Education, Security and Intelligence Studies

Liam Gearon

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138088276
• eBook ISBN: 9781351614689
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

With intensified threats to global security from international terrorism worldwide, education systems themselves face these same unprecedented security threats. Schools and universities have become marked loci of interest for the monitoring of extremism and counter-terrorism by security and intelligence agencies. The relationship between education systems and national security is nothing new though – it extends in surprising and unexpected ways into territory which is by turns open and covert, even secret.

Acknowledging the genuine political and security concerns which have drawn educational systems ever closer to the intelligence community, this book shows how and why this has happened, and explains why the relationship between education and the security and intelligence communities extends beyond contemporary concerns with counter-terrorism. As the title of this book demonstrates, this is as much an intellectual challenge as a security struggle.

Education, Security and Intelligence Studies thus critically engages with multi-disciplinary perspectives on a complex and contentious interface: between systems of often secret and covert national security and intelligence and open systems of national education. Delving into difficult to access and often closely guarded aspects of public life, the book provides the pathfinding groundwork and theoretical modelling for research into a complex of little explored institutional and epistemological interconnectedness between universities and the security and intelligence agencies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies.

INTELLIGENCE STUDIES, UNIVERSITIES AND SECURITY

by ANTHONY GLEES

ABSTRACT: This article offers a critical assessment of academic intelligence studies in higher education. It argues that universities (and academics) should value this subject far more highly than they currently do. Doing so will enhance better public understanding of an increasingly important and unique device in modern governance. It will also improve the quality of intelligence activity by raising awareness of both good and bad practice, encourage lawfulness by means of public understanding and so defending a vital public service from ill-informed attacks in today’s conflicted world. This, rather than training potential officers, should be the primary purpose of intelligence studies.

The study of intelligence is a relatively new field of academic inquiry and teaching. This article explores key issues arising from the research into, and the teaching of, intelligence studies in higher education, with a focus on the subject in its current UK context. The aim is not to list the various sites at which it is researched and taught or offer an exhaustive account of exactly what is taught, and by whom. Rather it is to provide a critical assessment of the subject itself, and to suggest that universities (and academics) should value it rather more highly than they do, both to underpin good and lawful policymaking and because teaching intelligence is sound pedagogy, given the unique importance for government of intelligence activity in today’s perilously conflicted world. This, rather than training potential officers, should be the primary purpose of intelligence studies.

There is no dearth of academic and media voices claiming that intelligence activity could subvert the core values of liberal democracy (free speech, for example, or academic freedom) by extending its reach into both universities and the media, two of the most important institutions on which liberty relies. The suggestion here is that in Britain, at any rate, this is to misrepresent the complexity of the issue.

The article begins by arguing that academic writing on intelligence studies is becoming too introverted, appearing too focused the ‘training’ paradigm for a variety of reasons. It ends by focusing on three discrete issues, each of which has political, moral and pedagogical urgency. These are: the ethics of intelligence activity (especially in respect of torture and human rights abuses by intelligence agencies); the interception of communications in the context of democratic acceptability; and, finally, the social and moral obligations of intelligence departments in British universities.

The claim made here is for the study of intelligence as an academic subject in its own right so as to provide for the better public understanding of an increasingly important device in modern governance and, ultimately, to improve the quality of the intelligence communities of democratic liberal states. It also, more controversially, makes a case for defending secret intelligence activity in the United Kingdom, both now and in the future, from an academic perspective. The proviso in doing so is that the work of our UK agencies continues to be framed by law and in particular by an adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights.¹ Western liberal democracies need the best intelligence communities they can construct. For them to function properly, they must have the support and understanding of the public. This in turn means strong academic voices are required to explain what they do, and why they do it.

Furthermore, the study of intelligence and better public understanding of its role in government is directly connected to the effectiveness of intelligence as a profession and thereby to the better safeguarding of our democracy (Glees, 2007, 2013d). Without effective intelligence, pluralistic liberal democracy, far from being strengthened, would find itself fatally wounded. There is a tangible threat of this happening today. And were this to happen, rational-free enquiry (which is the essence of higher education in any democracy) would also go under, because without political freedom there can be no academic freedom and free intellectual discourse. It follows that the study of intelligence is not just intimately linked to sound pedagogy but also to the concept of the free university. If universities disseminate a better understanding of intelligence activity, it will also make universities, and those who work in them, more knowledgeable about the security threats facing our free society and the unique role that higher education has to maintain it. In this way, universities will sustain liberty and genuine academic freedom within their institutional boundaries whilst promoting these liberal values in society more generally.

1. WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE? WHAT ARE ‘INTELLIGENCE STUDIES’?

We should start by considering what ‘intelligence studies’ actually consist of, and what they should consist of, not least because the term ‘intelligence’ has a different meaning in the United Kingdom from the one it is given in the United States of America, and is usually taught there in a different way. Rather more hangs on this distinction that might at first seem apparent both for what is taught and how, but also for how intelligence activity is evaluated by academics.

Leaving to one side for the time being the controversy that many intelligence operations cause quite properly once the public get to hear about them, it is vital to understand that in the United Kingdom, it has to do with secret information, as the British Government puts it: ‘information acquired against the wishes and generally without the knowledge of the originators or possessors. Sources are kept secret from readers as are the techniques used to acquire the information’ (UK Government: MI5).

