I might point out that if they are being attacked via intelligence more aggressively by another player, you may be undermining their counter intelligence efforts to resist that player. If someone did that to me, I would consider them an accomplice of the aggressor!
One feature of the intel in SE III that I miss in SE IV was the "blamed" intel operations: you could perform intel against an other empire but blame it on a third empire! Very nasty!!
Would be nice if this could be introduced in SE IV. Of course the cost of these blamed operations should be higher than the ordinary intel projects.