Intelligence Leadership and Governance

Building Effective Intelligence Communities in the 21st Century

Patrick F. Walsh

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351968652
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Politics & International Relations
• Categoria: Intelligence & Espionage

This book explores the challenges leaders in intelligence communities face in an increasingly complex security environment and how to develop future leaders to deal with these issues.

As the security and policy-making environment becomes increasingly complicated for decision-makers, the focus on intelligence agencies 'to deliver' more value will increase. This book is the first extensive exploration of contemporary leadership in the context of intelligence agencies, principally in the 'Five Eyes' nations (i.e. Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand). It provides a grounded theoretical approach to building practitioner and researcher understanding of what individual and organisational factors result in better leadership. Using interviews from former senior intelligence leaders and a survey of 208 current and former intelligence leaders, the work explores the key challenges that leaders will likely face in the twenty-first century and how to address these. It also explores what principles are most likely to be important in developing future leaders of intelligence agencies in the future.

This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, leadership studies, security studies, and international relations.

1 Introduction

Modernization of our intelligence community cannot be slow or timid. Reforms must be undertaken with a sense of urgency. It must be broad, deep and authentic. America’s intelligence professionals are capable and dedicated. They often do their jobs in dangerous and difficult circumstances. They need strong leadership, a renewed focus on mission, and clear lines of authority and accountability to excel. Structural, organizational, and jurisdictional reforms must be made and will be made. But the goal ultimately is to create an environment and a culture where truth to power is spoken from the bottom to the top.

(Additional Views of Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, cited in Senate Select Report on the US Intelligence Community’s Pre War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, 2004 : 509)

The co-ordination that Australia’s intelligence agencies require in the twenty-first century is different to that which shaped the establishment of the Office of National Assessments in 1977 and defined its legislative mandate. What is required into the future is an enterprise-based management of the NIC that provides leadership and a focus on integration across the full spectrum of Intelligence activities.

(L’Estrange and Merchant, cited in the Australian Independent Intelligence Review, 2017 : 56)

We suggest that the government consider establishing a National Intelligence and Security Adviser (‘NISA’) to oversee and co-ordinate the GCSB, NZSIS and NAB. This would facilitate efficiencies in budgetary and operational matters, and a more effective overview of how the wider NZIC’s budget is spent. The NISA could be the principal adviser to the government on matters of intelligence and security. He or she could provide leadership and take a whole-of-government view regarding these matters. The NISA could also oversee and direct the implementation of a more flexible budget to ensure the activities of the GCSB, NZSIS, NAB and the wider NZIC are aligned with the government’s national security priorities. The government may also wish to consider whether a version of these priorities could be made public.

(Cullen and Reddy, cited in Report of the First Independent Review of Intelligence and Security in New Zealand, 2016 : 62)

Objectives and overview

The above quotes are a small sample of an ever growing number of political, judicial, and independent inquiries into actual and perceived ‘capability short-comings’ or ‘intelligence failures’ across the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence communities (ICs). There are many more quotes that could be cited here, but the three above highlight the types of leadership and related organisational deficiencies that have arisen across our intelligence communities since 9/11. While we continue to learn a lot about leadership challenges and failures from public inquiries such as those listed above, there remain however, few academic and publicly available official sources about what leadership means in the intelligence context. After all, if successive inquiries are calling for ‘better’ or ‘new leadership,’ it seems critical for scholars and practitioners to reflect more explicitly on what ‘IC leadership’ is and does.

Additionally, and somewhat more concerning, there is even less reflection on how to address IC leadership shortcomings—the latter of which may potentially lead to intelligence failure. In contrast, there is now a rapidly increasing volume of studies, particularly since 9/11, that have investigated all facets of the analytical role (e.g. tradecraft, education, critical thinking, cognitive bias) and how these impact on effective intelligence processes and outputs that decision-makers value (Walsh 2011; Marrin 2012; George and Bruce 2014; Lahneman and Arcos 2014; Ratcliffe 2009; Walsh 2017a).

Given it is IC leaders of our national security and law enforcement agencies that are meant to set the structures and functions in which intelligence products and processes are delivered, it is surprising that with some limited exceptions (Zegart 2007; Walsh 2017b; Gentry 2008: 133–146; 2015: 637–661; 2016: 154–177; Quarmby and Young 2010; Buckley 2013) the subject of contemporary intelligence leadership remains under-investigated. This is not to suggest that there is not a deep quarry of historical knowledge about intelligence leadership that can be mined. Indeed, Chapter 2 makes the case that understanding contemporary intelligence leadership requires a deep engagement with IC leadership in the twentieth as much as the twenty-first century. Contemporary organisational structures and cultures of ICs have been undeniably shaped by earlier leaders. But this book is not a historical survey of the role played by various leaders on the evolution of intelligence communities in liberal democracies. While current leadership and organisational developments across intelligence agencies have been shaped by post-war, Cold War, and pre-9/11 leaders, what is missing from the literature is a comprehensive understanding of how the cadre of contemporary (since 9/11) leaders have shaped our ICs. What kind of leaders do we now have in our intelligence agencies? Will we need different types of IC leaders in the future than those that ran them during the Cold War or the immediate post-9/11 period and why? What attributes, strategies, and capabilities will IC leaders need to assemble in order to steer intelligence enterprises in directions that allow them to adapt longer term to the ever changing security environment?

