bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2006) — Summer 2006 // Été 2006, pp. 21–23
Canada is discussing the merit and necessity of establishing a clandestine foreign intelligence service. Support for such an institution formed part of the election platform of the recently elected Conservative Party. The retired head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, also spoke in Toronto in April in support of a greater Canadian intelligence contribution, describing Canada as an intelligence freeloader. More recently, Reid Morden, a former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and a retired head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), wrote an article for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (“A Canadian Foreign Intelligence Service: A New Necessity or an Expensive Frill?”) in favour of a secret service and, particularly, one located in CSIS.
Let us establish some facts at the outset. CSIS is a security service, not a foreign intelligence service. While a former CSIS director has suggested that the Service can do all that the CIA can do, that just is not correct.
The tradecraft required for security intelligence services differs significantly from that associated with the collection of foreign intelligence. A security service is an investigative entity chasing bad people. In Canada, it does so within very strict legal guidance involving judicial warrants and strict oversight to protect those who may be innocent.
Not so in foreign intelligence. There are very few rules. The activity occurs outside Canada for the most part, and there is no investigative structure. Only an information requirement exists. Some will argue that there is a great deal of overlap between security intelligence and foreign intelligence. And so there is. But there are also fundamental differences. Security intelligence serves to protect Canada and Canadian interests from harm by learning about, and countering, threats to our national well-being. Foreign intelligence has only the goal of obtaining information which can inform on international issues and advance Canada’s national interests. The difference may at times appear subtle but it is nevertheless important and demands very different tools. Successful merger of the two types of services has been unusual in democratic societies.
The debate over whether Canada should have a secret intelligence service is neither new nor unique; in fact, it has raged since the end of World War II. While Canada established a modest intelligence architecture after the war, a clandestine foreign intelligence service did not materialize. There was brief discussion of drawing upon the knowledge and expertise of William Stephenson
– “Intrepid” — but it went nowhere. The last significant effort of the early postwar period to launch a secret service occurred in 1951 but was laid to rest, probably because of cost and lack of resources. Since that time, the debate has recurred every five to 10 years, receiving brief public acclaim only to return to the depths of oblivion. Today’s debate is different.
For the first time there appears to be some political momentum in support of a foreign intelligence service, although it remains to be seen whether it is sustainable. And there is a subtle push from a number of quarters for a foreign intelligence service which would be part of CSIS.
Placing a foreign intelligence service within CSIS is contrary to the Westminster model of separating security and foreign intelligence services and having each report to the government minister in whose realm the activity lies. Foreign intelligence occurs in foreign places and should not be under the direction of the minister of the interior (the Minister of Public Safety in Canada’s case). CSIS falls under Public Safety Canada but, should something go amiss in a foreign country, it would be the Minister of Foreign Affairs who would have to do the explaining. Such a concept is counter-intuitive and will prove untenable over a longer period.
Merging the security and foreign elements of intelligence into a single entity is rightly called the KGB template by Morden, who then suggests that times are changing. He presents the model of the Dutch AIVD, the security service which recently established a foreign intelligence division. This is not an apt example since the Dutch intent is eventually to separate the two wings, once the foreign intelligence division, already under the direction of a member of the foreign ministry, is well established. Indeed, the foreign intelligence wing of the AIVD replaces a respectable Dutch foreign intelligence service, the IDB, which had operated successfully from World War II until 1994, when it was dissolved over what seems to have been internal squabbling. (This information was given to the author by individuals close to the Dutch service.)
Canada is confronting a demand for a foreign intelligence service. It is driven by a momentum riding the coattails of fear. We are under direct threat by terrorists, homegrown or otherwise. Our intelligence allies complain we are not doing enough. We need to have an independent source of intelligence.
A threat does indeed exist. And we certainly are not doing enough. But Canada does have an independent source of intelligence — and has had since World War II.
To put this in realistic terms, removed from the myths and glamour on which the calls for a “Secret Seryice” often rest, we must understand the real nature of intelligence.
Intelligence is only information which a country has kept hidden from others. This does not mean that the information is inaccessible. By one estimate, which recurs in much of the literature, fully 80 percent of the information in classified intelligence assessments is from open sources. That figure was the estimate cited during the Cold War. Today, the number is probably closer to 90 percent, according to Loch K Johnson in Bombs, Bugs, Drugs and Thugs (New York: New York University Press, 2000, p. 185.)
