Since the end of World War II, intelligence has evolved into one of the three primary instruments employed in national security strategies, together with diplomacy and military force. In fact, the postwar years have ushered in not just intelligence per se, but increasingly ramified “intelligence communities.”

In the United States, for example, these are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency of the Department of Defense, intelligence services in individual branches of the Armed Forces, the National Security Agency, and a special service of the Department of Energy. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service have foreign intelligence departments of their own (the foreign intelligence of the IRS is considered to be one of the most efficient secret services in the U.S.).

In Russia, the number of intelligence services multiplied following the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Soviet-era KGB broke up into the Foreign Intelligence Service (Russian acronym SVR), the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI), the Federal Border Guard Service (FPS), and the Federal Security Service (FSB) which is intended to ensure internal security but which by law also performs intelligence functions. In a way, the State Customs Committee has intelligence functions as well.

Military intelligence occupies a special place in the “intelligence community.” On the one hand, it comprises strategic intelligence and operational reconnaissance, and in many cases is subordinate not to the defense minister (who is of a higher rank) but to the chief of the General Staff. This implies the existence of at least two hierarchical levels separating the military intelligence chief from the highest levels of administration. On the other hand, strategic assessments, conclusions and concrete information concerning the country’s military security, often obtained “from a special point of view,” may be of great interest not only to the defense minister but also to the top state leadership. This explains why the military intelligence chief must be able to report on major issues directly to the highest levels of administration in the country (presumably in the presence, or with the knowledge of, the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff).

The duality of this position of military intelligence is one of the reasons why it is often reorganized and placed under the command of different bodies. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, this reshuffling occurred on a regular basis in the Soviet Union. At this time, strategic intelligence was first made subordinate to the defense minister, who belonged to the country’s top political leadership, and then to the chief of the General Staff, who occupied a position one step lower than the defense minister.

One of the most important tasks of the intelligence services is to forewarn its government about events that may occur at a certain time in the future and that pose a threat to national security. Contrary to popular belief, this mission is accomplished not only by means of reports from individual “super spies” or spy networks, but also through an in-depth analysis of diverse information obtained both overtly and covertly.

History demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of intelligence services prefer obtaining information, storing it in their top secret files, and then delivering to their leaders not conclusions (or rather proposals), which require in-depth analysis, but pure facts. This type of presentation is less hazardous for the intelligence chiefs, but unacceptable to an overwhelming majority of state leaders, especially if they do not possess a strong analytical think-tank.

While issuing a warning about a particular threat, intelligence services must pay special attention to the correlation between general tendencies and information relevant to future developments. An overwhelming majority of state leaders focus their efforts on addressing current problems. This factor prompts intelligence chiefs to supply mostly current information to their government.

Another task of the intelligence service is to prepare summary reports on the political, military-political and economic situation. It is also vital to provide analysis on the concrete problems (or regions) defined by the state leadership as top priority from the viewpoint of national security. These summaries must be based on specific intelligence, obtained by means and methods that are not available to the Foreign Ministry or the Ministry of Economics. If intelligence services prepare summaries on the basis of open sources (or worse, offer trivial, obvious conclusions to their findings), state leaders will, in the best case scenario, simply lose interest in such information.

Another important mission of the intelligence services is the assessment of potential enemies (as well as potential allies and neutral states).

This assessment of potential enemies consists of the following two parts: assessment of capabilities and assessment of intentions.

The first part of the assessment requires obtaining information on the combat personnel of the enemy armed forces, reserve units, and the military equipment already in service, as well as those systems under development. It must also assess the mobilization potential in terms of the financial, industrial, agricultural and manpower resources; this would also include assessing the efficiency of control at all levels, the quality of combat and operational training, and so forth.

Overestimating the enemy’s capabilities is often just as dangerous as underestimating them. A classic example occurred in World War II when the Soviet Union overestimated the armor protection of the notorious German Panzer tanks on the eve of the Nazi-Soviet war. As a result, the Soviet government decided to cease production of the 45-mm antitank guns and launch production of higher caliber antitank guns. However, the Soviet Union did not have enough time to start production of that weapon before the war. During the war it was discovered that the German tanks had much thinner armor plating than had been previously believed, and the 45-mm shells of the Soviet army proved powerful enough to pierce their metal.

