Annual Conference 2022: Communicating Secret Intelligence
1-3 July 2022, Politische Akademie Tutzing, Germany
Communication is at the very core of secret intelligence. Information collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination, all entail some kind of communication. Intelligence agencies need to plan and they provide direction, partners need to be informed. Channels of communication have to be selected and secured against unauthorized access. The product – knowledge constructed in a specific setting based on information – will have to be carefully weighed and formulated so that decision-makers are provided with the support they need. Also, more and more, intelligence agencies are called upon by an increasingly critical public to make transparent their sources and methods, collection methods, and the extent of their intrusion into the private sphere through covered operations and personal data collection.
International experts will address these aspects over a broad range of topics, both in terms of periods covered and of the focus of the presentations, to provide for a wide discussion of the various facets of communication and secret intelligence.
F R I D A Y , J U L Y 1 , 2 0 2 2
2.00 p.m. Arrival, Registration, Coffee and Tea
3.30 p.m. Welcome and Greetings
- Anja Opitz
- Michael Wala
- Thomas Wegener Friis
4.00 p.m. Panel I: Intelligence and Occupation
Chair: Anja Opitz, Akademie für Politische Bildung Tutzing
- Hans Sommer and German Intelligence in Occupied France
François le Goarant de Tromelin, Amicale des Anciens des Services Spéciaux de la Défense Nationale, Paris - New Friends? The Impact of Former Members of SS and Wehrmacht on US-Intelligence ́s Intelligence Acquisition and Intelligence Processing in the Early Cold War
Lutz Heilmann, Ruhr-University Bochum
5.00 p.m. Break
5.30 p.m. Panel II: Information, Analysis, and the Construction of Knowledge
Chair: Anna Abelmann, Bayerische Forschungsallianz, München
- Clandestine Communications and Cryptography during the Cold War
Detlev Vreisleben, Leverkusen - The Military-Adventurous Complex: Intelligence Maladies and Making of Japanese Imperialism
6.30 p.m. Dinner
7.30 p.m. Keynote Address
Chair: Jens M. Wegener, Ruhr-University Bochum
- „How Much Is the CIA Paying You to Say That?“: The Challenge of Educating the Public on the Secret World of Intelligence
Vince Houghtonm Director of the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade
S A T U R D A Y , J U L Y 2 , 2 0 2 2
8.15 a.m. Breakfast
9.00 a.m. Panel III: Cyber Security: The Protection of Data and Infrastructure
Chair: Wladyslaw Bulhak, Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Warsaw
- Intelligence and Big Data – Asset or Burden to the Intelligence Process
Juho Kotakallio, University of Helsinki - Humans are the Weakest Link in Cybersecurity: A Dangerous Myth and Its Consequences
M. Angela Sasse, Ruhr-University Bochum - Critical Infrastructures and Cyber Security: Paradoxes of Vulnerability and Security
Constantin Goschler, Ruhr-University Bochum
10.30 am Break
10.45 a.m. Panel IV: The Need to Know v. The Right to Know: Intelligence, Data Processing,
and Privacy Protection
Chair: Wolfgang Krieger, University of Marburg
- Physical Surveillance in the United States: A Social and Political History
Lawrence Capello, University of Alabama - Intelligence, Privacy, and Counter-Surveillance: The ‘Verfassungsschutz’ and the Public in the 1970s
Christopher Kirchberg, Ruhr-University Bochum - „Has It Always Been 1984?“: Public Constructions of Surveillance Technology, 1970-1990
Jens M. Wegener
12.30 p.m. Lunch
2.30 p.m. Panel V: Beyond the Anglosphere
Chair: Thomas Wegener Friis, University of Southern Denmark
- Sharing Intelligence: The BND and Iraq’s Mukhabarat
Ali Dogan, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin - The Syrian Mukhabarat (& the Stasi) – Practices of Surveillance and Social Control during the Cold War
Noura Chalati, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
3.30 p.m. Coffee Break
4.00 p.m. Panel VI: Collaborators, Double Agents, and Countermen
Chair: Gordan Akrap, Hybrid Warfare Research Institute, Zagreb
- Special Operation Executive and Anglo-Polish Intelligence Cooperation 1940-1945
Jacek Tebinka University of Gdansk - The Soviet Secret Service Dealing with Nazi-Collaborators, Accomplices, and Potential Anti-Soviet Enemies in the Aftermath of WW II in Ukraine
Tanja Penter, Heidelberg University - The Distorted Reality: The Communist Secret Service in Yugoslavia and the Collection of Intelligence
Jerca Vodušek Staricˇ, University of Maribor
5.45 p.m. Annual Membership Meeting of
5.45 p.m. Annual Membership Meeting of the IIHA
6.30 p.m. Dinner
S U N D A Y , J U L Y 3 , 2 0 2 2
8.15 a.m. Breakfast
9.00 a.m. Panel VII: Information, Disinformation, and Data-Overload
Chair: Constantin Goschler, University of Bochum
- (Dis)information Activities of Intelligence Agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia
Gordan Akrap, Irena Petrijevcˇanin Vuksanovic‘ Croatian Defence Academy, Zagreb - The Right Measure of Media Reporting on Sensitive Issues Related to the National Security
Dora Gelo, University of Zagreb
10.00 a.m. Break
10.30 a.m. Panel VIII: Telling Stories: Communicating Secret Intelligence through Memoirs and Novels
Chair: Michael Wala, Ruhr University of Bochum
- Former KGB Officers’ Spy Fiction: Is It Worth Reading?
Filip Kovacevic, University of San Francisco - The ‘KGB’ Novel that Exposed a Double Agent Operation
Benjamin B. Fischer, Former Chief Historian, CIA
11.30 a.m. Wrap Up
12.00 p.m. Lunch
End of Conference