5 The argument assumes that the functions, roles, and missions of intelligence organizations are inconsistent in international situations and cannot be categorized. Notable intelligence scholar Loch K. Johnson argues against this point, saying that there are basic common features found in all national intelligence apparatuses. According to Johnson, there are three basic activities of these governmental entities – collection and analysis, covert action, and counterintelligence.4 He argues that these three activities are universally found in all national intelligence systems, regardless of the security environment surrounding the country. This point seems to echo in the writings of Marina Caprini, a theoretician on security-sector reform, who says that “within government, intelligence has come to be thought of as comprising four main activities: collection, analysis and estimates, counterintelligence and covert action”.5 At the heart of the three activities, Johnson argues, is national wealth – Gross Domestic Product (GDP).6 Johnson would likely argue that the security situation around a nation impacts intelligence spending less than its national wealth. Of wealthy nations, he says, Because of the breadth of their concerns, not even expenditures in the range of $35 billion a year (the widely reported figure for U.S. intelligence in 2002-2003) can offer transparency for the entire globe – especially when adversaries choose to conceal their schemes and weapons systems in deep underground caverns, with camouflage, or by other methods of stealth to avoid the prying lens of satellite cameras orbiting above them. In contrast, the intelligence objectives of smaller nations are much more limited, say, to a single region or even a solitary enemy. Some may view this paradox as self-evident, but comparisons of the intelligence systems of different countries are often made without taking into account the differences in their funding abilities and targeting needs.7 4
Loch Johnson, “Bricks and Mortar for a Theory of Intelligence,” Comparative Strategy. 22, no. 1 (2003): 1. 5 Marina Caparini, “Controlling and Overseeing Intelligence Services in Democratic States,” in Democratic Control of Intelligence Services: Containing Rogue Elephant, ed. Hans Born and Marina Caparini (England: Ashgate, 2007), 5. 6 Loch Johnson, “Bricks and mortar for a Theory of Intelligence,” Comparative Strategy 22, no. 1 (2003): 22-23. 7 Ibid, 3.