Intelligence and International Security

New Perspectives and Agendas

Len Scott, R. Gerald Hughes, Martin Alexander, Len Scott, R. Gerald Hughes, Martin Alexander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415583879
• eBook ISBN: 9781317965503
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

The events of 9/11 and subsequent acts of jihadist terrorism, together with the failures of intelligence agencies over Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, have arguably heralded a new age of intelligence. For some this takes the form of a crisis of legitimacy. For others the threat of cataclysmic terrorism involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack gives added poignancy to the academic contention that intelligence failure is inevitable. Many of the challenges facing intelligence appear to be both new and deeply worrying. In response, intelligence has clearly taken on new forms and new agendas. How these various developments are viewed depends upon the historical, normative and political frameworks in which they are analysed. This book addresses fundamental questions arising in this new age.

The central aim of the collection is to identify key issues and questions and subject them to interrogation from different methodological perspectives using internationally acclaimed experts in the field. A key focus in the collection is on British and North American perspectives. Recent trends and debates about the organisation and conduct of intelligence provide key themes for exploration. Underpinning several contributions is the recognition that intelligence faces a conflict of ideas as much as practices and threats.

This book was published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security.

Introduction: Journeys in Twilight

Len Scott, R. Gerald Hughes and Martin S. Alexander

This is the third in a series of edited collections based on events held at the University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog, organized by scholars from the Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies (CIISS) in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.¹ A fourth conference was held in the spring of 2009. The introduction to the second collection contains this statement from the first:

Intelligence has never been more important in world politics than it is now at the opening of the twenty-first century. The terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, along with the politics and diplomacy of the Second Gulf War, have brought intelligence issues to the forefront of both official and popular discourse on security and international affairs. The need for better understanding of both the nature of the intelligence process and its importance to national and international security has never been more apparent. The aim of this collection is to enhance our understanding of the subject by drawing on a range of perspectives, from academic experts to journalists to former members of the British and American intelligence communities.²

And this remains our central aim.

The first conference, part of the Journeys in Shadows research project, sought to review and develop methodological perspectives on intelligence.³ While not eschewing traditional concerns, engagement was sought with various approaches, including theoretical, and in particular normative, discourses in International Relations. The second collection sought to consolidate these objectives while focusing on lessons from intelligence history for contemporary affairs. In this third collection we build upon these endeavours and explore emerging changes in the study and practice of intelligence.

One topic illustrates well our interest in methodological diversity: the issue of intelligence liaison. Several of our contributors address different aspects from different perspectives. Richard Aldrich invokes the observation in 2004 of Sir Stephen Lander, the former Director-General of MI5, that the exponential increase in international intelligence co-operation constituted the most significant change within the world of intelligence over the previous decade.⁴ Aldrich argues that changes in liaison have wrought major qualitative changes in the nature of intelligence and that ‘activities such as rendition are merely the most visible symptom of a more fundamental change in the style of intelligence activity that has been underway since the mid-1990s’.⁵ Don Munton uses a historical example of intelligence liaison as a means of exploring and evaluating key paradigms in international relations theory.⁶ For Munton, ‘Intelligence liaison is … not merely an additional source of policy-relevant knowledge. It is a type of international activity, a variety of policy behaviour’ to which theories used to explain other types of international cooperation can be applied. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones provides a third perspective, examining trajectories of liaison and integration within the European Union and assessing how those who consider more federal approaches might learn from the successes and failures of the Central Intelligence Agency.⁷

Munton also provides new historical insights into the intensively studied subject of Cuba, underlining our concern with historical understanding and scholarship. This is also illustrated by Andrew Priest’s reflections on the concept of a Vietnam Syndrome and its implications for Iraq,⁸ and in particular by John Ferris’ richly textured analysis of British perceptions of the Islamic ‘threat’ that shows the complex interrelationships between the religious and the secular, the state and the group, and between ideas of nationalism, Islam and imperialism over many decades.⁹

