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"To lack intelligence is to be in the ring blindfolded."

Former Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David M. Shoup

"Cheshire Puss." she began rather timidly..." would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." said the cat. Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

"For knowledge itself is power."

"I command an army which in the event of a conflict with Germany must immediately bear the brunt of the fighting. I know absolutely nothing about the German army. The General Staff tell me nothing. My own officers tell me nothing. I hope you will tell me something." [1918] To the new head of his Intelligence Section, Fratišek Moravec.

"Electronic intelligence, valuable though it is in its own way, serves to augment the daunting volume of information which is directed at headquarters from satellite and aerial reconnaissance, intelligence-gathering ships, optical observation, special forces, armoured reconnaissance teams, and the interrogation of prisoners. Nowadays the commander is confronted with too much information, rather than too little, and it is his informed judgment which ultimately decides what is relevant and important."  [NATO, The Warsaw Pact and the Superpowers, 2° ed. p. 33

"Ideally there should be one single organisation responsible for all security intelligence within the country. If there is more than one, it is almost impossible to define the respective responsibilities of each organisation or to devise any means of coordinating their activities. .., agents, especially the less reliable, will get themselves on to the payroll of several organisations and feed them the same unreliable information. Such information seemingly confirmed from different sources will be accepted as authentic. The different organisations will withhold information from one another in order to obtain the credit for themselves. A promising line of intelligence may well be cut inadvertently, or even intentionally, by another organisation. Mutual suspicion and jealousies will arise, quite likely with the result that the separate organisations merely end up spying on each other. .. The best organisation to be responsible for all internal security intelligence work is the special branch of a police force rather than a completely separate organisation. Is is a great advantage if intelligence officers have police powers and are able to call when necessary on other branches of the police for support and assistance for developing their intelligence work." SIS Director of Operations (1950)

"[It was an] intelligence stable [SIS] where Eton counted more than Lady Manners' Grammar School and membership of White's rather more even than Eton, while Oxford and Cambridge had preference over Manchester University and belonging to a Guard's regiment meant more than experience in the Intelligence Corps." Biography of Maurice Oldfield

"I learned how easy it was, if one was so inclined, to build up a report into rather more than it was worth, and how some people would cover hours of fornication with some very dubious intelligence as the end result. I began to see how all-important was the job of the man at the desk, analysing it all. I also saw how vital it was sometimes to provide more material than was really necessary. It was the total output, the useless and the useful, which really helped the interpreter of intelligence in the end." [p. 49].

"It is always worth while understanding the other person's religious background, what he thinks and feels, or indeed if he has no such thoughts at all. Intelligence is all about what people think and feel." [p. 112].

"The idea that you can trap the IRA with a criminal buffoon is one of the wilder fantasies this side of the Irish Sea." [on intelligence agents]

"You can infiltrate rogues as agents in Northern Ireland and you can pay the price by being shown up as the employer of rogues. It a risk with doubtful promises of success. Or you can try to win over some of the terrorists, which offers no easy solution, but a rather better chance of success, though it can still be interpreted by the PIRA as concocting evidence. There is absolutely no safe and sure way to defeat terrorism, but on balance I prefer to win informers." [p.247]

"The first principle of deception is to aim to strengthen an opponent's preconceptions." Forearmed, p. 48.

"The Intelligence Corps found itself becoming, in the words of one officer, 'The receptacle and guardian of the cumulative experience of interrogation', a role it still maintains today." Forearmed, p. 95.

"The successful Intelligence officer must be cool, courageous, and adroit, patient and imperturbable, discreet and trustworthy. He must understand the handling of troops and have a knowledge of the art of war. He must be able to win the confidence of his General, and to inspire confidence in his subordinates. He must have resolution to continue unceasingly his search for information, even in the most disheartening circumstances and after repeated failures. He must have endurance to submit silently to criticism, much of which may be based on ignorance or jealousy. And he must be able to deal with men, to approach his source of information with tact and skill, whether such source be a patriotic gentleman or an abandoned traitor. " Forearmed p. 13.

December 1945 conference to consider the future of Army photographic interpretation: "'It is probable that qualities count more than qualifications. Of the qualities, visual memory, speed of decision, patience and attraction to detail head the list. The best interpreters have a research-type of mind and realisation of the significance of events.' The same could be extended to all in every field concerned with Strategic Intelligence." Forearmed p. 111.

"Only the enemy in front, every other bugger behind."