Assessment of intentions is necessary for revealing whether or not a potential enemy is planning to start a war. If it is, certain questions need answers. For example, what kind of war will it attempt to wage? What will be the scale of attack? What are the political and military-strategic objectives? And where will the enemy deliver its main and auxiliary strikes? Furthermore, while it is necessary to understand the enemy’s intentions, it is, at the same time, equally important to determine the enemy’s assessment of our own armed forces, our strategic control system, intentions of our state leadership and military command, and their efficiency. Assessments of the latter kind are often not made, although they may play a decisive role in the final outcome.

Following the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish war, which was a major setback for the U.S.S.R., German military and political intelligence services held a very low opinion of the Soviet strategic control system, not to mention the state of the Soviet Armed Forces control at all levels. They explained it by Stalin’s reprisals against Army and Navy commanders and chief executives in the defense and other industries. The author of this article has not discovered any evidence that those assessments by the Nazi state leaders and military command were ever reported to Stalin, who had personally laid the foundation for these generalizations. In the meantime, these assessments prompted Hitler to set maximal objectives for his policy and military strategy concerning the Soviet Union in 1941, which regarded the Soviet Armed Forces as a “beheaded colossus with feet of clay.”

Due to the apparent lack of these assessments by the Soviet intelligence services, Stalin apparently could not fully believe that Hitler and the Wehrmacht command had plans to rout the Soviet Armed Forces within weeks. Nor could he imagine that Hitler hoped for a total victory in a blitzkrieg war when the Red Army had as many soldiers as the Wehrmacht, as well as its marked advantage in tank and aircraft strength. It should be remembered that at that time, the Soviet defense industry had a high mobilization potential. Hence Stalin’s hope, which was persistent through the first few days after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, that Hitler was pursuing some limited goals through his actions, but that it would remain somehow possible to reach an agreement with him. These factors caused Stalin to make serious mistakes in his political and military-strategic decision-making on the eve of the war and during its first few days.

Recent studies, based on Soviet and German archives, prove that German intelligence services had no idea of the real military might of the Soviet Union, especially of the huge scale of the industrial war preparations in the late 1930s-early 1940s. This lack of knowledge was due to exceptional secrecy that surrounded those preparations in the U.S.S.R. It is believed that a demonstration by the Soviet Union of its real military might could have provided a deterring, sobering effect on Hitler and his top military command.

When analyzing this concrete historical situation, one must also bear in mind that on the eve of Germany’s aggression against the U.S.S.R. both countries were conducting an active disinformation campaign against each other, which involved both diplomatic and intelligence channels. In particular, Germany “leaked” disinformation that the German leadership was divided over the issue of war against the Soviet Union, and that the Wehrmacht was actually preparing strategic actions against Britain and the Middle East.

Total assessment of the enemy’s intentions requires an in-depth political and psychological analysis of the main actors of the enemy’s strategic control system, both as individuals and as “small groups,” with their specific socio-psychological patterns of behavior. Apart from official intelligence services, most significant is the information coming from independent analytical centers, as well as journalists and even writers who possess a shrewd mind and a reliable insight into human nature.

An analysis of some recent and more distant historical episodes, both in Russia and abroad, demonstrates that state leaders and military command shape their ideas of the enemy not so much on the basis of intelligence reports, but through their own impressions of state leaders of other countries, of those countries proper, their peoples, armies, and so on. These sorts of assessments are established through personal contacts, from the media, and in more rare incidences, from historical, sociological or political works, even if these are popular publications (often these ideas stem from complicated speculative inferences). Intelligence and diplomatic assessments are often outweighed by the state leader’s personal assessments of another country’s leader.

