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Intelligence theory from the margins: questions ignored and debates not had

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Intelligence theory from the margins: questions

ignored and debates not had

Hamilton Bean

To cite this article: Hamilton Bean (2018) Intelligence theory from the margins: questions
ignored and debates not had, Intelligence and National Security, 33:4, 527-540, DOI:
10.1080/02684527.2018.1452544

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Intelligence and National Security, 2018
VOL. 33, NO. 4, 527–540
https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2018.1452544

ARTICLE

Intelligence theory from the margins: questions ignored and

debates not had
Hamilton Bean 

ABSTRACT
This article explores post-2009 contributions to intelligence theorizing
that focus on critique and transformation of dominant IS ontologies and
epistemologies. This exploration illuminates diverse theoretical resources
that can help reveal hidden or misunderstood intelligence-related
phenomena. The article contributes to recent calls for establishing a Critical
Intelligence Studies subfield that attempts to move associated scholarship
from the margins of Intelligence Studies to a more visible and influential
position within the field.

In 2005, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and RAND cosponsored a conference
on intelligence theory that culminated in the 2009 edited volume Intelligence Theory: Key Questions
and Debates.1 The volume has become a touchstone within the field of Intelligence Studies (IS), and
it remains one of the few IS volumes that directly engages the conc­ept of ‘theory’. Nevertheless, in a
review of Intelligence Theory published in the CIA’s Studies in Intelligence, Webb lamented that ‘the debate
promised in the [volume’s] subtitle never really takes place’, and he concluded that ‘a more robust set of
questions and debates is still needed’.2 While Webb’s critique mostly focused on the concerns of intelli-
gence analysts, this essay similarly attempts to generate questions and debate about the meaning and
use of the word ‘theory’ within IS in order expand the field’s domain of inquiry and spur its engagement
with other academic disciplines.
Specifically, this essay explores contributions to intelligence theorizing ‘from the margins’ published
after the release of the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume. From the margins refers to books, book chap-
ters, and academic journal articles that eschew the post-positivist, problem-solving orientation that
characterizes the bulk of IS theorizing. These contributions instead focus on critique and transformation
of dominant IS ontologies (what can be known) and epistemologies (how knowledge is produced). This
exploration is needed now because IS stands to benefit from diverse theoretical resources that can
help reveal hidden or misunderstood intelligence-related phenomena. Gill and Phythian argued that
as the field of IS matures, it must expand its focus beyond the concerns of intelligence practitioners
to all those with a stake in intelligence.3 The theoretical resources from the margins discussed herein
encourage that expansion.
The essay begins by problematizing the concept of ‘theory’ through critique of its representation
within the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume. It then highlights rhetorical and discursive, critical-cultural,
feminist, and postmodern engagements with intelligence theory that appear in post-2009 scholarship
in order to illuminate questions and debates that mainstream IS research has mostly ignored. This

CONTACT  Hamilton Bean  Hamilton.bean@ucdenver.edu

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
528    H. BEAN

exploration points to the desirability of establishing a Critical Intelligence Studies subfield that attempts
to move associated scholarship from the margins of IS to a more visible and influential position within
the field.

Images of intelligence theory

In the introduction to the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume, Gill, Marrin, and Phythian briefly invoked
Yale history professor and CIA Office of National Estimates co-founder, Sherman Kent’s, definition of
theory: ‘knowledge, organization, and activity’.4 However, readers were left to determine the meaning
of ‘intelligence theory’ through engagement with the subsequent chapters. The first three contributors
to the volume depicted theory in instrumentalist (i.e., problem-solving) terms. Kahn linked intelligence
theory to information theory, issues of defense and offense, and improved prediction. Warner theorized
intelligence as risk shifting in order to better manage the hazards of state power rivalry. Johnson devel-
oped 39 propositions to guide assessments of whether and how intelligence succeeded or failed to help
policymakers. Most of the other contributors to the volume reiterated IS’s commitment to problem-solv-
ing, observation, measurement, prediction, and control, although a post-positivist acknowledgment
of uncertainty and fallibility was also evident in many of the essays.
In his contribution, Phythian argued that IS’s dominant, post-positivist orientation made sense when
considering that intelligence practitioners employ problem-solving theories in their day-to-day work.5
He argued that International Relations’ (IR) theory of structural realism explained a great deal of intel-
ligence-related phenomena.6 Phythian nevertheless claimed that IS’s concerns should extend beyond
those of intelligence practitioners, and he urged scholars to engage issues of intelligence failure, eth-
ics, and accountability. Phythian advanced constructivism and post-structuralism as useful theoretical
perspectives from which to explore these issues, and he even suggested that feminist, post-colonial,
globalization, and Marxist approaches could contribute to a more expansive and explanatory IS. Judging
by subsequent academic citations within the field, however, Phythian’s suggestions have been mostly
(but not completely) ignored.
Phythian hinted that challenging structural realism’s dominance within IS would be difficult. Indeed,
in the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume, Davies warned IS academics to steer clear of theories devel-
oped by some of the twentieth century’s most notable critics of positivism: Adorno, Althusser, Derrida,
Foucault, Gadamer, Gramsci, Habermas, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Ricoeur.7 Readers were told that
theories developed by these figures had been empirically discredited or were ‘dependent on the anec-
dotal subjectivity of “interpretation”’.8 Davies claimed that when intelligence scholars, commentators,
and practitioners used theory, they ought to do so for conceptual and logical rigor, and not as ‘an
intellectually pretentious synonym for either metaphor or analogy’.9 The warning to IS academics was
clear: The resources of critical theory and cultural studies constituted dubious forms of relativism and
interpretivism that should be avoided.
Reinforcing Davies’ warning, Lillbacka later asserted that non-realist perspectives (lumped together
under the term ‘constructivism’) have ‘hitherto been unable to present anything that would benefit
Intelligence Studies, especially concerning intelligence analysis’.10 In bringing together IS and the field
of anthropology, Kriebel similarly argued that ‘scientifically-minded theories offer, by and large, better
prospects for aiding analysts than much recent theory favoring interpretive, postmodern, and critical
perspectives’.11 Kriebel acknowledged that ‘thinkers from the disciplines of philosophy, semiotics, sociol-
ogy, and the relatively new field of “cultural studies” have dominated theory in humanistic anthropology’,
yet he declined to explore associated theoretical resources vis-à-vis IS.12 Even IS scholars who appear
amenable to critical theorizing have not abandoned IS’s realist moorings.13 Thus, theories emphasizing
problem-solving, observation, measurement, prediction, and control have constituted the dominant
center of IS, and a small, mostly undifferentiated group of constructivist, critical, and post-structuralist
theories have been relegated to the margins.
 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY   529

