British Way of Intelligence

Ì¸» ×²¬»´´·¹»²½»® Ö±«®²¿´ ±º ËòÍò ×²¬»´´·¹»²½» Í¬«¼·» From AFIO's The Intelligencer Association of Former Intelligence Officers 7700 Leesburg Pike Ste 324 Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies Falls Church, Virginia 22043 Volume 21 • Number 2 • $15 single copy price Summer 2015 Web: www.afio.com , E-mail: [email protected] © 2015 AFIO - Association of Former Intelligence Officers, All Rights Reserved ÞÛÌÎßÇßÔÍô ØßÝÕÍ ú ÐËÞÔ×Ý Ü×ÍÌÎËÍÌ intelligence papers in the British National Archives, leading to a boom in popular and academic writing. This trend towards limited (although unprecedented) openness has continued, most notably through the Guide to Study of Intelligence publication of official histories of the Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).4 It has also been supplemented by authoritative inquiries into 1 British Intelligence the intelligence community, most notably the Butler Report into pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons of 5 by Dr. Huw Dylan and Dr. Michael S. Goodman mass destruction. Combined, these sources provide students and scholars with outstanding insight into the role of intelligence in British statecraft. or centuries, British kings and queens have utilised their spies and spymasters to safeguard Establishing the British Way in Intelligence Ftheir grip on power. Today’s intelligence officers As early as the Sixteenth Century, Sir Francis can trace their professional lineage to the Sixteenth Walsingham and his predecessor, Sir William Cecil, Century. They can look to a long tradition of foreign ran a network of ‘intelligencers’, gathering intelligence spying during the age of empire, and the exploits of on Catholic plots against Queen Elizabeth.6 Through- the officers who, for the defence of India, surveyed and out the Seventeenth Century Britain gathered intelli- spied in the badlands of Afghanistan – the adventures gence on restive plotters by intercepting their post, that inspired possibly the greatest spy story, Rudyard and by the Eighteenth Century there was an official Kipling’s Kim.2 And they can examine how British decipherer targeting the codes of foreign powers.7 intelligence performed, often with distinction, in These activities were funded by a national secret ser- the great wars of the Twentieth Century. They have vice fund, administered by the Secretary of State for an historic legacy. Today, in the United Kingdom, Foreign Affairs. However, before the Twentieth Cen- intelligence remains a vital component of statecraft. tury intelligence gathering was not professionalised This article introduces British intelligence and offers in the same manner as diplomacy; it was viewed as a an insight into ‘the British way’ in intelligence. distinctly ungentlemanly activity. It was the armed The rich history has been obscured by official forces who developed and formalised intelligence, secrecy until fairly recently. In 1985, the great histo- operating, as they were, on the sharp end of impe- rian of war, Professor Sir Michael Howard, lamented rial expansion. Britain boasted a naval intelligence that ‘so far as official government policy is concerned, department in 1887 and the War Office established the British security and intelligence services do not its intelligence branch in 1873.8 These organisations exist. Enemy agents are found under gooseberry pioneered modern intelligence in Britain, gathering, bushes and intelligence is brought in by the storks.’3 processing, and disseminating intelligence, based on This is no longer the case. Over the final decades of all sources. But it took many more years to develop a the Twentieth Century a small revolution occurred true British intelligence community. in official attitudes towards secrecy. Wartime intelligence veterans published their memoirs; official 4. C. Andrew, Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5. (London: Allen Lane, 2009); K. Jeffery, MI6: The History of the histories were published; and the 1993 Waldegrave Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949. (London: Bloomsbury, 2010); Open Government initiative increased the volume of M. S. Goodman, The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Com- mittee: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis. (London: Routledge, 2014). 1. Editor’s Note: AFIO has retained the original UK spellings 5. Butler, the Lord of Brockwell. HC898. Review of Intelligence on and punctuations of these two British scholars. Weapons of Mass Destruction (London: TSO, 2004). 2. See P. Hopkirk. The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia. 6. See S. Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and (London: John Murray, 2006); M.Grant (ed). The British Way in the British Succession Crisis, 1558-1569. (Cambridge: Cambridge Cold Warfare: Intelligence, Diplomacy and the Bomb, 1945-75. (Lon- University Press, 1998). don: Continuum, 2011). 