperation with Sunni Islamists would be
in its interests. The utility of these Islamist assets for al-Quds is truncated by
the degradation of operational management and the flexibility intrinsic in
politically quasi-independent entities. The operational skill set of the Sunni
networks are also limited compared with those available to al-Quds profession-
als. Sudan, by the end of the twentieth century, and now ruled by Omar Hassan
al-Bashir, became a refuge for Palestinians from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, and Fatah operatives who were wanted by Israel. Sudan also facilitated a
method whereby some wanted terrorists could return to the fight by going from
Khartoum first to Iran and then infiltrating back into operational areas of the
Middle East.34 Sudan by the late 1990s still had hundreds of IRGC members in
the country training foreign terrorists in addition to engaging in other military
missions.35 In the early twenty-first century Sudan developed a significant role
in Iran’s global arms-smuggling networks as a regional center for larger Iranian
arms-trafficking efforts.36 Hezbollah members, acting on Iran’s behalf, bought
weapons and transported them north through Egypt and into the Sinai, where
Bedouin smugglers moved them on into Gaza. In 2009 Israel was concerned
enough about the volume and quality of weapons moving north to risk an
international incident by attacking a convoy ferrying Iranian weapons that were
en route to Gaza via Egypt.37 At the end of the day, however, what remains is
that a substantive Iranian-facilitated arms-smuggling network, aided by Hezbol-
lah operatives, is moving large quantities of arms through Africa into the Mid-
dle East. Some of these arms are smuggled to Hezbollah in Lebanon, some to
Hamas in Gaza, and some furthering other Iranian interests in Africa.
In 1992 the global reach of al-Quds, using intelligence networks through
Iran’s embassy to coordinate local operational support, facilitated attacks in
Argentina against the Israeli Embassy and in 1994 a Jewish Community Center
in Buenos Aires.38 Some Argentine Islamist organizations sympathetic to Iran
were used for initial surveillance and target designation. Such preplanning
sometimes uses Iranian veterans of the Afghanistan war against the USSR, who
have high status among Islamists, to assist local sympathizers in creating target
packages. These targets may later be attacked using professionals following a
political decision in Tehran.39
In the Palestinian theater of war, Iran used Lebanon’s Hezbollah as a surro-
gate. Iranian overtures to Hamas, both directly and through Hezbollah, allowed
Iran to directly confront Israel. This began with Israel’s ill-advised deportation
of roughly four hundred Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists to the Marj al-
Zahour area of Lebanon in 1992, which inadvertently furthered Iranian-
inspired Sunni Shi’a cooperation in the anti-Israeli Resistance (Muqawama).
Although it was a failure in hindsight, as a proposal Israel’s deportations must
have initially appeared to have some merit in that Sunni religious and political
activists would be marooned in a region dominated by the Shi’a and with a
history of friction with the Palestinians. The hope, if there was a specific hope
articulated within Israeli councils of government by the Shin Bet, would be
that these activists would never return to Israel. They would be limited to voic-
ing anti-Israeli propaganda while kept on a very short leash by their new hosts.
Alas, the result was a textbook example of blowback. Rather than living as
unwanted guests, the Palestinians were taken under the wing of Hezbollah and
tutored in the arts of the Muqawama. Imad Mugniyah, assisted by Abdallah
Safi-Id-a-Din, coordinated such instruction between Hezbollah, Hamas, and

Islamic Jihad.40 Those Sunni Palestinian Islamists, housed and operationally
indoctrinated through Hezbollah, are now exploited by Iran in both the West
Bank and Gaza. The institutionalization of the ‘‘Lebanese Model’’ in Gaza—
and, to a lesser extent, in the West Bank—served Iranian interests and left the
Israelis preoccupied with an enemy stronger than they had heretofore faced in
the territories. This sublimation of Shi’a jurisprudential interest to Iranian
political interests continues to widen its scope. This was most recently demon-
strated by the movement of an entire Fatah faction from the Ain Hilwa camp
near Sidon, Lebanon, to shelter with Hezbollah under Pasdaran tutelage in the
spring of 2010.41
Iran’s ambivalence concerning, if not outright support for, the Muslim
Brothers (Ikhwan), particularly in their Egyptian incarnation but also in Jordan,
likewise serves Shi’a interests. The Egyptian Revolution in 2011 created a polit-
ical opening for the Ikhwan to directly participate in the government. The
Freedom and Justice Party formed by the Egyptian Ikhwan won a plurality in
the 2012 parliamentary elections and constituted a legislative coalition with
other Islamist parties, and the Freedom and Justice candidate, Mohammed
Morsi, won the presidency. If Egyptian society continues to move in a more
overtly Islamist direction, the resultant decrease in American influence inher-
ently works to Iran’s advantage.42
The IRGC and its intelligence apparatus took advantage of opportunities
presented by cooperation between radical Islamists. The Pasdaran supported an
infrastructure of Islamist terrorist organizations oriented toward both Sunni and
Shi’a through a national system of training camps. These camps are consider-
ably more substantial than those that had been maintained by various Palestin-
ian factions in Lebanon or what had been available in Libya or Syria. Groups
trained in the Iranian camps could sometimes function as proxies advancing
Iranian interests. Iran’s camp system was configured to support different terrorist
organizations and to focus on differentiated skill sets. In Qom, for example, the
Fatah Ghani Husseini camp was used primarily by Turkish Islamists, whereas in
Qasvim the Abyek camp was used for training in political assassination. Thou-
sands of trainees have now passed through this system, and about 10 percent
have been selected for more extensive training.43 This system of training camps
was fashioned quite early in the Islamic Republic of Iran and continues to this
day. Nowadays, regular groups of Hamas activists from Gaza continue to cycle
through the Iranian camp system.44
The Shatterbelt
In Iran itself, the revolutionary bureaucracy was Islamicized, so that the instru-
ments of authoritarian control all manifest a Shi’a veneer that reflects the direct
clerical role pioneered by Khomeini. The vulnerability of the region’s Sunni

governments to Iran’s revolutionary Shi’a imperium results from the region’s
weak state system. These weak states characteristically lack intermediating
social-political institutions that link state and society, which thereby creates
a vacuum that Iranian-supported or -created organizations can exploit. Civil
bureaucracies could function as intermediating social-political bodies but rarely
do. Weberian-style bureaucratic administrative organization was historically
premised on an existing civil society, which is the very thing lacking across the
region.45 Consequently, the effort to graft a European-style state system into
the Near East region became as problematic as similar efforts in Africa. Near
Eastern governments—whose administrative bureaucracies overtly claim partic-
ipation, delegation, and power sharing yet fail to do these things—only foster
a perception of weakness in a political culture characterized by patrimonial
leadership.46
Although Farsi-speaking Persians (and Azeris) dominate Iran’s government
and society, myriad ethnic groups, which constitute more than a third of the
country’s population, live on its periphery. This creates a latent ‘‘shatterbelt’’
of potential access points for Iran’s enemies. According to the Asia Times this
center/periphery division has always characterized the modern Iran’s national
state.47 The center/periphery divide has sometimes been manifested in social
unrest, as in the disputed presidential elections of 2009. In that instance Presi-
dent Mamoud Ahmadinejad clearly benefited from an electoral process that
was rigged against his opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. President Ahmadinejad
then used the Mobilization of the Oppressed (Basij-e Mostaz’afin or Basiji) mili-
tias drawn from outside the urban centers to overwhelm dissenters. The troops
of the Basiji militia, which was under the command of the Pasdaran after 2008,
were generally poorly educated and uniformly drawn from rural areas. A similar
organization, the Helpers of God (Ansar e-Hezbollah), sometimes cooperated
with the Basiji, and these became the primary instrument of suppression used
against street protesters in Iran’s urban centers. This Basiji along with the Ansar
e-Hezbollah ultimately crushed opponents of the 2009 election results. None-
theless, the social unrest did seriously alarm the regime, and thus it created
some uncertainty with respect to the ultimate loyalty of the security agencies.
Consequently, Khamenei reshuffled the intelligence structures so as to more
effectively confront any future unrest. The Pasdaran incorporated some of the
internal security functions of VAVAK and the Security Directorate of the Basiji
into a new entity that included Khamenei’s personal organization, known as
Department 101, to create a new organization.48 The significance of the new
organization—called the Intelligence Organization of the IRGC and headed by
Hossein Taeb, who previously ran the Basiji—was mitigated by the fact that the
administration of its constituent agencies was necessarily drawn from existing
intelligence management. Therefore, though antiregime political collusion
within the intelligence establishment became less likely, concomitantly admin-

istrative efficiencies were degraded as the new entities developed functionality
within the larger existing regime political structures. The result was a greater
number of security agencies, which decreased the likelihood of an antiregime
conspiracy but also undermined national coordination of security policy.
The long border from Turkey and Central Asia to Afghanistan creates a
herculean border protection task for Iran’s security services and VAVAK’s Khor-
assan Department, which is responsible for Afghanistan and Central Asia. In
Afghanistan the United States has free rein to establish electronic listening
posts and safe areas from which to conduct covert operations against Iran.49
Afghanistan also confronts Iran with a generally hostile Taliban movement
aided by both Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s al
Istikhbarat al A’amah.50 Iran’s relationship with the ISI and Pakistan is histori-
cally multifaceted and problematic. In chapter 7 of this volume, Robert Johnson
notes that Pakistan helped to jump-start Iran’s nuclear program. Yet the ISI,
apparently acting under US patronage, has also attempted to place moles in
this same nuclear program.51 Although Pakistan tries to improve political and
diplomatic relations with Tehran, the ISI works against Iranian interests in
Afghanistan. Likewise, Baluchistan has proven particularly difficult for the Ira-
nian services, with the Sunni-oriented Soldiers of God (Jundallah) organization
emerging as a significant threat, as demonstrated by its devastating bomb attack
in October 2009 in Pisheen that killed a number of senior Pasdaran leaders.52
Afghanistan and also Iraq nonetheless constitute theaters of conflict where
Iran can practice tradecraft against the United States in an operational
environment.
The fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, from Iran’s perspective, constituted
something of a foreign policy success. The United States conveniently removed
Saddam’s military barrier against al-Quds and VAVAK operations into Shi’a
communities in adjacent states. However, the loss of Saddam’s Iraq, from a
Sunni perspective, resurrected the threat of a renewed Persian Empire astride
the Gulf. Saddam, although a domestic and international bad actor, was a mili-
tary bulwark preventing Iranian expansionism throughout the region. VAVAK
had four departments located in the west and southwest of the country responsi-
ble for coordinating activities in Iraq. These included the Kurdistan, Kerman-
shah, Ilam, and Khuzestan departments.53 Likewise, Iraq’s security environment
allowed al-Quds to gain experience in widespread covert action across an entire
theater of operations. Al-Quds Department 9000 initially supported local Iraqi
entities such as the Mahdi Army, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Qazali (a splinter Mahdi
entity), and the Shebaini networks with money and training.54 Iran also con-
figured an Iraqi command element that it called the Ramzan Corps (subdivided
into Nasr, Zafar, and Fajr commands), which facilitated operations against
coalition forces.55 Concomitantly, MOIS established stations in Baghdad,
Najaf, Karbala, Kut, Basra, and Kirkuk.56 In the geographic area of Iraqi Kurdis-
tan, the Iranians are faced with a more difficult problem. The Kurds, although
carrying a tragic history of betrayal by the Western powers, are nonetheless a
point of access into Iran. Israel’s Mossad has maintained a substantive presence
in Kurdistan since at least the early 1970s, and American penetration expanded
following the first Gulf War.57
Central Asia presents an opportunity for VAVAK—albeit one mitigated by
both the traditional Turkish/Iranian rivalry reborn in Central Asia and the
resurgence of Russian power in the region. Nations contiguous with Iran, such
as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, offer the most significant prospects. The Ira-
nian security services are increasingly essential as Iran forges its place in the
sun in the Near Eastern milieu. The shah-era ‘‘triple alliance’’ of the non-Arab
states of Iran, Turkey, and Israel hemming in the Sunni Arabs has been reduced
to a bilateral Turkish–Israeli relationship, which is further deteriorating as the
Turks face the rise of their own Islamist political parties. Nonetheless, the
maturing Iranian services have some established level of stability with respect
to their relationships with foreign services. There are even instances of commu-
nication between Iranian services and the US intelligence community through
the good offices of the Jordanians,58 whose military intelligence component has
maintained relations with MOIS.59
Assessing the Persian Security Establishment

An assessment of Iranian intelligence organizations must presume that formal
institutional arrangements do not accurately reflect the actual organizational
relationships between the Iranian services. Political authority flows through
Iran’s clerical–security matrix using traditional lines of kinship that are charac-
teristic across the Near East.60 Iran differs from Arab states in that the corrosive
influence of patronage and kinship on the organizational effectiveness of its
intelligence establishment is mitigated by the remaining revolutionary élan that
still motivates many serving the institutions of Iran’s government. It is worth
noting that every minister of intelligence since 1984 has been a cleric, carrying
this revolutionary élan, rather than a technocrat.61 The remaining revolution-
ary fervor of this Islamist imperium also creates strategic goals for Iranian policy
that animate the government intelligence bureaucracies.
Iranian collection disciplines vary in their efficiency but can be graphically
represented as a series of concentric circles surrounding Iran, with the effort
more productive in areas geographically closer to Iran. Tehran’s extraterritorial
clandestine operational skill set is focused on covert weapons acquisition pro-
grams in Europe and state-sponsored terrorism. Postrevolutionary Iranian agen-
cies are at least adequate at internal security, although they confront regular
spasms of social unrest, with the most serious previously discussed deriving from
the disputed presidential election of 2009.62 The violent suppression of these

disturbances necessarily has an impact on the security services. Security service
factions less loyal to the regime become ripe for exploitation by hostile services,
irrespective of how those services have been reorganized. Illustrative of this was
the defection of General Ali Asgari, a former deputy defense minister who
commanded the Pasdaran in Lebanon during the 1980s.63 Among the most
critical collection arenas for Iran is in the area of nuclear technologies. Iran’s
nuclear program is an extraordinarily sensitive internal arena, and the combina-
tion of defections, assassinations, and penetrations in 2005 led to the creation
of Oghab-2, a specialized counterespionage agency with a core mission to
defend the nuclear program. Initially housed within the Pasdaran intelligence
framework, Oghab-2 began to expand rapidly, so by 2007 it was said to have
upward of ten thousand persons employed.64
Iranians’ collection of electronic intelligence (including signals, measure-
ment and signature, communications, and imagery) is limited by challenges
rooted in both technology and inadequate human resources (electrical and soft-
ware engineers, mathematicians, linguists, etc.). Iran faces particular challenges
in the area of advanced intelligence applications of nanotechnologies and
quantum computing. Most information and network technologies must be
covertly imported, which limits their availability. Moreover, internal instability
has reduced Iran’s ability to domestically educate a sufficient number of persons
with the relevant technological skills. The need to import commercial com-
puter chips and related hardware, even covertly, leaves the most sensitive areas
of Iran’s intelligence enterprise open to covert infiltration through compro-
mised hardware.65 The virtual world created by information technologies cover-
ing the globe does allow Iran’s security services entrée into Iranian expatriate
communities. The traditional requirement to access the West by traveling
through Ankara, Larnaca, or Beirut is now supplemented by network access to
Iranian communities overseas. Conversely, such technologies provide a portal,
although a more limited one, into Iranian society and government. Tehran’s
access to other states is increased, albeit with much potential remaining unreal-
ized due to Iranian domestic limitations in relevant technologies and human
resources. And the ability of Israel and the United States to technically exploit
the limited electronic portal into Iran puts Iranian electronic intelligence disci-
plines in an untenable situation attempting to defend the country.66
The work of the intelligence enterprise is still anchored in analysis and
dissemination of that analysis to policymakers. In the Iranian context such
analyses are necessarily skewed toward threats to internal security. The bilateral
balance of VAVAK and the Pasdaran (to include the Basiji and associated enti-
ties) thus focuses on internal security to an extent unknown in democratic
countries. The core structure of this security matrix creates a balance precluding
concentrations of power in the security organs fostering a limited rivalry used
to ensure their rectitude in loyalty to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This

approach is effective when the rivalries are contained, yet the Persian house has
fundamental social cleavages that have been papered over with a praetorian
state. Stresses on these cleavages accentuated by rivalry between the security
organs in the context of larger social unrest may lead to events cascading out of
control.
As we have seen previously in this volume, a number of scholars have sought
to develop a concept of intelligence culture, and in chapter 6 Abdulaziz Al-
Asmari characterizes how aspects of the early Arabian intelligence practice
were absorbed into much of Islam. Iranian intelligence culture finds the analyti-
cal capacity of the regime’s services challenged by the need to report within
the scope of an Islamist facade characterizing the consumers of that intelli-
gence. Shi’a clerics whose worldview is colored by jurisprudential filters govern
Iran. These clerics accept technology but understand neither modernity nor
social science. They therefore do not appreciate nuance and analytical method-
ologies concerning target countries, governments, and personalities. The blend-
ing of human analysis augmented by information technologies in Western
intelligence bureaucracies has further degraded Iran’s relative analytical capac-
ity. This comparative difference has been accentuated with the rapid expansion
of Western intelligence bureaucracies since 9/11 and the increasing incorpora-
tion of information technologies into Western analytical products. In the con-
text of these information technologies, the cliché that ‘‘you can’t do much
carpentry with bare hands, and you can’t do much analysis with bare brains’’ is
apt.67 Shortcomings in intelligence analysis are expected in most authoritarian
regimes for obvious political and ideological reasons. Yet such assessment is
also sometimes problematic in technologically advanced democratic regimes.
In chapter 10 Ken Kotani notes that cultural biases within the Japanese policy-
making establishment, for example, discount the value of intelligence as-
sessment in favor of operations. Japanese policymakers, like their Iranian
counterparts, are thereby less informed, which leads to a corrupting of diplo-
matic and political maneuverability for these governments in international
relations.
The major strategic threat to Iran is the tectonic plates of modernity itself.
Khomeini’s majestic vision of an unfolding Shi’a revolution has now deterio-
rated into profane efforts to further Iran’s national foreign policy goals under
an Islamic veneer. Iran’s clerical government has become internally corrupted
by power and fractionalized. It is sustained by multiple security services in com-
petition for political power and social status. Nonetheless, Iran’s various intelli-
gence agencies now sustain a regional Islamist imperium that reflects Tehran’s
goal of attaining regional dominance. The interlocking networks of clerical
factions and security organs have institutionalized the pursuit of this foreign
policy goal.
Archie Roosevelt argued long ago that a lust for knowing, seeking under-
standing unclouded by worldview, must animate the intelligence enterprise.68
The Shi’a worldview of the clerics leading the Tehran government substantially
undermines the Iranian intelligence enterprise to the detriment of the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
Notes
1. The twelfth imam recognized by the Shi’a, Muhammad al Mahdi, was hidden from
the world by divine intervention in ad 874. It is expected that his return will usher in the
Day of Judgment. The Shi’a community also includes Zaydis or Fivers, who claim five true
imams, and Seveners or Ismailis, who now live primarily in an arc from Central Asia and
Afghanistan to Western China.
2. Iran’s sixteenth-century Safavid Dynasty circumvented this problem by asserting that
the Shah and associated institutions derived their authority from Allah. The seventeenth-
century creation of the office of Mullabashi (chief mullah) precipitated ongoing contention
between religious and secular power in Iran. See Roger M. Savory, ‘‘The Problem of Sover-
eignty in an Ithna Ashari (‘‘Twelver’’) Shi’i State,’’ in Religion and Politics in the Middle East,
edited by Michael Curtis (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), 135–37.
3. Azar Tabari, ‘‘The Role of the Clergy in Modern Iranian Politics,’’ in Religion and
Politics in Iran, edited by Nikki R. Keddie (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 72.
4. Mir Zohair Husain, Global Islamic Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 227–35.
5. Wilfred Buchta, ‘‘Ideological Factions within the Power Apparatus,’’ in Who Rules
Iran? (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000), 14.
6. Mahammad Amjad, Iran: From Royal Dictatorship to Theocracy (Westport, CT: Green-
wood Press, 1989), 65.
7. See Abbas William Samii, ‘‘The Shah’s Lebanon Policy: The Role of SAVAK,’’ Middle
Eastern Studies 33, no. 1 (January 1997): 66–91.
8. Robin Wright, In The Name of God: The Khomeini Decade (New York: Touchstone,
1989), 110.
9. Edgar O’Balance, Islamist Fundamentalist Terrorism, 1979–1995: The Iranian Connec-
tion (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 38. Relations between Khomeini and
Arafat deteriorated following the latter’s support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq
War of the 1980s.
10. Gholam R. Afkhami, The Iranian Revolution: Thanatos on a National Scale (Washing-
ton, DC: Middle East Institute, 1985), 114. Also see Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian
Mojahedin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 50.
11. Haleh Afshar, ‘‘The Iranian Theocracy,’’ in Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil, edited by
Haleh Afshar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 191.
12. There is technically a coalition of law enforcement forces under the authority of the
Ministry of the Interior consisting of city police, countryside police, and the gendarmerie
and various revolutionary committees. These entities are of limited intelligence significance.
13. The SVR was the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service established in 1991 as a follow-
on to the old KGB First Directorate.
14. The Russians provided training in intelligence collection methods using three-month
training cycles under the direction of the Russian Interior Ministry and under the auspices
of Yevgeni Primakov. See ‘‘Russian Agents Teach Iranians How to Spy,’’ Washington Times,
September 11, 1995.
15. ‘‘Iran’s Spies,’’ Sunday Herald, December 24, 2006. This was allegedly accomplished
by feeding false information to various Iraqi opposition organizations infiltrated by MOIS.
16. ‘‘The Iranian Intelligence Services,’’ Note for News (French Centre for Research on
Intelligence), no. 200, January 5, 2010, available at www.cf2r.org.
17. Intelligence Newsletter, no. 286, April 18, 1996.
18. The Peoples Mujahidin Organization is a Marxist organization founded in 1965 and
dedicated to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although considered a terrorist
organization by the United States, it has nonetheless provided apparently accurate informa-
tion on Iran’s nuclear program.
19. ‘‘MOIS Structure,’’ February 28, 2006, www.iranterror.com/content/view/176/66.
20. ‘‘The Iranian Intelligence Services,’’ Note for News, no. 200, January 5, 2010, available
at www.cf2r.org.
21. Precision in this sort of thing is always problematic due to everything from definitional
differences respecting what constitutes a ministry employee to active disinformation efforts
on the part of the ministry.
22. ‘‘Iranian Intelligence Services.’’
23. The German courts referred to Misbahi as witness ‘‘C’’ in German terrorism trials
involving a VAVAK-sponsored assassination. Misbahi, in addition to being a close aide to
Rafsanjani and cofounder of VAVAK, managed intelligence networks in Iranian expatriate
communities in Europe. See ‘‘Former Official Disclosed Iran’s Complicity in Murders,’’ Wash-
ington Post, April 12, 1997.
24. Indicative of this was the visit of Iranian intelligence minister Fallahian with Germa-
ny’s BND chief Bernd Schmidbauer. The meeting allegedly dealt with humanitarian issues.
See ‘‘Iran’s State of Terror,’’ Time, Atlantic Edition, November 11, 1996. Schmidbauer
returned the favor by visiting Tehran secretly in 1996. See Brief on Iran, no. 462, July 25,
1996. Germany has also supplied computer equipment and training to the Iranian services.
O’Balance, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism, 157.
25. Although given the close post–World War II relationship between Germany and Israel
and Israel’s close pre-Revolution relationship with the shah of Iran, it is likely that the old
access channels between Israel and Iran and current channels among Germany, Israel, and
Iran have yielded a significant amount of back-channel interaction.
26. This was particularly applicable to cadre from the Peoples’ Mujahidin and Iranian
Kurdish Democratic Party.
27. Douglas Jehl, ‘‘Killing of Three Rebel Writers Turns Hope into Fear in Iran,’’ New
York Times, December 14, 1998.
28. Frederic Wehrey, Jerrold D. Green, Brian Nichiporuk, Alireza Nader, Lydia Hansell,
Rasool Nafisi, and S. R. Bohandy, Rise of the Pasdaran (Washington, DC: RAND National
Defense Research Institute Intelligence Policy Center, 2010), 10.
29. O’Balance, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism, 41. The IRGC ceded this role to MOIS
in 1983 but regained it following the election of President Khatami in 1997.
30. Buchta, Who Rules Iran? 69.
31. See Grant Wardlaw, ‘‘Terror as an Instrument of Foreign Policy,’’ in Inside Terrorist
Organizations, edited by David C. Rapoport (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
Libya also attempted to use state-sponsored terror but proved not very competent at it.
32. Sudan’s Islamic Front was a local version of the Ikhwan; by 2011 the Islamic Front
had evolved into something called the National Congress Party. Al-Turabi would himself be
imprisoned and released multiple times between 2004 and 2011 by one-time allies in Sudan’s
Islamist government. Mugniyah would be assassinated in Damascus Syria, presumably by
Mossad’s Kidon element.
33. The number of Iranian personnel would swell to 3,000 in 1996, decline to about 1,500
by the turn of the century, and numbers a few hundred today. See ‘‘Sudan Is a Surrogate for
Iranian Terrorism,’’ Washington Times, April 27, 1994; and ‘‘Elite Iran Unit Said to Control
Sudan’s Security,’’ Washington Times, August 28, 1993. It is also worth noting that Iran had
named Majid Kamal as its chargé d’affaires in Khartoum. He had previously served in Beirut
in the early 1980s assisting in the creation of Hezbollah. Administratively, a committee
including al-Turabi’s aide, Ali Othman Taha, and General Rahim Safavi of the IRGC was
responsible for the particulars of Iranian intelligence-related assistance under the auspices of
Ali Manshawi. Many of the camps in the early 1990s training foreign terrorists were run by
Ali Alhaja, a close associate of al-Turabi. See Shaul Shay, Somalia between Jihad and Restora-
tion (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 63. Initially, the major terrorist
training camps were Al-Shambat and Al Amzraa, later including camps at Khadolfi, Al-Grif,
Benda, Karda, and Bahra. See Shaul Shay, Red Sea Terror Triangle: Sudan, Somalia, Yemen,
and Islamic Terror (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 47. Nearly two dozen
additional camps existed for training terrorists under the tutelage of Osama bin Laden
Salafists. These camps basically dissolved after 9/11.
34. ‘‘Israeli, US Intelligence Report Says Sudan Becoming Haven for Hamas, Hezbollah,’’
BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 14, 2001.
35. See Amir Taheri, ‘‘Sudan: An Expanding Civil War with an Iran Connection,’’ Inter-
national Herald Tribune, April 9, 1997. Sudan also allowed mooring facilities in Port Sudan
to service Iranian submarines.
36. Smuggling is sustained in part by tribal relationships and religious affiliations that are
centuries old and stretch across a geographic arc from East Africa all the way around to
Pakistan. See Annette Hübschle, ‘‘Unholy Alliance? Assessing the Links between Organized
Criminals and Terrorists in Southern Africa,’’ ISS Paper 93 (Paris: Institute for Security
Studies, 2004), 9.
37. Israeli Air Force assets including Hermes drones out of Palmachim Air Base near Tel
Aviv, accompanied by an Eitan unmanned aerial vehicle (i.e., drone), carried out at least
two separate operations in January and February 2009. They attacked two separate convoys
carrying Fajr 3 rockets intended to be smuggled from Egypt for use by Hamas in Gaza. It
appears that dozens of smugglers and Iranian escorts were killed in the operation. See ‘‘Israeli
Drones Destroy Rocket-Smuggling Convoys in Sudan,’’ Sunday Times, March 29, 2009. US
Department of Defense Special Operations Task Forces (88/145) also covertly engaged al-
Qaeda across the Horn of Africa following the 1998 Embassy bombings. See Donovan C.
Chau, US Counterterrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Understanding Costs, Cultures, and Conflicts
(Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, 2008), 18.
38. ‘‘Iranian Diplomats Said to Be Suspects in Blast at Argentina Jewish Center,’’ Wash-
ington Post, July 29, 1994.
39. ‘‘The Iranian Hand on the Plunger,’’ Yediot Ahronot, July 29, 1994; and Foundation
for Democracy in Iran, Weekly News Update, May 27, 1996.
40. ‘‘The Changing Colors of Imad Mugniyah,’’ Jerusalem Report, December 3, 2002, 4. In
one of the region’s many ironies, Israel had been tolerant of Hamas in the Gaza during the
early 1980s as a counterweight to Fatah.
41. Musa Keilani, ‘‘Another Split with Worrisome Repercussions,’’ Jordan Times, March
21, 2010. The two thousand or so fighters under the command of Colonel Muir Maqdah,
formerly of Fatah’s Force 17, had a history of auctioning themselves to the highest bidder,
deep involvement in alleged corruption in the Ain Hilwa refugee camp, and Maqdah was on
the losing end of a political dispute with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
42. ‘‘The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Hurdles on the Way to Power,’’ Center for Secur-
ity Studies, Zurich, October 2011.
43. ‘‘Iran Builds Up Network of Terror Schools,’’ Electronic Telegraph, July 8, 1996. Addi-
tional camps have included the Nahavand camp in Hamadan for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and
the Imam Ali camp in east Tehran, which is the largest camp and used by Saudi opposition
groups. Iranian exile groups have also named Bahonar Barracks, Mostafa Kohomeini Bar-
racks, Ghayoor Asli Barracks, Imam Sadegh Camp, Korreit Camp, Lavizan and Abyek train-
ing centers, etc. See ‘‘Terrorist Training by the Quds Force and the VEVAK,’’ February 28,
2006, available at www.iranterror.com.
44. See ‘‘Iran’s Al-Quds Octopus Spreads Its Arms,’’ Jerusalem Post, October 27, 2008.
45. See Nazih Ayubi, ‘‘Arab Bureaucracies: Expanding Size, Changing Roles,’’ in The
Arab State, edited by Giacomo Luciani (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). A
civil society is here understood in Lockean terms, whereby government is created by a social
contract among individuals to protect individual rights to life, liberty, and property.
46. Bill and Leiden have commented; in the patrimonial style of Middle Eastern leader-
ship, the leader becomes the fount of all important ideas and strategies. Policies and programs
emanate from him. See James A. Bill and Carl Leiden, Politics in the Middle East (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1984), 151–52.
47. ‘‘Iran’s Lurking Enemy Within,’’ Asia Times, January 8, 2006.
48. ‘‘Iran Exile Group: Khamenei Tightens Intelligence Grip,’’ Reuters, November 12,
2009. Khamenei was assisted by Ali Asghar Hejazi. Hejazi was directly involved in creating
the MOIS and has coordinated intelligence agencies under Khamenei since 1989.
49. In this context Dubai has become a Near Eastern version of Vienna during the Cold
War, and Oman functions as a major covert asset of the United States, as does Jordan.
50. See Abedin Mahan, ‘‘The Iranian Intelligence Services and the War on Terror,’’
Terrorism Monitor 2, no. 10 (May 19, 2004), www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/terrorismmon
itorgta/.
51. ‘‘Major Personnel Boost for Oghab-2,’’ Intelligence Online, May 11, 2007.
52. Pisheen is on the Baluchistan–Pakistan border with Iran near the Persian Gulf. See
‘‘Iran’s Lurking Enemy Within.’’ The United States has apparently attempted to exploit
what amounts to a tribal militia, albeit one with its own ties to al-Qaeda, to conduct opera-
tions against Iran. In February 2010 Iran managed to capture the leader of Jundallah, Abdol
Malek Rigi, following a visit to a US facility in Pakistan. It was a significant blow to the
Jundallah organization.
53. ‘‘MOIS Structure,’’ February 28, 2006, www.iranterror.com/content/view/176/66.
54. Department 9000 was apparently established to act as a liaison between local Iraqi
Shi’a militants and al-Quds. See ‘‘Tehran’s Secret Department 9000,’’ Newsweek, May 28,
2007.
55. Bill Roggio, ‘‘Iran’s Ramazan Corps and the Ratlines into Iraq,’’ Long War Journal,
December 5, 2007, www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/12/irans_ramazan_corps.php.
56. See ‘‘The Iranian Intelligence Services,’’ January 5, 2010, Note for News (French Cen-
tre for Research on Intelligence), no. 200, available at www.cf2r.org.
57. Eliezer Tsafrir, who had been a senior Mossad official, revealed that Israeli–Kurdish
relations were so good that Israel had military advisers in Iraqi Kurdish regions during the
period 1963–75 and the Kurds had assisted in the movement of Jews from the area to Israel
as far back as the 1950s. Reuters, February 21, 1999.
58. ‘‘The Iranian Intelligence Services and the War on Terror,’’ Terrorism Monitor 2, no.
10 (May 29, 2004), www.Jamestownfoundation.org.
59. ‘‘Iranian Intelligence Services,’’ Note for News.
60. See ‘‘Revolutionary Disintegration,’’ Time, June 26, 1995.
61. See ‘‘Iran’s Clerical Spymasters,’’ Asia Times, July 21, 2007. Likewise, there is what
amounts to a ‘‘commissar system’’ of clergy in every entity of governance that reports directly
to the supreme leader. It is also relevant that much of the leadership in MOIS have attended
the Madrase-ye Haqqani theological school in Qom. See Buchta, Who Rules Iran? 166. The
Haqqani school itself was founded by the Hojjatieh, a semisecret anti-Sunni society that
technically rejects the velayat-e faqih of postrevolutionary Iran. See ‘‘Shi’ite Supremacists
Emerge from Iran’s Shadows,’’ Asia Times, September 9, 2005.
62. See ‘‘Daily Update,’’ Intelligence Watch Reports 3, no. 116 (April 26, 1996). E.g., Iran
managed to dismantle a network of American collection assets by 1989, and in 1995 it broke
up five espionage networks set up by Turkey within the country. This continued to the 2010
detention of several American ‘‘hikers’’ who entered Iran via Kurdistan and were finally
released in 2011. See ‘‘US Hikers Arrested at Iran Border,’’ Guardian, August 2, 2009.
63. ‘‘Defector Spied on Iran for Years,’’ Sunday Times, March 11, 2007.
64. ‘‘Major Personnel Boost for Oghab-2,’’ Intelligence Online, May 11, 2007. IRGC man-
agement was evident in Oghab-2’s first iteration under General Gholam Mohrabi but is still
anchored in the Pasdaran with the top tiers, including General Ahmad Wahidi and his
second, General Akbar Dianatr, coming from the IRGC. The third level does begin to
diversify with Ali Naqdi formerly of the Tehran police. Major efforts have apparently been
made to excise moles in the nuclear program from Pakistan’s ISI acting under US auspices.
65. Iran’s experience with the weaponized software called the Stuxnet worm perfectly
illustrates the problem. The worm exploits vulnerabilities in the commercial Microsoft Win-
dows computer operating system.
66. A cybersecurity unit within the IRGC, the ‘‘Control Center for Internet Activities,’’
is relatively small with quite limited resources as compared with their Western counterparts.
It was initially headquartered in the Firouzeh Palace (Ghasreh Firouzeh) district of Kamali
Township. See ‘‘Iran Exile Group.’’
67. Tom Armour, DARPA Tech Symposium 2002, Information Awareness Office, Cogni-
tive Amplification, citing Bo Dahlbomand and Lar-Erik Janlen.
68. Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing: Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1988).
CHAPTER 9
Intelligence and
Security-Sector Reform
in Indonesia
Peter Gill and Lee Wilson
I
n the past thirty years throughout Europe, the Americas, and more sporadi-
cally elsewhere, the issue of how to institute some democratic control over
security intelligence agencies has steadily permeated the political agenda.
This shift has been a central, and sometimes painful, aspect of the democratiza-
tion of formerly authoritarian regimes, both civilian and military. For example,
the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1976 precipitated democratization
in Spain that included the demilitarization of intelligence. Military rule ended
in Brazil in 1985, though the military-dominated National Intelligence Service
was not replaced until 1990 as part of a continuing process of demilitarization.
During the years 1993–94, a more rapid transformation of formerly repressive
security agencies was attempted in South Africa. In the countries of the former
Soviet bloc, no agency has been immune from the changes—although the
amount of real, as opposed to nominal, reform varies widely. Even in what
might be described as the ‘‘old’’ democracies of North America, Western
Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, legislative or judicial inquiries into scan-
dals involving abuses of power and rights by the agencies have resulted in new
legal and oversight structures for the agencies.
Such changes have been less common in Asia, though there are exceptions,
such as South Korea.1 In this chapter we examine the situation in Indonesia,
/ 157 /
158 / Peter Gill and Lee Wilson
where the first law on state intelligence was passed in 2011. We discuss the
competing approaches to the analysis of intelligence democratization; provide
an account of the development of intelligence since the country achieved inde-
pendence; and analyze the current prospects for democratization given the
social, economic, and political context of the country’s state and security
networks.
What Do We Mean by Intelligence Democratization?

Elsewhere, one of us has suggested that intelligence can be defined as ‘‘mainly
secret activities—targeting, collection, analysis, dissemination, and action—
intended to enhance security and/or maintain power relative to competitors by
forewarning of threats and opportunities.’’2 But our interest is in how to define
democratic intelligence. We suggest that it can be defined by adding the follow-
ing: ‘‘These activities will be subject to control and oversight in the interests of
effectiveness, efficiency, legality and respect for rights.’’ In general, the charac-
teristics of intelligence under authoritarianism include the lack of any legal
mandate; a plurality of agencies; repression of regime opponents, including fre-
quent human rights abuses and public fear mongering; and secret budgets and
involvement in corruption. Democratization requires more than elections; it
can only be achieved through interrelated political and legal mechanisms capa-
ble of maintaining accountability in this most secretive area of states’ activities.
Analysis in this area deploys two main models; in the Americas it is most likely
to be civil–military relations (CMR), whereas in Europe it is more likely to be
security-sector reform (SSR).3 Bruneau and Boraz argue that intelligence ‘‘can
best be conceptualized as a subset of civil–military relations,’’ and therefore that
intelligence reform should be studied via three fundamental issues of CMR:
democratic civilian control, effectiveness in achieving roles and missions, and
efficiency.4 In most ‘‘new’’ democracies, they suggest, intelligence is still almost
a monopoly of the military yet is often overlooked as reformers concentrate on
the establishment of new civilian agencies, while in the ‘‘old’’ democracies the
military is still often predominant. The research focus must be on state intelli-
gence institutions and those providing direction and oversight.
SSR has differing definitions with varying degrees of inclusiveness. Its nar-
rower definition is really no different from that given above for CMR, because
it refers to state security forces and their civilian management and oversight
bodies; but, reflecting the more fundamental concern with ‘‘human’’ rather
than traditional ‘‘national’’ security, a broader definition is more widely used.
For example,
The OECD DAC (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
Development Assistance Committee) Guidelines on Security System Reform
and Governance agreed by ministers in 2004 define the security system as
Intelligence and Security-Sector Reform in Indonesia / 159
including: core security actors (e.g., armed forces, police, gendarmerie, border
guards, customs and immigration, and intelligence and security services); secur-
ity management and oversight bodies (e.g., ministries of defense and internal
affairs, financial management bodies and public complaints commissions); jus-
tice and law enforcement institutions (e.g., the judiciary, prisons, prosecution
services, traditional justice systems); and nonstatutory security forces (e.g., pri-
vate security companies, guerrilla armies, and private militia).5
Bruneau and Matei argue that this variety of definitions and the inclusion of
nonstate bodies reduces the utility of the SSR concept, but, conversely, the
CMR model risks unduly privileging the military mode of intelligence; we can
find almost as many cases of civilian as of military intelligence abuse.6
The other strength of the SSR model is that it invites us to look at intelli-
gence ‘‘beyond the state.’’ Conventional intelligence studies have been too
dominated by the examination of state agencies, despite wide variations
between countries in terms of where the locus of intelligence activity lies.7
This may be the consequence of the general underdevelopment of modern state
institutions, but it can also be observed in older democracies with well-
established state institutions where the corporate intelligence sector has grown
in significance since the end of the Cold War. As we shall see, the need to
examine intelligence beyond the state is especially important in the Indonesian
case, even though the continuing dominance of the military in domestic gov-
ernment and politics might suggest the superiority of the CMR framework. The
SSR perspective is preferred precisely because it facilitates the study of the
many different types of security actors operating at the neighborhood, regional,
and national levels. Given the European origin of SSR, applying it to an Asian
country will provide an interesting test of its utility for comparative research—
including its shortcomings. Whichever model is deployed, note that democrati-
zation is a process, not an event, and, as such, may progress or regress.8
Security and Intelligence in Indonesia:

From Independence to New Order
From the perspective of a small but quite crowded island off the northwest of
the European mainland, it is actually quite difficult to imagine Indonesia as a
nation at all. It is an archipelago of about 17,500 islands, of which 6,000 are
inhabited across a distance, from west to east, of about the same as that from
Iceland to central Turkey. It has 238 million citizens, 45 percent of whom
are Javanese, and 87 percent are Muslim—the country has the largest Muslim
population in the world. Although the official language is Bahasa Indonesia,
which today most Indonesians speak, there are more than seven hundred lan-
guages across the islands and their multiple ethnic groups. The fear that the
country is not yet firmly established as a unified state leads to the emphasis in
policy on national unity, economic development, political stability, and the

sanctity of borders.9 It took the newly independent Indonesia until 1949 to
finally secure its autonomy from postwar attempts by the Netherlands to rees-
tablish its control.10 At the risk of oversimplifying, the next fifty years can be
described as falling into three main periods.
From 1949 until 1957 was a period of ‘‘political liberalism’’ and a series
of coalition governments, usually short-lived because of the unwillingness of
excluded ethnic groups to accept the legitimacy of governments that were nor-
mally dominated by Javanese. The military steadily increased its influence as
successive central governments paid little attention to state building across the
islands and failed to maintain order to the satisfaction of the military.11 The
first formal intelligence organization of the newly independent country was the
Secret Agency of the State of Indonesia (Badan Rahasi Negara or ‘‘Brani’’),
which was set up in May 1946 as ‘‘an umbrella for a diverse spread of ad hoc
units established by field commanders across Java,’’ including counterintelli-
gence and ‘‘field preparation’’ for reconnaissance.12 Presaging what has been a
permanent feature of intelligence in Indonesia—self-funding—some funds were
raised by selling what had been Dutch opium reserves to Chinese merchants.
Over the next few years, the military and civilian Ministry of Defense struggled
to establish intelligence and the police also maintained their own intelligence
desk, but there was no national coordination. The United States first came on
the scene in 1952, when a small number of civilians were selected for paramili-
tary and intelligence training by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
under the label of the Security Bureau.13
Between 1958 and 1966 liberalism gave way to ‘‘guided democracy,’’ which
included martial law, as the military adopted its ‘‘dual function’’ of both pro-
tecting and helping to run the state under Sukarno’s increasingly personalized
rule.14 He sought to reinstate the 1945 Constitution (which gave more power
to the executive than the provisional 1950 Constitution, which favored the
assembly) and authorized the creation of the Intelligence Coordination Agency
(Badan Koordinasi Intelegen [BKI]) to help with this. The agency’s contribution
was not very significant, but once the 1945 Constitution was reinstated by
decree, Sukarno enhanced the BKI’s budget and renamed it the Central Intelli-
gence Agency (Badan Pusat Intelegen [BPI]). As such, it remained largely a
coordination body for contributions from the military, the police, and Attorney
General’s Office.15
The precise events around the September 1965 coup attempt by a group
of Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia [PKI] members and
sympathetic military officers, apparently with the knowledge of Sukarno and
Subrandio, the head of the BPI, are not clear—but the aftermath certainly is.
The plotters were quickly put on the defensive, and Suharto, encouraged by
Sukarno, created the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security
and Order (Kopkamtib) three days after the coup attempt to mobilize the armed
forces against the PKI. Since the start of Indonesia’s ‘‘Confrontation’’ with the
United Kingdom over Malaysia in 1963, propaganda had been deployed by both
sides, but the United Kingdom took advantage of the coup to intensify its attack
on Sukarno and Subrandio, helping to damage their image, inciting people
against the PKI, and undermining support for the Confrontation campaign.16
As the commander of Kopkamtib, in the name of national security, Suharto
proclaimed a need to forge a chain of intelligence to monitor community activi-
ties considered to be a danger to the government. In 1966 he created the State
Intelligence Command (Komando Intelegen Negara [KIN]), a strategic body
responsible directly to him, incorporating all intelligence agencies to report on
foreign and domestic security issues.17 Opsus (special operations), which was
responsible for covert political and diplomatic operations, had worked for
Suharto since the West Irian campaign in 1960 and continued its work. When
Sukarno was forced to delegate government authority to Suharto in March 1966,
the army attacked the BPI headquarters building and detained everyone there.
In March 1967 KIN became the State Intelligence Coordination Agency (Badan
Koordinasi Intelijen Negara [BAKIN]), with essentially the same mandate, and
BAKIN immediately formed close ties with the CIA because BAKIN wanted
help with its domestic anticommunist campaign and in foreign communist coun-
tries; likewise, the CIA wanted regional help given the mire in which it was
becoming steeped in Vietnam. In 1968 a special unit was created for foreign
counterintelligence—the Special Intelligence Unit, eventually known as Satsus
Intel, which received CIA funding and also support from other Western agencies,
including training from MI-6 and Mossad. By 1973 Satsus Intel employees were
considered honorary employees of BAKIN but remained separate.18
The failed coup was the pretext for the initiation of the New Order by
means of the mass slaughter over the next six months of anywhere up to 1
million people by military and intelligence agencies led by Suharto and orches-
trated by Kopkamtib.19 Such extensive violence became a theme of the regime,
which justified killings by reference to the need to eliminate ever-present
threats to the security of the state. As Tony Day suggests, it is hard to imagine
the New Order without the constant threat of disorder.20 Lindsey notes the
ways in which informal systems of violence and extortion became institutional-
ized under the New Order, in which ‘‘the territorialized system of the preman
[gangsters] as urban standover criminals was writ large as the state used vio-
lence, systematic terror, and intimidation to extract the japrem [illegal rent] that
funded the crony capitalism of the New Order. This led also to a proliferation of
dekking or bekking (‘backing’), the mechanism by which state officials protected
street-level preman. Rival criminal ‘gang’ structures linked political and business
elites through the military to preman, who sometimes mutated into private
armies or militias linked to political and business leaders.’’21
And yet this excessive violence, it can be argued, resulted also from the felt
need of the security apparatus to show that it was more in command than it
necessarily was. Much of the ceremony surrounding the New Order drew upon
the attempted coup of 1965, the September 30 Movement (Gestapu, gerakan
September tiga puluh, G30S). The official version of events is retold in books
and films in which the events of G30S assume the role of foundational myth
for the New Order. Commemorative events served to reify and instantiate the
threat of the PKI, thus underlining the Suharto administration’s ability to
restore and maintain order after cataclysmic social upheaval and appalling
slaughter.22 National vigilance courses were introduced to make citizens aware
of the alleged threats to the social order.23 Although the security apparatus
could display ruthless efficiency in specific places at certain times, the very
nature of Indonesia meant that it was unable to actually maintain control
everywhere, though it certainly was able to intimidate enough to deter serious
threats.24 The first quarter century of the New Order coincided with the Cold
War, when the concern of the older democracies with interests in the region,
especially the United States and Australia, was with anticommunism. More-
over, for the international order, based upon the recognition of the monopoly
of a state’s absolute authority within its domain, the appearance of a strong
centralized state—whether police state or military dictatorship—able to pro-
vide security was important.25
In 1970 BAKIN was reorganized into two main departments, one foreign,
the other domestic, plus a third for Special Operations, though most of these
were still carried out via Opsus, for example, ensuring election victories for
Suharto and the growth of the Golkar electoral machine that underpinned the
New Order.26 Infighting between Opsus and BAKIN during the years 1973–74
eventually led to the former being merged within BAKIN’s third department,
which was now tasked with ‘‘conditioning’’—that is, molding public opinion
especially in five areas: Muslims, military, mass media, students, and business
leaders.27 However, during the late 1970s BAKIN was essentially subordinated
to military intelligence. Following a fundamentalist-inspired aircraft hijack that
was successfully thwarted by military special forces, military intelligence used
its suspicions of BAKIN’s involvement to virtually emasculate the agency. The
military’s own Strategic Intelligence Center now expanded into the Strategic
Intelligence Agency (Badan Intelegen Strategis [BAIS]), which absorbed many of
the investigative and enforcement powers of Kopkamtib. One of few areas
where BAKIN held its own was in counterintelligence against foreign espio-
nage, much helped by continuing support from the CIA.28
Democratization in Indonesia: The Context for SSR

There is inadequate space here to consider in detail the extensive literature on
‘‘transitions,’’ but our position is that there is ‘‘no way around a detailed study
of the interplay of actors and structure in concrete settings.’’29 Although events

such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or Suharto resigning in 1998 symbol-
ize what seem rapid transitions, they may actually be the culminations of long,
uneven, and fragmentary processes. Unsurprisingly, given their function of sus-
taining regimes, intelligence services themselves may play a key role, in either
facilitating change or, more commonly, inhibiting it.30 In Indonesia, however,
by the mid-1990s BAKIN bordered on irrelevance and played no significant
role in the May 1998 riots that presaged the end of Suharto’s rule.31
If a country exists within a ‘‘democratic region,’’ then ‘‘clustering’’ improves
the prospects for reform—but this was hardly a condition in Southeast Asia.32
More broadly, some powerful players within the international order promote
and enhance democracy, but Asia has no real equivalent for the carrots and
sticks of European Union–NATO membership that have been used to encour-
age democratization in Europe. Foreign aid to SSR in Indonesia—mainly to
state actors but also to civil-sector organizations—had grown to something like
$30 million a year by the end of 2004, with more aid going to police reform,
given the hesitations over directly aiding a military that was not exactly
embracing the ideas that came with it.33 However, the main thrust of this has
been to further US and Australian security interests, especially since 9/11,
which are not always simply consistent with democratization per se.
Linz and Stepan suggest that there are five interconnected and mutually
reinforcing arenas of ‘‘modern consolidated democracy’’: the rule of law, eco-
nomic society, political society, civil society, and the state apparatus.34 The first
four are crucial elements of the context for SSR, and we discuss the fifth in
more detail. Given that the security sector is certainly the hardest to change in
former military regimes, our conclusions should not be taken as necessarily
applying to other aspects of Indonesian society.
The Rule of Law

