Secrets and Spies by Jamie Gaskarth

Author:Jamie Gaskarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

FOUR

National Intelligence Accountability

The previous chapter explored how members of the national intelligence machinery and their overseers understand the concept of accountability and how they perceive its milieu changing in recent decades. This chapter builds on that description, going into more detail on how accountability works in practice in the U.K. context. Three mechanisms were identified above as salient, namely: (1) formal structures of reporting (including ministerial authority, legal rules and constraints, and oversight from the ISC and IPCO); (2) operational demands, or “task-oriented accountability,” whereby changes to the threat environment, new technologies, or government priorities compel reflection on what works and what does not; and (3) vernacular accountability—the everyday interpretative effort made by intelligence practitioners to ensure their activities fit with the culture of their organization, the norms of wider society, and the expectations of customers at home and abroad. By examining public statements of intelligence consumers and producers, bolstered by interviews with former and current intelligence practitioners, this chapter aims to see how far practice aligns with theoretical understanding, as well as consider which of these modes of accountability is more important in shaping behavior.

As noted in chapter 3, a primary locus of accountability identified by interviewees is the government minister; however, their status within the formal structures of accountability is ambiguous. On the one hand, they will approve operational decisions and thereby endow them with political authority; on the other hand, the civil servant who heads the agency is the legally responsible individual, and the initiative for warrants and other investigative actions comes from the services.1 Nevertheless, ministers are clearly a central focus for the construction and dissemination of accounts of intelligence behavior. Prior to seeking ministerial authorization, an extensive process of discussion and revision of submissions takes place within the agencies themselves. As a former senior SIS officer puts it:

It was clearly in nobody’s interests to send across a stream of flaky, ill-thought-out and tenuous submissions that would not command confidence. So, there was an element of self-censorship here … senior operational officers would normally look at these things quite carefully from that perspective. And then, there was an SIS secretariat that would look at them and, often, you would get them sent back: “We’re not sure about this. Could you clarify X or Y?” So, within the organization, there was this process. Then, it would be sent to the relevant FCO director or director general, and he or she would look at it and might well have views about whether this is something, in their judgment, that the foreign secretary would not be happy about, or would be happy about, or would not understand, or “Could you clarify this, that, or the other? And, when you say that this is legal, we want our legal advisors to take a view,” that sort of thing.2

The level of bureaucratic scrutiny here is striking, with multiple levels of assessment of the clarity, accuracy, and validity of the application, encompassing consultation with the FCO and legal advisors. With a wider

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.