ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the Oxford Intelligence Group (OIG) has been self-questioning since inception but the Oriel Colloquium was the first time the group was itself the subject of inquiry rather than the means of inquiry. Hew Strachan and his colleague Dr Rob Johnson tended to use the OIG as the unofficial ‘intelligence wing’ of the Changing Character of War, for example when hosting the visiting Humanitas Professor in Intelligence Studies, General Michael Hayden. The OIG undoubtedly acquired a certain prestige from being located at Nuffield College. In 2014, the OIG embarked on its most ambitious project to date: the year-long project of ‘Snowden, the Media and the State’ – originally conceived as a joint programme of the Oxford Intelligence Group and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Ethical considerations of intelligence activity have been a feature of OIG activity since the first Butler seminar of 2004.
