The Oxford Handbook Of National Security Intelligence

"Throughout the past few decades, interest in the field of national security intelligence has increased dramatically as a series of intelligence scandals and failuressuch as the Iran-contra affair and the false claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction - has brought attention to this young discipline. The terrorist attacks of 2001 further revealed the inadequacies of the U.S. security apparatus, and a motion toward reform has formed in the wake of this tragedy. In our information-dominated age, the organizations that function in the dark are increasingly driving policy decisions, and an understanding of these hidden aspects of government is more crucial than ever." "The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence surveys the current literature on national security intelligence, presenting a synthesis of theories and findings. The Handbook discusses national security intelligence within a political and historical context, explaining how intelligence agencies operate and how they collect information from around the world. It examines the problems that come with transforming raw information into credible analysis, and the difficulties involved in disseminating intelligence to policymakers. It explores the balance between secrecy and public accountability, and the ethical dilemmas that covert operations routinely present to intelligence agencies. This authoritative volume presents a comprehensive overview of the discipline, complete with research agendas and suggestions for reform." "This handbook represents the work of a distinguished team of international contributors from a variety of backgrounds: among the authors are many prominent scholars, intelligence agents, and politicians. Their dynamic array of viewpoints provides the reader with an indispensable portrait of this rapidly developing field of study, appropriate for experts and casual readers alike." --Book Jacket.

"The Oxford Handbook of US National Security frames the context, institutions, and processes the US government uses to advance national interests through foreign policy, government institutions, and grand strategy. Contributors examine contemporary national security challenges and the processes and tools used to improve national security."--Provided by publisher.

National security intelligence is a vast, complex, and important topic, made doubly hard for citizens to understand because of the thick veils of secrecy that surround it. In the second edition of his definitive introduction to the field, leading intelligence expert Loch K. Johnson guides readers skilfully through this shadowy side of government. Drawing on over forty years of experience studying intelligence agencies and their activities, he explains the three primary missions of intelligence: information collection and analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action, before moving on to explore the wider dilemmas posed by the existence of secret government organizations in open, democratic societies. Recent developments including the controversial leaks by the American intelligence official Edward J. Snowden, the U.S. Senate's Torture Report, and the ongoing debate over the use of drones are explored alongside difficult questions such as why intelligence agencies inevitably make mistakes in assessing world events; why some intelligence officers choose to engage in treason against their own country on behalf of foreign regimes; and how spy agencies can succumb to scandals -including highly intrusive surveillance against the very citizens they are meant to protect. Comprehensively revised and updated throughout, National Security Intelligence is tailor-made to meet the interests of students and general readers who care about how nations shield themselves against threats through the establishment of intelligence organizations, and how they strive for safeguards to prevent the misuse of this secret power.

2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Global National Intelligence and Security Agencies Handbook

This Oxford Handbook is the definitive volume on the state of international security and the academic field of security studies. It provides a tour of the most innovative and exciting news areas of research as well as major developments in established lines of inquiry. It presents a comprehensive portrait of an exciting field, with a distinctively forward-looking theme, focusing on the question: what does it mean to think about the future of international security? The key assumption underpinning this volume is that all scholarly claims about international security, both normative and positive, have implications for the future. By examining international security to extract implications for the future, the volume provides clarity about the real meaning and practical implications for those involved in this field. Yet, contributions to this volume are not exclusively forecasts or prognostications, and the volume reflects the fact that, within the field of security studies, there are diverse views on how to think about the future. Readers will find in this volume some of the most influential mainstream (positivist) voices in the field of international security as well as some of the best known scholars representing various branches of critical thinking about security. The topics covered in the Handbook range from conventional international security themes such as arms control, alliances and Great Power politics, to "new security" issues such as global health, the roles of non-state actors, cyber-security, and the power of visual representations in international security. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smith of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by a distinguished pair of specialists in their respective fields. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of the original Reus-Smit and Snidal The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by a pair of scholars drawn from alternative perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions.

Clark presents a brief history of the creation and development of the intelligence services in the United States. He centers his examination on the two main constants in the American way of gathering, processing, analyzing, and using intelligence; change and a concern for the impact of secret activities on democratic government. Resolving the ever-growing need for informed decision making continues to put pressure on the country's ability to manage and provide oversight of intelligence. Clark assesses how those forces have resulted in ongoing changes to the intelligence apparatus in the United States. Consistent with other volumes in this series, Clark supplements his narrative with key documents and brief biographies of influential personalities within the intelligence community to further illustrate his conclusions. Clark provides a current, explanatory text and reference work that deals with what intelligence is, what it can and cannot do, how it functions, and why it matters within the context of furthering American national security. He describes the U.S. intelligence community prior to WWII, demonstrating that intellignece gathering and espionage have played a key role in national security and warfare since the inception of the Republic. Through their ubiquity, Clark establishes them as a necessary function of government and governmental decision making. Today, the intelligence apparatus encompasses numerous activities and organizations. They are all responsible for different parts of the practice of collecting, processing, analyzing, disseminating, and using intelligence. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, significant stresses began to appear in the U.S. approach to the intelligence process; Clark concludes by chronicling those stresses and the attendant drive for change was accelerated after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The second edition of Secret Intelligence: A Reader brings together key essays from the field of intelligence studies, blending classic works on concepts and approaches with more recent essays dealing with current issues and ongoing debates about the future of intelligence. Secret intelligence has never enjoyed a higher profile. The events of 9/11, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the missing WMD controversy, public debates over prisoner interrogation, together with the revelations of figures such as Edward Snowden, recent cyber attacks and the rise of 'hybrid warfare' have all contributed to make this a ‘hot’ subject over the past two decades. Aiming to be more comprehensive than existing books, and to achieve truly international coverage of the field, this book provides key readings and supporting material for students and course convenors. It is divided into four main sections, each of which includes full summaries of each article, further reading suggestions and student questions: • The intelligence cycle • Intelligence, counter-terrorism and security • Ethics, accountability and secrecy • Intelligence and the new warfare This new edition contains essays by leading scholars in the field and will be essential reading for students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, international security and political science in general, and of interest to anyone wishing to understand the current relationship between intelligence and policy-making.

Intelligence is critical to ensuring national security, especially with asymmetric threats making up most of the new challenges. Knowledge, rather than power, is the only weapon that can prevail in a complex and uncertain environment awash with asymmetric threats, some known, many currently unknown. This book shows how such a changing national security environment has had profound implications for the strategic intelligence requirements of states in the 21st century.The book shows up the fallacy underlying the age-old assumption that intelligence agencies must do a better job of connecting the dots and avoiding future failures. It argues that this cannot and will not happen for a variety of reasons. Instead of seeking to predict discrete future events, the strategic intelligence community must focus rather on risk-based anticipatory warnings concerning the nature and impact of a range of potential threats. In this respect, the book argues for a full and creative exploitation of technology to support ? but not supplant ? the work of the strategic intelligence community, and illustrates this ideal with reference to Singapore's path-breaking Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) program.