Intelligence

SIS (?) Korean

네이버

SIS's tasking and dissemination architecture evolved originally out of the first Secret Service Committee review of intelligence needs and facilities in the wake of the First World War. When the Cabinet convened the first of a series of Secret Service Committees in 1919 to review post-war intelligence needs, the Committee was confronted with the dual problems of a failure to fulfil consumer intelligence requirements on one hand, and operational hazards from poor interorganizational co-ordination in the field on the other.

One of the conclusions of the 1919 Committee was that the SIS should act as a central human intelligence organization, acting on behalf of the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, the War Office, the Colonial Office, the Home Office and the Air Ministry, in other words giving the SIS a monopoly on foreign intelligence production for the UK government.

However, while this resolved the operational control problem it did not address what might be called 'consumer satisfaction', and a quid pro quo for SIS's central control of operations took shape:
in order to 'safeguard the interests' of the agency's major consumers, 'the intelligence branch in each of the three Services came to house one of its sections in the SIS, where it formed a part of the HQ staff' in a scheme the official history terms the '1921 arrangement' (Hinsley et al. 1979, pp. 17-18).

각 군. 부서별 연락, 소요부문( C 부문- Circulating Sections 구성)

The Admiralty and the War Office attached their secondments first, in 1919,

with the Foreign Office following later in 1921,

with Air Ministry intelligence following a decade later and

(Sir) Desmond Morton's Industrial Intelligence Centre setting up a similar arrangement to handle economic and industrial intelligence shortly before the Second World War.

Initially, the individual 'consumer liaison sections' were originally simply referred to as the 'political section' or 'air section' and so forth (Andrew 1987, p. 408).
However, by 1932 they had been designated 'Circulating Sections', or 'C Sections', and awarded Roman numerals (Special Operations Executive 1932).
This designation scheme almost certainly post-dated their original attachment to SIS HQ since it in no way conformed to the actual sequence in which the C Sections appeared.

Under this designation scheme, (각 해당 부서.군 서 파견된 인원으로 구성)

the Foreign Office liaison was Section I 외무성 파견 연락.소요-1과
the Air Ministry liaison Section II 공군성 파견 -2과
Admiralty was Section III 해군성 파견-3과
the War Office Section IV and 육군성 파견-4과
eventually the Ministry of Economic Warfare had its own Section VI (there is some debate concerning the designation of the Air and War Office Sections, see Davies 1995, pp. 120, 130). 후 경제선 성 파견.연락-6과

The other side of the organization consisted of a
small staff of 'G Sections' responsible for overseeing and directing the operational work of SIS stations abroad. ( G 부서-해외 공작 감독.지시. 수행)

However, matters became somewhat entangled during the interwar period because several sections which did not perform the consumer liaison function were bundled with the C Sections on an ad hoc basis.

These were: C 부서(대상 소비자 연락.수요 부처가 없는 부서들)

Section V (Counter-Espionage); 5과-방첩
Section VII (Finance) and 재정 7과- 재정
Section VIII (a section handling SIS ciphers and clandestine radio) 8과- 암호.통신

The result was a pattern in which the seconded consumer liaison sections possessed a variety of dual administrative identity in Whitheall. 각 연락.소요 부서 는 SIS내의 연락부서를 구성하면서도 동시에 모 성.군 (정보 부서)의 연락부서로도 지정.

The Military Section, for example, existed simultaneously as SIS's Section IV at the same time as it appears in War Office lists of the period as MI 1c (inheriting the First World War designation held by the SIS prior to its move from the War Office to the Foreign Office).
육군연락과- SIS 4과/(육군) 정보국 1과 C

Under the 1920-1924 reorganization of the Directorate of Naval Intelligence, the Naval Section at SIS was simultaneously SIS's Section III and designated NID 3 at the Admiralty (Admiralty 1923).

