Otherwise security can become an industry in itself and will not be protecting what is truly at risk. Unfortunately, there is frequently an inadequate connection between intelligence and protective security measures, resulting too often in measures being put in place after the event and then gradually wound down in a comparatively short space of time when nothing further happens, in response to complaints of delays or inconvenience.
Since the 1970s, international security and intelligence collaboration against terrorism has become increasingly close. The relevant agencies of the west have been working more and more closely together, sharing intelligence from a variety of sources and working together operationally. In the 1980s, the Provisional IRA chose to attack their targets in foreign countries, particularly in Europe, and went far afield in their search for weapons, finance and expertise. In that ‘war on terrorism’ there was much international collaboration and support from European and US police and intelligence services in particular and systems were put in place to share intelligence quickly and securely so that action could be taken where it could be most effective. It was accepted by all friendly security and intelligence agencies that, in spite of the intensely political nature of terrorism and its varied causes, a planned or actual terrorist attack on the citizens of one country was an attack on democratic values and would be investigated and countered just as seriously as an attack on their own country.
It is vital too that not only the intelligence but also the assessment of the intelligence is shared. Effective coordination, both internationally and nationally, is essential if the counter-terrorist effort is to succeed. Without it, vital leads will be misunderstood, key pieces of information will be lost and the moment to take action will be missed. In the UK in the 1980s, in response to various high-profile terrorist acts, it was decided to appoint MI5 as the lead intelligence agency for terrorism, to provide the initial assessment of all terrorist-related intelligence and if appropriate to liaise with the police or others for preventive action. No system is perfect and whatever arrangements are in place, something may be missed or not recognised as significant, but there must be one lead point within each country, otherwise there will be inconsistency of response and confused messages going to the government, resulting in confused policy making and national response. Judging by what we are hearing now from the USA, co-ordination between and even within agencies did not work well prior to September 11th and important information that might have been developed further, slipped through the net. But co-ordination is obviously easier in a small country than it is in a country the size of the US with its more than 100 different security and intelligence related departments and agencies.
I view with some concern the creation of yet another US agency to co-ordinate all the rest. It is a natural instinct of politicians, but one that should almost always be resisted, to create a new body when there appears to have been some sort of failure. We hear that the new Department of Homeland Security is not to control the intelligence agencies and certainly I would not expect those agencies in Europe which have well established relationships with the CIA and the FBI to allow this new department to have their most sensitive intelligence. I fear it may merely add to the confusion.
Perhaps not surprisingly, collaboration against terrorism between intelligence and security agencies has proved easier than political collaboration even among allies. Terrorism is violence for a political purpose, so inevitably it divides the political world and in the past there has been disagreement on how to deal with it. Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister famously asserted that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists or countries supporting terrorists.
Other countries have taken a different line. Some have negotiated with hi-jackers. Some have backed sanctions regimes against countries supporting or practising terrorism. Others, while paying lip service to sanctions, have seen the opportunity for economic or political advantage in covertly ignoring them. Indeed the British government’s stance on negotiating with those with ‘weapons under the table’ has significantly changed in recent years.
We all know the saying ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ and there are many examples of the effect of that in practice. For years members of the Irish community in the USA have given a good deal of money to the IRA, because they supported their objective of getting the British out of Ireland and somehow did not see the IRA’s activities as terrorism.
But the sheer extent of the destruction on September 11th has united more of the world than ever before in condemnation of the perpetrators. However startling the declaration of a ‘war on terrorism’ beginning on September 11th might be to those who have been fighting terrorism for years, it has achieved the involvement in an international coalition, uneasily in some cases, of countries whose attitude to terrorism has been ambivalent. On the principle that those who are not with us are against us, Pakistan has been persuaded to cooperate, though the traditional supporters, funders and protectors of terrorists, countries such as Syria, Libya, Iraq and Iran, who as it suited them have used terrorism almost as an arm of their foreign policy, still remain on the outside. One of the great successes of the ‘war’ must be the new co-operation between the intelligence services of Russia and the West against the common enemy of terrorism. Much valuable intelligence must be available to the Russians, with all their resources and experience. If countries were indeed to unite in denying terrorists support and the hospitality of their soil, it would be one of the most effective blows that could be struck. Keeping that coalition against terrorism together, fragile though it may be, is an essential task of diplomacy.
Finally, the most effective way of disrupting terrorists would be to deny them the publicity they crave. But that can never be. The media and political figures will always respond in a high-profile way to major disasters, after all they have their audience to satisfy.
But publicity for the atrocities terrorists commit feeds their vanity, reinforces their position in the eyes of their followers and confirms them in their view that terrorism is a successful way of bringing their cause to public attention. Publicity helps them recruit. Weak-minded people are attracted to famous causes. But in their public response politicians should use words of scorn, rather than the rhetoric of revenge. All rhetoric plays into the hands of terrorists but talk of revenge breeds yet more hatred in a never-ending cycle. When a terrorist attack succeeds, we must try not to allow our reaction to give the terrorists even greater satisfaction than they get from the death and destruction they cause.
PROLOGUE
When I first opened my eyes, in May 1935, I might have thought, if I’d been capable of it, that I had not got too bad a deal. The world was a fairly safe and settled place and my family seemed a satisfactory though hardly glamorous one to be born into. Admittedly, my father had been unemployed and forced to try to earn a living selling the Encyclopaedia Britannica three years before, when my brother was born, but by the time of my birth, he had a secure job as a mechanical engineer in a firm with some good contracts. My parents had just bought a house with a garden in the new suburb of South Norwood. It would have seemed to most people, observing me as I first saw the light of day, that I was pretty well set up. But the fact that it was snowing on that May day should have warned that all might not be quite as secure and predictable as it seemed. And it wasn’t.