Theoretical questions ignored and debates not had

To repeat, this essay attempts to generate debate among IS stakeholders (intelligence practitioners,
scholars, commentators, and citizens) about the role, value, and implications of rhetorical and discur-
sive, critical-cultural, feminist, and postmodern approaches to intelligence theorizing. These theoret-
ical approaches maintain distinct normative and intellectual commitments, yet they share a ‘critical’
impulse. Here, critical refers to something more than the mere disapproval of various intelligence pol-
icies, processes, or outcomes. Following communication theorist Deetz, a critical theorist is someone
who investigates the various kinds of social structures that lead to a distortion in the communication
process.14 This distortion arises because people cannot agree to the kinds of meanings that would
represent themselves well, or because people cannot find an opportunity to express certain meanings
in decision-making arenas.
This description of ‘critical’ both encompasses and goes beyond the critical theory tradition mocked
by Davies in the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume. The meaning of critical here is similar to Gill and
Phythian’s use of the term in their ‘reflexive critical theory’, which acknowledges the influence of ‘struc-
tures’ at ‘societal’ and ‘trans-societal’ levels.15 Examining the source of communication ‘distortion’ from
a critical perspective entails focusing not so much on individual or organizational error or idiosyncrasy
but on specific ideologies and social identity categories (e.g., gender, race, class, nationality, etc.) that
structure the production of knowledge and processes of inclusion and exclusion in decision-making. Despite
assertions that intelligence practitioners and academics uniquely apply scientific methods that make
their work resistant to the influence of these structures,16 a critical theorist maintains that intelligence
practitioners (and IS academics) are not insulated from the forces of history, culture and social posi-
tioning. A critical theorist investigates the consequences of these structures for multiple intelligence
stakeholders – especially for those whose voices are suppressed – and intervenes in various discourse
communities in order to promote reflection and change.
From this critical perspective, the essay next provides IS scholars with a sense of marginalized and
overlooked theoretical resources that might be considered in the development of a more comprehen-
sive, insightful, and critical field of inquiry. An assessment of academic citation patterns indicates that
contributors to IS’s most widely read journals (Intelligence and National Security, International Journal
of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and Studies in Intelligence) have mostly ignored the theoretical
resources provided by these scholars. However, several notable exceptions are highlighted below.
Before proceeding, it should be acknowledged that post-2009 intelligence theorizing from non-dom-
inant perspectives owes a debt to Der Derian, whose essay, ‘Anti-diplomacy, Intelligence Theory and
Surveillance Practice’, published in Intelligence and National Security, can be viewed as perhaps the first
attempt to alert IS scholars to the benefits of non-positivist approaches.17 Der Derian’s ‘intertextual’
theory revealed the fundamental and enduring tension between those who embrace IS’s post-positivist
orientations and those who question their adequacy. Aligning with the latter group, Der Derian argued,
‘[T]heoretical investigations do not serve as sovereign methods to order and verify facts but as part of a
subjective social process by which political identities are constructed and promoted’.18 For Der Derian,
the role of intelligence theory was to identify, question, and resist the social and institutional structures
that impelled intelligence practitioners and scholars to conform to accepted dogma – a commitment
generally shared by the authors noted below.

Rhetorical and discursive theorizing

Building on Der Derian’s critical project, in ‘Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies’, Bean
explained that rhetorical scholarship in IS involved the close study of intelligence texts and artifacts in
order to understand their persuasiveness (or lack thereof ) among audiences.19 These texts and artifacts
included speeches by intelligence officials and policy-makers, institutional documents, books about
intelligence doctrine, as well as popular images, music, film, and other messages deemed important,
influential, or unusual in constituting intelligence as an occupational identity and discourse community.
530    H. BEAN

