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Creating and Challenging the Transatlantic Intelligence Community

Mar 30, 2017 - Apr 01, 2017

Joint Conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. | Conveners: International Intelligence History Association, German Historical Institute, and the History & Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center

The Woodrow Wilson Center, the German Historical Institute, and the Intenational Intelligence History Association are delighted to invite you to the jointly organized conference on "Creating and Challenging the Transatlantic Intelligence Community."

Please register for the conference by email to the IIHA Executive Director at <exec_director[a]intelligence-history.org> before 23 March 2017. The conference fee is 150 EUR / 165 US-Dollar, 110 EUR / 120 US-Dollar for IIHA members and 75 EUR / 80 US-Dollar for students. This includes dinners on Thursday and Friday as well as coffee breaks during the conference and a snack lunch on Saturday.

THURSDAY, 30 March 2017 (Woodrow Wilson Center)

12:00 - 12:30 Registration

12:30 - 13:00 Welcome and Opening
Christian OSTERMANN (Director, Woodrow Wilson Center, USA)
Thomas BOGHARDT (U.S. Army Center of Military History, USA)
Michael WALA (Ruhr-University of Bochum/IIHA, Germany)

13:00 - 14:00 Panel I: From World War to Cold War and Beyond
Chair: Anna DAUN (Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany)

  • Huw DYLAN (King's College London, UK): "Deceiving Ourselves? The Transatlantic Struggle to Learn the Lessons of World War Two Deception and Apply them to the Cold War"
  • Michael HERMAN (Nuffield College Oxford, UK): "What Difference did it Make? Cold War Intelligence from a Todays' Point of View"

14:00 - 14:15 Coffee Break

14:15 - 16:15 Panel II: Exchanging Intelligence, Exchanging Data
Chair: Matthew AID (Washington D.C, USA) (tentative)

  • John FOX (FBI Historian, USA): "Foreign Counterintelligence Cooperation and the Transatlantic Intelligence Community"
  • Jens WEGENER (Montclair State University, USA): "A Many-Headed Beast:The CIA's Project HYDRA and the Dawn of the Information Age in the Transatlantic Intelligence Cooperation"
  • Verena DIERSCH (University of Cologne, Germany): "Digital Network Intelligence in a Transatlantic Organizational Field and Cooperation between NSA, BND, andBfV"
  • Samantha HOSSACK (University of Calgary, Canada): "Coopetition and the Istanbul Summit: The Development of NATO's Cooperative but Competitive Intelligence Sharing Program"

16:15 - 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 - 18:30 Panel III: Transatlantic Intelligence and Eastern Europe
Chair: André RANSON (Lt.-Gen. ret., Ministry of Defence, France)

  • Mark STOUT, Katalin KADAR LYNN (Johns Hopkins University, USA): "Failed Transatlantic Liaison: Early Cold War Paper Mills and the Case of the MHBK (Association of Hungarian Veterans)"
  • Gordan AKRAP, Miroslav TUDJMAN (St. George Association, Croatia): "The Cooperation of US and Croatian Intelligence Services in the 1990s and the Crisis in South East Europe"
  • Enrico HEITZER (Brandenburg Memorial Foundation, Germany): "The Fighting Group against Inhumanity: Spying and Destabilizing the GDR"
  • Nicholas J. SCHLOSSER (US Army Center of Military History, USA): "The East German Campaign against Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) Berlin, 1953-1961"

19:00 Keynote Address (to be announced)

20:00 Dinner

FRIDAY, 31 March 2016 (Woodrow Wilson Center)

9:00 - 10:30 Young Researchers' Forum I
Chair: Charlotte BACKERRA, (University of Stuttgart, Germany)

  • Susan PERLMAN (American University Washington DC, USA): "Franco-American Intelligence Cooperation and the Beginning of the Global Cold War"
  • Constant HIJZEN (Leiden University, The Netherlands): "Our Americanfriends: The Genesis of the Dutch-American Intelligence Liaison"
  • Emily HAIRE (Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland): "The First Special Relationship? Anglo-French Intelligence Liaison and its Influence on Anglo-American Intelligence Cooperation"

9:00 - 10:30 Young Researchers' Forum II
Chair: Anna ABELMANN (Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany)

  • Christopher KIRCHBERG (Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany): "The Computerization of the German Intelligence Service: Starting Point for a New Level of Transatlantic Intelligence Partnership"
  • Tobias SCHMITT (University of Freiburg, Germany): "U.S. Intelligence and the Nascent Transatlantic Security Architecture of the Cold War: The Case of the Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde"
  • Daniel PRONK (Netherlands Ministry of Defense, The Netherlands):"Sharing the Burden, Sharing the Secrets. The Fulcrum of Transatlantic Intelligence Cooperation"

10:30 - 10:45 Coffee Break

10:45 - 11:45 Panel IV: Transatlantic Intelligence and the Two Germanys
Chair: Richard BREITMAN (American University, USA) (tentative)

  • Kevin Conley RUFFNER (CIA, USA): "'Our Work in the Soviet Zone of Germany has been nothing but Interminable Delays, Restrictions, Bargaining and Suspicion': U.S. Army Graves Registration Operations in East Germany 1945-1956"
  • Kristie MACRAKIS (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA): "The Hazards of Intelligence Cooperation: The Case of the Berlin Tunnel & George Blake"

