Journal of Intelligence History

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Intelligence analysis in a changing world, an

introduction

C. W. Hijzen

To cite this article: C. W. Hijzen (2021) Intelligence analysis in a changing world, an

introduction, Journal of Intelligence History, 20:1, 1-6, DOI: 10.1080/16161262.2020.1746142

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JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY
2021, VOL. 20, NO. 1, 1–6
https://doi.org/10.1080/16161262.2020.1746142

Intelligence analysis in a changing world, an introduction

C. W. Hijzen
Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies and head of the Research Group Intelligence & Security at the
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this introductory article, the topic of intelligence analysis is Received 19 August 2019
explored. Starting from an interview with a former intelligence Accepted 7 October 2019
analyst in the Netherlands, it will be observed how the trade of KEYWORDS
intelligence analysis has changed over the years. From a practically Intelligence analysis; history;
non-existent professional environment the trade has grown to Netherlands Intelligence
become far more important, in terms of the position and training Studies Association (NISA);
of intelligence analysts. From there, questions are posed about the changing environment
development of intelligence analysis worldwide in the past, pre-
sent, and future. In the final part of this article, an overview of the
contributions in this special issue is presented.

‘Intelligence analysis? That was non-existent within our service, at least until the 1990s’,
Paul Abels says.1 Abels is a former intelligence analyst of the Binnenlandse
Veiligheidsdienst (BVD) – the domestic security service of the Netherlands – which
existed between 1949 and 2002. Currently, he works for the National Coordinator for
Counterterrorism and Security, and is Professor by special appointment of Governance
of Intelligence and Security Services at Leiden University. Asked about the function and
role of intelligence analysis within the BVD and its successor the Algemene Inlichtingen-
en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) – the General Intelligence and Security Service – established
in 2002 – Abels points out that events were being reported on, and thus ‘analysed’, but
not in a structured and systematic way. ‘There were caseworkers, for example, but they
were not academics and did not write intelligence analyses in a strict sense,’ Abels
continues: ‘There were also now and then analytical reports, such as an excellent and
famous one on the peace movement in the early 1980s, but the extent to which intelli-
gence analysis was done depended on individuals and their individual capabilities.
A structural analytical capacity was lacking’. And although new employees were exten-
sively instructed about the theories of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union, and com-
munist organisations, intelligence analysis as such was not instructed separately. It was
not a trade, nor did the position of ‘intelligence analyst’ exist. This was not deemed
necessary, because the intelligence activities of the BVD were focused on and managed by
‘collecting facts, on the basis of which the movements of individuals were mapped’.
This started to change in the course of the 1980s, when more academics were
recruited, most of whom poured into the ‘foreign affairs directorate’ (Stafafdeling

CONTACT C. W. Hijzen C.w.hijzen@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

1
Interview C.W. Hijzen with Paul Abels, 3 April 2019.
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med-
ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 C. W. HIJZEN