Stalin’s attitude to all warnings by both political and military intelligence on the eve of the June 22, 1941 aggression by Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union is an extreme historical example. A well-known Soviet military intelligence officer,

Mikhail Milstein, who analyzed this situation in his memoirs, concludes sadly: “Paradoxically, up to the first minutes of the carnage, Stalin trusted only one man – Hitler.”

In any major country, high-placed officials, when making important military-political decisions, as a rule do not rely only on political or military intelligence. Both services have their natural advantages and shortcomings, which must be well understood by any state leader. The latter should therefore be neither naively euphoric, nor overly disdainful, toward the intelligence services and their capabilities. Unfortunately, both attitudes are not uncommon and they occasionally reveal themselves in rather odd forms.

State leaders must never expect (nor demand) “absolutely precise information” from the intelligence services on all issues with regard to strategic decision-making. Actually, the great successes of the intelligence services – when the information they obtain “hits the mark” and makes a significant contribution to strategic decision-making – are quite rare; nevertheless, they are very valuable and require large-scale preparatory work to succeed. A good example of such work was exemplified by Soviet intelligence in the 1940s when they discovered the secrets pertaining to the development of the atomic bomb. This significant intelligence helped the Soviet Union to expedite the development of their nuclear weapons. As a result, there soon emerged a system of nuclear deterrence between the Soviet Union and the United States, which played a major role in preventing a third world war. This could have occurred as early as the 1950s due to the war in Korea (there was considerable debate in the U.S. concerning the implementation of nuclear weapons at this time).

Just as there is a “friction of war” in the military sphere, there is a “friction of intelligence” in secret spy operations. And the bigger an intelligence service is, the greater the friction.

If intelligence is properly organized, high-quality intelligence information may have a decisive effect on strategic decision-making. Rejecting this information for one reason or another may have catastrophic consequences, as was the case with Stalin on the eve of June 22, 1941.

When the average man-on-the-street, or even individuals within the top political circles, speak of intelligence, they often refer to “top spies” who became famous after they planted themselves in the “enemy lair” where they were able to steal sensitive information. Although these popular “in-the-field” operations are of tremendous importance, there is another type of intelligence work which remains virtually unknown to the uninitiated: the painstaking selection of information received from various sources, checking and rechecking its authenticity, and then putting the information through rigorous analysis. Finally, there must be a formulation of conclusions concerning the prospects for future developments, together with possible actions by state leaders, commanders, governments, military agencies, and general staffs.

Moreover, over the last 20 to 25 years there has been a tremendous growth in the role of electronic intelligence. This invariably involves the use of satellites, as well as ground-, sea- and air-based systems for intercepting radio messages, telephone conversations and data exchanges via the Internet; there is also the need for various kinds of systems for breaking into confidential computer networks, and so on. Another important aspect of this type of intelligence is the processing and selection of information, together with the preparation of these final reports for intelligence chiefs and top political leaders.

A majority of intelligence services in major countries have turned into burgeoning bureaucratic organizations where the distance between those collecting intelligence and those reporting it to political leaders is becoming too long. This bureaucratic red tape impedes the necessary links between politics, national strategy, military strategy and intelligence, and results in the loss or distortion of important information.

This excessive bureaucratic red tape transforms intelligence agencies into inertial institutions which are too slow and sluggish to face new challenges.

As a matter of fact, all intelligence services experienced an increased inertia through the decades of the Cold War, which now hampers their efforts to counter new national security threats. “I request information on the main terrorist centers and their leaders, as well as their ties with drug-traffickers in Europe,” one Western European statesman confided to the author of this article in the late 1990s, “but they bring me lists of commanding officers of the Leningrad Military District [of Russia’s Armed Forces] instead.”

The general inertia of the secret services was a major cause of the “greatest setback” of the U.S. state security bodies when they failed to prevent the “megaterror” acts in the United States on September 11, 2001.

Institutionally, the relations between the intelligence services and the decision-making political bodies are not in harmony, especially in peacetime. The same dilemma refers to official relations between an intelligence service and a state leader. The reason for this stems from the fact that their modi operandi are basically different. A political body is primarily public, whereas intelligence by nature is covert and secretive. Even in the world’s “oldest democracy” – the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the identities of the chiefs of its political intelligence – the Intelligence Service – were kept secret up to the 1980s.

