Intelligence Ethics and Communication: An Uncompleted Project

The International Studies Association (ISA) helped to develop a very slowly emerging sub-field called intelligence ethics. Its Intelligence Studies Section has been a venue for many efforts to develop literature on ethics for spies. For one example, we hosted three panels with 18 papers on that topic in 2007, contributing to a reader on intelligence ethics that was used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for a while. Dr. Jan Goldman of the Northern Illinois University (NIU), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other positions, also presented papers at ISA, and edited the “Scarecrow Professional Intelligence Education Series” that published 13 books, three focused on ethics for intelligence professionals. He started an international ethics association and a peer-reviewed journal.[1] However, this worthy effort to professionalize intelligence education with an ethical dimension was and remains greatly slowed by something Dr. Goldman labeled “ethics phobia” among the bureaucracies. The association is now dormant and the journal’s last print edition was in 2013. Senior executive Brian Snow also tried at National Security Agency (NSA), where a team of colleagues created a model code of ethics for collectors that did not gain traction for similar reasons. Individual and institutional concerns result in a “fear” of ethics among many three-letter United States Intelligence Community (US-IC) agencies.^[2] What agencies fear, practitioners avoid because children need feeding and pensions have meaning. Many definitions of a “profession” require a professional code of ethics to guide their craft, as doctors developed their “Hippocratic Oath”, and attorneys developed their “Model Code of Professional Conduct” for lawyers. It is time “professional” spies did so also. Some comparisons with non-Western countries will conclude that this is a problem only for societies that already embrace concepts, like “rule of law” and “individual liberties”. No one expects the spies of brutal, police state dictators to eschew deception, betrayal, propaganda, torture, or even killing of critics in service to the power of their immoralleaders.