CONCLUSION
The intelligence reform debate has an inconclusive aspect, which reflects both the difficulty of the issues and choices involved and the boundless enthusiasm of reform advocates, particularly those outside the intelligence community.
Although improvements undoubtedly can be made in intelligence, determining how efficient an inherently inefficient and intellectual process can be remains elusive. A wide gulf exists between government-based reviews of the intelligence community, which largely tend to accept the status quo and thus suggest modest changes, and the more acerbic critiques offered by those wholly outside the system, many of whom are intelligence community veterans. Are these differences real, or do they reflect, to some extent, parochial prejudices? The executive branch has rarely shown enthusiasm for major reforms. At least three factors explain this. First, many, if not most, policy makers believe that their most important needs are usually met, so they are not deeply dissatisfied. Second, many proposals for reform would require greater involvement of policy makers, which they would prefer to avoid if only because they already have more than enough to do. Third, many policy makers understand some of the fragility of the intelligence community and fear the possibility of making things worse.
Furthermore, remember that intelligence is a government activity. Revolutionary proposals tend to be ignored or, at best, to be severely moderated before they are enacted.
What is certain is that the debate over intelligence reform will go on, largely on its own momentum, with heightened attention during crises or after incidents deemed to be intelligence failures.
FURTHER READINGS
Literature on intelligence reform is extensive but uneven. Many opinions and proposals are on offer, not all of which are practical, with a few hobbyhorses among them. The following readings include some of the more recent studies and some of the more thoughtful and practical works by knowledgeable observers.
Berkowitz, Bruce, and Allen Goodman,
Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information
Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Best, Richard A., Jr
. Proposals for Intelligence Reorganization,
1949-1996. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service. 1996. (Appendix to
IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century;
see below.)
Betts, Richard K. “Fixing Intelligence.”
foreign Affairs
81 (January-February 2002): 43-59.
Carter, Ashton. B. “The Architecture of Government in the Face of Terrorism.”
Internatinnal Serurity
26 (winter 2001-2002): 5-23.
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction [WMD Commission].
Report to
the President
of the United States.
Washington, D.C., March 31, 2005.
Council on Foreign Relations.
Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future of U.S. Intelligence.
New York: Council on Foreign Relations. 1996.
Eberstadt, Ferdinand.
Unification of the
War
and Navy Departments and Postwar Organization for National Security.
Report to James Forrestal, secretary of the Navy. Washington, D.C., 1945.
Hansen. James. “U.S. Intelligence Confronts the Future.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
17 (winter 2004-2005): 674-709.
Hulnick. Arthur S. “Does the U.S. Intelligence Community Need a DNI?”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
17 (winter 2004-2005): 710-730.
Johnson, Loch. “Spies.”
Foreign Policy
120 (September-October 2000): 18-26.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States [9/11 Commission).
The 9/11 Commission Report.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.
Quinn.James L., Jr. “Staffing the Intelligence Community: The Pros and Cons of Intelligence Reserve.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
13 (2000): 160-170.
Treverton, Gregory F.
Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information.
New York: Cambridge University Press. 2001.
U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century.
Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change
Phase III Report. Washington, D.C., 2001.
U.S. Commission on the Roles and Responsibilities of the United States Intelligence Community.
Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence.
Washington, D.C., 1996.
CHAPTER 15
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
Although this book focuses on the U.S. intelligence community, examining how intelligence in foreign countries operates is instructive, both as a means of investigating alternative intelligence choices and of benefiting from the light they shed on the U.S. intelligence community. However, a problem with sources arises. No intelligence service, even those in other democracies, has undergone the same detailed scrutiny that the U.S. intelligence community has. The reliable literature on foreign intelligence services derives mostly from the press and from some more popular, as opposed to scholarly, histories. As is often the case, the accounts tend to emphasize organization and the more sensational activities. No other intelligence service is as transparent as that of the United States.
Although virtually every nation has some type of intelligence service—if not both civilian and military, and at least the latter—the services of five nations are worthy of close examination based on their importance and breadth of activity: Britain, China, France, Israel, and Russia. As is the case with the United States, each nation’s intelligence services are unique expressions of its history, needs, and preferred governmental structures.
BRITAIN
Despite their similarities and historical connections, the British and the U.S. governmental structures and civil liberties have significant differences, which are important in understanding their intelligence practices.
First, the Cabinet, which embodies Britain’s executive, enjoys a supremacy beyond that of the U.S. president. The Cabinet has the right to make appointments and to take major actions (declare war, make peace, sign treaties) without conferring with Parliament, where, by definition, the Cabinet enjoys a majority in the House of Commons. Second, the division between foreign and domestic intelligence is less stark in Britain than it is in the United States. Third, Britain does not have a written bill of rights protecting specific civil liberties (although Prime Minister Tony Blair talked about creating one). In 1998, Parliament enacted the Human Rights Act, which does offer many individual and political liberties. The act was passed to bring Britain into compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. However, this act does not grant these rights in absolute terms, unlike the U.S. Constitution. In terms of intelligence, one of the most important differences is that the British government can enforce prior restraint on the publication of articles deemed injurious to national security.
