The government plays catch-up
by Brian Jones
In a low key web release, the Cabinet Office announced on 8 October that the prime minister has accepted the recommendations of an internal review of how best to build on the lessons identified by the 2004 Butler report. Its timing coincides with the start of the latest Iraq inquiry. It serves to draw attention, I am sure unintentionally, to how many of the Butler recommendations appear to have been ignored or spun away in order to underpin the coincident preference of a government and its senior civil service to continue the cover-up of what really happened on the road to the Iraq war. This is not promising as far as the implementation of any recommendations that may be made by the Chilcot Inquiry is concerned.
It is hardly surprising that most people missed the announcement it because at first sight it appears to be a matter of minor detail dealt with in the obscure way of Whitehall. Also, it was quietly made public on the last day of the party conference season. By this time most political journalists were exhausted by three weeks of trekking from Bournemouth, to Brighton, to Manchester, and will have been dreaming a few days respite rather than trawling the internet for political minutia.
The announcement was that, with everyone’s agreement, the PM had accepted the recommendations of an internal review to build on the improvements made on the recommendation of the Butler report in 2004. If you do take the time to delve a little further and download the review (pdf file) you will discover it was conducted by people that are not identified and mechanisms that are not explained. After battling your way through the undergrowth of obscure language and negotiating its complicated structure, you may come to the same conclusion as I have. Significant parts of this are about addressing things that should have been dealt with long ago. Several lessons Butler suggested should have been learned appear have been paid scant attention in the intervening five years.
Surely this sudden burst of activity could not be related to the imminence of the Chilcot Inquiry’s quest to identify the lessons to be learned from Britain’s Iraq experience? The new inquiry is bound to consider previously identified lessons and whether they have been properly learned as it develops its own recommendations. I suspect the announcement’s reference to recommended further small steps building on the considerable activity that has already taken place may be code for “we think we had better try to show we have been doing something”. Since the “considerable activity” has been invisible to anyone outside Whitehall and perhaps many inside, it will be up to the Chilcot Inquiry to confirm whether it has, in fact, occurred.
The internal review paper places some emphasis on the Butler recommendation of the need to make improvements with regard to the analysis and assessment function of the intelligence machine. It is important to understand that Butler was concerned mainly with the way analysis and assessment was integrated into the overall intelligence system. But that is not the way that the government and the leaders of the intelligence community choose to interpret it. It is quite easy to apply the spin that implies the flawed Iraq message was a consequence of inadequacies in the overall quality of assessment, and this is what has been done – presumably because there remains a shared interest amongst those involved to perpetuate an impression that the fully processed intelligence picture left no doubt that Saddam had WMD. In reality the specialist WMD analysts’ picture was out of focus, poorly developed and full of uncertainty, and the normal assessments represented it as such. It was enhanced and fitted to the image required by No 10 for its dossier with the knowledge, approval and assistance of a significant proportion of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) itself.
Unfortunately, the JIC was, and as far as I know remains, poorly qualified to assess intelligence without the expert advice that it ignored or did not seek. Whether that was the result of gross incompetence or something rather more sinister is for the Chilcot Inquiry to decide.
My own written evidence to the Butler review, which I hope to make public shortly, said a good deal about the general state of intelligence analysis and assessment in the UK community. I thought it had been neglected, compared to the collection effort in the preceding decade or more. The “peace-dividend” that was demanded at the end of the cold war had contributed to a significant reduction in the capability and influence of this part of the process. My evidence stressed that in the case of Iraq WMD the problem was more to do with a loss of the will and ability to project and influence, rather than the quality of analysis itself. I related this to reorganisations of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) in the 1990s that had resulted in a leadership of the analytical community that lacked experience of intelligence. This had contributed to the decline in its authority and influence both in general terms, and more specifically on scientific and technical issues, where high level representation had been significantly diluted.