Buitenlandse Politiek; SBP). Established in the 1960s this directorate was to write reports
about communist ideology for those employees of the security service who were involved
in operational activities. Over time, particularly in the 1980s, the SBP’s task shifted
towards monitoring international events. Events located mostly in the communist
world, bearing relevance for the Dutch security service.2 As a result, the SBP directorate’s
reports obtained the form of analytical reports. It was, however, not until the end of the
Cold War when Arthur Docters van Leeuwen (Head of BVD 1989–1995) reorganised
and transformed the security service, piloting it into the post-Cold War age. Besides
constituting a veritable conceptual revolution (what was a security service for, who
should it serve, what is the essence of its ‘products’?), Docters van Leeuwen introduced
a new organisational structure based on multifunctional teams and (temporary) team
assignments.3
‘The introduction of teams implied the birth of the position of intelligence analyst,’
Abels explains. It was the consultancy firm Anderson, Elffels, and Felix (AEF) that
assisted Docters van Leeuwen in bringing about the reorganisation, after which the
function of intelligence analyst came into actual existence. To every multifunctional
team an analyst was added, tasked to formulate research question(s) for their assignment.
This functionary was isolated from the caseworkers, who managed the logistics of the
operation. ‘This was revolutionary’, as Abels recollects, ‘but how these analysts had to
function specifically, and what they had to do, was unclear. Initially, I was added to twelve
teams as an analyst, which meant that I had at least twelve meetings a week! That left me
no time to actually write intelligence analytical reports.’ He subsequently left some of
these teams in order to start writing ‘pieces that transcended what went on in the teams
and the individual cases, such as anti-integration tendencies.’
Abels never received any training in intelligence analysis. He and his colleagues
therefore discussed their methods and techniques, predominantly on the basis of their
academic education. Being a historian, Abels argued that doing intelligence analysis was
quite similar to doing historical research, involving research questions, structured argu-
ments, and source criticism. Abels and his colleagues started to instruct colleagues on
these matters and from this emerged the so-called ‘Mata Hari Academy’ in the late 1990s.
According to Abels, this was the first structured way of intelligence analysis training. Ever
since – particularly after the BVD became the AIVD and saw its responsibilities
enlarged – intelligence analysis has become institutionalised in terms of dedicated
personnel and training. This position, Abels fears, has recently changed in the light of
counterterrorism with intelligence analysts positioned once again closer to the teams. As
a result, Abels argues, ‘it is more difficult for them to analyse the more transcending,
overarching, and non-day-to-day trends and developments.’4
This first-hand account of Abels concerning his practical experience as an intelligence
analyst raises interesting questions about the development of the analytical trade itself,
the context in which it functions, and the challenges it faced and will face in the future. In
2016, the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association (NISA) decided to delve into these
and related matters by organizing a conference on the changing environment of

2
D. Engelen, Per Undas Adversas Een Institutioneel Onderzoek Naar Het Handelen Van De Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst En
Zijn Voorgangers, 1945–2002, report no. 122 (Den Haag: PIVOT, 2002), 85.
3
Constant Hijzen, Vijandbeelden: De Veiligheidsdiensten En De Democratie, 1912–1992 (Amsterdam: Boom, 2016).
4
See note 1 above.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 3

intelligence in general and the intelligence analyst in particular. Celebrating its 25 years
anniversary, NISA invited a wide variety of (former) practitioners and academics, both
international and Dutch, to reflect on the question to what extent intelligence analysis has
transformed in those 25 years. Has the trade changed since the end of the Cold War, and
if so: how? What are the current developments, and what can be expected in the future?
Such questions preoccupy not only practitioners, but also academics. Richard J. Heuer
observed in 1999 for example, that ‘the intelligence analyst [. . .] must cope with a rapidly
changing world’. Countries ‘that previously were US adversaries are now our formal or de
facto allies’. Heuer continued: ‘Schemata that were valid yesterday may no longer be
functional tomorrow’.5
Then 9/11 happened and the world changed even more radically with major implica-
tions for intelligence analysis as argued by Gregory Treverton in his book Intelligence for
an age of terror’. Compared to the Cold War, during which the targets of intelligence and
security services were relatively bounded and confined states, the target in the age of
terrorism are transnational actors, who Treverton sees as fundamentally unbounded and
thus more difficult to research. Whereas states come with geographical, hierarchical, and
bureaucratic dimensions, which allow intelligence analysts to tell consumers a clear story,
non-state actors come in many shapes and sizes. This makes them more difficult to catch
in a clear narrative. Whilst the trick during the Cold War was to obtain secret informa-
tion, the main challenge in the terrorist age is to deal with information overload. Another
aspect of this transformation is that intelligence activities – more than in the past when
there was little interaction – influences the way terrorist targets operate.6
Robert M. Clark concurs when he writes that the conflicts that intelligence analysts
must understand today ‘take a network form, the key players being non-state actors that
operate transnationally with the support or tolerance of governments’.7 These changing
conflicts ‘call for a different pattern of intelligence thinking, if we in the intelligence
business are to provide the support that our customers need’.8
Although these issues have primarily been addressed by American intelligence studies
scholars, they touch upon global change processes with implications for intelligence
analysts worldwide. In this special issue we would therefore like to explore the transfor-
mation of intelligence from other perspectives as well.
Generally speaking, to understand how and why intelligence analysts have adapted
their working processes, methods, and techniques – and will continue to change – it is
necessary to focus on external developments, such as the onset of a multipolar world,
asymmetric conflicts, and the information revolution, as well as internal or organisa-
tional changes in intelligence collection, processing, dissemination, legitimisation, and
oversight. And although intelligence analysts still predominantly operate in secret, the
demands of intelligence consumers and the public have changed. This development
raises questions about its implications for the intelligence analyst.
The collection of essays in this volume addresses the causes and consequences of
a changed intelligence environment, and aims to look ahead. The main goal of our special

