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Future roles of the UK intelligence system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2009

STEVYN D. GIBSON
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Abstract

The UK intelligence system is engaged in three distinct roles – producing strategic assessments in the traditional way; acting as a ‘global policeman’ by monitoring terrorist and criminal networks; and raising the capability of other countries to defeat terrorist and insurgency groups. Counter-intuitively, it is perhaps the first role that is most questionable. The use of single source intelligence reporting, drawn from individuals selected principally for their willingness to share secrets, may not be the best way to analyse emerging issues such as climate change, energy security and financial stability. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) may be drawing on too narrow a range of reporting to compete with increasingly sophisticated assessments from the private sector, academia and NGOs. In any event, the JIC has less impact on policy than is often imagined. The second task of ‘global networker’ is better-suited to the intelligence community's ability to combine human intelligence with communications intelligence and bulk data gathering, and is producing results. The third task of helping other countries to enforce the law and resist insurgency is proceeding on an ad hoc basis with occasional successes, but requires co-ordination across Whitehall so that improvements in the capabilities of other countries' intelligence services are accompanied by improved police and justice systems and enhanced oversight. Joint Intelligence Committee perhaps ought to be a Joint Action Committee.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 917 - 928
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2009

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References

1 International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Strategic Survey 2008, (London: IISS, 2008), p. 56.

2 Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hearings on the National Defense Establishment, 1st session, 1947, pp. 525–28, as recounted in Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (London: Deutsch, 1994), p. 275.

3 S. D. Gibson, ‘Open Source Intelligence: A contemporary Intelligence Lifeline’, Ph.D Thesis, Cranfield University (UK Defence Academy, 2007).

4 Oliver Franks et al, Falkland Islands Review (The Franks Report) (London: HMSO, January 1983).

5 Robin Butler et al, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (London: HMSO, 14 July 2004), para.605d, p. 146 (hereafter Butler Report).

6 The term ‘bias’ is used here in the statistical sense of a sample which is not representative of the whole, rather than to imply any dishonesty or prejudice of the intelligence officer or source.

7 For example, IISS, Strategic Survey 2008, p. 52, ‘Butler made the point that SIS intelligence coverage of Iraq had come from sources in the regime rather than émigrés or dissidents, thereby reducing the risk that the resultant reporting was deliberately biased or misleading. But of the five main sources on which SIS had relied, only one had had direct access to intelligence on WMD, with the others deriving their information from sub-sources. This was an entirely legitimate approach, but one which imposed a substantial obligation to test the bona fides of the sub-sources. Following the Iraq invasion, the intelligence from one source was ‘withdrawn’, meaning that the service no longer had confidence in the validity of the material. That from two others was placed in doubt.’

8 See for example The Butler Report, pp. 112–3, para. 459: ‘the JIC may, in some assessments, have misread the nature of Iraqi Governmental and social structures […]We note that the collection of intelligence on Iraq's prohibited weapons programmes was designated as being a JIC First Order of Priority whereas intelligence on Iraqi political issues was designated as being Third Order […]’

9 R. J. Aldrich, ‘Setting Priorities in a World of Changing Threats’ in Steve Tsang (ed.), Intelligence and Human Rights in the Era of Global Terrorism (New York: Praeger, 2006), pp. 158–69.

10 A. Rathmell, ‘Towards Post-Modern Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security, 17:3 (2002), pp. 87–104.

11 S. D. Gibson, ‘In the Eye of the Perfect Storm: Re-imagining, Reforming and Refocusing Intelligence for Risk, Globalisation and Changing Societal Expectation’, Rigsk Management, 7:4 (2005), pp. 23–41.

12 Gibson, ‘Open Source Intelligence: A Contemporary Lifeline’.

13 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Report on the US Intelligence Community's Pre-war Intelligence Assessment in Iraq, 7 July 2004: ‘Our Committee, as the findings reflect, discovered that there were serious flaws in the production and step-by-step review of the October 2002 NIE which was the subject of the committee's inquiry. In some cases, the agencies with significant technical competence and differing views were overruled by the CIA in the overall process. Some sources of information were not properly evaluated; indeed some were given undue weight. In some cases, key judgements did not include appropriate qualifiers to communicate to policymakers the level of uncertainty associated with the judgement. These problems that we have pointed out in the report must be addressed and corrected for future estimates.’

14 As argued in Aldrich, Setting Priorities, for example.

15 Doug Nicoll, ‘The Joint Intelligence Committee and Warning of Aggression’, Internal Cabinet Office Report, 1982, redacted May 2006. Obtained by Michael Goodman under the Freedom of Information Act. Contained in Michael Goodman, ‘The Dog That Didn't Bark: The Joint Intelligence Committee and Warning of Aggression’, Cold War History, 7:4 (2007), pp. 529–51. Goodman states that the JIC accepted the Nicoll report on 4 March 1982 but ‘[…] just one month later, the JIC fell into many of the pitfalls that Nicoll had identified when they failed to anticipate the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands.’

16 Nicoll Report, pp. 3–4, para. 6.

17 Ibid., p. 3 para. 5.

18 For example Richards Heuer, The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1999).

19 In a private conversation, a member of the Butler Report Committee told us that he was not aware of the Nicoll Report.

20 Sir Percy Cradock, Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World (London: John Murray, 2002).

21 This is analysed in more detail in Alex Martin and Peter Wilson, ‘The Value of Non-Governmental Intelligence – Widening the Field’, Intelligence and National Security, 23:6 (2008), pp. 767–76.