All of these questions are important, immense, and no doubt for some largely unanswerable. In part they may seem imponderable because we are not talking about ‘leadership’ in the private sector—or even leadership in other public agencies such as health or education. After all, intelligence agencies and communities operate largely secretly for obvious operational reasons. Nonetheless, since 9/11 we have seen a greater openness by our intelligence enterprises in liberal democracies to discuss aspects of capability in institutions that once not long ago were impenetrable to any scrutiny. There are many reasons for why a study of contemporary IC leadership is possible now. For one, the various episodes of intelligence failures (9/11, WMD in Iraq)—and efforts by governments to reform aspects of our ICs—has let the light in for intelligence scholars to produce better knowledge about various activities prosecuted by these communities.

The ability to garner more informed insights on the state of ICs has also been assisted by intelligence leaders that have left government employment and entered the academy—particularly in the US. Other episodes such as WikiLeaks and Snowden have also impacted significantly on how our ICs interact with the public and the scholarly community. Indeed, even in times of questions about the legitimacy of ICs and a growing mistrust about their activities, some contemporary IC leaders have chosen not to completely raise the draw bridge. Instead, some have sought as part of their leadership role to engage more publicly about what their agencies do in an attempt to respond—if not always assuage public concerns about IC activities. In summary, from a macro strategic level it is now possible to know more about contemporary IC leadership than would have been possible pre-9/11.

To that end this book seeks answers to four research questions:

1. 1. What is leadership in the contemporary IC context?
2. 2. Is ‘intelligence governance’ a useful theoretical construct to understand IC leadership; and what are the key governance challenges IC leaders will need to navigate through?
3. 3. How can IC leaders address intelligence governance challenges to improve organisational effectiveness and adaptation?
4. 4. What individual attributes, skills, and capabilities are critical for the next generation of IC leaders to develop, and what principles could underpin leadership development programs?

The four research questions underscore several aspects of ‘leadership’ in the intelligence context that are not sufficiently understood and the time for scholars and intelligence leaders themselves to address the knowledge gaps are overdue. As discussed in subsequent chapters, we have seen historically and particularly since 9/11 how several leadership-related issues have impacted on ICs—some for the better and others for the worse. Such impacts, whether positive or negative, can significantly influence the adaptability and sustainability of ICs. This can in turn influence both the quality of decision-making support governments can expect—as well as the agility in how these communities grapple with changes in an increasingly complex security environment. Indeed, at the time of writing the existential health security threat posed by COVID-19 is the latest example of how IC leaders will need to demonstrate agility to a changing security environment (Walsh 2020: 586–602). The challenges are likely to include understanding deception by countries seeking to avoid international scrutiny, the dispatch of non-declared human intelligence (HUMINT) missions and the risks that poses, and how ICs can work better with public health agencies (Walsh 2020; 2018). So the stakes are high if researchers and ICs do not make sustained efforts to understand intelligence leadership in all its dimensions.

This study is a clarion call for scholars, policy makers, and both the current and future generation of IC leaders to make greater progress in understanding how to improve leadership in our ICs. As we shall see shortly, leadership in the IC context can be understood during or after a crisis. But a central argument of this study is that learning what makes good leadership solely during intelligence failures is not a sustainable way to build the future generation of IC leaders. As business strategist Michael McQueen suggests, ‘if you wait until a crisis unfolds, you will be operating from a position of survival, not strategy’ (2018: 85). The book offers an innovative approach to studying contemporary IC leadership by addressing the research questions both from the perspective of individual leadership attributes and the organisational variables and how the two impact on each other.

Methodological approach

In particular, the book includes four key methodological aspects, which are unique hitherto to any other studies that have examined aspects of IC leadership (Zegart 2007; Walsh 2017; Gentry 2008: 247–270, 2015: 637–661, 2016: 154–177). First, the study is cross-comparative both in intelligence contexts (national security and law enforcement) and countries (‘Five Eyes’ and other selected liberal democratic countries). The book’s exploration of both national security and law enforcement sources across these countries provides a wider understanding of IC leadership; and whether similar or different leadership challenges exist in different contexts and countries.

The second unique aspect to the book’s methodological framework is that it explores both the individual and organisational aspect of intelligence leadership using a theoretical model—the effective intelligence framework that I developed in 2011 (Walsh 2011: 91–151, 2015: 123–142, 2017b: 441–459). The framework provides researchers and ICs with a tool to ‘diagnose’ how effective structural and functional aspects of an intelligence agency or entire community are performing. A key argument in my previous work on the model is that ‘intelligence governance’ is a critical component in the design and implementation of intelligence structures and functions within and across intelligence agencies (Walsh 2011: Ibid, 2015: 123–142, 2017b: 441–459). The framework will be explained in more detail in Chapter 2 (Intelligence and Leadership). In Chapter 10 (Conclusion), we will reflect back on the study’s methodological approach and whether ‘intelligence governance’ is a useful construct in which to understand IC leadership.

A third point of distinction about the book’s approach is that it seeks to take a multi-disciplinary perspective when addressing the research questions. The intelligence studies field has grown significantly since 9/11 yet various topics, questions, and issues still remain under-theorised (Walsh 2011: 283–299; Gill, Marrin and Phythian 2008). As noted earlier, there is only a small body of research that may be considered work on ‘intelligence leadership;’ so bringing in theoretical perspectives from leadership/management, organisational reform/culture, psychology, sociology amongst others will help inform the development of theorising and practice related to IC leadership.

A final (fourth) different aspect to the book’s methodological approach is that it adopts a grounded theoretical perspective to addressing the research qu...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Intelligence and leadership
• 3 Tasking and coordination
• 4 Collection
• 5 Analysis
• 6 Information and communication technologies (ICT)
• 7 Human resources
• 8 The future IC leader and governance challenges
• 9 Leadership development
• 10 Conclusion
• Index