Spy Chiefs: Volume 2

Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia

Paul Maddrell,Christopher Moran,Ioanna Iordanou,Mark Stout

• Éditeur: Georgetown University Press
• Année: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781626165236
• Sujet: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Sous-sujet: Inteligencia y espionaje

Throughout history and across cultures, the spy chief has been a leader of the state security apparatus and an essential adviser to heads of state. In democracies, the spy chief has become a public figure, and intelligence activities have been brought under the rule of law. In authoritarian regimes, however, the spy chief was and remains a frightening and opaque figure who exercises secret influence abroad and engages in repression at home.

This second volume of Spy Chiefs goes beyond the commonly studied spy chiefs of the United States and the United Kingdom to examine leaders from Renaissance Venice to the Soviet Union, Germany, India, Egypt, and Lebanon in the twentieth century. It provides a close-up look at intelligence leaders, good and bad, in the different political contexts of the regimes they served. The contributors to the volume try to answer the following questions: how do intelligence leaders operate in these different national, institutional and historical contexts? What role have they played in the conduct of domestic affairs and international relations? How much power have they possessed? How have they led their agencies and what qualities make an effective intelligence leader? How has their role differed according to the political character of the regime they have served? The profiles in this book range from some of the most notorious figures in modern history, such as Feliks Dzerzhinsky and Erich Mielke, to spy chiefs in democratic West Germany and India.

1What Is Intelligence Leadership?

Three Historical Trends

Paul Maddrell

Let us start with the Western model of leadership. The best way to analyze the leadership of an intelligence agency is first to explain what it is not.

The “Great Man” view of leadership, so beloved of Thomas Carlyle, does not apply, because it relies too much on individual genius; the individual displaces any organization that might have been working for him.¹

Nor does Max Weber’s model of “charismatic” leadership apply. The Weberian “charismatic” leader was a child of the mass politics of the democratic era: such a leader made a moral—indeed, quasi-religious—appeal to the masses. Some writers claim that there have been instances of charismatic leadership in business; Steve Jobs, the late, long-serving chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Corporation, and Lee Iacocca, the chief executive officer of Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s, are given as examples. However, both men greatly increased the stock market value of their companies; in the language of modern leadership (see below) they were principally “transactional” leaders. It is questionable whether the idea of charismatic leadership can apply in a business context, in which a leader is judged first and foremost on how much money he earns for others.² Those who argue that the business leader performs a charismatic role generally mean only that he or she needs to motivate and empower subordinates to ensure the organization’s success. They also stress that this charismatic role is only one part of the business leader’s job: the other part is the “instrumental” role of managing the organization and the people who work in it.³

Quite clearly, an intelligence chief cannot be a “charismatic” leader. Weber’s “charismatic” individual is a person endowed with extraordinary powers. This type of leadership is an exceptional one, arising in times of crisis. An intelligence chief belongs to a different, much more stable type identified by Weber: the rational-legal. Intelligence agencies are firmly established parts of government; they derive their purpose and such legitimacy as they have from the nation-state—an international legal norm.⁴ The authority of intelligence chiefs is derived entirely from their position, not from the possession of exceptional gifts. Their personal appeal, however great it may be, does not extend beyond their agency and the government it serves; they very much lead an organization—that is to say, a team, not the mass of the people. He or she is not in the same position as a political leader but is more similar to the CEO of a corporation listed on the stock exchange. There are considerable similarities between the two types of leadership: both leaders are, in practice, appointed to the position; both depend for their success on maintaining good relations with two sets of people—stockholders and employees in the business leader’s case; consumers of intelligence and subordinates in the intelligence leader’s case.

Business leadership is the principal model of leadership for intelligence chiefs today. George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence (DCI) under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, is a good example of a recent intelligence chief who regarded himself as, in effect, the CEO of a corporation. As DCI, he stressed the need for a long-term strategy focusing on core missions, strict financial management, good management of people, energetic recruitment of the best possible college graduates (offering salaries that competed with those available in business), unified training across the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), systematic encouragement of racial diversity among employees, development and exploitation of the most modern information technology, and performance-related pay. All these initiatives are staples of modern business management. Tenet even compares himself with Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. Modestly, he does so unfavorably.⁵

However, there are differences as well. The business leader has more autonomy than an intelligence counterpart: the former is responsible for determining the corporation’s mission; the latter’s mission is determined by its consumers (all the intelligence leader does is determine how the mission will be accomplished). The intelligence leader contends with enemies or, at the very least, threats; any failure on his or her part may cause the country to suffer very serious harm. The business leader contends only with competitors and so has only commercial failure to fear. The business leader’s success can be measured in financial terms; for the most part, the intelligence leader’s success cannot. Perhaps most significantly, as Sir Richard Dearlove stresses in his foreword to this book, the intelligence chief cannot motivate his subordinates by pointing to the agency’s successes, which have to be kept secret. Much follows from the fact that the intelligence leader’s organization is a secretive part of government. The leader has a more distant relationship with staff members than the modern business leader. The maxim of business leadership, “Be visible all the time,” does not apply well.⁶ Until recent times, the intelligence chief neither met nor addressed most subordinates. Even the modern director of Central Intelligence, who can address thousands of subordinates at one time by closed-circuit television, needs to shun publicity in order to do the job properly. A director of the CIA also spends a great deal of time briefing the president, liaising with the Congress, and meeting representatives of foreign intelligence agencies.⁷