Bean cited as an exemplar of a rhetorical approach Mitchell’s theory of ‘Team B intelligence coups’,
which accounts for how norms of cooperative argumentation are periodically subverted within the U.S.
intelligence community.20 In one case study, Mitchell showed how through deceptive inclusion and
omission of key briefing slides presented to different groups of policymakers and officials, Pentagon
officials were able to undermine the process of competitive intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 U.S.
invasion of Iraq. Mitchell also showed how Pentagon analysts exploited the ambiguity of the word ‘evi-
dence’ to undermine the CIA’s more skeptical assessments of Iraq’s capabilities.21 Similarly, in reviewing
Hasian’s recent work on forensic rhetorics and satellite surveillance, Marin underscored that ‘an image
can never offer just one interpretation of reality and is always dependent on a complex dispositif [struc-
ture of knowledge] that challenges any form of prosopopeia [whereby an image speaks for something
or someone absent]. Instead, all surveillance images operate polemically within ideological, cultural,
and political assumptions’.22
Kreuter investigated the broader role of rhetoric in the U.S. intelligence community. His theory cen-
tered upon critique of the U.S. intelligence community’s ‘mathematical ideology’.23 Kreuter employed
Burke’s essay, ‘Semantic and Poetic Meaning’, as a lens through which to re-read U.S. intelligence com-
munity documents.24 Doing so revealed an entrenched and outdated model of technical writing and
communication based on a semantic ideal of language use. This model rests on the positivist assumption
that the language intelligence practitioners use can be (and generally is) neutral – free of the persuasive
appeals, metaphors, analogies, or other tropes that ostensibly taint ordinary language. The roots of
this ideology within the U.S. intelligence community can be traced to Kent’s mathematical theory of
communication, which has become institutionalized in the nine ‘Principles for Intelligence Analysis’ that
today undergird the CIA’s Career Analyst Program.25 The mathematical theory of communication has
also been codified in Intelligence Community Directive 203, promoted in various intelligence writing
and briefing guidelines, and lauded by IS scholars.26 All of these texts illustrate Kent’s concern for the
precision of language and his assumption that appeals to facts and the clear deployment of words and
phrases could adequately signal uncertainties or gaps in information.27
In his development of ‘words of estimative probability’, for example, Kent downplayed the meta-
phorical and relational structure upon which language is built.28 Instead, ‘rigor’ was depicted as being
able to ensure fidelity between language use and concrete, material evidence. Analytical language,
in Kent’s formulation, should be neutral and associated with corresponding numerical probabilities
of certainty. Kreuter showed, however, how Burke rejected the false dichotomy between ‘science’ and
‘poetry’ that has underwritten the assumption within the U.S. intelligence community that language
use can somehow be scrubbed of underlying values and intentions. In critiquing Kent’s words of estima-
tive probability (a less numerical and rigid version of which now accompanies all National Intelligence
Estimates produced by the U.S. intelligence community), Kreuter observed:
Each percentage and its associated margin of error is affiliated with a verbal phrase, but, critically, there is never an
epistemological explanation of how analysts might arrive at such ranges of certainty. The chart is a substitution of
one type of uncertainty for another ….29
The problem, as Kreuter sees it, is that mathematical ideology obscures how words of estimative
probability are imputed meanings that are always capable of revision and reinterpretation, thereby
masking the socially constructed nature of both the ‘evidence’ supporting the U.S. intelligence com-
munity’s judgments, as well as the ‘confidence’ placed in those judgments. For example, Kreuter used
the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq to discuss how a key human intelligence source, ‘Curveball’, was deemed
‘high-quality’ before the invasion but subsequently shown to be a fabricator:
‘High quality’ – no matter the quantified degree of certainty attached to it or its position relative to other hedge
words – is an entirely subjective determination, both for the writer who writes the term and the reader who reads
it. The danger increases when both writer and reader are unaware of the ambiguity.30
While the CIA’s Career Analyst Program focuses on analytical assumptions and biases, it does not
appear to engage the implications of the intersubjective nature of language at a theoretical level.31
Marrin’s description of the program’s curriculum indicates that it progresses from the ‘history and
 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY   531

