Intelligence services have played a decisive role in military matters for centuries. In recent years, the art of espionage and undetected information gathering has been perfected by the USA, which now spends more than 150 billion US dollars on its intelligence apparatus – per year, mind you.
Back in the early 17th century, the English philosopher Francis Bacon coined the remarkable phrase: “Knowledge is power.” In the secret service milieu of the USA in the mid-20th century, this mutated into: “The Need to Know”. Before and after that, espionage – as one of the oldest trades of mankind – always revolved around the procurement, evaluation and application of information, usually secret, in order to protect one’s own interests, especially against real or perceived enemies. Sometimes also against allies or friends. It is therefore not surprising that even in pre-modern times, it was primarily about state or government-related knowledge, which was particularly important in the defense, preparation and of course even more so in the fighting of wars and conflicts, i.e. in military matters, and has remained so to this day. Until well into the 19th century, the creation of what we now call intelligence knowledge was generally carried out by individuals, manageable cells of intelligence collaborators or more or less extensive networks of spies. In this pre-modern form, intelligence activities were more likely to be the responsibility of the central politics and administration of a state, the military, diplomacy and various control and censorship authorities. It was therefore already geared towards both internal security and external interests and threats. Until the last third of the 19th century, however, these secret activities lacked a distinct form of organization and continuity everywhere; for centuries, they were essentially ad hoc in nature, often developed spontaneously and were often only intended for a relatively short period of time. This can be seen particularly well in the example of the USA, where a reasonably consistent military reconnaissance of the respective opponent can be spoken of as early as the War of Independence, but even more so in the Civil War of 1861-1965. At the end of this uncompromising conflict, however, these information-gathering units of the army were almost all disbanded. It was only with the establishment of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in 1882 that an intelligence instrument of the US Navy was founded that still exists today, which has contributed significantly to the expansion and success of US naval power since the end of the 19th century and to the current, almost unrestricted dominance of the Americans on the world’s oceans and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future in coordination with the latest weapons and satellite technologies.
In 1885, the US Army, which was rather insignificant by international standards at the time, followed suit and created its Division of Military Information, soon renamed the Military Information Division (MID). From 1889, the US government sent its first military attachés to the centers of power in Europe, and later also to Mexico and Japan. When a general staff was also introduced in the American army in 1903, all intelligence agendas at headquarters fell to the Second Division, General Staff, known as G-2 for short. It was not until the USA entered the First World War in 1917 that intelligence units were generally deployed in the field for the first time at the insistence of Ralph van Deman, the father of US military intelligence. By the end of the war, however, no more than 1,200 men had been assigned to this special area and the significance of the units remained relatively low. This was to change little in the interwar period. In terms of military technology, America fell far behind the other superpowers; only a few months before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had an outward-looking, civilian intelligence service created, the largely unknown Coordinator of Information (COI), from which the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) emerged after the USA entered the war in June 1942, which in turn was to become the actual forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) founded in 1947. The intelligence catastrophe of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor naturally led to an accelerated expansion of all military intelligence facilities, whose success in deciding the war is ultimately closely linked to the code names ULTRA (decryption of the German Enigma machine) and MAGIC (decryption of Japanese radio intelligence). The close intelligence cooperation between Washington and London undoubtedly resulted in important tactical and, above all, strategic advantages over the Axis powers. In the autumn of 1945, the new US President Harry Truman had the OSS disbanded, and it was not easy for the army intelligence services in the occupied territories (including Austria), organized as G-2 and the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), to adapt to the Soviet Union, which was defined as the new main adversary. In this new world order, known as the Cold War, the reorganization of the American security system took place primarily through the National Security Act of 1947 (standardization of weapons in the newly created Pentagon, establishment of the National Security Council in the White House, founding of the CIA), which created the basis for facing the new challenge posed by the communist Eastern Bloc under the leadership of Moscow. Under strict secrecy, the National Security Agency (NSA) was created in 1952 in Fort Meade on the outskirts of Washington, which became the new center of global radio, telephone and later Internet interception and today represents up to 70 percent of the capacity of the American intelligence community. The military intelligence sector, which reports directly to the Pentagon, was combined in the so-called Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which also reports to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition, the specific services of the three branches of the armed forces (ONI, G-2 and ISR) continue to exist.
It was only in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that the post of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created in 2004, an all-powerful intelligence coordinator directly in charge of all intelligence agencies in the USA – probably 17 in total today – with a staff of well over 150,000 people and a budget of probably more than 150 billion US dollars a year.
The traditional responsibilities and functions of (military) intelligence services have remained the same: Obtaining and exploiting information externally; covertly gaining advantages and surveillance, also externally; and defense against threats internally. In Austria, these services are therefore called the Army Intelligence Office and the Counterintelligence Office. Since 2002, the non-military counterpart has been called the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counter-Terrorism, formerly the State Police. The seemingly countless mishaps and failures of military intelligence services should not go unmentioned. As a rule, the media and the public discuss them at length. Intelligence service successes typically tend to remain secret. Often, intelligence disasters happen less because of a lack of information than because of ethnic arrogance, mistrust or a systemic refusal to coordinate, as Pearl Harbor or 9/11 show. One more word on the situation of international intelligence research: it has only really taken place in a substantial form since the 1980s as a sub-discipline in several subject areas (e.g. history, international relations, military and communication sciences). It benefits the services, even if its secrecy, even about long-completed historical events in liberal-democratic societies, often damages its own public image. The responsible citizen should be given more insight into the legitimate work of intelligence services. Ultimately, these services can only benefit from the trust and attentive cooperation of citizens interested in the common good, because intelligence services are still subject to a certain moral reservation. Since 2001, ethical and moral questions have increasingly been raised about the role and responsibilities of intelligence services, especially in the USA, whose freedom and civil rights once gave rise to revolution and the fight for freedom against the paternalism and oppression of the mother state. Intelligence as a central instrument for recognizing, combating and potentially overcoming internal and external threats, not least of a military nature, will continue to be important for the USA as the hegemonic regulatory power of the current world order. It is therefore to be expected that the buzzword of the coming decades will be closely interwoven with concepts of security and intelligence, similar to the concept of the nuclear threat in the international system of the Cold War in the second half of the 20th century. The challenges for intelligence and secret services are therefore likely to increase rather than decrease.
