Publications

This study asserts that complexity science, the study of systems that are complex and adaptive, holds many promises for examining the threats in the operational environment as well as intelligence organisations themselves. While this may seem a logical deduction, the study of intelligence has yet to adopt the ideas and methods of complexity science. Therefore this study aims to seek insights from complexity science and to apply these to intelligence.

On 25-26 October 2023 the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association (NISA) held its bi-annual international conference in Amsterdam. Founded in 1991 the NISA aims to further academic research and education regarding (counter)intelligence and security developments. It brings together academics, media representatives, (former) practitioners, and others within the (semi-)government, NGOs and private sector, taking an interest in intelligence and security.

This bibliography on intelligence numbers almost a thousand pages and runs up to 2008. It contains publications in English, German, French and Dutch and was put together by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom of the Forschungsinstitut für Friedenspolitik in Weilheim, Germany. NISA is grateful to him for making this bibliography available to us. 

by Jelle Hooiveld

Secrecy and informal organisation produce, sustain, and reinforce feelings of loyalty within intelligence and security services. This article demonstrates that loyalty is needed for cooperation between intelligence partners as well as within and between services. Under many circumstances, loyalty plays a larger role in the level of internal and external collaboration than formal work processes along hierarchical lines. These findings are empirically based on the case study of Anglo‒Dutch intelligence cooperation during World War II.

The West currently faces a number of actors who employ a wide range of measures to influence, coerce, intimidate, or undermine its interests. Many of these measures are often collectively referred to as “political warfare”, a term originally coined by former U.S. State Department diplomat George F. Kennan in 1948. This report defines political warfare as the intentional use of one or more of the traditional implements of national power (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic) to affect the political composition or decision-making within another state.

The book, Stepping Stones to Freedom: Help to Allied Airmen in The Netherlands During World War II, by Professor Bob de Graaff was originally published in Dutch as Schakels naar de vrijheid by SDU Publishers in The Hague in 1995 in cooperation with “The Escape” organization, a group made up of WWII helpers of downed Allied airmen.  Members of “The Escape” felt so strongly about its historical contents that they gathered financial support to have it translated and printed in English for members of the Air Forces Escape and E

Kees Jan Dellebeke

In 1975 four Syrians intended to hijack an international train with Russian Jews in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, but following a tip-off by the Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD Dutch Security Service) they were arrested by the Amsterdam police on 5 September of that year.

The book is the result of the conference "Telling the truth to power: the past, present end future of militairy inteliigence" organised by NISA in cooperation with the Netherlands Defense and Inteliigence and Security Service (DISS) in september 2014.

Editors: Floribert Baudet, Eleni Braat, Jeoffrey van Woensel and Aad Wever

door Bob de Graaff e.a
National intelligence cultures are shaped by their country’s history and environment. Featuring 32 countries (such as Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Norway, Latvia, Montenegro), the work provides insight into a number of rarely discussed national intelligence agencies to allow for comparative study, offering hard to find information into one volume. In their chapters, the contributors, who are all experts from the countries discussed, address the intelligence community rather than focus on a single agency.