Summary

The intelligence scholar Ken Robertson once described intelligence as ‘the secret collection of someone else’s secrets’4. This notion captures the essence of traditional intelligence collection as one of the black arts of statecraft. It underlines, not only the fact that our opponents have information that they do not want us to know, it also reminds us that the value of discovering those secret things is increased if our opponents believe that their secrets have not been compromised. Partly for this reason, the last half-century has seen the emergence of a range of security processes, including rigid compartmentalisation, that accompany the distribution of secret intelligence. This in turn makes the intelligence product difficult to use flexibly, especially in the context of counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency. Providing timely intelligence to customers from secret sources, without comprising those sources, remains one of the great challenges of intelligence management.