So, in rough order:
The Russian spies –
Aside from pictures of the spy formerly known as Anna Chapman in various states of undress – an unlikely cameo in the new James Bond film in the offing? – several things stuck out about this case. The first was just how disorganised an effort it was. All the books on Cold War spying suggest that such groups would have never been in direct contact with each other; nor would they have been so loose with their communications to their handlers back in Moscow. Whinges about who owned their respective houses would have never occurred for fear of revelation; so the impunity that these agents felt is either indicative of sloppy thinking or that counterintelligence is no longer as effective as it once was. Then came the extraordinary exchange of spies (10 back to Russia, and four from Russia to the US) at Vienna airport; a sign, perhaps, of the red-handed capture of the Russian officers, but also of the desire to maintain the thawing relations between the two sides.
There have been semi-official noises for the last five years in the UK about the state of foreign agent infiltration here; counterintelligence efforts having been replaced by the overwhelming focus on Islamist terrorism. This has allowed – so it goes – Russian and Chinese agents/officers to operate unmolested within our shores. This is something that requires attention, clearly. I would maintain, as per my previous post that further attention is required on the influence, influence through investments and voice opportunities being granted to these outside powers. More particularly, some critical thought needs to be given to the work of people like Anthony Glees who has written of the problems faced by unfriendly infiltration of British universities – particularly, I would add, universities who have military or dual-use specialisms.
The Chilcot Inquiry
Dame Manningham-Buller provided damning evidence to the Chilcot inquiry about the advice she and her former service – MI5 – had provided to the government in the lead-up to the Iraq war. She testified that MI5 had warned that the Iraq war would increase the threat from terrorists to the UK, and that Iraq had previously had no involvement with terrorism. She took a swipe at the foreign intelligence agency – SIS – saying they had over-promised on Iraq, and she presumably had in her mind all the extra work her service had to do to try and close the gap between their knowledge and the rapidly emerging threats following the invasion.
What really came out of her evidence, and in the tone she delivered it, was a sense that the way that the government had reached its decisions had been injudicious. The rise and rise of the ‘special advisor’; those fresh from university and the party machines with no specialist knowledge at all, added to the policy mix and the failure to adequately account for the law of unintended consequences.
Intelligence agencies do have to be accountable to the government and to Parliament, and so the civilian control of intelligence is desirable, but the opposite end of this spectrum; the ability to use flaky or non-existent intelligence to justify what the Deputy PM (Nick Clegg) has described as an illegal war is equally grotesque. Speaking truth to power is the raison d’etre of all intelligence agencies; to move away from this central goal is to reduce the agencies to some kind of secret policing service. As KoW readers will know, I have a particular interest in how policy is created in policy elites; what concerns me is that ‘sofa government’ allowed far too much leverage for the PM and his close cohort to override not only established government procedure, but also good or commonsense, worrying in the light of the magnitude of the decision and the cost to the British taxpayer. I hope the relationship between intelligence mandarins, product and politicians has been worked through with the current government.
Top Secret America
Dana Priest (who must surely have done more than anyone else in the last ten years to inform the public about the American and parts of the European intelligence community) and her team have published an enormous quantity of research on the Washington Post website called ‘Top Secret America’. This project reveals the hidden wiring of the secret American state (as a footnote, how does this square – as with the UK too – with the rolling back of the frontiers of the state?) and how a system akin to the military-industrial-complex has grown up and mainstreamed itself through America’s elites and ordinary citizenry.
Three of the Post’s conclusions were: “Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.”
It’s the numbers of people with high-level clearances and the number of companies involved in providing private intelligence services that are surprising, if not staggering. Priest and Arkin clearly wishes to give the impression of a country over-run by a surveillance parallel state; but they are clear – and I’m pleased they have this view – that this isn’t a deliberate attempt to hijack a state, it is the unintended consequence of a myriad of Congressional decisions, and parts of the intelligence community expanding in response to threats – it is the sum of the weight of bureaucratic developments. And whilst the Americans can rule themselves – it is not for me to suggest to them a way of government – it is something we could probably trace here too; particularly the growth of information analysis, and the gentle spread of intelligence functions into the private sphere, oh, and the growth of these functions within the European Union too (see the recent decision to agree on SWIFT, after several refusals). The central point should be that we are absolutely sure of what we are seeking to protect and that every growth spurt of this secret part of the state is done in order to secure the protection of a defined goal; at the moment it appears that the machine has expansion built into its DNA – Pierson called it functionalist creep. He could, and maybe should, reprise this work.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Very well said. Concerning the Iraq war, I think sloppy, “sofa” government is a bad thing in general. However, making bad decisions against the advice of (some of) their intelligence services must be allowed, since democracy requires they be able to make their own mistakes. The problem is that currently prime ministers can take whatever military actions they like, subject only to a vote of no confidence. We would benefit from the system in the US constitution, which they have ironically moved away from, in reserving declarations of war to the legislature.
Ed,
Just a comment:
” moved away from, in reserving declarations of war to the legislature.”
Actually, constitutionally, only Congress may declare war. That is unchanged. As a point of clarification, the president, as commander-in-chief, may deploy men at arms if need be, and if he does, he follows up by notifying congress.