A central objective in our 2002 conference was to integrate normative questions into the study of intelligence more satisfactorily and this has remained a continuing concern for the centre, illustrated by key contributions to the 2004 collection¹⁰ and the focus of the second annual CIISS lecture in November 2005 by the late Sir Michael Quinlan on the idea of ‘Just Intelligence’.¹¹ A focus on ethical (and associated legal) issues has now clearly emerged in the field of intelligence. In 2005 an International Intelligence Ethics Association was established which is developing its own journal, the International Journal of Intelligence Ethics.¹² And a growing literature attests to changes in attitudes of scholars and former practitioners.¹³ A key factor is of course developments in intelligence practice brought about by 9/11 and the ‘war on terrorism’. Changes in, and debates about, American practice in particular, involving ‘extraordinary rendition’, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and the activities at Guantanamo Bay as well as Abu Ghraib, have stimulated and in some places reinvigorated debates.¹⁴ Peter Gill’s essay on human rights in this volume reflects various growing concerns about intelligence practice as well as the need to develop normative frameworks in which to explore conflicts and controversies.¹⁵ There are, of course, those who believe that ethics has no place in the study or practice of intelligence. What is clear, however, is that former practitioners take such matters seriously. The argument that the operational and the ethical are inextricably connected is well illustrated by the observations of Sir Richard Dearlove, the former Chief of Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), who has noted that: ‘Potential recruits would come to us because they believed in our cause … This made our work much easier’, and that ‘America’s cause is doomed unless it regains the moral high ground’.¹⁶ How far moral high ground is lost or gained by means or ends raises important questions for western states and their intelligence services. Further reflection and a wider selection of case studies, though, may be required before we can determine whether and why intelligence agencies whose practices are effective and ethically defensible may, nonetheless, find themselves serving disputed and even disreputable policy.

In the preface to the 2004 collection Peter Hennessy observed that our endeavours then ‘were photo-reconnaissance of the state of the craft in the fast-moving world between 9/11 and the 2003 war on Iraq’.¹⁷ Arguably, the pace of change has not slackened since, and we are conscious that attempts to draw back and reflect risk being overtaken by events (or revelations). In this sense any judgements are best seen as provisional and in some cases tentative. For example, charting whether attitudes to intelligence-led preventive action represent a sea-change in American attitudes or the high tide of the Neo-Con agenda is only slowly becoming clearer. Distinguishing trends from phases assumes an additional level of difficulty when the subject under scrutiny remains often opaque and frequently hidden.

It is not our job to highlight our own shortcomings, though we are conscious of various kinds of bias in our approach, in particular with our focus on the traditional players in ‘the Great Game’. Given the events of 9/11 and the war on Iraq this is necessary to a degree. Yet because of the focus on the relationship between intelligence and globalization in particular, we are aware that new perspectives and case studies in the developing world require more scrutiny than we have provided. We are also conscious that our selection of authors and subjects in this volume does not do justice to various new approaches. In the UK, the engagement of political scientists, organizational theorists and legal scholars is something we wish to encourage, and hope to do so in our future endeavours.¹⁸

This collection is based on the ‘Choices for Western Intelligence: The Security Challenges of the Twenty-first Century’ Conference, at University of Wales Conference Centre, Gregynog, 28–30 April 2007. This was funded in part by Aberystwyth University, the Greygynog Colloquium Fund and the Department of International Politics, to whom we express our gratitude. We are also grateful to the speakers at the conference: Richard Aldrich, John Ferris, Pete Gill, Peter Hennessy, Michael Herman, John Nomikos, Paul Murphy MP, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Paul Maddrell, Don Munton, and Cees Wiebes. We would also like to note the contribution of the PhD students who took part in a session dedicated to their research: John Barlow, Ioannis Konstantopolous and Adam Svendsen. The following also attended and made various contributions to proceedings: Jim Beach, Huw Bennett, Jonathan Colman, Huw Dylan, Antony Field, Cornelius Focke, Jamie Fowler, Anthony Glees, Kristian Gustafson, Paula Hanasz, Claudia Hillebrand, Andrew Humphrys, Peter Jackson, Gaynor Johnson, John Keiger, Graeme Reddiex, Barrett J. Riordan, Carlos Santos, Melpomeni Skordou, Kristan Stoddart and Jake Widén.

Finally, we wish to record our thanks and appreciation to various people who assisted us in our endeavours: Peter Jackson, our editor, colleague and friend, for his support and guidance; and Ken Booth, Colin McInnes and Michael Foley, our friends and successive Heads of the Department of International Politics, who have consistently supported our endeavours in the Centre.