I advised Butler that the Assessment Staff which was central to the production of JIC assessments was too small and inexperienced and suggested it should be considerably enhanced in numbers, staffed by more experienced intelligence analysts and its scientific and technical capabilities increased. I suggested that consideration should be given as to how a post or posts with greater experience of intelligence analysis and assessment might be introduced at the higher echelons of the existing or of a revamped central organisation including the JIC.
The Butler review appeared to endorse a good deal (but unfortunately not all) of what I had argued (see pages 158-159 of the Butler report).
Butler said greater integration of the DIS (which it recognised as the community’s main engine for intelligence analysis) with the rest of the intelligence community should be achieved, and where there were inadequate resources from its own paymasters, the MoD, this should be made up from the central Single Intelligence Account, to which it did not have access.
That this has not happened is hardly surprising. In an environment where the individual intelligence agencies spend as much time competing with one another and fighting over territory as they do in cooperative enterprise, they were hardly likely to agree to part with any precious financial resource. The result has been that a hard pressed MoD has been forced to make a reduction of about 20% in the size of the DIS and sell off its current home, the Old War Office, to provide the Treasury with much needed cash. Most of the remaining staff will be moved “to the country” far away from the Cabinet Office and its central intelligence machine and other Whitehall customers.
This can hardly be what Butler intended, and looks rather like the DIS being sent into exile for daring to be right rather than compliant over Iraq.
Butler endorsed what I told the review about the need for greater experience of intelligence in the leadership of the DIS and considered that the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence should normally be an intelligence specialist. This recommendation has been rejected, and the MoD continued with successive appointment of non-specialists to this post since that began in 1999. The government response at the time was that the MoD would not guarantee to adhere to this recommendation as there was a problem in producing candidates of the right quality from within the ranks of professional intelligence analysts. This is somewhat ironic given the quality of the judgement made by a non-specialist Deputy Chief with respect to Iraq when, for reasons that have yet to be satisfactorily explained, an amateur DIS leadership overrode the advice of its professional staff to provide disastrous advice to the rest of the JIC. The Butler review clearly found the need for more experience of analysis to be imbedded in the intelligence community at the JIC level. This lesson has not been learned.
Recognising my advice with respect to the need for improved scientific and technical input to the assessment process, Butler thought it worth considering the appointment of a distinguished scientist to undertake a part-time role as adviser to the Cabinet Office. This has not happened.
Butler suggested the Assessment Staff was inadequately resourced and recommended a review of its size. It also asked for consideration of whether a career structure for analysts was appropriate. This seemed to admit that Butler thought there was substance to my arguments about the Assessment Staff and the lowly place of intelligence analysts in the community.
The government’s response to this seems to have been a marginal increase in the size of the Assessment Staff and the appointment of a Professional Head of Analysis in the central intelligence machine. The first appointment was a re-employed senior official who had retired at the rank below the most junior on the JIC. But the official was at least a former DIS analyst with wide experience of intelligence and its analysis. It is not clear what was decided about establishing a career structure that would lead to professional analysts in posts that had seats on the JIC.
However, when that individual stood down, the Head of Analysis position appears to have lapsed for a period, after which the role was taken on by the Chairman of the JIC. The chairman of the JIC is ranked at Permanent Secretary level which appears to give analysis a much higher profile. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the Chairman of the JIC does not come from an intelligence analysis background, and whilst he is probably well qualified to chair the committee, he would hardly seem to be the most sensible man to head a profession in which he has limited experience. Here then is another example of inquiry recommendations being largely ignored.
The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) was charged with overseeing the implementation of Butler and, in mid-2006, I took up some of these issues through its chairman. My intervention, which did not seem to be greeted with enthusiasm, was allowed to drag slowly on into 2008 and then conveniently allowed to fizzle out. Perhaps Chilcot will wish to consider whether its recommendations will be in receptive hands if an ISC answerable to the government rather than parliament is again asked to police implementation.
This background and experience leaves me with little optimism that any lessons relating to intelligence divined by the Inquiry from the Iraq experience will find their way through the maze of road-blocks and diversions that Whitehall is so good at devising.