Distance, rather than visibility and accessibility, has been a device used by intelligence chiefs to motivate their subordinates. According to his biographer, Dick White, the director (“C”) of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1956 to 1968, “rarely ventured beyond the fourth floor to the remainder of the Broadway offices. . . . apart from the most senior officers, no one in the service knew C, who deliberately isolated himself from the majority of his staff.”⁸ He maintained a distance even from his senior officers. His predecessor but one, Sir Stewart Menzies, had been even more distant from his staff. White explained his aloof style of leadership to his biographer: “Secret service organizations don’t have reputations, but mystique, and the chief needs to adopt a similar pose.”⁹

Since the intelligence chief is appointed to the position of leader, not elected to it, James MacGregor Burns’s concepts of the “transforming” and “transactional” leader do not apply. In his important book Leadership, Burns was trying to identify types of political leader. His two types of leader are people trying both to win the support and satisfy the needs and wishes of followers.¹⁰ “Transactional” leadership involves an exchange of favors between leader and follower; it is based on self-interest. The classic example is that of the electoral candidate who is voted into political office and then gives those who voted for him or her what they demanded.

“Transforming” leadership is an engagement between leader and follower in which each lifts the other up to “higher levels of motivation and morality.”¹¹ It is leadership with a strong moral element; the leader tries to inspire followers to nobler conduct by invoking high ideals such as freedom, justice, equality, or peace. It is a very similar concept to “charismatic” leadership but is open to the obvious objection that such a style may be to a considerable extent transactional.

Neither type of leadership applies to the directors of intelligence and security agencies. They are not trying to satisfy the wishes of those under them but rather are trying to meet the information and security needs of a third party—the government that appointed them and that they serve. They concern themselves with the needs and wishes of their subordinates only to achieve this end. They are much more concerned with their subordinates’ abilities and responsibilities. They do not make great moral appeals. They are very much bureaucratic leaders (a type of leadership that Burns distinguished from “transforming” leadership). That said, Burns rightly stresses that the purpose of leadership is to help followers achieve their goals. However, intelligence chiefs have two sets of followers: the employees they lead and the government officials they serve. For that reason, they have two main tasks: to manage an organization capably and to win the confidence of the consumers of their intelligence reports.

A distinction is often made between management and leadership; these are regarded as different, though overlapping, tasks. Leadership is the guiding of people and involves motivating subordinates and providing the organization with a vision and concrete goals. Management is treated as more bureaucratic in nature; it involves organizing the agency’s work, implementing its procedures, and preparing budgets. Essentially, the term “management” is used to describe the more mundane tasks of leadership; “leadership” is used to describe the more motivational and inspirational part of the leadership spectrum. As Gary Yukl, a scholar of business management, puts it, “The essential distinction appears to be that leaders influence commitment, whereas managers merely carry out position responsibilities and exercise authority.”¹² Since both roles involve managing people and persuading them, the distinction cannot be strictly maintained. It has little relevance to the work of intelligence chiefs, who are both leaders and managers: they lead people and agencies, though they also manage the agencies’ business. The two words “leader” and “manager” can be used interchangeably and will be so used here.

This book argues in favor of using business leadership as a model for the leadership of intelligence agencies. This is a particular application of the scientific management model of leadership that became influential in the 1920s, especially in the United States, owing to modern industrial management techniques. An intelligence chief is a leader and manager, though one working in a political context.¹³ Gary Yukl considers leadership “a complex,...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Leading in Secret
• 1 What Is Intelligence Leadership? Three Historical Trends
• 2 The Spy Chiefs of Renaissance Venice: Intelligence Leadership in the Early Modern World
• 3 Laying Hands on Arcana Imperii: Venetian Baili as Spymasters in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul
• 4 A Perfect Spy Chief? Feliks Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka
• 5 The Consummate Careerist: Erich Mielke, the German Democratic Republic’s Minister for State Security
• 6 Markus Wolf: From the Shadows to the Limelight
• 7 “The Dossiers”: Reinhard Gehlen’s Secret Special Card File
• 8 India’s Cold War Spy Chiefs: Decolonizing Intelligence in South Asia
• 9 Emir Farid Chehab: “Father of the Lebanese Sûreté Générale”
• 10 Egypt’s Spy Chiefs: Servants or Leaders?
• Conclusion: Government Men
• List of Contributors
• Index