Confronting the Colonies (4 page)

Fourthly, accurately understanding local agency is crucial in counter-insurgency. Intelligence must assess the interplay between internal and external factors when appreciating the instigation and course of an insurgency. Mistakes will cause a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict. If intelligence actors are looking the wrong way, vital warning-signs go unnoticed. Similarly, the all-important initial policy responses are likely to be deeply flawed if the wrong questions are being asked. Neglect of the international context resulted in a myopic and insular understanding of internal security. Yet over-emphasis of international factors underestimated the role of local agency in uprisings, thereby wrongly assessing the causes and nature of a particular threat. The internal-external tightrope is a difficult one for intelligence to tread, particularly during an era in which overarching external frameworks held so much sway. It was much easier for analysts to bend local developments into pre-existing mindsets than to question the legitimacy of each specific anti-colonial uprising.

Focus on the international also led to dangers of Cold War and imperial developments being conflated by policymakers and the intelligence community alike—although as Odd Arne Westad has shown ‘the history of the late twentieth century cannot be understood without exploring
the ties that bind [the Cold War and decolonisation] together'.
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As such, perceptions of the relationship (or lack thereof) between the Cold War and decolonisation and between the external and the internal are key themes permeating this book. They presented intelligence assessments with a serious challenge and remain acutely relevant to today's counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts, especially in determining how far a particular movement, such as Islamist terrorism, is internally or externally directed.

The JIC's role in counterinsurgency serves as a useful vehicle to explore broader issues within intelligence assessment. A fifth, and particularly important, theme therefore is that intelligence does not start and finish with the JIC report. Intelligence assessments are not hermetic and it is overly-simplistic to talk of intelligence as a single unit. Instead, myriad fascinating processes and relationships whir away beneath the final product. These are vital, for they shape the intelligence assessment in numerous, but under-explored, ways. There is more to an interdepartmental intelligence assessment than simply ‘the facts'; whatever they may be. As Philip Davies has recently pointed out, unlike their American equivalents, British assessments primarily strive for agreement over authoritative truth.
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JIC assessments are the product of their environment; they are shaped by the winds of Whitehall. Those involved in writing and scrutinising the reports were under the command of their various ministries, not the JIC. Understanding the messy process and competing pressures within the central intelligence machinery is therefore essential to understanding British interdepartmental intelligence assessments. Indeed, intelligence is a melting pot and JIC conclusions are the product of competing agendas, diverging threat perceptions and jealous departmental turf wars. By tasking and framing issues in a certain way, a dominant department within the drafting process can dangerously alter an intelligence conclusion. Likewise, intelligence assessment is impeded if a particular department is sidelined. It is therefore important to shine a light on the corridors and backrooms of Whitehall to reveal the processes underpinning JIC assessments. This book explores not just the evolution of the actual committee itself, but places it firmly in the context of the broader post-war Whitehall intelligence machine.

By looking beneath the JIC, it is possible to explore the competing conceptions behind a swathe of important issues since the Second World War. How, for example, did Whitehall (in all its complexity) understand imperial decline? How did Whitehall understand the international communist
threat? These debates manifested themselves candidly (sometimes caustically) throughout the central intelligence machinery.

David French has recently argued that ‘the ways in which the British conducted their counter-insurgency campaigns was only partly determined by the reality of their enemies' aims'. Far more important were two other factors: what the British thought were their enemies' aims, and what strategies they believed would be effective in defeating them.
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This reasoning operated at the theatre level but also extended to Whitehall thinking. Disagreements over insurgents' aims and the nature (and direction) of external support that insurgents received shaped the intelligence agenda and ultimately the assessments themselves. More broadly, understanding how Britain's changing place in the world was debated, constructed and experienced by those setting the intelligence agenda, composing assessments and reading the product can be particularly insightful—and indeed just as relevant as ‘objective' accounts of counter-insurgency within the broader international context.

Finally, no examination of the JIC would be complete without discussion of its relationship with the policy community. What role did intelligence play in governments' responses to political violence? The committee faced a difficult dilemma. Enjoying increasingly close relationships with policymakers, the JIC evolved to acquire ever greater impact. With such status came prestige and policy relevance. This, however, had a negative flipside. Reminiscent of some Faustian pact, input brought with it the perils of politicisation. As the committee ascended the hierarchy, it became subjected to pressures from across Whitehall. Its conclusions were more likely to be manipulated to support a pre-conceived policy idea—or deliberately overlooked if they went against the grain. The JIC walked a fine line.

These interlinked themes tie together to form a central claim of this book. In practice, strategic interdepartmental intelligence is a fluid process. It is almost a battleground, encompassing debates about the nature of security, perceptions of threats, diverging departmental understandings, jurisdictions and inevitable (albeit usually subtle) political pressure.

Public knowledge of, and media interest in, the JIC has been transformed by Britain's post-9/11 adventures. Unprecedently thrust into the
public limelight during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the JIC is a vital body within the British central intelligence machinery. Operating at the interface between intelligence and policy, it has been involved in many of the most important foreign and defence policy decisions taken by the British government since 1945. Its workings there fore serve as a constant throughout the fascinating post-war period of trials and tribulations as successive governments sought to promote British interests and influence in a changing world.

