ABSTRACT
Francis Bacon’s maxim Scientia potentia est – knowledge is power – seems to express the raison d’etre of all modern intelligence and security services. Intelligence and security services thus produce knowledge that allows their political masters to exercise power. This chapter shows that the essence of intelligence, as institutionalized, conceptualized, and practiced in the Netherlands, was of a different order. By design, intelligence served to inform politicians and make them aware. The literature on the impact of intelligence upon policy-making is somewhat diffuse. To begin with, factors that influence the ‘political usefulness’ of intelligence can be derived from definitional debates. There is strategic intelligence and tactical intelligence, often focusing on the when, where, and whom of attacks in whatever form. In the Kentian tradition, intelligence has offered policy-makers the crucial piece of the puzzle, a fact only the intelligence community could provide the ruler, thus enabling the decision-maker to take action in order to prevent an attack.
