ABSTRACT
If it is commonly accepted that intelligence represented the ‘missing dimension’2
of historical accounts of international and domestic politics for many years, at least until the end of the Cold War, circumstances since then have changed significantly. During the 1990s a variety of inter-linked factors brought intelligence blinking out of the dark, if only into the twilight, for example, the perception that insecurities took a greater variety of forms such as organised crime and trafficking, the interest in intelligence methods of a wider variety of state and corporate agencies and the rapid growth of technologies facilitating the gathering, processing and storing of information. These factors were all massively reinforced by 9/11, and by further attacks in Bali, Madrid, Istanbul and London. The impression given by these ‘failures’ is that intelligence is unable to ensure public safety just as security problems seem to be escalating.
