01 A Brief History of Intelligence

[0:04]In this module, we will examine in brief the history of crime and intelligence analysis, starting with the history of intelligence itself and how its use has developed over the years. Culminating in a brief explanation of the difference between crime analysis and intelligence analysis. Fuller explanations of the various concepts will be discussed in subsequent modules. Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information which is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. More than 3,000 years ago, the Hittite, an Indo-European people living in the region of Turkey, produced intelligence reports detailing information about their enemies written on clay tablets. In the time of Alexander the Great, travelers coming from foreign lands to the East were questioned about their knowledge of other lands. The information informed Alexander's invasion of Persia. The first known intelligent thesis was written about 500 BC. It is called The Art of War and was based upon the deliberations of a very successful Chinese warlord called Sun-tzu. Sun-tzu embraced a coherent vision that emphasized the ruthless practice of efficient warfare, a necessity in an era of multi-state conflict when even victory might doom a state. Knowledge-based, it stresses the application of overwhelming strategic power to exploit localized imbalances and thereby rest swift victory. Key concepts include the necessity of acquiring intelligence, a consequent need to employ spies, evaluating opponents, manipulating enemies, being formless and unknowable, creating and employing strategic power, Chi or spirit, the unorthodox and orthodox, leadership and command, configurations of terrain, thwarting the enemy's plans and bulking his alliances, and achieving victory as economically as possible, preferably without costly combat. This information was from Ralph Sawyer at www.ralphsawyer.com/work1.html. The principles advocated by Sun-tzu are still being studied by militarists and business management, and are all still applicable today as they were two and a half thousand years ago. In the more modern times, the use of intelligence has remained the purview of the military, although often very much as a poor relation until the turn of the 19th century. That said, there are numerous examples of intelligence being used outside direct military conflict. Sir Francis Walsingham is usually remembered as the spymaster of Queen Elizabeth I, cited as one of the earliest practitioners of modern intelligence. Walsingham is frequently cited as one of the earliest practitioners of modern intelligence, both for espionage and for domestic security. He oversaw operations which penetrated the heart of the Spanish military preparation, gathering intelligence from across Europe, and disrupted a range of plots against the Queen. However, the use of intelligence organizations within a military context tended to be hadoc, only being forced specific campaigns and disbanded during peacetime. John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough stated that, "No war can be conducted successfully without early and good intelligence." During the Napoleonic Wars, Lord Wellington employed exploring officers, the most famous being Lieutenant Colonel Colquhoun-Grant and George Scovell, his code breaker. Despite the influence of these great commanders, the military intelligence organizations were disbanded in peacetime until the time of the Boer War. A variety of information and intelligence gathering units were raised during the Boer War 1899 to 1901, such as Rimington's Tigers and the Corps of Scouts. As a consequence, there developed a need to analyze the information collected. This led to a three-tier system of sources and agencies employed to collect the information. Field intelligence officers with combat units and staff intelligence officers with the formation headquarters able to analyze the information. In the years between the end of the Boer War and the start of the First World War, a small counter-intelligence department, later known as MI5, was established under Captain Vernon Kell in 1909. By 1912, MI6 established under command of Commander Mansfield-Smith Cumming, its remit to control intelligence gathering overseas. He was known throughout the espionage world simply as C. The original title C being the designation of the departmental head. This name stuck and is probably one of Ian Fleming's influences in calling his character M in the Bond movies. The activities in the modern area of spies was refined during the Cold War of the latter half of the 20th century. Led by the two superpowers of the time, the United States on one side and Russia on the other. Each side constantly attempting to gain an advantage over the other using intelligence to achieve their aim. The intelligence collected in the modern era being very much within the realms of the intelligence agencies, such as MI5, MI6, the CIA and the KGB. Whilst it would be naive to think that such a requirement had disappeared because of the reduction in the Russian sphere of influence, there has been a shift in recent years of focus towards the intelligence requirements necessitated by terrorism. Whilst the roots of intelligence analysis were founded in the edit world of espionage, our focus is upon crime and criminal intelligence analysis. Intelligence gained a foothold within the world of policing in the 1880s. In March 1883, the Metropolitan Police Special Irish Branch was formed to counter Irish Fenian terrorism on mainland Britain. The term Irish was dropped from its title, as Special Branch took on responsibility for combatting a wide range of extremist and terrorist activity. Special Branch had responsibility for gathering, collating, and exploiting intelligence on extremist political and terrorist activity, disseminating intelligence