7. Stephen Twigge, Edward Hampshire, Graham Macklin, 3. C. Andrew, ‘Intelligence, International Relations and Un- British intelligence: Secrets, Spies and Sources, (London: The National der-theorisation’, Intelligence and National Security 19 (2) (2004), Archives, 2008), pp.10 – 11. 71. 8. Ibid, p.11. Spring/Summer 2015 Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies Page 35 The catalyst for the creation of the modern Chiefs of Staff and the government. They created the intelligence machinery was the rise of Germany. Joint Intelligence Committee, which established itself British military organisations and the Foreign Office at the apex of Britain’s intelligence machinery, and proved unable to deliver the intelligence demanded remained there.13 This development was significant by anxious ministers, so in 1909 the Committee of for the way Britain managed its intelligence affairs. Imperial Defence created the Secret Service Bureau After some teething troubles, the JIC secured the active (SSB). Originally consisting of an army and a navy engagement of the Foreign Office, and its members branch, it was soon reorganised into a foreign and included relevant policy departments, the armed a domestic section. The domestic or ‘home’ section forces and the intelligence agencies, all of which would would eventually become the Security Service and was contribute and agree to the Committee’s proceed- headed by the Army Officer, Captain Vernon Kell. The ings. This ensured that direction and collection were foreign section, MI-1c would eventually become SIS; it more focused; that JIC reports were truly ‘national’, was headed by the redoubtable Commander Mansfield consensus reports, rather than departmental ones; Cumming, who signed his letters in green ink with a that intelligence and policy were coordinated; and single letter, ‘C’ – a tradition followed by all chiefs of that no single department could dominate. Today SIS to this day.9 these characteristics remain: the British way in intel- Establishing the SSB began the long process ligence is characterised by the committee approach that yielded a functional intelligence community. As to management, an intelligence community working befitted its imperial heritage, until the Second World jointly rather than competitively, a (general) drive for War the military largely dominated intelligence. MI5 consensus, and the view that intelligence is valuable and SIS were civilian agencies, but heavily staffed by to all facets of national business. former military men, and their concern was largely (although by no means entirely) with enemy capabil- British Intelligence Today ities. After 1923, communications intelligence was the purview of the SIS controlled Government Code The core institutions of British intelligence have and Cypher School (GC&CS), which after World War 1 proven resilient. They have survived withering criti- amalgamated the Admiralty and the Army’s wartime cism following spectacular failures and have weath- SIGINT outfits, Room 40 and MI-1b.10 The Army and ered economic boom and bust. This is due to several Navy maintained their own intelligence branches.11 factors: the legacy of intelligence support for policy But the level of coordination was questionable. The making during the Second World War; the Cold War Foreign Office remained rather aloof from the agen- and the Soviet nuclear threat; the centrality of intel- cies, considering itself the sole authority on foreign ligence to the Anglo-American relationship – valued and diplomatic developments. Duplication was rife, and nurtured by British politicians from Churchill with one commentator after the war noting how he to Tony Blair; the importance of good intelligence witnessed “junior officers in the intelligence divisions in the small wars of the end of empire; and because of the Air Ministry, War Office, and the Admiralty all of the consistent threat the UK has faced from ter- doing the same job, writing the same things, gath- rorists. Britain has fought very hard to maintain its ering the same information, most of it not secret in intelligence power, even as other aspects of its global any way.”12 influence diminished. In 1936, with war clouds once again on the hori- Two notable features differentiate the contempo- zon, the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Committee rary machinery from its Cold War incarnation. Firstly, of Imperial Defence, Sir Maurice Hankey proposed today, the services have reasonably prominent public reforms to ensure that the medley of organisations profiles. They recruit openly, (some of) their records generated useful intelligence to meet the needs of the are available,

Load more