Our History

Over the past several decades, NSIC has carried out groundbreaking educational work in several areas – educating U.S. and foreign labor leaders about international affairs, providing security education to U.S. reserve officers, introducing security studies to universities and later doing the same with intelligence studies, identifying the emerging twin threats of armed groups and violent extremist ideologies, constructing an adapted security paradigm for an evolving global environment, and helping build the rule of law where it is badly needed.

Working with the Legal Community

In the 1960s, NSIC worked with Lewis E. Powell, Jr. — then the American Bar Association president and later a Supreme Court Justice — to introduce and educate lawyers on national security issues and law through what is now known as the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security. Few today are aware of its origin. With John O. Marsh, Jr. — then a member of Congress, later counselor to President Gerald Ford, and Secretary of the Army — NSIC also developed and institutionalized with the Reserve Officers’ Association a pioneering nationwide education program on national strategy. Back to top.

Assisting Academia

In the 1970s, NSIC also pioneered faculty development and formal university education on security – which, while commonplace today, rarely existed then. This collaborative endeavor with universities throughout the United States, and later abroad, introduced hundreds of young faculty members to military history, the study of strategy, the economics of defense, and public diplomacy. Alumni of NSIC programs went on to establish university security studies programs, centers, and courses. NSIC also developed and refined textbooks, curricula, and other college and university teaching materials. Security studies now exists in scores of universities and is well established in higher education in the United States and elsewhere. Few are aware of the relatively recent origins of this effort. Back to top.

Assisting the Labor Movement

Also in the 1970s, in cooperation with the AFL-CIO’s George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and Albert Shanker, NSIC helped establish Georgetown University’s International Labor Program. For over a decade, it promoted educational programs and curricula on international affairs for young American labor leaders, their counterparts in Europe, southern Africa, and Australia, and for U.S. officials specializing in the role of labor in international affairs. While senior leaders of the U.S. labor movement had become well versed in these issues, at the time there was no educational center for emerging trade union leaders on these subjects. Back to top.

A Scholarly Approach to Intelligence

In another “first,” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, NSIC created the academic Consortium for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). This brought together leading scholars, including political scientists Sam Huntington and James Q. Wilson; law professors John Norton Moore, Antonin Scalia, and Myers McDougal, and historians Adda Bozeman and Allen Weinstein. CSI was the first nongovernmental center to conduct unclassified research on effective intelligence practices. The Consortium also undertook the first systematic study of the principles of effective intelligence and then applied it to the U.S. system. This research was published in the groundbreaking eight-volume Intelligence Requirements series. It led to innovations such as opportunity analysis, the strategic approach to counterintelligence, and effective methods of acquiring local knowledge.

CSI was also instrumental in developing the field of intelligence studies and teaching about intelligence at colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Hundreds of university faculty and military educators were prepared in CSI-sponsored programs, and teaching and research about intelligence were institutionalized in institutions of higher education. The Consortium also enriched and facilitated the emergence of serious literature on the subject. It was instrumental in establishing a special section devoted to intelligence studies in the largest international professional organization of social scientists, the International Studies Association. Like Security Studies, Intelligence Studies is now an integral part of college and university curricula. Back to top.

Educating Security Leaders from Emerging Democracies

In the 1990s, NSIC developed the two-week Executive Leadership Seminar at Georgetown University to provide senior foreign security leaders with informed analysis about then anticipated regional and global threats posed by transnational criminals and terrorists, and knowledge of strategic approaches to combat them. A U.S. government interagency task force – consisting of the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury – collaborated with NSIC on the development of the curriculum and on recruiting participants. In addition, NSIC was asked to develop educational programs for government analysts and managers from the United States and other democracies to develop techniques to mitigate the threats posed by the multiplicity of armed groups and extremists. Back to top.