해군연락과-SIS 3과/해군정보부 3과

Similarly, the Air Section after its establishment in 1929 1930 carried both the SIS designation Section II and the Air Intelligence title AI 1c (Winterbotham 1978, pp. 15-19).
공군연락과-SIS 2과/공군정보부 1과 C

In 1938, when Desmond Morton was invited to lay down plans for an 'economic warfare intelligence branch' his proposals included a Liaison Intelligence Section that would receive information from other branches of government. 경제전 부서 하 연락정보과( 타 부처, 군과의 정보 교환)

That LI Section included a 'Secret Sources' sub-section consisting of two officers 'supplied by SIS' who were to act as liaison with that agency (Board of Trade 1938). Those officers also carried the SIS identity as Section VI (Johns 1979, p. 48; Special Operations Executive 1939; i-15).
해당 정보연락과 산하 비밀기관(SIS) 연락 담당 관-SIS 6과

Only the Foreign Office or 'Political' Section was purely a staff secondment and held no parallel status in its home department

The Circulating Sections did more that simply set requirements for raw intelligence in the form of wish lists, and evaluate the content of agent reports from field stations abroad.
C Sections (not to be confused with the designation of the Chief of Service as 'C') also originated operations which the operational G Sections were required to execute.

With the outbreak of war, the Service Branch directorates of intelligence began programmes of expansion and reorganization leading in turn to the expansion and reorganization of their liaison sections attached to SIS HQ. The programme of expansion reflected two different sorts of process: on the one hand, Service intelligence departments were gearing up for an anticipated increased volume of information, while on the other new functions were being set up and installed in the home departments, and a number of these had implications for the SIS. Air Intelligence and Naval intelligence both began their expansion programmes before the actual outbreak of war, while the War Office reorganization did not take place until 1940. SIS also had to mobilize, bring in new recruits to handle its wartime operations (see, for example, Trevor-Roper 1968, pp. 38-9).

By May 1941, under the new reorganization, the Admiralty liaison to SIS and GC&CS came under

a new Co-ordination and Liaison Section, NID 17. 해군 정보부 조정.연락과( SIS.GC&CS 등 타 정보기관 연락 담당)
NID 17 included the NID attachments to the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Interservice Security Board, and the Joint Planning Committee, as well as 'Special Liaison Duties' which meant GC&CS (sometimes referred to as the Government Communications Bureau, or GCB), SIS, and to the SOE (given in 1940 papers as SO 2) (Admiralty 1941).

As the range of NID liaisons multiplied through the war, adding the Joint Intelligence Staff and the interdepartmental Intelligence Section (Operations) (IS(O)) to the Division's commitments, the liaison duties were broken up between two different NID sections. 해군 정보부 각 연락 부문 에는 특임 연락 부문들( GC&CS/GCB, SIS, SOE 과의 연락담당부서들) 외에도 합동정보위원회, 기관?군? 간 안보 위원회, 합동 기획 위원회에 대한 파견우너들도 포함.
전 시 연락활동이 증대하고 합동정보참모부, 기관/군 간 정보부?과 (작전)담당 부문도 새로 분화 되면서 연락.파견 업무는 두 개 부서로 분할

The GC&CS and SIS liaison sections were excised from NID 17 in November 1944,
and placed in their own section, NID 12a, as 'Naval Section, Government Communications Bureau' and 'Naval Section, London' respectively, an arrangement which prevailed until October 1945 at least.

정보통신교 .SIS연락 부서는 17에서 떨어져서 12a에 배치 (각기 해군과, 정보통신국 해군과,런던 )

September of 1939, Section II made a major innovation in the field of intelligence and one with a lasting influence through the creation of a scientific intelligence sub-section
1939년 이후 2과(공군 정보 연락) 산하 과학.기술 정보 관계 하위 부서 창설

The scientist in question, R.V. Jones, was attached to Winterbotham's AI 1c (Jones 1978, pp. 92-3) or Section II, in which capacity Jones bore the title IId (i-03).
AI 1c/Section II (공군 정보부 1c/ SIS 2과 ) 산하 d (공군 정보 연락과 산하 과기 정보 부서)

The 1940 reorganization of Military Intelligence took the form of not only an expansion of the SIS HQ secondment staff, but also an upgrading of the War Office status of that staff.
In 1939, the Military Circulating Section was still known within the War Office as MI 1c, a single officer (still Menzies) manning the 'Special Duties' sub-section of MI 1, the Military Intelligence section responsible for 'Organisation and Co-ordination of Military Intelligence, League of Nations Questions' (War Office List 1939, p. 97).