"Scholars and spies can give to our national strategy and to our foreign policy the enormous benefit of objectivity if, but only if, our national leaders are disposed to protect our open society by maintaining and using, not abusing, a sophisticated secret intelligence service. A free nation with accurate knowledge of the world around it, particularly of hostile and secretive closed societies, is more likely to survive and prosper than one that relies on wishful thinking. Spies and scholars can give significant clues to future opportunities and dangers, if kept at work on a systematic, stable well-coordinated programme calculated to find facts that interpret them objectively."  Foreword to Secrets, Spies & Scholars: Blueprint of the essential CIA.

"The Army in Northern Ireland is divided between the 'green army', which operates openly in uniform, and those who operate in civilian clothes and unmarked cars. One senior officer spoke of the 'field army green, as opposed to the field army you-can't-see-it-now'." Inside the British Army, p. 250.

"The Intelligence Corps .. differs in its selection process for young officers. The attraction to fantasists is obvious. Candidates have to be good officer material first; special aptitudes come second. A brilliant linguist who cannot organise a platoon attack will never get through Sandhurst. 'We aren't too fussed as to what they read, although a good analytical subject is useful, and of course a language.'
 After passing out from Sandhurst, the subaltern spends a month at Ashford on 'corps briefing and orientation'  before he is sent off to an infantry battalion. This attachment ensures that he acquires an experience and an understanding of the mainstream Army, and also provides him with useful employment, since there are so few jobs for inexperienced lieutenants .. After at least nine months with the infantry, he returns to Ashford for three months' special-to-arm training . Depending on his specialisation, he will then go on to language training - German, Russian and Arabic are the main languages - or to his first job with an Intelligence Section at a headquarters in the United Kingdom, or to Northern Ireland .. From then on careers can follow any one of a number of paths, but all are subject to the regulated steps of courses and exams on the road to Staff College.
The Intelligence Corps Directorate has to root for its officers on selection boards because the rest of the Army does not really understand their work, and therefore cannot judge an officer's performance .. Partly thanks to the combat arm tag, and the years of close work with the infantry in Northern Ireland, the Intelligence Corps is increasingly accepted as mainstream, and seen less and less as 'funny'."  pp. 392-393.

"A small corps, especially one working in the world of intelligence, could even produce an introverted, even paranoid mentality, but the Intelligence Corps is spread around in small detachments working closely with the field army so the risk is reduced. And although it is different from the rest of the Army in many ways, the Intelligence Corps is not as eccentric or unmilitary as outsiders might imagine. First names may be used in operational circumstances for reasons of personal security, but they are 'not as informal as special forces, who tend to be very informal in certain circumstances'."  p. 393.

"The Intelligence Corps has no real civilian equivalent, except perhaps the Security Service, which would hardly accept the loss of its personnel on transition to war. About 500 strong, of whom nearly one quarter are officers, the Intelligence Corps Territorials represent, in the words of one of their Regular Army colonels, an 'amazing range of qualifications and professions ... Lawyers and BBC producers are very happy as lance corporals. The Int Corps is one area where the one-Army concept is a reality."  p. 459

"You cannot convert the absence of information into a conclusion." Sum of all fears, p. 935.

"There is a difference between not knowing anything and understanding that you don't know." Sum of all fears, p. 936.

"The rudiments of military intelligence [are] not a matter of individual prowess, producing dramatic coups, but a painstaking labour, the result of teamwork piecing together an infinite number of small facts." Agent Extraordinaire, p. 67.

"What information he [Canadian commander] had been given by the UN was worse than useless and he felt that national intelligence sources were essential." Broken lives, p.37.

"Getting the operational plan properly worked out by reconnaissance in advance is crucial to the subsequent success of any operation, which is why we were spending so much time looking at the options before the final decisions were made."

"He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child. Teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him."

"A great part of the information obtained in war is contradictory, a still greater part is false and by far the greatest part is of doubtful character."

"We soon came to the conclusion that a careful reading of the press could often produce results far superior to secret reports of agents, and that our own analysts should draw independent conclusions from diverse sources in order to evaluate raw intelligence material."

"The problem with technical intelligence is that it is essentially information without evaluation. Technical intelligence can only record what has happened so far - not what might happen in the future. Human sources can give information about plans, can analyse the political and military outlook, and can place documents and conversations in context. As any intelligence officer knows, far too much of the job is spent sifting through mountains of data in search of a valuable nugget ... Even though the role of technical intelligence will increase and will supplement what used to be done by human means, it is the human factor that makes an espionage service successful, not its high-tech bells and whistles."

"Pre-crisis political and military intelligence must have two components to e of use. First, it must quantify the degree of instability in a given situation and chart its likely development .Second, and far more difficult, it must indicate as precisely as possible when that development will precipitate a trauma - and do so in time for the information to be of use to policy-makers."

"The whole point of a secret service is that it should be secret." Water on the Brain