The JIC is an interdepartmental committee. It is currently part of the Cabinet Office but was originally housed within the chiefs of staff committee structure until 1957. The committee has grown considerably in strength, prestige and influence since its creation in 1936 to become the apex of the British intelligence process. It has broadened its focus to deal with a proliferating number of issues; it has acquired representatives from various political departments; it has strengthened its assessment drafting body; and most importantly it has played an increasingly active role at the foundations of the policymaking process.
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The JIC by no means has an unblemished record, however. Between 1947 and 1951, the committee found that thirty-three different assessments had either proved to be correct (or had not yet proven to be incorrect). Three had proved to be wrong, including a failure to forecast the blockade of Berlin in 1948 and the attack on South Korea in 1950. A further review prior to the Falklands War found that ‘the JIC has been able to assess the military capability of the potential aggressor with a fair degree of accuracy', but had twice drawn the wrong deduction. The committee's assessment that Egypt would not attack Israel in 1973 forms one example. Similarly, the Franks Report in the aftermath of the Falklands War criticised the JIC for being too passive and for overlooking relevant political and diplomatic developments.
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A fundamental feature of the JIC is its ability to bring together key personnel responsible for intelligence collection, intelligence assessment and policymaking in a regular weekly forum. The British system therefore involves an element of fusion between the intelligence and policy communities. While potentially increasing the susceptibility to politicisation, this allows intelligence assessments to be sensitive to the policy context and thus be timely, relevant and useful. Throughout the Cold War and the end of empire years, meetings were chaired by a Foreign (and Commonwealth) Office official.

At the time of the Iraq war, JIC meetings were apparently robust and were ‘never formulaic'.
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Even today, they can include much vigorous and occasionally heated debate. A picturesque account given by Chester Cooper, the CIA's representative on the committee in the mid-1950s, gives a flavour of the earlier workings of the rather stiff British intelligence and policy communities. He remembers how at his first meeting the Brits (who were apparently very tall) all wore identical dark suits from Savile Row and matching blue striped ties revealing their shared Etonian backgrounds. Identical pairs of spectacles sat aboard their noses—all National Health issue of course. Even at the height of the Cold War, the British amateurs sometimes had their minds on other things. They handed around sections of Greek verse alongside that week's intelligence documents and apparently translated them into Latin whilst debating the pressing security issues of the day. Committee members also kept up-to-date with the latest cricket score during meetings. Groans around the table were just as likely to emanate from a lost wicket as anything more serious.
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It was not all Greek verse and absorbing conversations about pressing intelligence matters, however: sometimes JIC meetings could be occasions of ‘unsurpassed dreariness'.
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Describing Cooper's recollections as only ‘partly caricature', former JIC chairman Percy Cradock remembers that the atmosphere of the committee tended to be austere and scholarly. Bowler hats were common until the 1960s and some of the older men remembered life before the First World War. Others had fought in the Second World War or had enjoyed personal experience of the empire.
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The director of military intelligence in 1946 struggled with JIC meetings: ‘they used to go on for hours' and ‘very nearly drove [him] insane'.
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Different members of the committee performed different roles. Broadly speaking, representatives from the three intelligence agencies scrutinise the wording of draft assessments. They ask whether any extra intelligence could be added and whether the secret intelligence included is being misused or misunderstood. Representatives from the policymaking departments act like publishers' readers and scrutinise whether a passage is properly justified, inspect for inconsistencies and ask if a certain section is weak and could be stated more strongly.
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Meetings often deviated from the proposed agenda and a whole range of matters were discussed. At one point in the late 1940s, Guy Liddell, of MI5, expressed concern about his boss attending the JIC alone. Liddell had little faith in
the director-general being able to perform well when presented with an array of unforeseen matters.
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Whatever the topic of discussion, committee meetings served (and still serve) as an institutionalised means of contact, dialogue and personal rapport between intelligence and policy-making communities. Regardless of output, this is important in itself to ensure that everyone is working from the same page.

Product, however, is of course central. What then does the JIC actually do? Its roles include providing consumers with coordinated intelligence assessments on a range of matters. These were originally defence-specific but incorporated broader topics as the committee evolved, expanded and gradually challenged traditionally narrow conceptualisations of security. The JIC is also charged with keeping threats to security under review.
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Its output broadly aims to inform policy discussions, build situational awareness, provide accurate analysis behind current trends and (to an extent) predict future developments. The JIC and its supporting staff bring together the various strands of the intelligence system into an agreed whole.

How then did the drafting process work? How did departments get their views across? It is a common misconception that the JIC drafts its assessments. The committee does not. Members merely review them and make last-minute alterations before approval and dissemination. Production of the assessments was done by the Joint Intelligence Staff (JIS), which was later replaced by the Assessments Staff. The JIS was composed of three teams, each of which had representatives from the armed services, the Foreign Office and the Joint Intelligence Bureau. Each member made a departmental contribution and papers were then drafted collectively. Assessments were then sent out for departmental review, before being revised by the JIS and sent to the JIC. Committee members had the final say, and one former chairman has described the JIC as ‘the final arbiter of intelligence'.
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A similar process continued from 1968 in the Assessments Staff, although there was a greater role for the intelligence agencies and raw intelligence.
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The central intelligence machinery takes raw intelligence, comments from the intelligence agencies, contribution from the intelligence analysts and input from the relevant policymaking departments, and places it into the bigger picture by assessing what it all actually means.
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GCHQ veteran Michael Herman has argued persuasively that relevant intelligence disseminated to policy practitioners in a timely manner is an ‘indispensable component of decision-taking'.
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