1940년 육군 정보부 조직 개편 SIS파견 연락 부문(SIS본부 조직)의 확장 및 정보부 의 동 지정 부서의 지위 승격

39년까지 SIS 육군 연락과(4과 )/MI 1c 육군 정보부 1과(육군.군사 정보 조직 조정. 국제연맹 문제 과) C부과?(Special Duties' sub-section 특임 부과?)

Under the 1940 reorganization, a greatly expanded MI Division was divided up between three deputy directors, one for 'Organisation' (DDMI(O)) another for 'Information' (DDMI(I)), and another handling security, (DDMI(S)).
1940년 조직 개편으로 정보부 산하 세 명 차장?부국장? 신설
조직 담당 차장/부국장, 정보 담당 차장/부국장, 보안 담당 차장/부국장

The DDMI(O) title was not particularly representative of that officer's functions, which encompassed not just the organization and co-ordination section MI 1, but also a number of intelligence collections and liaison sections.
These included communications security and interception through the War Office signals intelligence organization MI 8, the escape and evasion organization MI 9,
MIL which handled military attaches, liaison with home departments of government and liaison with and from allied forces, and
finally as 'Special Duties', the War Office liaison to SIS, now under the new designation

MI 6

조직 담당 차장부국장 하
조직 조정 (담당)과 (MI 1)외에 많은 정보 연락 부문 포괄
육군성 내 통신 정보 보안, 도청 관계 부문 MI 8
피난.소개 관련 업무 MI 9
무관 업무, 정부 모 부처? home departments of government ,연합군 및 연합군 내부 연락 MI L(Liason?)
SIS 연락부문 (종전의 MI 1c 특임 부과) 승격 MI 6

WW 2 이 후 제조직

In early 1945 a JIC sub-committee on the future of the SIS was convened under the Chairmanship of Victor Cavendish-Bentinck (later Duke of Portland). The results of their considerations were submitted to the Chiefs of Staff (COS) on 5 June 1945, although the conclusions of the committee have yet to be disclosed, apart from the suggestion that Menzies("C") 'hoard all the money he could before the war ended because ... the Treasury wouldn't give a penny if it didn't have to' (Howarth 1986, p. 199). SIS responded to the pressure to reform and confront the new era by convening its own internal Committee on SIS Reorganization in September of 1945 (Philby 1983, p. 124). Much has been written about the decisions of this committee which has been variously intensely critical or even deceptive, as often as not intentionally or unintentionally misleading.
However, what essentially happened was that what one-time Deputy Chief of Service Valentine Vivian had described as 'the present collection of independent units, known as SIS' (Cecil 1986, p. 186) was streamlined into a coherent system of five Directorates under 'C'.
Under this arrangement,

the operational 'P' Sections (as in Production, formerly the G Sections) were grouped under a Director of Production and

the C sections, relabeled Requirements or 'R Sections' were gathered under a Director of Requirements.

Finance and administration were bundled into another single directorate, as were technical research and staff training.

A short-lived Directorate of War Planning was also set up to absorb the functions of the now defunct Special Operations Executive, that is to say, sabotage, subversion and clandestine support for resistance movements in enemy occupied territory (Cavendish 1990, pp. 40-41; Philby 1983, p. 124; Smiley 1988, p. 188; i-008; i-010; i-015; i-009, i-011, i-019 and i-022).

As noted above,

Requirements Directorate consolidated the old C Sections (now R Sections) together under a single senior officer responsible for overseeing the evaluation and circulating of the production side's intelligence 'take', and the agency's overall relations with its consumers.

For the most part their numerical designations remained more or less unchanged.

R1 continued to be Political Intelligence working on behalf of the Foreign Office, R1 정치 정보(외무성 의거)

R2 was the Air Section R 2(공군 정보)

R3 Navy, and R4 the Military. 3(해군) 4 (육군)

Section VI would outlive its original consumer, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and continue to produce industrial and commercial intelligence for a wide range of departments as R6.

