Creating Intelligence Communities
| Author | Sir David Omand |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076709347081 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Published date | 01 January 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Features Section: Policy and Practice Perspectives |
Creating Intelligence
Communities
Sir David Omand GCB
Visiting Professor, King’s College London, UK
Abstract This article analyses the factors bearing upon achieving organizational
change in the world of secret intelligence in the US and the UK, identifying
for success the need for a convincing narrative, adequate budgetary control
and understanding of the special psycho-dynamics to be expected in secret
organizations. The article examines in that light the different paths of
development of the concept of a single national intelligence community in
the US and in the UK, and identifies common reasons for renewed pressure in
the light of the experiences of international terrorism and the pre-war failures
of intelligence over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Both US and UK
intelligence communities, for different reasons, are seen to be some way short
of where they need to be to face the challenges of future intelligence work
against global threats that span the domestic and overseas spaces.
Keywords British intelligence, intelligence coordination, intelligence leadership, national
security, secret intelligence, US intelligence
Change in the World of Secret Intelligence
Other contributors to this edition who have been practitioners in intelligence,
notably Sir David Pepper, have discussed the process of organizational devel-
opment as it affects individual intelligence Agencies. In the case of his Agency,
the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the staff were led to
embrace the case for change in the face of the transformation of the demand for
their work at the end of the Cold War and the onrush of packet switching and
internet protocol technology. Effective leadership inspired them to see historical
continuity with the scale of challenges that their parents, and in the case of some
members of staff their grandparents too, had overcome in adapting to the excep-
tional demands of Cold War and before that World War. The GCHQ story is of
highly successful adaptive change.
DOI: 10.1177/0952076709347081 99
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It is held to be a general truth in management circles that to succeed with change
programmes it is necessary to lead those who work in the organization into recog-
nition that there is a compelling case for change. Such a convincing narrative, that
is accepted as genuine and not management or political fashion, is in my experi-
ence of the public service certainly a prerequisite for achieving radical and lasting
reform.
My contact with the world of secret intelligence, including seven years on the
UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in different roles as senior defence policy
user, as head of Agency (GCHQ) and as Intelligence Coordinator, has convinced
me that there are two other truths that champions of reform must embrace. The
first is the old adage, follow the money. Alignment of desired change and authority
over the relevant budgets is essential. The second is that those who lead the process
of change must have, or quickly acquire, a feel for the ethos of the organization
concerned. Understanding the specific psycho-dynamics that arise from the nature
of the work that goes on within the organization is very necessary. In the case of
the intelligence community that work has very unusual and stressful characteris-
tics deriving from the very nature of secret intelligence, information that others do
not want you to have and will try actively to prevent you having. This is therefore a
world where conventional personal and business morality cannot apply. Methods
must be used that are akin in homely terms to steaming open the family’s letters,
listening at keyholes or masquerading as what one is not, all with the continu-
ing risk of scandal if found out. Success in obtaining secret intelligence, and the
sources and methods by which it is acquired, must be concealed from outside gaze
in a working environment where reticence if not outright concealment is second
nature. The shared risks and need for mutual support for those within create strong
interpersonal bonds, but at times create tensions with those on the outside. In such
an environment the change narrative must be compelling, be practical and achiev-
able, but the changes must also be seen to be consistent with the ethos and mission
of the organization.
In this article I want to illustrate this thesis by examining the development of the
concept of an overall intelligence community (IC), both in the UK and the US. The
need for the intelligence world to develop further a sense of shared community is,
I believe, pressing in contemporary global conditions, where the drivers of threat
span the domestic and overseas spaces. Both the US and UK wish to develop the
concept of a national ‘intelligence community’ in addition to the separate powerful
identities of their collection and assessment agencies, although, as I shall explain,
in different ways. I want therefore to look at the relationship between the compo-
nent parts of the intelligence community, the collection agencies, the intelligence
analysts and the central intelligence planners, and at how those relationships may
evolve.
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