Underlying more specific questions of the democratization and the impact of
Western support is the fundamental question of the applicability of Western
standards to Indonesia. For example, both Suharto and Prabowo Subianto often
made recourse to culturalist arguments in defense against critiques of human
rights abuses.35 The defense of national unity and sovereignty has been key to
military and intelligence claims that they must be unhindered in their activi-
ties; yet all nations (Asian or not) would claim the same—the point is that
these activities should be subject to civilian control and the law. In terms of
political culture, there is clearly a difference in emphasis between the liberal
individualism of Europe and the Americas and the communitarianism that is
widespread in Asia, but the idea of ‘‘community’’ and people’s obligations
thereto can too quickly be conflated into obligations of loyalty to a predatory
state by authoritarian governments and their allied elites. Indonesia signed the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2006, and the key
question is the extent to which national legal reforms stay within the ‘‘margin
of appreciation’’ permitted by rights conventions to all countries.
The Indonesian Criminal Code provides a legal basis for the control of
police and security operations but is widely ignored, in part because of an inade-
quate judiciary that is still subject to de facto control by the executive and the
failure to enforce even those rare sentences of rights violators that are passed.36
In the immediate post–New Order period a number of factors combined to
bring about a worsening rather than any improvement of human rights, includ-
ing the entrenched elites’ corruption, the collapse of the economy, and local
independence movements. In such a context the military and security forces
rested on their accustomed role as guardians of national unity and security and
committed widespread atrocities with impunity.37 Although the tragic circum-
stances of the 2004 tsunami precipitated some resolution of separatist claims in
Aceh, in other cases autonomy disputes persist. For example, in Papua the Peo-
ple’s Council resolved that all candidates in district-level elections should be
indigenous Papuans, but this measure has been rejected by Jakarta as discrimi-
natory and in violation of national law.38
The case that has come to symbolize the apparent impunity with which the
State Intelligence Agency, now known as Badan Intelijen Negara (BIN), is able
to operate, however, is the murder of Munir Said Thalib, one of Indonesia’s
most respected human rights lawyers and founder of the Commission for Miss-
ing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and the Indonesian Human
Rights Monitor (Imparsial). He was poisoned with arsenic on a flight from
Jakarta to Amsterdam in September 2004. The only person so far convicted of
his murder is a former Garuda Indonesia airline pilot who was traveling on the
plane and was known to have close links with BIN; for example, his mobile
telephone records showed more than two dozen calls in the days before and
after the murder with a top BIN official. However, a former BIN deputy chief,
Muchdi Purwopranjono, was acquitted in December 2008 of all the charges
eventually brought against him. Actions in both district courts and the Supreme
Court have left many entirely dissatisfied with the failure to conduct a thorough
investigation of Munir’s murder, and its anniversary remains a rallying point for
human rights campaigners.39
Economic Society
In Indonesia there is considerable resistance to capitalism and there is also a
residual mistrust of market forces for several reasons, including a rejection of
the Dutch colonial legacy and disenchantment with the large (often foreign)
firms that benefited under Suharto. Yet economic performance was good during
the three decades of the New Order; annual growth averaged 7.4 percent, which
posed something of a paradox for Duncan and McLeod because the usual
requirements for an effective market economy—secure private property rights,
impartial enforcement of contracts, and a neutral bureaucracy—were absent.
Rather, firms and individuals were vulnerable to extortion from preman, the
military, the police, and rent-seeking by bureaucrats. However, though this
contributed to minimal change or innovation in the informal or traditional
economy, the more modern and dynamic sector did benefit from the security
of property and enforceability of contracts. This resulted from the symbiotic
relationship between Suharto, his ministers, key bureaucrats, and the military
and the conglomerates, large foreign firms, and ‘‘first-family firms.’’ Here the
wealth generated was shared to mutual advantage under relatively secure condi-
tions enforced by the police, the military, the judiciary, and private militias. By
contrast, ‘‘outsider’’ firms were subjected to relatively predatory behavior by the
regime.40
With the collapse of this ‘‘Suharto Franchise’’ after 1998, economic per-
formance weakened because there was no rapid adoption of new business prac-
tices to match that of electoral politics.41 A law was passed in 2004 requiring
military disengagement from business, but this has been resisted by the mili-
tary.42 Corruption remains endemic, though it is quite ‘‘orderly’’; for example,
although some rackets have been pushed out of the state system since 1998,
they have gone ‘‘private’’ and now operate against the government, which is, of
course, harder for the state to control; and this danger is aggravated by any
decline in state capacity as a result of shrinking budgets.43 Or, to put it another
way, one Suharto has been replaced by many rent-seeking ‘‘mini-Suhartos.’’44
Political Society
Because Suharto resigned in 1998, there have been a series of more or less free
multiparty elections—the most recent in 2009—that are the clearest manifes-
tation of a more democratic Indonesia. However, it is not clear that the transi-
tion has gone much beyond establishing an ‘‘electoral democracy.’’ The 1945
Constitution includes the five principles of Pancasila:
$ protect the citizens of Indonesia,
$ protect the land of Indonesia,
$ attain public prosperity,
$ educate the nation, and
$ participate in global security efforts based on independence, eternal
peace, and social justice.
All state intelligence agencies are established to protect the country’s Con-
stitution, but what is more significant is that the Indonesian Constitution is
based on a rejection of Western ‘‘liberal governance’’ in favor of an ‘‘integralist’’

state—an amalgam of its component citizens—and therefore there is no need
for checks to be placed on the state. (For European readers, this will be reminis-
cent of French political culture and the reason why parliamentary oversight of
intelligence there came about much later than elsewhere in Europe.) The 1945
Constitution’s Second Amendment, which was passed in 2000, allows for sig-
nificant personal protections and provides for legal regulation of the military
and police; but given their mandate for national security and state sovereignty,
there is plenty of room for significant differences in interpretation.45
Recent ethnic conflict in Kalimantan, religious conflict in Maluku and Poso,
increased religious intolerance elsewhere in Indonesia, and the prevalence of
civil militias ostensibly representing ethnic and religious identities throughout
Indonesia all underline the degree to which the New Order managed to keep a
lid on internecine conflict by enforcing the ethical code of SARA—suku,
agama, ras, antar golongan; that is, ethnicity, religion, race, and class—in which
the public discussion of such matters was forbidden.46 Again, it must be empha-
sized how important this is to understanding the perception of security threats;
despite some talk of foreign sponsors of terrorism, almost all are seen as inter-
nally driven.47
One element of the post-Suharto regime (both authoritarian and centralist)
was decentralization beginning in 2001 throughout thirty provinces, two special
regions (Aceh and Yogyakarta), and Jakarta (the capital district), down to dis-
tricts and municipalities. The impact of this has varied widely; significant
reform has been achieved where leaders have been able to secure public policies
from capture by private interests, through some combination of stable political
coalitions or support networks in civil society.48
However, other networks will work contrary to democratization; one result
of the 1945 Constitution was the Sidoarjo Intelligence System—a parallel net-
work of bureaucratic, military, and industrial elites.49 Further parallelism
between state and criminal organizations characterized the New Order, and if,
as reform progresses and/or state budgets shrink, paramilitary gangs compensate
for the loss of state support by forming their own private alliances with business,
‘‘insecurity networks’’ may prevail.50
The plethora of security actors extends below the level of the central gov-
ernment and across all walks of life. For example, siskamling, police-controlled
networks of neighborhood security systems, hansip, civil defense units, and civil
service police units were founded in 1990 but since 1999 have increased decen-
tralization, come under the control of local regencies, and interact in different
ways with national military and police.51 Further, in 2002–3 kominda were cre-
ated as local intelligence groups organized by local governments, within which
police, military, and BIN would share information. Although these all reflect
the desire to increase the ‘‘reach’’ of the state among highly dispersed communi-
ties, they also provide the opportunity for local interests to dominate security
governance. These will include gang leaders, or preman, who have now entered
local government or Parliament and are legally representing their ‘‘communi-
ties.’’52 It is easy to see these groups as illegitimate, but it is not, in our view
anyway, so clear-cut. There is a gray zone of legality that is being constantly
negotiated, that might be viewed as a process of de facto sovereignty, and that
needs to be acknowledged alongside more conventional notions of constructing
‘‘democratic’’ states.
Civil Society
Active and politicized civil society groups are an important element of democ-
ratization. But although the 1997–98 economic crisis, including the collapse of
the rupiah, saw genuine popular resistance to Suharto after he was ‘‘reelected’’
in March 1998, forcing his resignation two months later, civil society remains
underdeveloped with only a small number of active organizations.53 Thus,
Makaarim refers to the lost momentum of SSR because civil society never
replaced the military in controlling the direction of reform: ‘‘SSR is no longer
a process that is influenced by the direction that comes from civil society,
instead it is fully dependent on how much the ideas can be compromised with
the interests of security elite and actors.’’54 However, it must be noted that there
are a number of active civil society organizations, such as Pacivis and Lesperssi,
which, as is shown below, have intervened directly in the debate on intelligence
reform. In the last decade a more pluralist civil society has developed, though
critical media, including television channels, and media access to conflict areas
such as Papua and Aceh, are normally blocked and freedom to report on security
service abuses is limited.55
The State Security and Intelligence Apparatus since 1999

A relatively autonomous state that is not under elite domination and ade-
quate state capacity are other factors facilitating democratization.56 The mili-
tary had been distancing itself from the increasingly personalized nature of
Suharto’s rule and his family enrichment throughout the 1990s, but its leaders
still saw themselves as guardians of stability and ‘‘guided’’ the transition,
although new limits to their influence were indicated by their subsequent
‘‘loss’’ of police and intelligence primacy to civilian agencies.57 But state insti-
tutions are still dominated by relatively narrow military and economic elites.
The adequacy of state resources for law enforcement remains an issue; but of
equal or greater concern are the extraordinary heterogeneity of the country
in terms of ethnicity and geography and the endemic police corruption.
Decentralization, proffered as a prerequisite for transition to democratic forms
of governance, often lays itself open to the very forces of separatism regularly
used to justify continued military intervention or local elites’ control of vio-
lence that defies democratization.58
The main state intelligence actors are the Strategic Intelligence Agency
(BAIS) of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia
[TNI]), BIK Polri within the national police, and BIN. All three maintain a
domestic intelligence capability. As we saw above, a weak BAKIN played little
role in Suharto’s downfall, and its weakness was aggravated by the lack of funds
in the wake of the economic collapse, the fact that its Cold War targets (as for
other Western agencies) had diminished, and by Habibie’s (Suharto’s immedi-
ate successor) purging of the Christians in senior posts who had been preferred
by Suharto. However, Abdurrahman Wahid (a.k.a. Gus Dur) became president
in October 1999, and in 2000 he sought to revamp intelligence by creating the
State Intelligence Institute, which answered to the minister of defense and had
the authority to oversee military intelligence. This direct assertion of civilian
control was not appreciated by the military.
BAKIN was redesignated BIN in January 2001, and its budget was expanded
at the expense of military intelligence.59 The series of Christmas Eve 2000
church bombings in Indonesia exposed BIN’s ‘‘scanty knowledge’’ of the Jem-
aah Islamiyah network that was responsible, and very shortly the insignificance
of internal intelligence (other than for the purposes of repression) was to be
reversed. First, when Megawati Sukarnoputri (Sukarno’s daughter) was made
president by the National Assembly in July 2001, she appointed a new BIN
chief—A. M. Hendropriyono—who was also given ministerial status;60 second,
after the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the Bali bombing in October
2002, BIN was not only given more responsibility for the coordination of intel-
ligence but also increased its operational focus. In part this was indicated by
the opening of offices in the provinces, regencies, and municipalities to which
government powers were devolved in the hope that BIN would provide coordi-
nation between military and police at local level.61 The first civilian head of
BIN was appointed in 2009, but he was replaced by another military head in
2011 immediately after the passage of the Intelligence Law.62
The military had maintained an administrative structure parallel to that of
the state during the New Order, and even though the new law on TNI 2004
sought to reduce the military’s role, it still included ‘‘assisting in local gover-
nance’’ as one of its responsibilities ‘‘other than war.’’63 Thus, the links between
the military, police, and intelligence run from the top to the bottom of Indone-
sian government—but only with a great deal of organizational friction. There
are specific policy areas in which these links become more crucial, such as
counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, in which they are all involved. For
example, in a well-meaning effort to civilianize counterinsurgency, responsibil-
ity was shifted in 2000 from the military to the police—specifically to its para-
military unit, Brimob—but for various reasons, including inadequate training,
the move was unsuccessful.64 Kopassus (Komando Pasukan Khusus), Indonesia’s

military Special Forces, have their own intelligence capacity, and became syn-
onymous with human rights violations; its Detachment 81 was deeply impli-
cated in the carnage in East Timor and routinely engaged in sabotage,
kidnapping, and murder.65 Yet, despite the police having had formal counterter-
rorism primacy since 2000, in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombing and the
2003 Marriott Hotel bombing, the government was reportedly seeking ways to
increase Kopassus’s role as a counterterrorist squad.
Friction between the police and the military increased further when
Detachment 88, which was under police command but was funded and trained
by the United States, began to be involved in counterterrorism investigations
in 2004, apparently duplicating the similar skills of Detachment 81. In July
2010 President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the formation of the
National Anti-Terrorism Agency (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Terorisme
[BNPT]), led by a two-star police general, Ansyaad Mbai. The BNPT is charged
with formulating policy and the coordination and implementation of counter-
terrorist efforts by the respective civil and military agencies, and it answers
directly to the president. Concerns remain about the concentration of too
much power in the hands of the BNPT, a lack of clarity in threat definition,
the operational management of army and police intelligence agencies, and
coordination with BIN.66 This innovation may compound intelligence manage-
ment problems in Indonesia: multiple agencies, the lack of regulation, and a
general lack of coordination between agencies themselves and with the police
and the military.67
Intelligence Reform in Indonesia: Establishing

Democratic Control and Oversight?
As far as intelligence is concerned, democratization is usually discussed in terms
of the control and oversight of agencies. ‘‘Oversight’’ is defined as a means of
ensuring public accountability for the decisions and actions of security and
intelligence services. It must be distinguished from control, which refers to
the ‘‘act of being in charge of the day-to-day management of the intelligence
services.’’68 An indispensable precondition for democratization of intelligence
is ‘‘legalization’’ via legislation. The president must gain approval of the People’s
Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat [DPR]) to make laws and
determine the budget, but he or she is not accountable to the assembly.69 Exec-
utive dominance of the DPR is the major challenge of intelligence reform;70 for
one thing, members have very little knowledge of intelligence, and the chance
to develop expertise is minimized because parties shuffle members around com-
missions twice a year.71 Commission One for foreign, defense, and security relies
almost entirely on former military/security officers for advice, and before 2009
few members showed much interest in the issue.72 The lawmaking process in
Indonesia is quite distinctive; the commission would assign an ad hoc working
committee (panja) to discuss the bill with government representatives. If inter-
party differences represented on the panja can be settled, there will be no voting
when the bill goes back, neither in the full commission nor in the subsequent
plenary session.73
There have been at least three official draft laws on intelligence. The first
was dated January 2002 and was leaked, having been prepared by BIN after
9/11. It proposed extensive powers of arrest and detention along with restric-
tions on legal representation and the right to silence, but it was dropped after a
barrage of criticism from the chief justice, the police, and human rights organi-
zations. However, in the wake of further bombings, including that of the Austra-
lian Embassy in September 2004, another draft law began circulating, which
again included extensive arrest powers.74 Nongovernmental organizations
responded to this in the form of a 2005 draft law prepared by the Global Center
for Civil Society Studies (Pusat Kajian Global Civil Society [sic] or PACVIS)
based at the Universitas Indonesia. Although still drawn in broader terms than
the intelligence legislation typically found in Europe and the Americas, this
was certainly an improvement on that written by BIN. For example, it proposed
that a separate body be established for strategic foreign and defense intelligence
and that there be a body for the coordination of intelligence assessments sepa-
rate from BIN itself, and it set out procedures for the external authorization of
the use of covert information gathering and for the control and oversight of
intelligence by the executive branch and the DPR.75
These proposals did not seem to have had much impact on official thinking,
judging from the next government draft published in March 2006, which
retained an extremely broad grant of discretionary powers to the agencies with
little in the way of control or oversight.76 BIN retained overall coordinating
authority (article 8), and arrest powers and covert information gathering would
not require external authorization (article 12). Further, as well as enumerating
the main intelligence agencies, it said that ‘‘other performers of intelligence
functions’’ could be established by presidential decree (article 7[2]), which
rather missed the point as to why legislation is seen as important for democratic
control. (This provision was not included in the 2010 redraft, but it is a moot
point as to whether the president would regard himself or herself as prevented
from appointing other agencies.)
The 2010 redraft of the law was distinctive,77 in that it was initiated by a
group of new members of Parliament on Commission One who had experience
of and interest in legislating for intelligence.78 After amendment, this became
law in October 2011, and it included signs that some of the provisions most
criticized in the 2006 version had been addressed; for example, the preamble
referred to a fairly conventional series of security threats ‘‘such as terrorism,

espionage, sabotage, subversion, theft of natural resources, and interstate orga-
nized crime’’ and the consequent ‘‘need for professional state intelligence,
improvement of intelligence cooperation and coordination, in addition to
establishing rule of law, democratic values and principles as well as acknowl-
edgement and respect for human rights.’’ This is a sign of at least rhetorical
acknowledgment of the significance of rights because it did not appear in the
equivalent section of the 2006 draft.79 BIN’s powers are defined more specifi-
cally, but in other respects much discretion is retained or actually extended.
BIN is to retain its authority for both domestic and foreign intelligence. With
respect to BIN’s powers, article 13 (1) reads: ‘‘In addition to the powers men-
tioned in Article 12 [to conduct investigations], on the basis of this Law, State
Intelligence Agency (BIN) has a special power to intercept communication
and investigate any financial undertaking that is suspected to fund terrorism.’’
We also need to note, however, that the draft required no external authorization
for this special power, as is regarded as a sine qua non for democratic control
and as had been suggested by the PACIVIS 2005 draft (article 14). During the
legislative process a provision was added requiring district court approval before
interceptions of communications, which sounds like progress until the unre-
formed nature of the judiciary is taken into account. Even the credibility of the
special regional corruption courts established since 2006 has been undermined
by allegations that poor screening of judges has led to many dubious acquittals.80
Another of the main criticisms of the 2006 draft (article 12) was its grant
of arrest powers to BIN, and these have been omitted—this is important and
suggests that civil society criticisms have had some effect.81 However, article
13(2) of the 2010 draft introduced a new concept of ‘‘intensive investigation’’:
‘‘In addition to the special power mentioned in paragraph (1), State Intelli-
gence Agency (BIN) has the power to intensively investigate a person who is
strongly suspected to be a terrorist in an investigation to uncover his/her activ-
ity.’’ Precisely what this means is not defined in the draft, but the explanatory
memorandum provides further information: ‘‘BIN’s special power for intensive
investigation is preventive in nature, in contrast to the power exercised by law
enforcement, in which case it is based on Criminal Code. The special power is
given with the intention of gathering information as well as acting swiftly for
the purpose of protecting the rights of the citizenry and public, which are more
important than the rights of a person who has the potential to rob the rights of
the former—in addition to protecting other national interests.’’ We should not
be surprised that the power is preventive, because that is the precise raison
d’être of intelligence, but it is easy to see how ‘‘intensive investigation’’ will
include detention for the purposes of interrogation.
Oversight Tasks
Since 1999 the DPR has had much-enhanced legislative, budgetary, and super-
visory functions, including the right to investigate. Parliamentary commissions
have become very active in requesting information from the government and in
holding hearings, but so far this has had little impact on intelligence matters
(which, to be fair, is also the case in many much older democracies). The
development of serious intelligence oversight is hardly advanced by the custom
of representatives and journalists accepting money from ministers to ask the
‘‘right’’ questions.
As noted above, Commission One covers foreign, defense, and security mat-
ters, but its members have been preoccupied with the first of these. On the face
of it, Commission One has achieved much by means of its control of the budget;
for example, the actual figures earmarked by its budget committee for counter-
terrorism and intelligence were published in 2002 in the wake of the first Bali
bombing, and the total was actually less than proposed by BIN. However, it is
not clear how significant this is, given that BIN is still able to raise money from
its own businesses, for example, its newspaper. A key element of democratic
control is that agencies may only spend money allocated by parliament—this is
still lacking from the new law.82 Article 43 of the new law provides only for
supervision of BIN by unspecified internal mechanisms and a special commis-
sion within the DPR. This will have some potential influence by means of
endorsing the president’s appointments of agency heads and is empowered to
question them.83 However, civil society organizations fear that the law’s provi-
sions for severe penalties for ‘‘leaking intelligence information’’ could be used
to hinder oversight by civil society and media organizations.84 This, the lack of
provision for citizens to complain, and the uncertainty surrounding the powers
of the parliamentary commission all suggest that oversight of even this one
intelligence agency will remain very weak.85
Conclusion
The literature on postauthoritarian regimes in Europe and Latin America sug-
gests there are broadly three main ways of describing the situation in these
regimes: democracy is ‘‘consolidated,’’86 and all politically significant groups
adhere to democratic ‘‘rules of the game’’; second, early change is at a ‘‘stand-
still,’’87 where change has stopped at, for example, ‘‘feckless pluralism’’88 or
‘‘pseudodemocracy’’;89 and third, there may be ‘‘regression,’’ and Putin’s Russia
is often cited as an example.90 Although the passage of the new Intelligence
Law represents a significant milestone in Indonesia, it cannot really be charac-
terized as any of these three. Defects in the law itself and uncertainties as to
what change it will make in practice certainly do not permit the conclusion
that democracy in Indonesia has been consolidated. Conversely, it is clearly
not an indicator of regression. However, to describe the country in terms of

feckless pluralism or pseudodemocracy is not necessarily more helpful.
Indonesia may still be struggling with what has been described in Europe as
the first ‘‘generation’’ of SSR—legislation for the intelligence mandate, and
procedures for control and oversight.91 However, drawing this conclusion makes
assumptions about the nature of the state and power in Indonesia that might
not be warranted. As we have argued, Indonesia is not only a postcolonial state
in which the role of violence plays a key role in the maintenance of authority.
It is a neopatrimonial state in which the exercise of authority relies as much on
the maintenance of relations that are mutable, personal, and precarious as it
does on the actual control of territory.92 Most often it relies on being able to
give the appearance of being in control; if necessary, through the application
of extreme violence, directly or via proxies. Democratic process in the form of
national electoral systems, as Trocki notes, often predicates the rise of ‘‘violent
and predatory local figures,’’ while in the longer term serving to consolidate
national unity and transparent political process.93 In postauthoritarian Indone-
sia there is a public desire for change, for the contestation of authority and
greater empowerment of civic power. The recent cicak-buaya case—in which
Police General Susno Duaji sparked public outcry when he compared the Cor-
ruption Eradication Committee’s attempts to investigate senior members of the
police as akin to a lizard confronting a crocodile—can be seen as evidence at
least of a growing public intolerance of abuses of power.94 Yet there is a long
way to go if popular sovereignty as an ideal is to be achieved. Although there
may be support for sharpening the instruments of civic society, a decentralized
state with multiple, competing sites of authority, blurred jurisdictional bound-
aries, and the continued rent-seeking of entrenched military and economic
elites in the context of periodic terrorist attacks suggest that there will be little
significant intelligence democratization in the foreseeable future.
We have not attempted any systematic consideration of the applicability or
otherwise of CMR/SSR models outside the Americas and Europe, but it is clear
that Indonesia’s experience cannot be adequately explained via the CMR
model because, though there is more civilian control of the military (e.g., the
police have been civilianized), the problems of inefficiency, corruption, and
human rights abuses are as likely to derive from civilian elites as from residual
military influence. But we have shown that the nature of state and society in
Indonesia is such that conventional notions of democratization in terms of the
democratic control of state agencies are inadequate to deal with the complexi-
ties of Indonesia, where the legitimacy or otherwise of many corporate and
community organizations performing intelligence functions and security roles
must also be considered.
Given post–New Order configurations of authority and power, it is incon-
ceivable that the Indonesian state will become centralized in such a way as to
ensure that greater control and accountability of the intelligence sector can be
addressed. In a decentralized state with networks of multiple security actors in
each area, the idea of parliamentary oversight is somewhat fanciful. This issue
can only be addressed through the education and empowerment of civil and
political societies locally, bearing in mind that currently some of these actors
may be more of a security problem than its solution. Thus, the broader notion
of SSR provides a better analytical perspective, but both the process and the
outcomes will be very different from those envisaged in Europe.
Notes
1. Jonathan Moran, ‘‘The Role of the Security Services in Democratization: An Analysis
of South Korea’s Agency for National Security Planning,’’ Intelligence and National Security
13, no. 4 (1998): 1–32.
2. Peter Gill, ‘‘Theories of Intelligence: Where Are We, Where Should We Go, and
How Might We Proceed?’’ in Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates, edited by Peter
Gill, Stephen Marrin, and Mark Phythian (London: Routledge, 2009), 208–26, at 214.
3. The intellectual origins of CMR are described by Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier
and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957). Its object was to maximize
national security with least sacrifice to other social values by balancing the power of civil
and military groups. SSR is a paradigm for good governance that sprang from the need for
normative order in Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of socialism and the
reconstruction of the Balkans. Miroslav Hadžić, ‘‘The Concept of Security Sector Reform,’’
in Sourcebook of Security Sector Reform: Collection Papers, edited by Philipp Fluri and Miroslav
Hadžić (Geneva and Belgrade: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces
and Centre for Civil–Military Relations, 2004), 11–44, at 12. SSR is a constantly evolving
and hotly debated concept that has rapidly become a central plank in EU foreign policy,
part of a democratizing agenda in which progress is measured in accordance with the extent
to which public control is exercised over the various state and nonstate actors that constitute
the ‘‘security system.’’
4. Thomas C. Bruneau and Steven Boraz, ‘‘Intelligence Reform: Balancing Democracy
and Effectiveness,’’ in Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness,
edited by Thomas C. Bruneau and Steven Boraz (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007),
2–6.
5. See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, The OECD DAC
Handbook on Security System Reform (SSR) Supporting Security and Justice (Paris: Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2007), www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/25/
38406485.pdf; cf. Timothy Edmunds, ‘‘Security Sector Reform: Concepts and Implementa-
tion,’’ in Towards Security Sector Reform in Post–Cold War Europe: A Framework for Assessment,
edited by W. N. Germann and T. Edmunds (Geneva and Bonn: Geneva Centre for the
Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Bonn International Center for Conversion, 2003),
11–25, at 11–12; Heiner Hänggi, ‘‘Conceptualising Security Sector Reform and Reconstruc-
tion,’’ in Reform and Reconstruction of the Security Sector, edited by Alan Bryden and Hänggi
(Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 1–9, table 1.1.
6. Thomas C. Bruneau and Florina Cristiana Matei, ‘‘Towards a New Conceptualization
of Democratization and Civil–Military Relations,’’ Democratization 15, no. 5 (2008): 909–29,
at 914.
7. Adda Bozeman, ‘‘Knowledge and Method in Comparative Intelligence Studies,’’ in

Strategic Intelligence and Statecraft, edited by Adda Bozeman (Washington, DC: Brassey’s,
1992), 180–212, at 196.
8. Charles Tilly, Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 50.
9. Leonard Sebastian, ‘‘Domestic Security Priorities, ‘Balance of Interests’ and Indone-
sia’s Management of Regional Order,’’ in Order and Security in South East Asia: Essays in
Honour of Michael Leifer, edited by R. Emmers and J. Liow (London: Routledge, 2006), 175–
95, at 191.
10. Although there was continuing conflict over Western New Guinea/Irian Barat until
1962. The intelligence implications of this are recounted by Wies Platje, ‘‘Dutch Sigint and
the Conflict with Indonesia, 1950–62,’’ Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 1 (2001):
285–312.
11. Joseph L. Derdzinski, Internal Security Services in Liberalizing States: Transitions, Turmoil
and (In)security (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 83–84.
12. Ken Conboy, Intel: Inside Indonesia’s Intelligence Service (Jakarta: Equinox Publishing,
2004), 18.
13. Ibid., 17–27. During the 1950s the United States became increasingly disenchanted
with President Sukarno, and in November 1957 President Eisenhower approved direct CIA
aid to rebel colonels on Sumatra who planned to overthrow him. The following February,
the colonels declared themselves to be the government when Sukarno was visiting Japan but
he successfully resisted the coup. More bizarrely, the CIA sought to exploit Sukarno’s reputa-
tion as a womanizer and purported to show him in a fabricated pornographic film and photo-
graphs. John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1987), 332–35.
14. Derdzinski, Internal Security Services, 84–85.
15. Conboy, Intel, 27–30.
16. David Easter, ‘‘British Intelligence and Propaganda during the ‘Confrontation’ 1963–
66,’’ Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 2 (2001): 83–102, at 98.
17. Haryadi Wirawan, ‘‘Evolusi Intelijen Indonesia,’’ in Reformasi Inteligen Negara (Jakarta:
PACIVIS, 2005), 23–49, at 34.
19. Robert Cribb, ed., The Indonesian Killings: Studies from Java and Bali (Clayton, Victoria:
Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1990).
20. Tony Day, Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2002).
21. Tim Lindsey, ‘‘The Criminal State: Premanisme and the New Indonesia,’’ in Indonesia
Today, edited by Grayson Lloyd and Shannon Smith (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies, 2001), 283–97, at 285.
22. E.g., ‘‘Hari Kesaktian Pancasila’’ (Sacred Pancasila Day), an annual event at which
tribute was paid to the generals murdered by the PKI on September 30, 1965, as heroes of
the state. Staged at a monument and museum complex built at the site of the well into
which the bodies of the murdered generals were thrown, the event served to establish the
official history of the attempted coup. Emphasis was placed upon the brutality of the deaths
of the generals at the hands of the PKI, and served to magnify the communist threat to the
social order. Katherine E. McGregor, ‘‘Commemoration of 1 October, ‘Hari Kesaktian Pancas-
ila’: A Post Mortem Analysis,’’ Asian Studies Review 26, no. 1 (2002): 39–72, at 52.
23. National vigilance refresher courses (tarpadnas, penataran kewaspadaan nasional) were
introduced by the National Defense Institute (Lemhannas, Lembaga Pertahanan Nasional)
to brief both the military and the civil administration on the possible threats to national
stability. A joint project between Lemhannas and the Operational Command for the Resto-
ration of Order and Security (Kopkamtib, Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Keterti-
ban), tarpadnas was instigated following the crackdown of the student movement against
Suharto in 1978. Jun Honna, ‘‘Military Ideology in Response to Democratic Pressure during
the Late Suharto Era: Political and Institutional Contexts,’’ Indonesia 67 (April 1999): 77–
126, at 79–82.
25. Adrian Vickers, ‘‘The New Order: Keeping Up Appearances,’’ in Indonesia Today, ed.
Lloyd and Smith, 72–84. In political theory and international relations, sovereign statehood
is typically predicated on the supreme authority of the government of a populated territory
within its jurisdiction. International recognition of domestic authority by other governments
thus assumes a normative aspect in which sovereignty is presumed to be coherent and to
reside in the state. Internationally this then becomes ‘‘a necessary condition of outward
agency.’’ Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 26.
26. Adrianus Harsawaskita and Evan A. Laksmana, Rethinking Terrorism in Indonesia: Les-
sons from the 2002 Bali Bombing, UNISCI Discussion Paper 15 (Madrid: Research Unit on
International Security and Cooperation, 2007), 74–75, www.ucm.es/info/unisci/revistas/
UNISCI15_Harsawaskita-Laksmana.pdf.
28. Ibid., 150–56.
29. Georg Sørensen, Democracy and Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing
World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), 33.
30. Peter Wilson, ‘‘The Contribution of Intelligence Services to Security Sector Reform,’’
Conflict, Security and Development 5, no. 1 (April 2005).
31. Conboy, Intel, 199.
32. Renske Dorenspleet and Petr Kopecký, ‘‘Against the Odds: Deviant Cases of De-
mocratisation,’’ Democratization 15, no. 4 (2008): 697–713.
33. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Rethinking Internal Security Strategy, Asia Report
90 (Jakarta and Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2004), 20–22.
34. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation:
Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: John Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1996), 7–15.
35. See Douglas E. Ramage, Politics in Indonesia: Democracy, Islam, and the Ideology of
Tolerance (London: Routledge, 1995); and Elizabeth Fuller Collins, ‘‘Indonesia: A Violent
Culture?’’ Asian Survey 42, no. 4 (2002): 582–604. For a robust defense of the notion of
universal human rights against claims of ‘‘Asian values,’’ see Jack Donnelly, Universal Human
Rights in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 107–23.
37. Ibid., 112–14; Elizabeth F. Drexler, Aceh, Indonesia: Securing the Insecure State (Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
38. International Crisis Group, ‘‘Indonesia: The Deepening Impasse in Papua,’’ press
release, August 3, 2010, www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/media-releases/2010/asia/
indonesia-the-deepening-impasse-in-papua.aspx.
39. Jakarta Post, September 7, 2010.
40. Ron Duncan and Ross McLeod, ‘‘The State and the Market in Democratic Indone-
sia,’’ in Indonesia: Democracy and the Promise of Good Governance, edited by Ron Duncan and
Ross McLeod (Singapore, ISEAS Publishing, 2007), 73–92, at 75–78.
41. Ibid.; see also Natasha Hamilton-Hart, ‘‘Government and Private Business: Rents,
Representation and Collective Action,’’ in Indonesia, ed. Duncan and McLeod, 93–114.
42. Damien Kinsbury, ‘‘Indonesia,’’ in PSI Handbook of Global Security and Intelligence:
National Approaches, vol. 1, edited by Stuart Farson, Peter Gill, Mark Phythian, and Shlomo
Shpiro (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), 247–62, at 258.
43. Lindsey, ‘‘Criminal State,’’ 285.
44. B. Ghoshal, ‘‘Democratic Transition and Political Development in Post-Soeharto
Indonesia,’’ Contemporary Southeast Asia 26, no. 3 (2004): 506–29, cited by Derdzinski, Inter-
nal Security Services, 93.
45. Cf. Derdzinski, Internal Security Services, 98–101.
46. International Crisis Group, ‘‘Christianisation’’ and Intolerance, Asia Briefing 114
(Jakarta and Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2010).
47. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Debate over a New Intelligence Bill, Asia Briefing
124 (Jakarta and Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2011), 4–5.
48. I Ketut Putra Erewan, ‘‘Tracing the Progress of Local Governments since Decentralisa-
tion,’’ in Indonesia, eds. Duncan and McLeod, 55–69.
49. Derdzinski, Internal Security Services, 99.
50. Richard Robison, Ian Wilson, and Adrianus Meliala, ‘‘Governing the Ungovernable’’:
Dealing with the Rise of Informal Security in Indonesia, Policy Brief 1 (Perth: Asia Research
Centre, Murdoch University, 2008).
51. Stein Kristiansen and Lambang Trijono, ‘‘Authority and Law Enforcement: Local
Government Reforms and Security Systems in Indonesia,’’ Contemporary Southeast Asia 27,
no. 2 (2005): 236–54.
52. Loren Ryter, ‘‘Their Moment in the Sun: The New Indonesian Parliamentarians,’’ in
State of Authority: The State in Society in Indonesia, edited by Gerry van Klinken and Joshua
Barker (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); International Crisis Group, Indonesia:
Debate over New Intelligence Bill, 3.
53. Jean Grugel, Democratization: A Critical Introduction (London: Palgrave, 2002).
54. Mufti A. Makaarim, ‘‘Civil Society and Security Sector Reform,’’ in Journey of Reform:
Security Sector Reform in Indonesia, edited by Beni Sukadis and Eric Hendra (Jakarta:
Lesperssi, 2008), 135–43, at 137.
56. Grugel, Democratization, 45.
58. E.g., see Vedi Hadiz, Localizing Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Southeast Asian
Perspective (Stanford, CA, and Singapore: Stanford University Press and Institute of South-
east Asian Studies, 2011).
60. Ibid., 213–14.
62. Jakarta Post, October 23, 2011.
63. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Rethinking Internal Security Strategy, 11.
64. Ibid., 5.
65. Ken Conboy, Kopassus: Inside Indonesia’s Special Forces (Jakarta: Equinox, 2003);
International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Rethinking Internal Security Strategy, 5–6; Kingsbury,
‘‘Indonesia,’’ 251–52.
66. Fatima Astuti, ‘‘In Focus: Indonesia’s National Counter Terrorism Agency (BNPT),’’
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis 2, no. 20 (2010): 1–3; International Centre for Political
Violence and Terrorism Research, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang

Technological University, 2010.
67. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Debate over a New Intelligence Bill, 6; Aleksius
Jemadu, ‘‘Accentuating the Coordination in Indonesian Intelligence Reform,’’ in Journey of
Reform, eds. Sukadis and Hendra, 102–10, at 108–9.
68. Hans Born and Loch Johnson, ‘‘Balancing Operational Efficiency and Democratic
Legitimacy,’’ in Who’s Watching the Spies? Establishing Intelligence Service Accountability, edited
by Hans Born, Loch Johnson, and Ian Leigh (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005),
225–40, at 226.
69. Derdzinski, Internal Security Services, 99.
70. Jemadu, ‘‘Accentuating,’’ 106.
71. M. Fajrul Falaakh, ‘‘The Framework for Intelligence Reform in Indonesia,’’ in Journey
of Reform, eds. Sukadis and Hendra, 111–16, at 114.
72. This is from personal information. Also see Derdzinski, Internal Security Services, 105.
73. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Debate over a New Intelligence Bill, 7.
74. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Rethinking Internal Security Strategy, 14.
75. Indonesian Working Group for State Intelligence Reform, Bill of Law on State Intelli-
gence (Jakarta: PACIVIS, 2005).
76. Indonesia, Draft Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number . . . Year 2006 on State
Intelligence, March 10. 2006.
77. We are grateful to Beni Sukadis at Lesperrsi for making this draft available and facili-
tating its translation into English.
78. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Debate over a New Intelligence Bill, 8.
79. In the ‘‘explanatory provisions’’ of the 2006 draft, included among the usual enumera-
tion of global threats to security such as terrorism and subversion was ‘‘neoliberalism.’’ In the
wake of the 2008 financial crisis, one might suggest that other countries would do well to
adopt this definition. However, it has been omitted from the list of threats attached to the
2010 draft.
80. Donny Syofyan, ‘‘Restoring Public Trust in Corruption Courts,’’ Jakarta Post, Novem-
ber 29, 2011, www.thejakartapost.com/print/361217.
81. Cf. International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Debate over a New Intelligence Bill, 10.
82. Budgetary allocation is perhaps the most important mechanism by which parliaments
establish control over executives. The immensity of the challenge of SSR in Indonesia can
be gauged from the fact that the military has historically been largely independent of the
government, receiving around 70 percent of its income from a wide spectrum of business
activities, both legal and illegal; Kingsbury, ‘‘Indonesia,’’ 248. The BIN budget for its 1,800
personnel plus administrative staff for 2011 has been reported as $140 million; Bagus Saragih,
‘‘Intel Law Is New Dawn for RI Spies,’’ Jakarta Post, October 12, 2011.
83. Ridwan Max Sijabat, ‘‘Who’s Afraid of the BIN Bad Wolf?’’ Jakarta Post, October 5,
2011,
84. Saragih, ‘‘Intel Law.’’
85. E.g., Fitri Bintang Timur, ‘‘The New Intelligence Law: Not Smart Enough,’’ Jakarta
Post, October 12, 2011.
86. Grugel, Democratization, 67; Bruneau and Boraz, ‘‘Intelligence Reform,’’ 11–12.
87. Sørensen, Democracy, 55.
88. Thomas Carothers, ‘‘The End of the Transition Paradigm,’’ Journal of Democracy 13,
no. 1 (2002): 5–21.
89. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation (Baltimore: John Hop-
kins University Press, 1999), 15.
90. Andrei Soldatov, ‘‘Russia,’’ in PSI Handbook, vol. 2, eds. Farson et al., 479–97.
91. Edmunds, ‘‘Security Sector Reform,’’ 16–19.
92. Lee Wilson, ‘‘Beyond the Exemplary Centre: Knowledge, Power and Sovereign Bodies
in Java,’’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17 (2011): 301–17.
93. Carl A. Trocki, ‘‘Democracy and the State in Southeast Asia,’’ in Gangsters, Democ-
racy and the State in Southeast Asia, edited by Carl A. Trocki (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1998), 7–16. Although, as Ryter points out, attempts to evaluate governance in Indo-
nesia on the basis of the degree to which democratic principles are implemented runs the
risk of assuming a ‘‘categorical abstract’’—democracy—as the baseline against which a state
is assumed to be succeeding or failing and disregarding quite different configurations of
authority and power. Ryter, ‘‘Their Moment in the Sun,’’ 215.
94. Also of the power of social networking media in civil society discourse. Detective
Chief Commander General Susno Duaji rather naively coined the phrase ‘‘cicak lawan
buaya,’’ or ‘‘lizard versus crocodile,’’ in reference to the corruption eradication committee’s
investigation (KPK, Komisi Peberantasan Korupsi) into impropriety amongst senior police
officers. The phrase became emblematic of the attempts by the KPK, a small and under-
resourced commission, to attempt to tackle the huge issue of endemic corruption in the
police force. After the police arrested KPK officials Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M.
Hamzah on alleged corruption charges, more than 1 million members joined a Facebook
campaign calling for their release.
CHAPTER 10
A Reconstruction of
Japanese Intelligence
Issues and Prospects
Ken Kotani
O
n April 4, 2009, the Japanese government mistakenly announced that
North Korea had launched a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. The false
news was distributed around the world. This incident does not mean
that Japan always has a tendency to cry wolf, but it is true that Japanese intelli-
gence has been much more vulnerable to these types of incidents compared
with other countries. After World War II, Japan failed to build an overseas
intelligence apparatus or develop an institutionalized intelligence community,
something regarded as an imperative for modern states in developing and build-
ing a proper security and foreign policy. Instead of developing these tools, succes-
sive Japanese governments have been able to rely on US intelligence gathering,
a situation that is fostered and maintained in the United States–Japan Alliance.
Another factor that made the development of an intelligence community in
Japan problematic was the country’s pacifist Constitution, specifically its prohibi-
tion of overseas military operations. These factors resulted in a vulnerable and
late-developing intelligence function within the Japanese government.
A number of times during the Cold War, the Japanese government did actu-
ally try to establish intelligence service and antiespionage laws, but the plans
usually faced strong opposition from liberal public opinion and bureaucratic
/ 181 /
182 / Ken Kotani
sectionalism in Kasumigaseki (the administrative district of Tokyo), and all

attempts eventually failed. Following the Cold War, the government was
shocked enough by the North Korean ballistic missile test, which was fired over
Japan in August 1998, to restart a discussion of Japanese intelligence reform,
which continues to this day. This chapter focuses on Japanese bureaucratic and
cultural issues influencing the country’s intelligence development by reviewing
a number of different reform discussions after World War II.
A Brief History from World War II to the Cold War

During World War II Japan had a strong intelligence apparatus and antiespio-
nage laws. Intelligence was managed by intelligence sections of the Imperial
Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy. They were able to collect a signifi-
cant amount of foreign intelligence through their human networks in Siberia,
Manchuria, China, and Southeast Asia, and to also intercept and break some
diplomatic and military signals traffic of the United States, the United King-
dom, the Soviet Union, and China.1 Although the intelligence agencies could
collect valuable intelligence, the operations staffs sometimes neglected the
fruits of this intelligence gathering, which resulted in a number of disastrous
defeats, like the Battle of Midway in 1942 and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944.
The estrangement of operations staffs from intelligence was mainly caused by
long-standing Japanese bureaucratic bias, which gave policy and operations
much higher status than intelligence, a bias that carried over in postwar Japa-
nese bureaucracy.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the intelligence organizations
were dismantled by the Allies. In those dark days of Japanese defeat and surren-
der, a rumor spread that officers who had been engaged in intelligence work
would be sentenced to life imprisonment; and due to the rumor, the intelligence
officers of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy destroyed
most of their secret documents and have kept their silence since the end of
war.2 This systematic destruction of Japanese intelligence caused a discontinuity
between prewar and postwar intelligence that stood in sharp contrast to the
Allied support of General Reinhardt Gehlen’s organization in West Germany.
In the early part of the 1950s, Japan tried to set up a new intelligence body
starting from scratch, under the auspices of the then–prime minister, Shigeru
Yoshida; the chief cabinet secretary, Taketora Ogata; and Jun Murai, chief of
the security section of the National Police Agency. These men were intent on
establishing for Japan a central intelligence machinery similar to the US Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency (CIA).3 They understood that the lack of central intel-
ligence machinery in the Japanese government during the war caused serious
bureaucratic infighting about information sharing between the Imperial Japa-
nese Army, Imperial Japanese Navy, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
However, the press bitterly opposed the plan, and Yoshida was obliged to
A Reconstruction of Japanese Intelligence / 183
compromise, establishing the Research Center (later, the Cabinet Intelligence

Research Office) in the Cabinet Office headed by Murai in April 1952.4 The
center was given a staff of only thirty and an inadequate legal basis as ‘‘its duty
is to collect and analyze information relating to the policy of cabinet.’’5 It was
expected to collect and analyze open-source information and aggregate infor-
mation of other ministries and agencies, but the shortage of staff and legal
restraints resulted in a body that barely functioned as an intelligence apparatus
throughout the Cold War period.
Intelligence Organizations of Japan

At present, Japan possesses a number of self-contained intelligence institutions:
the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, the Public Security Intelligence
Agency, and the various ministry-embedded apparatuses: the Defense Intelli-
gence Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense, the Public Security Department
of the National Police Agency, and the Intelligence and Analysis Service of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To all appearances, these institutions form a
Japanese intelligence community.6 However, this community is very small and
lacks the unifying force for coordinating all the various intelligence services.
The Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office

The Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO) is Japan’s central intelli-
gence agency based in the Cabinet Office. CIRO’s staff numbers about 170, but
100 of them are on loan from other ministries and agencies, and most chief
positions are occupied by police officers. CIRO’s duty is to collect open-source
information and coordinate with other intelligence agencies, but the shortage
of staff makes these duties difficult to execute. The head of CIRO is required to
advise the prime minister weekly, but according to Andrew Oros, ‘‘many
experts give CIRO poor marks on its primary mission of dealing with intelli-
gence on national strategy, particularly in the post Cold War period.’’7 In 2004
the Cabinet Office launched a plan to expand the staff of CIRO from 170 to
1,000, but the plan was abandoned.8 CIRO did grow with a new department,
the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, as a subordinate organization, which
was set up in 2001. The center employs a staff of 320 (100 of whom are imagery
intelligence analysts) and has four optical satellites and one radar satellite. The
newest version of satellite (IGS-6A) was launched in September 2011 and is
said to have 60-centimeter resolution.9
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has a long tradition of collecting
intelligence overseas compared with other agencies. The Investigation Depart-
ment was established in 1934 and was absorbed in 1991 into the International
184 / Ken Kotani
Intelligence Department, which has now become the Intelligence and Analysis
Service. In the absence of a foreign intelligence-collecting agency, MOFA’s
service is regarded as a kind of overseas intelligence. However, because all
MOFA personnel are trained and employed as diplomats, they cannot function
as true intelligence operatives. It is prohibited, for example, for MOFA person-
nel to engage in intelligence and covert activities in foreign countries. It is said
that about eighty staff members are allocated to MOFA’s intelligence section.
Logically, this section can collect diplomatic information through hundreds of
embassies and consulates all over the world, but actually overseas embassies can
bypass the Intelligence Department and send information directly to MOFA’s
policymaking departments. MOFA has a counterpart to the US State Depart-
ment’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research called the Intelligence and Analysis
Service. This organization has long been regarded as a backwater in the minis-
try, although attempts are under way to overhaul MOFA intelligence analysis.10
The Defense Intelligence Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense

The Defense Intelligence Headquarters (DIH) of the Ministry of Defense
(MOD), which was set up in 1997, is the largest intelligence apparatus in the
Japanese intelligence community, with more than 2,400 staff members, most of
them coming from the various military service arms. The DIH is under the
direct control of the defense minister, and each week the director of DIH briefs
his chief. Until the founding of the DIH, Japanese military intelligence was
handled separately by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), the Japan
Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force
(JASDF) intelligence sections, and for a long time it was difficult to break the
departmental walls and stovepipes among them.
The DIH’s main intelligence role has been to collect and analyze signals
intelligence through six intercepting facilities in Japan. The DIH also possesses
an imagery intelligence section, an analysis section, and a joint intelligence
section, all of which work together with the JGSDF, the JMSDF, and the
JASDF. The DIH’s precursor was the Second Investigation Bureau of the
JGSDF, which focused primarily on attacking Soviet traffic during the Cold
War. The Second Investigation Bureau’s most famous case was the interception
in September 1983 of the communications between the Su-15 interceptor that
shot down a civilian Boeing 747, Korean Airlines Flight 007, and the fighter’s
command-and-control base in the eastern USSR. The Soviet Union did not
officially admit its involvement in this accident, but a recording of the commu-
nications was subsequently released by the US government. This strongly sug-
gests that the recording had been passed to the Americans by the Second
Investigation Bureau.
The Public Security Intelligence Agency

The Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) is an internal investigation
agency, much like the British MI-5. Its staff is estimated at 1,500. The PSIA
was established as a division of the Ministry of Justice in 1952 to monitor
nationalistic and communist activities in Japan. Unlike the police, the PSIA
has no equivalent of subpoena powers to compel individuals or organizations to
comply with an investigation. In fact, the PSIA is thought to be nothing more
than an enforcement organization of the Subversive Activities Prevention Law,
which aims to prevent radical groups from carrying out terrorism and violent
activities on Japanese soil. The law, which is regarded by many analysts as
toothless, has been applied only in very limited cases in the past and was not
invoked even in the case of the March 1995 sarin gas attack on a number of
Tokyo subway stations by the cult Aum Shinrikyo. The Public Security Exami-
nation Commission took the view that the Subversive Activities Prevention
Law did not apply to the Aum Shinrikyo case, which prompted public debate
about the PSIA’s future existence. Since then, the PSIA has been struggling
for its survival, and it has moved its focus to new and emerging threats, such as
drug dealing and terrorism threats. Since its reorganization of 1996, the PSIA
has also increasingly shifted its efforts from internal investigations to foreign
intelligence collection.
The National Police Agency

The National Police Agency (NPA) is responsible for policing the entire nation
and protecting it against foreign espionage and terrorism, like the Federal
Bureau of Investigation in the United States. In fact, the NPA is the most
influential intelligence apparatus in the Japanese intelligence community. The
NPA’s capabilities rest not only on its 300,000-member police force (a number
greater than Japan’s military services) but also on its links with the other chief
intelligence positions of other agencies. The NPA regularly sends senior police
officers to the director of cabinet intelligence, CIRO, the deputy director of the
Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, the head of the signals intelligence sec-
tion of the DIH, and the director of the first intelligence department of the
PSIA. The highly centralized NPA can collect information through these intel-
ligence sections of the other agencies. The Public Security Department, the
NPA’s main intelligence component, is responsible for counterintelligence duty
in Japan. It consists of a Foreign Affairs Section, an International Terrorism
Section, and a Public Security Section.
After World War II Japanese intelligence was rebuilt for monitoring com-
munist activities in Japan, and the police were suitable for these duties. More-
over, the role of the Japanese military forces was very limited in the Cold War
period, and the police took over the role of the military services. For example,
186 / Ken Kotani
in 1976 when Soviet air force lieutenant Victor Ivanovich Belenko flew his
MiG-25 jet fighter to Hakodate airport in order to defect, the Japanese police
force tried to keep military officers out of the airport. It was a typical dispute
over bureaucratic turf, and a humiliating incident for the military specialists
who were not allowed to examine the MiG during the initial phase of the
incident.11
The NPA also shows interest in international cooperation, including
increased exchanges with foreign agencies to fight common threats. After
Japan’s signing of the Mutual Assistance Treaty with the United States, South
Korean, Chinese, EU members, and Russian governments, the NPA was able to
share information directly with police forces of those countries over the head
of MOFA. Despite this growth of influence, the NPA remains essentially a law
enforcement organization collecting information for their own investigations,
not for shaping foreign and security policy. In other words, the NPA is the most
efficient collector of information in Japan, but that information is kept in dead
storage.
Current Issues in Japanese Intelligence Reform

The end of the Cold War had a large impact on the Far Eastern security envi-
ronment, and the Japanese government started to discuss the organizational
reform of security and intelligence matters facing international and internal
difficulties, only to be overtaken by events. In 1995 there were, as we have seen,
the Tokyo subway gas attacks killing thirteen people, severely injuring fifty, and
injuring thousands more. Both the NPA and the PSIA failed to uncover or
prevent these attacks. Then, in August 1998, the Japanese intelligence com-
munity was shocked by the North Korean test launch of a Taepodong-1
intermediate-range ballistic missile, officially to try and launch a satellite into
orbit. Japanese intelligence failed to detect and warn the country’s leaders about
this impending missile launch, and this incident led to the decision by the
prime minister to launch reconnaissance satellites. The 9/11 attacks on the
United States by al-Qaeda further pushed the discussion for security reform
onto the agenda, and thus prompted a succession of discussions and reports
concerning Japanese intelligence and security reform. In recent years the Cabi-
net Office, MOFA, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the PHP Research Insti-
tute (a Japanese private institution) have all published different plans for
intelligence reform.
In October 2004 the Council on Security and Defense Capabilities (a panel
of ten experts) submitted the report Japan’s Visions for Future Security and
Defense Capabilities (Araki Report) to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.12 As
the title suggests, the report is a comprehensive vision of Japan’s security policy
for the twenty-first century, which also covers intelligence reform (1) to
improve information gathering in line with the policy-side requirement, (2) to

enhance CIRO’s control on information flow and urge intelligence sharing
among ministries and agencies, (3) to effectively utilize human intelligence
(HUMINT), (4) to foster intelligence specialists, (5) to set up security proce-
dures and penalties, and (6) to build up international cooperation in the intelli-
gence field. In September 2005 MOFA published the Report of Enhancement of
Overseas Intelligence Activities (the ‘‘First Machimura Report’’).13 In this report
MOFA indicated that it wanted to set up HUMINT apparatus under the con-
trol of the foreign minister, as with the British Secret Intelligence Service. This
report only referred to intelligence reform within MOFA, however.
In June 2006 the PHP Research Institute released the report Japanese Intelli-
gence: A Road Map to Transformation, which provided a comprehensive survey
of the issues on Japanese intelligence, which also made a proposal for reform.14
The report advocated the establishment of an intelligence community in the
Japanese government, along the lines of that in the United Kingdom: (1) to
establish a Cabinet Intelligence Committee/Joint Intelligence Committee in
the Cabinet Office for strengthening intelligence gathering and the analysis
structure of the Cabinet Office, (2) to promote intelligence sharing within the
intelligence community based on exchanges of personnel and network develop-
ment, and (3) to overhaul security systems for further information sharing
among ministries and agencies. This report still serves as the basis for intelli-
gence reform discussions in Japan.
In the same month the Liberal Democratic Party published its own Report
of Enhancement of National Intelligence (the Second Machimura Report).15 This
investigation was influenced by the so-called Shanghai incident, in which a
Japanese diplomat in Shanghai committed suicide in the wake of a Chinese
honey trap in 2004. MOFA had failed to prevent the Chinese secret police
from blackmailing the diplomat. The Second Machimura Report recommended
an overhaul of Japan’s central intelligence machinery, with a focus on improv-
ing the intelligence capability of the Prime Minister’s Office (Kantei). It pro-
posed that the Japanese government should (1) set up an intelligence
committee staffed by cabinet members, (2) upgrade the position of the director
of cabinet intelligence (the position is currently just an assistant of deputy chief
of the cabinet secretary), and finally, (3) set up an assessment staff to produce
analytic papers for the Cabinet Intelligence Committee to circulate to top-level
officials in the Japanese government.
In February 2008 the Cabinet Office published a new report, The Improve-
ment of Intelligence Functions of the Prime Minister’s Office, which reached con-
clusions largely similar to those of the Second Machimura Report.16 It
recommended (1) establishing equal relations between policymaking and intel-
ligence elements in the Cabinet Office, (2) enhancing intelligence-gathering
activities, (3) promoting intelligence sharing among ministries and establishing
188 / Ken Kotani
the Prime Minister’s Office’s control over information flows in the Japanese
government, (4) developing a more coherent intelligence infrastructure, and
(5) overhauling the entire Japanese security system. It would be fair to say that
this report sought to establish a collegial machinery modeled on the United
Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Organization. This built on an earlier Cabinet
Office paper, Improvement of Counter-Intelligence Functions, in August 2007, on
the basis of which CIRO had set up a Counter-Intelligence Center by the
subsequent April.17 The conclusions of these two papers were brought together
by CIRO in February 2009 for the Fourth Council on Security and Defense,
held in the Prime Minister’s Office.18
Ultimately, the various reports and investigations converged on relatively
similar diagnoses of the difficulties and shortfalls of the current Japanese intelli-
gence system. These dysfunctions include a lack of overseas HUMINT-
collection capabilities, the absence of an effective centralized intelligence
machinery and poor intelligence sharing among ministries, problems in tasking
and direction, and an inadequate protective security system. Another issue,
which stretches back more or less to World War II, is the low status of the
intelligence function and its consequent vulnerability to politicization.
The Lack of Overseas Human Intelligence Collection Capabilities

Although Japan did build HUMINT networks in its overseas territory and
Asian countries before World War II, practically none of these human sources
remained after the war. In general, it could be fair to say that the Japanese
island-nation mentality is not suitable for HUMINT activities in foreign coun-
tries. Although the role of HUMINT has often been criticized as pertains to
reliability and slow response times, it is essential against nonconventional
threats; as Paul Maddrell has pointed out, ‘‘transnational intelligence collection
on today’s threats forces spy agencies to engage in global collection,’’ and Japa-
nese intelligence has been left behind in the world trend to update HUMINT
activities.19
Currently, Japanese diplomats play a central role in overseas information
gathering, collecting information through their diplomatic networks and open
sources in the host country, but they are not allowed to engage in covert activi-
ties. In the economic field, the Japan External Trade Organization, which is
supervised by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, collects eco-
nomic and industrial information from abroad, sometimes collecting informa-
tion on military technologies. The NPA, PSIA, and MOD also send their staffs
as secretaries or military attachés of the Japanese embassy abroad, and one of
their duties is to collect political and military information.
HUMINT should provide information that is usually unavailable from dip-
lomatic means, but the Japanese government’s agents cannot collect overseas
information beyond diplomatic information in foreign countries. It is almost

impossible for them to collect information about those countries that do not
have diplomatic relations with Japan, such as North Korea. The Japanese gov-
ernment recognizes that there are seventeen abducted Japanese citizens in
North Korea, but it has been impossible to learn anything about their status,
and this situation has deeply frustrated the government.20 MOFA was planning
to set up a HUMINT section and send their intelligence officers to foreign
countries, but the plan seems to have been frustrated.
The Lack of Central Machinery and Poor Information Sharing

Under the present Cabinet Office, there are two different frameworks in
place—one based on the American CIA–styled CIRO, and the other based on
the British Joint Intelligence Committee–styled Cabinet Intelligence Commit-
tee/Joint Intelligence Committee, which was set up in 1986. However, the US
and UK intelligence systems are entirely different, as Philip Davies points out:
‘‘Despite the existence of similar joint bodies for collating similar raw informa-
tion, and with a common combined assessment as the goal, the two [US/UK]
systems can be seen as moving in different directions.’’21 Basically, the Japanese
bureaucratic culture is similar to that of the United States, marked by strong
sectionalism, which causes rivalry and friction among ministries; but the Japa-
nese political system is similar to that of the United Kingdom, being based on
consensus-oriented cabinet agencies that hold a parliamentary mandate. The
result has been a hybrid intelligence system, under which the Japanese Cabinet
Office is trying to manage both bureaucratic and collegial intelligence methods
simultaneously, with the result that neither system works effectively.
The Japanese government system is built on the basis of individual ministries
and agencies, with high walls that cannot be broken; in other words, stovepipes
among Japanese bureaucracy prevent them from sharing information with each
other or with the Cabinet Office. The former director of cabinet intelligence,
Yoshio Omori, wrote that he was not given any intelligence from MOFA and
MOD, even though he was the head of central intelligence.22 He struggled to
break the walls between CIRO and the other ministries, but he failed. Through-
out Japanese modern history, the government has never succeeded in managing
the central intelligence system effectively. In 1940 the Japanese government
tried to set up the Cabinet Intelligence Bureau for sharing national intelligence,
but the army and navy unraveled the plan before it even got off the ground.23
The absence of this machinery caused many troubles during the Pacific War.
One example of this was when, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the
Japanese Navy suffered heavy losses from the US Navy but falsely announced to
the public that the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk eleven aircraft carriers,
two battleships, and three cruisers, leading some army planners to conclude
190 / Ken Kotani
that the US Navy had been driven out of the area. In actual fact, no US ships
had been sunk in the battle and the Japanese Army, relying on the false figures
of the navy, changed its strategy accordingly. Its officers believed that Japan
had succeeded in taking air superiority in the area. The army had planned to
wage a decisive battle against the US troops on Luzon Island, but the false
reports of the destruction of the US task force caused the army to attempt a
new campaign to take Leyte Island, which was located hundreds of miles south
of Luzon. The army then tried to redeploy its main force by sea from Luzon to
Leyte, with the net result that most of its troops were annihilated by US air
attacks during transit.24
After the war, the Japanese government reflected that the lack of central
intelligence machinery had caused disastrous situations in war planning and set
up CIRO, taking the CIA as its model. Despite this promising start, the Japa-
nese government did not understand the CIA effectively and CIRO’s intelli-
gence duty was very restricted without the authority to force other bureaucratic
apparatuses to share information. In other words MOFA, MOD, and NPA were
not and still are not obliged to pass information to CIRO. These ministries
continued to send their staff to the Prime Minister’s Office as aides and personal
secretaries to the prime minister and were able to bypass CIRO and deliver
information personally and directly to the prime minister himself.25 The
information-gathering and analyses processes are subsequently not to be consid-
ered equal across the board. As a result, the situation became Balkanized, and
the secretaries of the prime minister and the chief cabinet secretary became
buried under piles of intelligence and information documents, which are not in
an order of priority, have not been sufficiently evaluated, and sometimes contra-
dict each other.
CIRO is also under the influence of the NPA, with many chief positions
being held by ex-members of the police force, so there is a strong image of a
police-style detective culture, rather than an intelligence-gathering and assess-
ment culture.26 MOD and MOFA are afraid that giving information to CIRO
means giving information to the NPA, which is well-known in Kasumigaseki
for its secrecy. Legend has it that it has never shared any information with
MOD and MOFA.27 Unless the underlying situation changes, however much
CIRO is strengthened, it is hard to see the information-gathering problem
being resolved. In the half century that has passed since CIRO was established
after World War II, it has been Japan’s central intelligence organization, yet its
function has not been adapted to meet the demands of the present day, and it
is now in a state where it is necessary to make serious changes.
In the 1980s the Japanese government had begun to realize that centraliza-
tion was not working well. Initially, senior officials simply thought that an
American-style system did not fit Japan, so there was an attempt to introduce
the British system in 1986 without dissolving CIRO. The result was the cre-
ation of the Cabinet Intelligence Committee, which is made up of deputy secre-
taries and chief secretaries and which has only two meetings a year, with each
meeting lasting only about an hour, which clearly does not provide any
dynamic or responsive capability.28 In contrast, there are the twice-monthly
meetings of the British Joint Intelligence Committee at the level of bureau
chiefs, who are much more involved in actual operations. The British commit-
tee system is fundamentally based on the idea of collegiality, but the strongly
turf-minded Japanese bureaucrats did not welcome the committee system. As a
result, the reality of the committee is like a table talk rather than a discussion
of national intelligence. This is because the committee does not possess a per-
manent secretariat staff; nor does it have an assessment staff that can write
papers for the committee. In April 2008 CIRO appointed five cabinet intelli-
gence analysis staffs to draft a National Intelligence Estimate in order to assist
in better managing national intelligence.
Problems in Tasking and Direction

In general, the Japanese intelligence community usually needs political guid-
ance on the priorities of the agenda so that its collection and reporting can be
relevant to policymakers’ decision needs.29 However, no effective system for
formulating and issuing intelligence requirements and priorities has ever been
articulated by the Japanese government, and thus the agencies have been forced
to work without explicit tasking. Japanese political leaders are usually more
concerned with negotiating a policy consensus between political factions and
interests than with carefully examining intelligence and factoring it into the
foreign policy decision-making process. In other words, Japanese politicians or
policymakers tend to put political considerations ahead of intelligence or infor-
mation on the ground. This was one of the reasons that Japan waged a war
against the United States in 1941, although it was known by Japanese military
leaders that the United States’ military power was far greater than Japan’s. The
Japanese government, army, and navy spent a lot of energy moving toward a
consensus before the Pacific War and finally reached a consensus after one
particularly grueling, continuous, sixteen-hour meeting on November 1, 1941,
which resulted in war against the United States.30
Too much time is expended in Japanese policymaking because of the need
to build a consensus. Another result of the consensus system is that new infor-
mation is actually undesirable. This has also led to information being sup-
pressed, even when it looks accurate. In their policymaking process, politicians
do not need information from the intelligence services; they think much of
reaching a consensus in their political group, and as a result they sometimes
ignore overseas intelligence when the intelligence no longer serves their politi-
cal goal.
192 / Ken Kotani
Before World War II there was no center of power in the Japanese political
arena. Even the prime minister was no more than a first among equals, and he
faced difficulties in building a consensus on Japanese foreign policy. For exam-
ple, before World War II the prime minister, Fumimaro Konoe, who was not
enthusiastic about the war against the United States, failed to persuade the
military leaders and finally abdicated his role as prime minister. After the war
the position of the prime minister was strengthened, but consensus building
remained important. Article 65 of the Japanese Constitution states, ‘‘adminis-
trative power is vested in the Cabinet.’’ In other words, the Japanese prime
minister cannot decide anything without obtaining the consent of other cabi-
net members and the cabinet is usually managed on the basis of unanimity. The
Japanese prime minister sometimes spends much of his energy persuading the
minister of education or the minister of health on overseas and security matters.
In this decision-making process, the prime minister does not need secret intelli-
gence for deciding overseas policy. Richard Betts wrote that ‘‘the importance
of successful intelligence ultimately varies with the policies it has to support,’’
but Japanese intelligence has been generally forsaken by political leaders.31
In 1986 the prime minister was granted the authority to convene the Secur-
ity Council of Japan in case of an emergency. The council is made up of nine
ministers who engage in overseas and security matters, but the role of the coun-
cil is to consider the situation, not to be a decision-making body. The council
fell into abeyance during the Cold War period, because Far Eastern interna-
tional circumstances were relatively stable under US dominance in the region,
and Japanese politicians’ need for secret information remained very low. Not
until 2006, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was there any attempt to regular-
ize such interdepartmental coordination. Abe had plans to set up a new
National Security Council (NSC) in the Cabinet Office that would supersede
the largely moribund Security Council. The new NSC was to be composed of
inner cabinet members and would allow for swift foreign and security policy
decision making.32 The NSC was also expected to give direction to the intelli-
gence community by issuing national requirements and incorporating the intel-
ligence produced in response directly into its policy deliberations. Thus the
NSC was intended to effectively implement an intelligence cycle between the
Prime Minister’s Office and intelligence community. Unfortunately, the sudden
resignation of Abe in September 2007 preempted these plans.
Weak Protective Security

Beyond problems managing the intelligence interagency function, the lack of
common and robust protective security standards across the Japanese govern-
ment has also contributed to the reluctance of the various intelligence agencies
to share intelligence with one another. Japan has neither an official secrets
statute nor a single, consistent security clearance system. Each intelligence

apparatus has different security standards and procedures. For instance, MOD
has a relatively strict security procedure, whereas MOFA does not have any
system at all. If MOD were to pass top secret information to MOFA, MOFA
would not need to treat the information as top secret. As a result, MOD hesi-
tates to share information with other ministries.
The long-term problem with poor protective security policy and a weak
counterespionage system is less the extent of compromise of specific sensitive
items in relation to an adversary or rival than the degree to which this inade-
quate policy and system undermines trust between the intelligence community’s
organizations. And trust is essential for effective information sharing and opera-
tional cooperation. But since 1945, Japan has struggled with an almost ineffec-
tual counterintelligence and security system.
Before World War II, under the Military Secrets Law and the National
Defense Security Law, foreigners involved in spying activities or their Japanese
agents could be punished ‘‘with the death penalty or unlimited penal servitude
with a minimum of three years.’’33 This was considered an adequate deterrent,
despite the damage done by the Soviet-controlled agent Richard Sorege. How-
ever, at the end of the war, when these laws were abolished, there was no
legislation put in place covering a counterintelligence structure. When the Ras-
tropov incident came to light in 1954, and the deputy head of MOFA was
prosecuted for collaboration, the fact that the prosecution was brought under
the National Public Service Law concerning the duty of civil servants to main-
tain secrecy, which had a maximum sentence of no more than one year’s impris-
onment, showed that the existing legislation was inadequate. Actually, Japan
was a ‘‘Spy Heaven’’ for Soviet spies during the Cold War period. The inade-
quacy of both the security system and available punishments was further dem-
onstrated over a decade with a succession of spy scandals, including the
Kononov (1971), Miyanaga (1980), and Levchenko (1982) Soviet espionage
cases, among others.34
After KGB major Stanislaw Levchenko’s 1982 defection to the United
States, he testified that a number of Soviet-controlled agents remained active
in Japan. This prompted something of a spy fever within the Japanese govern-
ment. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone tried to pass a State Secrets Bill in
June 1985, but he abandoned the effort as a result of furious public opposition.35
The need to deal effectively with foreign espionage was proving hard to recon-
cile with the legacy of World War II and a keenly felt distrust of anything
redolent of a ‘‘secret state’’ reminiscent of Imperial Japan among liberal voices
in the press and electorate. Unsurprisingly, contemporary Japanese politicians
hesitate to discuss security issues openly.
It is weaknesses such as these in the intelligence security system that act as
a barrier to the promotion of the exchange of intelligence between Japan and
194 / Ken Kotani
other countries. The US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, published

a famous report in 2000, The United States and Japan: Advancing towards a
Mature Partnership, which set the tone for the strengthening of United States–
Japan security cooperation as well as promoting the idea of US–Japanese coop-
eration in the intelligence arena. This report also called for increased
intelligence sharing within the Japanese government, increased participation
by the Japanese parliament in intelligence operations, and increased public and
political support for legislation concerning an Official Secrets Act or similar
type of legislation.36
Legislation concerning intelligence security relates to the duty of civil ser-
vants to maintain the secrecy of the National Public Service Law. As was men-
tioned above, the maximum penalty of national civil servants law is no more
than one year’s imprisonment; the November 2001 amendments pertaining to
military secrets to the Self-Defense Force Law, which covers government insti-
tutions as well as private corporations, set the maximum prison sentence at no
more than five years; and in connection to intelligence this law was received
from the United States within the framework of the Mutual Support Agree-
ment concerning Special Military Intelligence (Secrets Protection Law), and
the maximum sentence was set at no more than ten years.
The need for effective and resilient security policy has remained a difficult
issue. When Japan signed the General Security of Military Information Agree-
ment with the United States in August 2007, there was some hope that its
effects would reach beyond military secrets and help drive the development of
a comprehensive intelligence security system. Presently, according to expert
indications, at least 1,000 people are involved in activities within Japan on
behalf of China.37 The NPA officially warned about Chinese activities in Japan:
‘‘The way of Chinese information gathering is quite slick at hiring Japanese
agents, while they are creating friendly Sino-Japanese relations on a superficial
level.’’38 It is likely that several incidents could have been avoided if an effective
counterintelligence system had been in place.
There remains some hope that some form of antiespionage statute may yet
take shape. In August 2011 the Council of Advisers for Legislation on Security
Law submitted its report to the government. According to the report, the Japa-
nese government would introduce the Special Secrets Law, which covers
national security and secrets, and in case of an intentional leak of a secret, the
offender would be penalized with five or ten years of imprisonment.39 However,
the ruling party finally gave up its effort to enshrine the plan into law in March
2012.
The Weak Status of Intelligence and Politicization

Within the Japanese bureaucracy, intelligence duty has been undergraded and
has been considered an easy job for a long time. There is a common joke in
which intelligence officers of Japanese military forces are sometimes asked ‘‘Is
there anything wrong with your health?’’—implying that able-bodied men do
not do such work. During World War II there may have been intelligence
departments that existed to assess foreign intelligence in principle, but, in fact,
operational elements conducted their own intelligence appreciations with little
or no reference to the specialist intelligence cells. The best and brightest of the
army and navy were usually deployed to the operations branches, and the sec-
ond best were deployed to intelligence duties. Moreover, though both depart-
ments often had the same information sources, the operations staff members
believed that their assessment was superior to that of the intelligence staff.40
This trend was caused by the ambiguousness of the Japanese word commonly
used to denote ‘‘intelligence.’’
This problem has been exacerbated by the fact that the Japanese term for
‘‘intelligence’’ suffers from much the same ambiguity as the English term. In
Japanese the term joho can mean, variously, information in general, a finished
intelligence assessment, and intelligence from secret sources. The resulting
ambiguity has led to both confusion and conflict in Japanese intelligence prac-
tice. For military operations staffs, joho is taken to refer generically to ‘‘informa-
tion,’’ leading them to take the view that the job of an intelligence department
was to gather raw, mainly open information or data, such as newspaper clip-
pings. Operations elements had an exaggerated perception of their own role in
the Imperial Japanese Army and believed that they should perform the analytic
function. Conversely, intelligence staff took joho to mean analytic work and the
production of finished intelligence. They therefore believed that it was their
duty to analyze information and produce the finished appreciations that would
be incorporated into operational decision making and war planning. The gap
between the operations staff and the intelligence staff was so serious that the
chief of the army’s Intelligence Department was completely alienated from the
army’s war planning throughout much of the Pacific War. During the battle of
Guadalcanal, Major General Seizo Arisue, chief of army intelligence, realized
that his intelligence assessments had been neglected by the operations staff and
he resented integrating the Operations and Intelligence departments.41 This
failure to both integrate and exploit intelligence in the command process con-
tributed in significant part to the decisiveness of the Allied defeat of Japanese
forces during this campaign.
The situation has changed very little since the end of the war. Current
operations and policy personnel retain much the same primacy over intelligence
personnel in the Japanese bureaucracy, and intelligence assessments are hardly
used by policymakers. This unequal relationship can lead to both the marginali-
zation and politicization of intelligence in the making of Japanese foreign pol-
icy. For example, in September 1994 MOFA ignored the overseas information
that public security in Rwanda was getting worse, which resulted in significant
196 / Ken Kotani
delays in instructing MOD and the Self-Defense Forces to send peacekeeping

troops to the country.
Attitudes and Pace of Change

It has not been difficult to carry out several reform phases of the Japanese
intelligence machinery. Many officers understand the specific problems of Japa-
nese intelligence, but they are not willing to reform it rapidly. The biggest
problem is the serious friction among ministries and, most important, which
ministry can take the initiative to set up new intelligence machinery. Currently
the NPA is the most influential power in Japanese intelligence circles, covering
not only internal intelligence but also overseas intelligence, signal intelligence,
and imaginary intelligence, as well as controlling CIRO. CIRO, MOFA, MOD,
and the PSIA are concerned that the current round of intelligence reforms
would not be seen by the police as being in their interests, resulting in intense
resistance from the strongest element of the Japanese intelligence community.
It is unlikely that any effective intelligence reform can take shape until the
sectionalism and bureaucratic infighting have been resolved.
The other problem is the attitude of politicians toward intelligence. Intelli-
gence has been nothing more than a role fulfilling successive prime ministers’
intellectual curiosity. They do not need intelligence analysis in their policy-
making; nor do they trust this analysis, and they prefer to get information from
newspapers than from the intelligence services. For example, at the end of
November 1941, two weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese political
and war leaders expected that the United States would be willing to compro-
mise diplomatically with Japan. The Japanese prime minister and foreign minis-
ter had obtained supposedly ‘‘secret’’ information from a November 25 New
York Times article, but the source of this article was the Chinese ambassador to
the United States, whose purpose was to confuse diplomatic talks between the
United States and Japan; the next day, the United States submitted a sort of
ultimatum to Japan that gave the optimistic Japanese leaders a terrific shock.
And Japan’s intelligence practice has improved little since then. Moreover,
Japanese leaders also place a great deal of weight on public opinion, which is
typically apathetic when not actively averse to intelligence matters. Nonethe-
less, the spy scandals of the 1980s have had a lasting impact on the thinking of
Japanese political leaders vis-à-vis intelligence.
The pace of Japanese intelligence reform is very slow, but there are signs of
some steady progress. At last, in April 2008, CIRO assigned five intelligence
analysts to the Japanese Joint Intelligence Committee, taking the British
Assessment Staff as its model. The Joint Intelligence Committee’s analytic
team is allowed to access any intelligence of the government and is tasked to
produce National Intelligence Estimates for the Cabinet Intelligence Commit-
tee. CIRO has also set up the Counter-Intelligence Center, whose duty is to
supervise the national security activities of the Japanese government. It appears

likely that the Japanese government will resolve its tangle of bureaucratic inter-
ests through collegial system models based on the United Kingdom’s Joint Intel-
ligence Organisation. But the success of this effort will depend fundamentally
on the Japanese government’s ability to grapple with the internecine rivalries
and running disputes that have characterized the Japanese intelligence commu-
nity since its inception.
Notes
1. Ken Kotani, Japanese Intelligence in World War II (Oxford: Osprey, 2009), 12–71.
2. Kazuo Kamaga, ‘‘Daitoa Senso ni Okeru Ango-sen to Gendai Ango’’ (Covert War
in the Pacific War and Modern Code), Dodai Kurabu Keizai Konwakai (Tokyo) 2 (1989):
186–90.
3. Hajime Kitaoka, ‘‘Sengo Nihon no Interijensu’’ (Japanese Intelligence after World
War II), in Interijensu no 20 Seiki (Intelligence in the 20th Century), edited by Terumasa
Nakanishi and Ken Kotani (Tokyo: Chikura Shobo, 2007), 166–78.
4. Mikio Haruna, Himitsu no Fairu; CIA no Tainichi Kousaku (Jou) (Secret Files; CIA’s
Covert Activities in Japan, vol. 1) (Tokyo: Kyodotsusin, 2000), 521–30.
5. Order for the organization of the Cabinet Office, no. 219, July 31, 1952, www.cas
.go.jp/jp/hourei/seirei/naikaku_s.html.
6. Oros’s article is a comprehensive study of the present Japanese intelligence commu-
nity; Andrew Oros, ‘‘Japan’s Growing Intelligence Capability,’’ International Journal of Intelli-
gence and Counterintelligence, 15, no. 1 (2002).
7. Ibid., 6.
8. Sankei, March 29, 2004.
9. Asahi, September 23, 2011.
10. Taigai Joho Kinou Kyouka ni Kansuru Kondankai (Committee of Enhancement of
Overseas Intelligence), www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/release/17/rls_0913a.html.
11. Yahiro Okoda, Migu 25 Jiken no Shinsou (The Truth of the MiG-25 Incident) (Tokyo:
Gakushu Kenkyusha, 2001).
12. Council on Security and Defense Capabilities, Japan’s Visions for Future Security and
Defense Capabilities, www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/ampobouei/dai13/13siryou.pdf.
13. ‘‘Taigai joho no kinou kyouka ni mukete,’’ www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/release/17/
pdfs/rls_0913a.pdf.
14. PHP Research Institute, ed., Nihon no Interijensu Taisei: Henkaku heno Rood Mappu
(Japanese Intelligence: A Road Map to Transformation) (Tokyo: PHP Research Institute, 2006),
http://research.php.co.jp/research/risk_management/policy/data/seisaku01_teigen33_00.pdf.
15. Liberal Democratic Party, Kokka no joho kinou kyouka ni kansurr teigen (Report of
Enhancement of National Intelligence), www.jimin.jp/jimin/seisaku/2006/pdf/seisaku-
016.pdf.
16. Cabinet Office, Kantei ni okeru joho kihou no kyouka no houshin (The Improvement of
Intelligence Functions of the Prime Minister’s Office), www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/zyouhou/
080214kettei.pdf.
17. Cabinet Office, Kaunta interijyensu kinou no kyouka ni okeru kihon houshin (Improve-
ment of Counterintelligence Functions), www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/counterintelligence/pdf/
basic_decision_summary.pdf.
198 / Ken Kotani
18. ‘‘Anzenhosyou to boueiryoku ni kansuru kondankai (Dai 4 kai),’’ www.kantei.go.jp/

jp/singi/ampobouei2/dai4/gijisidai.html.
19. Paul Maddrell, ‘‘Failing Intelligence: US Intelligence in the Age of Transnational
Threats,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence 22, no. 2 (2009): 215.
20. ‘‘Abduction of Japanese Citizens by North Korea,’’ www.rachi.go.jp/index.html.
21. Philip Davies, ‘‘Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure in Britain and the
United States,’’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2004): 518.
22. Yoshio Omori, Nihon no Interigensu Kikan (Japanese Intelligence Agency) (Tokyo:
Bunshun Shinsho, 2005), 37–38.
23. Shiro Inoue, Shogen Senji Bundan-shi: Joho-kyoku Bungeika-cho no Tsubuyaki (Witness
on a Literary World: A Memoir of the Chief of Literature Section of the Intelligence Bureau)
(Tokyo: Ningen no Kagakusha, 1984), 8.
24. Yuzuru Sanematsu, Joho Senso (Intelligence War) (Tokyo: Tosho Shuppansha, 1972),
232.
25. PHP Research Institute, Nihon no Interijensu Taisei, 22.
26. Oros, ‘‘Japan’s Growing Intelligence Capability,’’ 6–8.
28. Ibid., 23.
29. Mark Lowenthal, Intelligence from Secret to Policy, 2nd ed. (Washington: CQ Press,
2003), 144.
30. Bouei Kenshujyo Senshisitsu hen (National Institute for Defense Studies, Military
History Department), ed. Senshi So-sho, Daitoua Sensou Kaisen Keii, 5 (Military History
Series, The Process of the Outbreak of the Pacific War, War History, vol. 5) (Tokyo: Asa-
gumo Shuppansha, 1974), 569–70.
31. Richard Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Secu-
rity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 192.
32. Hitoshi Yuuichirou, Nihon ban NSC no Kadai (Issues of Japanese NSC), Issue Brief
548, National Diet Library, 2006, 8–9, www.ndl.go.jp/jp/data/publication/issue/0548.pdf.
33. Minoo Hidaka, Gunki Hogo-ho (Military Secret Act) (Tokyo: Haneda Shoten, 1937),
24.
34. Gaiji Jiken Kenkyu Kai (Study Group for Spy Incidents), Sengo no Gaiji Jiken (Spy
Incidents after World War II) (Tokyo: Tokyo Hourei Shuppan, 2007); Stan Levchenko, On
the Wrong Side: My Life in the KGB (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 1988).
35. Masashi Kaneko, ‘‘Nihon no intelligence community’’ (Japan’s Intelligence Commu-
nity), in Sekai no Intelligence (World Intelligence) (Tokyo: PHP Shuppan, 2007), 123.
36. Institute for National Strategic Studies, ‘‘The United States and Japan: Advancing
towards a Mature Partnership,’’ INSS Special Report, 2000, http://se2.isn.ch/serviceengine/
FileContent?serviceID⳱10&fileid⳱DF76B344-40F0-95E9-10AB-431693ADE1A7&lng⳱en.
38. ‘‘The 50 Years of Security Police,’’ Shouten (Focus), no. 269 (September 2004): 43.
39. ‘‘Report of the Council of Advisers for Legislation on Security Law,’’ http://
202.232.146.151/jp/singi/jouhouhozen/housei_kaigi/konkyo.pdf.
40. Kotani, Japanese Intelligence, 103–8.
41. Itsiji Sugita, Joho Naki Senso Shido (Conducting War without Intelligence) (Tokyo:
Hara Shobo, 1987), 127.
CHAPTER 11
The Processes and Mechanisms

of Developing a Democratic
Intelligence Culture in Ghana
Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, Emma Birikorang,
and Ernest Ansah Lartey
W
ith the possible exception of South Africa, Ghana is one of the few
states in Sub-Saharan Africa with a historical intelligence culture.
This is unique in postindependence Africa, where the use and abuse
of intelligence became more focused on regime protection and its sustainability.
In Ghana, however, because of the particular nature of the leadership of the
country’s independence struggle, when it won its independence in 1957, a key
focus of its leaders became establishing institutions, structures, and procedures
for the use of intelligence to serve national interests—though certainly, in some
instances, for the misapplication of intelligence to serve the regime. Admit-
tedly, some of these structures had existed and been used by the colonial power
against the independence struggle. Nonetheless, this tradition and institution-
alization of the processes and mechanisms for the application of intelligence to
serve multiple interests has continued throughout all phases of Ghana’s politi-
cal development. Over the past fifty years these unique processes have been
developing, yet very little scholarly work has been undertaken to appreciate
the complexities, challenges, and milieu within which Ghana’s intelligence
community has functioned and, over time, developed a particular culture.1
/ 199 /
200 / Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, Emma Birikorang, and Ernest Ansah Lartey
This chapter examines the history and practice of intelligence in Ghana by

analyzing the context within which such practices have become an ongoing
aspect of Ghana’s political culture. Although the chapter is not necessarily a
straightforward historical account, there is no doubt that any such exercise
(especially within the context in which this analysis is being undertaken) must
review the historical/regime epochs in Ghana and discuss what was unique in
those periods. But even more critically, though different regime types have used
intelligence for multiple purposes, the reintroduction of democracy in Ghana
under the Fourth Republican Constitution of 1992, after several years of mili-
tary interventions in politics, contributed to the most dramatic change in pub-
lic perception and appreciation of how intelligence is gathered and used,
marked with the introduction in 1996 of specific intelligence guidelines.
Almost two decades later, there have been few revisions. Part of this chapter’s
aims are to evaluate the extent to which the introduction of specific rules of
engagement has contributed to a more effective and responsive use of intelli-
gence in Ghana. Security and governance often go hand in hand in African
politics. However, the extent to which these two political factors have contrib-
uted to the democratic development of most African states continues to remain
a subject of controversy among African governments, policymakers, and schol-
ars. Although a few African states have managed to establish positive connec-
tions between these two factors, the majority are still struggling to negotiate
the appropriate synergies that will further catalyze the kind of security and
governance structures that will ultimately promote the well-being of their
populations.
In Ghana a critical observation of the postindependence political landscape
reveals a rather tense, suspicious, and fractured ‘‘cooperation’’ between the
security sector and the political administration until 1992, when the country
made a democratic transition that has endured in open and competitive multi-
party pluralism to this date. Hitherto, the country had experienced a protracted
period of political instability with a systematic decline in key governance and
security indicators such as human rights and multiparty pluralism. But the post-
1992 constitutional era has seen a consistent deepening of these democratic
norms such as human rights, the rule of law, multiparty participation, and a
peaceful transfer of political power through democratic elections. Thus far there
has been an expanding landscape in the political system, allowing for more
political party inclusiveness and citizens’ participation.
The last decade and a half have thus had encouraging implications for the
continued growth of democratic developments vis-à-vis the security sector in
Ghana. It requires that the security sector operates within a specific legal frame-
work that authorizes their establishment, functions, and operations. As a result,
it also means that they operate under civilian oversight structures that promote
greater democratic principles such as transparency and accountability. To gain
Developing a Democratic Intelligence Culture in Ghana / 201
support from, and the loyalty of, the public, this also means forging closer syner-
gies among the various actors in the sector, and adopting dynamic approaches
that respond to human rights concerns while safeguarding the national interest.
One of the important challenges to attaining these goals is the question of
the intelligence sector in Ghana and the extent to which it can be brought
under effective, accountable, and transparent democratic oversight and freed
from its historical baggage of intimidation and violence. Since 2009 the sector
has come under severe public criticisms.2 These criticisms have mostly centered
on human rights abuses, which suggest in many ways that the intelligence ser-
vices still retain some of their pre-1992 makeup that allowed them to intimidate
and harass citizens and political opponents under the authoritarian regimes of
the past.3 The question is: Has the intelligence culture in Ghana always proved
adversarial to the democratic development of the country? What impact have
the democratic processes made on the intelligence services in Ghana? This
chapter investigates the answers to these questions by tracing the history of the
intelligence services in Ghana to the preindependence era, followed by an anal-
ysis of the evolving service since postindependence, through the various politi-
cal dispensations that the country has experienced, and how these experiences
and challenges have contributed to shaping the intelligence culture in Ghana.
Evolving an Intelligence Culture in Ghana

Ghana attained self-rule in 1951 and, eventually, independence from the Brit-
ish in March 1957. This was an occasion for optimism, great euphoria, and an
abiding sense of national pride, when the prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah,
declared Ghana’s independence as a test case for the black man to demonstrate
his ability to govern. Certainly for Ghana and now also for Africa, the one
person whose name has been widely associated as being the most instrumental
in rekindling the drive for independence was Nkrumah, Ghana’s first prime
minister and then president. Although this was a period of great optimism, it
was also marked by grave antagonism, political hatred, and divisiveness between
the different political groups that had fought the British for Ghana’s indepen-
dence. The two groups were the United Gold Coast Convention, which was
transformed into the United Party, having led the renewed process for indepen-
dence from the beginning of the 1940s under the slogan ‘‘Independence within
the Shortest Possible Time,’’ and Nkrumah’s more radical Convention People’s
Party (CPP), which used the slogan ‘‘Self-Government Now.’’
Part of the source of tensions between these two parties—which had impli-
cations for the development of an intelligence culture in Ghana—was the fact
that Nkrumah had been invited home from the United Kingdom by the United
Gold Coast Convention to become its general secretary, but he had eventually
broken away from his mentors. Such was the depth of this antagonism between
the two parties that security and intelligence delivery in the immediate post-
independence period also became tainted by it, and most liberal interpretations
of intelligence and security during Nkrumah’s stewardship between 1951 and
1966 have been examined through this lens.4 For example, according to Kofi
Quantson, even at independence, there were signs of the possible national
security problems that the country could face: ‘‘These indications emanated
from the fact that independence was not achieved with a general political una-
nimity. Very far from that. Independence was achieved in a poisonous atmo-
sphere riddled with an acrimonious political divisiveness and unconcealed
hatred between Nkrumah’s CPP government and the combined opposition
forces, the United Party. . . . Independence was attained on a virtually winner/
loser basis with Nkrumah’s CPP feeling openly buoyant and triumphant and
opposition forces feeling naturally peeved, even frustrated and cheated.’’5
This situation set the tone for a particular type of divisive politics and
national security challenges that confronted the country. In the face of this
animus Nkrumah did not make any attempts at national unity, but further
alienated himself from the opposition by employing the national security appa-
ratus as a personal defense force for his regime against opposition elements.
Also, in the period immediately preceding and following independence, there
were at least four assassination attempts against Nkrumah; fingers were naturally
pointed at his political detractors.6 As a result of these persistent threats, the
Security Services Bill was eventually passed in 1963. This resulted in counter-
measures aimed at the opposition, and the strong security measures to deal with
the menace would be loud enough to push for measures that could veer toward
repression and suppression.7
It is widely acknowledged that even though intelligence activities were evi-
dent in Ghana before independence in 1957, it took the seminal events of the
February 1948 riots—when veterans of World War II marched to Osu Castle,
the official seat of the colonial administration—to demand from the British
fulfillment of promises that had been made before their participation in the
war. The spate of violence and stealth with which this march had been orga-
nized compelled the British colonial administration to establish a formal intelli-
gence institution with surveillance, analysis, and data storage capability known
as the Special Branch, which was an offshoot of the colonial police administra-
tion and the Reserve Unit. It became obvious that the colonial administration
did not anticipate the intensity and spread of the 1948 riots given its existing
security apparatus. A major security failure was perceived by the regular police
service, leading to the establishment of the Special Branch, which was to focus
on the collection of vital political and security information concerned with
individuals thought to be indulging in subversive activities. The Reserve Unit
was used to quell street protests and other demonstrations.
The intelligence structure and culture under Nkrumah were similar to what
had existed during the colonial period. However, the exigencies of Nkrumah’s
Pan-Africanist outlook, as well as the Cold War confrontation between the
Communist and Western political blocs, in 1958 necessitated the formation of
an external intelligence capability, which was known as the Foreign Service
Research Bureau and was attached to the Foreign Ministry.8 As noted by Johnny
Kwadjo, the primary reason for the bureau’s formation was to acquire ‘‘reliable
intelligence and counterintelligence capability’’ that would allow the regime
to maintain its political independence while the East/West bipolar ideological
hostilities raged on, as they might, and their protagonists came to have antago-
nistic or self-interested relations with the Nkrumah regime. As a result, the
presidency ‘‘carved out an elite corps from the Foreign Ministry’s Research
Bureau to form the African Affairs Secretariat, which came under the adminis-
trative and operational control of the Presidency.’’9
In the early years of postindependence Ghana, the Special Branch also
became a tool for general security appreciation in the country, and also increas-
ingly for identifying and arresting persons who were perceived to be threats to
the personal security of President Nkrumah. The Special Branch, together with
several newly established institutions such as the Presidential Detail Depart-
ment and the President’s Own Guard Regiment, became the agencies responsi-
ble for the protection of the president. By 1958 there was a clear sense that
a ‘‘new’’ and decidedly political form of intelligence was beginning to take
shape—namely, the separation of intelligence into two facets: domestic intelli-
gence dealing with internal matters, and external intelligence dealing with
Nkrumah’s obsession with the anticolonial struggle in Africa. As a result, a
culture of limited oversight developed, whereby allocated funds were sometimes
classified as available for broad ‘‘intelligence purposes’’ and placed under the
personal control of trusted senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.10
According to Kwadjo, the usage of intelligence for regime protection pur-
poses started in the immediate postindependence period and became the focus
of domestic intelligence across the colonial and postindependence eras. There
was no difference between the outlook of the new intelligence services of this
emerging, new postcolonial state and what had preceded it. Rather, it used the
colonial police culture of heavy-handedness and harassment to intimidate the
citizenry.11 This period was marked, effectively, by the inappropriate use of the
national security apparatus and the judiciary against opposition elements.
According to Quantson, the direct intervention of the executive in the trial of
cases against the opposition created security challenges, because this was
regarded as the ‘‘crucifixion of due process for political expediency.’’12 This was
the beginning of a dangerous intelligence and national security culture in
Ghana, in which the judiciary, intelligence services, and national security
apparatus like the police and the military became extended arms of the execu-
tive, with minimal control and oversight. As a result, these agencies catered for
regime security and not to the broader national security interest, such that with
every new government that came to power, the first appointment focused on
changes of the inspector general of police, the chief of Defense Staff, the
national security coordinator, the chief of the Naval Staff, the head of military
intelligence, the head of external intelligence (the Research Department of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and the head of the Bureau of National Investiga-
tion (BNI). This has become the accepted security culture in Ghana—that all
top appointees in the security and intelligence services will be changed when-
ever there is a new political administration.
From 1958 onward, Ghana operated an elaborate intelligence system with
an emerging culture with both internal and external capabilities, though with
clear oversight differences. Proper coordination and coherence of culture
among these capabilities remained doubtful because their collective efforts
failed to uncover the coup d’état that eventually toppled the regime in 1966.
Several questions arise with respect to the initial hesitant attempts at establish-
ing institutions with their distinctive culture. In particular, what has been the
impact of military coups and regimes on the intelligence and security sector in
Ghana? To fully answer this question, we provide a chronology of key political
developments in Ghana in table 11.1, which indicates a high level of political
instability and the institutional hollowing-out that followed each change of
government and its attendant divisiveness. In all these developments, the role
of the security services, especially the military and the intelligence services, has
critically contributed to either the attainment or retention of power by leaders
or their abuse against Ghanaian citizens who have been perceived as enemies
of the regime in power.
A closer look at the political past of Ghana indicates that there have been
several instances where, for the sake of a perverted sense of national security,
individual security and community security have been sacrificed. This has
resulted in atrocities being committed against people merely upon suspicion of
engaging in activities that were unilaterally deemed to threaten national secu-
rity. National security has deliberately been confused with regime security. This
phenomenon has enabled the ruling regime to subject opponents—real and
imagined—to brutal treatment for committing acts of subversion. The BNI and
the Military Intelligence Unit (MIU), the two foremost domestic intelligence
agencies, have thus become synonymous with political brutality.
A major concern for the intelligence sector is that in the wake of military
coups d’état, newly established regimes quickly take over to redirect the work
of the intelligence services to their own safety and often subsume intelligence
command and responsibility structures under the military leadership, creating a
highly politicized and militarized intelligence sector that works solely toward
Table 11.1 Ghana’s Political History and Regime Types
Date or Period Regime Type Name of Regime Leader Comment
1951–57 Self-government Democratic, key functions of Kwame Nkrumah (leader of Gained full independence for
foreign, defense, finance, and government business) Ghana in 1957 and became
intelligence under British prime minister and eventually
colonial administration president
March 6, 1957 Democratic Convention People’s Party Kwame Nkrumah Overthrown by military with
Central Intelligence Agency
support in 1966
August 29, 1969 Democratic Progress Party Kofi Abrefa Busia Overthrown by military in
January 1972
January 13, 1972 Military dictatorship National Redemption Council Ignatius Kutu Acheampong Internal power play leading to
change of name to Supreme
Military Council I and II
June 4, 1979 Revolutionary military junta Armed Forces Revolutionary Jerry John Rawlings Held power for four months
Council and organized elections
September 24, 1979 Democratic People’s National Party Hilla Limann Overthrown by Jerry Rawlings
in December 1981
December 31, 1981 Military/civilian dictatorship Provisional National Defence Jerry Rawlings Ruled until 1992 when
Council (PNDC) transformed PNDC into
political party, National
Democratic Congress and
fourth Republication
Constitution promulgated
January 1992 Democratic National Democratic Congress Jerry Rawlings Served two terms until
defeated in elections in 2000
January 2001 Democratic New Patriotic Party John Agyekum Kufuor Served two terms and party
defeated in 2008 elections
January 2009 Democratic National Democratic Congress John Evans Atta-Mills Current president of Ghana
Source: Authors’ data.
the protection of the regime.13 After the 1966 coup, for instance, it was realized
that most of the key elements within the Criminal Investigations Department
of the Police Service and the Special Branch had been instrumental in staging
the coup.14 This became apparent when they took up key appointments in the
new military government of the National Liberation Council (NLC). To ensure
the protection of the NLC regime, the government established the MIU while
disbanding the African Affairs Secretariat that had been functioning in the
previous regime. This probably marked the beginning of the militarization of
the internal intelligence architecture in Ghana.
The role of the MIU was to ensure that successive governments came into
being through means other than the military. The paradox is that whereas the
MIU was created to ensure regime security, it nevertheless became the focus for
regime instability under subsequent military rulers. Kwadjo aptly asked: ‘‘Which
was worse: repeated acts of conspiracy to overthrow the state perpetrated by
elements in the security agencies or the persistent failure of the security estab-
lishment to thwart these coups?’’15 Between 1966, when the first coup took
place, and 1979, when the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council took over
power following a military uprising, the MIU had facilitated two military coups
d’état that brought into power the National Redemption Council (NRC) in
1972 and the Supreme Military Council (SMC) in 1978.16 Even though the
Armed Forces Revolutionary Council ensured a smooth democratic transition
of power, it later emerged again on the political scene as the Provisional
National Defence Council (PNDC) following the 1981 coup that overthrew
the civilian government it had initially installed.
In effect, not only did the emergence of the MIU trigger a spiral of military
incursions into national politics in the country, it also ultimately led to a loss
of trust and credibility in the entire intelligence services. The MIU was later
disbanded after the 1981 coup d’état as a regime-protection strategy. It should
be said that during all this, the focus of the internal intelligence continued to
remain regime protection, with the increased politicization and militarization
of the sector. The need to overhaul the entire security system became impera-
tive not only as a political expediency but also to craft a new intelligence
architecture that would remain independent of the military and police.
Predemocratic Era Regime Policies in Support of Intelligence Sector

