Intelligence, Threat, Risk and the Challenge of Oversight

Abstract

Intelligence studies has traditionally talked in terms of ‘threats’ though the idea of ‘risk’ has now entered its language, as it has so many other areas of policy. The key distinction remains the notion of threat of intentional action to cause harm: this is the central preoccupation of intelligence agencies that would not normally consider risks that might arise from, say, the unintended outcomes of accidents or interrupted supplies of resources. Another distinction is that intelligence is normally preoccupied with increasing knowledge in conditions of ignorance or uncertainty, while risk analysis is more likely to be quantifiable. The perception of a ‘new terrorism’ has led to the importation of the ‘precautionary principle’ to intelligence with potentially dangerous consequences for democracy. This requires enhanced thinking and practice with respect to the oversight of intelligence activities, especially in developing security networks.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were given at CAST/IARU Conference, 29–30 October 2009, Copenhagen, and the conference of the International Studies Association, Montreal, March 2011. I am grateful to participants at both of those for their comments. Special thanks to Stefan Brem, Mark Phythian, David Strachan-Morris and Michael Warner for their detailed comments on this article and to Stuart Farson for earlier exchanges on this issue that were very useful.

Notes

*Email: [email protected]¹Notably B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework For Analysis (London: Lynne Riener 1998).

²Peter Gill, ‘Theories of Intelligence: Where Are We, Where Should We Go and How Might We proceed?’ in Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin and Mark Phythian (eds.) Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates (London: Routledge 2009) pp.208–26 at p.214.

³Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1966 [1949]) p.ix.

⁴Cf. Len Scott and Peter Jackson, ‘The Study of Intelligence in Theory and Practice’, Intelligence and National Security 19/2 (2004) pp.139–69; Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity 2006) pp.29–34.

⁵Stanley Kaplan and John Garrick, ‘On the Quantitative Definition of Risk,' Risk Analysis, 1 (1981), p.13 cited in Inger Lise Johansen, Foundations of Risk Assessment, ROSS (NTNU) 201002 (Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2010), p.17.

⁶Johansen, Foundations of Risk Assessment, p.29.

⁷<http://download.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/nss/nss-factsheet2.pdf> (accessed 13 January 2011).

⁸Johansen, Foundations of Risk Assessment, pp.76–7. Also David Strachan-Morris in this issue.

⁹John Garrick, ‘Perspectives on the Use of Risk Assessment to Address Terrorism’, Risk Analysis 22/3 (2002) p.421.

¹⁰Paul Slovic, ‘Terrorism as Hazard: A New Species of Trouble’, Risk Analysis 22/3 (2002) p.425.

¹¹Yee-Kuang Heng, War as Risk Management: Strategy and Conflict in an Age of Globalised Risks (London: Routledge 2006) p.56.

¹²E.g. Jessica Stern and Jonathan Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism’, in Paul Bracken, Ian Bremmer and David Gordon (eds.) Managing Strategic Surprise: Lessons from Risk Management and Risk Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008) pp.110–83 at pp.110–12.

¹³Stern and Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism’, pp.119–21. In the Iraq case, this put Saddam Hussein in the position of having to prove the ‘negative’: that he did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD). For a balanced collection of articles on twenty-first-century terrorism see Charles Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 2003).

¹⁴There is one obvious point at which ‘risk assessment’ is central to intelligence operations and that is in respect of calculating risks to safety of operatives, agents and others when planning specific operations. David Strachan-Morris discusses this in his article.

¹⁵COMEST, The Precautionary Principle (Paris: World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology 2005) <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001395/139578e.pdf>, p.29, emphasis added (accessed 1 March, 2012).

¹⁶Bridget Hutter and Michael Power, ‘Organizational Encounters with Risk: An Introduction’, in Bridget Hutter and Michael Power (eds.) Organizational Encounters with Risk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005) pp.1–32 at pp.18–19 which can be compared with the similar point made by M.G. Fry and M. Hochstein, ‘Epistemic Communities: Intelligence Studies and International Relations’, Intelligence and National Security 8/3 (1993) pp.14–28.

