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Strategic Intelligence and Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Harry Howe Ransom
Harry Howe Ransom
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Abstract

Strategic intelligence, die evaluated informational product of intelligence bureaucracies, is a potentially important element in foreign policy decision making. But the role and impact of intelligence reports are very difficult to analyze, because of bodi secrecy and conceptual or definitional problems. Some new light is shed by a number of recent books, in three categories: essentially uncritical works by former insiders, muckraking exposes, and historical case studies. Collectively, these books improve our understanding of the variables that condition the impact of strategic intelligence on policy, or they illuminate die policy and bureaucratic context of intelligence activities. But only one of the recent books has a theoretical thrust. Great need remains, and opportunities exist, to move toward better dieoretical understanding of intelligence, or at least toward inproved information about when, how, or whether intelligence activities or reports have measurable impact on foreign policy decision making and policy outcomes in world politics.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , October 1974 , pp. 131 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974

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References

1 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings, Nomination of Henry A. Kissinger, 93rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C. 1973), Part I, p. 81.

2 Washington Post, December 22, 1963, p. 1.

3 “The Power to Speak and the Power to Listen,” in Franck, Thomas M. and Weisband, Edward, eds., Secrecy and Foreign Policy (New York, London, and Toronto 1974), 14Google Scholar.

4 The Foreign Affairs 50-Year Bibliography, ed. Byron Dexter (New York 1972).

5 (New York 1963). Other books that might have been listed include: Blackstock, Paul W., The Strategy of Subversion (Chicago 1964)Google Scholar; Hilsman, Roger, Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions (Glencoe, Ill. 1956)Google Scholar; Kent, Sherman, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (Princeton 1949)Google Scholar; Pettee, George S., The Future of American Secret Intelligence (Washington, D.C. 1946)Google Scholar; Ransom, Harry Howe, The Intelligence Establishment (Cambridge, Mass. 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wohlstetter, Roberta, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford 1962)Google Scholar.

6 Books of interest in this category are: Blackstock, Paul W., Agents of Deceit (Chicago 1966)Google Scholar; Cookridge, E. H., Gehlen, Spy of the Century (New York 1972)Google Scholar; Delmer, Sefton, The Counterfeit Spy (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Höhne, Heinz, Codeword Director (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Höhne, Heinz and Zolling, Hermann, The General Was a Spy (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Farago, Ladislas, The Game of the Foxes (New York 1972)Google Scholar; Gehlen, Reinhard, The Service (New York 1972)Google Scholar; McLachlan, Donald, Room 39 (New York 1968)Google Scholar; and Gen, Maj. Kenneth Strong, Intelligence at the Top (London 1968)Google Scholar.

7 (New York 1968).

8 Among earlier books in this category, although not by former insiders, are: Gramont, Sanche de, The Secret War (New York 1962)Google Scholar; Tully, Andrew, CIA (New York 1962)Google Scholar; Wise, David and Ross, Thomas B., The Invisible Government (New York 1964)Google Scholar; Wise and Ross, The Espionage Establishment (New York 1967). One former CIA insider, Victor Marchetti, encountered a court injunction when he and John D. Marks sought to publish a book which contained information the CIA wished to censor. Their book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York 1974), was published with blank spaces indicating the censored passages. Another recent work by a former CIA agent is Miles Copeland, Without Cloak or Dagger (New York 1974).

9 (New York 1973); quotations from pp. 2, 3, and 4.

10 Klaus Knorr, Foreign Intelligence and the Social Sciences, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph No. 17 (Princeton 1964), 46.

11 Ibid., 47.