In a bid to streamline and legitimize the endeavor to establish and operationa-
lize Ghana’s intelligence institutions, policies have been enacted to support the
intelligence and security services in their activities. Even though such policies
are not extensively discussed in this chapter, mention is made of them because
they set the precedent for successive governments to modify them to suit their
own purposes. These laws legitimized and became a justification for state secu-
rity agencies to violate human rights, as ‘‘protection of national security’’
became the justification for the commission of acts of violence against citizens.
Thus, a culture emerged in which, under the rubrics of ‘‘national security’’ and
‘‘national interest,’’ anyone suspected of breaching the amorphous concept of
national security automatically forfeited their human rights, and anything done
to them became acceptable.17 The frequency and ease with which these laws
were passed demonstrate the lack of national consensus in their formulation,
and were merely a tool employed by the executive to perpetrate violence against
citizens. For example, the Preventive Detention Act, which had a five-year limit
for detention without charge, was passed early in 1958 by the CPP to be used
to curb the activities of those whose acts were perceived as dangerous to the
security of the new state. Thus, persons could be arrested, detained, and ques-
tioned, but they would remain in detention even without trial if considered a
national security threat by the regime.18
The Law on Protective Custody was passed by the government of the NLC,
which overthrew Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. This law contained its own version
of detention without trials. The passage of the Elections and Public Officers
Disqualification Decrees in 1968 (NLCD 223) debarred persons associated with
the CPP from holding any appointment in the public service for a period of ten
years, starting January 10, 1968. This provision, as instituted by the NLC, not
only deprived the persons concerned of their right to work in any field they
chose, but also made them subject to public ridicule and impoverished them
and their dependents.
The Subversion Decree of 1972 (NRCD 90), under which civilians were
tried by military law and tribunals, continued under the government of the
NRC. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Decree of 1973 (NRCD 236) pro-
vided for the detention for an indeterminate period in military barracks,
ordered by regional commissioners, for offenses involving financial loss to the
state. The law on protective custody continued throughout the regimes of the
NRC and the SMC I and II. During this period all functionaries, however lowly,
were put in prison merely for having been officials of the ousted ruling political
party; this law was used to intimidate and deter political opposition.
During the period of NRC rule there was no independent press, but the
government found itself so much the subject of rumors that it passed the Prohi-
bition of Rumours Decree of 1973 (NRCD 82). The decree was repealed a year
later, however, because the government had acquired the image of an intolerant
and repressive regime, fueling yet more popular discontent. The SMC passed
another law, the Prohibition of Rumours Decree of 1977 (SMCD 92), in the
heat of the anti-union-government campaign.19 The Preventive Detention Law
of 1982 (PNDCL 4), which was first introduced during Nkrumah’s regime,
would later be promulgated by the PNDC, which came to power by overthrowing
President Hilla Limann in 1981. Under this law, persons classified as dangerous
to national security could be arrested and detained for long periods without trial.
Another law, the Habeas Corpus (Amendment) Law of 1984 (PNDCL 92), was
promulgated to prohibit the courts from examining the grounds upon which
anyone had been detained. With these types of laws in effect, all manner of
persons were therefore detained, often based upon mere allegation or suspicion
of wrongdoing, and they were not given the benefit of a fair judicial review.
Building a Democratic Intelligence Culture in Ghana

To further strengthen the security sector in a way that conformed to democratic
norms, a new legal regime was introduced in 1996, during the second elected
administration of President Jerry Rawlings. The Security and Intelligence
Agencies Act of 1996 (Act 526) became the reference point for all the intelli-
gence sectors in the country. This new legislation effectively established the
National Security Council (NSC) and outlined its composition as the presi-
dent, the vice president, and the ministers in charge of foreign affairs, defense,
the interior, and finance. The president may also appoint any other ministers
whose portfolios may fall on a specific subject as may be deemed fit for security
purposes. The rest of the members are:
$ the chief of the Defense Staff and two other members of the Armed
Forces;
$ the inspector-general of police and two other members of the Police Ser-
vice, one of whom shall be the commissioner of police responsible for
the Criminal Investigations Department;
$ the director-general of the Prison Service;
$ the director of external intelligence;
$ the director of internal intelligence;
$ the director of the MIU;
$ the commissioner of the Customs, Excise, and Preventive Service; and
$ three persons appointed by the president.20
The NSC operates directly under the presidency. Act 526 further sets the
functions of the NSC, one of which is its responsibility ‘‘for implementing
government policies on security and attendant issues on or relating to the inter-
nal and external security of Ghana and to provide for related matters.’’21
Act 526 also provides for the appointment of a national security coordinator
who will coordinate the intelligence agencies and their activities across the
country. In particular, the coordinator will oversee the regional and district
security councils, which also have compositions well spelled out in the act.22
Under section III of the act, the BNI and the Research Department are respon-
sible, respectively, for internal and external intelligence for the country. Their
focus is crosscutting and touches on all facets and dimensions of national secur-
ity as it pertains to country and its citizens.23 The MIU also operates under the
Anti-Terrorism Act of 2008 (Act 762), and it is mandated to monitor terrorism-

related activities (including smuggling and trafficking activities), money laun-
dering, and the financing of terrorism. The Defence Intelligence Service also
supports the National Security Agency. The intelligence service is making use
of Ghana’s navy and air force for its operations. There has also been established
a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which is an operational committee under
the NSC (established by the Constitution) and chaired by the national security
coordinator. The JIC meets weekly and oversees participation in meetings by
the Ghana Police Service; the Bureau of National Investigation; the Narcotics
Control Board; the Customs, Excise, and Preventive Service; the Ghana Immi-
gration Service; the Serious Fraud Office; the MIU; the Fire Service Depart-
ment; and the Ghana Prison Service.
The JIC, which has a twenty-four-hour operations room, is established
under the NSC and operates using Israeli technology. In particular, the role of
the national security coordinator is important. This position is appointed by
the president in accordance with Article 195 of the Constitution, and the
functions are to coordinate on a day-to-day basis the activities of the national,
regional, and district security councils and the activities of the intelligence
agencies; to collate and evaluate intelligence reports relating to national secu-
rity, and to ensure dissemination of the information within the government as
appropriate; to determine, in consultation with the director of the intelligence
agencies, the human resources requirements of the intelligence agencies; and
to assist the relevant intelligence agency to gather defense intelligence, both
internal and external, and to use the information to detect and prevent threats
to the security of the republic.
A security adviser is also attached to the government, and his or her office
is located right at the heart of government, in Osu Castle in Accra. This position,
which was created in 2009, is different from the national security coordinator.
Closely related to the emerging complex institutional processes is the establish-
ment of a Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).24 The FIC is located within the
Ministry for Finance and Economic Planning, and its mandate under sections 4
and 6 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2008 (Act 749) is to process, ana-
lyze, disseminate, and interpret information disclosed to or obtained by the cen-
ter in terms of the act; to retain the information in the manner and for the
period required under the act; to inform, advise, and cooperate with investigating
authorities, supervisory bodies, the revenue agencies, and the intelligence agen-
cies and their foreign counterparts; and to monitor and give guidance to account-
able institutions, supervisory bodies, and other persons on the discharge of their
duties and in compliance with the act. The FIC has the mandate under sections
28 and 29 of Act 749 to access information directly or indirectly from reporting
entities, supervisory bodies, and public agencies. The FIC is operationally
required to work closely with law enforcement agencies, the Attorney General’s
Department, and other government and private-sector agencies.
Parliamentary Oversight of the Intelligence and Security Sectors

Taking into consideration the history of the development of intelligence insti-
tutions in Ghana and the manner in which these have been exploited for paro-
chial and sectional interests, two critical questions emerge.25 Does Ghana’s
Parliament have the necessary powers, capacity, and political will to provide
effective oversight of the security sector? What roles can civil society organiza-
tions play in relation to parliamentary oversight of the security sector? Here, we
examine the functionality and effectiveness of parliamentary oversight of the
security sector. It can be argued that though oversight of the security sector has
improved since the return to democratic rule in 1992, the legacy of military
control and the culture of secrecy still remain.
Parliamentary power in Ghana, even though constitutionally strong,
remains weak relative to the executive. There are two main oversight commit-
tees of Parliament whose work touches on the intelligence community. The
first of these is the Parliamentary Select Committee on Defence and Interior
(PSCD&I). The PSCD&I has 18 members out of the total parliamentary mem-
bership of 230. Their responsibility is to ‘‘examine all questions relating to
defense and internal affairs in Ghana.’’26 The committee, however, has no clear-
cut remit for oversight of the intelligence agencies. The committee has two key
powers: (1) investigations; and (2) inquiries into the activities and administra-
tion of ministries, departments, agencies, public organizations, and corpora-
tions, as Parliament may determine. Such investigations and inquiries may
extend to proposals for legislation.27 Other powers conferred on the committee
include all those of a high court for the purpose of enforcing the attendance of
witnesses, compelling the production of documents, and the issuing of commis-
sions for the examination of witnesses abroad.28 Despite the fact that the
PSCD&I has been vested with these powers, it seldom exercises them. There
are, however, various gaps in the mandates of the different committees with
direct and indirect oversight of the security sector. This becomes more glaring if
one sets their current operations against their broad mandates. What it means,
therefore, is that there is ample room for improving the oversight functions of
the PSCD&I.
The function of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the second of the
major oversight bodies, is ‘‘the examination of the audited accounts showing
the appropriation of the sums granted by Parliament to meet the public expen-
diture of the government and of such other accounts laid before Parliament.’’
The PAC examines public accounts in general and discusses the report of the
auditor-general. This activity provides the PAC with some measure of oversight
over the expenses of the military and other security agencies. The PAC’s mem-
bers thus are empowered to question the rationale behind the use of funds,
especially if funds are not being used according to the spirit and intent of their
rationale. They can also question the policy, as their writ extends beyond fidu-
ciary responsibility.29 Based on emerging parliamentary praxis, the chairman of
the PAC should be from the minority group in Parliament. This, to some extent,
allows the chairman to discharge his or her duties dispassionately. The Finance
Committee, another committee whose broad remit brings it into contact with
the intelligence community, deals with matters related to finance and the econ-
omy generally, but it has the authority where ‘‘there has arisen an urgent or
unforeseen need for expenditure . . . to authorize advances from the Contin-
gency Fund to meet the need and report to Parliament.’’ Furthermore, when
such an advance has been made, the committee is bound to ensure that ‘‘supple-
mentary estimates for replacement of the advance are prepared and laid before
the House.’’30 So far, however, the Finance Committee, like the PAC and the
PSCD&I, has not flexed any muscle on intelligence oversight issues.
Parliament needs better institutional capacity to exercise its mandated over-
sight functions, together with the resources to enable and sustain such changes.
Furthermore, existing legislation limits effective oversight, whereas frequent
shifts in personnel and the excessive politicization of oversight institutions
undermine an already weak human resource base. Parliament’s oversight role
needs to be complemented by the emergence of more security-conscious civil
society actors. A critical study of the powers, capacity, and political will of these
committees, and of the Ghanaian Parliament’s ability to carry out effective
oversight of the security sector, points to the following. First, the complex
nature of the security sector presents a challenge for effective oversight; some
issues are too technical for those without experience or training in security
issues, and committees lack specialized support staff to overcome this problem.
Excessive secrecy in national security matters frustrates effective parliamentary
oversight, because security agencies often invoke national security to inhibit
oversight of sensitive issues. There has also been a culture of self-censorship in
Parliament. The Security and Intelligence Agencies Act of 1996, Act 526, only
requires the executive to report to Parliament annually. However, it can be
interpreted as providing a broader mandate for parliamentary oversight. Unfor-
tunately, Act 526 does not provide for any systems of parliamentary oversight.
It provides no guidance on the composition, mode of selection, mandate, or
degree of access to sensitive information of oversight committees. In accordance
with Act 526, the reporting arrangement seeks to hold the security agencies
accountable and within the rule of law. However, the executive has often failed
to meet its obligation to report to Parliament on security issues. Party loyalty
and discipline limit oversight, because parliamentarians are unwilling to chal-
lenge members of government from their own party.
Toward Judicial Oversight

The role of the judiciary with respect to the protection of rights of individuals
in the country has never been felt more vigorously. Even though more attention
has been focused on the political class, recent judicial interpretations concern-
ing certain actions by the BNI are instructive and provide the opportunity to
consider the increasing role of the judiciary in the operations of the Ghanaian
intelligence services from a more critical perspective. In the view of the judi-
ciary, even though the BNI is legally bound to safeguard national security inter-
ests, it can only do so with proper recourse to legal procedures. Even though
the intelligence sector has seen a considerable degree of reforms in recent dec-
ades, it does appear that the key institutions such as the BNI have yet to fully
appreciate and respect the principles underpinning those critical reforms. This
observation is evident in the recent judicial rulings on the actions of the BNI.
There are three critical areas where the interface between the BNI and the
judiciary has produced some significant outcomes, the aim of which is to make
the BNI’s operations more responsive to human rights and the rule of law. The
first instance borders on the extent to which the BNI can curtail people’s free-
dom of movement when, indeed, such persons are suspected of corrupt prac-
tices. In the specific cases involving two former government officials who were
both prevented from traveling outside the country by the BNI, the courts
upheld that the BNI has no such powers to prevent such persons who are under
criminal investigations from traveling. The ruling directed that their passports,
which were hitherto seized by the BNI, should immediately be returned to
them. The courts further enjoined the BNI to refrain from the practice of cur-
tailing peoples’ ‘‘free movement without recourse to the courts.’’31
Second, the BNI has been criticized widely for being obsessively covert
when dealing with their potential political ‘‘clients.’’ The process of interrogat-
ing clients without them having access to their lawyers during the interrogation
is not uncustomary to the BNI. But as the country matures democratically, and
the frontier of human rights expands, such traditional methods of conducting
affairs in the intelligence services are increasingly being questioned. In another
court case, in which a third former government official accused the BNI of
refusing him access to a counsel during his encounter with them in 2009, the
court clearly ruled in his favor. The court held that ‘‘it was unconstitutional for
the BNI to deny . . . anybody access to a lawyer when in detention, a meeting
or a ‘friendly conversation’ while in the offices of the BNI.’’32 The court ruling
touches on specific provisions of the country’s Constitution. Thus the seizure
of hand-held devices such as the mobile telephones of people invited to the
BNI and not allowing them access to counsel during their interrogation were
in breach of Article 14 of the 1992 Constitution on the right of accused persons
to have access to counsel.33
Third, perhaps the most important dimension to this seemingly increasing

role of the judiciary in the operations of the security and intelligence sector has
to do with the internal reform processes that have been undertaken within the
judiciary itself. Ultimately, the pursuit of any judicial reform processes should
lead to faster adjudication of court cases, and thereby protect the human rights
of individuals and make the practice of the courts the epitome of the rule of
law. All these factors seem to be reflected in the recent encounters between the
judiciary and the security and intelligence services. Indeed, the introduction of
Fast Track High Courts has improved relatively the speed with which court
cases, especially those involving the security and intelligence services, are con-
ducted. Also, the Human Rights Division of the High Courts in Accra has, for
instance, made some important judgments (including the cases discussed above)
in which the human rights of the individuals involved have been upheld as
against that of the intelligence institution. The implication is that even though
the BNI is authorized by law to curtail an individual’s freedom of movement,
this can be done only if proper authorization has been sought from the court.34
In the case of the ex-minister whose right to hold a passport was restored, the
court demonstrated its adherence to the rule of law by asking him to notify it
any time he wanted to travel abroad. Therefore, in both ways, the courts have
sought to retain the centrality of their role in matters of the rule of law, espe-
cially between the security and intelligence services and the rights of the indi-
viduals involved.
Assessing the Compliance of the Intelligence

Services with Judicial Oversight
Consequently, it is important to find out the extent to which the BNI has
complied with these court rulings following its encounters with the courts. It is
important to note that since these developments occurred, the BNI has
responded positively to the decisions by the courts. In the first instance, it is
instructive to realize that the BNI, including the Attorney General’s Office, did
not appeal these court rulings. This may suggest the admissibility of the viola-
tions they had committed under the pertinent circumstances. Second, the
immediate return of the passports (as ordered by the courts) to those persons
without further interfering with their freedom of movement is also a positive
response by the BNI to the rule of law.
More significantly, subsequent to the ruling that the BNI must allow access
to counsel during questioning of their clients, there has been some compliance
with this ruling as well. Instances of this can be drawn from the recent cases
involving Asamoah Boateng and Herbert Mensah, who went through question-
ing at the BNI office in the company of their respective lawyers.35 In the case
of Mensah, the government Information Ministry stated that he ‘‘had been
questioned and his statement accordingly taken, in the company of his law-
yer.’’36 Such conduct by the BNI has been seen by many observers as a healthy
development for the country’s democracy and a deepening of the rule of law.
However, there are still difficulties in the way the BNI operates. For instance,
though the government argued that Mensah was questioned in the company of
his lawyer, the client argued that ‘‘he was interrogated on two occasions without
his lawyer and when he insisted on the presence of the lawyer, the BNI officials
said it was an informal session and therefore did not require his lawyer.’’37 The
position of the BNI official in this particular instance was contrary to the court
ruling, which enjoins the BNI to grant access to counsel when interrogating
clients.
The Intelligence Services and the Media

Most often, the media plays a critical role in publishing stories about security
and intelligence operations in Ghana. This media role was further enhanced
with the repeal of the Criminal Libel Law in 2001. Hitherto, journalists were
restricted in their reporting and could not publish certain stories for fear of
being sued for libel. But given that the media landscape is now largely pluralist
and diverse, with each newspaper or other outlet holding different ideological
and political interests, there are occasions when some practitioners and press
houses have published stories in which the substance undermines the dictates
of fairness and objectivity. In a few instances those concerned with national
security have had cause to view some publications as posing a national security
threat to the country, and thus have triggered the arrest and detention of the
publishers of such stories. For instance, in March 2011 the BNI accosted the
editor of a newspaper for publishing a story alleging that the chief of the
Defence Staff was soon to be replaced because he had fallen out of favor with
the president.
This action by the BNI received wide condemnation by the media. The
BNI was criticized for wrongful arrest and detention of the journalist. Put differ-
ently, ‘‘The editor was reported to have been handcuffed and bundled into a
car by security officials . . . before being interrogated at the BNI in the absence
of his lawyer.’’38 A media expert described the action by the BNI as ‘‘unprofes-
sional,’’ stating that ‘‘under no circumstance . . . should a journalist be treated
like a common criminal for publishing a story’’ deemed to be offensive to public
sensitivity and also likely to destabilize the security and defense sector.39 Further
reports on this story painted the BNI as if it was still operating in the old
military era. Thus the BNI, ‘‘by arresting this journalist, is simply behaving like
the way they used to under the PNDC days when they went around after mid-
night, knocking people’s doors and arresting them and just throwing them in
the dungeon for years on end. If a journalist in our current democratic dispensa-
tion writes or publishes something that is even false, the aggrieved person or
institution has the right to write a rejoinder.’’40 The best place to seek redress
is the National Media Commission and never the BNI. This statement aptly
encapsulates the BNI’s overzealous tendencies while also undermining the role
of other key institutions such as the National Media Commission. The arrest
and subsequent detention of the journalist prompted the Ghana Journalists
Association to issue a statement, describing as ‘‘frightful’’ the involvement of
the BNI in the manhandling of the journalist over his publication that claimed
that there were going to be changes in the top hierarchy of the Ghana Armed
Forces. It was further stated that even though journalists are not above the law,
they must be treated humanely when arrested.41 The security and the intelli-
gence agencies contend that such stories in the media are fabricated to create
insecurity in the security sector, and hence are the justification for the arrest
and the interrogations of the editor in order to verify the authenticity of the
reporting.
Conclusion
The growth and development of Ghana’s intelligence services has been a slow
and painful process. The intelligence service, just like the country’s other secu-
rity services, has been manipulated and used for the purpose of abusing the
citizenry instead of protecting national security. From regime to regime, laws
and principles governing the sector have been enacted; however, even these
laws, for the most part, have served the interests of the rulers. The democratic
dispensation of 1992, which brought along with it powers for the judiciary and
legislature, has to some extent controlled some of the excesses of the intelli-
gence services. The intelligence culture of Ghana originally developed over
several decades preceding the independence period. Now that the country has
experienced democratic rule continuously for twenty years, its intelligence ser-
vice can be expected to develop a democratic culture that serves the national
interests and not simply the narrow power interests of the ruling regime. In this
context, a model for the effective and accountable functioning of Ghana’s
security sector would operate on several levels. In the first instance, and at the
strategic level, Parliament should have complete oversight over security policy
and objectives. At the tactical level, all operational issues should be examined
only with the involvement of key stakeholders and experts. Civil society organi-
zations should be brought in as an extraparliamentary source of oversight in
order to offset suspicion between political elites and the security sector.
Notes
1. See, e.g., Sandy Africa and Johnny Kwadjo, eds., Changing Intelligence Dynamics in
Africa (Birmingham: GFN/SSR, 2009).
2. Asante Fordjour, ‘‘A Review of the Conflicting Roles of the BNI and Ghana Police
Service,’’ 2009, www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID⳱173175;
Guure Brown Guure, ‘‘BNI: Bureau of National Intimidations—The Case for a National
Security Strategy,’’ 2010, www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php
?ID⳱178496.
3. Bismark Bebli, ‘‘BNI Brings Back Dark PNDC Days’’ and ‘‘Dreaded BNI Arrest Edi-
tor,’’ both Ghanaian Chronicle, March 18, 2011.
4. There has been a near industry of revisionist literature about this period. See, e.g.,
Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana 1946–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).
5. K. B. Quantson, Ghana: National Security (Accra: Bestas Press–NAPASVIL Ventures,
2003), 1.
6. The immediate response to the fourth assassination attempt was the enactment of the
Security Services Bill; see Debates 34 (November 25, 1963): 962–1012.
7. Quantson, Ghana, 9.
8. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957–1966: Diplomacy, Ideology, and the
Foreign Policy of a New State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 20ff.
9. Ibid., 100.
10. Ibid. One of the best books on this period; see esp. 59ff.
11. Ibid.
12. Quantson, Ghana, 9.
13. Hutchful Eboe, ‘‘Pulling Back from the Brink: Ghana’s Experience,’’ in Governing
Insecurity: Democratic Control of Military and Security Establishments in Transitional Democra-
cies, edited by Gavin Cawthra and Robin Luckham (London: Zed Books, 2003), 78–101.
14. It was identified after the 1966 coup d’état that the commissioner and deputy commis-
sioner of the Criminal Investigations Department and the head of the Special Branch were
part of those who staged the coup. Africa and Kwadjo, Changing Intelligence Dynamics, 100.
15. Ibid., 101.
16. Ibid.
17. Government of Ghana, Ghana National Reconciliation Commission Report (Accra: Gov-
ernment of Ghana, 2004).
18. For an interesting analysis of this act, see Ekow Nelson and Michael Gyamerah, ‘‘The
Origins of Preventive Detention in Ghana,’’ September 14, 2006, www.ghanaweb.com/Gha
naHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID⳱110547.
19. ‘‘Union government,’’ a concept brought forward by General Acheampong in 1977,
sought to make Ghana a nonparty state. This was widely perceived as a ploy by the head of
state to retain power.
20. Government of Ghana, Security and Intelligence Agencies Act (Act 526) of 1996,
Section I:1.
21. Ibid., preamble.
22. Ibid.; see section II.
23. See, e.g., Kwesi Aning, ‘‘Security Sector Governance in Ghana,’’ in Security Sector
Governance in West Africa, edited by Osita Eze and Jens-U Hettmann (Abuja: Frederich Ebert
Stiftung, 2005), 68–102.
24. See, e.g., Government of Ghana, Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2008 (Act 749); Gov-
ernment of Ghana, Economic and Organised Crimes Act, 210; Mutual Legal Assistance Bill,
2008.
25. This section draws on our earlier work; see Kwesi Aning and Ernest Lartey, Parliamen-
tary Oversight of the Security Sector: Lessons from Ghana (New York: Centre on International
Cooperation, 2009).
26. Standing Orders of Parliament, Order 158, under ‘‘Functions and Powers of Commit-
tees,’’ November 2000.
27. Constitution of Ghana, Article 103 (3), 1992; Standing Orders of Parliament, 190,
November 2000.
28. Constitution of Ghana, Article 103 (6), 1992; Standing Orders of Parliament, 155,
November 2000.
29. Standing Orders of Parliament, Order 165 (2); see also Constitution of Ghana, chap-
ter 13, 1992 and Article 187 (2), ibid. There seems to be some dissonance in the House of
Parliament concerning the extent of PAC’s oversight functions. According to the minority
leader, Alban Bagbin, ‘‘It appears from the provisions of the Constitution and the Standing
Orders so far mentioned that the committee’s work is limited to examining only reports
presented by the Auditor-General. This view is sometimes held by some of my colleagues
but I hold a contrary opinion. I believe the committee, as a watchdog wing of Parliament in
matters of public finance, can institute investigation into any matter of public interest where
public funds are involved.’’
30. Standing Orders of Parliament, 169–70 (1) and (2), November 2000.
31. GhanaWeb, ‘‘BNI Cannot Seize Passports, High Court Declares,’’ 2009, http://
mobile.ghanaweb.com/wap/artcle.php?⳱166710.
32. Modern Ghana News, ‘‘BNI Must Allow Access to Counsel,’’ 2009, http://modernghana
.com/print/233711/1/bni-munt-allow-access-to-co unsel.html.
33. Ibid.
34. Proper authorization could mean the BNI securing an arrest warrant from a judge.
35. Herbert Mensah is a close friend of former president Rawlings’s family. He was invited
to the BNI to assist in the investigation of a purported tape allegedly in his possession, the
content of which revealed that the incumbent president, John Mills, intended to expend
GH 90 million on the NDC presidential primaries in July 2011.
36. ‘‘Herbert Mensah Fails to Produce Tape,’’ Graphic.com.gh, 2011, www.com.gh/
print_article.php?news⳱12963&link⳱/dailygraphic/page.php?n.
37. See ‘‘External Powers Are Influencing BNI-Herbert Mensah,’’ 2011, www.multi
tvworld.com.
38. ‘‘Prof Karikari Slams BNI for Arresting Editor,’’ myjoyonline.com, 2011, http://news
.myjoyonline.com/tools/printnesw.asp?contentid⳱62897.
39. Kwame Karikari is the executive director of the Media Foundation for West Africa.
40. This comment was made by Kwame Karikari on Xfm, a local radio station based in
Accra. See the comment at www.xfmnewscenter.com/news/news.php?cat⳱General&title
⳱MediaⳭFoundationⳭForⳭWestⳭAfricaⳭCondemnsⳭArrestⳭOfⳭDaybreakⳭEditor
Ⳮ噛.
41. ‘‘GJA Warns BNI over Interference,’’ http://vibeghana.com/2011/03/22/gja-warns-
bni-over-interference/.
CHAPTER 12
Intelligence Community
Reforms: The Case of Argentina
Eduardo E. Estévez
A
fter decades of dictatorships and military influence in domestic politics,
Latin America’s new democracies faced the challenge to restore the
respect for the rule of law and human rights. Intelligence is one of the
issues with which they needed to deal. In fact, during the transition from the
twentieth century to the twenty-first century, this challenge was twofold: to
democratize the intelligence sector, and to adapt it to the threats and risks
arising in a new and changing security environment. Significant progress in the
democratization of intelligence can be verified in Latin American countries—
for example, new legal frameworks, enhanced democratic control, revamped
structures and professional education, and a tendency to openness through the
interaction with scholars.1 Yet the effectiveness and level of transparency the
intelligence communities have achieved throughout the region are quite differ-
ent and even questionable to some extent.2 This situation can also be observed
in other emerging democracies in the world.3
For decades, Argentina’s intelligence community was heavily influenced and
controlled by the armed forces, and it became engaged in political policing.
The authoritarianism that dominated most of the twentieth century culminated
in the military government that ruled from 1976 to 1983, which was widely
known due to ‘‘the Dirty War,’’ which was a period of state terrorism during the
counterinsurgency struggle, and ‘‘the disappeared,’’ that is, those people who
were victims of repression. Since December 1983, however, Argentina has been
/ 219 /
220 / Eduardo E. Estévez
living under stable democratic rule. A major goal for democratic leaders was to
establish civilian democratic control over the traditionally highly autonomous
military, security ‘‘police,’’ and intelligence sectors. The main outcome was a
set of pieces of legislation on intelligence, which included national defense and
domestic security laws, within a major framework, the National Intelligence
Law passed in December 2001. This chapter is about the process of the democ-
ratization of intelligence in Argentina from mid-1980s to the present; it
explores the peculiarities of the governance of the intelligence sector as well as
the pertinent issues, challenges, accomplishments, and results.4
Democratization and Path Dependency

The study of the process of intelligence democratization in Argentina focuses
on knowing and explaining the pathway to change for a nondemocratic intel-
ligence apparatus. This raises questions: How are intelligence services de-
mocratized in new democracies? What is intelligence reform? For some,
democratization may mean the enactment of laws and decrees, to mandate rea-
sonable levels of political control and transparency for the intelligence sector.
However, reform has more to do with profound changes in organizational struc-
tures, culture, and practices. As a bureaucracy isolated by the requirements and
constraints of secrecy, the intelligence services are ‘‘total institutions.’’5 Formal
and informal resistance to change may arise as a feature of their particular
culture. Thus, the institutional impact of changes may be difficult to trace. Path
dependence theory, with its focus on mechanisms that promote continuity or
change, can be useful for explaining such processes.6 The following are core
concepts that inform this approach.
Path dependence processes involve conditions whereby legacies7—
‘‘decisions taken in the past, established ways of thinking and routines [that]
have a decisive impact on the present’’8 —are relevant, thus tending to institu-
tional stability.9 Regarding institutional change, ‘‘layering,’’ a type of gradual
transformation of interest for this chapter, ‘‘involves active sponsorship of
amendments, additions, or revisions to an existing set of institutions.10 The
actual mechanism for change is differential growth; the introduction of new
elements setting in motion dynamics through which they, over time, actively
crowd out or supplant by default the old system as the domain of the latter
progressively shrinks relative to that of the former.’’11
The stability of path dependence may be disrupted by punctuated changes,
described as ‘‘critical junctures’’ and as ‘‘significant changes.’’12 Critical junc-
tures are made of branching points, triggering events that initiate processes of
institutional or policy change.13 Other authors acknowledge the importance of
other ‘‘starting points’’ (e.g., exogenous shocks) and advocate ‘‘periodizing
based on important moments in those layers of the contextual environment
Intelligence Community Reforms in Argentina / 221
that are likely to be most relevant to the process and outcome of interest.’’14
The ‘‘process tracing method allows one to trace the operation of the causal
mechanism(s)—for example, conversion, layering, increasing returns—at work
in a given situation.’’15 The reconstruction of the chronology of events that
makes up the process is central.
Consistent with the expectations of path dependence theory, even under
democratic rule the resilience of authoritarian legacies in the intelligence sec-
tor—including decision-making styles, doctrines, and practices—have resulted
in significant institutional inertia.16 Successive political actors committed to
promoting change have tried to overcome this inertia.17 Several tools may prove
useful to evaluate the status of intelligence democratization and to assess the
outcomes. It is relevant to detect critical junctures and significant events that
trigger institutional change, as well as to identify the actors who were aware of
such opportunities. Structural determinants—for example, strategic environ-
ment, politicization of security and intelligence, securitized domestic environ-
ment, and military influence—may shape the outcomes.18 The levels of
transparency, control, effectiveness, autonomy, and penetration are relevant
indicators.19 Certain relevant topics to consider are respect/violation of rights
of citizens, use/misuse of secret expenses, intelligence failures endangering the
democratic system, fully democratic regulations, effectiveness of parliamentary
control, consistency between intelligence policy (determined by democratic
authorities) and activities, access to archives of repression, media and judicial
controls, evidence of change in the culture and practices of intelligence person-
nel, and intelligence-sector reliability in the international community.20 This
analysis also takes into consideration the recently described factors that either
support or arrest progress in the process of intelligence democratization.21 The
next two sections trace the historical development of Argentina’s intelligence
sector and its democratization since the mid-1980s.
Origins, Legacies, and Challenges

Argentina’s intelligence sector historically constituted a powerful intelligence
service of the presidency, the services of each branch of the armed forces, and
the smaller services of the federal police and security forces.22 Most of the his-
tory of the Argentine intelligence and domestic security apparatus over four
decades before the 1980s evolved under the influence of the military; as men-
tioned, the intelligence community engaged in political policing. The military
coup of 1930 has been considered the starting point of a period characterized
by the use of the coercive power of the state against the opposition, a period
with long-lasting effects, such as the growth of a secret state within the state
lacking external controls and accountability, which engaged in ‘‘surveillance,
instigation, espionage, blackmail, and vetting.’’23
In 1946 the elected president, Juan Domingo Perón, created an office for
the Coordination of Information of the Presidency and subsequently positioned
it in the Ministry of War. In 1949 it was renamed the Office of Coordination
of State Information. The State Information Service, under the presidency,
replaced this office in 1951. The intelligence services of the army, the navy,
and the air force had also been set up in 1946. The Federal Police, created in
1943, were also an active player, and the Federal Coordination Information
Corps was its main intelligence element. For the historian Patricia Funes, 1956
represented a Gordian knot in the structuring of Argentina’s twentieth-century
intelligence sector,24 when it was engaged in targeting communism and other
extremisms.25 That year, the State Information Secretariat (Secretarı́a de Inteli-
gencia de Estado, SIDE) was set up under Decree 776 of the military govern-
ment, named ‘‘Liberating Revolution.’’ A decade later, in 1966, a new
coordination and analytical body under the president, the National Intelligence
Center (Central Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI), was established by law.
As Ana Lemos-Nelson puts it, a significant historical consideration in
understanding the politics of Latin America is the presence of the military in
internal law enforcement—domestic security—as a constant element since the
prerepublican experience.26 Argentina is no exception. During these decades
under varied arrangements, military officers dominated the civilian intelligence
agencies, and also the intelligence staffs of the police and security forces. For
example, Secret Law 20,195 of 1973 specified that the secretary and undersecre-
taries of SIDE should be appointed from the senior ranks of the armed forces.27
The politically authoritarian but economically neoliberal military regime
that ruled from 1976 to 1983 undertook the National Reorganization Process,
which is remembered chiefly because of the ‘‘disappeared,’’ the significant num-
bers of people eliminated by the government during that period.28 The regime
imposed changes aimed at promoting a market economy while executing the
so-called Dirty War against supposed subversion, and became engaged in the
South Atlantic conflict of 1982 with the United Kingdom over the Malvinas/
Falkland Islands. 29 The Dirty War entailed a powerful conjunction of state
resources,30 in which the intelligence agencies became essential instruments.31
The scope of military intelligence activities during the dictatorship is illustrated
by the scale of monitoring and infiltration of the education sector.32 Signifi-
cantly, Argentina was not acting entirely alone. At the regional level the mili-
tary commanders of Argentina and other Latin American countries designed
and implemented Operation Condor between late 1973 and early 1974. This
operation was a broad and cooperative military and intelligence effort focused
on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism.33 The politicization of military
intelligence also contributed to the South Atlantic conflict, of which it has
been observed that ‘‘a crucial influence in the Argentine decision to invade
the Malvinas Islands was the Argentine intelligence community’s reluctance to
interpret the available information appropriately; that is, in a manner that

would contradict the military government’s preconceived views and expecta-
tions.’’34 This contributed to the miscalculation of the possible consequences of
such an invasion.
During the 1970s both SIDE and the CNI were the major players in the
intelligence community. Although the CNI tried to coordinate the community
with varying degrees of success, SIDE usually prevailed. At the time the intelli-
gence community was characterized by its weak legitimacy (it was regulated by
decree—laws issued by military governments), by duplications and overlaps
within SIDE, and also between diverse intelligence agencies, denoting a lack of
coordination with the consequent squandering of resources. The public percep-
tion was that these bodies had a significant degree of autonomy, were not under
effective political control, and were in constant collision with democratic
values.
Since December 1983, Argentina’s new democracy progressively accom-
plished fundamental improvements in the democratization of the intelligence
and security services. To develop effective civilian democratic control, and
break away from the pattern of the autonomy of the military, police, and intelli-
gence sectors—and the monopoly of the military over the latter two sectors—
Congress adopted specific legislation on defense, domestic security, and
intelligence.35 Beyond democratic transition, and as a general context, it is
noted that during these twenty-seven years of democracy, the country experi-
enced several military uprisings, domestic and international terrorist attacks,
economic crises, political-institutional crises, and growing criminality.
Main Events in Democratization

When he was elected president of Argentina in 1983, Raul Alfonsı́n (who was
president until 1989) appointed the first civilian head of SIDE, the lawyer
Roberto Pena. During his fourteen-month term, Pena found resistance from the
military and also from within the agency. He appointed civilian undersecretar-
ies, performed a purging of military officers unprecedented in the history of the
agency, and drafted a CNI reform proposal; as the proposal was unheard, Pena
resigned.36 The last intelligence chief of the Alfonsı́n administration, Facundo
Suárez, also intended to empower the CNI as the main coordinator of the
intelligence community.
A clean break with the past was a main item on President Alfonsı́n’s agenda.
Military junta members and guerrilla leaders were arrested, put on trial, and
sentenced on human rights violations by a court of civilian judges. Alfonsı́n
established the National Commission of the Disappeared, chaired by the well-
known writer Ernesto Sábato. In November 1984, the commission issued its
final report, ‘‘Nunca Más’’ (Never Again), which gave data on 9,000 disappear-
ances during the military regime. After extensive debate and consensus, in 1988
Congress passed the National Defense Law 23,554. This law replaced the exist-
ing National Security Doctrine, which required internal security to be defined
by an additional special law. The new law confined the armed forces to con-
fronting external threats. Consequently, military intelligence was banned from
conducting activities related to domestic political affairs. The analytical pro-
duction of military intelligence would be carried out by an agency composed of
the armed forces’ intelligence agencies under the authority of the minister of
defense.
Tense civil–military relations, including several military uprisings, charac-
terized the period. In fact, ‘‘the insistence of the armed forces upon retaining
their monopoly of intelligence and domestic security during the 1980s indi-
cated that the military still regarded surveillance of domestic policies as a key
reserved domain.’’37 After the unexpected ultraleftist command attack on an
army base in January 1989,38 the reactive measures and short-lived decisions
undertaken by President Alfonsı́n and later by President Menem—the creation
of a Security Council,39 and a Committee on Domestic Security40 —raised con-
cern about military involvement in domestic intelligence.
A number of intelligence scandals mushroomed during Carlos Menem’s
consecutive administrations (1989–95; 1995–99), and these were joined by
issues such as the impact of the two international terrorist bombings and tend-
encies to involve the military in domestic intelligence and internal security.41
The first intelligence chief of the Menem administration was the journalist
Juan Bautista ‘‘Tata’’ Yofre. Curiously, retired general Carlos Alberto Martı́nez,
former chief of intelligence during the military regime, was posted as director
of the National Intelligence College (Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia, ENI).42
Also curiously, Yofre’s undersecretary, Carlos Cañón, who was also the CNI
chief, supported the domestic use of military intelligence.43 The dispute be-
tween the two chiefs became public, ending with Cañon’s resignation in Octo-
ber 1989.44 Intending to legitimize intelligence activities, Menem’s second
intelligence chief, Hugo Anzorreguy, tasked SIDE to support judicial criminal
investigations, a matter that was open to question.45
The Internal Security Law 24,059 of 1992, which was also approved by
consensus, established the civilian management of the police and security
forces. It founded the National Congress Joint Committee for the Oversight of
Internal Security and Intelligence Activities and Agencies and also the Internal
Security Council within the executive, and it created the Directorate for Inter-
nal Intelligence under the Internal Security Secretariat of the Ministry of the
Interior. This directorate, the first body on domestic intelligence with demo-
cratic legitimacy, was instituted as a permanent entity with an integrated staff
trained in intelligence and active duty officers of the federal police, security
forces, and provincial police agencies, as well as intelligence specialists, as
deemed necessary.46
In June 1993 the so-called ideological surveillance scandal broke when an

order to update intelligence files, issued by the Ministry of the Interior, was
leaked to the press. Under the order, intelligence elements of the Police of the
Buenos Aires Province and the National Gendarmerie had been conducting
surveillance against students, teachers, and trade unionists.47 The executive’s
Internal Security Council invited legislators from the Joint Committee for the
Oversight of Internal Security and Intelligence to a meeting. A statement
addressed to the police and security forces reiterated the strict prohibition on
searching and collecting information, as well as producing intelligence con-
cerning the inhabitants simply because of their race, religious faith or political
opinion, or their adherence to principles of trade union, youth, student, cooper-
ative, welfare and cultural movements, as well as the legitimate activity that
they perform as members of organizations acting legally in the sectors men-
tioned above.48
In the meantime, a dialogue between Congress and the intelligence sector
began to develop. In 1991 and 1992, the ENI held a special course for advisers
of the legislative and executive bodies. In December 1993, the first Interna-
tional Seminar on Congressional Oversight of Intelligence Agencies and Activ-
ities took place, organized by two local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
and the ENI, and sponsored by the Joint Committee for the Oversight of Inter-
nal Security and Intelligence.49 Another international seminar took place in
April 1995. In 1993, a bill on the intelligence system entered by majority sena-
tor Eduardo Vaca informally released for consideration of the executive
reopened legislative debate. Although the majority draft followed a centralizing
approach, similar to the system in force, the opposition draft proposed a decen-
tralizing approach, clearly distinguishing between domestic intelligence and for-
eign intelligence, with ministerial and parliamentary controls, and judicial
control of wiretappings. In August 1994, the Senate approved the majority bill,
but in December 1995, because disagreements between the majority and the
minority could not be overcome, the lower chamber disregarded the bill.
During the same interval Buenos Aires was hit by two terrorist bombings.
The first one damaged the Embassy of Israel (March 17, 1992), and the second
one damaged the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, a Jewish community
center building (July 18, 1994). In 1995, the Argentine government developed
a strategy for counterterrorist cooperation at the regional level. The Tri-Border
Tripartite Command was created in May 1996 to operate in the area between
the cities of Puerto Iguazú (Argentina), Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), and Foz de
Iguazú (Brazil). This command, which is composed of permanent members of
the domestic security forces of the three countries, is in charge of the exchange
of information and joint and combined counterterrorist actions.50 A number of
regional security initiatives also took shape under the auspices of Mercosur
(Mercado Común del Sur, Common Market of the Southern Cone), chief
among which was a program designated SISME (Security Information

Exchange System).
In November 1998, the press revealed that air force intelligence personnel
had been conducting surveillance activities on a number of journalists and a
women’s NGO. The officers responsible were prosecuted.51 In June 2000, a judge
discovered that Information Collection Center 141, under the Third Army
Corps, was performing intelligence activities aimed at political parties, trade
unions, and university groups in the province of Cordoba.52 Fernando De Santi-
bañes, the first intelligence chief of Fernando de la Rúa’s administration (2000–
2001), implemented several changes in SIDE: A thousand personnel were
dismissed, the secret budget was cut, qualified and expert staff members were
hired, and the organizational structure was refurbished.53 An additional scandal
in the Senate concerning the alleged payments of bribes in late 2000 prompted
new disclosures about intelligence misconduct. The General Trusteeship of the
Nation reported that SIDE had been declaring expenditures that had not in
fact been made. The result was that the agency had retained a body of funding
available to finance operations that could then be conducted outside any con-
trol or oversight. De Santibañes resigned on October 21.54
In 2001, eight intelligence bills were introduced to Congress, and the
consensus-building process on intelligence legislation was thus reopened. After
approximately eight months of discussion, a panel of about forty members—
including legislators, intelligence experts, and parliamentary advisers—issued a
consensus draft.55 In August 2001, the executive referred the agreed-on bill to
the Senate, and on November 27, Congress passed the National Intelligence
Law 25,520. After sixteen years of democracy, Argentina’s intelligence commu-
nity stood on statutory footing for the first time. From 2002 until the present,
there have been ongoing efforts to develop a systematic secrecy policy. President
Nestor Kirchner (2003–7) issued at least eighteen presidential decrees waiving
the legal obligation to preserve secrecy to permit disclosure of intelligence
information on a case-by-case basis upon a formal judicial request.56 The cases
in question included human rights abuses during military regimes, corruption,
the misuse of intelligence funds, terrorist-bombing investigations, and crimes
committed by police officers. Known as the ‘‘Spy Law,’’ the Data Retention Law
25,873, which was passed in December 2003 (and later regulated by Decree
1,563 of 2004), provoked concern in the media and public opinion.57 Under
this statute, telecommunications and Internet service providers were required
to retain both personnel and the technical capability to intercept communica-
tions upon stated requirements of the Judiciary or the Public Ministry. In 2005,
president Kirchner issued Decree 357, which suspended applications under the
Spy Law. Finally, in February 2009, the Supreme Court of Justice declared the
law unconstitutional.58
In 2005 a drug-trafficking scandal involved the National Aeronautical

Police (Policı́a Aeronáutica Nacional, PAN), then under the Air Force Com-
mand.59 President Kirchner transferred PAN from the Ministry of Defense to
the Ministry of the Interior, renaming it the Airport Security Police (Policı́a de
Seguridad Aeroportuaria, PSA).60 A process of reform and institutional mod-
ernization began. Airport Security Law 26,102 of 2006, the legal framework for
this new security force, was passed. The law stipulated that PSA contributes
to the development of criminal intelligence within the National Intelligence
System.
In March 2006, a human rights NGO, the Center of Legal and Social Stud-
ies (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales), reported that the navy was perform-
ing illegal domestic intelligence gathering at the Almirante Zar Naval Base, in
Chubut Province.61 President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–11;
reelected in 2011) responded by conducting an extensive reform of military
intelligence. Its doctrine was redefined. The Ministry of Defense took control
of the entire military intelligence system through the National Directorate for
Strategic Military Intelligence, proceeded to reformulate the cycle of military
intelligence planning, and by Decree 1,076 of August 17, 2006, it was granted
access to all military intelligence information.62
Matters were complicated by the fact that even democratic leaders had often
used intelligence budgets for other purposes than those mandated by law. Dur-
ing the Menem administration, secret expenses were destined for the informal
payment of extra salaries for ministers, secretaries, and undersecretaries. In
December 2009, a federal court confirmed the prosecution of former president
Menem, his economy minister Domingo Cavallo, and other former top officials
on charges of embezzlement.63 On a television program the evening of July 25,
2004, the justice, security, and human rights minister, Gustavo Béliz, further
accused the Secretariat of Intelligence (Secretarı́a de Inteligencia, SI) of irreg-
ularities, and he showed a picture of one of its directors, whom Béliz said
had real power and had overextended his competencies.64 Although Béliz was
subsequently prosecuted for revealing state secrets, in August 2011 he was
acquitted.65
In 2010, President Kirchner issued Decree 4, which declassified information
on the actions of the armed forces during the previous dictatorship in response
to a request from a judge investigating violations of human rights. The decree
excluded from declassification the information on the Falklands/Malvinas war
and on strategic military intelligence. The press also published a list of person-
nel in Army Intelligence Battalion 601.66 Given these examples and the other
ones cited above, it is clear that the legislative oversight of intelligence was far
more rigorous in the 1990s than in the 2000s.67 Recently, the opposition pro-
posed amendments to the intelligence law aimed at increasing democratic con-
trol and transparency still further.
Key Features of the Legal Framework

