Admission requirements
This course is designed for the minor Intelligence Studies. It is not possible to follow single courses of this minor. You need to be enrolled in uSis for the minor to be accepted to this course. There are 100 places open for registration, on a first come first serve basis, where LDE students are given priority.
Description
Over the past thirty years, the so-called intelligence revolution that occurred during the Second World War and Cold War became a core concern in the academic literature and in intelligence studies programmes. Among the aspects that feature prominently in those debates are post-mortem evaluations of crisis preparedness and the notion of intelligence failure. Whereas from the point of the intelligence community successful intelligence operations should remain secret as long as necessary, allegations of failure tend to be publicly discussed and actual failures come out into the open. These instances are often subject to national inquiries, producing much relevant material for academic scrutiny. Some of these failures have become national traumas, such as the failure to act on available information about an impending Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attacks.
In this course, in addition to exploring various cases of intelligence failure (or alleged failure), students will be introduced to conceptual discussions, theoretical expectations and methodological aspects. They will engage with the question of how effective warnings could have been issued in specific situations. Students will also be encouraged to reconstruct the idiosyncratic context in which intelligence producers and policymakers interacted when confronted with a given crisis. They will apply their knowledge in a group exercise in which they unpack a specific failure, as well as in the final exam. The cases covered in this course include well-known historical failures in the U.S. context, recent cases of relevance to European foreign policy as well as non-Western cases.
Course objectives
Upon finishing the course, students will be able to:
1. understand the core concepts and debates around intelligence success versus failure;
2. identify and explain different biases and other constraints when producing intelligence;
3. understand specific challenges in the intelligence-policy interplay for the cases covered;
4. discuss various examples of intelligence failures;
5. identify the different aspects of a ‘warning failure’;
8. produce a warning report;
9. select and work with the relevant literature for the assignments.
Timetable
On the right side of the programme front page you will find links to the website and timetables, uSis and Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
The course will consist of seven 3-hour sessions, which will be taught by the course convenor and guest lecturers. Each of the sessions will include interactive lectures and discussion of the core reading and/or other relevant material that will be shared ahead of class. In-class formative assignments might also be held to help students prepare for the assigments.
Participation in each session as well as in the group exercise and final exam is required in order to obtain a grade. One session may be missed.
Assessment method
Midterm group exercise
30% of final grade
Resit not possible
Grade must be compensated
Final exam
70% of final grade
Grade must be 5.50 or higher to pass the course
Resit possible
Resit will take the same form
Participation in each session as well as in the group exercise and final exam is required in order to obtain a grade. One session may be missed.
Students will also be permitted to resit the 70% final exam if they have a calculated overall course grade lower than 5.50 or with permission of the Board of Examiners. The midterm group exercise needs to be compensated.
The corresponding Brightspace course will become available one week prior to the first session. Details for submitting the assignments will also be posted there.
Late hand-in penalty: 1 point minus per day, and after three days we do not accept the assignment any longer.
In the case of written assessment methods, the examiner can always initiate a follow-up conversation with the student to establish whether the learning objectives have been met.
The Course and Examination Regulation Security Studies and the Rules and Regulation of the Board of Examiners of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs apply.
Reading list
TBA on Brightspace
Registration
Registration via MyStudymap is possible from Tuesday 15 July 2025 13:00h after registration for the entire minor. Register for every course via MyStudymap. Some courses of the minor have a limited number of participants, so register on time. Registration for the exam is mandatory.
Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course.
More information on registration via MyStudymap can be found on this page.
Please note 1: Registration for the resit of an exam is mandatory, this has to be done by the student and can be done from Monday 1 December 2025 until 10 days before the exam. Until 5 days before the exam you can email OSC and fill in a form.
Please note 2: guest-/contract-/exchange students do not register via MyStudymap but via uSis. Registration via uSis is possible from Thursday 17 July 2025 after registration for the entire minor.
Contact
intelligencestudies@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
Remarks
This course can only be taken as part of the minor Intelligence Studies.
All sessions will be in English. Exams and assignments need to be written in English.
Please be aware that the resits will take place in January.