ABSTRACT
The official intelligence discussed in this book has no distinguishing adjec-tive; it tends to be just called ‘intelligence’, both in general usage and in formal descriptions. 1 Other kinds of intelligence are usually expanded, for example into ‘business intelligence’ in the private sector and ‘criminal intelligence’ in law enforcement. 2 Occasionally the intelligence discussed here becomes ‘national intelligence’, as in the recent official British booklet on ‘National Intelligence Machinery’, 3 but for most purposes it stands alone. Yet as Sherman Kent explained in his classical description of it, it denotes a particular kind of knowledge, the type of organization producing this knowledge, and the activity pursued by the organization. 4 This chapter considers the particularity that distinguishes it from other information activities, and speculates on its future in the Information Age.