The three major intelligence components—MI5, M16, and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—operate under statutory basis. M15, whose formal name is the Security Service, is a domestic intelligence service, responsible for providing security against a range of threats, including terrorism, espionage, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation, and threats to the economy and for giving support to law enforcement agencies. M15 focuses on covertly organized threats. A major preoccupation had been combating Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorism in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. According to the M15 Web site, this is still a concern, focusing on dissident groups that have rejected the 1998 accords. MI5 has no police powers (such as arrest or detention) and is empowered to protect British interests overseas. M15 uses human agents, communications intercepts, and eavesdropping to collect intelligence. M15 apparently had success in recruiting senior IRA officials as informants, much to the embarrassment of the IRA’s political arm, Sinn Fein, when these were revealed in 2005 and 2008.
In the 1990s, M15 won Parliament’s approval to expand its mandate to include organized crime, narcotics, immigration, and benefits fraud. The law provides authority to monitor telephones and mail (both of which require warrants from the home secretary) and to enter homes and offices of organized-crime suspects. M15 operates under the authority of the home secretary, for whom there is no precise U.S. equivalent. (The Home Office is responsible for police, immigration, drug enforcement, and other matters.) The Security Service Acts of 1989 and 1996 govern M15. In 2004, the home secretary announced a planned 50 percent increase in M15 with the addition of one thousand new analysts to respond to increasing concerns about terrorism. One area of emphasis is Arabic and South Asian languages. In 2006, M15 came under criticism for its performance prior to the July 7, 2005, attacks on the London Underground. M15 apparently had the leader of the attack and one other bomber under surveillance in 2003 but dropped it after coming to the conclusion that they were not immediate security threats. An investigation by the Intelligence and Security Committee released in May 2006 upheld this decision. This report also noted that the number of “primary investigative targets” in the United Kingdom had gone from 250 in 2001, to 500 in 2004, and to 800 in 2005, and increases on this magnitude meant that only a fraction of these individuals could actually be investigated. In November 2006, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who had recently stepped down as the head of M15, said there were 1,600 known active militants being tracked.
The director general of the Security Service also oversees the joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC). JTAC is staffed by officers from M15, M16, GCHQ, and the Defence Intelligence Staff and is responsible for counterterrorism intelligence, much like the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in the United States.
M16 is also known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Its activities are governed by the Intelligence Services Act of 1994, which also directs GCHQ. MI6 is charged with the collection [by means of human intelligence (HUMINT) and technical intelligence (TECHINT)] and production of “information relating to the activities or intentions of persons outside the British Islands.” It also performs other related tasks—a legal echo of the vague U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) charter in the National Security Act. MI6 comes under the authority of the foreign secretary (equivalent to the U.S. secretary of state). Like M15, M16 has entered a period of growth, particularly in response to terrorism and WMD. According to British press estimates. M16 shrank by some 25 percent during the 1990s in the aftermath of the cold war. As of 2008, MI6 has a Web site to explain its role and to broaden its recruiting base. Interestingly, the Web site is available in French, Spanish. Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.
GCHQis the British signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency, also operating under the foreign secretary. It is the British equivalent of the National Security Agency (NSA), with which it enjoys a close working relationship. Like NSA, GCHQhas facilities at home and overseas. GCHQ, again like NSA, has both a SIGINT and an information assurance function. The function of the Communications Electronics Security Group is reflected in its name.
The Defence Intelligence Staff(DIS), under the chief of Defence Intelligence, reports to the defense secretary. The DIS controls the Defence Geographic and Imagery Agency, which, like the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), produces both geographic and imagery products. According to press reports, there has been a large exodus of military intelligence officers from 2004-2007, lured away by better offers in the private sector.
Executive control of British intelligence is based on the Cabinet structure and its supporting Cabinet Office. The prime minister is responsible for all intelligence and security issues, with the support of the Ministerial Committee on the Intelligence Services, which serves an oversight and policy review function. The prime minister chairs the committee; other members are the deputy prime minister; the home, defense, and foreign secretaries; and the chancellor of the exchequer (equivalent to the U.S. secretary of the Treasury). In July 2007, the United Kingdom changed its intelligence management structure. There is now a head of Intelligence Security and Resilience, who also acts as security adviser to the prime minister. There will also be a separate head of Intelligence Assessment and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The JIC is part of the Cabinet Office, providing interdepartmental intelligence assessments to the government. The goal was to meet the recommendations of the Butler Report (an investigation led by Lord Butler into intelligence on Iraq’s WMD) to separate the intelligence policy advice and analytical roles at the top of British intelligence. Responsibility for the Single Intelligence Account (that is, the intelligence budget, less the DIS and the JIC), now goes to the cabinet secretary, who is the chief civil servant. Thus, the senior managers of British intelligence have a much closer relationship to policy makers and rely on the uniquely British concept of powerful career civil servants (the permanent undersecretaries) to administer on a nonpartisan basis. The closeness of the relationship obviates some of the more formal processes developed in the United States to determine intelligence requirements and resource allocation.