After the September 11, 2001 “megaterror” act, the interests of U.S. politics and the interests of U.S. intelligence and counter-intelligence organizations clashed over whether or not proof of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in that act should be made public. Politically, that would have been of paramount importance for both domestic and foreign audiences (as it would help form an international anti-terrorist coalition). However, the secret services wanted their sources of information and methods used to obtain it to remain highly classified.

When intelligence emerges from the shadows of politics, it is usually a forced incident caused by some major failure of intelligence coordination, or through some scandal involving an operation outside of the legal jurisdiction of the intelligence services (as was the case in the 1970s when the CIA was accused of illegal operations on U.S. territory, which was the prerogative of the counter-intelligence bodies).

In the late 1970s, this author analyzed many historical situations while, at the same time, examining the provided informational support for the military-political decision-making process. The following is a brief summary from that study concerning the paradoxes of intelligence.

The first paradox: the more valuable and uncommon is the information gathered and presented by an intelligence body, the less the heads of state will trust it. Furthermore, the full perception of this sort of information may prove very difficult.

The second paradox: the more valuable a spy, the more difficult it is to use the vital information he gathers in the interests of big politics, for fear of revealing the spy and his network. Every intelligence chief must constantly consider the safety of his information sources. There have been many cases in history when particular statesmen, participating in negotiations with their counterparts from other countries, have openly flaunted information that had been received from an intelligence source. Naturally, the unfortunate source was quickly discovered by the opposing side and permanently removed.

Occasionally, the desire to ensure the absolute safety of a spy may reach a point where the top leaders of a country are denied necessary information at a most critical time. A classic example presented itself in 1941 when U.S. naval intelligence acquired access to highly classified information shortly before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. president, who is the official commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, was actually excluded for some time from receiving Japanese diplomatic cables deciphered by American cryptographers. The military feared a leak of information somewhere on the presidential staff. It has been revealed to this author by various sources that there existed similar apprehensions among Soviet and Russian intelligence services with regard to their own heads of state.

It has also been revealed by Soviet political intelligence veterans that for many years the KGB stored voluminous and highly classified files concerning major developments in Western military policies. This information could have been processed by the Soviet Defense Ministry’s military specialists (whom political intelligence lacked) to be reported to the political leaders. However, the KGB did not share this vital information with other government agencies and departments in order not to increase the number of people who knew about its existence.

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Theoretically, intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies are essentially different bodies equally ensuring the national security of the country. Indeed, counter-intelligence itself very often made major contributions of vital information and assessments to the heads of state and the military command. During World War II, for example, the Soviet Union’s military counter-intelligence agency (Smersh), which Stalin made subordinate to himself personally, became an essential source of military and military-political information for the Supreme Commander.

On many occasions, valuable “external” intelligence was provided not only by the KGB’s 1st Main Department, but also the 2nd Main Department, which was officially in charge of counter-intelligence activities alone, as well as the 5th Main Department, which was engaged in “combating ideological subversion.” Therefore, it would be wise for the heads of state not to scorn intelligence which is supplied by counter-intelligence means. On the other hand, any intelligence service performs counter-intelligence functions at the same time in order to ensure its own security, as well as to prevent acts of espionage within its country.

The above activities must be strictly regulated by laws, classified bylaws, the mutual orders of various services and other necessary procedures in order to avoid the redundant duplication of functions (as was stated above, however, this duplication is sometimes inevitable and even necessary). This will also work to prevent unnecessary rivalry or other conflicts which may damage the activities of the secret services.

Drawing specific boundaries between the branches of intelligence and counter-intelligence, as well as between other intelligence services – especially between political intelligence and military strategic intelligence – is a very sensitive task requiring constant supervision from the highest levels of administration, which relies on its intelligence as an invaluable instrument of Russia’s national security policy.