Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community by Richard J. Samuels

Author:Richard J. Samuels [Samuels, Richard J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Political Science, Intelligence & Espionage, History, Asia, Japan, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781501741609
Google: GkCNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell
Published: 2019-10-15T14:00:55+00:00

Military Intelligence

As examined in chapter 3 of this volume, CIRO’s rather odd situation originated in highly charged debates over civilian control in the 1950s. So, despite quietly standing up its own Military Affairs Unit, and despite being assigned nominal responsibility to supervise the CSIC, CIRO had little military expertise well into the 2010s.95 In the intervening years, however, proper military intelligence was enhanced considerably.

HUMINT

We can begin to review Japan’s military intelligence during this period with Japan’s widely acknowledged lack of HUMINT resources—particularly the sorts of foreign area experts discussed in chapter 2 who were so numerous and skilled before and during the Asia-Pacific War. It was not only CIRO and MOFA that had to play catch-up in this domain. The military’s own language and analytic skills training program also had to be reorganized in March 2001, when two smaller training centers were combined in western Tokyo to create a successor to the Nakano School—the Kodaira School.96 This was a delicate problem because, as one senior MOD intelligence officer uncomfortable with transparency explained: “The almost complete lack of clandestine collection overseas has been criticized by the LDP—first by Machimura… . But a bill authorizing such HUMINT would invite a very active political circus and would likely produce an intrusive accountability mechanism that would stifle any new intelligence organization. So on HUMINT we needed to start small and evolve over time.”97 Even if on a small scale, experience accumulated for military intelligence. There were unconfirmed press reports in 2013 that the GSDF was funding agents run by Kodaira School–trained handlers in Russia, China, and elsewhere.98

But the largest and fastest-growing number of active foreign area intelligence collectors were the military attachés of the SDF—mostly officials from the Second Section of the Investigation Division of the Ground Self-Defense Force who operated in the open.

After the Kodaira School was initiated and the supply of foreign area officers began to increase, the SDF broadened its reach. It began placing military attachés in such nations as Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Algeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Nigeria, and Morocco. Since many of these were sites of multinational peacekeeping missions, it was relatively easy to justify the increased attention. Nor, given the shift in the regional balance of power, were increases in the number of military attachés sent to China and South Korea hard to explain to budget examiners or the general public. The government also found it useful to take advantage of defense attachés and liaison officers dispatched to the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Pentagon, or other billets as resources.99 During the compilation of the 2015 budget, amid editorials calling for enhanced intelligence capabilities, MOD announced plans to send additional defense attachés to Mongolia, the UAE, and Jordan. In an uncanny echo of Nomonhan (see chapter 2), Mongolia was described by an unnamed official as a “particularly important platform for intelligence gathering” because of its borders with Russia and China and its diplomatic relations with North Korea.100

Table 5.2 Japan’s Intelligence Attachés Abroad

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