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NSA Intelligence Gathering: An Organization Theory Perspective

Glenn Hastedt

Significant obstacles standing in the way of advancing our knowledge of the operation of intelligence organizations is the difficulty of obtaining reliable information. The veil of secrecy surrounding their operations makes both in-depth single event case studies and comparisons across time or countries difficult to assemble. Consequently these studies typically are centered on situation specific personality and politics driven narratives. All too often unexamined is the possibility that the actions of intelligence agencies are fully consistent with the underlying logic of decision making found in the organization theory literature. To the extent that this is the case intelligence organizations can be treated as “normal” organizations with predictable tendencies. Presented here is an exploratory analysis using organization theory to understand the actions of one intelligence agency, the National Security Agency