Michael Herman (1) (1929–2021)

[excerpted from Routledge, Taylor & Francis online obituary, written by John Tolson & David King]
National Service took him to Egypt with two years as a JNCO in the Intelligence Corps. He served with 284 Field Security Section, which undertook port security duties at Port Tewfik, the entrance to the Suez Canal, and supported Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME), a multi-agency (Intelligence Corps, Security Service and SIS) organisation based in Cairo. In 1949, he went up to The Queen's College, Oxford to read Modern History, graduating with 1st Class Honours.

He joined GCHQ in 1952. He held a variety of posts at GCHQ, but got the greatest satisfaction running production divisions: J Division, focusing on the Soviet target in
the late 1970s/early 1980s, and V Division responsible for work on radar signals and other technical intelligence. Later, he was also Head of Z, responsible for GCHQ's external intelligence policy and relationships. Between 1972 and 1975 Michael was seconded to the Cabinet Office as Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee, where much of his time was spent on Northern Ireland. In the last year of his government career, Michael worked in the Defence Intelligence Staff, formally as Adviser to the Chief of Defence Intelligence but also usefully collecting material and forming ideas which would be developed later in his first book.

Michael was clear when he retired from GCHQ that he wanted a second career in academia, and his scholarly achievements were remarkable. He went to Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was the recipient of a one-year Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellowship (a scheme for the Civil Service and armed forces), followed by six years as an Associate Member. The eventual outcome of Michael's time at Nuffield was the publication in 1996 by Chatham House and Cambridge University Press of Intelligence Power in Peace and War – a book which was to become a standard work. Subsequently, Michael's writing was prodigious, including articles in many journals such as Intelligence & National Security, Contemporary British History, the Journal of Intelligence History, the RUSI Journal, and International Relations. He travelled and lectured widely, always with time for people.

In 2004 Michael was behind the establishment of the Oxford Intelligence Group (OIG). Michael had created a forum within Oxford for the discussion of open source intelligence, secret intelligence, historical research and current theory. This was not without difficulty. There was a view then that Intelligence Studies was ‘not a proper subject', and indeed Oxford still does not offer it as an undergraduate option.

Michael has many distinctions. He has been an Honorary Departmental Fellow at Aberystwyth University, was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Nottingham, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE). In 2003, he gave evidence to Lord Butler's Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, contributing to the report's conclusions and recommendations about intelligence assessment processes. Shortly before he died Michael received news that his latest book, Intelligence Power in Practice, will be published before the end of 2021.