UK Government Intelligence: Its
nature, collection, assessment & use
Secret intelligence is information acquired against the wishes and
(generally) without the knowledge of the originators or possessors. Sources
are kept secret from readers, as are the many different techniques used.
Intelligence provides privileged insights not usually available openly.
Intelligence, when collected, may by its nature be fragmentary or
incomplete. It needs to be evaluated in respect of the reliability of the
source and the credibility of the information in order to allow a judgement
to be made about the weight to be given to it. It then needs to be analysed
in order to identify significant facts before circulation either as single
source reports or collated and integrated with other material as
assessments.
Assessment should put intelligence into a sensible real-world context and
identify elements that can inform policy-making. Evaluation, analysis and
assessment thus transform the raw material of intelligence so that it can
be assimilated in the same way as other information provided to
decision-makers at all levels of government.
The Secret Intelligence
Service and GCHQ evaluate and
circulate mainly single source intelligence. The Security Service
also circulates single source intelligence although its primary product is
assessed intelligence. The Defence
Intelligence Staff produces mainly assessed reports on an all-source
basis. The Joint Terrorism
Analysis Centre produces assessments both on short-term terrorist
threats and on longer term trends relating to terrorism.
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessments, the collective product
of the UK intelligence community,
are primarily intelligence-based but also include relevant information from
other sources. They are not policy documents. JIC product is circulated to No.
10, Ministers and senior policy makers.
There are limitations, some inherent and some practical, on the scope of
intelligence, which have to be recognised by its ultimate recipients if it
is to be used wisely. The most important limitation is incompleteness. Much
ingenuity and effort is spent on making secret information difficult to
acquire and hard to analyse. Although the intelligence process may overcome
such barriers, intelligence seldom acquires the full story. Even after
analysis it may still be, at best, inferential.
Readers of intelligence need to bear these points in mind. They also need
to recognise their own part in providing context. A picture that is drawn
solely from secret intelligence will almost certainly be a more uncertain
picture than one that incorporates other sources of information. Those
undertaking assessments, whether formally in a written piece or within
their own minds when reading individual reports, need to put the
intelligence in the context of wider knowledge available. That is why JIC
assessments are "all source" assessments, drawing on both secret
and overt sources of information. Those undertaking assessments also need
to review past judgements and historic evidence. They need to try to
understand, drawing on all the sources at their disposal, the motivations
and thinking of the intelligence targets. Where information is sparse or of
questionable reliability, readers need to be aware that they face a higher
risk of being misled by deception or by sources intending to influence more
than to inform, and of judgements conforming to others' expectations.
If the intelligence machinery is to be optimally productive, readers should
feed back their own comments on intelligence reports to the producers. In
the case of human intelligence in particular, this is a crucial part of the
evaluation process to which all sources continually need to be and are
subjected.
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