MI5 Boss hints kiss goodbye to civil rights...
- From: micheil@xxxxxxx (Michilín)
- Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 05:26:54 GMT
http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page387.html
"THE INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST THREAT AND THE DILEMMAS IN COUNTERING IT"
SPEECH BY THE DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE SECURITY SERVICE, DAME ELIZA
MANNINGHAM-BULLER, AT THE RIDDERZAAL, BINNENHOF, THE HAGUE,
NETHERLANDS, 1 SEPTEMBER 2005
I am delighted to be here to celebrate the 60th Birthday of the AIVD.
The friendship between the AIVD and my Service, the British Security
Service - commonly known as MI5 - pre-dates even those 60 years.
I quote from a note in our files from 1946: "The friendly
relationship, established during the war, with the Dutch Security
Service in London continues to operate with very satisfactory
results". In celebrating the birthday, I am here, not only to
represent the UK, but as a symbol of all the friends of this Service
and there are many throughout the world.
Perhaps that is my first message. One of the strengths we have in
facing a global, international threat is long-standing intelligence
relationships of trust and co-operation in Europe and further afield,
created and nurtured in the case of the UK and the Netherlands over 60
years. That relationship has been tested in adversity. It is
strongly-forged and, for someone with a career such as mine, a
professional intelligence officer for over 30 years, the relationship
means a great deal.
One of my first visits overseas as a young officer was to The Hague
and, after a fascinating trip to the Mauritshuis, I remember very well
meeting a Dutch officer of this Service who had been in the resistance
in the Second World War while still a teenager. He had been sent to
Buchenwald where he had survived because he worked as a Russian
interpreter. His career was focussed first on fighting the threat from
fascism then, by the time I met him, on countering terrorism.
Although I was born three years after the war and I do not speak
Russian or, indeed, Dutch, and my experience was slight whilst his was
extensive, we spoke a common language as we do today. Then and now the
AIVD and the British Security Service understand each other and agree
on the role of a modern, professional security service in a democracy.
That role is to defend that democracy from substantial threats to its
security and to protect, as far as possible, the way of life of its
people. So, when Sybrand van Hulst invited me to speak on this
occasion about the threat of international terrorism and the dilemmas
in countering it, I had no hesitation in accepting his invitation.
I accepted the invitation to speak before the terrorist attacks in
London in July. It is significant that we received from the AIVD an
early message of sympathy and support, followed by constructive help.
My Service received many offers of help from our friends around the
world and our friends just across the English Channel. That is a
second message. Key to countering this problem is international
co-operation.
The attacks in London were a shock, and my Service and the police were
disappointed that we had not been able to prevent them. But we were
not altogether surprised because of our understanding of the threat
which is what I wish to discuss next, although in some ways it feels
unnecessary to describe it. We have seen so many manifestations of it
both before 9/11, for example in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and since
then in Casablanca, Madrid and Bali and many other places as well of
course as here in the Netherlands.
Those of us in the intelligence community are also aware of many more
attacks thwarted by good intelligence and police work, and through
international co-operation. Those successes have usually been quiet
ones. But we are judged by what we do not know and did not prevent. I
shall come back to that point later when describing the nature of
intelligence.
Al Qaida represents the first truly global terrorist threat. The
extremist ideology it sponsors has spread round the world and seeped
into and infected individuals and groups almost everywhere. The
attacks of 9/11 inspired new generations, discontented with Western
policies and ways of life, to seek to emulate, so far generally on a
more modest scale, those horrendous attacks in New York and Washington
we recall so well.
The key components of those attacks were a major loss of life,
economic damage across the globe and the preparedness of 19 young men
to commit suicide: it was a graphic illustration of what terrorism can
achieve. And those inspired by Al Qaida who have formed networks based
on terrorist training camps, not only in Afghanistan, and shared
experiences in Algeria, Bosnia and Chechnya, but also nearer to home,
within our countries, have the capacity, if we allow them, to do real
harm to our way of life.
We, the British and the Dutch, and many others in Western Europe and
elsewhere judge the threat to be serious and sustained, with a proven
lethality and the potential to continue for years to come. The root
causes are fuelled by a complex series of intractable issues and while
there has been substantial success and a high attrition rate against
the core of Al Qaida, there are now many potential terrorists who have
no linkage to Al Qaida but are inspired by its ideology and actions.
On the Internet such individuals can see images of suffering Muslims
in various parts of the world: and they may, from radical preachers,
hear an interpretation of Islam which is violent and demands action by
the listener.
This process of radicalisation is now better understood: the message
has an appeal to small numbers in our communities. Bin Laden's
articulation of an extremist ideology has inspired a broad coalition
of groups and there is a widespread covert series of networks which
supports that ideology, with links round the world and roots almost
everywhere.