5
Richards J. Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1999),
51–55. 30.
6
Gregory F. Treverton, Intelligence for an Age of Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
7
Robert M. Clark, Intelligence Analysis: A Target-centric Approach, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2016), 27.
8
Clark, Intelligence Analysis, 19.
4 C. W. HIJZEN

issue is to explore the causes and consequences of this changed environment for the
intelligence analyst; e.g. its impact on the applied processes, methods, and techniques of
analysts and looks ahead to explore future paths.
We approach our topic from different perspectives. The first two articles in this special
issue address from a historical perspective how intelligence analysis is consumed. In
From Circumspection to Centrality: Prime Ministers and the growth of analysis, co-
ordination, management in the UK Intelligence Community Richard J. Aldrich and
Rory Cormac point out that management and analysis of secret intelligence matters to
political leadership. Despite this, the connections between the most secret realm of
government and 10 Downing Street have received little scholarly attention. Their article
seeks to connect the world of Downing Street with the burgeoning literature on secret
services. It argues that a Churchillian revolution in intelligence occurred during the
middle of the twentieth century. Winston Churchill’s famous determination to harness
the power of intelligence to decision-making changed the nature of the core executive in
Britain. However, Churchill was impulsive and could not complete the intelligence
revolution. It took his reclusive deputy, Clement Attlee, to combine imagination with
organisation and create a system that has allowed prime ministers to leverage intelligence
power up to this day. Although some of their successors may have proven more adept
users of secret information than others, intelligence has continued to move from prime
ministerial circumspection to centrality over the past century, and has become something
no current or future prime minister is able to ignore.
In the second article of this issue, titled Briefing the Swedish policy maker: the analyst-
policy maker relationship in a small country, Michael Fredholm focuses on the role of the
Swedish intelligence analyst in the consumption of intelligence by politicians. Fredholm
states on the basis of several examples in Swedish history that unlike their British and
American counterparts, the Swedish intelligence establishment has never been very
worried that intelligence would be politicised. Although Swedish intelligence analysts
have been allowed to make policy recommendations, Fredholm argues that Sweden is
characterised by a tradition of objectivity within its public service as a whole and within
the intelligence community in particular. Civil servants, which intelligence analysts are,
like to see themselves as being able to objectively advise their consumers. This mind-set
proved difficult to uphold in practice, however. Using several examples, Fredholm argues
that it was rather unrealistic to expect intelligence analysts to come up with objective
conclusions in the policy and decision-making process. Swedish policy makers were as
biased and selective in presenting their analyses to their political consumers as any other,
often reflecting their subconscious or explicit policy preferences. Fredholm also pays
attention to the fact that policy makers base their decisions on prejudices and emotions
rather than the contents of intelligence analysis, thus limiting the role of intelligence
altogether.
Next, this special issue shifts its attention to the production of intelligence analysis. In
Sensemaking for 21st Century Intelligence, David T. Moore (who sadly deceased in 2018),
Elizabeth Moore, Seth Cantey, and Robert Hoffman argue that the key to effective
twenty-first century intelligence analysis, where the issues are interconnected and effec-
tive decision-making has to be made in the context of their complexities, is our sense
making process. Sense making is the deliberate attempt to understand a situation and
how it emerged. The goals of sense making are to achieve an explanation in terms of
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 5

