NATO Review: Intelligence disclosure as a strategic messaging tool

In the period between the WP article’s publication and 23 February 2022, the US and UK intelligence services made eight disclosures refuting Russian propaganda and exposing the Kremlin’s plans for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The repeated public disclosure of information about hostile actors’ plans and intentions, derived from classified sources – also known as intelligence – was widely seen as an unusual move, since security services rarely disclose what they know to the general public.

American and British intelligence disclosures in the prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine were at an “unprecedented scale”, according to some observers. Likewise, the Director of the British signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, stated in March 2022 that “deeply secret intelligence is being released” and that “at this pace and scale, it really is unprecedented”. Examples from the Cold War show that while such disclosures are not novel in and of themselves, the new element this time around was the breadth, scope, and number of the intelligence disclosures. Where the US Office of the Director for National Intelligence once disclosed one or two requests to downgrade intelligence reports per month, these days, it often receives more than one or two requests per day, according to a Time Magazine report.

Citing the American intelligence community’s accuracy in exposing Russia’s plots regarding Ukraine, US Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, Brent Holmgren, deemed the US intelligence diplomacy on Ukraine “successful”, whereas then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that NATO Allies had disclosed intelligence to the public in order “to mainly try to prevent Russia from attacking”. How did the primary goal of intelligence disclosures change from deterring Russia to unifying Allies?

This article will discuss how we can understand the notion of intelligence disclosure, why states sometimes choose to disclose secret intelligence, and what the potential implications of intelligence disclosures may be. It suggests that while the abundance of intelligence disclosures in recent years may point to a more “transparent” role of secret services, disclosures have more importantly opened a debate on whether the boundaries between policy and intelligence practice are becoming increasingly blurred. Adding to these accounts, this paper proposes that the power of intelligence disclosure lies in the epistemic status of secret information, as opposed to other forms of information.

Sharing classified information with the general public may be a potent political tool. Information that is concealed has a special social status as it is perceived to be more valuable than other forms of information. This is what some scholars have termed the “capital of the secret”. Secrecy can be understood as a form of investment or capital because it may create feelings of jealousy, paranoia, confusion, mystery, intrigue, suspicion and fascination. Due to its social status, revealing “secret” information may be considered more valuable than merely presenting a policy.

For example, in his work on state secrecy, author William Walters showed how the 1995 public revelation of the CIA’s top secret Venona project – a programme of cryptanalysis into Soviet communications from World War II to the 1980s – illustrated how the public, as well as scholars saw the disclosure of Venona as revealing a world that had been hidden to them. Reporting on the disclosure of Venona, Walters illustrated how the media acted as heroic extractors of truth, employing tropes from the genres of detective, mystery, and spy fiction, which emphasised how the project was stored behind closed doors inside a tightly knit intelligence community. The public’s imagination of secrecy made the fact that formerly top secret information was disclosed perhaps more important than the information on the cryptanalysis itself.

To take another example, the French spy thriller series Le Bureau des légendes (2015-2020) gained a lot of its status as credibly representing real world espionage due to its links to the actual Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), France’s equivalent to the American CIA and British MI6. Using the DGSE’s authentic logo and reportedly prescreening episodes to the DGSE’s employees, Le Bureau des légendes was seen in public discourse as revealing a hitherto concealed truth about the DGSE. Secrecy around what the real DGSE does means that the series’ claims to show an underlying espionage reality cannot be proven, nor dismissed. Yet, public discourse surrounding the links between the series’ creators and the DGSE gave it the epistemic status of showing how ‘real’ espionage works, and helps to explain the series’ popularity in France. As in Walter’s case study of the Venona project, the feeling that one gets a glimpse of what is happening on the ‘inside’ of a secret world can be thrilling to the general public.

Secrecy, therefore, plays a peculiar role in the public’s view on intelligence. But secrecy is also decisive in assessing the roles intelligence plays in policymaking, and also how we understand the phenomenon of intelligence disclosure. On the one hand, the sources and the methods used to gather information must remain unknown to those outside the intelligence community. On the other hand, at least in liberal democracies, intelligence services are dependent on public support for maintaining trust and enabling recruitment. As such, maintaining secrecy while gaining public support represents a dilemma for intelligence services.

The relationship between intelligence and policy is also characterised by secrecy. Intelligence is supposed to help policy-makers think through an issue and play out various scenarios and their implications. But it is traditionally not the job of intelligence agencies to take a position on policy choices, which is why intelligence agencies are blocked from political decision-making. Theorists of intelligence disagree on what the ideal relationship between policy-makers and intelligence analysts should be. While some hold that intelligence employees need to stay at arms-length to avoid ‘contaminating’ their analysis, others find that interaction with policy-makers would not affect the objectivity of intelligence analysis. The latter point of view might explain a decision by policy-makers to disclose intelligence, where its intended role is to shape policy and actors’ behaviour. Yet, disclosing intelligence to the public does not come without costs or risks.

The disclosure of secret intelligence also represents a dilemma for governments. What Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson call the “disclosure dilemma” arises when states possess information whose wide dissemination would yield political benefits, but could also trigger negative political or operational consequences. An added dilemma is in reaping the intended political or military effect while keeping the specific methods and sources covert.

The disclosure dilemma is further exacerbated when human sources are involved. As Dylan & Maguire point out, the better access to information a human source has, the more difficult it becomes to use this intelligence out of fear of compromising the source. For example, Kremlin aide Oleg Smolenkov was allegedly instrumental in providing the CIA with intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself ordered and orchestrated the 2016 US elections interference, information that US authorities later made public in their efforts to deter Russia from engaging further. In the summer of 2017, Smolenkov was reportedly exfiltrated to the US while on holiday in Montenegro. While details of Smolenkov’s story still remain unknown, much seems to suggest that the release of the intelligence he gathered made him more exposed, possibly requiring his escape from Russia.

