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Abstract
National security and intelligence communities in democracies have traditionally not been very transparent, in general and specifically in their relations with minority communities. This goes against basic principles of democratic governance, but it is also counterproductive: the lack of transparency hinders these organizations’ ability to protect national security. This article argues that a broader, proactive definition of transparency should replace traditional perspectives to better support enhanced engagement with minority communities. Next, it explains that for its gains to be sustainable, transparency must be institutionalized into the everyday work of national security organizations. Yet enhancing transparency is easier said than done: while the gains tend to emerge in the longer term, risks emerge in the short term. The article concludes by recognizing that enhancing national security transparency in relations with minority communities, although necessary, is complex and time-consuming, a reality underestimated by some of its proponents in civil society.
Notes
1 On the relationship between democracy and transparency, see Dennis Thompson, “Democratic Secrecy,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 114, No. 2 (1999), pp. 181–193; and James Hollyer, Peter Rosendorff, and James Raymond Vreeland, “Democracy and Transparency,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 4 (2011), pp. 1191–1205.
2 Steven Aftergood, “Reducing Government Secrecy: Finding What Works,” Yale Law and Policy Review, Vol. 27 (2009), p. 403.
3 Joe Davidson, “American Trust in Government near Historic Lows, Pew Finds,” Washington Post, 9 June 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/09/american-trust-government-pew-survey/ (accessed 9 June 2022).
4 On the United Kingdom, for example, see Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Diversity and Inclusion in the UK Intelligence Community, HC 1297 (London: The Stationery Office, 2018).
5 For background on debates between transparency and national security, see Michael Colaresi, Democracy Declassified: The Secrecy Dilemma in National Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
6 Antonio Díaz-Fernández and Rubén Arcos, “A Framework for Understanding the Strategies of Openness of the Intelligence Services,” The International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2021), pp. 259–280.
7 Jacquelyn Schneider, “A World without Trust: The Insidious Cyberthreat,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 101, No. 1 (2022), pp. 22–31.
8 Christopher Hood and David Heald (eds.), Transparency: The Key to Better Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
9 Anna Lührmann, Kyle Marquardt, and Valeriya Mechkova, “Constraining Governments: New Indices of Vertical, Horizontal and Diagonal Accountability,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 114, No. 3 (2020), pp. 1095–1113.
10 Andrew Defty, “From Committees of Parliamentarians to Parliamentary Committees: Comparing Intelligence Oversight Reform in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 35, No. 3 (2020), pp. 367–384.
11 Njord Wegge, “Intelligence Oversight and the Security of the State,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2017), pp. 687–700.
12 This is a point emphasized, among others, by Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence in the United States, in testimony to Congress in May 2022. Quoted in Bryan Bender, “White House Launches New War on Secrecy,” Politico, 23 August 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/23/white-house-war-on-secrecy-00053226 (accessed 12 September 2022).
13 Huw Dylan and Thomas J. Maguire, “Secret Intelligence and Public Diplomacy in the Ukraine War,” Survival, Vol. 64, No. 4 (2022), pp. 33–74.
14 Amy Zegart, “‘Spytainment’: The Real Influence of Fake Spies,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2010), pp. 599–622.
15 Amanda Clarke, Opening the Government of Canada: The Federal Bureaucracy in the Digital Age (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019), p. 25.
16 Colaresi, Democracy Declassified, 6.
17 Dan Reiter and Allan Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
18 There is a vast literature on the role that these various stakeholders can play to hold national security and intelligence organizations to account. On the media, for example, see Claudia Hillebrand, “The Role of News Media in Intelligence Oversight,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 27, No. 5 (2012), pp. 689–706.
19 On the UK case, see Daniel Lomas, “#ForgetJamesBond: Diversity, Inclusion, and the UK’s Intelligence Agencies,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 7 (2021), pp. 995–1017; on the United States, see Damien Van Puyvelde, “Women and Black Employees at the Central Intelligence Agency: From Fair Employment to Diversity Management,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 5 (2021), pp. 673–703.
20 See, for example, the conclusions of a report commissioned by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency: Director’s Diversity in Leadership Study: Overcoming Barriers to Advancement, 2015, https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=767776 (accessed 28 September 2022).
21 Carrie Cordero, “Intelligence Transparency and Foreign Threats to Elections,” Center for a New American Security, 23 July 2020, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/intelligence-transparency-and-foreign-threats-to-elections (accessed 29 September 2022).