literature of intelligence’ to ‘analytic thinking, writing and self-editing, briefing, data analysis techniques,
and a teamwork exercise …’ without ever explicitly introducing analysts to contemporary theories of
language that might lead them to critically assess the implications of mathematical ideology.32 Kreuter
thus concluded, ‘[T]he ongoing legacy of positivism points to a need within the intelligence community
for technical writing instruction (where it does not exist at all), and that it is more informed by current
research (where it does exist already within the intelligence community)’.33
Similar to Kreuter, in ‘Tasting the Forbidden Fruit: Unlocking the Potential of Positive Politicization’,
Woodard rejected Kent’s premise that questioning the supposed neutrality of language somehow
constituted a violation of the intelligence community’s ethical norms: ‘Sherman Kent was not God, and
he was wrong! In reality, purposeful policy prescriptive politicization by intelligence analysts can be
controlled and it can provide better decision advantage than the traditionalist framework’.34 Drawing
on classical Greek and Roman descriptions of rhetoric as a speaker’s purposeful or inadvertent influence
on an audience, Woodard claimed: ‘Since all language or communication is “sermonic” or rhetorical,
and since all intelligence is fundamentally a form of communication, intelligence must then also be
rhetorical’.35 In contrast to Kent’s mathematical ideology, a rhetorical theory of intelligence maintains
that speech or writing produced without the persuasive intent or influence is impossible. Therefore,
the ethical approach to intelligence is to acknowledge that influence (‘politicization’) is baked in to the
intelligence process itself.36 Woodard suggests that analysts should be taught that ‘objectivity’ does
not require fidelity to a non-rhetorical, immutable truth, but rather to conditions of rhetorical fairness,
neutrality, and clarity. Here, however, neutrality and clarity do not refer to a semantic ideal laying
beyond the influence of persuasion. Instead, neutrality and clarity refer to explicit acknowledgment
of a speaker’s motives:
By explicitly stating a policy position, analysts would necessarily and more explicitly state their biases, a key com-
ponent of objectivity for Heuer. Policy advocacy could also increase decision advantage by adding more clarity to
the situation. The pursuit of policy neutrality all too often obscures where the evidence really leads and limits the
clarity of the process. If the information leads to a particular policy outcome the analyst should clearly say what
he [sic] means.37
Woodard argued that in no other field are ‘informing’ and ‘persuading’ so artificially separated, and he
claimed that making policy advocacy more explicit would actually help constrain its negative influence,
making intelligence more ethical. For example, deceptively omitting key briefing slides for different
audiences, as the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans did in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq,
concealed the policy advocacy occurring behind closed doors.38 A more effective and ethical approach
would have been to allow analysts across the intelligence community to fairly argue with each other
over preferred policies in relation to competing interpretations of underlying and ambiguous evidence,
that is, not concealing their rhetorical attacks or counterattacks from each other. Overt policy advocacy
may have allowed the intelligence community to better ‘prepare an estimate that offered our most
likely scenario, that Saddam had WMD, and then [offer] a much more pointed discussion about our
uncertainties’.39
Kreuter and Woodard’s rhetorical theorizing holds profound implications for Phythian’s call to
develop an IS focused more on the ‘ethics’ of intelligence.40 Here, the ethical question becomes twofold
in that scholars are encouraged to examine not only the ethical premises of intelligence practice (the
post-positivist ‘principles’ of analysis), but also the ethicality of IS scholars’ continued promotion of an
outdated mathematical ideology and naive theory of language:
Rather than reducing the risk of analytical blunders, the semantic ideal, a positivist ideology, simply masks the
ethical dimensions of the intelligence community’s utterances … The effort to render language neutral and to
frame judgments constructed entirely in the minds of readers as quantifiable probabilities or degrees of certainty
is an effort to deny both the rhetorical and ethical nature of language and of the things that we attempt to do
through language.41
Discourse-oriented theories of intelligence share the concerns of rhetorical theories, but discourse-ori-
ented theories draw from a different scholarly tradition and use different vocabulary.42 Eriksson’s doc-
toral dissertation-turned-book, Swedish Military Intelligence: Producing Knowledge, develops a discourse
532    H. BEAN

theory of intelligence that combines elements of critical policy analysis, new institutionalism, socialized
knowledge, and critical discourse analysis.43 Eriksson’s theoretical position maintains that all knowl-
edge is socially situated; therefore, a useful theory of intelligence must adequately account for the
social context of intelligence production. In other words, intelligence theorizing is incomplete unless
it accounts for the messy, ambiguous, and contradictory practices of institutional life. A useful way to
account for these practices is to analyze the discourse (written and spoken communication, both formal
and informal) exchanged among institutional members that generates, maintains, or transforms organ-
izational rules, procedures, and routines.44 In her multilevel discursive analysis of the Swedish Military
and Security Directorate (MUST), Eriksson found that informal practices (i.e., the unstated organizational
roles, routines, and procedures that are usually overlooked in idealized, post-positivist theorizing) pro-
foundly shaped the conceptualization and production of intelligence within MUST: ‘The intelligence
social discursive practices at the least discourage a reflective and critical perspective on the analytical
foundations and conduct of the intelligence analysis’.45 The absence of reflective consideration, Eriksson
argued, led to a stale and routinized process of knowledge reproduction, rather than the creation of
new and novel insights.
Similar to Eriksson, Bean integrated resources from institutional theory, organizational studies, and
rhetoric to develop a discourse-centered theoretical perspective to understand how open source intel-
ligence advocates attempted to shape post-9/11 U.S. intelligence reform efforts.46 Bean argued that the
‘institutionalization’ of open source intelligence within the U.S. intelligence community was occurring
not primarily through the increased use of open sources by analysts (behavior that was not widely writ-
ten or talked about), but through the production, circulation, and consumption of official talk and text
that described open source in ways that allowed analysts, managers, and officials to assert that open
source intelligence constituted a specific and special type of knowledge unavailable to stakeholders
outside the intelligence community. In other words, institutional members strategically used language
to reaffirm the foundational distinctions upon which the institution of ‘secret’ intelligence is built in the
face of the challenge presented by ‘open’ sources.
In sum, rhetorical and discursive approaches to intelligence theorizing underscore that even if intel-
ligence practices within different agencies and across national contexts lack a unifying theory, they
generally maintain adherence to a shared, post-positivist ideology. Rhetorical and discursive approaches
usefully highlight the dangers of ignoring how this ideology shapes intelligence practice, calling atten-
tion to how institutions might become more reflective about ideological influence in order to mitigate
or avoid error, failure, or crisis.

