Intelligence Power in Practice

This volume draws on Herman’s professional experience and personal recollections to examine the past and present of British intelligence. In twenty-one chapters he offers an insider’s perspective on the Cold War intelligence contest against the Soviet Union and its continuing legacy today. This includes proposals for intelligence ethics and reform in the twenty-first century, and the declassified copy of his evidence to the 2004 Butler Review. Herman also discusses the role of personalities in the British intelligence community, producing sketches of Cold War contemporaries on the JIC and several Directors of GCHQ. The combination of operational experience and academic reflection makes this volume a unique contribution to intelligence scholarship.

Michael Herman (1929-2021) was the world’s leading intelligence practitioner-academic. Among his senior roles during a thirty-five year career in Her Majesty’s Civil Service, he was Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee from 1972-75, and Head of several GCHQ Divisions in the 1970s-80s. After his professional retirement, he was a Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford and founding director of the Oxford Intelligence Group.