Truly Reforming or Just Responding to Failures? Lessons Learned from the Modernisation of the Greek National Intelligence Service

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to highlight the challenges that the Greek Intelligence Community is facing and to stress the need for a genuine reform of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Over the past years NIS has experienced several failures and so far the efforts to reform the Service have been inadequate. A closer look reveals that past efforts to reform NIS are basically a spasmodic reaction to failures and political pressure and not a result of an in-depth analysis of the new role that NIS is required to play. The analysis of the effort to reform NIS, and its comparison with other cases of intelligence reform in Europe, allows us to reach broader conclusions regarding the importance of reform in the intelligence services.