Critical-cultural theory
Bean argued that IS ought to explore the value of critical-cultural theories of intelligence.47 ‘Critical’
referred to theories where a concern for power drives both the research questions asked and the ulti-
mate, political goals of scholarship. Critical theorists conceptualize power as a defining and ubiquitous
feature of relationships among intelligence stakeholders (practitioners, policy-makers, citizens, and
scholars). The misguided use of power can lead to waste, injustice, and distorted decision-making,
but power can also be used to spur productive institutional and social change. Following Barker, Bean
characterized cultural studies of intelligence as centrally concerned with ‘how signs and symbols serve
as both the means and medium for the generation of meaning, how power is achieved in the flow of
everyday speech and interaction, and how some ideas become binding and justified and others do not’.48
A handful of studies published since the release of the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume have illus-
trated the benefits of a critical-cultural approach. Räsänen and Nyce argued that ‘the raw is cooked
data in intelligence practice’.49 By this, the authors meant that when intelligence practitioners used
the term ‘raw data’ in everyday discourse, it obscured how that data is, in fact, already preprocessed in
determining ways. Analysts do not simply convert un-meaningful data into meaningful data through
their interpretative, analytical labor. The taken-for-granted assumption that there exists something in
the world called ‘raw data’ generates analytical confusion. Using a three-year, multi-methodological
 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY   533

study of the Military Intelligence and Security Service within the Swedish Armed Forces, the authors
destabilized post-positivist assumptions and prescriptions for improving intelligence analysis, arguing
that recent IS theorizing tended to ‘underestimate the differences in organizational structure, intel-
lectual resources, and the end points between what goes on in science, medicine, and intelligence
work’.50 At a foundational level, the authors called into question the widespread belief that ‘data are
the starting point and a prerequisite for creating information while information is a prerequisite for
knowledge’.51 Instead, using theoretical resources drawn from science and technology studies (STS),
they urged scholars to ‘pay attention to how information is defined, created, managed, and used in
particular contexts’ in the first place.52
For example, Räsänen and Nyce showed how the idealized ‘intelligence cycle’ obscured the work that
intelligence practitioners actually perform. As a model, the intelligence cycle presumes that analysts
start with ‘raw’ data, rather than data which has already been preprocessed in terms of ‘kind, target,
and locale’.53 As a ‘cycle’, the model simultaneously undermines its own premise that ‘raw data’ exists
because it also asserts that ‘decisions, based on prior disseminated results, determine future collection
practices’.54 Moreover, the categories of data permitted by technical storage systems necessarily shape
collection processes, ‘since only some data, not others, some categories, and concepts, not others,
can easily be entered in these templates’.55 Such conditions necessarily limit what constitutes relevant
‘data’. Thus, even before analysts begin to examine evidence, ‘neutrality’ has been rendered an illusion:
Data processing (and analysis) reflects and embodies a particular weltanschauung (world view). Further, one’s
technology, and its attendant categories and practices, instrumentalizes this world view. The result is that data,
how they are organized and processed, reflect an ideological commitment to certain technological solutions.56
Räsänen and Nyce’s project adds a critical-cultural voice to those that have already questioned the
adequacy of the intelligence cycle metaphor.57 Specifically, Räsänen and Nyce show how intelligence
practice relies on institutionally, culturally structured categories of thought and action that are difficult
to see, yet warrant critical scrutiny:
[F]or most practitioners work does not necessarily mean having to take these categories or rationales apart. In
fact, work for the intelligence practitioner, as for many other practitioners, rests on reconfirming and legitimatizing
these very categories.58
As both an example of critical-cultural theorizing and a distinct subfield in its own right, post-colo-
nialism has also contributed to post-2009 understandings of intelligence theory. Thomas’s ‘Intelligence
Providers and the Fabric of the Late Colonial State’ described how intelligence processes were essential
to colonial control.59 Thomas preceded Räsänen and Nyce in underscoring the importance of ‘world
view’ in officials’ selection and interpretation of information:
Aside from the obvious difficulties of gathering information from hostile subjects in the first place, intelligence
providers were confronted with difficult choices in matters of source selection and threat assessment. All such
choices were informed by a peculiar combination of available information and the prevailing attitudes of European
officials that determined how such information would be interpreted and exploited.60
In sum, both Thomas and Räsänen and Nyce have contributed useful theoretical and empirical
resources for understanding how ideas about what intelligence is become binding and justified, leading
to specific uses of intelligence in perpetuating institutional and cultural configurations of knowledge
and power.

Feminist theory
While IS literature includes multiple biographies of female intelligence agents and analysts, feminist
approaches to intelligence theorizing that foreground gender, sexuality, and difference in understanding
what intelligence is/does are nearly nonexistent. This condition is unsurprising when considering the
field’s historical lack of diversity.61 While feminist theorizing is diverse terrain, most approaches share a
concern for how various forms of oppression are constructed, maintained, or transformed. An argument
for IS to embrace feminist theorizing is found in the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume, wherein Warner
534    H. BEAN

