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Intelligence

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: intelligence
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In government and military operations, evaluated information concerning the strength, activities, and probable courses of action of international actors that are usually, though not always, enemies or opponents. The term also refers to the collection, analysis, and distribution of such information and to the secret intervention in the political or economic affairs of other countries, an activity commonly known as "covert action." Intelligence is an important component of national power and a fundamental element in decision making regarding national security, defense, and foreign policies. It is conducted on three levels: strategic, tactical, and counterintelligence. Despite the public image of intelligence operatives as cloak-and-dagger secret agents, much intelligence work involves an undramatic search of "open" sources, such as radio broadcasts and various publications. Among covert sources of intelligence are imagery intelligence, which includes aerial and space reconnaissance, signals intelligence, which includes electronic eavesdropping and code breaking, and human intelligence, which involves the secret agent working at the classic spy trade. Leading national intelligence organizations are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the U.S.; the Federal Security Service in Russia; MI5 and MI6 in Britain; and the Mossad in Israel.

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US Military Dictionary: intelligence
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n. 1. the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of available information concerning foreign countries or areas.

2. information and knowledge about an adversary obtained through observation, investigation, analysis, or understanding.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Intelligence Encyclopedia: Intelligence
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Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > Intelligence & Security Encyclopedia

Intelligence is information concerning a foreign entity, usually (although not always) an adversary, as well as agencies concerned with collection of such information. It is intimately tied with the intelligence cycle, a process whereby raw information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and disseminated to the appropriate consumers.

The intelligence cycle, as defined in the United States Senate hearings of the Church Committee during the mid-1970s, consists of four or five steps. In the first of these, called either planning, direction, or planning and direction, intelligence requirements are determined, a plan for the collection is developed, and agencies are assigned to specific collection tasks. Throughout the intelligence cycle, this first step recurs in the form of continued checking on the productivity of collecting agencies.

The second step, collection, is probably the one that most readily comes to mind when the average person thinks of intelligence. Collection involves actions the layperson would call "spying." Collection includes the gathering of information through means such as surveillance of various types, as well as the cultivation of human contacts. Through these and other means, information sources are exploited, and this information is delivered to the appropriate processing unit.

The third and fourth steps, processing and production, are sometimes viewed as a single step. In the processing phase, raw data is converted into a more usable form; then that information is evaluated, analyzed, integrated, and interpreted to produce what is no longer mere information, but true intelligence. Suppose numerical data on a factory's output is collected; in the processing phase, these numbers may be put into the form of a graph, while in the production phase, an analyst determines overall patterns and what they mean.

Finally, there is dissemination, the step in which processed intelligence is distributed to the appropriate consumers, which are usually government or military officials.

Further Reading

Books

Martin, David C. Wilderness of Mirrors. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Polmar, Norman, and Thomas B. Allen. Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House, 1998.

Richelson, Jeffrey T. The U.S. Intelligence Community, fourth edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

Wright, Peter. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. New York: Viking, 1987.

Wikipedia: Intelligence (information gathering)
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For other uses, see Intelligence (disambiguation).

Intelligence (abbreviated int. or intel.) refers to discrete information with currency and relevance, and the abstraction, evaluation, and understanding of such information for its accuracy and value. Sometimes called "active data" or "active intelligence", intelligence typically regards the current plans, decisions, and actions of people, as these may have urgency or may otherwise be considered "valuable" from the point of view of the intelligence-gathering entity. Active intelligence is treated as a constantly mutable component, or variable, within a larger equation of understanding the secret, covert, or otherwise private "intelligence" of an opponent, or competitor, to answer questions or obtain advance warning of events and movements deemed to be important or otherwise relevant.

"Intel" is in contrast with "data", which typically refers to precise or particular information, and "fact", which typically refers to verified information. As used by intelligence agencies and related services, "intelligence" refers integrally to both active data as well as the process and the result of gathering and analyzing such information, as these together form a cohesive network (cf. "hive mind"). In a sense, this usage of "intelligence" at the national level may be somewhat associated with the concept of social intelligence —albeit one which is tied to localized or nationalist tradition, politics, law, and the enforcement thereof.

This article deals with the general role and history of intelligence. For a more detailed look at the process, there is a hierarchy of articles, partially posted, beginning with intelligence cycle management.

Contents

Process

Information collected can be difficult to obtain or altogether secret material gained through ("closed sources") See list of intelligence gathering disciplines, or it can be widely available but systematically researched through Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). Traditionally, intelligence involves all-source collection, storage and indexing of data, usually in multiple languages, in the expectation that some small portion will later prove important. Intelligence gathering disciplines, or, more narrowly, and the sources and methods used to obtain them are often highly classified and sometimes compartmentalized, and intelligence officers need top level security clearance.

