Philip H.J. Davies

Davies, Philip H. J. "Assessment BASE: Simulating National Intelligence Assessment in a Graduate Course." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 19, no. 4 (Winter 2006-2007): 721-736.

Discusses the "highly demanding, semester-long simulation of the British model of national intelligence assessment, designated the Brunel Analytical Simulation Exercise (BASE)." The simulation is taught at Brunel University in its Master’s degree in Intelligence and Security Studies (MA/ISS), "as part of a wider program of initiatives tied to the establishment of the Brunel University Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies (BCISS)."

[RefMats/Teaching]

Davies, Philip H. J. The British Secret Services. Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University, 1996.

According to Kruh, Cryptologia 21.2, this is "an annotated bibliography of British Secret Services from their Elizabethan origins to the present." The book is organized around the three primary intelligence and security services, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Security Service (MI5), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Additional sections cover the World War II specialty services. The author includes "a wide range of books, journal articles and a scattering of other works, with thoughtful annotations for each entry."

[UK/Reference]

Davies, Philip H.J. "A Critical Look at Britain's Spy Machinery." Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 4 (2005): 41-54.

"[T]he malaise in Requirements [tasking, validation, and dissemination] that led to the intelligence failure on Iraqi WMD represents an even deeper, longer-term trend in the management of SIS than the Butler review identified."

[UK/PostCW/Gen]

Davies, Philip H.J. "Discredited or Betrayed? British Intelligence, Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destuction." In The Search for WMD: Non-Proliferation, Intelligence and Pre-emption in the New Security Environment, ed. Graham F. Walker, 151-172. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, 2006.

[UK/PostCW/Gen]

Davies, Philip H.J. "Ideas of Intelligence: Divergent Concepts and National Institutions." Harvard International Review 24, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 62-66.

The author includes the substantive elements of intelligence as laid out by Sherman Kent. The focus is on the differences between the British and U.S. concepts of intelligence.

[WhatIsIntel?]

Davies, Philip H.J. "Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure in Britain and the United States." Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (Oct. 2004): 495-520.

From abstract [http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk]: The intelligence systems of the United States and the United Kingdom "share very common methods, technologies and resources and have closely aligned political cultures and histories, and yet one can still find between them profound and consistent differences." The author uses for his discussion "selected examples of intelligence failure in the two systems, in the US case looking at the September 11 terrorist attacks and for Britain at the Falkland Islands invasion, followed by the common failure to generate accurate assessments of Iraq's capability in non-conventional weapons prior to March 2003."

[GenPostCW/00s/Gen; UK/PostCW/Gen]

Davies, Philip H.J. MI6 and the Machinery of Spying: Structure and Process in Britain's Secret Intelligence. London: Frank Cass, 2004.

From advertisement: This book traces the development of MI6's "internal structure from its inception until the end of the Cold War. The analysis examines how its management structure has been driven by its operational environment on the one hand and its position within the machinery of British central government on the other.... [The author] argues that where SIS activities have resulted in public disasters and scandals the reason has usually been less its lack of accountability and control than the very high degree of control and direction exercised by opportunistic politicians and the senior Civil Servants."

Scott, I&NS 21.2 (Apr. 2006), notes that "[a] central theme of the study is to show that SIS has always been highly collegial and organic in both structure and ethos." In a bit of understatement, the reviewer acknowledges that "organizational structure and process do not make for ripping yarns;" but "where possible," Davies "provides operational context and occasionally humour."

[UK/Overviews/00s]

Davies, Philip H.J. "MI6's Requirements Directorate: Integrating Intelligence into the Machinery of British Central Government." Public Administration 78, no. 1 (Jan. 2000): 29-49.

"Regardless of ... changes and reforms in structure and process, for nearly eighty years the consumer liaison architecture of SIS's Requirements side has permitted that very covert agency's infrastructure and inner workings to interweave with the machinery of overt British government,... beyond the ... centrality of bodies like the Cabinet Office and its Central Intelligence Machinery. That process of interweaving means that the SIS does not exist in a governmental and conceptual realm at some distance removed from the more visible, 'overt' machinery of British government. Rather, it is in fact very much part and parcel with that larger machinery."

[UK/Overviews/00s][c]

Davies, Philip H.J. "Organizational Politics and the Development of Britain's Intelligence Producer/Consumer Interface." Intelligence and National Security 10, no. 4 (Oct. 1995): 113-132. In Intelligence Analysis and Assessment, eds. David A. Charters, A. Stuart Farson, and Glenn P. Hastedt, 113-132.

Davies argues that the prevailing "view of a centralized British intelligence system has constituted something of an optical illusion. The problems and issues, which have formed the focus of current discussions of intelligence..., have all resulted from the fact that the British intelligence system is, in fact, profoundly decentralized."

[UK/Overviews][c]

Davies, Philip H.J. "The SIS Singapore Station and the Role of the Far East Controller: Secret Intelligence Structure and Process in Post-War Colonial Administration." Intelligence and National Security 14, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 105-129.

The author uses his analysis of the role of the FEC to support his argument that the relationship between the SIS and the British government is characterized by a "pull" (demand-driven) architecture for the SIS. This arises out of the "fundamental decentralisation of intelligence in the British state." (Emphasis in original)

[GenPostwar/ColdWar; UK/Postwar/Gen]

Davies, Philip H.J. "From Special Operations to Special Political Action: The 'Rump SOE' and SIS Post-War Covert Action Capability, 1945-1977." Intelligence and National Security 15, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 55-76.

"Beyond simply an influx of experienced staff, the legacy of SOE [in SIS after 1946] took two main forms: the establishment of the Directorate of War Planning on the one hand, and of the Directorate of Training and Development on the other."

[UK/Postwar]

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