This paper focuses on a discrete group whose occupation it was to identify and categorize perceived threats to French imperial control in North Africa and Syria. These were the providers of intelligence to governmental authorities about internal social conditions within French-held territories in the Maghreb and the Syrian Levant. It is divided into two parts. The first reviews the nature, composition, and role of these intelligence providers. The second considers a series of examples from the World War I era and after, illustrating how intelligence provision was organised and acted upon, sometimes with success, sometimes without. Taken together, these case studies suggest that intelligence provision may help us understand late colonial states as ‘intelligence states’ in which effective exploitation of political information became increasingly critical to the survival of colonial rule in North African and Middle Eastern territories in the early twentieth century.