Secret Services

Nature and Function of Secret Services

In 1966, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst and academic historian Sherman Kent wrote a short, seminal book in which he defined the three dimensions of intelligence services: (1) these services are organizations, (2) they undertake activities, and (3) they produce knowledge. This approach is very helpful for scholars insofar as it shows that intelligence agencies are not merely the tools of executive authorities. The very nature of secret services means that they try to escape from all kinds of external scrutiny and especially from academic analysis. As a result, current literature concerning the secret services is influenced, on the one hand, by journalistic bias (the need for scoops and permanent suspicion [Page 2370]toward what is hidden) and, on the other, by conspiracy theories. Today, this lack of academic literature is problematic especially since the assessment of “global” threats and the so-called war against terror have increased the role played by intelligence organizations. During the Cold War, most countries, apart from the former USSR and the United States, had only limited means. In recent years, most intelligence services have seen their size, budget, and means increase considerably. They are no longer an insignificant part of the state, a weak side of public policies. That is one of the reasons why governments in liberal democracies have tried to improve accountability and oversight.

Most intelligence agencies now publish some of their reports and documents and edit their own official histories (usually written by academics), and the parliamentary committees in charge of overseeing their activities edit the annual reports on the agencies. It is surprising, then, to note the paucity of academic literature considering the ever-increasing available material (the current published official documents and declassified archives). For a long time, intelligence has been described as the “missing dimension” in the study of international relations, but the same could also be said of domestic policy studies. Despite the criticism of intelligence activities by its detractors, the first academic works were published in the 1970s by “practitioner-scholars” like Sherman Kent. Academic scholars began to work on the topic in the 1980s. Today, intelligence studies is an authentic scientific research field with its own research centers, departments in college and universities, and journals and series. Different stakeholders meet regularly at conferences and contribute to journals. The majority of academic literature comes from English-speaking political scientists specializing in international relations and from historians. This would indicate that intelligence is not yet entirely recognized as a bona fide subject by all social sciences: The same can be said of sociologists and scholars working on politics while not taking intelligence into account. The situation is worse in continental Europe, where the first works only appeared at the very beginning of the 21st century.

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