So how do we respond? Intelligence is key to any successful counter
terrorist strategy but it is not enough and I shall explain why not. I
want first to say something about the nature of intelligence and its
use. What many here will know but is not always well understood is
that intelligence rarely tells you all you want to know.
I should like to quote from Lord Butler's report into the "Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction". "The most important
limitation on intelligence is its incompleteness. Much ingenuity and
effort is spent on making secret intelligence difficult to acquire and
hard to analyse... intelligence seldom acquires the full story... it
is often... sporadic and patchy and, even after analysis may still be
at best inferential".
Often difficult decisions need to be made on the basis of intelligence
which is fragmentary and difficult to interpret. In sum, some is gold,
some dross and all of it requires validation, analysis and assessment.
When it is gold it shines and illuminates, saves lives, protects
nations and informs policy. When identified as dross it needs to be
rejected: that may take some confidence. At the end of the day it
requires people of integrity not only to collect it but also to
prioritise, sift, judge and use it.
Intelligence work requires careful training and people who are shrewd,
objective and sensible and can manage the uncertainty of intelligence.
I have met many people like that in the AIVD.
But intelligence is also fragile. It comes from human sources who risk
their lives and whom we have a high moral duty to protect and from
technologies whose effectiveness can be countered by skilled
opponents. That is why there can be no coercion to share intelligence
and why its use in open courts needs to be carefully handled. In
principle we both want to share, and want to see successful
prosecutions. We do not collect intelligence for its own sake; there
is no point. We need to develop and act on it for the safety of all
our citizens.
Given the threat is global, protecting our friends is a way also of
protecting ourselves. So we have a very strong interest in
international co-operation, in all similar services having both the
full legal powers to collect intelligence and the skill and experience
to handle it carefully but if we splash it around carelessly we shall
soon have none of it. So I could never agree to a compulsory exchange
of intelligence as that would risk compromising valuable sources of
intelligence. There would soon be little to exchange.
To some that presents a real dilemma: to me it's part of the normal
conduct of business, making sure intelligence gets to the right places
and is used while sources are protected. I would add another dilemma
in intelligence work, balancing investigation and monitoring of those
whom we know present a threat, with work to discover and nullify
previously unknown threats.
In the UK, and certainly here in the Netherlands, intelligence is not
only used to help track down and disrupt terrorists. We are trying
more widely to reduce the risks of terrorism. Intelligence supports
wider policies and action to make it more difficult for terrorists to
succeed. That may involve increasing protection at our key sites or on
our key systems to reduce their vulnerability to attack. It will
involve reviewing laws to check whether they are best-framed to be
deployed early on before the terrorist commits his act.
I am sure you agree with me that containing terrorism in a democratic
society, governed by the rule of law, where civil rights are of great
value, having been acquired with difficulty over many centuries, is
not straightforward. Our courts require evidence that meets high
standards of proof and strong evidence of a crime having been
committed or strong evidence of a conspiracy to commit such a crime.
This is one of the central dilemmas of countering this sort of
terrorism. We may be confident that an individual or group is planning
an attack but that confidence comes from the sort of intelligence I
described earlier, patchy and fragmentary and uncertain, to be
interpreted and assessed. All too often it falls short of evidence to
support criminal charges to bring an individual before the courts, the
best solution if achievable. Moreover, as I said earlier, we need to
protect fragile sources of intelligence including human sources.
Being in this position can be uncomfortable for Services such as the
AIVD and mine. We can believe, correctly, that a terrorist atrocity is
being planned but those arrested by the police have to be released as
the plan is too embryonic, too vague to lead to charges and possibly
convictions. Furthermore the intelligence may be highly sensitive and
its exposure would be very damaging as revealing either the source or
our capability.
I think that this is a central dilemma, how to protect our citizens
within the rule of law when intelligence does not amount to clear cut
evidence and when it is fragile. We also, of course, and I repeat in
both our countries and within the EU value civil liberties and wish to
do nothing to damage these hard-fought for rights. But the world has
changed and there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of what
we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens
not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives. Another
dilemma.
That brings me on to the roles of government, the commercial sector
and the public. As I said earlier the threat cannot be countered by
intelligence alone or by the police and the security and intelligence
agencies.
It is the responsibility of governments to address the causes, set the
legal frameworks for countering terrorism so that Services can collect
intelligence by all means including through the retention of data, and
ensure the development and implementation both of pan-government
policies and international initiatives to protect ourselves to the
best possible level.
It is also important that governments ensure intelligence and security
agencies and the police have appropriate and effective legal powers
and the resources to maximise the chances of success. My government
has given to my Service and the police very public support since the
attacks, understanding as it does that there is no such thing as
complete security.
