Intelligence Oversight and Effectiveness in New Democracies

Scholarship on the inherent tension between intelligence and democracy has paid limited attention to new democracies, especially those transitioning from military regimes. There, it is more challenging to bring intelligence services under democratic control without sacrificing their efficiency in exchange for oversight. This research note analyses these challenges in the Brazilian case, contributing to the scholarship on intelligence in Latin America. The case study demonstrates that the restructuring of intelligence in Brazil resulted in a spread-out intelligence system with many agencies, aimed at avoiding monopolisation and politicisation with formal oversight mechanisms put in place. Nonetheless, Brazilian society and politicians still do not trust intelligence, and lack a clear understanding of its functions for a democratic state. While intelligence reform in Brazil still has a long way to go regarding intelligence effectiveness and efficiency, it indicates how intelligence reform is a central part of a successful democratic transition.

Driving Intelligence

This chapter identifies three generic drivers that affect the shape, pace, and direction of intelligence reform. The first consists of shifts in the strategic environment and the second driver of intelligence reform is technological change. Failure is the third, and often the most proximate, driver of intelligence reform. These three drivers forced the pace of intelligence reform in Japan in much the same way that they compelled reform elsewhere. This chapter observes how the drivers converge with the specific activities in which national intelligence communities are engaged—the “elements” of intelligence. It provides the historical and comparative framework for a subsequent analysis of the Japanese intelligence community.

Intelligence Integration and Reform: 2009–2014

Christopher Kojm inherited the continuing challenge of implementing intelligence reform. This time the tension lay between the two mandates given to the new director of national intelligence: to provide strategic intelligence analysis and to coordinate the activities of the far-flung intelligence community. The first mandate was clearly within the NIC’s purview; the second had been at best a collateral duty. To meet this second mandate, the DNI created national intelligence managers, whose charge seemed to erode the NIC’s mandate, causing several national intelligence officers to resign. More positively, unlike some of his predecessors, Kojm dealt with an Obama administration that welcomed dissenting opinions, as evidenced by the reception to the 2013 NIE on Afghanistan that informed a contentions policy debate over whether to draw down our military commitment or to “surge” to a higher level. Kojm’s tenure also saw production of Global Trends 2030.

End of the Cold War and the Continuation of Reform

The momentum for DoD intelligence reform quickly expanded into the broader Intelligence Community and Congress. The executive and legislative branches worked to improve intelligence support to military operations. Although many recommended reform measures were not initially instituted, the actions of a handful of individuals kept the discussion of intelligence reform and support to military operations alive. Over time, many of the issues that were not initially embraced found increased support as national security conditions changed and the requirement of support to military operations became immediate.