concluded, ‘What we can say without hesitation is that, for most of history, intelligence has been used
to oppress, and to maintain systems of oppression’.62
Feminist scholarship of interest to IS stakeholders has begun to coalesce within a new and related
subfield: feminist surveillance studies. Outlining the contours and commitments of that subfield is
beyond the scope of this essay; however, Walby and Anaïs noted that feminist surveillance studies and
IS shared a concern for the social consequences of surveillance.63 Braithwaite similarly pinpointed a
shared concern for how the state and its intelligence agencies engage in oppressive processes of ‘seeing
and not-seeing – rendering some bodies and some actions hyper-visible while hiding others’.64 The
trope of (in)visibility can refer not only to internal and external Others, but also to female intelligence
practitioners. Hasler attempted to navigate a ‘minefield of gender stereotypes’ while drawing attention
to ‘the invisible women who hunt terrorists’ within U.S. intelligence agencies.65 Harris recounted her
experiences of (in)visibility as the U.S. Navy’s first female African-American intelligence officer.66 Finley
lampooned the CIA and the war on terrorism, sharing with Hasler the use of a genre – satire – that ena-
bled scathing critique without sparking reactionary attacks from institutional members.67 Bean argued
that IS needed to take biographical, autobiographical, and satirical accounts of intelligence analysts
and officials seriously as sources of ‘data’ in illuminating the organizational cultures and (gendered)
cultural politics of intelligence agencies.68
The field of police studies offers an example of how a feminist theory of intelligence might take
shape. Specifically, Atkinson’s ‘Patriarchy, Gender, Infantilisation: A Cultural Account of Police Intelligence
Work in Scotland’ investigated the rise of intelligence-led policing, specifically, ‘how civilian intelligence
analysts [are] emerging as the bearers of new knowledge and skills that are crucial to making effective
policing decisions’.69 However, Atkinson showed how civilian intelligence analysts were not permitted
inclusion within masculine ‘police culture’ and were instead ‘infantilized’ by police expressions of patri-
archy. Atkinson’s work suggests that IS could benefit from the use of ‘patriarchy’ as a conceptual lens
through which to analyze power, gender and occupational identity both within intelligence-related
workplaces and between analysts and policymakers. For example, Atkinson found that ‘infantilising
talk devalued, degraded and deprofessionalised the role, status and position of intelligence analysts,
relegating them to subservience and powerlessness’.70 Such dynamics warrant IS’s scrutiny as intelli-
gence services in the United Kingdom and the United States move forward with stated plans to increase
gender diversity.71

Postmodern theory
Postmodernism is the most disparaged theoretical perspective circulating on the margins of IS.72 While
the term is used in different ways by different speakers, it generally refers to cultural developments
that question or undermine ‘modernist’ rules and conventions of prediction and control and instead
emphasize complexity, multiplicity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Gill and Phythian rejected postmod-
ernism vis-à-vis IS, but they acknowledged that conditions of postmodernity have changed the world
in fundamental ways.73 As Harris noted in his discussion of the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo’s work
in relation to intelligence, ‘Vattimo attributes the “end of metaphysics” to technology; the plurality of
voices coming through radio, television and the internet, the increasing difficulty of distinguishing “fact”
from “fake” … the instantaneous reporting of news mean that “how things are” has lost its metaphys-
ical pretensions of stability and certainty’.74 The recent tension between President Trump and the U.S.
intelligence community over ‘fake news’ and alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election illustrates the conditions of postmodernity at work.
Similarly, in ‘Postmodern Intelligence: Strategic Warning in an Age of Reflexive Intelligence’, Cavelty
and Mauer argued that historical transformations since the end of the cold war have led to ontologi-
cal and epistemological shifts that have still not been well accounted for by intelligence scholars and
practitioners.75 The U.S. intelligence community continues to emphasize ‘strategic warning’ to assist
policy-makers in avoiding ‘surprise’, yet contemporary risks now call for a better understanding of the
limits of knowledge, as well as the development of a ‘political discourse of uncertainty’.76 The authors
 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY   535

critiqued the same mathematical ideology that Kreuter identified, but they did so from a slightly differ-
ent epistemological orientation.77 Rather than asserting the need for updated and improved technical
communication training, Cavelty and Mauer called for a broader ‘reflexive rationality’ to sit alongside
the means-ends rationality that has undergirded intelligence practice since the cold war. Reflexive
rationality emphasizes the limits of uncertainty reduction within ‘a situation that is unpredictable by
nature, not just by virtue of the limitations of the observer’.78 In this postmodern context, measurement,
prediction, and control are of uncertain value; instead, the authors argued that a science of complexity
should play a more central role in analysis:
Analysts will need to use fresh assumptions and fresh visions of the future to engage in pattern discovery, to forge
closer links with policymakers in order to enhance their sensitivity to the issues, and to engage in systematic probing
strategies to elicit knowledge and understanding of adaptive responses.79
The goal of such transformation, however, is not necessarily to reduce uncertainty; rather it is to ‘coun-
ter at least part of the danger of uncertainty being instrumentalized politically to legitimize actions’.80
Drawing from Alvesson and Deetz, Bean argued that postmodern intelligence theorizing has gener-
ated animosity among IS academics because its role in the research process has been misunderstood
and misrepresented.81 Postmodern theorizing differs from post-positivist approaches by serving to
‘open up the indeterminacy that modern social science, everyday conceptions, routines and practices
have closed off. The expected outcome is to produce dissensus rather than a new consensus’.82 Problem-
solving, observation, measurement, prediction, and control are at odds with postmodernism’s concern
for the (often oppressive) consequences of unexamined configurations of knowledge, discourse, and
power. However, lest readers assume that postmodern theorizing always cultivates dissensus and is
antithetical to institutional interests, Harris drew upon Vattimo’s postmodern philosophy to justify
the ethicality of ‘online HUMINT’ and covert operations to deliberately distort the public messages of
nefarious groups.83
Illustrating the dissensus approach, Bean used a postmodern perspective to demonstrate how the
dominant discourse of ‘organizational culture’ circulating within the U.S. intelligence community has
shaped stakeholders’ understandings of accountability and what has constituted necessary, correct, or
effective intelligence reform.84 Bean analyzed intelligence community documents and IS scholarship
to locate questionable assumptions and suppressed perspectives about the nature of and relationship
between ‘organizational culture’ and ‘accountability’ in order to generate dissensus about the appro-
priate locus of intelligence reform efforts. He argued that the dominant discourse of organizational
culture (as something an organization has that can be molded by top officials, rather than a flexible,
discursive creation onto which people impute meaning) encouraged intelligence stakeholders to avoid
holding individuals accountable and instead conveniently attribute ‘intelligence failure’ to the vagaries
of agency systems and cultures. This allowed intelligence stakeholders to avoid a (politically incendiary)
public debate concerning the complex relationship between institutional structures and individual
decision-making.

