ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises key strategies of influence used by contemporary intelligence elites and evaluate whether or not these strategies can be justified. It discusses their success in manipulating civil society; and civil society's ability to hold intelligence elites publicly accountable. The chapter considers how an understanding of the relationships of influence between intelligence elites and civil society, alongside the benchmark of Accountability Demands, can help scholars and wider civil society better gauge and challenge intelligence elite discourse. It suggests that uptake of these conceptual tools would create a stronger epistemic position from which civil society could critically respond to controversial intelligence elite policies. Intelligence elite strategies directed at public citizens continue with the long-standing strategy of seeing the public as a target of influence. The benchmark of Accountability Demands provides a range of critical questions to help evaluate intelligence elite activity.