Jones's lid was hived off from the Air Section to become R7. (R7 과기 정보)

Section VIII, now R8, was stripped of its Radio Section at Hanslope Park (hived off in turn to become the Foreign Office's Diplomatic Wireless Service), and reduced to a single officer handling liaison with the signals intelligence service Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ; formerly GC&CS)

Under these arrangements, like R6, R7 officers were not to be drawn from external consumer departments, but to be career SIS scientists

R8's function was, as one former officer described it, to 'act as GCHQ's man at SIS.' R8's function was as a two-way channel. R8's work routine consisted of a weekly meeting on Tuesdays at GCHQ's London offices on Palmer Street, with a monthly meeting at GCHQ's headquarters (in due course in Cheltenham). On the one hand, GCHQ used it to issue requirements for SIS to target individuals with access to information about cryptosystems GCHQ wished to penetrate, such as code books and one-time pads, encryption algorithms and their keys, information about communications security procedures, facilities and so forth. On the other hand, R8 also served as a conduit for signal intercepts which might be of value in SIS's work, such as identifying likely candidates for recruitment on the basis of their telecommunications traffic (i-10; i-15; Cavendish 1990, p. 41).

One recurrent item of confusion in the literature on the SIS deals with the supposed designation of the agency as 'DI 6' rather than MI 6 (see, for example, Bunyan 1977, p. 3; McDermott 1973, p. 137), and this results from a change in the Whitheall designations for R2, R3 and R4 following the 1963/4 consolidation of the Service intelligence branches with the JIB under the general amalgamation of the Service Departments with the Ministry of Defence.

1963~64년 각 군성 국방성으로 통합, 각 군 정보부 +합동정보참모부=국방정보참모부 탄생

The Services had been amalgamated with the Ministry of Defence chiefly on the grounds that there were administrative scale economies to be had combining the civilian civil service machineries of the War Office, Admiralty and the Air Ministry. In the process, the three Service intelligence branches were consolidated with the JIB. Far from immediately benefiting from scale economies in administration, the process of amalgamation proved fairly chaotic; although under a common command, a lot of the various NID, MID, AI and JIB sections retained their original designations or a joint DIS/Service Branch designation, DI(MI), DI(NI) or DI(AI) followed by the Section number, for example DI(AI) 7 (Ministry of Defence 1964).

이 통합에도 불구하고 각 군 정보부 는 종래의 부서명을 별도로 유지하며 이를 합동정보부에 병기 (일레로 국방정보(공군정보) 7은 국방정보참모부 하에 과거 공군 정보부 7과를 의미)
중복 업무 부서도 당근 등장

However, in 1966, a scheme was adopted in which the analogous or related Service intelligence sections were combined into single joint DI sections with Army, (A), Navy (N) or Air (Air) sub-designations, for example the Soviet geographical section of the Directorate of Service Intelligence (DS Int) became DI 3, subdivided into DI 3(A), DI 3(N) and DI 3(Air) (Ministry of Defence 1966b). 1966년 구 각 군 정보 부서들 중 연관되거나 중복되는 부서들은 통합하고 해당 기능별(혹은 지역별) 부서에 각 군 관련되던 부서들을 하위부문으로 두도록 변경

일례로 과거 육,해공군 정보부 산하에 모두 각기 소련 정보 부서가 있었고 통합이후에도 이 소련 정보부서들은 종래의 부서를 유지하며 앞에 국방정보 표기를 병기하며 , 종전의 표기를 유지( 과거 육군 정보부의 대소부서가 MI -?라면 통합 후에도
DI (MI) ?하는 식으로 표시 )하였는 데 새로운 체제 하에서는 군종 정보국의 소련 부서는 DI 3가 되고 각 산하에 DI 3(A), DI 3(N) and DI 3(Air) 와 같은 육군, 해군,공군 별 하위부문을 두도록 변경.

