This text presents a comparative, international study of commissions of inquiry that have been convened in response to extraordinary failures and scandals. In recent years, commissions of inquiry have been common to the politics of the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia. Recent years have seen a much wider range of states establish commissions of inquiry into intelligence and security issues, and they have also played important roles in transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Commissions of inquiry are no longer even the exclusive preserve of states, as transnational institutions such as the United Nations and European Union have begun to convoke them. This groundbreaking book comprehensively examines commissions of inquiry around the world, which have become important and increasingly invoked tools to discover truth, curb abuses, and reconcile national security imperatives with the constraints of law and human rights. It offers timely insights for national security analysts, government officials, diplomats, lawyers, scholars, human rights monitors, students, and citizens.

By comparison with the other facets of intelligence, the analytical role provided by intelligence agencies has not received the scholarly attention that it rightly deserves. In October 1994 the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) and the Intelligence Section of the International Studies Association (ISA) attended to this deficit by holding a special international conference on the subject in Ottawa. This volume is the product of that conference. The essays comprising it may be divided into four self-contained sets of essays. The first critically examines the assessment systems now in place in Britain, the USA, Germany and Australia. Each is written by someone who participated at a senior level and hence knows their respective strengths and weaknesses well. The second series of essays looks at the bureaucratic dynamics of analysis and assessment. While two specifically examine how well intelligence producers have related to their political masters, another dissects the internal relationships that have developed between CIA analysts and their managers. The changing ground that intelligence is currently experiencing is the focus of the third section. Here such new analytical priorities as the environment, peacekeeping and arms proliferation are singled out for study. Finally, the volume considers the impact of new technologies and modes of communication on intelligence gathering and analysis.

This book, first published in 1991, examines the changes to security and intelligence agencies envisioned in the uncertain world at the end of the Cold War. While the central focus is on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, its history, function and future, there are also comparative studies of the British, Soviet, American and Australian systems.

This book, first published in 1991, examines the changes to security and intelligence agencies envisioned in the uncertain world at the end of the Cold War. While the central focus is on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, its history, function and future, there are also comparative studies of the British, Soviet, American and Australian systems.

Of the many functions carried out by intelligence agencies, analysis and assessment has received comparatively little scholarly attention. In October 1994 the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) and the Intelligence Section of the International Studies Association (ISA) attended to this deficit by holding a special international conference on the subject in Ottawa. This volume is the product of that conference. The essays may be divided into four self-contained sets. The first examines critically the assessment systems now in place in Britain, the USA, Germany and Australia. The second looks at the bureaucratic dynamics of analysis and assessment. The changing ground that intelligence is currently experiencing is the focus of the third section. Finally, the volume considers the impact of new technologies and modes of communication on intelligence gathering and analysis.