'Intelligence' endangers all of us

Jeremy Seabrook, The Statesman, Asia News Network, Calcutta

There exists in most countries something called the "intelligence community". In Britain, as elsewhere, its operations are usually secretive and opaque. The Hutton inquiry into the death of the scientist Dr Kelly, has given a glimpse of the workings of this intelligence community, as it assembled its fearsome dossiers on the alleged threat posed to the West by Saddam and his weaponry of mass destruction.

Acquiring intelligence is often described as "gathering", as though it were as innocent a chore as picking flowers. The compiling of sensitive information of this kind, concerned as it is with national security, is supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of our democracy.

Invoking the mystery in which it is cloaked has been the most effective way of silencing criticism and stifling dissent.

Perhaps it is time to re-think this ancient art. Most people now concede that the intelligence assessments of the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were faulty, if not utterly erroneous.

George W. Bush himself has also disavowed the connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, yet for the duration of the war, it was permitted to be believed that intelligence had furnished him with proof of such links. Given the money and resources deployed in this elevated task, it is difficult to imagine how such severe miscalculations arose.

This view of "intelligence" reduces it to commodity. It is often described as the pieces of a jigsaw, which the particular talents of the agencies know how to put together to acquire an understanding of the "bigger picture". Unfortunately, intelligence without insight is not very useful.

When there is a particular security alert, this generally follows the monitoring of increased "traffic", the avalanche of material that Tony Blair says comes across his desk each day. At such times, there is heightened surveillance, and a more intensive reliance on humint (the spies and infiltrators deployed with rather meager productive effect, ever since the British government first placed its informers among radical organizations and trade union "combinations" at the end of the 18th century).

The skills of those whose work it is to forestall any attack on the nation to anticipate the work of terrorists are highly mechanistic. A recent report of the Special Branch in London stated that the events of Sept. 11 underlined the "urgent need to monitor those who abuse democratic liberties to further their terrorist intentions." Such a bureaucratic approach is unlikely to be more effective in forestalling future acts of terror than the vast expenditure by the U.S. security industries was in preventing Sept. 11.

However refined and sophisticated the equipment they use, the information they acquire is processed by government machinery which has its own political fixed ideas. Such intelligence is easily mis-shaped, even before it reaches the eyes of political masters whose omniscient minds have already been made up.

Since the methods of amassing this intelligence are so one- dimensional and single-minded, it is rare for the security, in the name of which it is collected, to be safeguarded.

Imperial powers rarely have any clear view of what their adversaries and enemies are thinking. Their own self-confidence prevents them from entering into the experience of others. They are depowered when it comes to an understanding of the subordinate and inferior, the dissenters and excluded, who wish them ill and seek to damage their interests.

It has always been so. The powerless always know the mind of power better than power ever knows its underlings. That power itself provides little protection against the bearers of grudges may be seen in the papers, in stories where trusted servants have beaten or killed their employer and run away with cash or jewellery.

As it is domestically, so it is politically. Those who are so busy proclaiming the universality of their values and the correctness of their world-view cannot stoop to comprehend, the workings of disaffection, the ways in which they cause injury and offense to the beliefs of others.

They are so full of the certainties and truths which they wish to bring to the benighted places of earth, that they cannot step into the shoes of those they have slighted or alienated. So eager are they to remake a whole planet in their own image that every obstacle or objection is perceived as a threat to security, and must be dealt with accordingly.

On Sept. 6, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld, insisted "We want to encourage the people of Iraq to take greater responsibility for their own sovereignty." Two weeks later, without any sense of irony, the U.S. announced that all Iraqi industries and businesses formerly owned by the state (with the exception of oil and minerals) were to be made available to foreigners.

How can anyone expect that the secret information gathered on Iraq, or any other country, will be any more reliable? It is an insult to our intelligence. Intelligence is a complex and many- sided concept. We recognize this when we speak of emotional intelligence, intuitive intelligence, which means the ability to enter into the experience of others.

There is an intelligence of common sense and daily reasonableness. Intelligence, like security, is one of the most abused words in the tarnished lexicon of politics. It is usually invoked to justify -- as in Iraq -- means acts of aggression, and the conspicuous use of military pyrotechnics -- spectacular bombs, guns and hi-tech weaponry -- bunker-busters, daisy- cutters, stealth aircraft, smart bombs.

"Security", like "intelligence", is a state of mind, a human attribute. When it is made material in an extensive display of military hardware, it becomes like the intelligence in the name of which it is deployed -- crude, mechanistic, and to a large degree, ineffective against the evil it is designed to destroy.

Intelligence, even of the most clever and gifted people, can easily be impaired by greed, anger, lust or some other common human failing.

In the same way, intelligence, the elaborate mechanism designed by the state apparently to protect the people, is readily inflected by cupidity, vanity or the vainglory of power. It feeds on paranoia and hysteria, and winds up, not as intelligence at all, but as the plainest stupidity. And this endangers us all.

Among the writer's latest books is A World Grown Old.