22 IISS Strategic Survey, 2008, p. 53.

23 Cradock, Know Your Enemy.

24 For an account of the King's College training programme, see Michael Goodman and Sir David Omand, ‘Teaching Intelligence Analysts in the UK. What Analysts Need to Understand: The King's Intelligence Studies Programme’, Studies in Intelligence, 52:4 (2008).

25 For example, Butler Report, ‘[T]he need to reach consensus may result in nuanced language. Subtleties such as “the intelligence indicates” rather than ‘the intelligence shows’ may escape the untutored or busy reader.’ para. 603, p. 145.

26 The management implications of handling fragmentary intelligence are discussed in Peter Wilson, ‘Preparing to Meet New Challenges’ in Tsang (ed.), Intelligence and Human Rights in the Era of Global Terrorism, ch. 9, pp. 111–120.

27 Intelligence analysis software used widely by intelligence and security agencies, supplied by i2 Ltd.

28 Wilson, ‘Preparing to Meet New Challenges’.

29 See for example, A. Martin, ‘The Lessons of Eastern Europe for Modern Intelligence Reform’, Conflict, Security & Development, 7: 4 (2007), pp. 551–77.

30 See for example, Seth Jones et al, Securing Tyrants or Fostering Reform: US Internal Security Assistance to Repressive and Transitioning Regimes (Washington DC: RAND, 2006). ‘Internal security agencies should be judged by their ability to respond effectively to key security threats to the state. In the interest of long-term sustainability, however, they must also be judged by their accountability to their populations and by their commitment and proven capacity to abide by internationally recognized human rights norms. The goals of effectiveness and accountability are interlinked and, if they are realized, mutually reinforcing.’ p. xii.

31 See D. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) and Lt. Gen. John Kiszely, ‘Learning About Counter-Insurgency’, Military Review, (March–April 2007), pp. 5–11.

32 D. Gompert et al, War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced COIN Capabilities (Washington DC: RAND, 2008), p. 81.

33 Gompert, War by Other Means, pp. 14–5.

34 See also Lt. Gen. John Kiszely, ‘Learning About Counter-Insurgency’, Military Review (March April 2007), pp. 5–11, which draws on lessons from Malaya, Cyprus and Northern Ireland and says ‘one of the clearest lessons from Malaya […] had been the importance of an impartial, disciplined police force’. (p.6).

35 For example, Kiszely, ‘Counter-Insurgency’: ‘It is easy in the light of the later success of this [Northern Ireland] campaign to forget the early mistakes that were made, and the time it took to rectify them. Among such mistakes were the seemingly unqualified support for a highly partisan police force, internment without trial, and large cordon-and-search operations on very limited intelligence, often at the expense of the hearts-and-minds campaign. Without mistakes such as these, the situation might not have escalated.’ See also Rod Thornton, ‘Getting it Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in the Early Stages of the British Army's Deployment in Northern Ireland (August 1969 to March 1972)’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30:1 (2007), pp. 73–107.

36 IISS, ‘Rehabilitating the Jihadists’, Strategic Comments, 14:5 (2008), {http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-14-2008/volume-14-issue-5/rehabilitating-the-jihadists/} accessed on 15 October 2008.

37 Kirsten Schulze, ‘Indonesia's Approach to Jihadist Deradicalization’, CTC Sentinel, 1:8 (July 2008), pp. 8–10. {http://www.ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/CTCSentinel-Vol1Iss8.pdf} accessed on 15 October 2008. For an overview of de-radicalisation programmes see Naureen Chowdury Fink and Ellie Hearne, Beyond Terrorism: Deradicalization and Disengagement from Violent Extremism, International Peace Institute (October 2008), {http://www.ipacademy.org/asset/file/384/BETER.pdf} accessed on16 October 2008.

38 See OECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform (Paris: OECD, 2007), {http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/25/38406485.pdf} accessed on 16 October 2008.

39 International Development Act, 2002.

40 Countering International Terrorism, The United Kingdom's Strategy (London: HMSO, July 2006), {http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-publications/publication-search/general/Contest-Strategy?view=Binary} accessed on 16 October 2008.

41 {http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/WhatWeDo/SecurityandIntelligence/SSDAT/}

42 {http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/what-we-do/funding-programmes/conflict-prevention-pools/} accessed on 16 October 2008. The Conflict Prevention Pool was formerly split into an African Conflict Prevention Pool and a Global Conflict Prevention Pool.

43 ‘The issue or areas for improvement are as follows:

  • the absence of authoritative guidance on how to set priorities within strategies and lack of agreement on who sets them; …

  • that the CPPs appear to operate more according to bureaucratic interests which are somewhat removed from the identified PSA and SDA objectives, rather than to those objectives;

  • that CPPs are limited by what the three principal Departments (FCO, MOD and DFID) can agree, even though differences can be, and are on occasion, resolved at Ministerial level; …

  • for the bulk of CPP expenditure, that the CPPs may represent little more than a new accounting mechanism (a new budget line) for pre-existing programs of involved Departments, rather than a way of enhancing UK efforts in conflict prevention.’

Greg Austin, Evaluation of the Conflict Prevention Pools (London: DFID, September 2003), para. 22 {http://www.channelresearch.com/dwnld/ev647summary.pdf} accessed on 16 October 2008.