I have been thinking a lot about the SIS and other branches of the service ('spooks' as they are called). I am reading an excellent book at the moment. It is about espionage and intelligence in Ireland, drawing on (relatively) recently declassified documents, now in the public domain (though, I doubt, online, but in the Public Records Office - due to the sensitive nature of such information).
Although the book discusses the period spanning 1916-1945, it contains many references to today. For example, did you know that it was in 2007 that MI5 took control of intelligence gathering in Northern Ireland? (The book itself was first published in 2008). It is called British Spies and Irish Rebels: British Intelligence and Ireland 1916-1945, and is an outstanding work of literature. A dry, sometimes amusing, but always objective, impartial history of intelligence gathering in Ireland, often through times which were rather lamentable, and really quite tragic. I remember having a set book in English class to read, as a child, at secondary school Across the Barricades, a novel, by Joan Lingard, set during the time of the troubles in Northern Ireland. In any case, examine Paul McMahon's section here:
"Policy-makers make decisions not on the basis of objective analysis of the facts, but by employing subjective cognitive premises and belief systems. They see what they want to see, select the information that fits their pre-existing hypotheses and biases, and ignore what is inconvinient. In his analysis of notable intelligence 'failures' of the twentieth century, Richard Betts (1978, p.61 [Analysis, War and Decision]) concludes that 'the ultimate causes of error in most cases have been wishful thinking, cavalier disregard of professional analysts, and, above all, the premises and preconceptions of policy makers.' The role of preconceptions is especially powerful when information is incomplete, contradictory or ambiguous, or when the subject is ingerently mysterious or unknowable. The most that an effective intelligence system can do is to educate and enlighten government leaders, shaping their cognitive premises and challenging obvious errors so as to minimise distortions (Herman, 1996, pp.143-145, 227-230 [Intelligence Power in Peace and War]; Hughes, 1976 [The fate of facts in a world of men: foreign policy and intelligence making]; Jervis, 1976 [Perception and misperception in international politics; Vertzberger, 1990 [World in their minds: information processing, cognition, and perception in foreign policy decision-making]). This is the case today, even in those countries with sophisticated intelligence systems." (Mahon, 2008, p.162).
This is an important point. There are, according to one reference work I own (West, 2016, p.138 [Spycraft Secrets: An Espionage A-Z]) a number of points in recent history when intelligence blunders have been made using these preconceived ideas. Notable incidents of what is called Mirror Imaging in the SIS, include the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the amphibious assult made by Leopold Galtieri during the glorious Falkands War in 1982, and the assumption that Saddam Hussein would not invade another neighbouring Arab country in 1990. Policies in the intelligence community are often formulated by people that are ex-military, conditioned, or in the case of government, even Bullingdon Club Epicureans from Oxford.
It's an important point. McMahon highlights numerous instances in the history of the intelligence services that have been to do with hyperbole, non-credible sources of information, or misinformation, or other factors, such as assumptions made by station chiefs that are extremely right wing (the British Empire was still a very serious imperial power and world player back in the late 1910s and early 1920s).
The value of education cannot be underestimated. Not I, of course. I just finished up making fast food for minimum wage on a busy Saturday night. This is not fifteenth century Florence under the patronage of Cosimo d'Medici, evidently. It's Dark Age Britain. Well, that's what you do with your master's degree in Classical Latin, here, now.
Max.
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