Depending on the national policy, some intelligence agencies engage in clandestine and covert activities beyond espionage such as political subversion, sabotage and assassination. Other agencies strictly limit themselves to analysis, or collection and analysis; some governments have other organizations for covert action.

  • Military intelligence is an element of warfare which covers all aspects of gathering, analyzing, and making use of information, including information about the natural environment (Shulsky and Schmitt, 2002), over enemy forces and the ground. It involves spying, look-outs, high-tech surveillance equipment, and also secret agents.

Intelligence as used here, when done properly, serves a function for organizations similar to that which intelligence (trait) serves for individual humans and animals. Intelligence collection is often controversial and seen as a threat to privacy. Intelligence is essential for government policy formation and operations; it is a policy matter for individual governments whether While usually associated with warfare, intelligence can also be used to preserve peace.

The process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities is called intelligence analysis. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the analyst must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6) in the UK, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence or competitive intelligence.

Intelligence analysis is a way of reducing the ambiguity of highly ambiguous situations, with the ambiguity often very deliberately created by highly intelligent people with mindsets very different from the analyst's. Many analysts prefer the middle-of-the-road explanation, rejecting high or low probability explanations. Analysts may use their own standard of proportionality as to the risk acceptance of the opponent, rejecting that the opponent may take an extreme risk to achieve what the analyst regards as a minor gain. Above all, the analyst must avoid the special cognitive traps for intelligence analysis projecting what she or he wants the opponent to think, and using available information to justify that conclusion.

Well-known national intelligence organizations

Main article: List of intelligence agencies

Australia

Brazil

Canada

China

Colombia

Denmark

France

Germany

Greece

India

Indonesia

Iran

Israel

Italy

Korea, Republic of

Pakistan

Russia

South Africa

Spain

Turkey

United Kingdom

United States

Major publicly accessible intelligence sources

See also

References

Surveys

  • Andrew, Christopher. For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (1996)
  • Black, Ian and Morris, Benny Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services (1991)
  • Bungert, Heike et al. eds. Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (2003) essays by scholars
  • Kahn, David The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (1996), 1200 pages
  • Lerner, K. Lee and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, eds. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security (2003), 1100 pages. 850 articles, strongest on technology
  • O'Toole, George. Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA (1991)
  • Owen, David. Hidden Secrets: A Complete History of Espionage and the Technology Used to Support It (2002), popular
  • Richelson, Jeffery T. A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (1997)
  • Richelson, Jeffery T. The U.S. Intelligence Community (4th ed. 1999)
  • Shulsky, Abram N. and Schmitt, Gary J. "Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence" (3rd ed. 2002), 285 pages
  • West, Nigel. MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909–1945 (1983)
  • West, Nigel. Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartime Sabotage Organization (1992)
  • Wohlstetter, Roberta. Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962)

World War I

  • Beesly, Patrick. Room 40. (1982). Covers the breaking of German codes by RN intelligence, including the Turkish bribe, Zimmermann telegram, and failure at Jutland.
  • May, Ernest (ed.) Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (1984)
  • Tuchman, Barbara W. The Zimmermann Telegram (1966)

World War II: 1931–1945

  • Babington Smith, Constance. Air Spy: the Story of Photo Intelligence in World War II (1957)
  • Beesly, Patrick. Very Special Intelligence: the Story of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre, 1939–1945 (1977)
  • Hinsley, F. H. British Intelligence in the Second World War (1996) (abridged version of multivolume official history)
  • Jones, R. V. The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–1945 (1978)
  • Kahn, David. Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (1978)
  • Kahn, David. Seizing the Enigma: the Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939–1943 (1991)
  • Kitson, Simon. The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (2008). ISBN 978-0-226-43893-1
  • Lewin, Ronald. The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (1982)
  • May, Ernest (ed.) Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (1984)
  • Smith, Richard Harris. OSS: the Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (2005)
  • Stanley, Roy M. World War II Photo Intelligence (1981)
  • Wark, Wesley K. The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (1985)
  • Wark, Wesley K. "Cryptographic Innocence: the Origins of Signals Intelligence in Canada in the Second World War", in: Journal of Contemporary History 22 (1987)

Cold War Era: 1945–1991

External links

v • d • e
Intelligence cycle management
Intelligence
collection
management
HUMINT/
Human Intelligence
SIGINT/
Signals Intelligence
MASINT/
Measurement and
Signature Intelligence
Others
Intelligence
analysis
management
Intelligence
dissemination
management

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Intelligence Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Military Dictionary. US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Words, 2003.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Intelligence (information gathering)".  Read more