The socially critical role of intelligence services

The seminar will be held at Københavns Professionshøjskole, Sigurdsgade 26, København N
Wednesday the 20th of April 2022 12:30 – 16:00
Auditorium B086
Registration: Kira Vrist Rønn at kroenn@sam.sdu.dk before 14th of April

About the seminar

As the threat against Denmark becomes more complex, the size and responsibility of the intelligence services has grown. The same applies to the critical debate about their roles and methods. The legality of surveillance collaborations, leakage of confidential information, media coverage as well as charges of centrally located persons have shed an unfamiliar light on the intelligence services.

The seminar opens for debate about fundamental democratic issues: Is the political control with the intelligence services adequate? Where is the limit for surveillance? How can critical journalism balance the consideration of state security?

KEYNOTE by Dr. Simon Willmetts: Open Secrets - Intelligence in an Age of Publicity

Intelligence agencies are traditionally understood as cloistered entities.  Historically, they have conducted their work behind a veil of secrecy, relatively free from societal scrutiny.  In recent decades, however, these hermetic kingdoms have found themselves increasingly exposed.  Whistleblowers, leakers, enterprising investigative journalists, and major official enquiries, have subjected intelligence agencies around the world to unprecedented publicity, producing a steady diet of spy scandal.  Alongside these official and journalistic enquiries sit our imaginative fantasies about the shadowy world of espionage.  Spy fiction, conspiracy theories, and other widespread cultural narratives have produced what Timothy Melley has described as a “covert sphere”, a domain of public discourse that accompanies the work of intelligence agencies, and one in which our collective fantasies flood in to fill the historical void left over by official secrets.  To combat these often-critical visions of their work, many intelligence agencies around the world have abandoned their commitment to anonymity, engaging instead in public relations in order to influence public discourse about their work in a positive direction.  This presentation will seek to situate the recent Danish spy scandal, involving former intelligence chief Lars Findsen, within this broader trend away from secrecy, and towards publicity, public relations, and information control.  It will reflect on the implications for both intelligence practitioners and scholars, if we come to understand intelligence agencies as no longer secret, but now fundamentally public institutions.

About our keynote speaker

Dr. Simon Willmetts is an Assistant Professor in Intelligence and Security at Leiden University in the Netherlands.  Within Leiden University’s Institute for Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), he is the head of a dynamic research group in intelligence studies.  His own research has explored the role of cultural narratives in shaping public discourses about intelligence agencies, and the ways in which intelligence agencies have themselves sought to influence those narratives.  His book, In Secrecy’s Shadow: The CIA and Hollywood Cinema, explored these themes in one particularly influential culture industry.  More recently his article The Cultural Turn in Intelligence Studies articulated some of the more theoretical concerns raised by a conceptualization of intelligence agencies as fundamentally intertwined with wider cultures and societies.  In 2020-21 Dr. Willmetts worked as a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS), developing his next major book project, a Cultural History of the US Central Intelligence Agency, which aims to put into practice some of the more theoretical ideas explored in his article on the cultural turn.

Access the programme for the seminar here (in Danish).