¹⁷James Bruce and Roger George, ‘Introduction: Intelligence Analysis – The Emergence of a Discipline’ in Roger George and James Bruce (eds.) Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2008) pp.1–15 at p.12.

¹⁸E.g. Garrick, ‘Perspectives on the Use of Risk Assessment to Address Terrorism’.

¹⁹Cf. Claudia Aradau and Rens Van Munster, ‘Governing Terrorism Through Risk’, European Journal of International Relations 13/1 (2007) pp.89–115 at p.101.

²⁰Johansen, Foundations of Risk Assessment, p.55.

²¹For example, Uzi Arad, ‘Intelligence Management as Risk Management: The Case of Surprise Attack’ in Bracken, Bremmer and Gordon (eds.) Managing Strategic Surprise, pp.43–77 at p.76.

²²Ambiguities in language may very understandably lead to the quantification of estimates of probabilities but these may be just as misleading.

²³Hutter and Power, ‘Organizational Encounters with Risk’, p.3

²⁴Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton 2004) p.63.

²⁵Stern and Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism’, p.125

²⁶Richard Ericson, Crime in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity 2007) p.36, emphasis in original.

²⁷E.g. Gill and Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World, pp.68–70.

²⁸Peter Hennessy (ed.), The New Protective State: Government, Intelligence and Terrorism (London: Continuum 2007) p.17.

²⁹HMG, Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7^th July 2005, HC1087, May 2006, paras 31–37.

³⁰Hennessy, The New Protective State, 37.

³¹Jonathan Evans, ‘Intelligence, Counter-terrorism and Trust’, Address to the Society of Editors, Manchester, 5 November 2007 <https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/news/director-general-speaks-of-need-for-perseverance.html> (accessed 1 March 2012).

³²Duncan Gardham, ‘MI5 Chief Warns of Threat from Global Recession’, Telegraph.co.uk, 7 January 2009, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/4144460/MI5-chief-warns-of-threat-from-global-recession.html> (accessed 1 March 2012).

³³Address at the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals by the Director General of the Security Service, Jonathan Evans, 16 September 2010, Evans also said: ‘In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure. This is a nonsensical way to consider terrorist risk and only plays into the hands of the terrorists themselves. Risk can be managed and reduced but it cannot realistically be abolished and if we delude ourselves that it can we are setting ourselves up for a nasty disappointment’. <https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/the-threat-to-national-security.html> (accessed 17 January 2011).

³⁵Cited in Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster 2007) p.62.

³⁴Michael Warner, ‘Intelligence as Risk Shifting’, Gill, Marrin and Phythian (eds.) Intelligence Theory, pp.16–32 at p.22.

³⁶Stern and Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism’, pp.138–42.

³⁷Cf. Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 1964).

³⁸Pat Carlen, 2008, ‘Imaginary Penalities and Risk-Crazed Governance’ in Pat Carlen (ed.) Imaginary Penalities (Cullompton: Willan 2008).

³⁹Gavin Cawthra and Robin Luckham, ‘Democratic Control and the Security Sector’ in Gavin Cawthra and Robin Luckham (eds.) Governing Insecurity: Democratic Control of Military and Security Establishments in Transitional Democracies (London: Zed Books 2003) pp.305–27 at p.305.

⁴⁰John Dziak, Chekisty: A History of the KGB (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books 1988).

⁴¹Cf. J.A. Tapia-Valdes, ‘A Typology of National Security Policies’, Yale Journal of World Public Order 9/1 (1982) p.10. In other approaches, ‘security’ has been the dominant component in the development of ‘liberal democratic’ governments and is manifest in the ubiquitous surveillance of populations. For example, Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’ in G. Burchell et al. (eds.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1991) pp.87–104.