Sherman Kent, the senior American intelligence officer who provided the “theology” for the CIA’s Office of National Estimates, wrote in 1951 that, “of the things our state must know about other states some 90 percent may be discovered through overt means.” (This information is cited in Robin W. Winks, Cloak & Gown, published in New York by William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1987, p. 456). Kent later revised his estimate up to 95 percent. Others before and after have provided similar estimates of intelligence being accessible through overt means.
All this information is not necessarily lying around waiting to be picked up — although much is. But much open source intelligence is retrievable relatively easily if you know where to look. A great deal of this information is available through regular diplomatic reporting, which constitutes one of the more significant sources of intelligence in most countries.
It is true that only some 80 to 90 percent of intelligence requirements can be met through open sources or a gray intelligence program. The remaining 10 to 20 percent is an important segment. Much, but not all, of this missing quotient is met through “technical” collection programs (SIGINT, IMINT, etc.). Yet there are some missing elements which can only be obtained through a clandestine HUI program. We do need that intelligence and perhaps, some time in the future, we should collect it. However, at a time when we are not fully exploiting what can be easily and safely obtained it seems unwise to spend very substantial amounts of money and assume high political risks to chase elusive intelligence while foregoing minimal resources to pick up what is there for the picking.
The Department of Foreign Affairs maintains a couple of much too small programs directed towards collecting attainable albeit not necessarily “open source” information. This falls within the realm of gray intelligence which is neither entirely open source nor clandestine in origin. Such information is obtained by asking for it (very nicely, in fact).
The oldest of these collection programs is the Interview Program, located within the Foreign Intelligence Division of Foreign Affairs, which has operated since 1953 (and informally even earlier). The program debriefs persons who have gained access to areas of interest. The program is very modest with a collection staff usually of about five persons. While details of the information collected cannot be revealed, there were some notable successes during the Cold War. Unlike some other organizations, the Interview Program was able to remain unknown to the public until 2002, on the eve of its fiftieth anniversary, when a conscious decision was made by DFAIT to “out” the organization.
The second program at Foreign Affairs is more recent in origin and consists of conventional Canadian diplomats who are part of a project directed at obtaining information pertaining to security and stability issues. Named the Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP), these resources are fenced, that is, they have a specific mandate from which deviation is not permitted. Also relatively few in number, these diplomats collect information in much the same way that other diplomats do, but are more closely directed at obtaining information bearing on Canada’s security interests. Not burdened by the many administrative tasks which overlay much of the work of Canada’s diplomats, their reporting output is substantially greater than possible by traditional embassy officers.
None of the information collected through these programs is gathered through clandestine means. In fact, the very absence of a Canadian clandestine foreign intelligence service eases the work of these programs. Canada and Canadians are not viewed as posing an intelligence threat. While it may appear simplistic, the very fact of not being intelligence agents opens a great many foreign doors to members of the two programs. Sources of information do not live in fear of being found to cooperate with a foreign intelligence service. Both programs have collected information which has met critical intelligence requirements.
Neither of these collection programs meets all of Canada’s foreign intelligence requirements. There are simply some types of information which prove impossible to obtain. But these challenges also exist for countries with functioning clandestine foreign intelligence services. Using their clandestine resources, the CIA failed dramatically in Iraq before the war.
Both the British SIS and the American CIA did enjoy some tremendous successes during the Cold War. A small number of special sources (Penkovskiy, Gordievsky, and others) were of immense help to the West. However, these were few and far between. Canada did not have direct access to sources of a similar quality, although Penkovskiy first approached Canada and then the United States before succeeding in establishing a relationship with the British. Very few countries have access to such exceptional sources in place. The cost is astronomical and the risks horrendous. It is extremely unlikely that a clandestine Canadian foreign intelligence service, operated as an adjunct to CSIS, would have the resources, money, and skills to “run” a future Gordievsky.
It also bears remembering that nearly all the West’s great spies, the Penkovskiys and the Gordievskys, were “walk-ins,” that is, individuals who sought contact with Western intelligence organizations in order to help for ideological reasons. Gouzenko, the Russian GRU cipher clerk in Ottawa, who defected to Canada at the end of World War II was also a walk-in. Western secret services have rarely recruited any spies of great significance through direct approaches.
