Damien Van Puyvelde

‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’: diversity and scholarship in Intelligence Studies

Abstract This study takes stock of the field of Intelligence Studies thanks to a quantitative review of all the articles published in the two main journals in the field: Intelligence and National Security and the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. Particular attention is paid to the diversity of the authors publishing in these two journals and the evolution of the issues they discuss. Publications in the field are widely authored by males based in the United States and the United Kingdom who write about Western intelligence and security organizations. Recent years have seen a slight diversification in the field but further efforts will be necessary to develop a more eclectic body of researchers and research on intelligence and national security.

Intelligence, Democratic Accountability, and the Media in France

This article examines the relationship between the media, the government, and its intelligence apparatus in contemporary France. In a country characterized by a traditionally strong state, the relationship between intelligence and the media has often been tense. The recent affaire des fadettes—in which the Central Directorate for Domestic Intelligence tapped a journalist’s phone to trace the source of an unauthorized disclosure of government information—epitomizes the precarious position of the press in France. Following recent reforms, the French system of intelligence accountability would benefit from a more collaborative relationship between the institutions of government and the media.This article examines the relationship between the media, the government, and its intelligence apparatus in contemporary France. In a country characterized by a traditionally strong state, the relationship between intelligence and the media has often been tense. The recent affaire des fadettes—in which the Central Directorate for Domestic Intelligence tapped a journalist’s phone to trace the source of an unauthorized disclosure of government information—epitomizes the precarious position of the press in France. Following recent reforms, the French system of intelligence accountability would benefit from a more collaborative relationship between the institutions of government and the media.

What Science Can Teach Us about “Enhanced Interrogation”

Dr. Misty C. Duke is a Lecturer in the National Security Studies Institute at the University of Texas, El Paso, where she earned her Ph.D. in the Legal Psychology Program. Her areas of research include the exploration of non-coercive methods for obtaining information from sources in intelligence interviews and interrogations. Dr. Duke has also conducted studies on child suggestibility and juror decisionmaking. With an M.A. in Counseling Psychology she was a practicing psychotherapist for ten years prior to joining the staff at El Paso.

Fusing drug enforcement: a study of the El Paso Intelligence Center

Abstract This article examines the evolution of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a key intelligence component of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to shed light on fusion efforts in drug enforcement. Since 1974, EPIC has strived to fuse the resources and capabilities of multiple government agencies to counter drug trafficking and related threats along the Southwest US border. While undergoing a steady growth, the Center has confronted a host of challenges that illuminate the uses and limits of multi-agency endeavors in drug enforcement. An evaluative study of the Center shows that it is well aligned with the federal government priorities in the realm of drug enforcement; however the extent to which the Center’s activities support the government’s efforts in this domain is not so clear. The Center needs to improve the way it reviews its own performance to better adapt and serve its customers.This article examines the evolution of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a key intelligence component of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to shed light on fusion efforts in drug enforcement. Since 1974, EPIC has strived to fuse the resources and capabilities of multiple government agencies to counter drug trafficking and related threats along the Southwest US border. While undergoing a steady growth, the Center has confronted a host of challenges that illuminate the uses and limits of multi-agency endeavors in drug enforcement. An evaluative study of the Center shows that it is well aligned with the federal government priorities in the realm of drug enforcement; however the extent to which the Center’s activities support the government’s efforts in this domain is not so clear. The Center needs to improve the way it reviews its own performance to better adapt and serve its customers.

Intelligence Accountability and the Role of Public Interest Groups in the United States

This article explores the role of US public interest groups in the promotion of government transparency, as part of a broader agenda on civil liberties. Drawing on a set of declassified documents, and extensive oral testimony from protagonists, it is argued that such groups occupy a significant position as facilitators of intelligence accountability in the United States. Public interest groups represent a tradition of pluralism that lies at the heart of the American conception of democracy. A survey of the tactics deployed by interest groups to support liberal democratic principles demonstrates that these groups always rely on government institutions to carry out their oversight function. By virtue of this, public interest groups support intelligence accountability rather than hold to account the US government and its intelligence agencies.

Franck Bulinge, De L'Espionnage au Renseignement: Le France à l'Âge de l'Information

monitor (often Left-leaning) opponents. Manipulation and control of secret information by British security officers during and after independence to ensure that ‘radical’ elements in any new government were not given access to top secret information required careful consideration. Walton’s study of India after 1947 is a case in point. In the main, the British successfully sold intelligence to new rulers who carried on repressing opponents as had the colonial governments. While Walton’s volume is not complete – as he himself recognises – and it tends in parts to general discussion of intelligence issues (such as the Cambridge spies) – it is immensely impressive and he is to be congratulated for writing a book that adds substantially to a growing corpus on the impact of intelligence on empire before and after 1945. It is to be hoped that he will write a similar volume on the period following the 1960s.

Mark Owen (with Kevin Maurer), No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden: The Autobiography of a Navy SEAL

No Easy Day is an easy read. Indeed, Mark Owen’s ‘firsthand account of the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden’, written with the help of journalist KevinMaurer, reads like a gripping novel. Owen, a former member of the elite Navy SEAL team 6, not only retraces the meticulous preparation and unreeling of Operation Neptune Spear. A good part of the book tells the story of his life, from his childhood in Alaska to the frontline of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), where he and his SEAL ‘brothers’ were involved in hundreds of operations over a decade. When telling his story, Owens is adamant that he also tells the story of any Navy SEAL, a story of individual sacrifice and perseverance in the name of ‘something bigger’. As such, the first half of the book does not offer anything fundamentally new. Other former Special Forces have offered first-hand accounts of their life, and the use of Special Forces has come under increasing academic scrutiny since the beginning of the GWOT. The story that leads to the killing of Osama bin Laden, or UBL, really starts towards the middle of the book (p.157). The book displays the SEALs’ scepticism, as Washington slowly moves towards a decision on whether to assault or bomb the compound where bin Laden was thought to live. The operation really starts in Chapter 12, which describes the SEALs’ journey from Jalalabad, Afghanistan to Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the infamous crash landing of one of the two helicopters in the courtyard of the UBL residence. The following chapters (pp.213–63) walk the reader through the operation, from the infiltration of the complex, to the deaths of the Al-Kuwaiti brothers (one of whom was the courier that reportedly led to UBL), and the killing of Khaled (one of UBL’s sons) and Osama bin Laden, before final exfiltration back to Afghanistan.

Quelles leçons tirer de la privatisation du renseignement aux États-Unis ?

Un apercu des raisons, des modalites et des consequences de la privatisation du renseignement aux Etats-Unis depuis 2001, met en lumiere une serie de lecons qui pourrait s’averer utile aux decideurs francais. Au xxie siecle, l’intensification des relations public-prive dans le secteur du renseignement parait inevitable pour qui veut maintenir des services de renseignement competitifs. Cependant, ces relations sont appelees a se developper dans un marche caracterise par une concurrence imparfaite. Il est donc necessaire que l’Etat attache une attention particuliere au controle de ce marche afin de pallier les aspects les plus negatifs de son externalisation et de maintenir une hierarchie entre autorite publique et secteur prive.