3 THE INTELLIGENCE CYCLE

This article is another excerpt from the book by Barrington Roy Schiller (#BarringtonRoySchiller) titled “ESPIONAGE, INTELLIGENCE, RUSSIA, AND ME.: Spies, Lies, and Russian Misinformation.?“

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3. THE INTELLIGENCE CYCLE

The intelligence community plays a vital role at all stages of our national security, and naturally, there are cases whereby intelligence (The product) simply lands in the gatherers' hands, but more often, it is a case whereby the community is constantly engaged in the continuous process of hunting for what they need to enter into the intelligence cycle. This ensures all interested parties have the intelligence they need to protect the alliances and members. The intelligence cycle usually consists of the following steps:- Planning and direction: At this stage, the decision-makers (the consumers) define the required intelligence and in what order it will be collected. They then develop a plan and provide a forum for intelligence chiefs to discuss the intelligence requirements to support their operations and missions, choose a suitable intelligence collection agency (the gatherers) based upon the type of intelligence required, and direct them to collect the necessary intelligence (the product/s) for the operation.

?Collection: Once the planners have defined what is needed, the collectors set out to collect the intelligence from various sources, including HUMINT (human intelligence), IMINT (imagery intelligence), SIGINT (signals intelligence), and MASINT? (measurement and signature intelligence), according to the “collection plan”. They usually do not plan the intelligence collection directly (leaving that to “planning and direction” ), but they coordinate and oversee the collection activities. This ensures that all planners collect the necessary intelligence and that there is no duplication of effort.

Processing: Once collected the collectors do not process the intelligence directly. The collecting also involves converting the collected intelligence into a helpful format for analysis. The intelligence is processed to make it more beneficial to the consumers. This may include translating into different languages and transcribing or analysing intelligence data to produce insights and assessments. This ensures that all concerned comprehensively understand all the security threats.

Analysts examine and interpret the processed intelligence at the analysis stage to produce insights and assessments. This may involve identifying patterns and trends in intelligence or developing hypotheses about the intentions of adversaries. this ensures that all western allies use the same methods and tools to analyse intelligence and reach the same conclusions. analysts examine the processed intelligence to identify patterns, trends, and relationships. they also assess the reliability of the intelligence and its implications for their security.

dissemination: at the dissemination stage, the precise, concise, and relevant intelligence to the needs of the decision-makers is disseminated and communicated to the decision-makers and other relevant stakeholders and consumers in a timely and accurate manner. this ensures that decision-makers have the intelligence to make informed decisions.

feedback: this step involves collecting feedback from decision-making consumers on the usefulness of the intelligence provided and using that feedback to improve the intelligence cycle and find any changes that can be made to improve the effectiveness of the intelligence cycle. the allied decision-makers provide feedback to the intelligence community on the usefulness of the intelligence provided. a forum of intelligence chiefs discusses the feedback from decision-makers.

military intelligence has a long history, dating back to ancient civilisations, where espionage and reconnaissance were used to gain strategic advantages. however, the modern concept of military intelligence mainly began to take shape during the world wars. Studying intelligence history is a dynamic process, and new information is constantly coming to light. this is especially true in intelligence history, where formerly classified documentary materials change our understanding of how and why certain world events happened.

?the above is naturally the “norm”, but there are anomalies and exceptions. for example, the “missions” operated more like “scavengers” without knowing what they would find when they set out on their tours to gather. also, rather strangely, there were times when Brixmis (the British mission) would collect information and report it to the “allied pool” only to find that the US has then classified it as “noforn”, which meant that no foreigners (i.e. those who had supplied the intelligence) were now allowed access to it. 9/ll proved how possessive different agencies were regarding “sharing”. the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies hated sharing even with other agencies of their own country.

?After the break up of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation took the Honey trap one step further and sent an army of beautiful young women to marry men from “the West” and to have children with them, live for a while in “the West” before returning to their native Russia. You can take the women out of Russia, but you can’t take Russia out of the girl. The dual nationality children are then Russified, and the Western fathers (who are nearly always influential) find themselves in a compromising situation, having to choose between their morals or their child.