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Intelligence’s Future:
Learning From the Past
by MICHAEL HERMAN

Abstract

The British political crisis in 2004 over the government's 'dossier' on Iraqi WMD, published a year earlier, illustrates the problems of intelligence's new public profile. It also points to the lessons to be learned from its assessment failures on this subject. These point towards establishing a European assessment machinery, a kind of Brussels Joint Intelligence Committee; and also towards encouraging intelligence professionalism everywhere – at the right distance from policy despite the public profile. Historians can contribute valuable perspectives on all these issues.