Confronting the Colonies by Cormac Rory

Author:Cormac, Rory
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: British Intelligence and Counterinsurgency
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Policy input

Covert action, however, is not essentially an intelligence activity but a foreign policy option. It is designed to influence events overseas in support of British interests. It is therefore important to examine the impact intelligence assessments had on the actual covert policy sanctioned. The JIC’s influence was intermittent in the early years of the conflict and assessments were used or overlooked depending on the consumers’ interests. Although some officials and ministers vociferously disagreed with the committee’s conclusions, JIC reports were used in planning covert intervention from 1964. They helped temper some of the more aggressive proposals. Intelligence helped ensure that any action did not extend to actively taking sides in the civil war but was instead limited to counter-subversion along the frontier. It must, however, be noted that JIC assessments were only one source in moderating covert action. Other factors simply included bureaucratic delays in responding to and processing requests, as well as policy malaise owing to ongoing tension about the best means with which to proceed.

From the outbreak of the Yemeni conflict, the JIC chairman fed intelligence directly to senior policy practitioners and ministers via his attendance of ad hoc cabinet committees. This happened for example in October 1962 when the committee’s assessments of stalemate and its criticism of exaggerated local reports were used in debates regarding initial responses and potential recognition of the new Yemeni regime. Perhaps such input casting doubt on the governor’s assessment played a role in Macmillan’s decision to sanction only some of Johnston’s requests the following month.153 Elsewhere, the chiefs of staff waited for JIC conclusions before planning action to ‘counter border incursions and subversion in the Protectorate or hostile action affecting the security of the Aden base’. Based on the JIC’s threat assessment, military planners then began to liaise with the Colonial Office and a local security committee to consider how best to react to border skirmishes using counter subversion, infrastructure development and propaganda.154 Between late 1962 and early 1964, the government authorised cautious covert action in the frontier area, including mine-laying, supplying arms to tribes and sabotage. This was ultimately defensive and more limited than requests from people like Johnston and Trevaskis. Local officials were hoping for retaliatory action inside Yemen itself as well as covert military assistance directly to the Royalists. They sought active involvement in the civil war. As Spencer Mawby has argued, ‘Macmillan’s administration was willing to consider retaliatory action, though not on the scale which Johnston proposed’.155

Elsewhere, however, JIC reports were not used as an objective foundation to policy discussion. Some ministers and officials disagreed with the committee’s assessments and so simply ignored JIC intelligence. It has already been noted that Julian Amery criticised the JIC for underestimating the coherence and vehemence of Royalist resistance and fed parallel reports to the prime minister. Elsewhere, the committee’s assessments were used to justify covert action—despite JIC reservations. By January 1964 the JIC had dismissed any overt military threat, acknowledged the political subversive threat, but stopped short of accusing the Egyptians of an active coordinated campaign of violent subversion and terrorism.

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