Congress, in turn, may elect to declare war (thereby demonstrating they have a backbone). Or they may elect to do nothing. If they do nothing that is tacit approval of the action the president is taking, and besides, not all armed action requires a formal declaration of war. Now, if congress objects to the armed action, then they can exercise their constitutional duty and strangle the purse-strings, thereby cutting off the president’s ability to prosecute the armed effort.
Thanks, GR, I’m entirely aware of the US constitutional legalities. Now, how many wars against states has the US been involved in as a major actor since 1945? (I’m thinking Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq) And how many of those wars has the legislature declared? Do you claim that the constitution legality following the obvious intent of the constitution’s drafters has been respected? Or would you agree that president has arrogated to himself the starting and prosecuting of wars?
Rob,
Regarding clearances: No great shakes, given the size of the United States and the number of people that are directly involved in sensitive programs in the DoD, NIH, State Department, Commerce, Industry, etc, even academia (though who would trust “those people,” I’ll never know).
Thing is, the number of people with clearances isn’t much of a metric. Just because you may have a Top Secret clearance doesn’t give you access to whatever Top Secret information/program strikes your interest.
There are two criteria for access to classified information: You have the appropriate level of clearance and, most importantly, a need to know.
A level of clearance assures those with program/information access have been vetted to a level of suitability and trustworthiness. The NEED TO KNOW is the part that really defines the situation.
If you are assigned to work a classified program, you are only cleared to work where you have a specific need. You are not cleared for the entire program. Not even an adjacent part of the program.
So, while you may be working on a widget of some new design, you simply would have no idea how it fits into the other widget being worked on in the next office. You would be working in your little slice of the program, not the entire program. Therefore, the number of people with a clearance doesn’t really mean a heck of a lot.
GR, I didn’t suggest that any of these people did have access to significant chunks of anything, even with minor programmes. But the numbers of people given clearance to this level would certainly dwarf – I would imagine, and even on a pro-rata basis- the numbers in the UK, although I’d happily see Ms Priest find that one out here.
It just strikes me, that even on the terms of your own argument, there’s an awful lot of tiny bits of need to know. And it is the extent of this need to know that defines the expansion of the secret state in America.
And this expansion might not be earth shattering or significant.. but it is worthy of exploration; because no-one will know whether it’s significant unless it’s explored!
I recall reading some time ago, possibly in Mark Urban’s “UK Eyes Alpha” (sorry for no better ref), the suggestion that secrecy becomes an end in itself. I would suggest that given the author classifies his/her own product, that there will be some classification-inflation. In addition, secrecy acts as a superb pre-emptive way to cover one’s own arse. (cf Robert Cialdini’s “scarcity”: information is seen as more valuable when it is seen as harder to get, independently of its actual value or actual hardness to get)
On the point of number of TS cleared people: 854,000 people in the US (pop 307m) is equivalent in the UK (pop 61m) to around 170,000 people, or nearly as many as in the regular armed forces. That’s a lot of people.
Rob,
Thanks.
What I am driving at is the fact that the number of cleared people is not a legitimate measure of merit.
The US is engaged in a tremendous amount of truly classified work, much more than any other country, hence the need for many people with clearances. Oh, by the way, there are Confidential, Secret and Top Secret clearances. Contrary to Hollywood and others, there is no such thing as “Above Top Secret.”
Further, in the federal government, there are suitability clearances. Essentially there are people that had background checks on them to see if they are suitable for a position of trust. While not a security clearance, per se, it is a “clearance” that proves suitability for sensitive work—like a federal law enforcement Agent. Are the authors including them in their count as well? I don’t know.
Classifying a project, information or effort is not easily done and a nightmare to not just initiate but to administer—so, speaking from the “inside,” we do not classify just to classify. Classification is done for legitimate reasons. Does this mean there are no examples of over-classification? No. It means that over-classification is rare and usually the result of someone unsure of the level that is required and defaults to a more protective cover/level.
Yes, there are tiny bits of need-to-know. That is the nature of the beast.
You need to know then you are cleared, if not, no access–even if you have a clearance.
I wonder if there is a metric (or one of Parkinsons amusing yet venerable Laws) for the point when secrecy, classifaction and complexity merege to bring the machine to a halt or simply retard the whole process for no real benefit.
The recent articles (and the even better website) on Top Secret America by the Washington Post do ask such questions.
Perhapes we dont need super users as much as some sort of super computer to oversee and corodinate the whole process.
SkyNet anyone?
It is untrue that Iraq had “previously no involvement with terrorism,” and that’s not what Manningham-Buller said. What she said, according to the source article, is that Iraq had no connection with al Qaida. Even that may not be strictly true, depending on how you define “connection.” Essentially British and U.S. intelligence concluded there was no operational relationship there, which is probably true. Terrorism is by no means limited to al Qaida and Iraq had lots of terrorist links, including to those who attempted to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.
Whether the invasion of Iraq was justified on that or any other basis is a separate question. But it is concerning to see such great importance placed on whether or not to invade Iraq on the criterion of whether or not it would increase domestic terrorism in Britain. It would seem somewhat beside the question of whether or not it was the right thing to do.
To add to the current rash of spy stories, there is a pretty good Radio 4 program currently on iPlayer (sorry non-UK users), called ‘McCarthy: There Were Reds Under the Bed’, which looks at the extent of Soviet infiltration in the US.