Len Scott

R. Gerald Hughes

Martin S. Alexander

Aberystwyth

August 2010

Notes

1 L.V. Scott and P.D. Jackson (eds), Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century: Journeys in Shadows (London: Routledge 2004), also published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security, 19/2 (Summer 2004); Len Scott and R. Gerald Hughes (eds), Intelligence, Crises and Security: Prospects and Retrospects (London: Routledge 2008) also published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security, 21/5 (October 2006).

2 ‘Introduction’ in Scott and Hughes, Intelligence, Crises and Security, p. xi.

3 One further aspect of the project involved critical scrutiny of archive-based study of intelligence. This resulted in a volume of documents with specialist commentaries that explored the challenges and opportunities for archival research, R. Gerald Hughes, Peter Jackson and Len Scott (eds), Exploring Intelligence Archives: Enquiries into the Secret State (London: Routledge 2008).

4 S. Lander, ‘International Intelligence Co-operation: An Inside Perspective’, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17/3 (2004) pp. 481–93.

5 Richard Aldrich, ‘Global Intelligence Co-operation versus Accountability: New Facets to an Old Problem’, this volume, pp. 25-50.

6 Don Munton, ‘Intelligence Cooperation Meets International Studies Theory: Explaining Canadian Operations in Castro’s Cuba’, this volume, pp. 113-32.

7 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, ‘Rise, Fall and Regeneration: From CIA to EU’, this volume, pp. 97-112.

8 Andrew Priest, ‘From Saigon to Baghdad: The Vietnam Syndrome, the Iraq War and American Foreign Policy’, this volume, pp. 133-165.

9 John Ferris, ‘“The Internationalism of Islam”: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840–1951’, this volume, pp. 51-71.

10 Michael Herman, ‘Ethics and Intelligence after September 2001’ in Scott and Jackson (eds) Understanding Intelligence, pp.180–94, also Intelligence and National Security, 19/2 (2004) pp. 342–58; Toni Erskine, ‘“As Rays of Light to the Human Soul?” Moral Agents and Intelligence Gathering’ in Scott and Jackson (eds) Understanding Intelligence, pp. 195–215, also Intelligence and National Security, 19/2 (2004) pp. 359–81. For an excellent early exposition on the subject, see E. Drexel Godfrey Jr., ‘Ethics and Intelligence’, Foreign Affairs, 56/3 (April 1978), pp. 624-42.

11 Subsequently published as ‘Just Intelligence: Prolegomena to an Ethical Theory’, Intelligence and National Security, 22/1 (February 2007) pp.1–13; and in Peter Hennessy (ed.), The New Protective State: Government, Intelligence and Terrorism (London: Continuum Books 2007) pp.123–41. Sadly, Sir Michael Quinlan died in February 2009. Possessed of a brilliant mind, Quinlan was also, as one obituarist noted, ‘a man of both dignity and reserve’ (Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2009).

12 For the web page of the ‘International Intelligence Ethics Association’, see <http://intelligence-ethics.org>.

13 See for example, Alex Danchev, ‘Human Rights and Human Intelligence’ in Steve Tsang (ed.) Intelligence and Human Rights in the Era of Global Terrorism (London: Praeger Security International 2007) pp. 93–108; Angela Gendron, ‘Just War, Just Intelligence: An Ethical Framework for Foreign Espionage’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, 18/3 (2005) pp. 398–434; E. Drexel Godfrey Jr, ‘Ethics and Intelligence’ in Loch K. Johnson and James J. Wirtz (eds) Intelligence and National Security: The Secret World of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction: Journeys in Twilight
• 2. The Future of Intelligence: Seeking Perfection in an Imperfect World?
• 3. Global Intelligence Co-operation versus Accountability: New Facets to an Old Problem
• 4. ‘The Internationalism of Islam’: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840-1951
• 5. Security Intelligence and Human Rights: Illuminating the ‘Heart of Darkness’?
• 6. Rise, Fall and Regeneration: From CIA to EU
• 7. Intelligence Cooperation Meets International Studies Theory: Explaining Canadian Operations in Castro’s Cuba
• 8. From Saigon to Baghdad: The Vietnam Syndrome, the Iraq War and American Foreign Policy
• Index