The existing two intelligence collection programs operated by the Department of Foreign Affairs are too small to be the answer to Canada’s foreign intelligence collection requirements. But this is solely because of their size. With adequate resources, there is no question but that the intelligence collection “take” would prove significant. More importantly, there is no associated risk with this form of collection greater than what exists for any Canadian diplomat engaged in his or her daily duties. And the cost is insignificant when compared to the cost of maintaining a clandestine foreign intelligence service. These programs have been called CHEAPINT for a reason. However, the programs do not have the cachet of being engaged in secret intelligence collection – although the value of the information secured for Canada would be about the same, based on past performance.
In intelligence matters, Canada has a long tradition of being risk averse and frugal. Embarking on a conventional clandestine intelligence collection path using an organization reporting to a Minister with no foreign policy mandate is not only risky but potentially career limiting for any Minister of Foreign Affairs. And it will be very, very costly. And dangerous politically.
The question has also been asked whether we, in fact, need more foreign intelligence. Even though members of the Anglo-Saxon intelligence fraternity often complain about being overwhelmed by the volume of intelligence and incapable always of identifying the golden kernels among the chaff, the fact is that more is always needed. However, Canada needs to make investments in intelligence analysis, an area with a checkered past, in order to benefit fully from the existing amounts of intelligence, let alone future increases.
Foreign intelligence analysis has been understaffed in Canada and has rarely received the political and administrative support it required. For reasons of turf wars and short-sighted administrative cost-cutting efforts, the potential for a first-rate Canadian assessment organization has often been snapped from the jaws of success as the few existing foreign intelligence assessment resources fluttered back and forth between Foreign Affairs and the Privy Council Office. Intelligence collection without an assessment capability is often a waste of money.
Canada also needs to do more in terms of making foreign intelligence policy-relevant. All too often intelligence collection is driven by the technological capacity to gather information rather than being based on client demand, that is, the needs of the decision makers. Vital to intelligence having an impact is the creation of “viable links between policy makers and those providing intelligence, so that the right information can get to the right people at the right time,” according to Daniel Livermore in The Intelligence-Policy Dialogue: Some Issues Big and Small, a paper presented at the CASIS Conference in 2004, in Ottawa.
Intelligence must answer questions, not just titillate or entertain bureaucrats. There is little evidence that decision makers are consistently receiving the intelligence which they require in any of the Anglo-Saxon alliance nations. That intelligence may, in fact, exist but resources to serve decision makers seem inadequate to discharge the demands — although some Canadian successes seem to have been achieved in the last half decade or so. Success in serving clients well is enhanced by proximity between the intelligence provider and the foreign policy decision maker, yet another argument for housing foreign intelligence with Foreign Affairs.
Canada needs to do much more in the realm of foreign intelligence collection. We must collect more of our own intelligence and we must do more of our own intelligence evaluation. To wit, “Any system whereby the appraisal is made from incomplete intelligence acquired from other countries, or the acceptance of another nation’s appraisal insofar as it relates to itself, cannot possibly satisfy the Canadian requirement. Such a system would presuppose a degree of political, economic and military dependence incommensurate with the national outlook.” This statement summarizes the Canadian need. It was written in 1945. (“A Proposal for the Establishment of a National Intelligence Organization,” signed Lieut.Gen. Charles Foulkes, 22 December, 1945, National Archives Canada RG2, Vol. 248. File 1-40, 1945-47.
It is right for a debate on foreign intelligence collection to occur at this time. Whether the debate as currently being cast is asking the right questions remains to be seen. We must ask ourselves whether we need a clandestine foreign intelligence service. But we must also ask whether such is the best tool for the task at hand, at this time. Can we collect more through existing means at less cost and less risk? Are we using the available foreign intelligence to best advantage?
The debate should not be uninformed. A risk of this exists because a presumption has been created that Canada does not now collect foreign intelligence. That presumption is wrong. The question must focus on whether we are obtaining all that we can by exploiting and using existing tools which are relatively inexpensive and quite safe. The last thing we require is a clandestine secret service which fulfills a macho requirement of being “one of the boys.” Particularly not a service to collect information which is readily accessible through other means.
Dr. Kurt F. Jensen is a retired foreign
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2006) — Summer 2006 // Été 2006, pp. 21–23. Read the rest of this issue →