⁴²For example, Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson (eds.), The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2006); Gabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate, ‘Criminology and Terrorism. Which Thesis? Risk Society of Governmentality? British Journal of Criminology 46 (2006) pp.379–98.

⁴³Charles Raab, ‘Governing the Safety State’, adapted from inaugural lecture at the University of Edinburgh, June 2005.

⁴⁴Hennessy, The New Protective State.

⁴⁵Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (New York: Simon & Schuster 2008) p.357.

⁴⁶This is not just to assess the ‘threat at hand’ but also explore other possibilities beyond security threats; for example, our earlier definition referred also to seeking opportunities, especially economic within a competitive global economy.

⁴⁷Colm Campbell and Ita Connolly, ‘Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland’, Modern Law Review 69/6 (2006) pp.935–57. Also Stern and Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism’, pp.159–61.

⁴⁸FCO/Home Office, ‘Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism’, April 2004, <http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2004/muslimext-uk.htm> (accessed 19 January 2011). Arguably, the financial crisis of 2008 is another example where ‘experts’ caused much harm by taking actions they did not understand in conditions of high complexity and almost complete ignorance.

⁴⁹Cf. R. Kasrils, ‘To Spy or Not to Spy? Intelligence and Democracy in South Africa’ in L. Hutton (ed.) To Spy or Not to Spy? Intelligence and Democracy in South Africa (Tshwana: Institute for Security Studies 2009) pp.9–22 at pp.15–16.

⁵⁰Using Mike Warner's term for groups who are neither state nor corporate but who are willing to use violence in defence or advancement of their political, social or economic interests. Warner, ‘Intelligence as Risk Shifting’.

⁵¹Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing, Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice (London: Routledge 2003).

⁵²Shorrock, Spies for Hire.

⁵³Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London: Penguin 2007) pp.18–20; Graham Thompson, Between Hierarchies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003) pp.155–6, p.187

⁵⁴Philip Cerny, ‘Globalization, Governance and Complexity’ in Aseem Prakash and Jeffrey Hart (eds.) Globalization and Governance (London: Routledge 2000), pp.188–212.

⁵⁵Intelligence and Security Committee, Rendition, Cm 7171, July 2007, para.7

⁵⁶Ethan Nadelmann, Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press 1993) pp.436–57.

⁵⁷The existence of the Finding though not its specifics has become public. Dick Marty, Alleged Secret Detentions and Unlawful Inter-state Transfers of Detainees involving Council of Europe Member States: Second Report, Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, 2007, paras 56–60 presents what is known.

⁵⁸Ibid., para. 79 (emphasis in original).

⁵⁹Ibid., para. 168, emphasis in original. It is estimated that over 100 people disappeared as part of the HVD programme.

⁶⁰A very useful collection of articles on this issue has just been published: Hans Born, Ian Leigh and Aidan Wills, International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability (Abingdon: Routledge 2011).

⁶¹Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in relation to Maher Arar, A New Review Mechanism for the RCMP's National Security Activities (Ottawa: Public Works and Services 2006).

⁶²Marty, Alleged Secret Detentions and Unlawful Inter-state Transfers, 20.

⁶³Melissa Eddy, ‘Court Rejects el-Masri Suit against German Government’, The Miami Herald, 10 December 2010.

⁶⁴Richard Aldrich, ‘US–European Intelligence Cooperation on Counter-Terrorism: Low Politics and Compulsion’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 11/1 (2009) pp.122–39 at p.134.

⁶⁵Richard Aldrich, ‘Regulation by Revelation? Intelligence, Transparency and the Media’ in R. Dover and M. Goodman (eds.) Known Knowns: British and American Intelligence and the Media (New York: Columbia University Press 2009).

⁶⁶Stern and Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism’, pp.142–83 set out detailed arguments for preparing such a portfolio of risks.

⁶⁷Stern and Wiener, ‘Precaution Against Terrorism, p.161.