The German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND): Evolution and Current Policy Issues

This article discusses German's foreign intelligence services through the context of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Unlike other intelligence services of other nations, Germany has no separate military intelligence. The BND serves as Germany's sole foreign and military espionage agency. It also does not have an acknowledged capacity of covert operations compared to the intelligence agencies of other nations. The BND was established in 1956 as part of the West German rearmament within the NATO framework; however, by the time of its establishment the Bonn government had already abandoned its previous efforts to build a military intelligence organization from scratch and with people of its own. Because of this, the BND was under American operational control during the Cold War and German intelligence professionals have served as mercenaries for the Americans over a period of ten years, giving Americans an unique intelligence asset inside the West German government. In this article, the discussions include the evolution of the BND and the current issues faced by the German intelligence services.

Israeli Intelligence: Organization, Failures, and Successes

The State of Israel was established only in 1948, but in its fifty-seven years of existence, its intelligence community has been one of the most professional and effective in the world. The Israel Mossad has become the leading agency in Israel's success in the conflict with the Arab states. Its mission not only includes that of ascertaining the plans and strengths of the Arab military forces opposing Israel but also the work of combating Arab terrorism in Israel and abroad against Israeli and Jewish targets, collecting sensitive technical data, and conducting political-liaison and propaganda operations. The Israel intelligence community is composed of four separate components: the Mossad is responsible for intelligence gathering and operations in foreign countries; the Israeli Security Agency controls internal security and intelligence within the occupied territories; the Military Intelligence is responsible for collecting military, geographic, and economic intelligence, particularly in the Arab world and along Israel's borders; and the Center for Political Research in the Foreign Ministry prepares analysis for government policymakers based on raw intelligence and analytical papers. This article discusses the organization, failures, and successes of the Israeli intelligence. Particular attention is given to the huge mistakes and failures of the Israeli intelligence. Discussions included herein are: the evolution of the Israeli intelligence and the future challenges of the intelligence system.

Covert Action: United States Law in Substance, Process, and Practice

This article discusses covert action within the context of the U.S. law. The first section describes the main elements of the U.S. legal regime, including the definition of covert action and the “traditional activity” exceptions, the elements of a covert action finding, and the thresholds and requirements for congressional notification. The second section describes some of the significant limitations on the conduct of covert action. The third section discusses the nature of executive branch legal practice in this area of the law. And the last section draws conclusions about the role of national security law within the context of covert action.

Catching an Atom Spy: MI5 and the Investigation of Klaus Fuchs

This article focuses on M15 organization and Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist and Soviet “Atom Spy” who was arrested in 1950 and served fourteen years for offences related to atomic espionage. It examines how Fuchs was identified as an “Atom Spy” in 1949 and describes the MI5's investigation, which ended in the early 1950 with the successful arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of this highly significant Cold War figure. Key issues discussed in this article include the difficulties encountered by MI5 and the budding British atomic program in the sphere of security. It also discusses the role of Signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the investigation of Fuchs, and the high-risk but ultimately successful approach taken by MI5's key interrogator, William Skardon. This case study highlights both the unparalleled level of international intelligence cooperation between the British agencies and their American counterparts, which made the resolution of this case possible, and some of the frailties in the Anglo-American alliance that were brought to the fore by the exposure of Fuchs as an Atom Spy.

The Future of FBI Counterintelligence through the Lens of the Past Hundred Years

Counterintelligence is the business of identifying and dealing with foreign intelligence threats to a nation, such as the United States. Its main concern is the intelligence services of foreign states and similar organizations of non-state actors, such as transnational terrorist groups. Counterintelligence functions both as a defensive measure that protects the nation's secrets and assets against foreign intelligence penetration and as an offensive measure to find out what foreign intelligence organizations are planning to defeat better their aim. This article addresses the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) foreign counterintelligence function. It briefly traces its evolution by examining the key events and the issues that effected its growth as the principle civilian counterintelligence service of the U.S. government.

The Policymaker-Intelligence Relationship

This article focuses on the policymaker and intelligence analyst relationship which is central to intelligence. The article proceeds from three main points: the centrality of analyst relationship with the consumer; the notion that intelligence's meaningful function is to serve as a larger apparatus for policymakers; and the strict boundary between policymakers and intelligence officers where intelligence officers are expected to distance themselves from creating preferences and recommendations. In the policymaker-intelligence relationship, the relationship should be dominated by the policymakers who have contested and won an election. Policymakers have the right to govern, set budgets, make decisions, and order operations. Second, intelligence is a service provided to policymakers. Although intelligence is an important and useful part of the policy process, its role should be determined by the policymakers and not by the intelligence agencies.

