Resources, stages and subjects

The previous chapter sketched modern intelligence's evolution. This one provides an introductory map of the system, with some impressions of its size, stages, categories and resource allocations. Overall resources Budgetary conventions are complicated by the intelligence extensions just touched upon. Formal distinctions are made between so-called ‘strategic intelligence’ – institutionally the national and central departments and agencies described in the last chapter – and the so-called ‘tactical’ resources under the control of military commands, or the Victorians' ‘intelligence in the field’. The United States intelligence budget has separate divisions for ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ resources, but most other countries include only the former. But the order of magnitude of intelligence is clear enough. In 1976 the US superpower had just over 100,000 people in the defence-funded component of its ‘strategic’ community, excluding those funded outside defence, notably CIA. When everything else was added, including support staff and the services’ tactical efforts, the overall personnel total may have been in the region of 200,000. The Soviet KGB and GRU combined were then much bigger overall, though perhaps not much bigger than their US opposite numbers if the KGB's vast non-intelligence activities were excluded. Unofficial figures subsequently put the cost of US intelligence at about $28 billion in 1994 – rather more than 10 per cent of the defence bill, and far more than the cost of the State Department.