Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [235]
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CHAPTER 15
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
Although this book focuses on the U.S. intelligence community, examining how intelligence in foreign countries operates is instructive, both as a means of investigating alternative intelligence choices and of benefiting from the light they shed on the U.S. intelligence community. However, a problem with sources arises. No intelligence service, even those in other democracies, has undergone the same detailed scrutiny that the U.S. intelligence community has. The reliable literature on foreign intelligence services derives mostly from the press and from some more popular, as opposed to scholarly, histories. As is often the case, the accounts tend to emphasize organization and the more sensational activities. No other intelligence service is as transparent as that of the United States.
Although virtually every nation has some type of intelligence service—if not both civilian and military, and at least the latter—the services of five nations are worthy of close examination based on their importance and breadth of activity: Britain, China, France, Israel, and Russia. As is the case with the United States, each nation’s intelligence services are unique expressions of its history, needs, and preferred governmental structures.
BRITAIN
Despite their similarities and historical connections, the British and the U.S. governmental structures and civil liberties have significant differences, which are important in understanding their intelligence practices.
First, the Cabinet, which embodies Britain’s executive, enjoys a supremacy beyond that of the U.S. president. The Cabinet has the right to make appointments and to take major actions (declare war, make peace, sign treaties) without conferring with Parliament, where, by definition, the Cabinet enjoys a majority in the House of Commons. Second, the division between foreign and domestic intelligence is less stark in Britain than it is in the United States. Third, Britain does not have a written bill of rights protecting specific civil liberties (although Prime Minister Tony Blair talked about creating one). In 1998, Parliament enacted the Human Rights Act, which does offer many individual and political liberties. The act was passed to bring Britain into compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. However, this act does not grant these rights in absolute terms, unlike the U.S. Constitution. In terms of intelligence, one of the most important differences is that the British government can enforce prior restraint on the publication of articles deemed injurious to national security.
The three major intelligence components—MI5, M16, and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—operate under statutory basis. M15, whose formal name is the Security Service, is a domestic intelligence service, responsible for providing