The Dilemma of Defense Intelligence

This article discusses the dilemma of the defense intelligence. It discusses the interweaving yet complicated relationship of the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Immersed in a divided and a “stovepiped” culture, the member agencies of the intelligence community lacked coordination and collaboration. In this article, the nature of the three agencies of the DOD: the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) are discussed. The evolution of coordination among the intelligence community agencies and the impact of 9/11 on the cooperation and collaboration between the agencies are also discussed including the era of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the challenges posed by the future space surveillance.

The Troubled Inheritance: The National Security Agency and the Obama Administration

This article discusses the National Security Agency under the Obama Administration. Upon his inauguration on January 20, 2009, Obama inherited from the Bush administration an intelligence community embroiled in political controversies. Of the sixteen agencies of the intelligence community, the National Security Agency (NSA) faced the greatest scrutiny from the new Obama administration and the Congress. NSA was the largest and the most powerful member of the U.S. intelligence community. Since its formation in 1952, NSA has managed and directed all U.S. government signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection. It is the collector and processor of communications intelligence (COMINT) and the primary processor of foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT). And since 1958, NSA has been the coordinator of the U.S. government's national electronics intelligence (ELINT) program. It has also the task of overseeing the security of the U.S. government's communications and data processing systems, and since the 1980s, NSA has managed the U.S. government's national operation security (OPSEC) program. In this article, the focus is on the challenges faced by the NSA during the Bush administration; the role played by the NSA during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the challenges faced by the Obama administration in confronting a series of thorny legal and policy issues relating to NSA's eavesdropping program.

National Security and Public Anxiety: Our Changing Perceptions

This article discusses the changing perceptions on national security and civic anxiety. During the Cold War and its aftermath, security was rather a simple and straightforward issue. The countries knew their enemies, where they are and the threats they presented. On the event that, the enemies's secrets were unknown, probing techniques were employed to determine the weaknesses of the enemy. This formulaic situation which seeped through in to the twenty-first century left little room for innovation. In fact, in some countries, security maintained at the Cold War levels despite criticisms that new and emerging national security threats should be addressed at a new level. Of the powerful nations, America maintained the role of a world policeman and adapted its national security priorities according to its perception of a new series of strategic threats; however these new security strategies were without a sense of urgency. However, the perception of global threats and national security radically changed in the event of the 9/11 attack. The sleeping national security priorities of America came to a full force which affected the national security priorities of other nations as well. In the twenty-first globalized world, no conflict remains a regional clash. The reverberations of the Russian military action in Georgia, the Israeli intervention in Gaza, and the results of the attacks in Mumbai resonates loudly and rapidly through the wider international security system. While today, nations continue to seek new methods for addressing new security threats, the paradox of the national security policy is that nation-states have lost their exclusive grip of their own security at a time when the private citizens are assailed by increased fears for their own security and demand a more enhanced safety from the state. Nation-states have been much safer from large-scale violence, however there exists a strong sense of anxiety about the lack of security in the face of multiplicity of threats. Nations have been largely dependent on international coordinated action to achieve their important national security objectives. National policies and security theory lack precision. In addition, the internationalization of national security has eroded the distinction between domestic and foreign security. These blurring lines suggest that the understanding of national security is still at the height of transformations.

Assessing Intelligence Performance

Literatures on intelligence predominantly focus on intelligence failures, often explicitly claiming that the failures reflect the poor performance of the intelligence agencies as a whole. Despite negative claims on the performance of these agencies, politicians, citizens, and scholars often have little to discuss on intelligence performance. They seldom ask what the intelligence services do in aggregate; what their performance rate is; how the infrequent yet prominent failures compare to ongoing performance that is invisible to the outsiders because it is at least adequate; and how ignorance of the performance of the different types of intelligence activities affects the overall assessment of the intelligence services. This little discussion on some of the important aspects of intelligence performance resulted in the absence of general theory of intelligence performance. To judge better intelligence performance, understanding the functions and the nature of work of the intelligence services is a must. This article hence uses existing theory and available data to determine the theory of the whole performance of intelligence agencies. It also provides a scorecard of the recent performance of the U.S. intelligence and suggests avenues for future research.