Moving critical questions toward the center of intelligence theory debates

Lillbacka argued that there has been no reason for IS to abandon its realist foundations, claiming
that constructivist epistemology suffered from crippling subjectivity, relativism, and lacked methods
to adjudicate propositions. ‘The constructivist analysis of intelligence may in fact be impossible’, he
asserted.85 The intelligence theorizing from the margins discussed above provides good reasons for
doubting Lillbacka’s assertion. This theorizing illuminates ideological and social influences and institu-
tionalized practices of (self-) deception, distortion, and topic avoidance that post-positivist theorizing
often ignores. This final section of the essay outlines how intelligence theorizing from the margins
might coalesce under the moniker of Critical Intelligence Studies to provide a more visible alternative
to IS’s dominant, post-positivist theoretical orientation.86
536    H. BEAN

Critical Intelligence Studies would resemble, draw from, and contribute to affiliated critical theorizing
in related fields. Some of these fields were already identified in the 2009 Intelligence Theory volume:
international relations, organizational studies, and sociology.87 These three fields (and others) already
maintain their own ‘critical’ variants that contribute to broader (inter)disciplinary debates and can serve
as blueprints for the construction Critical Intelligence Studies. Of course, rhetorical and discursive, crit-
ical-cultural, feminist, and postmodern perspectives each have their own theoretical assumptions and
normative commitments, but their aggregation under the banner of Critical Intelligence Studies could
promote intellectual coherence, a shared vocabulary, and a collective research agenda in the same way
that ‘Critical Security Studies’ has become the preferred moniker for constructivist, critical, feminist,
post-colonial, post-structural, and discourse/securitization theories used within that disciplinary arena.
Synthesizing the critically inflected work of ‘native’ IS scholars and the critical theorizing of those
working outside of IS, the following orientating question is proposed for those who are interested in
contributing to the development Critical Intelligence Studies (of course, this question is not meant to
be definitive or all-encompassing, it is merely a place to begin the conversation). Critical Intelligence
Studies asks: What are the benefits of supplanting the ‘informational’ ontology that underwrites contem-
porary intelligence practice and IS theorizing with an ontology that instead emphasizes the historical
contingency and cultural specificity of language? This question entails two significant implications.
First, this question asks IS stakeholders to reflect upon where the meaning of intelligence resides. Both
IS scholars and intelligence practitioners continue to overwhelmingly adhere to the realist assumption
that ‘language is a neutral medium through which propositions can be commensurably communicated
between individuals’.88 The bulk of intelligence theorizing from the margins rejects the premise that
facts ‘speak for themselves’ and instead emphasizes the sociocultural, political, and institutional contexts
that shape how ‘information’ is identified, gathered, processed, disseminated, and consumed. From this
perspective, language (text and speech) is not a neutral conduit that merely conveys meaning from
one mind to another. Language both constructs and reflects the social contexts within which some
information is made meaningful and some information is ignored or disregarded. Critical Intelligence
Studies scholars thus focus their attention on the workings of these social contexts in order to reveal
the influence of ideology, identity, and power. Fundamentally, this orientation asks IS academics to
abandon the naïve informational model of communication and instead pay closer attention to why
and how the meanings of taken-for-granted terms such as ‘information’‘intelligence’, ‘uncertainty’, ‘deci-
sion-advantage’, and so on are constructed in the first place. Doing so encourages greater self-awareness.
Second, this question also asks intelligence stakeholders to consider how their work might be dif-
ferent (and potentially improved) if they begin from the premise that the meaning of any particular
symbol (word, image, etc.) is not a fixed object of knowledge that can be neutrally conveyed, but is
instead stabilized only through the rhetorical/discursive processes that constrain that symbol’s pol-
ysemic potential for alternative meanings. Critical Intelligence Studies recognizes that intelligence
analysis does much more than ‘reduce uncertainty’ for decision-makers.89 Intelligence here is theorized
as both a source and medium of institutional power. Discourse and power are dialectically related;
therefore, critical intelligence theorists must better understand the workings of the structures that
establish the identities of (and influence the relationships among) intelligence stakeholders. Improved
theorizing of the interrelationships among discourse, power, structure, and identity would help explain
how historical configurations of intelligence are implicated in the reproduction of social order through
forces of domination or resistance.

Conclusion
Improved understanding of the interrelationships among discourse, power, structure, and identity
could shed critical light on a number of issues in IS that already concern mainstream theorists: (a)
how intelligence is used to insulate public officials from accountability and security institutions from
democratic control; (b) how national security decision-making becomes centralized in the hands of
elites at the expense of congressional and public debate; (c) how intelligence activities interfere with
 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY   537

legitimate democratic processes; and (d) how the economic imperatives of intelligence contractors
distort public policy and shape understandings of security threats. This essay has highlighted the ben-
efits of answering these types of questions from non-positivist theoretical orientations. Collectively,
the contributions highlighted herein suggest that the development of a Critical Intelligence Studies
subfield that attempts to move marginalized theory toward a more visible position within the field
of IS may be both possible and desirable. Ideally, IS stakeholders’ improved awareness of intelligence
theorizing from the margins can broaden the range of theoretical resources considered in addressing
social, institutional, organizational, and interpersonal tensions and dilemmas in the production, circu-
lation, and use of intelligence. At a minimum, IS stakeholders can benefit from viewing intelligence
theory as more diverse than dominant orientations have traditionally allowed.

