ABSTRACT
Donne’s fatalistic maxim succinctly defines the essential context that modern intelligence services function within, and the variables determining their relative fortunes. Their experiences suggest that they are very human institutions largely shaped by the vagaries of circumstances beyond their control, not to mention misfortune and luck. As refined information used by the state to further national goals and policies, intelligence is directed, collected, analysed and disseminated (the ‘intelligence cycle’) within the milieu of international politics. Intelligence work must therefore function within the ‘anarchical society’ of Great Powers.1 Equally significant is the extent to which intelligence functionaries serve at the mercy of their policy masters. The intelligence officers themselves, in their various professional incarnations, are the ‘desperate men’ in this formulation, striving as they do to carry out their risky and/or problematic duties in the face of inertia and outright opposition on the part of rivals, enemies, and occasionally their own countrymen. It is unlikely that any intelligence service in history has ever completely escaped sub-jugation to such restrictive bondage.