22 See, for example in the Canadian case, Lee Berthiaume, “Military Failing to Remove Barriers to Diversifying Ranks: Ombudsman,” Canadian Press, 16 May 2022, https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2022/05/16/military-failing-to-remove-barriers-to-diversifying-ranks-ombudsman/#.Ywd_OXbMKUm (accessed 2 September 2022).
23 Lomas, “#ForgetJamesBond”; Miah Hammond-Errey, “Now More Than Ever, Diversity in National Security Thinking Matters,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 18 May 2022, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/now-more-than-ever-diversity-in-national-security-thinking-matters/ (accessed 18 May 2022).
24 For an in-depth demonstration of this assertion in the military context, see Jason Lyall, Divided Armies: Inequality & Battlefield Performance in Modern War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).
25 Nomaan Merchant, “Spy Agencies Urged to Fix Open Secret: A Lack of Diversity,” AP, 19 May 2022, https://apnews.com/article/racial-injustice-national-security-us-intelligence-agencies-7149db22d9da96efba8396ba89cc977e (accessed 9 September 2022).
26 See Carolyn Ball, “What is Transparency,” Public Integrity, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2009), pp. 293–308; Greg Michener and Katherine Bersch, “Identifying Transparency,” Information Polity, Vol. 18 (2013), pp. 233–242; and Albert Meijer, “Understanding the Complex Dynamics of Transparency,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 73, No. 3 (2013), pp. 429–439.
27 Anne Cronin, “The Secrecy − Transparency Dynamic: A Sociological Reframing of Secrecy and Transparency for Public Relations Research,” Public Relations Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2020), pp. 219–236.
28 Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Suzanne Piotrowski, and Gregg Van Ryzin, “Latent Transparency and Trust in Government: Unexpected Findings from Two Survey Experiments,” Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 4 (2020).
29 On the dangers of groupthink in intelligence communities, see David Omand, How Spies Think: Ten Lessons in Intelligence (London: Viking, 2020), pp. 122–125.
30 For an extreme articulation of these objections against the “Openness Lobby,” see Thomas Patrick Carroll, “The Case Against Intelligence Openness,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2001), pp. 559–574. For a more nuanced discussion of the pros and cons of transparency, in the context of whistleblowing in the national security world, see William Harwood, “Secrecy, Transparency and Government Whistleblowing,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2017), pp. 164–186; see also Kristin Lord, The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency: Why the Information Revolution May Not Lead to Security, Democracy, or Peace (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).
31 Some of the recommendations discussed in this section build on the third report of the National Security Transparency Advisory Group (NS-TAG). How National Security and Intelligence Institutions Engage with Racialized Communities, NS-TAG Third Report, 31 May 2022, https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2022-nstag-nsiirc-isnrccr/2022-nstag-nsiirc-isnrccr-en.pdf (accessed 29 August 2022).
32 In the Canadian context, these are points that regularly surfaced in the work of the NS-TAG.
33 See the Report on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, produced by the bipartisan Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, headed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1997) for historical background.
34 See Elizabeth Goitein and David Shapiro, “Reducing Overclassification through Accountability,” Brennan Center for Justice, 2011, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Justice/LNS/Brennan_Overclassification_Final.pdf (accessed 2 October 2021); Oona Hathaway, “Keeping the Wrong Secrets: How Washington Misses the Real Security Threat,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 101, No. 1 (2022), pp. 85–98.
35 Some of the recommendations discussed in this section build on the second report of the National Security Transparency Advisory Group. The Definition, Measurement and Institutionalization of Transparency in National Security, NS-TAG Second Report, 12 November 2021, https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2021-dntn-msrmnt-trsprncy-ns/2021-dntn-msrmnt-trsprncy-ns-en.pdf (accessed 29 August 2022).
36 Margaret Marangione, “Millennials: Truthtellers or Threats?” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2019), pp. 354–378.
37 Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).
38 Colaresi, Democracy Declassified; Daniel Lomas and Stephen Ward, “Public Perceptions of UK Intelligence,” The RUSI Journal, Vol. 167, No. 2 (2022), pp. 10–22. Intelligence Community leaders in multiple democracies, notably the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, have also publicly recognized the need to be more transparent in recent years.
39 Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022).
40 Clarke, Opening the Government of Canada, p. 64.
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Thomas Juneau
Thomas Juneau is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. From 2019 to 2022, he cochaired the National Security Transparency Advisory Group, an independent body that advises Canada’s national security and Intelligence Community on measures to enhance transparency. This article is partly based on his experience and observations in serving in this role. He can be reached at