Michael Werner, Sources and methods for the study of intelligence,
in
Loch K. Johnson (ed.), Handbook of Intelligence Studies,
Routledge, 2007
Michael Warner serves as
the Historian for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Sources on the outside
(22) Such a labor has traditionally resembled the
writing of ancient history, with the
advantage (sometimes) of having living participants to interview. Like ancient history, much of the best work
is heavily literary in character, rather than historical in the Rankean sense of depicting events wie es
eigentlich gewesen war (“as they actually happened”). This is not
meant as a criticism or a pejorative. Livy,
Tacitus, and Thucydides, to name
but three ancient historians, sought by the portrayal of fascinating but flawed
characters against the backdrop of grand narratives to illustrate the larger
themes of nature, society, and Man himself.3 Where histories of intelligence aspire
to be more Rankean than
literary, they tend to resemble in some ways the works of modern historians
writing about ancient times.
(23) Integrating the inside and the outside is another
parallel with ancient history. When
real documents begin turning up in public archives, it can be tricky to match
them up with the accreted legends that both informed and were themselves formed
by an earlier body of literature written without any access to the sources. Ancient historians have to do a similar
thing in trying to square the tangible discoveries of modern archeology with
the epics of Homer, for instance, or
the writings of Herodotus. Indeed,
here is the capital shortcoming of intelligence scholarship on the outside: the
lack of reliable data, and the consequent inability to determine when all the
important records have been consulted.
Notes
3 “My purpose is not to relate at length every motion,
but only such as were conspicuous for excellence or notorious for infamy. This
I regard as history’s highest function, to let no worthy action be
uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to
evil words and deeds.” Tacitus, Annals,
III:65.