Under the consolidation of the Service intelligence branches, the Service branch liaisons with the Security and Secret Intelligence Services were consolidated under DI 5 and DI 6. Within DI 6, therefore, the designations of R2 (Air Intelligence liaison), R3 (NID 17) and R4 (MI 6) became DI 6(Air), DI 6(N) and DI 6(A) respectively (i-30; these section headings are excised from the Ministry of Defence papers on the DIS consolidation in the PRO, with the numbering scheme skipping from DI 4 to DI 7 (see Ministry of Defence 1966b)).

이 체제 하에서 각 군 정보부의 SIS ,SS 기능은 DI 5 and DI 6.로 통합
따라서 과거 각 군 정보부의 연락부문은 다음 과 같이 로 변경(이중지정은 여전히 유지)

R2 (Air Intelligence liaison),-DI 6(Air)
R3 (NID 17) -DI 6(N)
R4 (MI 6) -DI 6(A)

For the most part, the Requirements Sections changed relatively little throughout the following two decades, although a series of changes began to accumulate in the SIS' governmental environment which would eventually contribute to the comprehensive reform and reorganization of Requirements during the 1970s. In 1957, the external processes of tasking, dissemination and analysis underwent another change which had fairly profound implications for the process on the work of Requirements side of the SIS, and the Requirements/Production relationship.

In 1946, the increased post-war centrality of the JIC as an assessment as well as administrative entity, and the creation of the JIB, shifted the emphasis in requirements from strictly partisan representation to a concern for disinterested 'objective' evaluation (a shift further emphasized by the fact the R1, R6 and R7 all served multiple consumers). However, at this point the JIC was still essentially one consumer amongst many, albeit primus inter pares, and so the majority of intelligence requirements issued to the SIS were matters of departmental demand.
In 1957, according to the official account 'as a reflection of the broadened scope and role of intelligence,
the JIC was brought within the Cabinet as part of the interdepartmental committee structure under the authority of the Secretary of the Cabinet' (Cabinet Office 1993, p. 11). This represented a profound change in the role of the JIC as the body formulating national intelligence requirements in support of a national assessments process, that is, one working at the level of the Cabinet Office on behalf of ministers and departmental Permanent and Under-Secretaries.

The JIC was also now responsible for co-ordinating all the requirements and priorities which could be laid upon the 'Security and Intelligence Agencies' by their consumers in Whitheall.
The result was an annual review of intelligence requirements, leading to an annual national intelligence requirements list, through a process consisting of 'rigorous analysis of the requirements for secret intelligence with extensive consultation with consumer departments and consideration of the financial and other resources required' (which, although modified through the 1968 appointment of the Co-ordinator of Intelligence, has remained substantially the same since the 1950s.) (Cabinet Office 1993, p. 13).

The resulting National Intelligence Requirements Document (i-28) therefore involved not only a shopping list for intelligence, but one which assigned priorities to potentially competing demands, in other words, it put individual departmental demands in the context of both national requirements and limited operational resources.

The role of partisan representation had been steadily decreased throughout the previous two decades, while joint- rather than single-Service all-source analysis had been increased both by the increased centrality and power of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the 1964 consolidation of the Service departments under the Ministry of Defence. Consolidation of the armed services had also involved placing the individual armed services under separate, junior Defence ministers who were without seats in Cabinet. The Service customers were, therefore, politically weaker, as well as subject to strengthened pressures towards inter-Service and inter-departmental jointery.

The combined effect was to weaken very considerably any outside partisan pressure which served as a justification for a functional organization to (departmental) requirements.
The trend towards a geographical reorganization of Requirements was also given a push in 1968 by the replacement of the JIC's Joint Intelligence Staff with the Joint Assessments Staff (JAS).
The JIS had been composed of a constellation of ad hoc interdepartmental groups, some geographical but others such as JS/TIC were functional.
In 1968 these were reorganized or replaced with the more formal but still essentially collegial, geographically organized Current Intelligence Groups (CIGs) making up the JAS (Cabinet Office 1993, p. 11; Herman 1996, p. 262; Urban 1996, p. 29).

