From the Falklands to Iraq

31 March 2007

The job of intelligence is not the same as that of statesman. There was at least a chance that Argentina might not invade until later in 1982, by which time something might have been done to avert it. In 2002, past history suggested that Saddam Hussein might yet be concealing something dreadful, whatever Hans Blix and the UN might claim. Spies, as George Smiley always said, must always defer to ‘our lords and masters’. But both these failures to hear intelligence aright led to the two bloodiest wars fought by Britain in my lifetime.

The lesson supposedly learned after the Falklands was that Whitehall’s intelligence apparatus should be made less dependent on departmental inputs and thus more robust in ‘speaking truth to power’. As part of this exercise, MI6 went public. Iraq shows that this restructuring failed. The head of the JIC was found cosying up to the Prime Minister on his sofa and editing press releases.

Intelligence must always remain on tap and not on top. States run by spies are never happy ones. But the message of both these affairs is that the tap must run pure. The framework by which threats to British security are assessed must be independent of executive policy and have some alternative conduit of accountability to parliament. If power does not like what truth speaks, so be it, but at least we might ensure it hears the speaking.

Simon Jenkins is co-author, with Max Hastings, of The Battle for the Falklands, published by Pan.