INTELLIGENCE ALL ROUND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000700400025-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2005
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: October 1, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

L/
Approved For Release 20aBWM I0R P7 -00149R000700400025-7
OCTOBER 1, _1966
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,ut of the Ministry of Defence's book 11
fIC,v people read this weekend of the retirement of the '..removed, they would. be wise to look all round the circle.
Director-General of Intelligence, most of them will;;;. Should what has happened in the defence segment happen
assume that this is someone who has been in charge of all.?i'elsewhere? . Is the function of intelligence properly under-
British intelligence, an overlord comparable in power and.in'-stood outside the Ministry of Defence and portions of the
scope to Queen Elizabeth's Walsingham 400 years ago. They Treasury? Is any distinction made in the minds of ministers
will be wrong. Remarkable though the achievement of Sir and senior civil servants between information pure and simple,
Kenneth Strong has been, he has never been in charge of the ..research as conducted by scholars (either within the civil
whole field. For there is in fact no single intelligence service..;' service or outside) and intelligence-that is to say, graded and
His authority has been confined.to what is now known asp.;-.sifted information interpreted for the purposes of a projected
defence intelligence, which used to,be split. up into' home,.,,, or expected operation ? Is anyone in the public service-out-
military, air, economic and scientific. "Tor the present integra-. ,side the specialists of defence,-trained in the methods and
tion, which was desirable for intellectual as well as adminis- ti techniques of intelligence? The miscalculations and errors
trative reasons, a large share of the credit goes to Sir Kenneth..(Ia that are still made suggest that the answer is No.
It was he who was able,, with the help of one or two other'r,:l: This use of the word intelligence is still pretty unfamiliar.
senior officers, gradually to push and ease through the aboli-:h:For-reasons that everyone is supposed to understand, White-
tion of distinctions between 'the ' three services which Lord ;'hall thinks it wise not to draw too much public attention to
Mountbatten initiated five years ago when' he was Chief of? the word onto the activity.. Because.some.of its methods are'
the Defence Staff. Indeed, it is fair to say'"that it is only in'secret-and, of course, 'most of its results-it is held 'that,
'.intelligence matters that anything 'like genuine integration"."* everything should be secret ; with the curious result that the
exists in the Ministry of Defence, In other circles of .staff;?",;obsolete names of our'security'service' and secret intelligence
.work the rivalries are as sharp, the. service loyalties as.'intense ,,service (MI5 and M16) enjoy in the western world an almost
as ever. they were. music-hall notoriety second only to that of the American CIA.
But if top people in Whitehall take a few, minutes 'off to l; The mystery surrounding the work as concealEd from a
-consider the significance of this twenty years' effort, to move;l;`but initiates the fact that there.is much to be learnt from its
;Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry intelligence into a' methods of collecting, organising and interpreting information.
''common service, with science: and economics-and topography '.' 'Take an example from a civil department. ,; It might have
-adequately' represented ;?and, the old fantastic overlappmgs'x:,:been -thought''::that the 'Home (Office; ,;having ultimate
responsibility for security (for which, incidentally, Mr George and quick presentation. It is not simply what serious,
Wig;; constitutionally has none), would have bcen.fully aware journalists would always product if they had time: it is some-
of the importance of accurate, current intellience about thing more rigorous, continuous and above all operational-
,,
coloured immigration. Denied some of the facts it needed ' that is to say, related to something that somebody wants to do
by the kind of questions asked, or not asked, in the census and or may be forced to do.
in death and birth certificates, it was unable to inform : The point to be made now is quite simply that what has
ministers accurately about the size and future of the problem been done in defence intelligence should be studied by some-
when it attracted urgent and emotional public discussion. one with an eye that can look over the whole of Whitehall.
That was, perhaps, pardonable ten years ago. But when Mr -,There is a case for providing all home ministries with a
Mark Bonham-Carter took charge of his Race Relations Board common intelligence service ; for offering a career in intcl-
last February, he found that he had been provided neither ligence to first-class talent which is not attracted by adminis-
with the funds nor the staff to collect intelligence. The need' trative duties ; for building up a class of trained intelligence
had just not been thought of. . officers, women as well as men, interchangeable between
But this, it will be said, is just research under a new name. departments---even with defence and the police-and for
Why use the word intelligence to describe research, which is giving them the chance to rise to the top of the civil service.
flourishing and which is gradually asserting its claim to The associations of the word intelligence might even be
influence policy-making in government? Intelligence, after ,.. valuable ; most ministers would talk more proudly and take
all, meant news a hundred years ago-and no more. Now it';-*
t ; more notice of "my intelligence adviser" than of "my
has all kinds of overtones of surreptitious methods and skull-`:` research department." Such an addition to Whitehall's
duggcry. The answer is, of course, that this picture of intel-'?': resources would not cramp the style, say, of the Central
ligcncc was discarded for ever during the war. Except in the : .`. Statistical Office or of the Social Survcy.whtch provides excel-
special field of counter-espionage, which has its own standards';, lent intelligence service of a broad and long-term kind. What
of behaviour, most of what the fiction writers purvey is years': the modern minister and his
erm
d
d
p
anent tin
er-secretary nee
Q out of date ; it is just John Buchan matured in the wood. ; ; is the kind of personal, speedy, operational intelligence service
Modern intelligence has to do. with :the Painstaking collet:- , that ' Major-General :;Strong once 'organised for ' General
tion and analysis of fact,: the exercise of judgment and clear: Eisenhower.
Approved: t or Release ZU.U5/0T/t)4 (:f/ -KI)P75-UU't49K0007U_U4UUUZ5-7