Problem of Secret Intelligence

Kjetil Anders Hatlebrekke is Specialist Director Intelligence Development in the Norwegian Intelligence Service and former Associate Professor at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School. He earned his PhD from King´s College, London. Hatlebrekke has served in the Norwegian Armed Forces since 1990, and in the Intelligence Service for the last 24 years. He has operational experience from Bosnia, Kosovo, the Middle East and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan he served as an intelligence officer in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Anaconda. The unit he was in was awarded the US Navy Presidential Unit Citation. Hatlebrekke has been awarded with the Norwegian Intelligence Service’s Medal of Merit, and he was the first to be awarded it publicly.

This is an important and courageous book that needs to be read by practitioners and deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in secret intelligence in international affairs and the prevention of strategic surprises in particular. My heavily dog-eared copy attests to the number of insights throughout its pages. It is my hunch that, in its call for a more open, encompassing and creative view of intelligence as an activity, process and output, this book will become a classic in intelligence studies.

• Part I1. Cognition 2. Intelligence and Discourse FailurePart II 3. Secrecy and Intelligence Tribal LanguagePart III4. On Collection 5. On Analysis6. On Dissemination7. On Action and Decision by the Intelligence ConsumerConclusionBibliography