The National Intelligence Law 25,520 of 2001 established the juridical, organic,
and functional basis of the current National Intelligence System. Three intelli-
gence agencies are the leading bodies: the SI, the National Directorate for
Criminal Intelligence (Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal, DINIC),
and the National Directorate for Strategic Military Intelligence (Dirección
Nacional de Inteligencia Estratégica Militar, DINIEM).68
The SI, situated under the presidency and the highest-ranking agency of
the system, has the general role of managing the intelligence community as
well as responsibility for the production of national intelligence assessments.
DINIC,69 under the Ministry of Security,70 produces criminal intelligence; it is
responsible for the functional management and coordination of the intelligence
activities of the national police effort. This consists of the national police and
security forces, and the twenty-three provincial police forces. DINIEM, under
the Defense Ministry, in accordance with the provisions of article 15 of the
National Defense Law, is tasked with the production of strategic military
intelligence.
The law provides a range of safeguards to prevent the use of intelligence
agencies for political purposes and operations, and it provides for the protection
of human rights and civil liberties. It states that the functioning of the system
must adhere strictly to the relevant provisions under the Constitution, statute,
and regulatory frameworks. The law also prohibits the intelligence community
agencies:
$ From obtaining information, collecting intelligence, or keeping data on
individuals because of their race, religion, private actions, and political
ideology, or due to their membership in partisan, social, union, commu-
nity, cooperative, assistance, cultural or labor organizations, or because of
legal activities performed within any field.
$ From exerting influence over the institutional, political, military, police,
social, and economic situation of the country, its foreign policies, politi-
cal parties, or influencing public opinion, individuals, media press, or any
kind of associations whatsoever.
Arrangements for executive control and coordination of intelligence
include the empowerment of the president of the nation to determine the stra-
tegic outlines and general objectives of the national intelligence policy. In addi-
tion, the law articulates procedures for secret expenditure control and the
judicial authorization for the interception of communications. The law incorpo-
rates doctrinal definitions, criminal provisions, and provisions concerning per-
sonnel and training. Decree 950 of 2002 provided regulations for the provisions
of the law, in short that intelligence activities must be conducted in accordance
with the general provisions of the Personal Data Protection Law (Law 25,326).
The current statute also provides for legislative intelligence oversight in the
form of the Congressional Joint Committee for the Oversight of Intelligence
Activities and Agencies. The committee’s responsibilities include the legality
of intelligence activities, intelligence policy, the management and administra-
tion of the intelligence system and agencies, the system’s effectiveness, person-
nel education plans, secret budgets and expenditures, data on requests for
interceptions of communications, and public complaints about the agency or
its personnel.
The National Intelligence Law did not solve debates about the relative mer-
its of the centralizing or decentralizing approaches to the intelligence structure.
The resulting formula is, therefore, a hybrid. It combines relative centralization
at the top (where the SI concentrates most of the executive’s control compe-
tences) and decentralized lower echelons (under some degree of ministerial
control).71
Balance and Outcome

Using concepts derived from path dependence theory, this section discusses the
outcomes of the process of intelligence democratization in Argentina. It also
presents findings about the status of the current situation and its challenges in
relation to effectiveness and transparency, as well as other relevant factors.
The Nature of the Process

In the case of Argentina’s democratization of intelligence, it has not experi-
enced a single ‘‘critical juncture’’ that has driven profound change; on the con-
trary, the process is best described in terms of ‘‘incremental policy change.’’72
Politicians have opted instead for structural alterations and partial reforms
rather than overall, comprehensive reform. The starting point was the establish-
ment of democratic institutions. The concept of layering here offers a useful
approach to understanding this incremental change. The relevant institutional
layers in Argentine intelligence reform have included national intelligence,
military intelligence, criminal intelligence, the congressional role, legislation,
and regulatory frameworks. Each layer recognizes key actors who were the archi-
tects of change as well as specific trigger events. The clash between new and
old institutions and practices can be seen in each layer. In addition, each layer
is placed in its own time and has its significant events and punctuated changes.
The vicissitudes and discontinuities in the development of the new internal
intelligence agency, from its establishment in 1992 and through its 2001 recon-
stitution as a criminal intelligence agency, are typical. Another example is the
delays in the effective reform of military intelligence.
The original impulse toward reform in the 1980s came from the legislature,
with the executive mainly following suit. The intelligence sector remained very
much in transition while the military lobbied against changes, and even still
performed illegal operations. Following the enactment of the 2001 statute, the
executive took a more active role in furthering reforms. Throughout, the reform
process has been hindered by factors such as the complexity of intelligence
reform, the remnants and practices of the authoritarian past, resistance and
reluctance to change in a number of quarters, variable and often insufficient
political will, and finally, persistent tendencies to politicize intelligence.73 The
most significant factor driving progress has been the willingness of decision
makers to democratize intelligence—initially, this effort was led by legislators
and their advisers; more recently, the momentum has included the ministerial
administrators in charge of policy implementation.
In sum, two distinct but partially overlapping stages can be seen in the
reform of Argentina’s intelligence community. The first stage was focused on
debating and passing legislation to reorganize the intelligence community and
permit the exercise of executive and legislative control and oversight. And the
second stage was characterized by a set of executive actions taken to enhance
control over the system, as seen with military intelligence reform, declassifica-
tion of archives on human rights grounds, and refurbishing criminal
intelligence.
Achievements and Challenges Ahead

Since the mid-1980s the role of intelligence in Argentina’s domestic politics,
illegal wiretaps, the militarization of intelligence, debates on intelligence legis-
lation, and scandals all have been topics that captured media attention. During
the 2000s, at least two major national newspapers have taken a critical stance
toward the intelligence sector as well as toward different administrations on
issues of intelligence.74 Until the last decade, in the absence of democratically
passed intelligence legislation, reform efforts were variously weak and unsuc-
cessful, and often opportunistic or politically driven. The ideological surveil-
lance scandal of 1993 demonstrated that even a democratic government was
capable of falling seriously short in terms of observing appropriate executive
and legislative controls over domestic intelligence activities.
An important step toward intelligence democratization and the exercise of
civilian control was the appointment of civilians as intelligence chiefs, a prac-
tice that still continues. Occasionally, democratic leaders have insisted on
handing some domestic security tasks over to the military, but this has tended
to run afoul of the legislative framework of the civil–military relations model
that has been adopted by a democratic Argentina.75 As noted above, in spite of
the legal prohibition to perform domestic intelligence, military intelligence
continued to conduct domestic activities until the comprehensive overhaul of
2006. Likewise, although the National Intelligence Law established new provi-
sions for communication intercepts, illegal wiretaps continued to be a recurrent
cause of public concern during the 1990s.76 The misuse of secret funds also
continued to be a significant ongoing problem. However, successful prosecu-
tions of such malfeasance are a good indication that institutional constraints
such as judicial measures can work. Critical weaknesses in Argentina’s intelli-
gence in terms of warning and emergency response were also exposed by the
two international terrorist attacks during the 1990s. In Decree 815 of 2005,
President Kirchner acknowledged the government’s responsibility regarding the
bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina. Significantly, regional
efforts to cooperate on intelligence and counterterrorism have since been coor-
dinated by civilian officials in collaboration with members of the intelligence
agencies. This is an important step for the exercise of democratic control.
In the 2000s, the executive sponsored and implemented a second generation
of reforms concerning military intelligence and airport security intelligence.
The secrecy policy related to the disclosure of information and the declassifica-
tion of files is a major step in terms of transparency, and the relevance of its
impact for human rights must not be underestimated. However, intelligence is
still a subject of controversy and sporadic scandals, and it still lacks the confi-
dence of society. The NGOs that focus on media and human rights have
exposed incidents of misconduct and blunders. The new law has not yet had
quite the impact on changes in culture and practices that had been hoped for.
Moreover, the legislature has been less effective than it might be in exerting
congressional oversight.77 As a legislative adviser with a prominent role in
developing the intelligence bills warned, the lack of experience of both mem-
bers of the intelligence community and legislators with living harmoniously
under the new legal framework is perhaps the greatest obstacle to overcome in
the future.78 It has also been observed that ‘‘the main challenges for Argentina
now are to ensure that intelligence remains an issue of interest to Congress, to
develop further mechanisms to support intelligence control, and to ensure that
priorities, resources, and capacities are congruent.’’79 These challenges remain.
Experts and academics concur that there is still a long way to go in the democ-
ratization of intelligence.
Conclusion
Path dependence and institutional change may prove useful in explaining the
outcomes of the complex process of intelligence democratization, and in articu-
lating the issues that arise in new democracies pursuing intelligence reform.
The restoration of democracy by itself is not a sufficient condition to trigger
intelligence democratization and reform. A genuine fresh start never occurs, a
central question being whether the existing intelligence machinery can adapt
its organization, policies, and practices to the new political environment—
assuming it even can be adapted—and how.80 Sooner or later, democracies and
democratic leaders reach a point where, for a range of possible reasons, they
have a real need to exert control of their intelligence communities. The politi-
cal realization of the magnitude and significance of violations of human rights
by security and intelligence agencies appears to be one such necessary condi-
tion. In this case, a significant driver of intelligence democratization initiatives
is an accurate appreciation of the legal abuses and human rights violations
committed by the preceding military regime. Consequently, an effective investi-
gation of past activities by a special commission coupled with prosecution in
civilian courts serve as significant drivers in the initial stages of the reform
process.
The twenty-first century found Argentina’s intelligence community reorga-
nized, with a new structure, responsibilities, and accountability mechanisms
under the law enacted in 2001. The main pressure for reform came from Con-
gress, and only after 2003 did the executive take up this initiative. In the mean-
time, the judiciary also dealt with several key cases. As mentioned above,
punctuated changes occurred in certain institutional layers, with moments of
backsliding arising from problems like politicians looking to military command-
ers to lead the intelligence sector. Throughout the decades of democratization
examined here, there has been a consistently weak political commitment to
maintaining the momentum of intelligence reform over time. For all these rea-
sons it is still premature to speak about deeply rooted intelligence reform in
Argentina. Intelligence democratization remains an ongoing process character-
ized by periodic bursts driven by significant events, moments of crisis, and the
responses of politicians.
Notes
1. For a comparative perspective on democratic civilian control and effectiveness in
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, see Thomas C. Bruneau, ‘‘Democracy and Effective-
ness: Adapting Intelligence for the Fight against Terrorism,’’ International Journal of Intelli-
gence and Counterintelligence 21, no. 3 (2008): 448–60. For a comparison of military
intelligence reforms, see Gregory Weeks, ‘‘A Preference for Deference: Reforming the Mili-
tary’s Intelligence Role in Argentina, Chile and Peru,’’ Third World Quarterly 29, no. 1
(2008): 45–61. On legislation and mechanisms for coordination and control of intelligence
in Latin America, see FLACSO–Chile, Reporte del Sector de Seguridad en América Latina y el
Caribe (Santiago: FLACSO–Chile, 2007), 115–25. For an account on legal structures, see
José M. Ugarte, ‘‘América Latina, Actividad de Inteligencia y su Control: El Estado de la
Cuestión,’’ paper prepared for annual meeting of Latin American Studies Association,
Toronto, October 6–9, 2010.
2. According to Carlos Maldonado, South American intelligence services confront two
types of dilemmas, old ones, such as lack of legitimacy, deprofessionalization, lack of national
intelligence systems, militarization, securitization, and politicization; and modern ones, such
as foreign interference, remilitarization, privatization of intelligence, and failed or unfinished
reforms. Carlos Maldonado, ‘‘Dilemas Antiguos y Modernos en la Inteligencia Estratégica en
Sudamérica,’’ Security and Defense Studies Review 9, nos. 1–2 (2009): 50–51.
3. See Thomas C. Bruneau and Florina Cristiana (Cris) Matei, ‘‘Intelligence in the
Developing Democracies: The Quest for Transparency and Effectiveness,’’ in The Oxford
Handbook of National Security Intelligence, edited by Loch K. Johnson (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2010), 771.
4. This chapter is based on revised excerpts from Eduardo E. Estévez, ‘‘Comparing Intel-
ligence Democratization in Latin America: Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador Cases,’’ paper
delivered at International Political Science Association–European Consortium for Political
Research Joint Conference, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, February 16–19, 2011. It
also draws from ‘‘Intelligence Democratization in Argentina: Achievements and Chal-
lenges,’’ by Eduardo E. Estévez, unpublished, June 2010.
5. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situations of Mental Patients and other
Inmates (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961).
6. New institutionalism and path dependence have been applied in comparative studies
of intelligence and security apparatuses. See Priscila Carlos Brandão, Serviços Secretos e
Democracia no Cone Sul: Premissas para uma Convivência Legı́tima, Eficiente e Profissional
(Niterói, Brazil: Editora Impetus 2010); and Lawrence P. Markowitz, ‘‘Unlootable Resources
and State Security Institutions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,’’ Comparative Political Studies
44, no. 2 (2011): 156–83. Also see Amy Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA,
JCS and NSC (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
7. E.g., institutional ‘‘lock-in,’’ increasing returns, self-reinforcing and reactive
sequences, and ‘‘mechanisms of reproduction.’’
8. Jürgen Beyer, ‘‘The Same or Not the Same: On the Variety of Mechanisms of Path
Dependence,’’ International Journal of Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2010): 1.
9. Taylor C. Boas, ‘‘Conceptualizing Continuity and Change: The Composite-Standard
Model of Path Dependence,’’ Journal of Theoretical Politics 19, no. 1 (2007): 33–34; Beyer,
‘‘Same or Not the Same.’’
10. This typology of modes of gradual change also includes mechanisms, e.g., displace-
ment, drift, conversion, and exhaustion. See Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen, ‘‘Intro-
duction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies,’’ in Beyond Continuity.
Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, edited by Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen
Thelen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 31.
11. Ibid., 23.
12. James Mahoney, ‘‘Conceptualizing and Explaining Punctuated Versus Incremental
Change,’’ paper prepared for annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Washington, September 2–5, 2010, 9.
13. John W. Hogan and David Doyle, ‘‘The Importance of Ideas: An A Priori Critical
Juncture Framework,’’ Canadian Journal of Political Science 40, no. 4 (2007): 883–910.
14. Tulia G. Falleti and Julia F. Lynch, ‘‘Context and Causal Mechanisms in Political
Analysis,’’ Comparative Political Studies 42, no. 9 (2009): 1152–59, and table 1.
15. Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘‘Process Tracing,’’ in Qualitative Methods in International Relations:
A Pluralist Guide, edited by Audie Klotz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 116.
16. According to Aguilar and Hite, authoritarian legacies can condition democratic tran-
sition and even be embedded in certain cultural and institutional practices of the new
regime. See Paloma Aguilar and Katherine Hite, ‘‘Historical Memory and Authoritarian
Legacies in Processes of Political Change: Spain and Chile in Comparative Perspective,’’ in
Authoritarian Legacies and Good Democracies, edited by Paola Cesarini and Katherine Hite
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 191–231.
17. Gerald Alexander, ‘‘Institutions, Path Dependence, and Democratic Consolidation,’’

Journal of Theoretical Politics 13, no. 3 (2001): 255. See also Beyer, ‘‘Same or Not the Same.’’
18. Bruneau and Matei, ‘‘Intelligence in the Developing Democracies,’’ 771.
19. See Peter Gill’s typology of security intelligence services: Peter Gill, ‘‘Securing the
Globe: Intelligence and the Post–9/11 Shift from ‘Liddism’ to ‘Drainism,’ ’’ Intelligence and
National Security 19, no. 3 (2004): 468–70.
20. Eduardo E. Estévez, ‘‘Argentina’s Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century/After
Twenty-Five Years of Democracy,’’ paper delivered at Fifty-First International Studies Associ-
ation Annual Convention, New Orleans, February 17–20, 2010.
21. Florina Cristiana Matei and Thomas Bruneau, ‘‘Intelligence Reform in New Democra-
cies: Factors Supporting or Arresting Progress,’’ Democratization 18, no. 3 (2011): 602–30.
These authors consider that in intelligence democratization there are neither total successes
nor total failures.
22. ‘‘Security forces’’ is not synonymous with ‘‘armed forces.’’ Security forces include (1)
the National Gendarmerie and (2) the Naval Coast Guard, intermediate forces that both
fulfill law enforcement duties at the federal level and are prepared to perform national
defense tasks, and (3) the Airport Security Police.
23. Laura Kalmanowiecki, ‘‘Origins and Applications of Political Policing in Argentina,’’
Latin American Perspectives 27, no. 2 (2000): 37–40.
24. Patricia Funes, ‘‘ ‘Ingenieros del Alma’: Los Informes sobre Canción Popular, Ensayo
y Ciencias Sociales de los Servicios de Inteligencia de la Dictadura Militar Argentina sobre
América Latina,’’ Varia Historia 23, no. 38 (2007): 423.
25. See, e.g., Decree 2,985 of 1961.
26. Ana Tereza Lemos-Nelson, ‘‘Latin American Rambos: The Post–Cold War Syndrome
of Deregulation of State Use of Violence,’’ paper presented at ‘‘Democracy and the New
Millennium,’’ Fifty-Seventh Annual Meeting of Midwest Political Science Association, Chi-
cago, April 15–17, 1999.
27. This secret law was published on September 21, 2006, under the provisions of Law
26,134.
28. For a historical perspective of the last century, see Luis A. Romero, A History of
Argentina in the Twentieth Century (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006).
29. The United Kingdom refers to these as the ‘‘Falkland Islands.’’ The operation to
recover by military means the Malvinas Islands, ordered by de facto president Lieutenant-
General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, took place on April 2, 1982.
30. A very detailed study of this period is by Wolfgang Heinz, ‘‘Determinants of Gross
Human Rights Violations by State and State-Sponsored Actors in Argentina 1976–1983,’’
in Determinants of Gross Human Rights Violations by State and State-Sponsored Actors in Brazil,
Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina (1960–1990), edited by Wolfgang S. Heinz and Hugo Frühling
(The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1999), 593–737.
31. An example is the participation of SIDE personnel in the clandestine detention cen-
ter known as ‘‘Automotores Orletti,’’ in the city of Buenos Aires; the number of victims was
sixty-five. See Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, ‘‘Justicia por los Crı́menes de la Dic-
tadura,’’ chapter 1 of the Informe sobre la Situación de los Derechos Humanos en Argentina
2007 (Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, 2007), n37, available at
www.cels.org.ar.
32. See Martin Edwin Andersen, Dossier Secreto: El Mito de la Guerra Sucia (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Planeta, 1993), 222–26.
33. See J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin
America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). According to McSherry, Operation
Condor extended to other South American countries and there were attempts to export it
to Central America.
34. Enrique H. J. Cavallini, ‘‘The Malvinas/Falkland Affair: A New Look,’’ International
Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 2, no. 2 (1988): 209.
35. For more information, see Eduardo E. Estévez, ‘‘Executive and Legislative Oversight
of Intelligence in Argentina,’’ in Who’s Watching the Spies? Establishing Intelligence Service
Accountability, edited by Hans Born, Loch Johnson, and Ian Leigh (Washington, DC: Poto-
mac Books, 2005), 160–79; and Priscila Carlos Brandão Antunes, ‘‘Establishing Democratic
Control of Intelligence in Argentina,’’ in Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Con-
trol and Effectiveness, edited by Thomas C. Bruneau and Steven C. Boraz (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2007), 195–218.
36. See Gerardo Young, SIDE: La Argentina Secreta (Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta,
2006), 70–71.
37. J. Patrice McSherry, Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 151.
38. The taking of the military infantry regiment of La Tablada by the MTP (Movimiento
Todos por la Patria) took place on January 23, 1989.
39. Decree 83 of January 25, 1989.
40. Decree 327 of March 10, 1989; and Decree 392 of February 26, 1990.
41. For more details, see J. Patrice McSherry, ‘‘National Security and Social Crisis in
Argentina,’’ Journal of Third World Studies 17, no. 1 (2000).
42. Young, SIDE, 103–4.
43. ‘‘La Inteligencia Militar,’’ La Nación (Buenos Aires), July 25,1989.
44. Young, SIDE, 107–8.
45. Ibid., 115, 180.
46. Regulatory Decree 1,273 of 1992, article 10.
47. See ‘‘La Orden para el Espionaje Ideológico,’’ Cları́n (Buenos Aires), July 7, 1993.
48. See La Nación, July 2, 1993.
49. Held in Buenos Aires, December 1–3, 1993; Britt Snider, general counsel, US Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, and James X. Dempsey, assistant counsel, Subcommittee
on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the US House Committee on the Judiciary, were the
invited international speakers.
50. Argentinean government, ‘‘Report of the Argentine Republic on its Implementation
of Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001),’’ Security Council, United Nations, S/2001/
1340, December 31, 2001, 10–11, www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/46d571621.pdf.
51. Sergio Moreno and Adriana Meyer, ‘‘Espı́as de Muy Corto Vuelo,’’ Página 12, Buenos
Aires, March 6, 2000.
52. ‘‘El Ejército hizo Tareas de Espionaje en Córdoba,’’ La Nación, June 12, 1999.
53. Florencia Fontán Balestra, ‘‘Towards a Democratic Control of Argentina’s Intelli-
gence Community,’’ International Center for Criminal Justice, Harvard Law School, 2000,
24–46. See also ‘‘El Servicio de Inteligencia Estatal,’’ editorial, Cları́n, February 8, 2000.
54. See Laura Zommer, ‘‘La Sindicatura le Apunta a Santibañes,’’ La Nación, October 19,
2000.
55. Jaime Garreta, ‘‘El Diseño de un Nuevo Marco Jurı́dico Regulatorio para la Actividad
de Inteligencia del Estado en la Argentina,’’ Security and Defense Studies Review 2, no. 2
(Winter 2002–3): 270–71. See also Elsa Llenderrozas, ‘‘Del Espionaje Domestico a la Inteli-
gencia Estratégica: Los Caminos hacia una Ley de Inteligencia,’’ paper delivered at REDES
2001, Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, Washington, May 22–25, 2001.
56. See Eduardo E. Estévez, ‘‘Developments of the Democratization of Intelligence in
Argentina: Trends in Secrecy Policy–Implications for Comparing Transitional Settings,’’
paper prepared for fourth European Consortium for Political Research Conference, Pisa,
September 6, 2007.
57. E.g., see Gustavo Ybarra and Lucas Colonna, ‘‘Sigue en Vigor la Polémica ‘Ley Espı́a,’ ’’
La Nación, May 2, 2005.
58. Halabi, Ernesto c/ P.E.N.–ley 25.873 dto. 1563/04 s/ amparo ley 16.986, Corte
Suprema de Justicia de la Nación (H. 270. XLII), Fallo, Buenos Aires, February 24, 2009.
59. Alejandra Dandan, ‘‘Las Valijas salieron por un Mecanismo Aceitado,’’ Página 12,
Buenos Aires, February 15, 2005.
60. Decree 145 of February 22, 2005.
61. For more details, see Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, ‘‘Polı́ticas de Defensa y
Control Civil,’’ chapter 2 in Informe sobre la Situación de los Derechos Humanos en Argentina
2007. Also see Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, ‘‘El Efecto, en el Plano Judicial y
Polı́tico, de la Denuncia Penal por la Inteligencia Ilegal en la Base Almirante Zar de Trelew,’’
Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Buenos Aires, March 2007.
62. See Jefatura de Gabinete de Ministros, ‘‘Memoria Anual Detallada del Estado de la
Nación 2008,’’ Buenos Aires, March 1, 2009, 85–94.
63. ‘‘Prosecution for Menem and Cavallo Confirmed,’’ Télam, National News Agency of
Argentina, December 22, 2009, http://english.telam.com.ar/index.php?option⳱com_
content&view⳱article&id⳱8229:prosecution–for–menem–and–cavallo–confirmed&catid
⳱42:politics.
64. Young, SIDE, 5–8, 302.
65. See TOF no. 3 sentence of August 10, 2011, on judicial case no. 95–08 ‘‘Béliz, Gus-
tavo Osvaldo s/inf. art. 222 del C.P.,’’ www.cij.gov.ar/nota-7467-Difundieron-los-funda-
mentos-de-la-sentencia-que-absolvio-a-Gustavo-Beliz.html.
66. Daniel Santoro, ‘‘Exclusivo: La Lista de los Agentes del Batallón 601 de Inteligencia,’’
Cları́n, January 23, 2010.
67. E.g., see Jaime Rosemberg, ‘‘Mucho Misterio y Escasa Actividad en la Comisión que
debe Controlar la SIDE,’’ La Nación, August 11, 2009.
68. For a detailed description of the law and the regulatory decree, see Geneva Centre
for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, ‘‘Intelligence Legislation Model–Argentina,’’
Toolkit–Legislating for the Security Sector Series, no. 3.5, Aidan Wills (series ed.), Geneva,
2011.
69. This is the successor to the Directorate for Internal Intelligence, created by the Inter-
nal Security Law 24,059 of 1992.
70. Due to reorganization of the executive ministries, since December 2010 the National
Directorate for Criminal Intelligence has been under the jurisdiction of the recently created
Ministry of Security, Decree 2,009 of December 15, 2010.
71. See Estévez, ‘‘Executive and Legislative Oversight,’’ 171–72; and José M. Ugarte,
‘‘Nueva Ley de Inteligencia,’’ La Nación, December 14, 2001.
72. In the context of civil–military relations, Brandão recognized as the critical juncture
the end of the military dictatorship and the impact of the defeat in Malvinas, the period
when the military lost the ability to establish rules of the political game. Brandão, Serviços
Secretos, 78.
73. E.g., while analyzing the military intelligence reform in Argentina, Chile, and Peru,
Weeks suggests considering the ‘‘civilian indifference’’ as an element in a rational choice
analysis of such reforms under the span of civil–military relations. Weeks, ‘‘Preference for
Deference,’’ 46–47.
74. Cları́n and La Nación.
75. Ernesto López, ‘‘Nuevos Desafı́os a la Defensa y la Seguridad: El Impacto en las Relaci-
ones Civiles-Militares, el Caso Argentino,’’ paper delivered at REDES 2002, Center for
Hemispheric Defense Studies, Brası́lia, August 7–10, 2002, 10.
76. See ‘‘Escuchas Ilegales y Cultura Polı́tica,’’ Cları́n, December 22, 2007.
77. See Alberto Binder, ‘‘Perversa Inteligencia sin Control,’’ op-ed, Cları́n, November 24,
2009.
78. Garreta, ‘‘Diseño,’’ 281.
79. Antunes, ‘‘Establishing Democratic Control,’’ 215.
80. Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2006), 178.
CHAPTER 13
Sweden: Intelligence
the Middle Way
Wilhelm Agrell
It’s exactly when formalities have to be observed so carefully and

completely, as in Sweden, that it’s easiest to circumvent them and
do as you please.
—From the novel The Queen’s Diadem, by C. J. L. Almqvist, 1834
I
n many respects the creation, development, and nature of the Swedish
national intelligence institutions is no different from that of a number of
other small states in Northern Europe. The region was deeply affected by
World War II and early in the Cold War became a geostrategic conflict zone
and still to some extent remains one, although in a new European security
context. Sweden, like its Nordic neighbors, is a stable democracy with an inde-
pendent legal system, a free press, and a society built along the ‘‘middle way’’
protected by a long peace. So, judging from the outer appearance, not very
much peculiarity should be expected, not even in such a peculiar domain as
intelligence. However, the outer appearance might in this respect be mislead-
ing, as the Swedish novelist Carl Jonas Love Almqvist let one of his main
characters observe in one of the closing chapters of his classical early-
nineteenth-century novel—quoted above—which was based on the plot to
assassinate King Gustaf III at a masked ball in 1792. Here Almqvist had, as a
gifted writer, grasped one of the Swedish state’s central features, which has to
some extent remained intact for centuries.
/ 239 /
240 / Wilhelm Agrell
The ‘‘Organizing’’ of Intelligence

Like most other small European states, Sweden lacked the framework for an
intelligence culture until the late 1930s. There was a limited understanding of
the need for intelligence, there was no specific institution for its conduct, and
hence there were no clusters of specialists who could have constituted the basis
for a profession. There were some forerunners in the diplomatic corps, in naval
radio interception, and in the General Staff, where the first intelligence-related
actions were taken against Norway during the process of that country’s secession
from its forced union with Sweden in 1905. In the 1930s, however, increasing
international tension and the threat not only of war but also of a completely
new kind of warfare affecting all society became the prime movers for defense
preparations and, among them, the creation of foreign and domestic intelli-
gence institutions.
In the typical Swedish way, intelligence was systematically ‘‘organized,’’
institutions were created, and instructions were written. Formalities were, at
least initially, closely observed, while the actual function (let alone efficiency)
of the institutions was expected to result from the ongoing process of bureau-
cratic establishment. In 1937 a new Defense Staff was formed to handle joint
interservice functions such as war planning and signals communications. The
new staff organization also contained an intelligence branch of around twenty
officers, with a foreign and a domestic section, the latter dealing with military
counterintelligence and protection against sabotage. The means for intelligence
collection were limited to the study of open sources, along with reporting from
the fifteen service attachés stationed in the neighboring countries and the
major powers. Most were military attachés from the army, and there were also
some naval attachés and a few air force attachés, of whom the air attaché to
Moscow, Captain Stig Wennerström, was to play a significant although some-
what unexpected role in Swedish postwar intelligence.
Collection was initially the weak spot, and it became even more so as the
war broke out, with increasing demand for rapid and accurate information from
beyond the national borders, while the listening posts provided by the attachés
were either lost (as in Poland, the Baltic states, and eventually all over Europe)
or hampered by wartime restrictions.1 Also, the diplomats were important intel-
ligence collectors, but there was a certain level of mutual mistrust between
the Intelligence Department and the Foreign Ministry; the Foreign Ministry
reluctantly agreed to send copies of diplomatic reports to the Intelligence
Department, but it reserved the right to decide which reports and at what
time.2 The Intelligence Department, conversely, could circumvent the Foreign
Ministry through the employment of personal letters (handbrev), sent by the
service attachés with the diplomatic bag directly to the head of the Intelligence
Department.
Sweden: Intelligence the Middle Way / 241
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and the subsequent Swedish
declaration of neutrality, three new actors entered the intelligence field. The
first was the G-Bureau, later renamed the C-Bureau (Centralbyrån), a unit for
secret intelligence collection that was under the Defense Staff but was kept
separate from the Intelligence Department. The C-Bureau established a large
intelligence network that was never fully documented. However, the permanent
staff of the bureau remained small, and operations were often run personally by
the chief, Major Carl Petersén, who preferred to keep operational matters to
himself. The staff included a number of well-educated academics, among them
Gunnar Jarring, later an ambassador and international negotiator, and Thede
Palm, the holder of a doctorate in the history of religion and later Petersén’s
successor.
The second hastily established intelligence unit dealt with signals intelli-
gence. The Swedish navy had started the first efforts to monitor Soviet radio
communications, and the Cryptographic Department of the new Defense Staff
took on the overall responsibility for decrypting foreign military and diplomatic
communications. This activity started in the autumn of 1939, using mainly
civilian personnel either called in or serving voluntarily; among the latter was
a professor of mathematics, Arne Beurling.3 The Cryptographic Department
scored considerable successes against the Soviet low-level cipher system during
the Finnish–Soviet Winter War, and the results were shared with Finnish radio
intelligence, a liaison arrangement that was politically uncomplicated as Swe-
den had not declared itself neutral in that specific conflict and supported Fin-
land with arms and other supplies.4
The major breakthrough for signals intelligence was, however, provided by
the Germans after the occupation of Denmark and Norway from April to June
1940. One of the Swedish concessions demanded by Germany was the right to
use land lines, which were believed to be more secure than radio communica-
tions, for telecommunications with occupied Norway. The German machine-
crypto was nevertheless successfully solved by Beurling, thanks to inadequate
handling of the system by the German operators. The net result was that the
Cryptographic Department managed to read about 150,000 German telegrams
between the summer of 1940 and the summer of 1942, when the Germans
realized that their cryptography system had been compromised.5
The decrypted German traffic had a vast intelligence potential, which the
Swedish intelligence service could exploit only to a limited degree.6 The most
important aspect was without doubt that of warning, or, to be more precise,
what the telegrams did not contain. Monitoring the build-up in the late spring
of 1941 for Operation Barbarossa, the Defense Staff and the government were
not only fully aware of the coming German attack against the Soviet Union,
they also knew that the German plans did not presuppose an occupation of
Sweden.7 A more direct use was made of the decrypts of the Stockholm–Berlin
diplomatic traffic, whereby senior officials at the Swedish Foreign Ministry

could check how the German diplomats reported back on conversations and
negotiations.8 However, the Stockholm–Berlin traffic also contained material
of a more problematic nature. Some of the telegrams related German conversa-
tions with senior Swedish military officers and were potentially embarrassing
for the latter. Because the decrypts were distributed by the Defense Staff, a
secret order was issued that telegrams containing information concerning Swed-
ish officers with the rank of colonel or above should be withheld and not given
wider circulation without prior approval. This internal censorship toward the
government eventually became known by the minister of defense, Per Edvin
Sköld, who promptly took action to stop it. Signals intelligence had by now
grown out of the Defense Staff organization and had been constituted as an
independent agency, Försvarets radioanstalt (FRA), directly under the Ministry
for Defense, giving it a special position among the intelligence institutions,
with far-reaching consequences.
The last of the intelligence institutions set up during World War II, the
General Security Service (Allmänna säkerhetstjänsten), was by far the largest,
most powerful, and least known. Having originated with an initiative from the
Defense Staff in the late 1930s that stressed the need for a civilian counterpart
in combating espionage and subversion, the General Security Service was insti-
gated as a ‘‘sleeper’’ organization, to be put into effect in case of war or threat
of war. Neither the government decision to create the service, nor its instruc-
tions, were put before Parliament. The service thus had a status based on a
secret government decision that affected a large number of agencies, something
that was regarded as an advantage.
Parliament, conversely, remained in the dark about the existence of the
General Security Service until 1943, when the careless arrest of some promi-
nent citizens led to an investigation by the government ombudsman, which
eventually resulted in the director being fined for misconduct of duty. If there
was a director with the title security chief, there had to be an organization
under his command, and in this way Parliament was finally informed about the
existence of a huge surveillance apparatus with unlimited authority to monitor
telephone, telegraph, and mail communications on a massive scale without a
court order. In January 1945 the government, eager to distance itself from polit-
ically damaging fallout of the wartime conduct of domestic surveillance, han-
dled the issue with a traditional Swedish method, establishing a parliamentary
commission in which the most outspoken critics were included. The inquiry
lasted almost three years, and the commission presented its major finding on
the General Security Service in 1948, by which time the organization had
been dissolved and the issue had lost much of its previous public and political
significance.9
The Three Pillars of Intelligence

Two of the wartime intelligence institutions were dismantled as peace settled,
only to rise again from the ashes as the threat from the Cold War became
obvious in 1947–48. The secret C-Bureau had to some extent been discredited
for having cooperated with the German Abwehr, at least in the eyes of the
Western powers. More devastating perhaps was the fact that the bureau, due to
personal disputes among its staff, came under investigation for dubious financial
transactions and inaccurate bookkeeping. Even if not very much came out of
the investigation besides some missing receipts, one case of suspected private
bicycle repair was duly noted, and a sour remark that Major Petersén seemed to
have had a preference for meeting his agents in remote places like Istanbul, the
accusations nevertheless received media attention and thus effectively ‘‘outed’’
the secret organization, which was gradually wound down, only to be hastily
reorganized to handle intelligence collection from the Baltic ports, the former
Baltic states, and Finland’s eastern border.10 Thede Palm, who succeeded Pet-
ersén, found himself in a new role, heading the semiautonomous organization,
renamed the T-Office (T-Kontoret), possibly referring either to the name of
the chief or the cover name Technical Department, chosen to be as nonillumi-
nating as possible.
The General Security Service was swiftly wound down in 1945. Not waiting
for the outcome of the parliamentary investigation, the government abolished
the emergency legislation and dismantled the entire service, a process that was
completed in 1946. The only remaining element was the Radio Surveillance
Department (RKA), which had been successfully shielded from public or parlia-
mentary scrutiny. The RKA was an organization tasked with the monitoring
and tracking of illegal domestic radio transmitters and should not be confused
with the FRA, although the two continued to have a mix of close cooperation
and endless turf battles until the outbreak of the signals intelligence controver-
sies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The RKA, being mainly a
counterintelligence instrument, was merged into the Sixth Department of the
State Police. This, in turn, was renamed the Third Department, later the
equally confusing Special Policing Department, and subsequently the more
accurate Security Department and Security Police, or Säpo. The latter was ini-
tially a rather ill-sounding public acronym, to which the organization itself,
however, became so accustomed that it became the official abbreviation of its
name in the 1980s.11
The third pillar of Swedish intelligence, the FRA, was the one that had
‘‘won the war,’’ at least in terms of intelligence output and prestige. The tre-
mendous success achieved against German traffic had not only facilitated the
FRA’s organizational growth and its independent position vis-à-vis the military
intelligence structure, but also had given it the role of crown jewel, surrounded
by an air of secrecy and mystery.12 Given the geopolitical position of Sweden

in the Cold War, signals intelligence became even more important, both for
early-warning purposes and for strategic intelligence collection.
The organizational heritage of the 1940s, which was to remain intact during
the Cold War and beyond, did not until the turn of the century contain any
central body for the coordination and guidance of intelligence, let alone for
joint analysis and dissemination. In principle, all parts of the intelligence struc-
ture, which initially also contained independent intelligence departments of
the three armed services and agencies for defense research and defense procure-
ment, were guided by the government. But because there was no joint adminis-
trative body, and influenced by the extreme secrecy surrounding intelligence
matters in a country like Sweden, things were handled directly by the minister
of defense or the prime minister personally.13 Having other things on their
minds, the top politicians, at least up to the mid-1960s, normally took a very
limited interest in intelligence matters. One indication of this is the fact that
the head of secret intelligence, Thede Palm, recalls having been summoned by
the prime minister, Tage Erlander, fewer than ten times during his nineteen
years as head of the T-Office, even though the two were well acquainted and
had a common academic background at Lund University in the 1930s.14 A
peculiar circumstance was the virtual nonexistence of a cabinet office; the
prime minister, Erlander (in office, 1945–69), ran the government virtually on
his own until he managed to recruit the young student politician Olof Palme as
his political assistant in the mid-1950s, incidentally from a position at Defense
Staff Intelligence.15
From the perspective of the prime minister and his closest associates on
security matters, intelligence in the 1950s and 1960s was on the whole more of
a (necessary) source of trouble than a policy asset. Time and again the prime
minister was dragged into crisis management domestically and externally due
to intelligence matters. For example, in 1950 the air force, obviously after infor-
mation acquired by the T-Office but without government approval, conducted
a daring photo-reconnaissance mission from northern Sweden toward Kanda-
laksya in the northwestern USSR, crossing Finnish airspace in Lappland. The
prime minister was informed afterward about the flight, not by the military but
by the chief of the Security Police, who in his turn had received the information
in confidence from the head of military security.16
This lack of coordination and elementary contact also reflected an overall
feature of Swedish public administration, whereby the heads of the agencies
enjoyed a high degree of independence, and whereby the ministers were, and
still are, forbidden by the Constitution to intervene in operational matters
(ministerstyre). There was, especially in the field of intelligence, a gray zone, but
this worked both ways, as illustrated by a comment by Thede Palm that the
head of the Security Police informed the prime minister about every sensitive
matter simply to keep his back clean, whereas Palm followed the opposite line
and kept away from the politicians, making all decisions by himself to grant
them solid deniability.17 As a consequence, the weak structure for intelligence
guidance became even weaker, with the government being only partially
informed or not informed at all about what the agencies were up to. One amaz-
ing example is the Swedish participation in the US–British Venona Project
dealing with the deciphering of Soviet radio communications from the 1940s.
The work in Sweden began in 1962 after an initiative from the British General
Command Headquarters, and on the Swedish side was carried out jointly by the
FRA and the Security Police. However, not only military intelligence but also
the government was kept in the dark, and it took until 1973, when the project
was almost terminated, before the chief police commissioner informed the
prime minister, who at that time was Olof Palme.18
The smooth cooperation between the FRA and the Security Police in a
concrete operational matter illustrates another aspect of the ‘‘nonsystem’’ of
Swedish intelligence: the virtually unlimited potential for informal contacts,
information exchange, and mutual support. Although the intelligence structure
as a whole lacked overall guidance, officials within the agencies could cooperate
at an operational level, to a large extent through personal contacts and mutual
trust, employing the Swedish principle of horizontal coordination (samverkan).
This was a fundamental principle in the armed forces and in the huge institu-
tional structure for total defense, established in parallel with the intelligence
agencies during World War II and preserved during the entire Cold War. Even
if intelligence was a closed domain, in some respects extremely closed, it could
nevertheless facilitate joint efforts from this culture of cooperation and coordi-
nation within the ‘‘extended family’’ of intelligence officials in neighboring
agencies. Horizontal cooperation outside the intelligence profession was far
more restricted and one-sided.
One illustrative example of these informal networks and their role in an
intelligence context occurred during a Soviet/Swedish diplomatic controversy
in 1957, initiated by a Soviet note accusing Sweden of clandestine intelligence
operations and infiltration of armed émigrés into the Baltic republics. Many
details about personnel addresses and telephone numbers were subsequently
published by Soviet newspapers, all pointing in the direction of the T-Office,
as Swedish journalists started to discover. To end this investigative journalism,
the Defense Staff gave the military representative on the Board for Psychologi-
cal Defense the task of discreetly approaching the editors in chief of the most
active newspapers, who also had wartime assignments on this board. After this,
the papers promptly stopped their investigations.19
Neutral Intelligence Liaison: Apples in Exchange for Pears

Swedish intelligence foreign liaison had an early start; in some respects it pre-
ceded other forms of intelligence collection.20 Already in the autumn of 1936,
a Swedish officer from the Defense Staff concluded a liaison arrangement with
the German Abwehr, concerning intelligence from the east.21 The close con-
tacts between the Defense Staff and Abwehr continued until 1943–44, when
competing and increasingly exclusive liaison arrangements were established
with the representatives of the Western Allies, first of all the American Office
of Strategic Services.22 The FRA established parallel contacts with the British
signals intelligence, whereby the latter was able to conduct telemetry collection
against the German missile research center at Peenemünde from a site in south-
ern Sweden.23 The General Security Service had upheld a close liaison with
the Gestapo up to 1942 and was, along with the C-Bureau, not without reason,
regarded with some suspicion by the Western intelligence services. The new
geostrategic conditions created by the outcome of the war had far-reaching
consequences for the intelligence field. For Sweden it was of paramount impor-
tance to monitor military forces and activities in the east.24 This interest was
to a large extent shared by the three Scandinavian countries, constituting a
strong incentive for intelligence cooperation, established already during the
final stages of the war and continued in an informal triangular configuration,
with the somewhat odd feature of nonaligned Sweden acting as a mediator
between the NATO countries Denmark and Norway.25
On the Swedish side, there was no single authority or committee coordinat-
ing intelligence liaison between the different institutional actors. Palm and the
T-Office played an important role in establishing contacts between FRA and
its Danish and Norwegian counterparts, but this was soon further developed on
a bilateral basis. In a rare case of intelligence coordination, typically enough in
the horizontal and informal fashion, in 1946 representatives of the Defense
Staff intelligence and security departments, the FRA, and the T-Office agreed
to handle future intelligence liaison with US representatives along three sepa-
rate lines: intelligence, counterintelligence, and signals intelligence. The Swed-
ish agencies in this way divided an American offer between themselves so that
each would get a slice of the pie but also, independent of each other, be respon-
sible for establishing the specific liaison arrangement.26
This formula was to remain valid throughout and well beyond the Cold
War. Each agency established and developed individual liaison arrangements
based on an exchange, information-sharing, or cooperative basis. The informa-
tion sharing became especially important in the fields where the Swedish intel-
ligence agencies were dependent on technological assistance from the outside,
which in most cases meant the United States. One early example of such ‘‘tech-
nology for information-sharing’’ deals was the informal agreement in 1947
between US Air Force intelligence and the head of photo-reconnaissance at

the Defense Staff, Captain Thorén, who incidentally was the brother of the
director of the FRA, both being naval officers. The deal meant that the US Air
Force would supply its Swedish counterpart with aerial cameras on loan ‘‘in
return for photographic intelligence.’’27 The delicate nature of the agreement
was underlined by the instructions to the US military attaché in Stockholm to
handle the matter directly with the Defense Staff intelligence and not through
the Swedish Air Force. It was also assumed by the Americans that the transac-
tion would create considerable goodwill: ‘‘It may prove desirable for a photo
intelligence officer to accompany the shipment since the receipt of the cameras
on loan may cause the Swedes at that particular moment to be willing to release
a great amount of photo intelligence material to us.’’28
There is no reference to the Swedish government approving this agreement
or being informed about the content, let alone the consequences. The incident
with the flight toward the Kola Peninsula in 1950 was most likely a part of the
subsequent program.29 The remark by the prime minister in his diary is notable:
‘‘Now the question: Have the military idiots told the Americans about their
adventures? Probably so, unfortunately.’’30 This comment indicates not only a
lack of government approval for the individual mission but also a lack of knowl-
edge concerning the underlying liaison agreement, granting the US Air Force
information sharing from a mission conducted with their cameras.
The most extensive liaison arrangement was, however, the links established
by the FRA to the corresponding services in the Scandinavian countries—but
first and foremost to the British signals intelligence, a role later taken over by
the United States. The Scandinavian ‘‘market’’ was divided by 1954 so that
Britain continued to deal with the FRA, while the National Security Agency
entered into formal agreements with Norway and Denmark.31 From the second
half of the 1950s, American contact gradually overshadowed the British, which
to a large extent was due to the advanced signals intelligence equipment that
the United States could supply for very favorable prices or on loan.32
It was, however, neither the economy nor the crossing of lines with foreign
partners that constituted the main problem in the growing web of intelligence
liaison, but the potential political fallout in case of revelation. This was a part
of a wider problem connected with secret Swedish contacts with the Western
powers, motivated by the same geostrategic circumstances that had created the
incentive for intelligence liaison. The problem in these contacts, stretching
back to the closing stages of the war, when the nominally neutral Sweden
adjusted its policy from concessions toward Germany to concessions toward the
Western Allies, was the overarching domestic consensus on nonalignment and
neutrality, or, in the words of the official definition of Swedish national security
repeated throughout the Cold War: ‘‘Nonalignment in peace aiming at neutral-
ity in war.’’ This meant that not only binding arrangements but also such mea-
sures that would undermine the credibility of a declaration of neutrality in the
event of war between east and west were ruled out. Starting in the early 1970s,
the nonalignment and subsequent self-imposed limitations were jointly
described as a ‘‘Policy of Neutrality’’ (Neutralitetspolitik).33
For Swedish intelligence, the result of this policy drift was a paradox.
Although liaison had to be carried out with discretion in the first postwar years,
it increasingly became a contradiction in terms—an officially denied activity
that, if it became known, would be impossible to defend within the neutrality
doctrine and thus could threaten to undermine the credibility of this doctrine
externally, but perhaps first of all internally, as it was perceived by the Swedish
public. However, instead of producing tight central control and a limited con-
duct of intelligence liaison, the effect became almost the opposite. On the
military operational level, the secret Western contacts were handled by a very
limited number of officials but were nevertheless regarded as so potentially dev-
astating for the Policy of Neutrality that they were gradually phased out and
the key planning documents were destroyed in the 1980s.34
Intelligence liaison in a similar way had to be limited to a small number of
officials within the agencies, and documents received through liaison were given
extremely limited circulation and a special classification, Special Intelligence
(S-underrättelser), the very existence of which was secret. Liaison, in this way,
developed into a closed subculture within the agencies, where it could not only
continue but gradually expand. When the very existence of liaison with foreign
powers finally was disclosed in 1973, the public was thoroughly unprepared, and
the supreme commander, in an attempt to play down the significance, com-
pared the practice with exchanging apples for pears. In the report of a Parlia-
mentary Commission investigating the revelations, Swedish intelligence liaison
was described as something natural and on the whole uncomplicated: The
Swedish intelligence services were comparatively small and could facilitate
exchange with others. The issue of neutrality was avoided by pointing out that
liaison had to be conducted in a way that did not harm ‘‘a third party.’’35 How
this would come about was not specified; no names of countries were men-
tioned, and the types of information exchanged were not described, except for
information concerning Swedish citizens that was not to be forwarded ‘‘except
after review in the individual case.’’36 The commission did, however, highlight
one fundamental weakness in the conduct of liaison: Because each agency
worked on its own, there was not only a lack of coordination but also a lack of
overall assessment of what material was exchanged and what the country actu-
ally received in return. However, not very much changed in the liaison struc-
ture, even if a mostly symbolic oversight body was set up by the parliament, and
it would take another twenty-five years until a small coordinating body was set
up within the Ministry of Defense.
Behind the careful wordings of the report of the 1974 Intelligence Commis-
sion, the first of its kind ever in Sweden, lay a serious structural dilemma. As
with all small states entering into nontransparent continuous intelligence coop-
eration with major powers, there was a problem of control and integrity. Thede
Palm had experienced this when he established contact with Reinhardt Gehlen
and the West German foreign intelligence service, the BND. Gehlen was eager
to place a liaison staff in Stockholm, but Palm said no, knowing that the
T-Office was a small organization that could be easily overwhelmed by requests
and initiatives from such a liaison station, which would have degraded Palm’s
staff to the role of subcontractor to BND.37
Another aspect of this structural dilemma was that the Swedish intelligence
agencies, with their limited resources and expertise, could be supplied with
material containing intentionally or unintentionally tainting assessments. It
has been argued that the United States and/or Britain could have been involved
in the alleged submarine intrusions in Swedish waters in the early 1980s.38 The
Western powers, however, had at their disposal far more effective methods for
influencing Swedish threat perceptions and strategic dispositions in the form of
the close intelligence cooperation whereby Swedish intelligence during the
same period was provided with alarming intelligence assessments concerning
Soviet aggressive aspirations in the Far North, assessments that obviously
affected the overall picture of Swedish military intelligence.39
Domestic Intelligence in Deep Shadows