Requirements Directorate was the first point of contact with the JIC.
Its R Section officers sat on the JIC subcommittees which their R Sections served (i-15; i-28; Cabinet Office 1983, p. 95). With such profound changes in the governmental side aspect, SIS's environment made adaptation of Requirements Directorate to suit the new tasking and dissemination conditions all but inevitable. Perhaps one of the main indications of the reportedly moribund state of the SIS under Sir John Rennie's term as 'C' was the delay of nearly five years before that adaptation took place under his successor

Environmental changes in the UK government's intelligence machinery converged with
reductions in staff size in the specialist R Sections such as R6 (Economic/Industrial) and R7 (Scientific) which had resulted in a large part from another financial pressure upon the SIS.
In the early 1970s, the SIS experienced sizeable staff-cuts across the board, but this was felt particularly keenly in Requirements which, despite its centrality in SIS structure and process, was a relatively small directorate.
Although R2, R3, and R4 had been reduced to single officers in 1964, and
R8 had been more or less a single officer since 1947,
technically specialized sections like R6 and R7 were still relatively small compared with R1 which had at least four geographical sub-sections as well as the SIS's covert action Special Political Action under its ambit (i-08, i-20, i-28).

The Service Department and GCHQ liaison sections couldn't get any smaller and still exist independently, and they still individually served four powerful outside consumers with very particular requirements.
R6 and R7, however, did dwindle to a point where their independent existence could be challenged.

As one officer put it, there were very few economic intelligence requirements at all, and what requirements did exist were essentially 'political-economic'. One did not, he noted, send an officer abroad to study the economy of the country to which they were stationed.
Moreover, 'there was a matter of inclination: very few SIS officers are economists while the typical SIS officer is a political animal' (i28). It was, therefore, a relatively minor change to
absorb R6's regional functions under the political requirements section, R1. And, since most scientific intelligence requirements concerned the USSR, a greatly reduced

R7 was eventually absorbed under the Soviet sub-section of R1 (i-28).

In principle, all that would have been left from the diminution and demise of R6 and R7 would have been the Service liaison sections, R8, and a considerably expanded R1.
As a result, when Maurice Oldfield (Rennie's successor as 'C') undertook his 'streamlining' of the SIS after 1973, the predominantly political requirements sections were reorganized along geographical lines as:

Requirements, Soviet Bloc (R/Sovbloc);

Requirements, Far East (R/FE); Requirements,

Middle East (R/ME); Requirements,

Europe (R/EUR); Requirements

Western Hemisphere (R/WH, including the Americas and Caribbean);

Requirements, Africa (R/AF), more closely approximating the JIC's CIGs,

while R8, the GCHQ liaison, remained as R/GC (Requirements, Government Communications) (i-20; i-28).

As the political and surviving economic aspects of Requirements Directorate were being broken up along geographical lines,
the Service Branch liaisons, formerly R2 (Air), R3 (Navy) and R4 (Army), were carved out of the Directorate to become a Defence Liaison Staff.

In this capacity, they were retitled 'MODA's, standing for Ministry of Defence Advisor, with
R4 (DI 6(A)) redesignated as MODA/Army,
R3 (DI 6(N)) as MODA/Navy and
R2 (DI 6(Air)) as MODA/Air (Campbell 1982; i-20).

By 1978/79, Requirements Directorate, 'already felt in some quarters to be too small to warrant a full Director' (i-28) ceased to be an independent Directorate, and
Production and Requirements were merged under a combined Director of Requirements and Production who also doubled as Deputy Chief (i-20; i-28; Campbell 1982; Bloch and Fitzgerald 1983, p. 34; Smith 1996, p. 155).

The Requirements process, however, retained a measure of independence under a Deputy Director, Requirements (DD/R) who carried on the responsibilities that DR had done, but in a junior capacity in the SIS (i-20, i-28).

Although the separate Director of Requirements was a thing of the past, the functions of the R Sections continued to be overseen by DD/R, who was responsible overall for the quality of the reports produced by the R Sections, and the day-to-day relations between SIS and its consumers in Whitheall.

