Intelligence and Security

 

Mankind has used intelligence for centuries for internal control, economic progress and external influence. Intelligence can be open or secret. The first recorded secret intelligence operation was in 13th Century BCE when God ordered Moses to dispatch 12 tribal chiefs to search for the land of Canaan, their promised land. This was recorded in the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible.

 

Moses asked them to report on the geographical features, composition of the population, agriculture potential, actual crops, forestry conditions and their administrative structure. This is equivalent to modern economic intelligence. A Canaanite woman named Rahab facilitated the secret entry of these Israelites into Canaan. In intelligence parlance, this would be equivalent to a mole in a foreign land.

 

Since 1998 I have been publishing columns on security, intelligence and terrorism in mainstream newspapers.  In 2014, Indus Books published my first book National Security and Intelligence Management-A New Paradigm. My object in writing on intelligence was to “demystify” that subject to make the broad contours of the “intelligence process” known to the public and media.