Along with secret intelligence, the Security Police resurfaced with the advent
of the Cold War and a subsequent surge in a perceived threat from spies, sabo-
teurs, and communist subversion. By 1948 the police also saw the return of their
most powerful instrument: the right to conduct secret wiretapping to investigate
suspected crimes against the state security. ‘‘Suspected crimes’’ soon turned out
to be a somewhat fluid term, and the Security Police initiated a massive intelli-
gence collection on communists and suspected communists, filling the Central
Registry with files, reaching a peak in the mid-1960s with around half a million
registered names (from a population of 7.7 million).40 The means employed
were traditional surveillance and a widespread use of informers, as well as wire-
tapping, of which the party headquarters of the Swedish Communist Party con-
stituted the largest single target.
Sometime in 1952 or 1953, another and separate domestic intelligence proj-
ect was initiated, focusing on persons employed in sensitive positions in the
armed forces and the total defense complex. The Domestic Department of the
Defense Staff had been assigned the task of screening conscripts for certain
sensitive assignments. This was done in cooperation with the Security Police,
which checked the names against the Central Registry. But the armed forces
were also dependent on civilian personnel and contractors, along with employ-
ees in the defense industry and other companies or agencies with relevance for
the total defense. Although there were divisions and crossing lines of responsi-
bility among the intelligence agencies, the main divide here was the one
between the Security Police and the various actors in the defense domain.
There was certainly ongoing cooperation in specific concrete matters (samver-
kan), both formalized and informal, but the organizations on each side of the
divide were nevertheless very different in their professional outlook, with the
police being far more legalistic in their approach than military intelligence and
security. These differences, along with the existence of a gray zone of unclear
responsibility, resulted in a cautious and, as it turned out, in some cases hostile
relation at the top, fed by a fair amount of bureaucratic territoriality. An addi-
tional aspect complicating the matter was a distrust on behalf of the Social
Democratic Party organization and labor unions against the police, which was
to some extent deeply rooted in experience from political struggle and strikes
but also influenced by the more recent experience of the wartime General
Security Service, which was not always successful in separating social democrat
sympathizers from Communists and other suspicious left-wing elements. The
incentive to cooperate with the Security Police was thus limited, especially on
the local level.41
In 1951, Lieutenant Birger Elmér was employed by the Intelligence Depart-
ment and assigned the task of monitoring and analyzing Soviet propaganda
broadcasts against Sweden. Elmér had studied psychology and would later write
a doctoral dissertation on propaganda analysis. Two years later, in 1953, another
young reserve lieutenant, Olof Palme, joined the Intelligence Department, pos-
sibly influenced by a contact with Elmér, because they knew each other and
already had cooperated in intelligence-related matters. The close relationship
between the two was to prove decisive for Elmér’s career as well as for the rise
of a new secret intelligence structure.42 Contrary to most senior officers, Elmér
was an outspoken social democrat and later also acquired party membership.
Referring to these party contacts, he soon managed to make himself useful in a
number of ways. With considerable entrepreneurship, he established contacts
far above and beyond his formal position, including the social democrat minis-
ter of defense, Torsten Nilsson, the senior official of the central trade union
(Landsorganisationen), and Social Democrats in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and
Germany.
Through his party and labor union contacts, Elmér became aware of a possi-
ble solution to the problem concerning screening of suspected security risks
without relying on the Security Police. In the struggle against the Communists
for the control over local trade unions, the social democrats established in the
late 1940s a nationwide network, covering about 20,000 workplaces with party
representatives (arbetsplatsombud). Elmér’s innovative idea was to tap this net-
work of often-detailed knowledge about their adversary on the left. However,
neither the police nor the military could approach this semiclandestine party
structure with any hope of cooperation. This could only be accomplished by an

organization staffed by well-known social democrats, hence trusted by their
party comrades in the labor movement.43 A further concern, often referred to
in retrospect, was US demands on security clearance regarding Communist
infiltration of industries and other facilities handling sensitive technology
exported to Sweden in accordance with agreements signed in 1952 and 1958.44
Elmér’s vision, with himself playing the key role, grew step by step. In 1958
a small unit with the designation Group B was created with Elmér as head and
attached to the Domestic Department, though localized in a separate premise.
In the coming years Elmér established a nationwide and international network
and started the collection of information on suspected security risks, and in the
beginning of the 1960s Group B moved to a new building in a Stockholm
suburb under the suitable cover of the company name ‘‘Collector.’’ At that
stage friction between Elmér and Thede Palm, and also between Elmér and the
Security Police, was increasing. At a meeting between Palm and the head of
the Security Police, Thulin, the latter asked several times in what kind of work
Elmér was engaged. Palm answered that he did not know, but that he thought
Elmér did some processing on material he got from Thulin. To this Thulin
answered that this probably had been the intention, but that he had declined
such an arrangement. Thus neither the T-Office nor the Security Police knew
what purpose Group B had.45
Palm’s relations with Elmér had been frosty from the onset, with Elmér as a
junior intelligence officer establishing his own liaison arrangements with for-
eign partners. Neither were Palm’s relations much better with the rapidly rising
star, Palme. There were differences in personality, but also in political and
professional outlook. In his memoirs Palm rather bitterly comments that Elmér
was allowed to ‘‘establish a security service on behalf of his political party’’ using
government funding.46 The close relation between Elmér and Palme proved to
be more decisive than the old friendship between Palm and Erlander. In 1964,
Palm began receiving signals from the government that it was time for him to
withdraw. He also had growing difficulties with the head of Section II of the
Defense Staff, who incidentally disliked both Palm and Elmér and wanted
‘‘those gentlemen’’ to be placed outside the Defense Staff and have nothing to
do with it, except the duty to send over reports.47
Without support from either the minister of defense or the prime minister,
Erlander, and with Palme entering government, the stage was set for the first—
and only—major reshuffling of the postwar intelligence structure, the creation
of the Information Bureau (IB). In 1965, Palm was removed and placed in
internal exile at the Department of Military History of the War College. No
doubt a bitter man, he nevertheless kept quiet, as he had done for twenty-five
years. The T-Office and Group B, now called the B-Office, were merged into a
new combined secret service (or special service, as it was sometimes called),
with Elmér as its first director. With the creation of the IB began a brief inter-
lude of close but at the same time extremely nontransparent government–
intelligence relations, mostly handled on a person-to-person basis between
Elmér and Palme. If the wartime General Security Service was little known
and lacked parliamentary consent, the IB was completely detached from any
constitutional or legal framework; it was an officially nonexistent entity without
any outside insight or control and with a nondocumented information channel
directly to Palme, first as minister of education and then, starting in 1969, as
prime minister.48
If Palm was easy to get rid of, the same was not the case for the Security
Police. Thulin’s successor in 1962, P. G. Vinge, described in his memoirs the
shock he experienced when he visited ‘‘AB collector’’ and realized that Elmér
and his organization were operating as a parallel security service outside any
legal framework.49 In 1969, shortly before Erlander left office, the chief police
commissioner, Carl Persson, brought the issue to a decision. At a meeting with
Erlander, where his imminent successor, Palme, also was present, Persson asked
the prime minister if it was the Security Police or the IB that should be
entrusted with the responsibility for the country’s internal security. This was a
rhetorical question, and Erlander had to promise that the domestic intelligence
conducted by the IB would be discontinued. Elmér, furious over the decision,
was forced to comply, but without any external control of his organization, he
could simply reactivate domestic intelligence after a brief interlude.50
All this, however, came to a sudden halt in the spring of 1973, when the
Swedish left-wing magazine Folket i Bild Kulturfront published a feature story
that effectively outed large parts of the organization. As in many similar cases,
the magazine had gotten its information from an insider, an employee who had
been sacked after inventing sources and pocketing their reimbursements. This
was the end for the IB and Elmér as the first (and last) director. The now-not-
so-secret organization was restaffed and placed back under the Defense Staff,
with a role similar to that of the old T-Office. The unit changed its name
several times and finally in the 1990s, under the designation Office for Special
Collection, became a part of the newly formed Military Intelligence Directorate
(Militära Underrättelstjänsten, MUST), as an independent part of the head-
quarters. The IB was formally dissolved in 1974, but Elmér remained in the
shadows as a consultant. As a nonsocialist government entered service in 1976,
the first since the 1930s, the new minister of defense discovered that funding
was still trickling to the nonexistent IB and demanded an immediate stop to
the flow and the removal of Elmér and his old confidants from everything that
had to do with defense intelligence, something that did not stop Elmér from
remaining in the background at least to 1980, after which he retired to his farm
in southern Sweden, incidentally growing apple trees.51
‘‘The IB Affair’’ resulted in the setting up of the 1974 Parliamentary Intel-

ligence Commission. Although the investigation took a broad grip over a num-
ber of key organizational and political issues, like the subsequent probes by the
justice ombudsman (Jutitieombudsman) and the attorney general, it failed to
clarify the extent and nature of the domestic intelligence activities conducted
by the IB. From the very outset, the social democrat representative denied any
connection between the party and the IB and explained the number of former
labor union men in the IB as purely coincidental. The bubble finally burst in
1998, two months before a general election. This time it was the IB’s old
director, Birger Elmér, who was the perhaps unintentional source. A few years
earlier, Elmér had been among a large number of former civil servants, officers,
and politicians questioned by another parliamentary commission, this time
investigating Swedish clandestine links with the Western powers in the period
before 1969.52 Although the commission was not supposed to investigate intel-
ligence relations—in fact, intelligence matters had been explicitly mentioned
as something they should not look into—the members nevertheless asked
many questions regarding intelligence matters. The hearings were closed and
the transcripts were classified, so very little of this became public, at least
initially. However, a number of journalists and researchers, realizing the poten-
tial of the material, started the process of getting the transcripts declassified in
accordance with the Swedish equivalent of the US Freedom of Information
Act. Applications could be filed over and over again, and by way of attrition
bits and pieces of the classified sections of the transcripts were released, among
them one where Elmér bragged about his idea to use the Social Democrat
Party for domestic intelligence collection. Thus ended this peculiar twenty-
five-year-long intelligence disaster—or, in the words of Lars Olof Lamperts,
the researcher tasked by the appointed 1999 Security Service Commission to
once and for all investigate the IB, ‘‘an unprecedented example of failed politi-
cal crisis management.’’53
The Post–Cold War Maze and the Return of Unfinished Business

With the perceived end of the Cold War, much of the logic of the existing
intelligence system had been eroded, but the wider implications still remained
unclear. In 1996, the government finally appointed a new intelligence commis-
sion, the first in two decades. This commission, however, was nonparliamentar-
ian and was chaired by a senior jurist, staffed by experts, and assigned a limited
mandate. Although tasked with investigating the impact of transforming intel-
ligence requirements and an updated (or rather introduced) legal framework, it
was not authorized to investigate or suggest any organizational changes. A new
intelligence agenda thus had to be implemented within the old Cold War intel-
ligence structure and without too much reforming of its institutions. Such a
reform would have demanded a full parliamentary commission, and would inevi-
tably have upset the relative balance of power that had been established after
the turbulence in the 1960s and 1970s.
The report, issued in 1999, was a typical product of the late 1990s security
agenda, stressing the need to transform intelligence from focusing on military
surveillance toward a broader span of possible future national security threats,
including support for peacekeeping operations; the flow of refugees (i.e., the
flow that Sweden had just experienced from the Balkans); transborder organized
crime; and the smuggling of components, raw materials, and the know-how
associated with weapons of mass destruction. Typically for assessments shortly
before the new millennium, international terrorism was just mentioned in pass-
ing but was not regarded as something crucial from an intelligence perspective.54
More than any other part of the Swedish intelligence structure, the FRA
had enjoyed a long period of anonymity and lack of political reform efforts
during the Cold War and beyond. Apart from the downing of a signals intelli-
gence aircraft in 1952 and a prolonged struggle by the relatives of the aircraft’s
lost crew members in the 1980s and 1990s to clarify their fate, the FRA had
remained almost totally unknown in its rural setting outside Stockholm and
monitoring stations in remote parts of the country. In official documents, it was
only mentioned in passing; the 1974 investigation only gave a brief description
of it on a single page but did disclose that its current budget showed that signals
intelligence received about 80 percent of the total share.55
That ‘‘health remains quiet’’ (Hälsan tiger still) is an old Swedish proverb,
and it probably held true for the FRA during the late Cold War. But in the
1990s things began to change on two fronts. First, the need for military surveil-
lance of the Baltic Sea region decreased due to the dismantling of the Soviet
armed forces and the independence of the Baltic states. There were far fewer
targets and activities to monitor, and far less demand from Swedish military
and political intelligence customers. This increased the relative importance of
worldwide communications intelligence, the traditional hallmark of the FRA
ever since the Swedish victory over the Geheimschreiber. This most secret
activity during the Cold War had initially been conducted through monitoring
of radio transmissions, supplemented with the access to telegraphic and telex
cable communications to and from foreign institutions in Sweden. This latter
source had been cut off in 1945, with the termination of the wartime emergency
laws, and the newly appointed foreign minister, Östen Undén, himself a profes-
sor of international law, had opposed such access on legal and ethical grounds.
But in 1948, with the Cold War in full swing, access was nevertheless granted
through a secret government decision.56
This ‘‘cable access’’ remained unknown throughout the Cold War but would
become known after fifty years, if not renewed. The significance for intelligence
collection had decreased drastically in the 1970s and 1980s with the introduc-
tion of satellite communications that could be intercepted without physical
access. In the early 1990s, the 1948 government decision was altered and the
access was terminated, an action probably dictated mainly by the government’s
fear of another intelligence scandal. From the perspective of the FRA, this
terminated access did not seem to matter particularly much. Not foreseen at
that time was the coming rapid development of the international network of
fiber-optic cables with the huge transmission capacity needed for Internet traf-
fic. Just a few years later, the FRA suddenly found itself in a situation where it
was increasingly cut off from the large telecommunication flows then moving
back from satellite links to cables. The dilemma this created was considerable.
On the one hand the FRA could continue with business as usual, but then most
likely it would lose important sources, and in the longer run also the cryptologi-
cal competence that was its backbone. On the other hand the FRA could press
the government to renew the cable access, but then risk that the whole Swedish
communications intelligence enterprise would become widely known.
The first attempt to find a way out of this dilemma was a compromise. In
2003, a one-man investigation carried out by the former supreme commander,
General Owe Wiktorin, suggested that the FRA—for the sake of protecting
information security in vital infrastructure, but also for individual citizens—
would be given access to the global telecommunications network through the
operators. The stated purpose was thus not intelligence collection but protec-
tion against hackers and other forms of hostile Internet activities. Article 8 of
the European Convention, which ensures citizens the right to private commu-
nications, was highlighted, not as an obstacle but as an argument for supervision
to protect these rights.57
External events, however, generated a serious crack in the silent consensus
necessary to solve the signals intelligence dilemma in a smooth and, as it was
intended, discreet way. Although not directly affecting Swedish security, the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States nevertheless
increased the threat of terrorism, or rather the perceived scale of a possible
attack. This inevitably reactivated an old controversy in Sweden dating from
the 1930s over the dividing line between the armed forces and the police. Until
then, the armed forces had been ruled out for internal police tasks, even in case
of severe crimes such as terrorist attacks. But terrorists using aircraft or having
at their disposal advanced weapons could not be handled by the police. This
problem was transferred to an investigation (11 September-Utredningen), but
the underlying latent conflict between the defense and the police proved hard
to overcome, even though both sides realized that this had to be done.58 It took
five years until the tug of war was decided, mainly in favor of the police. A law
passed in 2006 mandated that military resources could be employed in extreme
situations, when resources not available to the police were demanded. But in
these contingencies, the police would still be in charge and the military support
would be under their command.59
Although not primarily dealing with the intelligence aspects of possible
attacks by international terrorist, the conflict over the ‘‘ownership’’ of the ter-
rorism threat nevertheless rapidly spilled over to the intelligence domain, and
thus it fed underlying structural conflicts within the defense intelligence agen-
cies and between defense intelligence as such and the Security Police, which
since the mid-1990s had been supplemented by Criminal Police Intelligence.
This latter conflict rapidly escalated to the political level, where it caused grow-
ing friction between the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Justice.
All this occurred behind the scenes and remained almost completely invisi-
ble to those not directly concerned until the autumn of 2007. There were two
interlinked territorial conflicts. The first concerned the secret intelligence
department, the Office for Special Collection. This was basically the only pro-
ducer of raw intelligence within MUST, besides the service attachés controlled
by the directorate itself. Otherwise, MUST was dependent on other intelli-
gence producers, first of all the FRA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The
FRA had, shortly after World War II, suggested reorganizing to a centralized
collection agency whereby the FRA would take over photo-intelligence (at that
time run by the brother of the FRA director) and the unwanted baby, the
C-Bureau. The High Command had at that time stopped all such plans, but in
the late 1990s they resurfaced, now against the background of a transforming
and widening role for national intelligence, whereby the efforts of the collect-
ing agencies had to become more closely coordinated—or so it was argued. A
less altruistic reason could have been that all the intelligence agencies now had
problems remaining relevant from a customer’s perspective.
The second territorial aspect of this silently prepared reshuffling was the
transformation of secret intelligence, from the traditional Cold War foreign
intelligence collection focused on the East, to a more general intelligence col-
lection agency, with the capacity to run sources and collect information con-
cerning the whole span of transborder threats. But there were two caveats. The
first one was a bill passed in 2000, the first ever regulating defense intelligence,
which—as it soon turned out, rather unfortunately—explicitly limited the
scope of defense intelligence to the surveying of external military threats against
the nation, thereby excluding almost all the new transborder threats, leaving
them to the police, customs, and other civilian agencies. The second obstacle,
once again far more difficult to overcome, was the Security Police.
In 2007, after several years of in-house processing in the Ministry of Defense
and Ministry of Justice, the government was finally prepared to propose a pack-
age solution, containing three interlinked new or rewritten laws.60 The first was
new wording in the Law of Defense Intelligence that replaced ‘‘external military
threats’’ with ‘‘external threats,’’ a seemingly minor change, but as it emerged
one with wide-ranging implications. The second part of the package was a
brand-new Law of Signals Intelligence, the first one ever in Sweden. The law’s
text, which was very brief and did not even mention the FRA, nevertheless
contained the important clarification that signals intelligence also could be
collected in all types of transmission, including in cables crossing the national
border. Permission nevertheless had to be given by a new board, but signals
intelligence collection did not like the well-established police wiretapping
court order, because it was a part of Defense Intelligence (as now defined) and
not law enforcement. Finally, the package’s third part was an addendum to a
law on electronic communication, containing an obligation for telecommuni-
cations operators to make their cross-border traffic available at certain tapping
points, an instruction not entirely unlike the 1939 emergency legislation mak-
ing the diplomatic cable traffic available to the Defense Staff’s Cryptographic
Department. The main reasons behind this proposed package of laws were pre-
sented as legalistic ones because Sweden, like the United Kingdom and Ger-
many, had to comply with the European Convention, which stipulated that the
rights of citizens in accordance with Article 8 had to be supported in law.
Although important for its legal rationale, the regained cable access was never-
theless the crucial issue from an intelligence perspective.
In the summer of 2008, the government was finally prepared to present the
bill to Parliament. The tug-of-war had by then burst into the open, with the
chief police commissioner, echoing Carl Persson in 1969, firmly opposing the
bill as a threat to individual integrity and a reopened door to domestic military
intelligence with a resemblance to the IB. On June 18, with the summer holiday
only days away, the Swedish parliament was supposed to pass the bill without
undue delay and lengthy debates. However, what from the beginning had been
presented as a minor technical and legal matter had by now transformed into a
major public controversy, fed by widespread fear of massive eavesdropping and
the reestablishment of the Cold War surveillance system, now in the name of
protection against terrorism. Facing a possible defeat, to persuade rebels on the
government benches to vote in favor, the government had to add a long list of
concessions that proved very difficult to include in a new, modified bill on
tightened procedures for approval, improved control, and limited access to sig-
nals intelligence as a source. One of the concessions was the promise to deprive
the Security Police of the right to file requests for signals intelligence, a decision
that was heavily questioned after the narrowly misfired suicide bomber attack
in central Stockholm on December 11, 2010.61
In July 2008, in the midst of the public and political turmoil over the ‘‘Cable
Law,’’ a group of US antiterrorist officials visited Sweden on a rather delicate
mission. The terrorist-screening information-negotiating team was to negotiate
the terms for Swedish adherence to the US Enhanced Visa Waiver Program,
which in practice meant concluding a formal agreement on the exchange of
information on terrorist suspects. Through at that time an unforeseen form of

communication intelligence, the report containing a summary of the meetings
was made public in the giant WikiLeaks release of US State Department cables
in the autumn of 2010. According to the US summary, which, of course, reflects
the perspective of the negotiating team, the Swedish representatives from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Justice were positive about antiter-
rorist intelligence cooperation but very reluctant to sign any formal agreement
on the matter. The Swedes expressed ‘‘a strong degree of satisfaction with cur-
rent informal information sharing agreements’’ with the United States covering
‘‘a wide range of law enforcement and antiterrorism cooperation.’’ However, in
light of the newly passed surveillance law, the Swedish representatives
explained, it would be impossible for the Ministry of Justice to avoid presenting
a formal data-sharing agreement for Parliament. According to the Swedish rep-
resentatives, as a result the existing informal cooperative arrangement would be
more intensely scrutinized by Parliament and thus jeopardized. US ambassador
Michael Wood summarized his view of the Swedish attitude to the conduct of
intelligence in the following words: ‘‘The Ministry of Justice’s notion of a one-
sided, informal data exchange arrangement reflects Swedish constitutional
restrictions on the use of intelligence, combined with a willingness to continue
feeding information to the US through existing informal channels.’’62
Echoing the words in Almqvist’s famous novel, this rare insight into the
management of a bilateral liaison arrangement also illustrates the enhanced
importance of intelligence in foreign relations, not only as a tool but also as an
arena. This is even more visible in the European context, where the symbolic
role of intelligence cooperation and participation in emerging multilateral
structures has become an essential element in the conduct of intelligence.63
Cooperation is not only conducted to acquire information, but intelligence
is also conducted to facilitate participation in cooperation on a bilateral or
multilateral basis.
Conclusion: The Practice of Muddling Through in a Noncommunity

From the outset, a permanent weakness of the Swedish intelligence culture was
the lack of a concept of a system; this lack mirrored both the overall structure
of public administration and the low priority given to intelligence matters in
the formation of national policy, with the Palme–Elmér relationship in the
1960s and early 1970s as a brief and not too encouraging interlude. To keep the
‘‘gentlemen’’ at arm’s length remained a valid prescription for politicians
against trouble, as both the IB Affair and the Cable Law controversy were to
confirm. The alternative line, the establishment of a political and public con-
sensus on intelligence, would have presupposed both the political will and a
solid potential for public acceptance, neither of which seemed at hand in the
period after World War II when no imminent security threat had profoundly
altered the underlying premises.
However, being Sweden, there were nearly always ways of muddling through,
also in the face of political confusion, agency rivalry, and more or less wide-
spread mistrust among the public. Even at the height of the conflict between
the IB and the Security Police, the former continued to send its reports from
domestic surveillance to the latter, where they were duly filed in the Central
Registry under the source cover name Erik. Two of Elmér’s key subordinates also
regularly had lunch at an officers’ club in Stockholm with an inspector from
the Security Police, where they informally exchanged information and mutual
requests.64
The outcome of the parliamentary clash over the Cable Law in 2008 was a
typical political compromise where both sides had to make concessions in order
to gain something. From an intelligence perspective, however, the outcome was
disastrously dysfunctional, because it deprived the Security Police of the right
to request (although not receive) signals intelligence material from the FRA.
During the Cold War this would have been of limited importance, given that
the Security Police then relied most on other sources and anyway had their
own Radio Control Department to monitor radio communications associated
with foreign intelligence activities. In the new security environment, however,
the worldwide monitoring of telephone and Internet traffic was an essential
tool, and the lack of this would threaten to virtually blind first of all counterter-
rorism efforts.
In 2009, shortly after the Cable Law controversy, a permanent National
Center for Threat Assessments that was focused on terrorism was established at
the Security Police with representatives from the FRA and MUST. This was the
first attempt ever not only to institutionalize the informal links across agency
boundaries but also to jointly assess and grade threats against Sweden and Swed-
ish interests. But the National Center for Threat Assessments also meant that
analysts for the first time not only met but worked together. Although not
officially admitted, the effort thereby quietly solved the signals intelligence
dilemma. Although the Security Police had been removed from the customer
list, the Intelligence Directorate had remained. With the new definition of
defense intelligence, the directorate was tasked with the monitoring of external
threats, including terrorism on the international scene, with a subsequent need
for signals intelligence coverage that was in principle identical to that of the
Security Police. The overlapping tasks that had so infuriated the chief police
commissioner in 2007 thus, as events unfolded, offered a smooth, informal way
out of the unwanted cul-de-sac of the rewritten Cable Law.
Epigraph
Quotation from the English translation of the novel by Yvonne L. Sandstroem (Columbia:
Camden House, 1992), 217.
Notes
1. Probably the most valuable intelligence channel was the Swedish Berlin legation,
where the naval attaché, Captain Forshell, had very close contacts with senior officers in the
German Naval Command. Wilhelm Carlgren, Svensk underrättelsetjänst 1939–1954 (Stock-
holm: Liber, 1985), 26.
2. Ibid., 13–16.
3. On Beurling, see Bengt Beckman, Svenska kryptobedrifter (Stockholm: Bonniers,
1996).
4. For the development and result of the signals intelligence, see C. G. McKay and Bengt
Beckman, Swedish Signals Intelligence 1900–1945 (London: Frank Cass, 2003).
5. For the circumstances around the German discovery and countermeasures, see McKay
and Beckman, Swedish Signals Intelligence, 219–22.
6. On the content of the German traffic, see Klaus-Richard Böhme, Kryposektion IV:
Försvarsstaben läser hemliga tyska telegram 1941–42 (Stockholm: Ersatz, 2006). Carlgren,
Svensk underrättelsetjänst, 71, observes that no initiative was taken for a joint Defense Staff–
Foreign Ministry evaluation and that the material, as other types of raw intelligence, was
assumed to speak for itself.
7. Carlgren, Svensk underrättelsetjänst, 71–80.
8. McKay and Beckman, Swedish Signals Intelligence, 163–64, quoting the memoirs of the
undersecretary of state Eric Boheman, relating a case where Boheman could use the decrypts
to check how the German minister had ‘‘improved’’ the outcome of a diplomatic demarche.
9. The Parliamentary Investigative Commission on refugee matters and Security Service
(the Sandler Commission) produced three reports, on refugee matters (Statens Offentliga
Utredningar, or Official Reports of the Swedish Government; hereafter SOU 1946:36), on
information provided Germany on refugees (SOU 1946:93) and finally on the Security Ser-
vice itself (1948:7). Strangely enough there is not a single scholarly work devoted to the
history and operations of the General Security Service, the only overview being a chapter
in a dissertation in criminology on the conduct of the Swedish legal system under emergency
conditions, based mainly on the Sandler Commission. Janne Flyghed, Rättsstat i Kris (Stock-
holm: Federativ, 1992), 265–338.
10. On the reestablishment of secret intelligence, see the memoirs of Thede Palm, Några
studier till T-kontorets historia (Stockholm: Kungl.Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter
rörande Skandinaviens historia, 1999).
11. The hazards of being too invisible was illustrated in the Wennerstöm case, where the
eventually decisive information from the colonel’s observant cleaning lady was considerably
delayed due to the lack of a ‘‘Säpo’’ entry in the Stockholm telephone directory.
12. It was not until the 1980s that the full extent of the cryptologic achievements against
the German traffic became public. The first summary of the material was given by Carlgren,
Svensk underrättelsetjänst, and a more comprehensive and technical account was given by
Beckman, Svenska kryptobedrifter.
13. Niklas Wikström, Den svenska militära underrättelsetjänsten 1948–1956 (Stockholm:
Swedish National Defense College, 2006), 127–31. In his review of the military intelligence
in the first decade of the Cold War, Wikström concludes that the leading members of the
government neither appear to have been particularly informed nor interested in intelligence
matters and formed their opinion independently of intelligence assessments.
14. Palm, Några studier, 97. There are even fewer references in Erlander’s diaries, so far
published up to 1961.
15. On Palme and his early career, see Kjell Östberg, I takt med tiden: Olof Palme 1927–
1969 (Stockholm: Leopard, 2008). For early intelligence contacts as a student politician, see
Karen Paget, ‘‘From Stockholm to Leiden: The CIA’s Role in the Formation of the Interna-
tional Student Conference,’’ Intelligence and National Security 10, no. 2 (2003): 134–67.
16. Prime Minister Erlander commented on the matter in his private diary. Tage Erlander,
Dagböcker 1950–1951, entry 757 (Hedemora: Gidlunds, 2001).
17. Palm, Några studier, 97. As an example, he refers to the decision to invite Reinhard
Gehlen to Sweden on a clandestine visit to establish liaison between the T-Office and BND,
a case where it was better for the government to be kept in the dark.
18. Wilhelm Agrell, Venona: Spåren från ett underrättelsekrig (Lund: Historiska Media,
2003). A shorter version will become available in English.
19. The incident is described in the diary of the chief of the Defense Staff, Major General
Richard Åkerman, September 3, 1957, Richard Åkerman’s personal archive, War Archive,
Stockholm.
20. For a more detailed account of the foreign liaison, see Wilhelm Agrell, ‘‘Sweden and
the Dilemmas of Neutral Intelligence Liaison,’’ and Magnus Petersson, ‘‘The Scandinavian
Triangle: Danish–Norwegian–Swedish Military Intelligence Cooperation and Swedish
Security Policy during the First Part of the Cold War,’’ both in Journal of Strategic Studies 29,
no. 4 (2006): 607–51.
21. Carlgren, Svensk underrättelsetjänst, 15.
22. On the Office of Strategic Services in Scandinavia, see Tore Pryser, USAs hemmelige
agenter: Den amerikanske etteretningstjenesten i Norden under andre verdenskrig (Oslo: Universi-
tetsforlaget, 2010).
23. Wilhelm Agrell, Den stora lögnen (Stockholm: Ordfront, 1991), 126. The arrange-
ment was established on British initiative and approved by the Swedish undersecretary of
state. The Defense Staff, however, when informing the regional military command, did not
mention intelligence collection but described the operation as an experiment carried out by
the air force on a radar station with the support of some British technical experts.
24. For a detailed account on the collection of maritime intelligence in the first postwar
years, see Sam Nilsson, Stalin’s Baltic Fleet and Palm’s T-Office: Two Sides in the Emerging Cold
War 1946–1947 (Stockholm: Swedish National Defense College, 2006).
25. Petersson, ‘‘Scandinavian Triangle,’’ 612–14.
26. Notes from meeting September 25, 1946, signed by Colonel Juhlin-Dannfelt, head of
Section II at the Defense Staff. Former top secret documents of the head of the section,
Royal War Archives (Krigsarkivet), Stockholm.
27. Letter from Major General George C. McDonald, US Air Force, Director of Intelli-
gence to Military Attaché, Stockholm, November 20, 1947, RG 341, entry 214, box 39, US
National Archives (NA), College Park, MD.
28. Memorandum for Record, Lieutenant Colonel Fuller, September 11, 1947, RG 341,
entry 214, box 39, NA, College Park, MD.
29. For the early Swedish aerial reconnaissance missions, see Lennart Andersson and Leif
Hellström, Bortom horisonten: Svensk flygspaning mot Sovjetunionen 1946–1952 (Stockholm:
Freddy Stenboms förlag, 2002).
30. Erlander, Dagböcker.

31. Matthew Aid, ‘‘In the Right Place at the Right Time: US Signals Intelligence Rela-
tions with Scandinavia 1945–1960,’’ Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 4 (2006): 594–95. On
the US–Norwegian formal agreement, see Olav Riste, The Norwegian Intelligence Service:
1945–1970 (London: Frank Cass, 1999).
32. See Wikström, Den svenska militära, 89–90. Also see Agrell, Den stora lögnen, 129–30;
and Aid, ‘‘In the Right Place,’’ 601.
33. See Sverker Åström, Sweden’s Policy of Neutrality (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet
1977). Åström was undersecretary of state, and the semiofficial character of the booklet was
underlined by the fact that it was published in English and not translated to Swedish until
1983.
34. See Robert Dalsjö, Life-Line Lost: The Rise and Fall of ‘‘Neutral’’ Sweden’s Secret Reserve
Option of Wartime Help from the West (Stockholm: Santérus, 2006), 258–59. It is not entirely
clear to what extent this dismantling actually affected the actual prepared liaison arrange-
ments, now embedded in the planning by regional and even local commanders, as for
instance the detailed and continued coordination of Danish and Swedish preparations to
close the Sound between Zealand and Southern Sweden in case of war. See Mikael Holm-
ström, Den dolda alliansen: Sveriges hemliga NATO-förbindelser (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2011).
35. Den militära underrättelsetjänsten, Betänkande av 1974 års underrättelseutredning, SOU
1976:19 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 1976), 112–13.
36. SOU 1976:19, 113. It is worth underlining that this concerned only military intelli-
gence and neither the Security Police nor FRA.
37. Palm, Några studier, 89–91.
38. See Ola Tunander, The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception
in the 1980s (Portland: Frank Cass, 2004). Tunander’s interpretations and handling of sources
have been heavily criticized by, among others, General Bengt Gustafsson (supreme com-
mander, 1986–94), in Sanningen om ubåtsfråga: Ett försök till analys (Stockholm: Santérus,
2010), 117–31.
39. This dissemination of US Naval Intelligence reports to Sweden and their impact on
Swedish military threat-perceptions are described in the official investigation by ambassador
Rolf Ekéus, Fred och säkerhet: Svensk säkerhetspolitik 1969–89, SOU 2002:108.
40. Rikets säkerhet och den personliga integriteten: De svenska säkerhetstjänsternas författnings-
skyddande verksamhet sedan år 1945, SOU 2002:87 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 2002).
41. SOU 2002:87, 507–12.
42. On Elmér and Olof Palme, see Lars Olof Lampers, Det grå brödraskapet: En berättelse
om IB, SOU 2002:92 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 2002), 490–99; and Kjell Östeberg, I takt med
tiden: Olof Palme 1927–1969 (Stockholm: Leopard Förlag, 2008), 167–75.
43. This description mainly rests on two accounts given by Elmér in the 1990s, but to
some extent substantiated by other accounts. No contemporary documentation has ever
been found and possibly never existed. SOU 2002:87, 504–14.
44. SOU 2002:92, 130–33.
45. SOU 2002:92, 139, quoting Palm’s diary, October 9, 1958. The diary is deposited
among his private papers at the War Archives but remains closed until 2015. Using extraor-
dinary legal authority, the Security Service Commission, which was appointed in 1999 to
investigate military and police surveillance, demanded access to the closed diary, a decision
fiercely resisted by the archive.
46. Palm, Några studier, 52. According to Palm’s memoirs, both Elmér and Palme on some
occasion signaled that they wanted to join his organization but were turned down because
Palm never employed someone who had volunteered and only handpicked people.
47. Transcript of statement by General Bo Westin to the Commission on Neutrality Pol-

icy (Neutralitetspolitikkommissionen) 1993.
48. SOU 2002:92. It turned out to be impossible for the Security Service Commission to
reconstruct the frequency of contacts between Elmér and Palme, since none of them had left
any documentation. According to a foreign intelligence officer working under Elmér at the
IB, Elmér and Palme had informal meetings on a weekly basis.
49. P. G. Vinge, Säpochef 1962–1970 (Stockholm: Wahlström och Widstrand, 1988).
50. SOU 2002:87, 531–35.
51. SOU 2002:87, 541.
52. Om Kriget kommit . . . Förberedelser för mottagande av militärt bistånd 1949–1969: Betän-
kande av Neutralitetspolitikkommissionen, SOU 1994:11 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 1994).
53. SOU 2002:92, 510.
54. Underrättelsetjänsten: En översyn—Betänkande av 1996 års underrättelsekommitté, SOU
1999:37 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 1999).
55. SOU 1976:19, 77. The total intelligence budget for 1974–75 was SEK 101 million,
which was a little more than 1 percent of the total defense allowances. The budget of the
Security Police was not included in this figure.
56. Protokoll över kommunikationsärende, hållet inför Hans Kungl: Höghet Kronprinsen-
Regenten i statsrådet å Stockholms slott den 23 april 1948, Ministry of Communications, secret
archive, National Archives, Stockholm.
57. Försvarets radioanstalt: En översyn—betänkande av utredningen om översyn av Försvarets
radioanstalt, SOU 2003:30 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 2003).
58. Vår beredskap efter den 11 september, betänkande av 11 september-utredningen, SOU
2003:32 (Stockholm: Fritzes, 2003).
59. Lag om försvarsmaktens stöd till polisen vid terrorismbekämpning, SFS 2006:343 (Stock-
holm: Riksdagen, 2006).
60. Regeringens proposition 2006/07:63 (Stockholm: Försvarsdepartementet, 2007).
61. As it turned out, the suicide bomber had not been a total bolt out of the blue, but
had exchanged calls to and from a mobile telephone in Iraq on the day he carried out his
attack.
62. Secret section 01 of 02 Stockholm 000748 sipdis Sate, November 7, 2008.
63. For inter-European intelligence cooperation, see Björn Fägersten, Sharing Secrets:
Explaining International Intelligence Cooperation (Lund: Lund Political Studies, 2010).
64. Lampers, Det grå brödraskapet, 415–23.
CHAPTER 14
Intelligence Culture, Economic

Espionage, and the Finnish
Security Intelligence Service
Lauri Holmström
I
n the domain of international intelligence, Finland offers a perspective into
a developing intelligence culture with the potential to facilitate change in
how intelligence is perceived and practiced by a small nation. Finland has
no civilian domestic or foreign intelligence service. The national intelligence
machinery is divided between the Finnish Defense Forces and the Police of
Finland. The Finnish Security Intelligence Service, previously known in
English as the Finnish Security Police (Suojelupoliisi, Supo) is the operational
security authority that has performed the tasks of counterespionage, counterter-
rorism, and security work in Finland since 1949.1 The service is a part of the
Finnish Police. The Finnish Military Intelligence Center (FINMIC, Puolustus-
voimien tiedustelukeskus) is a unit of the Defense Command of Finland and its
Intelligence Division. FINMIC analyzes Finland’s security environment as well
as the operating environment of the Defense Forces. The Finnish Intelligence
Research Establishment (Viestikoelaitos) is the signals intelligence unit of the
Finnish Defense Forces, which functions under the Finnish Air Force. Finland
is a nonaligned country that participates in the NATO Partnership for Peace
program.
/ 265 /
266 / Lauri Holmström
This chapter examines Finnish intelligence and how it is represented by

Supo in the post–Cold War era. The focus is especially on how Supo’s intelli-
gence culture is reflected in counterespionage efforts against high-technology
economic espionage.2 The strategic objective of protecting the nation’s eco-
nomic life from illegal economic intelligence has been a priority for Supo since
the agency’s founding. Its organizational culture still leans heavily on the Cold
War experiences and on the historical legacy of the service as a security police
force. However, Supo’s intelligence culture is currently in transition. In recent
years modest steps have been taken toward a service that is more oriented
toward security intelligence, wherein elements of the old culture have been
merged with new administrative practices. This has led to a more international
form of Finnish security intelligence, wherein elements of the larger Finnish
grand strategy are also present. This chapter starts with a historical overview of
Supo and its recent organizational changes. This is followed by an exploration
of the operative environment of the service with regard to economic espionage
and high technology. The chapter then develops the ideas brought forward by
Stephen Welch on intelligence culture and applies them to the Finnish case of
Supo. Finally, the conclusion offers a synthesis on Supo intelligence culture in
the contemporary world as well as pathways into future research on the subject
matter.
Historical Overview and Recent Organizational Developments

Supo was preceded by the Detective Central Police (Etsivä keskuspoliisi) from
1919 to 1937 and by the State Police (Valtiollinen poliisi, Valpo) between 1937
and 1949. During the years 1945–49 Valpo was dominated by Communists
and known as ‘‘Red Valpo.’’ A new organization called the Security Police was
established in 1949 to replace the dissolved Valpo. Headquartered in Helsinki,
Supo today employs about 220 persons and in 2010 had a budget of y17 million.
The fundamental task of Supo is the protection of parliamentary democracy
and security interests of Finnish society. The principal values of the service are
legality, reliability, and quality.3 Supo is tasked with preventing undertakings
and crimes that may endanger the governmental and political system and inter-
nal or external security, and with investigating such crimes. Supo also maintains
and develops the overall preparedness for preventing activities endangering
national security. The matters investigated by the agency are determined by the
National Police Board.4 The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI,
Keskusrikospoliisi) is the national center for intelligence activities focused on
serious and organized crime. NBI also serves as the national center of interna-
tional criminal police cooperation. In intelligence matters Supo is responsible
for gathering and analyzing intelligence and the NBI for criminal investigation.
Supo changed its English name from the Finnish Security Police to the Finnish
Intelligence Culture, Economic Espionage, and the Finnish Security Intelligence Service / 267
Security Intelligence Service in 2010 to signify its continuing evolu-

tion from the realm of police responsibilities and toward a more security
intelligence-oriented service.
To date, the history of Supo has been recounted in three authorized vol-
umes, the latest and most comprehensive being the official history titled
Ratakatu 12: Suojelupoliisi 1949–2009, which commemorates the sixtieth anni-
versary of the service.5 According to the leading Finnish intelligence historian
Kimmo Rentola, there was no room for complete neutrality in the field of intel-
ligence during the Cold War. Where Finland could find common interests with
opposing sides in areas such as cultural or economic relations, in the world of
intelligence and counterintelligence these fundamental questions were ren-
dered into operational measures by the main threat to Finnish national security,
the Soviet Union, which by its aggressive and systematic actions defined the
answers. The relationship between Supo and the Western intelligence commu-
nity during the Cold War was built on the idea that Supo saw the adversary of
the opposing side as an ally. This idea was reciprocated by the West in both
actions and exchanges of information that were helpful to Supo. Even if Finnish
aims were not served by undertakings such as intelligence operations conducted
against the Soviet Union from Finland, Supo cooperated with Western services
in operational matters from its inception. Despite having deeper relations with
the West than almost any other branch of the Finnish government during the
Cold War, the service was never a full member of the Western intelligence
community; Supo’s most important communal cooperation took place between
the Nordic intelligence services.6
Even when the Russians possessed much knowledge and information on
Supo during the Cold War, they still had difficulties understanding the nature
and position of the agency in Finnish society. Supo was often compared with
major Western intelligence services or to the USSR’s mighty KGB (Committee
for State Security, Komityet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) itself. As for the
relationship between the KGB and Supo, Rentola concluded that a distinct
model of operation was created, which on the Finnish side adapted to the reali-
ties of Cold War foreign policy and the official position of the Finnish state,
while reserving the potential to respond and keep an eye on the Soviet intelli-
gence machinery operating in the country. However, the model never achieved
a mutually recognized stable form. On the Soviet side it was characterized by
persistent pressure and a search to find any weak spots. This was countered on
the Finnish side by evasive maneuvers and delaying tactics. Throughout its
existence, the KGB considered Supo to be its enemy.7
Matti Simola has studied the organizational history of Supo and observed
that it has gone through four different designs in the last twenty years. In 1992
a structure was established whereby the main focus areas of the agency were
placed directly under its director in three units: Counterespionage, Security,
and Development and Support Functions. When Eero Kekomäki retired as

director in 1996, Seppo Nevala was appointed as his successor. During Nevala’s
tenure a new organizational structure was implemented in 1998. The central
idea in this transformation was the division of work between operational mat-
ters and development projects. Nevala also introduced a second reorganization
of Supo in 2004, in which the focus was placed especially on developing
research and analysis functions as well as reporting. In addition, the Opera-
tional, Preventive, and Strategic lines were built on the notion that operational
matters were to be separated from strategic and preventive security work. In
Nevala’s view Supo was ‘‘taking a few practical steps toward a security service.’’
Simola has noted that under Nevala, Supo also became more international.8
Ilkka Salmi became the director of Supo in 2007. In 2008 the service got
its first communications manager.9 The current organization of the service was
introduced in 2009. With the restructuring process, the line organization was
discarded. Today Supo has four operational units: the Counterespionage Unit,
the Counterterrorism Unit, the Security and Regional Unit (including security
clearances and vetting), and the Field Surveillance Unit. The service is divided
into an Operational Branch and a Strategic Branch. The Operational Branch
is led by the operational deputy director and is composed of the four operational
units introduced above. The Strategic Branch contains the Situational Aware-
ness Unit, the International Relations Unit, and the Internal Services Unit. It
acts under the command of the strategic deputy director, who is also responsible
for the agency’s legal matters. The director of Supo oversees both branches and
is in direct contact with the Communications Office. Approximately 55 per-
cent of Supo’s staff members are police personnel, of which 30 percent are
commanding officers, 40 percent are senior officers, and 30 percent are officers.
About half of the rest of the staff members work as specialists or senior special-
ists, and the other half carry out clerical, support, and occupational tasks. One
in three employees has an academic degree, and their average age is a little
under forty-four years.10
The institutional position of Supo within the Finnish government is under
the Ministry of the Interior. This is somewhat of an anomaly in the Nordic
intelligence realm, where the Swedish Security Police (Säkerhetspolisen,
SÄPO), the Norwegian Police Security Service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste),
and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (Politiets Efterretningstjen-
este) all operate under the Ministry of Justice in their respective countries.11
Finland is also set apart from the other Nordic countries with regard to foreign
intelligence. In contrast with Finland, for example, in Denmark the Defense
Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste), situated under the Min-
istry of Defense, acts as both the foreign and military intelligence agency and
also handles human intelligence duties abroad.12 This dimension of intelligence
is absent from the Finnish national intelligence machinery. Furthermore, it is
also important to note that Finland has no specific law on intelligence. In

comparison with large Western intelligence agencies, Supo comes closest to the
United Kingdom’s Security Service (MI-5) in operational terms. In the Nordic
countries, contrary to other European nations, the security services have tradi-
tionally been police organizations. It is also of note that the Estonian Security
Police (Kaitsepolitsei) is similarly a police organization and is administered by
the Estonian Ministry of Internal Affairs.13
Economic Espionage and High Technology in Finland

