Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2016 | Page 110

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Hughes-Wilson is particularly adept at fleshing out the historical development
of SIGNIT and IMINT from the most rudimentary technology to the highly advanced
equipment of today. His case study on how signals intelligence was crucial in ensuring
the victory of the U.S. Navy over the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway is particularly
gripping. It is also enlightening about the organizational pathologies perpetually at
play in contemporary intelligence structures, one aspect of which relates to the vexed
question of the ownership of SIGNET: does it reside with the communicators and
signalers on the one hand or with the intelligence people?
Hughes-Wilson is an engaging writer who brings the reader inside the mind
of the prudent intelligence operative: consistently asking questions and performing
an officious bystander test as he sifts through large amounts of information. He is
very good at guiding the reader through the practical application of the theories
undergirding the intelligence process. This is particularly illuminating in regard to
his summation of the severe deficiencies in the American intelligence apparatus in
1941 on the eve of a war that all knew was coming. For it is the case that the problems
leading up to Pearl Harbor, including those of over compartmentalization and interorganizational
rivalries, are ones of enduring relevance and bring into focus the need
for all-source integration and assessment; an ideal which is difficult to achieve within
any national security establishment.
The choice of case studies tailored to fit a particular theme of the intelligence
process, whether related to failures or successes, provides the basis for a series of
illuminating deconstructions. For instance, the failure of the political leaders of the
Soviet Union and Israel to predict the oncoming onslaughts, respectively, of Operation
Barbarossa in 1941 and Operation Badr in 1973 was due, Hughes-Wilson argues,
not with nonpossession of the correct information predicting enemy intentions but
instead centered on the translation of information into intelligence. In the former
case, it hinged on a developed organizational culture of only reporting information
which the dictator found palatable while the latter was caused by the monopolization
of all-source intelligence by Israeli Military Intelligence. On the issue of protecting
state secrets, he uses the recent high-profile cases of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange,
and Edward Snowden as exemplars explaining the impact of an inadequate security
checking mechanism, the increasing difficulty of securing masses of electronically
collected data in the high-technology age and the eternal dilemma of balancing
national security concerns with that of protecting whistleblowers acting in the public
interest. For deception, the Allied planning of the highly risky, but ultimately successful,
D-Day landings is used while the area dealing with intelligence fiascos considers the
U.S. Special Forces operations in Son Tay, Vietnam and Iran at the time of the hostage
crisis. The author also provides an excoriating analysis of the role played by the leaders
of the British intelligence community in enabling the administration of Tony Blair to
produce a “dodgy dossier” which led the country into a war of dubious legality against
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
The issue of intelligence and the challenges posed to national security by
terrorism and by cyber warfare are also given consideration by the author. He provides
a thoughtful summary on the grievances and “catalysts for conflict” that often form the
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