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has indicated
that it will look at the facts and it will no doubt wish to review
whether we missed anything and the attacks could have been prevented -
but no one in government nor, to be fair, the media, immediately
rushed to the presumption that the July attacks were our fault. And
the public has bombarded our website with messages of support.
One way of using the intelligence is to develop from it advice to
protect ourselves. Across the UK private companies are working with my
Service and the police to improve their resilience and strengthen
their ability to stay in business in the face of threats or actual
attacks. The narrow definition of the threat to corporate security has
traditionally been focused on crime and fraud: it needs to be widened
to include terrorism, for anticipation of that to become an integral
part of business planning.
And the public. Since 7th July I have been proud of the courage of
Londoners, refusing to be cowed by the attacks on the underground and
buses, resolutely asserting "we are not afraid" even when they are,
and showing determination and toughness in the face of terror. People
took extraordinary efforts to come to work even when the public
transport system was only half-working.
A few days after the first attacks we celebrated in London the sixty
years since the end of the Second World War. Veterans from that war
came into Central London, all of them octogenarians or more, some
proudly wearing their medals, some in wheelchairs, determined not to
be stopped by the current manifestation of terror from remembering
both their contemporaries who died preventing the terror of fascism
from prevailing and from celebrating the democratic values which we
share.
And I am proud that most people understood that the attacks were on
all our citizens, whatever their ethnic origin, and indeed on 17
citizens of 14 other nations. There has been outspoken condemnation of
terrorism from all quarters of society and many people have provided
information to us and police.
This brings me to another point, the importance of public
communication, of telling the public in broad terms what the threat
is and trusting them to respond sensibly. We all rely upon public
support and co-operation. For many years we have relied in the UK on
the good will, good sense and above all, the trust of our fellow
citizens to cope with the inconvenience of added security measures,
checks and disruption to normal life of bomb warnings and other
alerts.
I would note here a further dilemma. In a society with 24 hour media
and the internet the chances are slight that a pre-emptive security
response to a terror threat will go unreported. But it is often simply
impossible to explain what lies behind a public alert.
I repeat. We need to protect valuable sources of intelligence without
which there would be no warning at all. Compromising them will achieve
little in the short term and, to repeat, will damage our ability to
collect intelligence. At the same time public safety is the overriding
concern and requires the authorities to act quickly when faced with
credible intelligence about a threat.
Governments face difficult decisions about how best to protect the
public, without preventing normal life going on or damaging the
economy. We want people to continue their way of life and have
confidence to make their own decisions on risk. Given we in the UK,
and I expect the statistics are not so different here, receive over a
hundred pieces of threat intelligence a week, i.e. intelligence
pointing to a terrorist threat, decisions on what to do are difficult,
especially as is so often the case if the intelligence is piecemeal
and uncertain. The repercussions, another dilemma, of such decisions
can be significant.
As I said earlier, international co-operation in the face of an
international threat is essential. The AIVD presidency of the European
Counter-Terrorist Group was particularly important, in welcoming the
Security Services of the ten EU accession countries into the CTG, and
in establishing the link between the CTG and the EU Sitcen. The UK
plans for its Presidency were drawn up, in consultation with others,
before the attacks: they have not needed to be much amended as, again
as I said earlier, we anticipated further attacks and were not
surprised when they occurred.
In my area we are working through the CTG and have an extensive range
of work in hand. We wish to focus on implementing existing initiatives
rather than producing a fresh raft of them. We need to engage more
extensively with partners outside the EU in order to put the threat
within Europe into a broader context and we need to build both on the
links to Europol and the relationship with the EU Sitcen.
I know some believe that international, or in this case EU, work can
present a difficult dilemma with regard to national interests but, in
my experience, substantial counter-terrorist work on a practical,
tactical level works successfully every day on the basis of the
relationships of mutual trust to which I referred at the start of my
talk. And at the political and strategic level there is further
important work in progress.
So, in sum, we, the UK, the Netherlands and beyond face a high level
of threat. The scale of the problem we face has become more apparent
as the amount of intelligence collected and shared has increased.
Responding to it is challenging. Intelligence, the capability to
collect it and the competence to handle it are vital but not
sufficient.
The response of governments, the commercial sector and the public are
also of critical importance. Using intelligence, which may be both
fragile and fragmentary, ensuring our legal frameworks are fit to
address threats before they materialise fully, not through our own
actions destroying what we value in our way of life and what
terrorists wish to damage, and balanced public communication, all
present real difficulties.
What I am confident about is that the Dutch people are as
well-equipped as any to handle these dilemmas, and that in the AIVD
you have a highly professional, modern, thoughtful Security Service
doing a difficult job. I applaud them and hope you will join me in
doing so.
Murchadh
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