ABSTRACT
Between the mid-1950s and late 1960s Whitehall’s intelligence architecture was transformed to reflect more accurately the holistic nature of intelligence. The JIC was installed in the Cabinet Secretariat with its remit extended to include political intelligence. This enabled the FO immediately to wind-up its Russia Committee which had operated as a departmental intelligence assessment body in parallel to the JIC’s role for the Chiefs of Staff. In 1962 the Economic Intelligence Steering Committee was set up within the Cabinet Secretariat as a formal mechanism to produce inter-departmental economic intelligence assessments. Two years later in 1964 the three SIDs and the JIB were brought together to form an integrated DIS and which included the Directorate of Economic Intelligence as the ultimate source of Whitehall’s economic intelligence expertise. Further radical changes were to come in 1968 with the appointment of an Intelligence Co-ordinator to oversee the whole central organisation, the replacement of the Joint Intelligence Staff by an Assessments Staff independent of their Departments, and the JIC itself split into separate political-military and economic intelligence committees
(respectively JIC(A) and JIC(B)). The JIC(B) replaced the EISC with the aim of enhancing the contribution of intelligence in economic policymaking. This period is also characterised by the expansion of the economics profession within Whitehall through the Government Economic Service (GES) as a cross-departmental professional class. There was also a fundamental shift in the aims and claims of the discipline towards ever-greater abstraction.