Economic espionage has been on the rise since the end of the Cold War.14 Both
nations and corporations face a growing threat from entities using illegitimate
methods that attempt to acquire new technologies, innovations, and informa-
tion in a wide variety of disciplines. Throughout its existence, Supo has worked
to ensure the economic security of the Finnish state and counter illegal and
covert intelligence efforts aimed at the nation’s economic life.15 In the Finnish
case, the interest of the state to confront economic espionage can be seen as
encompassing three separate elements. First, the government has created a pub-
lic education system that provides the companies operating in the country with
academically trained recruits. Second, for the economy to function properly,
the state must be able to provide a safe and favorable environment for business.
And third, economic espionage can compromise questions of national security
when it targets, for example, dual-use technology that contributes to the secur-
ity of the state.
Recent economic intelligence cases have clearly demonstrated that compa-
nies, research facilities, and other communities risk the most damaging informa-
tion losses via their staff. The storage and systematization of large amounts of
information by technological means has made it easier to engage in practices
such as insider crime. This is why, even when information security issues are
becoming more important, intelligence organizations still strive to recruit
human sources. The recruitment of an agent is a slow and deliberate process,
and it includes assessing factors such as the target’s access to information, moti-
vation, and reliability.16 One of the most informative examples of recent high-
technology economic espionage in Northern Europe has been the 2002 Erics-
son espionage case, where three employees of the company stole corporate
secrets and tried to sell them to Russian diplomats working in Sweden. It has
been called the first real economic espionage case in the country and the first
economic espionage case that has led to a sentence for serious espionage.17
The globalization of trade and research has also advanced the opportunities
for economic espionage by increasing international cooperation, which in turn
has facilitated new options for recruiting and using people for the purposes of
illegally gathering economic intelligence and also sharing and selling classified
information. This has left the national intelligence agencies that deal with
economic espionage with the difficult challenge of separating normal working
relationships from those that have a potential to turn into a security risk.18 In
the case of high technology, research that is based on international collabora-
tion can make it very hard to determine what specific information should be
protected in projects that stretch over a long period and may involve a number
of people from different organizations. Changes in the post–Cold War global
economy have shifted intelligence priorities toward high-technology industries
and research institutes.19 In Finland this has been significant because of the
large investments in research and development in high technology.
After the Cold War the level of foreign intelligence in Finland increased
from the second half of the 1990s to the early years of the 2000s. In 2006, the
number of foreign intelligence officers grew a little but did not affect the num-
ber of aggressive recruitment cases.20 During recent years both the quantity and
quality of foreign intelligence officers operating in Finland have stayed the
same. The main foreign intelligence offensive in Finland is aimed at key areas
of high-technology research and development and the political system. Lately,
issues such as the international energy questions, which encompass both politi-
cal and technological questions, have also been targets of foreign intelligence.
Scientific and technological intelligence efforts in Finland are characterized by
a very wide gathering of open-source intelligence, with targets ranging from
universities to small companies. Because of the extreme care taken in the selec-
tion of both the desired technology and the key persons connected to it, recruit-
ment efforts have been relatively rare; but a few cases surface each year. In 2010,
Supo conducted an investigation into a few intelligence operations abroad that
had targeted Finnish official representatives, civil servants, and businesspeople
more aggressively than what had been previously observed.21
Foreign intelligence has been particularly interested in high-technology sec-
tors that have dual-use capabilities, such as telecommunications and informa-
tion technology. Other important targets of economic espionage include
nuclear technology, biotechnology, medical science and pharmacy, new materi-
als, nanotechnology, and positioning technology. Constant targets for foreign
military intelligence involve technological purchases that can be considered
interesting from the military perspective as well as assessing Finland’s military
capability, defense policy, and international military cooperation. The foreign
intelligence services operating in Finland prioritized confidential conversations,
situational estimates nearing completion, and plans on which work was still
being done. In addition, foreign intelligence officers have targeted the coopera-
tion between business and research that seeks to produce practical, marketable
applications. The constant level of foreign intelligence in Finland shows that
gathering secret and confidential information through human sources has not
lost its meaning in the modern world. At the same time, organized crime and
intelligence attacks against information systems pose a new and growing threat.
In 2007, about 10 percent of the Finnish companies interviewed by Supo said
that they had been a target of illegal intelligence activity during the last two
years. Similar numbers were reported in a survey conducted by the Central
Chamber of Commerce of Finland and the Helsinki Region Chamber of Com-
merce in 2008.22
The Finnish economy relies increasingly on technological innovations. In
the view of Supo, protecting research, innovations, and other relevant informa-
tion related to the field will become even more significant in the future than it
is today.23 Innovative companies are the main drivers of Finland’s economy, and
technology has become the most important industry in Finland. It constitutes
60 percent of Finnish exports, and 80 percent of research-and-development
investments are directed toward technology.24 Remarkable technological
advances of intellectual property in Finland have been achieved through close
cooperation between the state, the research centers, and the companies. This
has been made possible by the continued emphasis placed on higher education
and by the creation and development of a national innovation system.25 Inno-
vation has been integral in the restructuring of the Finnish economy. During
the past twenty years the research-and-development intensity of Finland has
grown to the second-highest level within the European Union, and the share
of high-technology products in total Finnish exports is among the highest in
the industrial world.26
The international competitiveness of Finland is linked to the rise of high-
technology companies and the emergence of a knowledge-based economy. A
modern technology policy that has been a priority for the political leadership
is responsible for advancing economic growth through technological develop-
ment. Economic espionage corrodes the national investment and innovation
frameworks supported by the state and causes financial and intellectual losses
to companies and research centers. Economic espionage can also act as a deter-
rent to innovation and may in the long run even cause losses to consumers
around the world.27 Both national and international companies look for a stable
and secure environment in which to base their operations. Security can, in this
regard, be viewed as one of the building blocks of Finland’s competitiveness in
the global economy.
The counterespionage and preventive security work of Supo related to the
problem of economic espionage has its starting point in the idea that the entire
national innovation system is protected. The basis for this work is laid out in
threat analyses. The agency builds on this through the consultation and vetting
services that place Supo in cooperation with businesses on a daily basis. In
addition to these means, the operational security work of Supo’s Counterespio-
nage Unit is focused on the intelligence threats aimed at the Finnish economy.
The service also works closely with international security and intelligence ser-
vices and security authorities.28 The challenge for Supo is twofold. First, it needs
to continue to effectively and openly inform and serve companies and other
communities targeted by economic espionage and other security challenges
such as proliferation issues. Second, it needs to secure its own operations against
illegal economic intelligence efforts while performing its overt functions related
to economic security. It is important to note here that Supo does not investigate
instances of corporate espionage where both parties are privately owned compa-
nies. The matter becomes an interest of the agency only when a foreign state is
connected to the case. Countering economic espionage has also been publicly
recognized by Supo’s leadership as one of its main priorities.29 During the years
2003–8, the prevention of illegal intelligence was awarded the most resources
in Supo’s budget. In 2010, a total of 39 percent of the resources allocated to
the agency were assigned to the prevention of illegal intelligence efforts.30
An Intelligence Culture in Transition

Henrikki Heikka has researched Finnish strategic culture from a historical per-
spective. Traditionally, Finnish post–Cold War foreign policy has been
approached as a shift from cautious neutrality to rapid integration within the
core of Europe. Heikka has argued that instead of studying Finland’s post–Cold
War grand strategy as evidence of a change, it should be thought of as a sign of
continuity. Finland’s strategic culture has historically been based on a republi-
can understanding of the country’s role in defending an antihegemonic security
order in Europe. In the post–Cold War era, Finland’s strategy can, in Heikka’s
words, be said to be composed of three main elements: full integration of Fin-
land with the rest of Europe in order to achieve an active role in the making of
Europe’s grand strategy; connecting Russia more closely with the rest of interna-
tional society, especially through the European Union; and maintaining a cred-
ible national defense and developing Finnish interoperability with NATO.31
The element of continuity in Finland’s strategic thought is largely based on
the experience of its being a neighbor of Russia, where republican ideals have
never been accepted and Europe’s antihegemonic constitutions have not been
respected. Heikka has described the Soviet era from the point of view of Finnish
strategic culture as ‘‘essentially a long war of defending republicanism against a
revolutionist empire next door.’’32 How, then, is this experience reflected in
Finnish intelligence culture as practiced by Supo? From an institutional per-
spective, it is clear that the Finnish national intelligence actors have always
been and currently are all either military or police entities. This fact supports
the picture of Finland as a nation that seeks continuity also in the domain of
intelligence and security through its operational security authorities. Supo’s
intelligence culture can therefore also be viewed as a product of Finland’s grand
strategy. This is perhaps most clearly visible in the role that preventive security
work has in the day-to-day workings of the agency. Active engagement with
Finnish society and especially the private sector can be seen as an effort to
continue the practices of the Cold War era into the twenty-first century. They
also represent a part of the larger national security culture of Finland, where
the police and armed forces have the monopoly on intelligence matters and
have historically been involved with all segments of society in the name of
national security. An example of this larger engagement from the perspective
of the Finnish Defense Forces is the institution of the National Defense
Courses, where high-ranking military officials and public leaders are invited to
a series of courses at the National Defense University (Maanpuolustuskorkea-
koulu) that focus on Finland’s current and emerging security challenges. The
courses comprise Finnish foreign, security, and defense policies as well as the
capabilities of the Finnish Defense Forces to meet the requirements recognized
by the political leadership. Finland’s integration into Europe since the 1990s
has been largely political and economic. Supo’s role in countering economic
espionage can be seen to connect to that objective in three ways. First, the work
of the agency seeks to secure the competitiveness of the companies deemed
important to Finland. Second, a functioning and secure business life makes it
easier for the government to be a credible political player in the European
Union. And third, Supo’s leadership has ensured that this element of continu-
ity is present in the agency’s strategy.
In chapter 2, Stephen Welch contrasts the theories of Gabriel Almond and
Robert Tucker that put forward the following ideas about political culture and
its research. In Almond’s view, political culture is at least partly an indepen-
dent variable that correlates with democratic stability. To be further used in
research, political culture must be ‘‘operationalized,’’ for example, in the form
of an attitude survey, which is a quantifiable mode of measurement. Through
operationalization it is possible to separate the concept of political culture
from ‘‘the general culture.’’33 Conversely, Tucker understands the concept of
political culture to be important for helping researchers formulate meaningful
questions, focus on relevant issues, work with data, and approach the study of
society and its political life in general without explaining anything itself.34
Welch also notes that political culture should not be understood to be the
same as public opinion. Whereas political culture can be used to explain larger
issues, such as the continued support for democracy as the means of gover-
nance, public opinion functions inside the political culture of a nation-state,
where it has an effect on, for example, who is elected to power.35 However, as
Philip Davies has noted in his research on intelligence culture and intelligence
failure, theories of culture are complicated to operationalize and test with any
real degree of diligence.36
Welch sees political culture as an applied concept of culture, which means

that consequences and results in a specific social domain can be accounted to
that culture.37 In the field of intelligence, this means that intelligence culture
is projected in the outcomes of the intelligence system it represents. However,
as Welch duly points out, intelligence culture represents a limited and clearly
defined field of activity to which the concept of culture can be applied. From
this Welch finds an incentive to look into the study of intelligence organiza-
tions to support the research on intelligence culture. But the benefits are also
limited here, because organizational culture is as challenging to study as politi-
cal culture. Welch divides his study of behavior in an organization into two
main categories: the practices, methods, and customs of behavior; and the dif-
ferent ways in which these are constituted, explained, or accounted for. When
studying cultural difference and continuity, it is important to be aware that
what we do and what we say about what we do are two separate things. For
example, a survey on the behavior of the personnel of an intelligence organiza-
tion will not uncover the motives behind their behavior but only the existing
modes of explaining their behavior in the relevant environment.
Why is the organizational culture of a company, a group, or, in this case, an
intelligence community important? Should not the study of the structure and
functions of a secretive organization provide us with enough information to
conduct well-rounded research on its inner workings that would leave little or
no room for guesswork? The answer, in Edgar Schein’s words, is that organiza-
tional culture solves the basic problems of survival and adaptation that an
agency faces in its external operational environment. The experience of the
post–Cold War Supo has precisely been about adaptation to new political and
operational realities as well as survival and continuity on an institutional level.
Finland’s membership in the European Union since 1995 and the inclusion of
Supo in the Club de Berne since 1993 and in the Counter Terrorist Group
since 2001 have been important milestones in the internationalization of Fin-
nish security intelligence. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of global Islamic
terrorism, and the continued threat of economic espionage, along with the media
spotlight on some of Supo’s cases, have all been tests of persistence for Supo.
Organizational culture is also responsible for the integration of a group’s internal
processes that safeguard its ability to continue to adapt and survive.38
According to Schein, leadership is a fundamental process that creates and
shapes organizational culture. In researching a given organizational culture, it
is important to acknowledge the influence of the national culture where the
organization in question operates. Organizational culture can be approached
through the study of the observed behavioral regularities, the norms and values
embraced by an organization, the philosophy and rules of an organization, and,
finally, the atmosphere that is perceived both in and outside the organization.
Culture, in this respect, should be seen as the property of an independently
stable social unit. To study organizational culture one must recognize the special
features of the subject of interest. These features can best be observed through
the past accounts, actions, and personal histories of important figures in the
organization. The study of organizational culture must therefore be viewed as
historical in its nature.39
The idea of leadership as the most intrinsic part of organizational culture is
one of the core themes in Schein’s thinking. In Schein’s view it is important
to understand how the individual intentions of an organization’s founders and
leaders have become a shared and consensually validated set of definitions that
are adopted by the organization and passed on to its new members.40 The role
of leadership in Supo is naturally strong because of its modest size. The effects
of decisions made at the top level are felt quickly, and the director can put his
personal touch on the way most things are run. Supo’s leadership is responsible
for recognizing, upholding, and developing its intelligence culture, which
encompasses both past and present as well as future ideas of what the service
does and how it achieves its goals. This strategic vision is then manifested at
Supo’s operational levels, which can be further acknowledged as embodying the
Finnish conception of security intelligence at work.
However, because behavioral regularities alone cannot inform us if we are
investigating a cultural artifact, it is only by the discovery of deeper cultural
levels that underlie all human interaction that we can begin to distinguish
between what is and what is not an artifact of the culture in question.41 To
solve this problem, here the choice has been made to examine the intelligence
culture of Supo through the dependent variable of security intelligence as it is
understood by the service. Supo defines security intelligence as the ‘‘identifica-
tion of internal and external security threats, the related operational informa-
tion gathering and analysis, and the timely reporting of resulting intelligence
information to support decision making.’’42 Davies has studied intelligence cul-
ture and compared intelligence failure in Britain and the United States. He has
observed that, in comparing national ideas of intelligence, in the American
view information is an element of intelligence, whereas the British understand-
ing is that intelligence is a specific type of information. This is not just a seman-
tic difference, as Davies points out, for it has extensive institutional
implications. The contrast between these two definitions is an example of how
the idea of what we define as intelligence is reflected in the way an intelligence
organization based on that interpretation of the concept is formed and func-
tions.43 In this regard Supo’s definition of security intelligence is closer to the
British than the American concept. In Davies’s view, the British definition of
intelligence points toward an integrative intelligence culture that is prone to
groupthink. The opposite American definition of intelligence would lead
toward a disintegrative culture that is characterized by turf wars.44 However,
Supo’s definition also takes into consideration the process that produces action-
able intelligence for the decision maker. It is therefore more of a description of
the agency’s mode of operation, in which intelligence information plays a role
more than a specific definition of intelligence itself.
Defining security intelligence as the mode of operation can deliver two
changes for Supo. It can be argued that the definition and its implementation
into Supo’s processes can increase the service’s self-understanding, which in
turn can be helpful in achieving its leadership’s strategic goals. The other possi-
ble transformation is related to how the agency is perceived in the international
field of operations by fellow security and intelligence services. This will almost
certainly also have an effect on how Supo will see itself as a part of the interna-
tional intelligence community in the future.45
One of the main arguments presented by Welch in chapter 2 is that the
research of any applied culture, such as intelligence culture, does not require
an understanding of the larger culture in which the intelligence culture is based.
Even when one examines a closed organization or a group such as the intelli-
gence agency of a particular nation, one is still in essence trying to bring into
focus the characteristics of an evolving social unit that is attached to a larger
host culture. In a limited analysis such as this chapter’s, it is not meaningful
or even possible to dig deeply into Finnish strategic culture and examine its
manifestations of norms, values, and practices in public administration in the
past or the present. Welch has further noted that this would likely not be
fruitful anyway, because in many cases the cultural values of a nation are
expressed in situations where, for example, the people of a given agency are
being tasked with comparing their organizational practices with those of other
agencies. He further asserts that the study of intelligence culture can be
advanced somewhat separately from the larger debate on scholarly cultural
analysis and need not wait for its resolution. This can be done by focusing on
things such as the organizational designs, mandates, and customs that all form
a part of the intelligence culture of an agency. Welch also highlights special
‘‘points of friction’’ between different practices and ways of accounting for them
inside an intelligence organization as the most fruitful place to begin research
on intelligence culture. By examining these friction points, ‘‘national,’’ ‘‘intelli-
gence,’’ ‘‘agency,’’ or some other characteristics of behavior will rise to the fore,
depending on the nature of the possible dissent as described by the friction
point.
With regard to Supo, the relationship between its cautious openness and its
security of operational activities and international relations is perhaps the most
visible point of entry for the researcher. Its new and cautiously open policy has
made Supo a visible participant in Finnish public discussions that are related
to its areas of expertise. This change has been felt especially in media inquiries
related to terrorism. The risk is that the media can get lost in the details, take
them out of their original context, and use them to create journalistic products
that can have a negative effect on the public—with Supo left to weather the
possible fallout. The reverse side of this phenomenon is the situation where
media pressures can possibly hamper Supo’s operational activities and attempt
to steer the course of its work.46 As Schein has noted, organizational culture
can also be addressed through the atmosphere that is perceived outside Supo.
According to a recent survey (2011), 78 percent of Finns think that Supo has
performed its duties either very well or somewhat well. In addition, 85 percent
of those interviewed said that their confidence in Supo was either high or rather
high.47 This would put the service in a good position to deal with outside pres-
sures from a cultural point of view.
As was noted above, defining the concept of security intelligence can facili-
tate changes in how Supo reflects on itself and how it is perceived by others.
However, if one tries to impose these ideas on a possible but ultimately hypo-
thetical projection of the future, no tangible results can be expected. In the
case of Supo it can be argued that it has been useful to adopt an actionable
term that in some way illustrates the change in its model of operations from a
security police force to a security service. It is nonetheless an entirely different
idea to attempt to measure the possible effect of a theoretical concept in Supo’s
day-to-day workings. In a bureaucratic organization it will always take time
before new ideas and customs are fully absorbed and adopted.48 The culture of
Supo affects essentially all its functions and has a direct impact on the results
it achieves. One friction point in the evolution of Supo’s intelligence culture
can be thought to be the gradual replacement of the old, unified, and strong
organizational culture by something new in the future. There are two main
reasons for this development: the change in the weight and importance of
Supo’s operational units, and the strategic move made by its leadership toward
more of a security service operational model. One of the special features of
Supo’s culture is the strong traditions of a police organization, which the service
still very much follows. In the international field of operations, Supo is still
thought of as an internal security police force, and this is also reflected in its
culture and customs. Thus, the discrepancy between how Supo views itself and
how it is seen by other services will also influence the development of its intelli-
gence culture—especially on the level of international relations. From the point
of view of organizational culture, Supo’s intelligence culture can thus be under-
stood as the organization’s self-conception as an actor in both the national and
international spheres of operations.49
Conclusion
What, then, is the essence of Finnish intelligence culture as represented by
Supo, and how does it relate to the problem of economic espionage in Finland?
If we take as our starting point the notion that an intelligence culture is pro-
jected in the outcomes of the intelligence system it represents, we can answer
this question in a way that is supported by factual evidence and does not require
an extensive theoretical framework to function. Supo’s work on preventing ille-
gal economic intelligence is based on the concept that the entire national
innovation system is protected. This strategic objective has been on the agenda
of the agency throughout its existence in different forms. The consultation and
vetting services represent a part of the culture of the service that seeks to engage
with the society it serves. The operational security work constitutes another
dimension of the culture of the agency, but recent activities in this area can
only be researched through the perspective of intelligence theory or specific
case studies based on publicly available material.50
The role of leadership and the form and functions of organizational design
also influence Supo’s intelligence culture. Historically, the fact that much
emphasis has been placed on countering economic espionage must be under-
stood to be a product of the continuity in Supo’s work and culture. The legacy
of the Cold War naturally carries a lot of weight for the organizational culture
in Finnish intelligence, but it can be argued that Supo’s management in the
post–Cold War period has fused together elements of the old culture with new
administrative practices and a modern mode of operation that have created a
more international machinery for Finnish security intelligence. It can be fur-
ther asserted that Supo’s intelligence culture, as well as its actions, also reflect
deeper Finnish cultural values and the traditions of Finnish grand strategy. The
future will show how durable the concept of security intelligence will be for
Supo, and how the concept itself will evolve in relation to the agency’s
organization.
It can be argued that both Supo and its intelligence culture are currently in
a period of transition. To a large extent the agency is still acting as it did during
the Cold War. This also applies to Supo’s actions with regard to countering
economic espionage. The position and functions of the service in Finnish soci-
ety, the durability of the old security police force’s philosophy in the workings
of the agency, and the strong role of preventive security work are all proof of
this reasoning. However, the advent of a new culture that is oriented toward
security intelligence, as instigated by the leadership of the service, has placed
the old culture on a collision course with the new culture. How this issue is
resolved will not only be decided inside Supo; it will probably also have an
impact and in turn be influenced by the major trends in Finnish grand strategy
and especially how Finland approaches questions of intelligence and security in
the near future.
It is also entirely feasible that the emergence of a new Supo intelligence
culture will not achieve a lasting impact on the way the agency acts or perceives
itself among international security and intelligence services. In that situation,
the nascent Supo intelligence culture would also have no influence on the evo-
lution of other Finnish intelligence institutions. However, an enduring change
in the development of the Finnish intelligence culture could facilitate broader
transformations in how intelligence is understood and used by the Finnish gov-
ernment to support decision making, how the Finnish national intelligence
actors identify themselves and their tasks, and how the Finnish national intelli-
gence organizations continue to progress as institutions in the future. This
development would also support the Finnish grand strategy. After the Cold
War Finland quickly exchanged its policy of neutrality for rapid political and
economical integration with Europe. The chosen means were different, but the
historical goal of defending republicanism stayed the same. In much the same
way it is possible that in the future new practices and instruments could be used
to drive Finnish strategic aims with regard to intelligence and security.
When setting requirements and priorities for the intelligence process, the
first priority is the definition of intelligence.51 Supo has now taken this step
with its description of security intelligence. The need for efficient intelligence
machinery in Finland will grow in the future. If this challenge is to be met in a
decisive manner, a functioning, specific law on intelligence must be enacted. It
can be argued that one of the roles of an emergent intelligence culture is to
assist the organization it serves to better understand how it can reach its strate-
gic goals in operational terms now and in the future. Without a working culture
of intelligence, a state’s security apparatus is in danger of falling into a situation
of constrained existence while becoming disconnected from the society it is
tasked to protect. Anssi Kullberg has identified this issue in his research on
Finland and terrorism. On the state of intelligence in Finland, he writes: ‘‘The
two basic levels of intelligence, gathering and analysis of information, must not
be overwhelmed by burgeoning bureaucratic processes and coordinating efforts.
Intelligence should not be regarded as spying or as criminal investigation but
rather as a natural part of sophisticated activities carried out by the authorities
of an independent country. Without such intelligence, decision making is based
on vague assumptions, panic reactions, and outside impulses, which all may
lead to miscalculations and, in the worst case, to miscarriages of justice.’’52
Although Supo’s intelligence culture does not necessarily explain anything
by itself, one can use it as a tool for gaining a deeper understanding of specific
intelligence issues by studying the history, organization, and operations of the
agency on a clearly defined field or through a case study on a subject such as
the prevention of economic espionage against high-technology targets.53 For
more relevance and usefulness, this kind of research should also be comparative.
As noted above, the most logical context for this would be the intelligence
agencies of the other Nordic countries or other European nations with the same
type of security intelligence system as Finland. In addition, if Finnish strategic
culture is thought of as a variation of Nordic strategic cultures, this might also
prompt broader questions, such as what is currently meant by Nordic political

and strategic culture in general and with regard to security and intelligence in
particular.54 The results would not only be beneficial for academic research on
intelligence but would also deepen each service’s self-understanding, which is a
crucial component of the continued evolution and success of any organization.
Notes
1. In Finnish, the service still uses its old name, Suojelupoliisi. In English, the acronym
Supo is also in use, despite the new official name of the agency, which has been in use since
August 27, 2010. In this chapter Supo is used in both past and current contexts as instructed
by the service.
2. The author is grateful for the kind and generous cooperation of Supo with regard to
this chapter. The views conveyed here are the author’s own and do not represent the official
position of Supo. The official documents and reports of Supo and the Swedish Security
Police (Säkerhetspolisen, SÄPO) have been made available on the web pages of the respec-
tive services. However, they have also been published as printed sources. The decision has
been made to refer to them as documents authored by the agency in question and by simply
using the title of the source.
3. Finnish Security Intelligence Service, 2011; Finnish Security Intelligence Service Annual
Report 2010; Finnish Security Police 2008–10; Finnish Security Intelligence Service, 2011.
All available at www.suojelupoliisi.fi.
4. Act on Police Administration, section 10. The updated Finnish version of the law is
found on Finlex, 2011, www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/1992/19920110.
5. Kimmo Rentola, ‘‘Suojelupoliisi kylmässä sodassa 1949–1991,’’ in Ratakatu 12: Suojel-
upoliisi 1949–2009 (The Security Police in the Cold War 1949–1991, in Ratakatu 12: The
Security Police 1949–2009), edited by Matti Simola (Hämeenlinna: WSOY, Kariston Kirja-
paino Oy, 2009). The two earlier volumes on the history of Supo are Matti Simola and Jukka
Salovaara, eds., Turvallisuuspoliisi 75 vuotta (Security Police 75 Years) (Helsinki: Painatusk-
eskus Oy, 1994); and Matti Simola and Tuulia Sirvio, eds., Isänmaan puolesta: Suojelupoliisi
50 vuotta (For the Fatherland: The Security Police 50 Years) (Jyväskylä: Gummerus Kirja-
paino Oy, 1999). At the moment there are no major historical sources in English that deal
with Supo.
6. Rentola, ’’Suojelupoliisi kylmässä sodassa,’’ 159.
7. Ibid., 153–58; Kimmo Rentola, ‘‘Cooperation between Enemies: The Finnish Security
Police and the KGB,’’ draft of article presented at Norcencowar Workshop, Seili, Turku
Archipelago, June 28–30, 2010.
8. Matti Simola, ‘‘Suojelupoliisin organisaatio 1992–2009’’ (The Organization of the
Security Police 1992–2009), in Ratakatu 12, ed. Simola. For accounts of earlier organiza-
tional history of Finnish security intelligence, see Matti Simola, ‘‘Toimitiloista ja viimeisten
vuosikymmenien organisaatioista’’ (On the Facilities and Organizations of the Last Decades),
in Turvallisuuspoliisi 75 vuotta, ed. Simola and Salovaara, 189–95; and Matti Simola, ‘‘Suojel-
upoliisin organisaatio ja johto’’ (The Organization and Leadership of the Security Police), in
Isänmaan puolesta, ed. Simola and Sirvio, 213–21.
9. Simola, ‘‘Suojelupoliisin organisaatio,’’ 263; Finnish Security Intelligence Service
Annual Report 2010, 3. Ilkka Salmi is on a four-year leave of absence as the director of the
EU Situation Centre (SitCen) since February 2011. Antti Pelttari was appointed as the new
director of Supo on March 17, 2011. The Finnish government appoints the director of Supo.
Before his appointment to the post of director of Supo, Ilkka Salmi worked as a special
aide to the interior minister, Anne Holmlund (National Coalition Party, in office April 19,
2007–June 22, 2011. Salmi’s successor, Antti Pelttari, also worked previously under Minister
Holmlund as state secretary.
10. Finnish Security Police 2008–10 (2009), 41–45; Simola, ‘‘Suojelupoliisin organisaa-
tio,’’ 264–65, 268. The Regional Unit was fused with the Security Unit in October 2011.
11. Swedish Security Police, 2011, www.sakerhetspolisen.se. Norwegian Police Security
Service, 2011, www.pst.politiet.no. Danish Security and Intelligence Service, 2011, www
.pet.dk. In Iceland the National Commissioner’s National Security Unit (Greiningardeild
Rı́kislögreglustjóra) is responsible for intelligence matters. National Commissioner of the
Icelandic Police, 2011, www.logreglan.is. For an analysis of the evolution of Swedish intelli-
gence institutions, see chapter 13 in the present volume, by Wilhelm Agrell.
12. Danish Defense Intelligence Service, 2011, http://fe-ddis.dk.
13. Simola, ‘‘Suojelupoliisin organisaatio,’’ 266; Estonian Security Police, 2011,
www.kapo.ee.
14. Samuel Porteous defines economic espionage as ‘‘the use of, or facilitation of, illegal,
clandestine, coercive or deceptive means by a foreign government or its surrogates to acquire
economic intelligence. The acquisition of an actual piece of technology, such as physical
examples of technological information or documents, is assumed to be included in this defi-
nition.’’ He further explains industrial espionage to be ‘‘the use of, or facilitation of, illegal,
clandestine, coercive or deceptive means by a private sector entity or its surrogates to acquire
economic intelligence.’’ Where business intelligence explores information that is openly
available, industrial espionage is inherently about stealing corporate secrets. Samuel Por-
teous, Economic Espionage (II) (Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Commentary 46,
1994). For the discussion related to concepts of economic espionage see, e.g., Hedieh Nash-
eri, Economic Espionage and Industrial Spying (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
Phillip C. Wright and Géraldine Roy, ‘‘Industrial Espionage and Competitive Intelligence:
One You Do; One You Do Not,’’ Journal of Workplace Learning 11, no. 2 (1999): 53–59, at
53–55; Ben Rothke, ‘‘Corporate Espionage and What Can Be Done to Prevent It,’’ Informa-
tion Systems Security 2 (November–December 2001); Coskun A. Samli and Laurence Jacobs,
‘‘Counteracting Global Industrial Espionage: A Damage Control Strategy,’’ Business and Soci-
ety Review 108, no. 1 (2003): 95–113, at 96–97; Omid Nodoushani and Patricia A. Nodous-
hani, ‘‘Industrial Espionage: The Dark Side of the ‘Digital Age,’ ’’ Competitiveness Review 12,
no. 2 (2002): 96–101, 96; and Mark McCourt, ‘‘Keeping Up with New Threats,’’ Security 45,
no. 3 (March 2008): 16–18, 16.
15. Finnish Security Intelligence Service (2011), 21; Finnish Security Police 2008–10
(2009), 17. Matti Remes, ‘‘Supo huolestui PK-yritysten tietoturvasta,’’ Prima 5 (2009): 30–
34, 32–34.
16. Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War, Royal Institute of International
Affairs, 5th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 53–56; Forrester Consult-
ing, ‘‘The Value of Corporate Secrets: How Compliance and Collaboration Affect Enterprise
Perceptions of Risk,’’ paper commissioned by Microsoft and RSA, Security Division of EMC,
March 2010; Swedish Security Police, Annual Report 2003, 2004, 25–27.
17. Stockholms Tingsrätt, Rotel 1301, Avd 13, Dom, Mål nr B 7025–02 (Judgment of the
Stockholm District Court in the Ericsson Espionage Case). For more information and analy-
sis of the Ericsson case, see Lauri Holmström, Industrial Espionage and Corporate Security:
The Ericsson Case, Reports of the Police College of Finland 87/2010 (Tampere: Tampereen
yliopistopaino–Juvenes Print Oy, 2010).
18. Lisa A. Kramer and Richards J. Heuer Jr., ‘‘America’s Increased Vulnerability to
Insider Espionage,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence 20, no. 1
(2007): 51–52.
19. Julie Anderson, ‘‘The HUMINT Offensive from Putin’s Chekist State,’’ International
Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence 20, no. 2 (2007): 258–316, at 269; Holmström,
Industrial Espionage, 17–20.
20. Finland held the presidency of the Council of the European Union from July to
December in 2006, and it is possible that this might have had some effect on the level of
foreign intelligence activities with regard to the Finnish state.
21. Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Annual Report 2010, 2011, 7–8; Finnish Secu-
rity Police 2008–10 (2009), 14; ‘‘Suojelupoliisi: Suojelupoliisin vuosikertomus 2006’’ (Finn-
ish Security Police, Annual Report 2006) (2007); ‘‘Yrityksiin kohdistuvan ja niitä
hyödyntävän rikollisuuden tilannekuva syksy 2007’’ (Situational Picture of Crime That Uses
and Targets Companies, Fall 2007), 11; ‘‘Suojelupoliisi: Suojelupoliisin vuosikertomus 2007’’
(Finnish Security Police, Annual Report 2007) (2008), 6.
22. Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Annual Report 2010, 7–8; ‘‘Suojelupoliisi: Suo-
jelupoliisin vuosikertomus 2006’’; ‘‘Yrityksiin kohdistuvan ja niitä hyödyntävän rikollisuuden
tilannekuva syksy 2007,’’ 11; ‘‘Suojelupoliisi: Suojelupoliisin vuosikertomus 2007’’ (2008), 6;
‘‘Yritysten rikosturvallisuus 2008: Riskit ja niiden hallinta—Keskuskauppakamari ja Helsin-
gin seudun kauppakamari’’ (The Security of Companies with Regard to Crime: Risks and
Risk Control), 22–30; ‘‘Yrityksiin kohdistuvan rikollisuuden tilannekuva: Tietoturvallisuus
ja maksuteknologia; Keskusrikospoliisi, teematilannekuva 3.4.2009, RTP 164/213/09’’ (Situ-
ational Picture of Crime That Targets Companies: Information Security and Payment Tech-
nology) (2009), 4; ‘‘Yrityksiin kohdistuvan ja niitä hyödyntävän rikollisuuden tilannekuva
syksy 2009: Keskusrikospoliisi/rikostietopalvelu 7.10.2009, Arkistoviite KRP (Keskusrikos-
poliisi) /RTP 5230/213/09’’ (Situational Picture of Crime That Uses and Targets Companies,
Fall 2009) (2009), 17–18; ‘‘Yrityksiin kohdistuvan ja niitä hyödyntävän rikollisuuden tilan-
nekuva syksy 2010, 5.11.2010: Keskusrikospoliisi, arkistoviite KRP/RTP 5969/213/10’’ (Situ-
ational Picture of Crime That Uses and Targets Companies, Fall 2010) (2010), 6, 11–12;
‘‘Yritysten rikosturvallisuus 2010: Taloustaantuman vaikutukset yritysten kilpailukykyyn vai-
kuttavaan rikollisuuteen—Helsingin seudun kauppakamari’’ (The Security of Companies
with Regard to Crime: The Effects of the Economic Downturn on Crime That Affects the
Competitiveness of Companies) (2010), 23–26.
23. Finnish Security Intelligence Service; ‘‘Finnish Security Police 2008–10’’ (2009), 17.
24. Teknologiateollisuus ry (Federation of Finnish Technology Industries), 2011,
www.techind.fi.
25. For a discussion of the Finnish national innovation system, see Osmo Kivinen and
Jukka Varelius, ‘‘The Emerging Field of Biotechnology: The Case of Finland,’’ Science, Tech-
nology & Human Values 28, no. 1 (2003): 141–61. For more on Finnish innovation, see
Ministry of Employment and Economy, ‘‘Finland’s National Innovation Strategy’’ (2008);
Evaluation of the Finnish National Innovation System: Full Report, Taloustieto Oy (on
behalf of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Employment and the Economy),
Helsinki University Print (2009), www.evaluation.fi; HighTech Finland, 2011, www.high
techfinland.fi; Finnish innovation system, 2011, www.research.fi/en/innovationsystem. In
the past, the term ‘‘innovation’’ has been used mainly to signify original scientific discoveries,
but in the current technology policy discourse it has expanded to include inventions that
have possible marketable applications. An innovation system is organized action that strives
to create, develop, and exploit innovations. Within the framework of the national innova-
tion system and technology policy, the private and public sectors and universities are
expected to work together transcending institutional boundaries. Knowledge is now consid-
ered intellectual property as well as a potential product that can be exploited in the market.
This reconceptualization can be seen as the industrialization of the production of scientific
knowledge. Timo Räikkönen and Veikko Rouhiainen, Riskienhallinnan muutosvoimat: Kirjalli-
suuskatsaus, VTT Tiedotteita—Research Notes 2208 (Forces of Change in Risk Control. Liter-
ature Review), VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (Espoo: Otamedia Oy 2003),
31–32; McCourt, ‘‘Keeping Up with New Threats,’’ 16.
26. Thomas R. Leinbach and Stanley D. Brunn, ‘‘National Innovation Systems, Firm
Strategy, and Enabling Mobile Communications: The Case of Nokia,’’ Tijdschrift voor Eco-
nomische en Sociale Geografie 93, no. 5 (2002): 489–508, at 491–93; Francesco Daveri and
Olmo Silva, ‘‘Not Only Nokia: What Finland Tells Us about New Economy Growth,’’ Eco-
nomic Policy, April 2004, 117–63, at 129; Kivinen and Varelius, ‘‘Emerging Field,’’ 144.
27. Merril E. Whitey and James D. Gaisford, ‘‘Economic Espionage as Strategic Trade
Policy,’’ Canadian Journal of Economics / Revue canadienne d’Economique 29, special issue: part
2 (April 1996): 627–32, at 632. For more on the discussion on post–Cold War challenges to
economic security and the connections between security, technology, and the economy, see,
e.g., Chris Clough, ‘‘Quid Pro Quo: The Challenges of International Strategic Intelligence
Cooperation,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence 17, no. 4 (2004):
607–8; and Ernest R. May, ‘‘Intelligence: Backing into the Future,’’ Foreign Affairs 71, no. 3
(Summer 1992): 64.
28. Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Annual Report 2010, 4, 21–24; Finnish Security
Police, ‘‘Finnish Security Police 2008–10,’’ 17.
29. Remes, ‘‘Supo huolestui PK-yritysten tietoturvasta,’’ 32–33.
30. Simola, ‘‘Suojelupoliisin organisaatio,’’ 269; Finnish Security Police, ‘‘Finnish Secur-
ity Police 2008–10,’’ 45; Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Annual Report 2010, 6.
31. Henrikki Heikka, ‘‘Republican Realism: Finnish Strategic Culture in Historical Per-
spective,’’ Cooperation and Conflict 40, no. 1 (2005): 91–119, at 93. For more on the politics
of postneutrality in Europe, see Christine Agius, ‘‘Transformed beyond Recognition? The
Politics of Post-Neutrality,’’ Cooperation and Conflict 46, no. 3 (2011): 370–95.
32. Heikka, ‘‘Republican Realism,’’ 92, 103.
33. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democ-
racy in Five Nations, abridged ed. (London: Sage, 1989). See chapter 2 in the present volume,
by Stephen Welch.
34. Robert C. Tucker, ‘‘Culture, Political Culture, and Communist Society,’’ Political Sci-
ence Quarterly 88, no. 2 (June 1973): 173–90, at 179; chapter 2 by Welch.
35. See chapter 2 by Welch.
36. Philip H. J. Davies, ‘‘Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure in Britain and the
United States,’’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (October 2004): 495–520,
at 496.
37. Paul Egon Rohrlich, ‘‘Economic Culture and Foreign Policy: The Cognitive Analysis
of Economic Policy Making,’’ International Organization 41, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 61–92;
Jeremy Richardson, Policy Styles in Western Europe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982);
Alan Macmillan and Ken Booth, ‘‘Appendix: Strategic Culture: A Framework for Analysis,’’
in Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region, edited by Ken Booth and Russell Trood (Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1999), 363–72.
38. Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, A Dynamic View (San Fran-
cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), 50.
39. Ibid., ix, 2, 6–8.
40. Ibid., 51.
41. Ibid., 9.
42. Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Annual Report 2010, 6.
434. Davies, ‘‘Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure in Britain and the United
States,’’ 500–501.
44. Ibid., 508; Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘‘Intelligence and Strategic Culture: Some Observa-
tions,’’ Intelligence and National Security 26, no. 4 (August 2011): 521–39, at 526–27.
45. Confidential interview, 2011.
46. Ibid.
47. A survey concerning the views of Finnish citizens on Supo’s activity is carried out
yearly at the request of the agency. The latest published survey was conducted in February
2011 with a total of 1,000 interviews. The respondents were between fifteen and seventy-
nine years. The confidence interval of the results is plus or minus percentage points. Finnish
Security Intelligence Service, Annual Report 2010, 11.
48. Confidential interview, 2011.
49. Ibid.
50. For more on the challenges of studying economic espionage in practice, see Holm-
ström, Industrial Espionage, 12–16.
51. Duyvesteyn, ‘‘Intelligence,’’ 525.
52. Anssi Kullberg, ‘‘Radikalismi Suomen muslimiyhteisöissä: Ulkomaisten konfliktien ja
kansainvälisen islamismin vaikutus,’’ in Suomi, terrorismi, Supo: Koira joka ei haukkunut—
Miksi ja miten Suomi on välttynyt terroristisen toiminnan leviämiseltä? (Radicalism in Finland’s
Muslim Communities: The Effect of Foreign Conflicts and International Islamism in Finland,
Terrorism, Supo—The Dog That Did Not Bark: Why and How Finland Has Avoided the
Expansion of Terrorist Activity?) edited by Anssi Kullberg (Helsinki: WSOY, 2011), 295.
The translation of the quotation from Finnish is by the author.
53. Isabelle Duyvesteyn has observed that there is empirical evidence that proves how the
perception of geopolitical conditions informs priorities and definitions of intelligence, which
further influence collection mechanisms, assessments, and dissemination in the political
domain. Duyvesteyn, ‘‘Intelligence,’’ 529.
54. Heikka, ‘‘Republican Realism,’’ 109.
PART IV
Conclusion
CHAPTER 15
Legacies, Identities,
Improvisation, and Innovations
of Intelligence
Tradition is a guide and not a gaoler.

—W. Somerset Maugham
L
ike so many other institutions in human social and political affairs, intelli-
gence is a field characterized by the presence of culture as a medium
through which people both understand and act. As Talcott Parsons
observed, culture may articulate both ends and means, but human action is
‘‘voluntaristic’’—that is, individuals act of their own accord but use culture
rather than being directed by it.1 Culture tells us less what people will do than
how they will go about doing it. Beliefs, concepts, values, and norms are, in the
last analysis, toolkits to help human beings navigate this life individually and
collectively. In this sense those who would try and set cultural explanations
against ‘‘materialist,’’ ‘‘realist,’’ or ‘‘structural’’ accounts have fundamentally
misunderstood not only the explanatory role and value of cultural approaches
but also the actual processes whereby ‘‘realist,’’ ‘‘structural,’’ and ‘‘materialist’’
factors play into institutions, decisions, and actions.
Therefore, those who reduce all human affairs to culture and ideology—
concluding thereby that because something is socially constructed it is nothing
/ 287 /
but social construction—are as mistaken as biological reductivists who would

reduce human affairs to environmental natural selection and evolutionary strat-
egy at the genetic level. In this sense there is an important parallel with physics.
Uncertainty has been as axiomatic in social science as it has been in physics
for far longer but in ways that have been less coherently articulated. Mayo and
the Chicago team who first described the Hawthorne Effect demonstrated, in
effect, that the human observing a system directed the humans being observed.2
It took modern physics two centuries to mine down far enough into the observ-
able effects of matter and energy to reach the doubt-ridden realms of the Planck
scale. By contrast, in the study of humanity by humanity, the magnitude of the
observing system has always been the same as the magnitude of the system
being observed, with all that this implies. Frankly, however, the hard sciences
have proven rather better at managing uncertainty than the social sciences,
where there has been far too much willingness to equate the uncertain with
the unknowable and then to take that as a license to opt for tendentious, parti-
san, pleasing tales that cast the world in the light of preferred political precon-
ceptions. In the process analysis is conflated with advocacy, and conviction
substitutes for caveated estimation because, after all, the human mind does not
manage uncertainty well or comfortably.
And yet here is the rub: Intelligence, broadly or narrowly understood, is
ultimately about managing uncertainty where one must and mitigating it when
one can. At a certain level it matters little whether that management of uncer-
tainty serves regimes that are benign or malign, actors that are state or substate,
or governments or corporations—the process of knowing remains the same. It
should be no surprise not only that both Indian and Chinese thinkers on intelli-
gence should concern themselves with validating as well as collecting informa-
tion but also that they should both do so through strikingly similar rules of
threes. Thus Kautilya asserts that when information received from ‘‘three differ-
ent sources it shall be held reliable’’ but ‘‘if they [the three sources] frequently
differ, the spies concerned shall be either punished in secret or dismissed.’’3 As
Sawyer notes in his seminal The Tao of Spycraft, the Chinese rule of three varies
only in their tradition of trying to apply some epistemological reasoning to why
it worked.4 Although the tale of the defeat of the king of the Sung Dynasty
(who executed the first and second spy to bring bad news, convincing the third
to lie) is used to illustrate the soundness of the rule of three and the idea of
validation via multiple sources, other sources understood that ‘‘words act in
such a way that their credibility stems from greater numbers. Something untrue,
if reported by ten men, is still doubted; by a hundred is taken to be so; and if
by a thousand becomes irrefutable.’’ Accordingly, the Lü-shih Ch’un-ch’iu
observed that ‘‘the way words are obtained must be analysed. . . . If one learns
something and analyses it, it will be fortunate; if not, it would be better not to
have learned it.’’5 Credibility, doubt, and interpretation of perceptual evidence
Legacies, Identities, Improvisation, and Innovations of Intelligence / 289
were all things that classical Chinese philosophers of government (and intelli-
gence) mused over, if not in a systematized way. Presaging Donald Rumsfeld by
many centuries, the same Lü-shih Ch’un-ch’iu pointed out: ‘‘Knowing that one
does not know is best. The misfortune of those who are mistaken is not knowing
but thinking that they know. Many things seem to be of the same category but
are not, thus they lose their state and destroy their people.’’6
In no small way this bridge between cultures and across centuries serves
nicely to demonstrate the argument made in the introduction to this book
about the cross-cultural commensurability of intelligence as a core state func-
tion. Intelligence reporting is never self-explanatory and is very rarely com-
pletely trustworthy. It arises from conditions of acute uncertainty, which
typically result from the active denial and deception efforts of those about
whom the intelligence practitioner and their masters would know. And so
where the cognitive task is similar, the resulting formulas resemble each other.
On the operational side, the roles of spies in war in Kautilya, Sun Tze, and
other Chinese political philosophers are largely similar—they classify spies in a
similar way, for instance, and share ideas like the rule of three—but ultimately
they have different intellectual roots. More significantly, there are major institu-
tional differences between ‘‘classical’’ Chinese and Indian society. Though both
were highly stratified between the very top of the social hierarchy and the
bottom, India never displayed the relatively meritocratic social mobility that
China’s secular state machinery offered, and the Chinese never had to navigate
the same rigid divisions created by Hinduism’s caste system. Consequently, in
covert collection it was necessary for Kautilya to posit two different classes of
mendicant female spies, one to deal with Kshatriya and Brahmin women and
the other to reach the women of the Sudras and lower castes below them.
Conversely, far less use, effect, and diversity of religious cover were available to
the increasingly secular and religiously pluralistic polity of imperial China than
in India, where the basic political, military, and economic institutions framed
their authority in terms of religious legitimacy.
Laminated Legacies
Much of what this volume has examined is best understood in terms of the
notion and impact of legacy on communities and institutions. This legacy may
be ancient, profoundly pervasive, and deep; or it may be a shallower and more
recent one to which the members of that community subscribe less comprehen-
sively or completely. And so Sun Tze and his successors have been formative to
the strategic thought not only of the Chinese but also the Japanese, but other
influences have overlaid that deep legacy. Japan, of course, evolved its own
discourse of strategic thought grounded in the inaccurately termed ‘‘feudalism’’
of the yamabushi, the Samurai, with indigenous classics such as the Hagakure
and, better known to Westerners,7 swordsman Miyamoto Musashi’s Gorinosho

(‘‘Book of Five Rings’’8), which provided an intermediate stratum of ideas and
approaches that the modernized, industrialized, and increasingly globalized
Nihonjin can mine down into and extract insights from that can be alloyed with
newer, more recent influences.
A more striking laminated forging is shared by two other states examined
in this volume, Pakistan and Indonesia. Each of these has its deepest intellec-
tual roots embedded in the Sanskrit tradition, subsequently overlaid by Islam,
followed by colonial subordination to the British and Dutch empires, respec-
tively. In Indonesia the state locates itself consciously in the precedent of the
Indianized empires of Srivijaya (based in Palembang, Sumatra) and Majapahit
(chiefly in Surabaya, Java), which survives even today in the Hindu-Buddhist
principalities of Bali. Indeed, as one translator of the Malay epic of Hang Tuah
has recently noted, even texts like the Hikayat Hang Tuah that date to the
Muslim era frame their accounts and the legitimacy of the local sultanates in
terms of divine and semidivine origins and rights that owe more to a Hindu
cosmology than the Islamic notion of a khalifate and its darul Islam, realm of
Islam.9 Islam reinforced the Javanese kingdoms in some ways, adding a new
religious discourse of authority while transforming society by, for example,
doing away with the strictures of the Hindu caste system—and yet the Indone-
sian word for ‘‘warrior’’ today remains kesatria.
Under the Dutch came a new but external authoritarian rule, little more or
less severe and uncompromising than the traditional princes and their courts,
better organized and more formidably armed, but bounded by rational-level
constraints that never occurred to Javanese absolutism. And having been dis-
placed briefly by the Japanese, they eventually gave way to Sukarno’s nationalist
revolutionaries. Judging from their conduct, however, the intelligence institu-
tions of postcolonial Indonesia seem to have drawn chiefly on the regime pro-
tection, disruption, and provocation so essential to Kautilya’s ‘‘institutes of
espionage.’’ This deep legacy appears to have fused with the additional regime
protection interests and sanguinary methods that John Dziak has argued are
endemic to the security apparatuses of many revolutionary regimes and their
resulting ‘‘counterintelligence states.’’10
Pakistan, by comparison, had a very different experience of colonial admin-
istration—and, indeed, of Islamization. After the decline of the Chandraguptas,
the diverse and struggling principalities of India would not experience anything
close to unification until the eighth-century arrival of the Persian Moghuls. But
their reach was always contested, with Hindu resistance a recurrent challenge,
and much of the stratification of Pakistani society by informal notions of caste
has proven more resilient in Pakistan than in Indonesia, despite the Islamic
notion of equality before God and the otherwise strict adherence to Islamic
doctrine that pervades so much of Pakistani society. It is worth keeping in mind
that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) evolved from the British-designed Joint

Intelligence Bureau, yet another case in support of Philip Murphy’s observa-
tions about the British habit of exporting and field-testing experimental intelli-
gence arrangements among Commonwealth governments before implementing
them at home.11 And yet, despite the attempt to establish a UK-model profes-
sional military, the notion of a comparably professional and apolitical joint
intelligence component did not take, and the ISI became something very differ-
ent. Indeed, to look at the ISI’s action orientation, it is impossible not to see
in its use of the Mujahideen in the 1980s, the Taliban in the 1990s, and the
Kashmiri Islamic militants almost continuously since Partition a modern
reflection of the ‘‘firebrand’’ (tikshna) and poisoner (rasada) so significant among
Kautilya’s ‘‘institutes of espionage.’’ Although the administration of the ISI is
that of a modern, albeit militarized, intelligence agency, the sense of communal
identity that guides its priorities and binds the loyalties of its membership and
their masters is steeped in self-perception as part of a global ummah. It is this
latter ideational stratum that has so often effectively enslaved the deep and
shallow legacies of the Sanskritic kingdoms and the British Empire, respec-
tively, to the cause of Jihadism.
Beyond the West and Westphalia