These arrangements have continued to provide the basic core structure to SIS even after the Cold War with, however, some modification to take into account emerging security concerns such as transnational terrorism and serious crime, environmental concerns and the potentials of the new information technology

Within the SIS, communications between Requirements Officers and the operational Production side were similarly mundane. The Production side would, through its network of field stations, generate the basic 'source reports' which were circulated to the R Sections and thence to SIS consumers in Whitheall. Former Iberian area P Officer (P1) Desmond Bristow has recounted how 'the report would be digested by its recipients and then returned to me marked with an A, B, C or D according to its importance, usually accompanied by a request for further information ... every six months my colleagues in [P1] would evaluate each agent in collaboration with the recipient departments of his or her reports [i.e. the R Sections] and the Head of Station supplying the reports' (Bristow 1993, p. 176).

The process was not confined to intelligence collection alone, and special political actions and paramilitary special operations were likewise tasked through the requirements machinery. For example, the unsuccessful 1949 resistance programme in Albania (betrayed by H.A.R. 'Kim' Philby to his Soviet controllers during his term as SIS intelligence liaison in Washington) resulted initially from a requirement formulated by the Foreign Office's 'Russia Committee' (Foreign Office 1948), while the successful 1953 coup in Iran (operation BOOT) originated with a requirement issued by the Foreign Office after the failure of its own subversion attempts between 1951 and 1952 (Woodhouse 1983, pp. 111-112). This relationship was reinforced when a new Special Political Action Section was created in the wake of BOOT to handle covert political actions and was placed under the auspices of the Foreign Office liaison section R1 (i-08, i-11).

Before the emergence of JIC as the central and final arbiter of intelligence requirements and priorities, SIS's demand-driven architecture could run the risk of overwhelming the SIS's limited resources. Prior to the Second World War, the SIS was flooded with demands for information on the German armed forces and economy through the Service intelligence branch liaisons and IIC. The volume of requirements coming from Section II, III, IV and VI was so great that the agency could not fulfil any single requirement completely, and as a relatively junior organization within the civil service chain of being, it was in no position to reject consumer demands. Of this stage in the organization's history, the official history concludes that

the SIS was not a strong enough organization to settle priorities between the requests that were made of it, or even able to resist demands which went beyond its resources. When those demands became insistent and conflicting, as they did in the 1930s, it was overstretched by user departments (Hinsley et al. 1979, p. 18)

The increased centrality of the JIC mechanism, however, acted as a filter on the inflow of requirements by basing them not on a monologue of demands but on a dialogue between producer and consumer, formulated ultimately in the annual National Intelligence Requirements Document, within the SIS in the form of its 'Red Book'. The impact of the post-war JIC and JIB structure and process was that the tasking process, or requirements, now began to reflect not merely partisan interests but the need for balanced 'objective' inputs to a joint, all-source assessment process at both the strategic and tactical levels. The work of tasking and dissemination was increasingly to become one of detached intermediary. On the one hand, the Requirements officer was there to make sure that the information received by consumers was, as one officer put it, 'not influenced by the imperatives of the Production side, i.e. making poor agents look good or good agents look better', the relationship of case officer to source, noted this officer, being 'something of a partnership ... a bond of loyalty [which] tends to make sheep out of goats, and Requirements Sections are supposed to ensure that goats remain goats.' On the other hand, he or she was also required to ensure that intelligence reporting was not distorted by 'political influence from customers in Whitheall' (i-28).

Regardless of the successive changes and reforms in structure and process, for nearly eighty years the consumer liaison architecture of SIS's Requirements side has permitted that very covert agency's infrastucture and inner workings to interweave with the machinery of overt British government, below and beyond the lofty centrality of bodies like the Cabinet Office and its Central Intelligence Machinery. That process of interweaving means that the SIS does not exist in a governmental and conceptual realm at some distance removed from the more visible, 'overt' machinery of British government. Rather, it is in fact very much part and parcel with that larger machinery. Such an interweaving means that secret intelligence is not just the esoteric preserve of a few departments and officials but something affected by, and playing a role in, the wider processes of British government and policy. It also means that secret intelligence and secret services should not be treated as something apart from the larger study of government and politics; they are part and parcel with that as well.

October 2, 2005 at 02:11 AM in MI6 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home