In the United States of America, on the other hand, ‘intelligence’ is generally held to be any information, secret and open source, that is passed to government and on which it may act.

The fullest official description of the nature of intelligence as it is defined in the United Kingdom comes, paradoxically perhaps, from the Review carried out by Lord Butler of the intelligence failures that hallmarked Britain’s attack on Iraq in 2003, largely justified on intelligence indicating that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of WMD (published in the government’s 2002 dossier), which proved not to be the case (UK Government: Butler, 2004).

‘Intelligence’, Lord Butler stated in his Review

merely provides techniques for improving the basis of knowledge … it can be a dangerous tool if its limitations are not recognized … the most important limitation is its incompleteness. Much ingenuity and effort is spent on making secret information difficult to acquire … it is often when first acquired sporadic and patchy and even after analysis may still be at best inferential … the necessary protective security procedures with which intelligence is handled can reinforce a mystique of omniscience. Intelligence is not only like many other sources incomplete, it can be incomplete in undetectable ways … A hidden limitation of intelligence is its inability to transform a mystery into a secret. In principle intelligence can be expected to uncover secrets … The enemy’s intentions may not be known but they are … knowable. But mysteries are essentially unknowable. What a leader truly believes or which his reactions would be in certain circumstances cannot be known but can only be judged. Joint Intelligence Committee judgements have to cover both secrets and mysteries … but [judgement] cannot impart certainty. (UK Government: Butler, 2004)

Secret, intelligence-led activity has been, is and will always be a key, and probably a core, tool of governance whether in the United Kingdom, the United States of America or indeed anywhere else. Lord Butler listed several examples of where secret intelligence had a positive and decisive influence on Britain’s security. If nothing else, they show the importance, breadth and the impact of intelligence on policy: ‘the compliance with international law or international treaties, warning of untoward events, support of military and law enforcement operations and in long-term assistance to planning for future national security operations’(UK Government: Butler, 2004). Specific cases included the uncovering of the work of A Q Khan who was ‘at the centre of an international proliferation network’ in helping states to illegally enrich uranium, the decision by Libya to abandon its WMD programme in December 2003, the validation of the existence of Iran’s chemical weapons programme, of North Korea’s development of WMD, in the fight against Islamist terrorism and the tracking of ‘Usama Bin Laden’ since November 1998.

There is a large literature addressing the definition of intelligence and the nature of intelligence studies (May, 1995; Lowenthal, 1999; Zegart, 2007). There is consensus that the subject must involve an investigation of intelligence activity, how governments utilise it and how, and in what circumstances, intelligence communities carry out their duties (Gill et al., 2008). It is obvious that the definition of intelligence must condition what is studied, both practically and conceptually. In the US context, the subject would involve examining all information going to government in respect of any particular policy or event, whereas in the United Kingdom it ought, strictly, to mean the study of the use of secret information in policymaking (secret, that is, at the time of use). In the US context, a massive number of government institutions would have to be looked at; in the United Kingdom, the perspective would be limited to secret agencies and the national security policies associated with them.

In the event, however, the different definitions carry implications that go far beyond what is studied and researched. They impact not only on what is taught but also on the conclusions that are drawn about intelligence activity more generally. It is not just the case that the subject is conceived much more narrowly in the United States of America, it is that some of those teaching it in the United Kingdom seem to wish to brush over the significant conceptual differences in order to emphasise (or exaggerate) what they regard as the commonalties between US and UK intelligence. Several UK academics in the field point to what they claim is an intelligence ‘Anglosphere’, even suggesting that we in the United Kingdom may be its ‘prisoners’, to which the comparison of diverse intelligence cultures on a global scale could be an antidote (Aldrich and Kasuku, 2012).

In making this argument, however, the authors take it as a given that this ‘Anglosphere’ really exists and that it provides a firm basis for the study of the UK intelligence community, often quoting in support an influential practitioner turned scholar, Michael Herman (Herman, 1996). Herman believes he has identified a commonality between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of ‘dynamics and problems’. Elsewhere, Herman has argued that (as Aldrich puts it) ‘despite their marked differences in size, intelligence in Whitehall has more in common than with any cognate continental European mechanism’. This idea has formed the basis of several other academic studies, including a recent two-volume comparative study (which ironically actually describes in careful detail the myriad differences between the two systems) (Davies, 2012). In fact, the differences are far more important than the similarities, and it is not at all clear what weight should be given to the concept of an ‘Anglosphere’ in organisational (‘intelligence machinery’) or ethical and legal terms.

Despite the difference in the concept of ‘intelligence’, there are also, of course deeply significant, historical differ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Education, Security and Intelligence Studies
• 1. Intelligence studies, universities and security
• 2. Extremism and neo-liberal education policy: A contextual critique of the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham schools
• 3. Neither villains nor victims: Towards an educational perspective on radicalisation
• 4. The politicisation and securitisation of religious education? A rejoinder
• 5. Thinking interestingly: The use of game play to enhance learning and facilitate critical thinking within a Homeland Security curriculum
• 6. A golden age of security and education? Adult education for civil defence in the United States 1950–1970
• Index