for operational use and assisting other government agencies to counter threats to security of the United Kingdom. In the United States, the first organized police service was established in Boston in 1838, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854. Early law enforcement intelligence units were established during the Prohibition years of the 20s and early 30s, collecting information on the high-profile criminals of the time such as Al Capone. The tool of choice from that time until the 1960s was the intelligence dossier, a simple record of what was known of the subject. During the intervening period, there were few developments in the law enforcement intelligence arena until Anacapa Life Sciences developed a series of charting techniques in the 1970s. Anacapa Life Sciences Inc. is an American company formed in the late 1960s. The company has completed research and development projects for over 200 different government agencies, academic institutions, and industrial organizations. The company name is derived from the name of an island in the Channel Islands Archipelago, Anacapa, a volcanic island located 14 miles off the coast of Ventura, California. In 1971, the company developed techniques for intelligence analysis, providing training to law enforcement, business and military organizations throughout the world. The techniques the company developed are based upon social network techniques and are used to analyze patterns of interactions and to understand the flow of information. The techniques they developed include amongst others, the intelligence process, link or association analysis and commodity flow charting. These will be looked at elsewhere in the course. Crime analysis and criminal intelligence analysis in the world of war, spies and espionage. The aim of intelligence gathering was to determine the plans and activities of the enemy, so that they could be thwarted and the enemy vanquished. Intelligence would loosely speaking have consisted of two types: topical-related information and quantitative information. The former, consisting of specific information about an event or activity. For example, the enemy was moving resources towards a border area, whereas quantitative information might consist of data such as the amount of radio traffic between units. These different types of intelligence have analogies in the world of crime and criminal. Crime analysis is concerned with quantitative information. Often, it will involve the examination of crime in aggregate as opposed to in isolation. So for example, the number of burglaries or housebreakings in a particular area. It is also likely to be concerned with the characteristics of an offence, rather than the offender. Criminal intelligence analysis in contrast is concerned with topical related or qualitative information. This often involves the examination of pieces of information about a specific individual, activity, crime or event. Often, it will involve the examination of individual pieces of information. So, for example, information about the activities of a specific criminal or criminal group. Clearly, crime analysis and criminal intelligence analysis do not exist in isolation from one another. Either can inform the other. Arguably, crime analysis is a relatively new concept, in that it wasn't until the mid-1970s that crime analysis procedures were developed, although its roots go back before the formation of the Metropolitan Police. In 1752, Henry Fielding, a renowned author and magistrate at the Westminster Court in London, collected and analyzed data on thefts and individuals believed to involved in such crimes. He then published a periodical entitled The Covent Garden Journal which was used to circulate descriptions of wanted persons. Later work was done at Scotland Yard to classify various types of criminal modus operandi and to use that knowledge to identify individuals that warranted police attention. The renowned August Vollmer, a leading figure in the development of the field of criminal justice in the early 20th century, introduced the techniques thus employed to the United States. He was the first police manager to realize the advantages of aggregating calls for service data, to inform decision making in determining beat boundaries and deploying patrol officers. The Crime Analysis Manual was subsequently taken up by Vollmer's protege, Orlando Wilson. In his book, Police Administration 1950, he discussed the analysis of police records to identify changes in criminal activities that might warrant prompt police intervention. Wilson described crime analysis as a means of identifying the locations, time, special characteristics, similarity to other criminal incidents and various other significant facts that may aid identification of either a criminal or the criminal pattern. Of the two disciplines, criminal intelligence analysis is the one most closely related to traditional military or espionage intelligence analysis. It is more reliant on pieces of information or intelligence collected, very often from sources of various kinds in the field or in military parlance, the theater of operation. So, for example, information that James Brown and Mary Smith are associates and are involved in the production of cannabis would be information subject of criminal intelligence analysis. Likewise, information that Mohammed Basra and Omar Ben Suleiman attended the same terrorist training camp in January 2008. In a nutshell, criminal intelligence analysis is concerned with the relationships between people and other entities, for example, organizations, locations, vehicles, telephones, and so forth. Crime analysis and criminal intelligence analysis both work towards the same goal, that is, to identify criminals and criminal events so that managers can make informed decisions to address the matters thus identified as appropriate.