One of the most striking features shared across the non-Western, or perhaps
more accurately non-Westphalian, approaches to intelligence is the degree to
which they are principally about the role of espionage. Also common to these
traditions is the degree to which the role and status of espionage are relatively
undifferentiated from both covert action on one side and diplomacy on the
other. In the contemporary West there exists a keen and long-running debate
about the suitability of intelligence agencies as information agencies or as vehi-
cles of political and paramilitary special activities.12 By contrast, to Sun Tze,
Kautilya, the Byzantine emperors, and Arab potentates, espionage, sabotage,
disruption, and assassination were all variations on a common enterprise. To a
very real degree their traditions are discourses not of intelligence but of the
nature and role of covert capability in statecraft. Indeed, there are moments
when even the use of the word ‘‘spy’’ seems a mistranslation. What is really in
question is the role, variety, direction, and significance of clandestine operators.
Intelligence as information is almost a by-product of a concept of government
and governance that assumes and frequently relies upon a supporting clandes-
tine infrastructure. And, as noted above, we have evidence only of the Chinese
thinkers dwelling on the deeper problems of knowledge and analytic judgment
that lie beyond validating and collating those sources.
By the same token, if we were to ask a student of world politics what to him
or her constituted the normal vector for the conduct of relations between states,
we might get the answer ‘‘diplomacy’’—what one scholar has called ‘‘the essen-
tial institution for the conduct of interstate relations.’’13 This word on its own
is often used as shorthand for foreign policy, when using the term ‘‘diplomat’’
is equal to ‘‘statesman,’’ which can be evidenced by the discussions of such
elder statesmen as Henry Kissinger, the late Richard Holbrooke, and Christo-
pher Meyer.14 In different times and places, the duties of the diplomat have
included those actions that might today be called covert action. The Byzantine
diplomat, for instance, was a general agent of the state. In his efforts to avoid
costly and dangerous war, he employed bribery, trickery, covert subsidy,
extraordinary rendition, and even assassination to achieve what his state
needed.15 Likewise, among the primary tasks of Kautilya’s ambassadors was the
establishment of espionage and potential sabotage networks within their host
country and the monitoring and penetration of the host government’s clandes-
tine efforts against the ambassador’s own government. On the Arabian Penin-
sula one sees less evidence of formally constituted diplomatic missions, but that
goes hand in glove with a great reliance on covert surveillance and interven-
tion. One also sees in these precedents a similarly weak differentiation between
state representatives of a nation and private citizens of that nation resident in
a foreign land. Leading members of the expatriate community, who were abroad
for personal or commercial reasons, were often also tasked to represent their
government to the local political leadership as well as economic and status
elites.
Today, however, the Western and Westphalian definition of diplomacy tends
to eschew any act that moves toward violence. One scholar has offered that the
‘‘juxtaposition of diplomacy and war as polar opposites appears as a peculiarly
Western notion not necessarily found in other traditions.’’16 It is within this
globalized Western tradition that we may therefore use the definition of diplo-
macy offered by the Portuguese diplomat José Calvet de Magalhães, where
diplomacy is ‘‘an instrument of foreign policy for the establishment and devel-
opment of peaceful contacts between different states, through the use of inter-
mediaries recognized by the respective parties.’’17 Although it may not always
be the case into the future, at the moment it would be hard to deviate from de
Magalhães’s definition. What one can draw from these discussions about diplo-
macy is that it is the baseline function of interstate relations—that it is about
‘‘getting our way,’’ with peaceful means, inside mutual and consensual mecha-
nisms.18 At the international level, this is normal political interaction, frozen
in place as the norm through the construction of the United Nations and the
rest of the Westphalian framework of global politics. Most Western states thus
may use diplomatic cover for intelligence operations; but they draw a fairly firm
line between intelligence-gathering ‘‘spies’’ (intelligence officers) and diplo-
mats. It is a construct particular to those states whose histories and political
traditions encompass the Thirty Years’ War and its settlement, and perhaps
those that underwent the process of the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
But the argument evident here is that the hard line between the diplomat and
the intelligence officer may be predominantly a Western construct, and other
political traditions—Russo-Byzantine, Subcontinental, Chinese, and Islamic—
may not see such a divide as evident or necessary. And such an approach may
not be purely an archaic approach but also formative of contemporary practice.
Reflections at an Angle
The literature of cultural study takes it as axiomatic that the understanding of
consciousness, individual or collective, is a reflexive undertaking. Ordinarily,
one would take this to mean that one reflects inwardly, being aware of being
aware, as it were, the Kantian notion of a transcendental awareness. In so doing,
one becomes self-aware of the process of understanding, ideally as much to
serve in helping oneself to understand others—the conceptual (often reified)
Others—as much as oneself. One points a cognitive mirror at oneself and then,
obliquely, at oneself regarding the Other. But in this collection we have some-
thing of an opportunity to perceive something of ourselves in the image one
would not ordinarily detect.
Less of an axiom than simply a common assumption is that there is some
sort of nominally homogenous ‘‘Western’’ episteme and approach to gov-
ernment and governance, which has been shaped across the inheritors of the
European tradition by a common experience of the Enlightenment and mod-
ernization. But two chapters in this collection suggest a more complex narrative,
in which there are two very distinct Western traditions of governance and
therefore of intelligence. It is also a common practice to speak of an ‘‘Anglo-
American’’ tradition that binds the United States and the English-speaking
parliamentary democracies that belong to the Commonwealth. The late, pion-
eering H. Bradford Westerfield was echoing more than just Winston Churchill’s
notion of historically united ‘‘English-speaking peoples’’ when he wrote in 1997
of an Anglo-American intelligence tradition.19 And, indeed, there can be little
doubt that there are profound, even fundamental differences between the politi-
cal and therefore intelligence values, norms, and conduct within the ‘‘Anglo-
sphere’’ liberal tradition and the Continental European notions of governance
rooted in feudal and especially Bourbon Absolutism. It was not mere jingoistic
idiosyncrasy that led the 1923 Secret Service Committee to shudder at the
prospects of a ‘‘Continental system of domestic espionage’’ when it shut down
the overzealous Basil Thompson’s Directorate of Intelligence.20 Micrometer
political surveillance and ‘‘informing’’ on one’s neighbors to ‘‘the authorities’’
continue to have a legitimacy in many nominally democratic European states—
many of which have no history of stable democracy predating World War II—
that they never have had in the ‘‘Anglosphere.’’ Even France’s successive
republics have been relatively authoritarian in political and administrative

culture.
Again, however, two chapters in this collection should serve at least as a
reminder, actually as a wake-up call, to the fact that there is a Continental
European body of states and a tradition of liberal values, norms, government,
and governance that owes nothing to the post-1945 or post-1989 mentoring of
the Anglophone democracies. Thus chapters 13 and 14 on Sweden and Fin-
land, respectively, bring home the fact that Scandinavia has a constitutional
tradition that, though it has often been allied with the Anglosphere, has not
owed its existence (but perhaps its survival on occasion) to the Anglosphere.
Indeed, there are interpretations of the history of Anglo-American liberal
democracy vis-à-vis Anglo-Saxon, Jute, and Danish influences and legacies.
And consultative if not representative bodies appear in Scandinavia quite early
in the modern era—and, as if often overlooked, Swedish freedom of information
legislation dates as far back as the late eighteenth century, long predating even
the United States’ statutory avant-garde of the 1970s. Indeed, the ‘‘principle of
public access’’ predates the establishment of American democracy itself by a
decade.21 And, of course, from the stories of Britain and Sweden allying them-
selves in the Thirty Years’ War to Norway’s role in World War II and NATO,
there is a narrative of nonhostility and frequent alliance between the Anglo-
Saxon and Scandinavian worlds that is well established and almost as rooted in
common values and interests as that within the Anglosphere. And so, perhaps
those working from within the Anglo tradition need to reflect on and redefine
our own identities, not as branches of an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American
tradition but as an Anglo-Scandinavian tradition—a tradition broader, deeper,
richer, and much older than that which we have previously taken for granted.
The Syncretic Spy

The convergence of cognitive requirements and challenges and diverse histories
and contexts, and the ongoing hammering and forging of layers of cultural and
institutional legacy, are mediated throughout by the human capacity for both
improvisation and innovation. In improvisation one riffs and recombines on
preexisting themes and forms while innovation builds anew, albeit always build-
ing on a foundation of the old. Innovation made routine folds back into history
and becomes a part of the foundation and improvisation that create the new
cycle of innovation. There is a degree of commonality between the notion
developed here of laminated legacies and the role of legacy in path dependency
theory discussed in chapter 12 of this volume. But where path dependency
tends to emphasize how culture and legacy delimit thought and action, it is just
as important to understand how they enable action as well, providing the raw
materials of invention in a manner reminiscent of Claude Levi-Strauss’s notion
of ‘‘bricolage.’’ The bricoleur interprets and deals with the world by drawing on,
combining, chopping, and changing useful fragments of legacies; in Levi-
Strauss’s words, he or she ‘‘builds up structures by fitting together events or the
remains of events’’ in contrast with science, which ‘‘simply by virtue of coming
into being, creates its means and results in the form of events, thanks to the
structures which it is constantly elaborating and which are its hypotheses and
theories.’’22 Significantly, Levi-Strauss omits the most significant and formative
‘‘events’’ in science, which are those experimental tests that allow its prac-
titioners to choose between alternative competing theories and hypotheses. The
cumulative consequences of experimentation and falsification, of course, com-
pletely undermine the kind of epistemological equivalence between scientific
knowledge and manipulating ‘‘the remains of events’’ that Levi-Strauss would
like to assert.23 But the idea of ‘‘fitting together . . . the remains of events’’ is a
compelling way of visualizing how almost any form of social construction takes
place. After all, what are cultural artifacts like traditions and conventions but
the remains of events? What Levi-Strauss articulates so well—what other think-
ers in what the Germans call the giesteswissenschaften, the spiritual or cultural
studies (‘‘sciences’’ might be the literal translation, but it is a misleading term
for what the activity entails), underestimate—is this: People innovate with tra-
dition. They fabricate ideas, approaches, understandings, and methods that are
both chronologically and substantively new from intellectual matter that is old
and even ancient. In its way, the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Commit-
tee was as new and innovative in the practice of intelligence as the first recon-
naissance satellite, but assembled from conventions and practices rooted in
attitudes and conventions that dated back decades or more rather than shiny,
freshly manufactured, technologically ground-breaking component parts.
In the last analysis, intelligence is about understanding. It feeds into under-
standing and supports understanding without subsuming all that understanding
should entail. The mythopoetic understanding that underpins the idea of brico-
lage assumes and exploits a shared knowledge of the symbols, signs, and codes
that are the ‘‘remains of events.’’ Such artifacts are comprehensible in the lin-
guistic sense, because they rest on communicative competence that can be
acquired, and this comprehension can be articulated, translated, and conveyed
with varying degrees of fidelity to others who might not share these fragments
of legacy. So, in part, the intelligence practitioner seeks to comprehend actions
and institutions that are themselves the consequence of bricolage. In another
part, intelligence institutions and the states where they are located are them-
selves the products of bricolage, and likewise are comprehensible. In the last
analysis what the contributors to this volume have sought to do is achieve, and
convey, just such an understanding of how intelligence has been assembled and
given shape and meaning through very different symbols, signs, codes, and other
remnants from those so often taken for granted in the thought and pronounce-
ments of the English-speaking world.
Notes
1. This is the essential message of his seminal book; see Talcott Parsons, The Structure of
Social Action (New York: Basic Books, 1969; orig. pub. 1937).
2. Elton Mayo, Hawthorne and the Western Electric Company: The Social Problems of an
Industrial Civilisation (London: Routledge, 1949).
3. Kautilya, Arthashastra, 21.
4. Ralph Sawyer, The Tao of Spycraft: Intelligence, Theory and Practice in Traditional China
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004), 297.
5. Ibid., 298.
6. Ibid., 308.
7. Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, translated by William
Scott Wilson (London: Kodansha Europe, 2000).
8. Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, translated by William Scott Wilson (Lon-
don: Kodansha Europe, 2002).
9. Muhammad Haji Salleh, ‘‘Translating Hikayat Hang Tuah,’’ in The Epic of Hang Tuah,
translated by Muhammad Haji Salleh and edited by Rosemary Robson (Kuala Lumpur: Insti-
tut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia, 2011), xlii–xliii.
1985), 1–5 passim.
11. For a general discussion of the idea of what might be called prototyping in the empire,
see Philip Murphy, ‘‘Creating a Commonwealth Intelligence Culture: The View from Cen-
tral Africa 1945–1960,’’ Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 3 (Summer 2002).
12. See, inter alia, Charles Beitz, ‘‘Covert Action as a Moral Problem,’’ Ethics and Interna-
tional Affairs 3, no. 1 (1989): 45–60; William E. Colby, ‘‘Public Policy, Secret Action,’’ Ethics
and International Affairs 3, no. 1 (1989): 61–71; Loch K. Johnson, ‘‘On Drawing a Bright
Line for Covert Operations,’’ American Journal of International Law 86 (April 1992): 284–309;
and David P. Forsythe, ‘‘Democracy, War, and Covert Action,’’ Journal of Peace Research 29,
no. 4 (November 1992): 385–95.
13. Christer Jönsson, ‘‘Diplomacy, Bargaining and Negotiation,’’ in Handbook of Interna-
tional Relations, edited by Beth A. Simmons, Walter Carlsnaes, and Thomas Risse (London:
Sage, 2002), 212.
14. Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, The-
ory, and Administration (New York: Routledge, 1995), 1.
15. Ibid., 14–20.
16. Raymond Cohen, ‘‘Reflections on the New Global Diplomacy: Statecraft 2500 BC to
2000 AD,’’ in Innovation in Diplomatic Practice, edited by Jan Melissen (New York: Palgrave,
1999), 4.
17. José Calvet de Magalhães, The Pure Concept of Diplomacy (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1988), 59.
18. Christopher Meyer, Getting Our Way: The Inside Story of British Diplomacy (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009).
19. H. Bradford Westerfield, ‘‘American Exceptionalism and American Intelligence,’’
Freedom Review 28, no. 2 (Summer 1997).
20. See, e.g., Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence
Community (London: Sceptre, 1986), 405.
21. For a comparative analysis of Swedish open government practice with those of the
United Kingdom and the United States, see K. G. Robertson, Public Secrets (London: Mac-
millan, 1984).
22. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 22.
23. Ibid., 15.
CONTRIBUTORS
Wilhelm Agrell has a twin academic background in history, in which he

defended his PhD thesis in 1985 and of which he became an associate professor
in 1987, as well as in peace and conflict research, of which he became an
associate professor in 2003. Since 2006 he has been professor of intelligence
analysis at Lund University, the first in the subject in Sweden. He has written
extensively on military research and development, security policy, regional con-
flicts, and the role and transformation of intelligence. He is a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences and of the external advisory board to
the Swedish Security Service.
Emmanuel Kwesi Aning has taught in several universities around the world,
including in Denmark, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States,
Nigeria, Austria, and Ghana. He presently serves as dean and director of the
Faculty of Research and Academic Affairs at the Kofi Annan International
Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra. Until 2007 he served as the African
Union’s first expert on counterterrorism, peace, and security. He has extensive
publications to his credit and serves on several editorial boards. He was recently
appointed to the World Economic Forum’s Council on Conflict Prevention. He
received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen.
Abdulaziz A. Al-Asmari is a Saudi Arabian diplomat. While posted to the

United Kingdom, he joined the Brunel University Centre for Intelligence and
Security Studies, where he worked on ‘‘Paramilitary Groups as Intelligence
Actors.’’ After he completed his master’s in philosophy, he researched the his-
tory and development of the Islamic theory of intelligence at Brunel Univer-
sity’s Department of Politics and History, where he received his PhD. He
received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York.
Emma Birikorang is a research fellow and program head for the Regional Part-
nerships for the Peace and Security Programme at the Kofi Annan International
/ 299 /
300 / Contributors
Peacekeeping Training Centre. She is currently undertaking research on Afri-

can Peace and Security Mechanisms and the Economic Community of West
African States–African Union regional peacekeeping frameworks. She also
facilitates training modules on security-sector reform and conflict prevention.
She received a BA in languages (English and French) from the Kwame Nkru-
mah University of Science and Technology and an MA in international politics
and security studies from the University of Bradford. She is currently a doctoral
candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of
London.
Philip H. J. Davies is the director of the Brunel University Centre for Intelli-
gence and Security Studies and originator of Brunel’s highly innovative MA
program in intelligence and security studies. He recently completed a substan-
tial comparative study of national intelligence in the United Kingdom and the
United States, Intelligence and Government in Britain and the United States: A
Comparative Approach (Praeger Security International, 2012), and he has pub-
lished extensively on the management and organization of intelligence institu-
tions and on the concept of national intelligence cultures. He was a contributor
to the current UK Joint Intelligence Doctrine.
Eduardo E. Estévez is president of Fundación de Estudios Económicos y Polı́ti-

cas Públicas in Argentina. With a background in defense and civil–military
relations, he has specialized in two fields, security—including police reforms
and citizen security—and intelligence. His most recent government assignment
was as general director of crime prevention policy at the Ministry of Security of
the Province of Buenos Aires. He has served as coordinator-director and adviser
at Argentina’s National Directorate for Crime Prevention Coordination and
Analysis of the Interior Security Secretariat. He has written widely on intelli-
gence democratization and public security.
Peter Gill is an honorary senior research fellow at the University of Liverpool.

Previously, he was a research professor in intelligence studies at the University
of Salford. He is the author of Policing Politics (Frank Cass, 1994) and Rounding
Up the Usual Suspects? (Ashgate, 2000) and coauthor of Intelligence in an Inse-
cure World (2nd ed., Polity, 2006). He is coeditor of the two-volume PSI Hand-
book of Global Security and Intelligence: National Approaches (Praeger, 2008) and
Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates (Routledge, 2009). His current
research, which is supported by a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship that he was
awarded in 2010, is on the democratization of intelligence in former authoritar-
ian regimes, and includes his contribution to the present volume.
Kristian C. Gustafson is deputy director of the Brunel University Centre for

Intelligence and Security Studies and director of its very successful MA program
Contributors / 301
in intelligence and security studies. He was formerly an officer of both the

Canadian and British armies, and he has been part of operations in the Balkans
and Afghanistan. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and
taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before moving to Brunel. He
has written on covert action (especially on the case of US intervention in
Chile, in his book Hostile Intent) and on horizon scanning. He contributed to
the new UK Joint Intelligence Doctrine.
Lauri Holmström is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki. He received

his master’s degree in political history from the University of Helsinki and
completed the intelligence and security studies MA at Brunel University. He
previously researched Finland’s role in American intelligence during World
War II as well as issues of economic espionage and corporate security in the
modern world. He has held a range of posts in the Finnish government.
Robert Johnson is the deputy director of the Oxford Changing Character of

War Programme and a lecturer on the history of war at the University of
Oxford. His primary research interests are conflicts in the Middle East, Afghan-
istan, and Pakistan, including the interactions between intelligence and con-
ventional operations, war by proxy, insurgency and counterinsurgency, and
strategy. He has published a number of books and articles, and he is the author
of The Iran-Iraq War (Palgrave, 2010) and The Afghan Way of War: How and
Why They Fight (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2011).
Ken Kotani is a senior fellow of the National Institute for Defense Studies at
the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo. He received his MA in war studies from
King’s College London and his PhD in international history from Kyoto Uni-
versity. He was a visiting fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in Lon-
don in 2008–9 and is now a visiting lecturer of the National Defense Academy
of Japan. His major field of study is the intelligence history of Japan and the
United Kingdom. He is an author of Japanese Intelligence in World War II
(Osprey, 2009) and is the coauthor of the Pacific War Companion (Osprey, 2005).
Ernest Ansah Lartey is the head of the Conflict and Security Programme in the
Research Department of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training
Centre. His research interests include security-sector reform, postconflict peace
building, and elections security. He has published a number of papers covering
these specific interests. He also provides teaching support to training programs
at the Kofi Annan Centre.
Ralph D. Sawyer is an independent scholar who studied at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and who specializes in Chinese
302 / Contributors
military and intelligence issues, with a particular focus on the revitalization of

traditional concepts in current military doctrine. His analytical works include
Ancient Chinese Warfare (Basic Books, 2011), The Tao of Spycraft (Basic Books,
2004), and The Tao of Deception (Basic Books, 2007). His translations, all of
which feature extensive historical introductions, range from the Seven Military
Classics of Ancient China (Westview Press, 1993) to Sun-tzu’s Art of War (West-
view Press, 1994), Sun Pin’s Military Methods (Westview Press, 1995), and the
Hundred Unorthodox Strategies (Westview Press, 1996). Along with serving as a
consultant to conglomerates and defense agencies, he is a fellow of the Centre
for Military and Strategic Studies and senior research fellow with the Warring
States Project.
Carl Anthony Wege is a tenured professor at the College of Coastal Georgia.

He has published numerous articles on Hezbollah and associated topics. He has
traveled to China, Argentina, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Israel in various
academic capacities and has taught courses on terrorism for many years.
Stephen Welch is lecturer in politics in the School of Government and Interna-

tional Affairs at the University of Durham. He is the author of The Concept of
Political Culture (St. Martin’s Press, 1993) and of several articles on political
culture, and his forthcoming book is The Theory of Political Culture (Oxford
University Press).
Lee Wilson is a research associate in the School of Political Science and Inter-
national Studies at the University of Queensland. He is the author of a forth-
coming monograph on Indonesian martial arts, Pencak Silat: The Constitution of
a National Martial Art in Indonesia (KITLV Press). He coedited the recent vol-
ume Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power (Routledge, 2012). His current
research focuses on citizen militia groups in newly democratizing Indonesia.
INDEX
Abbas, Mahmoud, 155n1 al-Ansi, Al-Aswad, 105–6

Al-Abbas, Abu Al-Fadhl, 100 Anzorreguy, Hugo, 224
Abbi Waqas, Saad bin, 111n57 Arab and Islamic intelligence culture
Abe, Shinzo, 192 Arabic intelligence terminology, 90–94
Abi Talib, Ali bin, 99, 101, 111n55 espionage, early Arab records of, 94–97
Abi Waqqas, Saad bin, 101 impact of Muslim intelligence activ-
Abu Bakr, Abdullah, 99–100 ities, 108–9
Abu Bakr, Asma bint, 99–100 pre-Islamic origins of, 89–90
Abu Sufyan, 100–103, 106–7, 111n59 the Prophet Muhammad and, 99–108
Afak, Abu, 105 religious texts and, 97–98
Afghanistan Argentina
Iran and, 148 authoritarianism to democracy, intelli-
the ISI and conflict in, 121–27 gence and, 219–20, 232
US–Pakistani relations and, 115–17 democratization, main events in,
agents provocateurs, 54 223–27
Aguilar, Paloma, 233n16 the Dirty War in, 222
Ahmadinejad, Mamoud, 147 legal framework of intelligence sector,
Ahmed, Mahmood, 130 228–29
Ahmed, Mahmud, 139n57 origins, legacies, and challenges of the
Alexius I (emperor of Byzantine Empire), intelligence sector, 221–23
73–74 outcomes of intelligence democrati-
Alfonsı́n, Raul, 223–24 zation, 229–31
Alhaja, Ali, 154n33 Arisue, Seizo, 195
Al Jarmi, 75 Armitage, Richard, 130, 194
Almond, Gabriel, 14–15, 141, 273 arms-smuggling networks, Iranian, 145
Almondian paradigm, 14–18 Arthashastra (Kautilya), 50–52, 55–56,
Almqvist, Carl Jonas Love, 239, 258 62–63. See also Kautilya
Anderson, John, 83 Art of War (Sunzi), 30–35, 38–39
Andrew, Christopher, 3 al-Asbahani, Abu Faraj, 95–96
/ 303 /
304 / Index
Asgari, Ali, 150 Byzantine Empire

Ashiq, Haroon, 119 culture of intelligence and security in,
Ashoka the Great (emperor of Maurya 71–79
Empire), 51–52 diplomat, role of, 292
assassination, 38–39, 62, 104–6, 143 Manathira/Lakhmid states, relations
Åström, Sverker, 262n33 with emerging, 94
Atmar, Hanif, 117 postal system of, 72–73
Aum Shinrikyo, 185 Russian intelligence culture, impact on,
Al-Awsi, Omeir bin Wahab, 105 67–69, 79–84
Al-Awwam, Al-Zubair bin, 101, 111n56 Russian political culture and, 69–71
Bagbin, Alban, 217n29 Cadogan, Sir Alexander, 3

Baluchistan, 148 caeseropapism, 69, 73
al-Bashir, Omar Hassan, 144 Cañón, Carlos, 224
Basil II (emperor of Byzantine Empire), Carlgren, Wilhelm, 260n6
73–74 Cavallo, Domingo, 227
Beeston, A. F., 95 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Belenko, Victor Ivanovich, 186 Afghan Mujahideen, support for, 125
Béliz, Gustavo, 227 Indonesia, actions regarding, 160–62
Berlin, Isaiah, 26n23 Iran’s SAVAK and, 142
Betts, Richard, 192 Khan, protection of, 129
Beurling, Arne, 241 Sukarno, efforts to overthrow, 175n13
Bhakari, S. K., 64n14 Chabal, Patrick, 18–20
Bhutto, Benazir, 117, 122, 134, 138n44 Chandragupta (emperor of Maurya
Bhutto, Zulifiqar Ali, 123–24 Empire), 51
bin Laden, Osama, 116–17, 119, 130, 132 Chen Ping, 47n46
blowback, 145–46 China
Boateng, Asamoah, 213 assassination and subversive programs,
Boheman, Eric, 260n8 38–43
Booth, Ken, 26n23 bribery, use of, 44–45
Bo Pi, 42–43 ecological warfare, 43–44
Boraz, Steven, 158 intelligence activity, tradition of,
Bréhier, Louis, 75 29–30
bribery, 44–45 knowing your opponent, necessity of,
bricolage, 295 30–33
Bruneau, Thomas C., 158–59 rule of threes in, 288
Bulgaria, 84 the Spring and Autumn Period, 30–33
Burke, Jason, 137n24 spycraft, treatises on, 34–38
Bury, J. M., 74 China, People’s Republic of, 29–30
Bush, George W., 129 Church Committee report, 11n5
Index / 305
Churchill, Winston, 293 Duaji, Susno, 173, 179n94

civil-military relations (CMR) model, Duncan, Ron, 165
158–59, 174n3 Du You, 35–36
clandestine activities. See espionage Duyvesteyn, Isabelle, 284n53
Comnena, Anna, 74, 81 Dziak, John, 8, 70–73, 79–80, 290
comparative analysis
intelligence as a subject of, 7–8 ecological warfare, 43–44
isolation, protection against examining economic espionage, 269–72, 281n14
cases in, 4–5 Egypt, Islamist influence in, 146
strengths of, 5–6 Eisenhower, Dwight, 175n13
Constantine V (emperor of the Byzantine Elkner, Julie, 82
Empire), 81 Elmér, Birger, 250–53, 259
Constantine VII (emperor of the embezzlement, 58
Byzantine Empire), 77, 87n64 Erlander, Tage, 244, 251–52
counterintelligence state, 71, 73, 79–80 espionage
Cui Hao, 35 Byzantine sources on, 78–79
culture Chinese sources on, 34–43
Anglo-American and Scandinavian, clandestine activities, impact on Islam
relationship of, 293–94 of, 98–101
concept of, 13 in diplomacy and war, 60–62
duality of, 23 early Arab records of, 94–97
explanatory role of, 287–88 economic, 269–72, 281n14
intelligence (see intelligence culture) Kautilya on special operations, 54–55
as laminated legacy, 289–91 Kautilya’s ‘‘institutes [or categories] of,’’
organizational, 21–22, 274–75 50, 52–55, 290–91
political (see political culture) non-Western government and, 291
in routine government, Kautilya on,
55–60
Daloz, Jean-Pascal, 18–20
See also spies
Davies, Philip, 189, 273, 275
ethnocentrism, 4
Day, Tony, 161
de Magalhães, José Calvet de, 292 Fardust, Hussein, 142
democratic intelligence, 158 Finland
democratization, path dependency theory economic espionage, 269–72, 277–78
and, 220–21, 231–32 foreign intelligence activities of (see
De Santibãnes, Fernando, 226 Finnish Security Intelligence Service
Al-Dhamiri, Amru bin Ummaya, 106 [Supo])
Dianatr, Akbar, 156n64 intelligence activities, organizational
Dikshitar, V. R. Ramachandra, 64n14 structure for, 265
Dilks, David, 3 Russia and, 272
diplomacy, 60–62, 291–93 security/strategic culture of, 272–73
306 / Index
Finnish Security Intelligence Service regime and state security, 56–57

(Supo) revenue, commerce, and law
adaptation to new political and opera- enforcement, 57–60
tional realities, 274 Greece, 84
economic espionage, 271–72 Griffith, Samuel B., 63n1
history and recent organizational devel- Guan Zhong, 31–32, 46n11
opments, 266–69 Gul, Hamid, 126, 130, 134, 137n31
intelligence culture of, 277–80 Gustafson, Bengt, 262n38
intelligence role and culture of, 265–66
public opinion regarding, 277
Habibie, Jusuf, 168
security intelligence and the intelli-
Hadith, 97–98
gence culture of, 272–77
Hajar, Aws bin, 92, 96
Franco, Francisco, 157
Haldon, John, 72
Fraser, Peter, 62
fraud and theft by the ruler, 59–60 Hamzah, Chandra M., 179n94
Funes, Patricia, 222 al-Hanafi, Thumamah bin Athal,
Furaihah, Amir bin, 99 100–101
Handel, Michael, 45n5
Gabriel, Richard, 90, 99, 111n66 Han Feizi, 33
Geertz, Clifford, 17–20, 25n19 Han Xin, 35
Geertzian paradigm, 17–20 Haq, Ehsanul, 130
Gehlen, Reinhardt, 182, 249, 261n17 Haqqani, Jalaluddin, 130–31
Germany, 143, 153n25 Haqqani, Sirajuddin, 121–22, 131
Ghana Haqqani network, the, 115–17, 131–33
democratic development and intelli- Heikka, Henrikki, 272
gence culture, 199–201, 208–9, 215 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 126
evolution of intelligence culture, 201–6 Hendropriyono, A. M., 168
judicial oversight, 212–14 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 18
the media and the intelligence services, Hite, Katherine, 233n16
214–15
Hitti, Philip K., 95
parliamentary oversight, 210–11
Hofstede, Geert, 21
political history and regime types,
Holbrooke, Richard, 292
204–5
Hussein, Javed, 120
predemocratic era policies, 206–8
Gilani, Daood, 137n24
Gilani, Yusuf Raza, 115 India
Giustozzi, Antonio, 139n66 Asian balance of power, role in, 50
Glubb, John, 94 Kautilya and espionage in, 49–51,
Godson, Roy, 81, 108, 112n82 62–63 (see also Kautilya)
government Mumbai attacks, 119, 122, 128
espionage and, Kautilya on, 50, 55–60 Pakistan and, 116, 118–19, 121–22
Index / 307
Pakistan and the insurgency in intelligence culture

Kashmir, 127–28 Arab and Islamic (see Arab and Islamic
Indonesia intelligence culture)
civil society, intelligence reform and, bottom-up approach to, 21–23
167 of the Byzantine Empire, 71–79
context for security-sector reform friction between practices and
(SSR), 162–63 accounting for practices, focus on, 24
decentralization in, 166 of the ISI, 120–23 (see also Inter-
democratic control of intelligence, Services Intelligence)
establishing, 169–71 political culture and, 13–14, 16, 24, 274
economic society, intelligence reform (see also political culture)
and, 164–65 Russian (see Russia)
financial independence of the military intelligence democratization, 157–59
from the government, 178n82 International Security Assistance Force
independence to New Order in, 159–62 (ISAF), 132
intelligence democratization in, 157–58 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
laminated forging in, 290
the Afghan conflicts and, 123–27
oversight of intelligence, establishing,
assessments of, 134–35
172
culture of, 118–19, 291
political society, intelligence reform
insurgency and the ends of, 131–33
and, 165–67
Islamists in post–9/11, 129–31
postauthoritarian intelligence reform,
Islamization of, 123–26
limitations of models for describing,
Kashmir operations, 127–28
172–74
nuclear proliferation and, 128–29, 148
the rule of law, intelligence reform and,
organization, strategy, and culture of,
163–64
120–23
security and intelligence apparatus
reputation of, 117
since 1999, 167–69
Inglehart, Ronald, 15 the US and the Haqqani, relations
intelligence with, 115–17
commensurability and, 7–8, 289 Western concerns regarding, 117–18
core functions of, 7–8 Iran
definition of, 158 Afghanistan and, 148
democratic reform of, models of, center/periphery divide in, 147
158–59, 174n3 Germany, Israel, and, 153n25
diplomacy and, 291–93 Germany and, 143
Kautilya’s Arthashastra, legacy of, intelligence culture, limitations
49–50 imposed by, 151
scholarly approaches to study of, 3–4 Iraq and, 142, 148–49
uncertainty and, 288–89 Islamist revolutionary state, the 1979
as understanding, 295–96 Revolution leading to, 141
308 / Index
Iran (continued ) National Police Agency, 185–86

nuclear capabilities of, Pakistan and, Public Security Intelligence Agency,
128, 148 184
Pakistan and, 148 Jarring, Gunnar, 241
Russia and, 142 Jenkins, Romilly, 77
security architecture of, 141–46 Jia Chong, 35
security establishment, assessing, Jie Xuan, 37–38, 46n22, 47n30
149–52 Jihadists, the ISI and, 115–22
‘‘shatterbelt’’ of access points for Jing Ke, 39
enemies of, 146–49 Jones, Seth, 139n66
Sudan and, 144–45 Juan Zhu, 38
Iraq, 142, 148–49 Justinian (emperor of the Byzantine
ISI. See Inter-Services Intelligence Empire), 81
Islam, Arab intelligence culture and. See
Arab and Islamic intelligence culture Kamal, Majid, 154n33
Israel Karikari, Kwame, 217n39–40
Germany, Iran, and, 153n25 Karzai, Hamid, 116
Iran and, 145–46 Kashmir, 118–19, 127–28
Mossad intelligence agency (see Kautilya
Mossad) context for work of, 51–52
espionage in diplomacy and war,
Al-Jahiz, 89 60–62, 292
Jamal, Syed, 126 espionage in routine government,
Al-Jamhi, Omeir bin Wahab, 107 55–60
Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, 132 information, rule of three sources
Japan applied to, 288
Cabinet Intelligence and Research ‘‘institutes [or categories] of espionage,’’
Office, 183 50, 52–55, 290–91
Defense Intelligence Headquarters of intelligence theory and practice, impact
the Ministry of Defense, 184 on, 49–51, 62–63
discourse of strategic thought in, Sunzi, contrast with, 50, 55, 60–61
289–90 Kayani, Ashfaq Parvez, 116
history of intelligence from World War Kekaumenos, 74
II to the Cold War, 182–83 Kekomäki, Eero, 268
intelligence culture, limitations Kennan, George, 82
imposed by, 151, 182, 195–97 Khabeeb bin Uday, 106
intelligence development in, 181–82 Khadeejah, 99
intelligence organizations of, 183–86 Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, 132
intelligence reform in, 186–97 Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali, 142, 147
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 183–84 Khan, Abdul Qadeer, 128–29
Index / 309
Khan, Aziz, 130 Lucas, Edward, 68

Khar, Hina Rabbani, 120 Luttwak, Edward, 77, 79
Khatami, Mohammed, 144
Al-Khattab, Umar bin, 98, 107 Ma’bad Al-Khuzai, 103–4
Al-Khazraji, Abu Amie, 107 Macmillan, Alan, 26n23
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 141, 147, Maddrell, Paul, 188
151 Makaarim, Mufti A., 167
Khwaja, Khalid, 131 Maldonaldo, Carlos, 232n2
Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de, 227 Malik, Rehman, 115
Kirchner, Nestor, 226–27, 231 Manshawi, Ali, 154n33
Kissinger, Henry, 292 Maqdah, Muir, 154–55n41
Knight, Amy, 68, 80 Markov, Georgi, 81
Koizumi, Junichiro, 186 Marshall, Alan, 62
Konoe, Fumimaro, 192 Martı́nez, Carlos Alberto, 224
Kuhn, Thomas, 15 Marwan, Asma’ bint, 104–5
Kullberg, Anssi, 279 Matei, Florina Cristiana, 159
Kurdistan, 149 Maugham, W. Somerset, 84, 287
Kwadjo, Johnny, 203, 206 Maurice, 77
Mayo, Elton, 288
Lamperts, Lars Olof, 253 Mbai, Ansyaad, 169
Lashkar-e Toiba, 137n24 McLeod, Ross, 165
law enforcement, 57–59 Mehsud, Beitullah, 121, 134
Lecapenus, Romanus, 87n64 Menem, Carlos, 224, 227
Leeser, Anita, 129 Mensah, Herbert, 213–14
legacy, 289–91 methodology
Lemos-Nelson, Ana, 222 comparative (see comparative analysis)
Leontiev, Konstantin, 70 political culture and, 15 (see also
Leo the Deacon, 79 political culture)
Levchenko, Stanislaw, 193 surveys, 23
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 294–95 variables, nature of social science, 6
Li Jing, 32 Meyer, Christopher, 292
Limann, Hilla, 207 Mill, John Stuart, 5
Li Mu, 44 Mills, John, 217n35
Lindsey, Tim, 161 Misbahi, Abu al-Kassam, 143
Linz, Juan, 163 Mohlrabi, Gholam, 156n64
Li Quan, 32, 37, 41–42 Morsi, Mohammed, 146
Li Si, 35, 45 Mossad
Litvinenko, Alexander, 81 Iran’s SAVAK and, 142
Liudprand (Bishop of Cremono), 75 Kurdistan, presence in, 149
Lotman, I. M., 70 Mousavi, Mir-Hossein, 147
310 / Index
Mufateh, Hojatolislam Mohammed, 142 the United States, the ISI and relations
Mugniyah, Imad, 145, 154n32 with, 115–17, 120–21, 129–31
Muhammad, the Prophet, 90, 97–108, Palm, Thede, 241, 243–46, 249, 251–52
109n4 Palme, Olof, 244–45, 250–51
Mullen, Mike, 115, 120 Parsons, Talcott, 6, 25n19, 287
Mumbai attacks, 119, 122, 128 Pasha, Ahmed Shuja, 116
Al-Munthir, Al-Naman bin, 95 path dependence theory, 220–21, 231–32,
Murai, Jun, 182–83 294
Murphy, Philip, 291 Pelttari, Antti, 280–81n9
Musashi, Miyamoto, 290 Pena, Robert, 223
Musharraf, Pervez, 121, 128–31, 133–34 Peoples Mujahidin Organization, 153n18
Muslim Brothers, 146 Perón, Juan Domingo, 222
Persson, Carl, 252, 257
Nakasone, Yasuhiro, 193 Petersén, Carl, 241, 243
Nasir, Javed, 127 political culture
Nawaz, Shuja, 125, 129 the Almondian positivist paradigm,
Nevala, Seppo, 268 14–18, 273
Newton, Isaac, 18 dialectic of, moving beyond the, 21–23
Nikephoros Phokas, 78
dialectic of approaches to, 20–21
Nilsson, Torsten, 250
the Geertzian interpretive paradigm,
Nkrumah, Kwame, 201–3, 207
17–20
nuclear proliferation, 128–29, 148
intelligence culture and, 13–14, 16, 24,
273–74
Obolensky, Dimitri, 67–70
Russian, Byzantine influence on, 69–71,
Ogata, Taketora, 182
79–80 (see also Russia)
Omori, Yoshio, 189
Popplewell, Richard, 52, 63
organizational culture, 21–22, 274–75
Porch, Douglas, 63
Oros, Andrew, 183
Porteous, Samuel, 281n14
Ostrogorsky, George, 69
postal system, intelligence functions and,
oversight, 169
72–73
Procopius, 72, 76
Pakistan
Psellus, Michael, 73
India and, 116, 118–19, 121–22
Purwopranjono, Muchdi, 164
intelligence activities in (see Inter-
Putin, Vladimir, 68, 70, 82–83
Services Intelligence)
Pye, Lucian W., 17, 20
Iran and, 148
Kashmir, insurgency in, 127–28
Kautilya’s legacy and the sponsorship of al-Qaeda, 116–17, 119
jihadists, 63 Quantson, Kofi, 202–3
laminated forging in, 290–91 Quran, the, 97–98
Index / 311
Rafsanjani, Akbar Hashemi, 144 secrecy, 11n5

Rahman, Akhtar Abdur, 124–25 security-sector reform (SSR) model,
Rashid, Ahmed, 135 158–59, 174n3
Rashid, Sheikh, 138n44 Serbia, 84
rational choice theory, 16 Shah, Ijaz, 134
Rawlings, Jerry, 208 Shah, K. J., 63
Rayshahr, Mohammed, 143 Shahzad, Syed Saleem, 119
religion Shakai Agreement, 116, 121
espionage in India and, 53–54 Shamasastry, Rudrapatnam, 50–52, 58,
resurgence in Russia, 82–83 62, 64n6, 64n14, 65n33
Rentola, Kimmo, 267 Sharif, Nawaz, 138n44
revenue, espionage and the collection of, Shi Zimei, 29, 32, 36–37, 46n14
58–60 Shul’ts, Vladimir, 82
Rezaii, Mohsen, 142 Shultz, Richard, 81
Rianto, Bibit Samad, 179n94 Sima Shang, 44
Rigi, Abdol Malek, 155n52 Sima Tan, 35
Roman Empire, 71 Simola, Matti, 267–68
Romania, 84 Six Secret Teachings (Liutao), 39–41
Roosevelt, Archie, 152 Sköld, Per Edvin, 242
Rúa, Fernando de la, 226 Sorege, Richard, 193
Russia Sorokin, Piotr, 25n19
Byzantine influences on the intelli- sovereign statehood, 176n25
gence culture of, 67–69, 79–84 Soviet Union. See Union of Soviet
Finland and, 272 Socialist Republics
Iran and, 142 special operations. See espionage
political culture, Byzantine mark on, spies
69–71 categories of, Kautilya on, 50, 52–55
resurgence of religion in, 82–83 (see also Kautilya)
Ryter, Loren, 179n93 terminology in Arabic for, 91–94
types of, Sunzi on, 34–35 (see also
Sábato, Ernesto, 223 Sunzi)
sabotage, 62 See also espionage
Saddam Hussein, 142, 148 spycraft. See espionage
Safavi, Rahim, 154n33 Stalin, Joseph, 80–82
Safi-Id-a-Din, Abdallah, 145–46 Stepan, Alfred, 163
Salmi, Ilkka, 268, 280–81n9 Suárez, Facundo, 223
Sawyer, Ralph, 288 Subianto, Prabowo, 163
Scandinavia, constitutional tradition of, Subrandio, 160–61
294 Sudan, Iran and, 144–45
Schein, Edgar, 274–75, 277 Suharto, 160–65, 167–68
312 / Index
Sukarno, 160–61, 175n13, 290 Toynbee, Arnold J., 70

Sukarnoputri, Megawati, 168 Trocki, Carl A., 173
Sun Bin, 33 Trotsky, Leon, 81
Sunnah, 97–98 Tsafrir, Eliezer, 155n57
Sun Tze. See Sunzi Tucker, Robert, 17, 273
Sunzi Tunander, Ola, 262n38
Art of War, 30–36, 38, 45, 45n3, 45n5 al-Turabi, Hassan, 144, 153–54n32
Japanese, impact on, 289 Turner, Michael, 5
Kautilya, contrast with, 50, 55, 60–61
Supo. See Finnish Security Intelligence uncertainty, 288–89
Service Undén, Östen, 254
Su Qin, 44 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Sweden, 239 (USSR), 70, 76, 267. See also Russia
domestic intelligence in the shadows, United Kingdom
249–53 Foreign Office and Secret Intelligence
foreign intelligence in the post-Cold Service, separation of, 80
War era, 253–58 Ghana, colonial administration in, 202
intelligence via informal muddling Indonesia, confrontation with, 161
through, 258–59 Joint Intelligence Committee as inno-
neutral intelligence liaisons, 246–49 vation through tradition, 295
‘‘organizing’’ of intelligence in, 240–42 secrecy and intelligence, 11n5
police vs. armed forces, terrorism and United States
the dividing line between, 255–56 Central Intelligence Agency (see
the three pillars of intelligence in, Central Intelligence Agency)
243–45 distinctive intelligence culture of,
Turner’s model of, 5
nuclear proliferation, actions regarding,
Tabari, Muhammed ibn, 96–97
129
Taeb, Hossein, 147
Pakistan and the ISI, relations with,
Taha, Ali Othman, 154n33
115–17, 120–21, 129–31
Tai Gong, 35, 39
secrecy and intelligence, 11n5
Taimiya, Ibn, 111n67
terrorist watch list, Pakistan and, 127
Taliban, the, 116–17, 121–22, 126,
Ushakov, A. I., 80
129–35, 138n39
Uspensky, B. A., 70
Tankel, Stephen, 137n24
‘‘Techniques for Secret Plots’’ (Li Quan), Vaca, Eduardo, 225
41–42 Verba, Sidney, 14–15, 17
Thalib, Munir Said, 164 Vinge, P. G., 252
Theophanes, 75–76, 81
Thompson, Basil, 293 Wahid, Abdurrahman, 168
Thulin, 251–52 Wahidi, Ahmad, 156n64
Index / 313
Waldman, Matt, 133 Xi Shi, 43

Walsingham, Sir Francis, 74 Xun Huo, 35
Wang Jian, 44–45
war Yahnus, Wabrah bin, 106
the Byzantines and, 71–72
Yao Li, 39
espionage and, 60–62
Yi Yin, 35
Al-Ward, Urwa bin, 92
Yofre, Juan Bautista ‘‘Tata,’’ 224
Wei Liaozi, 45
Yoshida, Shigeru, 182
Welch, Stephen, 273–74, 276
Yousaf, Mohammad, 125, 137n33
Wennerström, Stig, 240
Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 169
Wen Zhong, 43
Yue Yi, 47n46
Westerfield, H. Bradford, 293
Yu Rang, 38–39
Wikström, Niklas, 260–61n13
Wiktorin, Owe, 255
Williams, Raymond, 16 Al-Zabeedi, Muhammad Murtadha, 91
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 22 Zhang Zhao, 35–36
Wood, Michael, 258 Zheng Dan, 43
Wu Zixu, 43 Zia ul Haq, 121, 124–25, 127, 137n26

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INTELLIGENCE ELSEWHERE

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Georgetown University Press

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Part I: Introduction and Theory

Part II: Intelligence Culture outside the Anglosphere

Part III: Current Practice and Theory

9 Intelligence and Security-Sector Reform in Indonesia 157

Part IV: Conclusion

Introduction and Theory

An Agenda for the Comparative

Intelligence and Commensurability

The Aim and Structure of This Book

mainstream. Much of the existing literature on intelligence is heavily focused

The Positivist Mainstream of Political

a stable democratic political system to be successfully embedded. Political cul-

quality of life’’ rather than distributive economic issues).5 Transitions to democ-

The Interpretive Alternative in Political

therefore, as the Geertzian paradigm bids us do, a deep equivocation arises as

Beyond the Dialectic of Paradigms?

encounters the problem of characterizing the ‘‘entire context,’’ which inevita-

22. F. M. Barnard, ed., J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, translated by F. M.

Intelligence Culture outside

Spying transcends human affairs. Spies must successfully undertake

The Spring and Autumn Period

Although Sunzi’s designations adequately characterize each agent’s role,

turned around and employed, it is as a double agent. If we are to recruit him to

Assassination and Subversive Programs

emperor, preserves material of such historical and contemporary importance

The measures expounded for undermining enemy rulers in the considerably

Other chapters that advocate causing consternation in the enemy include

The chapter concludes by advising that, at a minimum, capable commanders

The effects of these machinations and Fuchai’s proﬂigacy were vigorously

Other Means of War

who were already resident in the netherworld. Although Goujian’s measures

6. Sawyer, Sun-tzu Art of War, ‘‘Incendiary Attacks.’’

26. ‘‘Zingren,’’ which might be translated as ‘‘Roving Agents.’’

The Original Surveillance State

The Institutes of Espionage

information to their masters in government through cipher writing and cutouts

provocateurs. Another class of spies employed in the special operations ﬁeld

Espionage in Routine Government

be an exaggeration to describe Kautilya’s intelligence doctrine as not merely

Regime and State Security

military notionally dismissed for corruption would offer others ‘‘monetary

Revenue, Commerce, and Law Enforcement

Another one of the collector-general’s main tasks was detecting individuals

More elaborate frauds included setting an agent up as a wealthy businessman

Espionage in Diplomacy and War

The Legacy of the Arthashastra

Epigraph and Acknowledgment

15. Arthashastra, 20, 21.

58. Ibid., 429–32.

Protecting the New Rome

When we mentally picture Byzantinism, we see before us . . . the

ever be a mirror image of any Western state. Though Russia is presumably

The Byzantine Mark in Russian Political Culture

The Byzantine Culture of Intelligence and Security