causes, which can include human intentions, beliefs and actions, and to derive courses of
action from that understanding. Today, understanding is being strained more than ever
by the number of complex issues that cross regions, topics, and domains. One issue that is
particularly testing the intelligence analyst’s ability to deal with complexity is the so-
called grey zone, or hybrid conflict.
In Anticipating Surprise in an Era of Global Technology Advances, Daniel G. Pronk
proposes a different way of analysing intelligence, particularly for detecting weapon
development programs of opponents. Pronk points to the trends of globalization and
their impact on the pace of technological development. Particularly in the consumer
electronics industry and software development sector accelerated development now
regularly occurs. The business practices and project management approaches of these
sectors mirror what can be done in weapons development. The fast, and ever-increasing
pace of global technology advances enable ‘crash’ weapon development programs, which
allow an adversary the potential for capability surprise. The ‘Scientific & Technical
Intelligence analyst’ is the first line of defence in protecting against such surprises.
Pronk shows how this particular intelligence analyst should go about in detecting these
‘crash’ weapon development programs.
In their co-written article Towards a robust β research design: on different classes of
unknowns and reasoning, Giliam de Valk and Onno Goldbach also focus on the way
intelligence analysts do their work, although they adhere to a different approach. In
trying to understand the methodological basis of intelligence analysis, De Valk and
Goldbach argue that science and intelligence analysis have a completely different meth-
odological setting. In order to contribute to a more mature methodology for intelligence,
they explore relevant differences and their meanings. Firstly, in science a phenomenon is
explained in a general sense. Intelligence practitioners also develop theory, but almost
always in the form of a specific case-theory. Secondly, science is primarily aimed at
explaining and contributing to theory, for which the value of the α is critical: the scientist
wants to keep the number of incorrect relationships as low as possible. Intelligence
analysis, on the other hand, is in the first place designed to not to miss a possible threat.
In that research, the value of the β is the most critical one: in order not to miss a threat the
intelligence analyst strives to keep the number of missed relationships as low as possible.
Thirdly, if an intelligence analyst uses an analytic technique that has been developed in
science, which is often the case, then there is a chance that this technique has not been
adapted for intelligence analysis, i.e. it has not been calibrated in order not to miss
a relationship. Scientific techniques are designed to explain and assess a relationship
instead and thus designed to reduce the α, instead of the β. Fourthly, in the context of
intelligence analysis, logic – inductive, deductive, and inference to the best explanation –
needs to be reformulated, and calibrated from an α to a β approach. The final aspect De
Valk and Goldbach pay attention to is their observation that tooling is needed for
a research design exploring unknown territory, as intelligence focuses on the unknowns.
In the final contribution, titled Devil’s Advocacy and Cyber Space. In Support of Quality
Assurance and Decision Making, Alexander Claver focuses on the need for reliable
decision support in today’s unsettled (military) cyber sphere – a particular and challen-
ging field for current and future intelligence analysts. In a highly dynamic and rapidly
changing environment, (cyber) decision makers will arguably benefit from assessments
and advice based upon differing points of view, Claver states. Devil’s advocacy, which
6 C. W. HIJZEN

criticizes established positions, and offers alternative perspectives to a given argument

based upon the same input, is one instrument to try to achieve this. Within the Israeli
military this concept seems to have fulfilled its promise since a Devil’s Advocate has been
in place ever since the end of the Yom Kippur War. The surprise outbreak of hostilities in
1973 clearly showed the need for countering tunnel vision and group think in order to
improve assessment and decision-making processes. This begs the question whether the
appointment of a Devil’s Advocate within the current digitalized environment might
have something to offer to (cyber) decision makers as well, as they try to make sense of
highly complex cyber issues and context.
From their different angles, the articles show what intelligence analysis has changed
markedly since Paul Abels’ days. From an activity that was highly dependent on the
abilities and mindsets of individual employees of intelligence and security services, not
structurally instructed in training programs and thus not an essential part in the
intelligence cycle, it has developed into a core activity in the intelligence process, steered
at making intelligence valuable for politicians and policy makers. Intelligence analysis has
its distinct approaches, techniques, and methodological underpinnings, which raise
interesting questions about what intelligence in essence entails, how it is produced, and
how it is disseminated in such a way that consumers can optimally use it. If these
contributions show anything, they underline the need for constant reflection on the
approaches, techniques, and methodologies of intelligence analysis. This special issue
tries to do exactly that, from a historical and present-day perspective.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
C. W. Hijzen is Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies and head of the Research Group
Intelligence & Security at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University.

ORCID
C. W. Hijzen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7112-0550