In cases where intelligence agencies cannot share the source of their intelligence, it is more difficult to present the information as convincing. This is very much what happened in early 2022: while satellite imagery showed Russian troop buildups, the exact provenance of the disclosed intelligence asserting that Russia was going to invade Ukraine remained classified, and since the exact source of the intelligence could not be shared, some allies were reportedly skeptical of British and American assessments regarding Putin’s plans.

The skepticism of some European countries to US intelligence warnings apparently contributed to Washington’s decision to go public with their intelligence. Based on talks with the CIA Director, the National Security Advisor, and the Director of National Intelligence, the Time Magazine report mentioned earlier found that the first target of the US disclosure campaign was Putin himself, so as to “disabuse Russia of the idea that they could have the element of surprise”. After Burns’ phone call to Putin appeared to be futile, the decision to start sharing intelligence was reportedly informed by the need to convince some of the US’ European allies, who didn’t believe a full-scale war in Europe was possible.

While intelligence disclosures may invest policymakers with status and authority, many observers hold that disclosures also risk politicising intelligence, which could imply that analysts “cherry-pick” preferred conclusions and impose ideological preconceptions on the interpretation of ambiguous information. Former CIA agents David Gioe and Michael Morell warned in a recent Foreign Affairs article that disclosures may politicise intelligence and thereby threaten one of its biggest advantages, namely its reputation for objectivity. Gioe and Morell’s intervention touches upon a complex debate on what objectivity means in intelligence practice. While one camp advocates for the notion that intelligence should represent an apolitical and detached ideal, the other camp – known as the Gates School – claims that it is perfectly possible to remain objective while at the same time recognising that intelligence is a political endeavor.

The debates about which intelligence service was right or wrong in predicting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 illustrate these tensions: those who failed to predict the invasion were seen as failing to live up to the norm of objectivity in intelligence. For example, the German Federal Intelligence Service and the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) predicted it was unlikely that Putin would invade. However, were these assessments simply “wrong” or were there competing assessments within these agencies that concurred with those of the CIA and MI6? We can’t be sure, because the assessments that were not disclosed obviously did not make it into the public discourse. As a result, the Anglo-American assessments were seen as more “objective” than the French and German ones, even though we don’t know how they came about. The public’s insight into the “whole story” of what intelligence agencies know will always remain out of reach, which also means that intelligence “disclosure” is never a full revelation.

Since we don’t know what intelligence remained classified, we cannot assess the reasoning behind the French and German conclusions. Perhaps they underestimated what costs Russia would be willing to pay, or underestimated or even ignored the imperialist and nationalist turn in Russian politics. While such miscalculations could indeed stem from politicisation of intelligence, they could also have other causes. For example, a key aspect of the “psychology of intelligence analysis” is that when one lacks understanding and access to what others are thinking, this is replaced with one’s own judgements.

We cannot know the specific effects, if any, that the intelligence disclosures of NATO Allies had on Putin’s plans in the run-up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and answering this question will be the job of future historians. As previously mentioned, then NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg stated that the primary goal of intelligence disclosures was to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine. Stoltenberg’s statement suggests that intelligence disclosures would therefore contribute to deterrence: convincing a potential aggressor that aggression would incur a cost, which would far outweigh a potential gain.

Ofek Riemer, a scholar who specialises in intelligence disclosure argues that the intelligence disclosures in Russia’s war in Ukraine played a primarily political role: it helped consolidate unity around NATO’s narrative and painted Putin as a villain. According to Riemer, if NATO had wanted to deter Russia, it would have been willing to use force and incur a risk of war, and would furthermore have acted more cautiously with public intelligence disclosure to maintain superiority. Even Ukrainian President Zelenskyy appeared to have reservations about the US disclosures. On January 28, 2022, Zelenskyy stated that Biden’s warnings could “create panic”. The extent to which these disclosures were successful or not, depends on what their end goal consisted in. The disclosure efforts by the US and the UK were therefore more likely to have an effect on convincing European allies, and possibly, parts of the Russian population, than deterring Putin. When Putin decided to launch its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO was unified, and in that sense, the Anglo-American campaign was successful in rallying Allies.

The success of the American and British predictions was also supported by the fact that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was a massive intelligence failure for Russian intelligence services. Intelligence scholars have suggested that this stems from the ‘autocratic intelligence paradox’. Since autocratic leaders use security services to suppress all form of domestic dissent, they are more reliant on intelligence than leaders in democratic states. However, they are also less likely to identify weaknesses in their security apparatus, which can significantly threaten their grip on power. So while failing to provide accurate intelligence on Ukraine in 2022, those same Russian security services have been indispensable to Putin in securing his regime from domestic opponents.

The aim of this paper was to reflect upon the roles intelligence disclosures played in the run up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was informed by what appeared to be a paradox, namely that even though they might have been intended to prevent Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, UK and US intelligence disclosures were perceived a “success”, particularly in creating unity amongst NATO Allies. As Dylan & Maguire note, the disclosures helped create “narrative superiority” which contributed to fostering an international front against Russia.

A key question for the future is whether we will see more or less disclosures in the coming years. Given the high risks involved in intelligence disclosure, states tend to prioritise secrecy over short-term diplomatic gains. While the sharing of “secrets” will certainly happen again, disclosures at the pace and scope that were observed in the prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are not likely to become the new normal.