Notes
1.  Gill, Marrin, and Phythian, Intelligence Theory.
2. Webb, Review of Intelligence Theory: Key Questions, 36.
3.  Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World.
4.  Gill, Marrin, and Phythian, Intelligence Theory, 2.
5.  Phythian, “Intelligence Theory and Theories of International Relations,” 54–72.
6. Waltz, Theory of International Politics.
7.  Davies, “Theory and Intelligence Reconsidered,” 186–207.
8.  Ibid., 194.
9.  Ibid., 187.
10. Lillbacka, “Realism, Constructivism, and Intelligence Analysis,” 305.
11. Kriebel, “Anthropological Theory and Intelligence,” 55.
12. Ibid., 62.
13. Phythian, “Intelligence Theory and Theories of International Relations”; Aldrich and Kasuku, “Escaping from
American Intelligence.”
14. Deetz, “Critical Theory,” 85–112.
15. Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World, 37.
16. Lillbacka, “Realism, Constructivism, and Intelligence Analysis.”
17. Der Derian, “Anti-Diplomacy, Intelligence Theory and Surveillance Practice.”
18. Ibid., 38.
19. Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies.”
20. Mitchell, “Team B Intelligence Coups.”
21. Ibid.
22. Marin, Review of Forensic Rhetorics and Satellite Surveillance.
23. Kreuter, “The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Mathematical Ideology.”
24. Burke, “Semantic and Poetic Meaning”.
25. Kent, “Words of Estimative Probability,” 127–41.
26. Major, Communicating with Intelligence; Davies, “Theory and Intelligence Reconsidered,”186–207; Lillbacka, “Realism,
Constructivism, and Intelligence Analysis.”
27. Marrin, “CIA’s Kent School.”
28. Kent, “Words of Estimative Probability,” 127–41; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
29. Kreuter, “The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Mathematical Ideology,” 224.
30. Ibid., 229–30.
31. Coulthart, “Why Do Analysts Use Structured Techniques?”
32. Marrin, “CIA’s Kent School,” 619.
33. Kreuter, “The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Mathematical Ideology,” 218.
34. Woodard, “Tasting the Forbidden Fruit,” 92.
35. Ibid., 95.
36. Marrin, “Rethinking Analytic Politicization.”
37. Woodard, “Tasting the Forbidden Fruit,” 101.
38. Mitchell, “Team B Intelligence Coups”; Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies.”
39. Lowenthal, “Towards a Reasonable Standard,” 311.
40. Phythian, “Intelligence Theory and Theories of International Relations.”
41. Kreuter, “The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Mathematical Ideology,” 220, 231.
42. Barker, Making Sense of Cultural Studies.
43. Eriksson, Swedish Military Intelligence.
538    H. BEAN

44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 190.
46. Bean, No More Secrets.
47. Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies.”
48. Barker, Making Sense of Cultural Studies; Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies,” 449.
49. Räsänen and Nyce, “The Raw is Cooked,” 655.
50. Ibid., 658.
51. Ibid., 659.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 664.
54. Ibid., 665.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid., 667.
57. Phythian, Understanding the Intelligence Cycle; Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World.
58. Räsänen and Nyce, “The Raw is Cooked,” 660.
59. Thomas, “Intelligence Providers and the Fabric,” 11–35.
60. Ibid., 12.
61. Van Puyvelde and Curtis, “‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.’”
62. Warner, “Intelligence as Risk Shifting,” 29.
63. Walby and Anaïs, “Research Methods, Institutional Ethnography.”
64. Braithwaite, Review of Feminist Surveilance Studies, 1199.
65. Hasler, “The Invisible Women.”
66. Harris, A Woman’s War.
67. Finley, Victor in the Rubble; Hasler, Intelligence.
68. Bean, “Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies.”
69. Atkinson, “Patriarchy, Gender, Infantilisation,” 2.
70. Ibid., 10.
71. Director’s Advisory Group on Women in Leadership, Unclassified Report; Intelligence and Security Committee of
Parliament, Women in the UK Intelligence Community.
72. Davies, “Theory and Intelligence Reconsidered.”
73. Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World.
74. Harris, “The Limits of Intelligence Gathering,” 31.
75. Cavelty and Mauer, “Postmodern Intelligence.”
76. Ibid., 125.
77. Kreuter, “The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Mathematical Ideology.”
78. Cavelty and Mauer, “Postmodern Intelligence,” 136.
79. Ibid., 139.
80. Ibid.
81. Bean, “Organizational Culture and U.S. Intelligence Affairs.”
82. Alvesson and Deetz, “Critical Theory and Postmodernism Approaches,” 271.
83. Harris, “The Limits of Intelligence Gathering,” 27–38.
84. Bean, “Organizational Culture and U.S. Intelligence Affairs”; Bean, “U.S. Intelligence Culture.”
85. Lillbacka, “Realism, Constructivism, and Intelligence Analysis,” 323.
86. The author is joined in the endeavor to establish a Critical Intelligence Studies subfield by Peter de Werd, Ph.D.
candidate at Utrecht University.
87. Gill, Marrin, and Phythian, Intelligence Theory.
88. Lillbacka, “Realism, Constructivism, and Intelligence Analysis,” 306.
89. Fingar, Reducing Uncertainty.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Hamilton Bean is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver where he studies communication, organi-
zation, and security.

ORCID
Hamilton Bean   http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0987-4076
 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY   539

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