12:00-13:00 Panel V: Perceptions of US-German Intelligence Relations
Chair: Tim NAFTALI (New York University, USA)

  • Dorle HELLMUTH (Catholic University of America, USA): "German-U.S.Intelligence Cooperation: Reliable Allies despite Differences"
  • Bodo HECHELHAMMER (BND Historian, Germany): "[...] to give the Germans a broad picture of the US [...]": The Secret US Training and Visiting Program by the CIA

13:00-14:30 Lunch Break

14:30 - 16:00 Panel VI: Anglo-American Signals IntelligenceRelationship: Evolution and Lessons
Chair: John FERRIS (University of Calgary, Canada)

  • David J. SHERMAN (National Security Agency, USA): "From Improvisation toPermanence: British and American Signals Intelligence, 1941-1955: An American Perspective"
  • Tony COMER (Government Communications Headquarters, UK): "From Improvisation to Permanence: British and American Signals Intelligence,1941-1955 - A British Perspective"
  • Michael WARNER (US Department of Defense, USA): "Transformation and Intelligence Liaison"

16:00-16:15 Coffee Break

16:15-17:45 Panel VII: UK-USA Intelligence: Past, Present, Future
Chair: Bernd SCHAEFER (Woodrow Wilson Center, USA)

  • Richard ALDRICH, Chris MORAN (University of Warwick, UK):"Anglo-American Co-operation and the Future of Intelligence"
  • David GIOE (US Military Academy at West Point, USA): "The 1946 UK-USAAgreement: The Mustard Seed of Transatlantic Cyber Operations?"
  • Calder WALTON (Harvard University, USA): "For your Eyes only: The UK-US 'Special' Intelligence Relationship and Changing Strategic Threats in the Twentieth Century"

18:00-19:00 Looking Beyond the Obvious

  • Shlomo SHPIRO (Bar Ilan University, Israel, Chairman of the IIHA):"Cooperation Beyond the Transatlantic"
  • Bodo W. BECKER (Federal Institution for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany): "Protecting the Economy" (tentative title)

20:00 Dinner

SATURDAY, 1 April, 2016 (German Historical Institute)

9:00-9:30 Welcome by GHI Director Simone LÄSSIG

9:30-11:30: Panel VIII: German Integration in the Transatlantic Intelligence Community

  • Wolfgang KRIEGER (University of Marburg, Germany): "The BND as a Western Intelligence Partner, 1948-1968"
  • Michael WALA (Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany): "Hunting the 'Red Orchestra' after 1945 and the Creation of a Transatlantic Intelligence Community"
  • Thomas BOGHARDT (U.S. Army Center of Military History, USA): "SemperVigilis: The U.S. Army Security Agency Europe in Early Cold War Germany"
  • Eva JOBS (University of Marburg, Germany): "Trust, Lies, and Science:The Polygraph as a Transatlantic Intelligence Challenge"

11:30-11:45 Coffee Break

11:45 - 12:45 Keynote Address

  • Joseph WIPPL (former CIA Chief of Europe Division/Boston University,USA): "Unilateral v. Multilateral Liaison: The Future of Transatlantic Intelligence"

12:45-13:00 Closing Remarks

13:00 Lunch at German Historical Institute

Call for Papers

Transatlantic intelligence cooperation played a key role in collecting and analyzing information during the Cold War, and the resulting intelligence product informed the decision-making process at the highest levels of government in Europe as well as in the United States. The need for intelligence cooperation has become even more urgent after 9/11, as nations on both sides of the Atlantic are facing terrorist threats, and are confronting a host of other challenges posed by non-state actors, such as arms and drug trafficking as well as organized crime. 

The conference will review the origins of the transatlantic intelligence partnership during the immediate postwar years and its evolution during the Cold War. It will explore the mechanisms for intelligence exchange between individual agencies as well as the ad hoc and informal interactions between members of intelligence organizations. In addition, papers will examine the causes and consequences of frictions in this intelligence partnership that have occurred over the past decades. While some conflicts were due to continued compartmentalization of national intelligence organizations, others resulted from often conflicting bilateral or multilateral agreements and from an unequal relationship between individual agencies. 

The conference, jointly convened by the International Intelligence History Association, the History & Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the German Historical Institute, will be held at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., (March 30-April 1, 2017). The conference theme is broadly conceived and will provide for a wide range of discussions and a variety of papers relating to intelligence and international relations. It seeks to encompass past, current, and future developments, as well as analyses and trends in intelligence research. 

Due to the complexity of its subject, the study of intelligence draws on a number of disciplines, including history, security and intelligence studies, political science, sociology, physics, engineering, and mathematics. We invite proposals from all fields of academic inquiry, exploring any organizational or operational aspect of intelligence services. While the transatlantic intelligence relationship after 1945 constitutes the main focus of the conference, proposals addressing intelligence issues outside these temporal and geographical boundaries will be considered as well. 

We encourage paper proposals from young researchers and doctoral students as well as from established scholars and former practitioners. 

Please submit your paper proposal abstract of 150300 words and a short CV by email to the IIHA Executive Director Anna Abelmann. 

The deadline for submissions is June 30, 2016. Acceptance notifications will be sent out in late July.