"As a political intelligence operator who had defected at a critical juncture in East-West relations, Gordievsky was often puzzled by SIS's preoccupation with the KGB's modest operational successes. To some extent he shared the view of some Foreign Office diplomats and Assessments Staff members that MI5 and MI6 were, as one puts it, 'obsessed with fighting the opposing intelligence service rather than putting more effort into finding out more about the wider world'."

"On 15 Jan 86 Gorbachev launched an initiative for a nuclear-free world. His call did not propose a practical programme, but rather an attempt to convince the wider world that the USSR no longer thought that it could acquire security through endless production of nuclear weapons and that cuts were required. What western governments did not know (it was revealed years later by a Soviet energy minister) was that around the time of this initiative Moscow:s nuclear arsenal had reached its peak - an extraordinary 45 000 devices, or twice what the USA had. About one-third of these Russian weapons were old and no longer operational, and it was in 1986 that they began secretly to reduce this huge stockpile."

"In the days that followed Britain's breaking off diplomatic relations with Syria [following the Oct 1986 attempted bombing of an El Al flight, attributed to Syrian official involvement] the government attempted to convince its allies that they should follow this lead. [Then Forein Minister Geoffrey] Howe suggests that they would have done if they had enjoyged access to the same intelligence as the USA and UK. This admission is an interesting demonstration of the desire of these two countries to preserve SIGINT secrets, even when it would be to their diplomatic advantage to share them with what are, after all, close colleagues."

"The Syrian case provides an example of the role of intelligence in making foreign policy. Britain's Atlantic orientation, enshrined in the UKUSA SIGINT treaty, led London and Washington to take one view, while European partners adopted another. Britain's inability to share such secrets fed continental suspicions about the shallowness of Albion's commitment to the European project."

"[In the mid-1980s] about 60 MI5 personnel were responsible for running agents and bugging in Northern Ireland, and for supporting a senior officer the Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (DCI) who acted as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland's personal adviser. The vast majority of the human intelligence-gathering in Ulster was carried out by the RUC Special Branch, with the Army's secret Field Research Unit running about 10% of the Agents. MI5's casework was meant to fall into two categories: agents able to provide information on terrorist campaigns across the Irish Sea and sources able to add political detail to what the RUC could gather from cells on the streets."

"During 1987, few intelligence targets could have had a higher priority for US and UK agencies than these four types of UNF missile [SS-4, SS-12M, SS-20, SS-23] and their associated military units. They were both a potential military threat and the subject of ongoing diplomatic negotiations; thus, any change in deployments was of great significance. In East Germany, Britain, the USA and France had the advantage of the military missions they were allowed under the old four-power agreement [including BRIXMIS]. These legalised spies spent their days travelling the roads, logging Soviet military movements and, when possible, peering into equipment hangars at Soviet bases. But they, the satellites and the SIGINT experts, had completely missed the establishment of 2 bases for SS-23 nuclear missiles. It was not as if the objects in questions were devices able to fit in a suitcase; the eighteen launchers positioned in the German Democratic Republics were the size of buses and were supported by dozens of ancillary vehicles."

"The SS-23 story provides several lessons. Most simply, that a nation which tracks spy satellites can hide equipment at the times when the satellites pass overhead; and that having people on the ground, as the Allies did in East Germany, will not necessarily help. The interpreters who studied the images beamed down by the 2 or 3 KH-11 CYSTAL satellites that covered the Soviet Bloc at the time would eventually have found the new SS-23s, but it would have taken time - perhaps several years, just as the accurate estimate of SS-20 bases had. Within 4 years, many people would have forgotten these limitations, and huge resources would be committed to finding similar mobile missile launchers in the deserts of Iraq."

"Intelligence 'group think' is described by a senior analyst, one of the more thoughtful members of the JIC Assessments Staff, who believes, 'An analytical culture develops among people looking at the same problem. It's always one of the hardest tasks to keep on challenging the assumptions of that culture. All the great misjudjements of history have been made by experts'."

"SIS had problems finding te right officers to manage the Counter Proliferation area; the high-flyers of its intelligence branch were more often versed in the classics than in the science of uranium centrifuge enichment of anthrax preparation. An MI6 officer jokes: 'Most people in the Foreign Office would be better at talking to Julius Ceasar than discussing matters of technology'."

"A former member of te JIC Assessments Staff did concede the need to share the blame [for Ministers missing warnings] adding, 'As far as I'm concerned, it's an intelligence failure if you don't sell your intelligence properly to the ministers who ought to be reading it."

"During its war with Iran, Iraq had benefitted from US advice on how to defeat space-based intelligence-gathering, but its generals knew that a substantial invasion force could not be assembled without its being noticed. What they did do, however, was to maintain tight communications security to prevent eavesdroppers from learning of their intentions. The Iraqis had installed a national system of secure landlines, allowing generals to organise the coming operation without UK or US SIGINT being able to detect it. When giving orders to the troops massing on the Kuwaiti border, care was taken not to send sensitive instructions over tactical radios and so reveal the plan."

"In its report on the crisis and the subsequent war [in 1991] the US House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services noted that expectations of the intelligence community are often too high. 'Policy makers and private citizens who expect intelligence to foresee all suden shifts are attributing to it qualities not yet shared by the Deity with mere mortals.'"

(UK Eyes Alpha)

Mark Urban

"The good Lord had obviously left too much of Nature's artwork in New Zealand and too little in some other parts of the world." Battle Cry, p. 277.