Commentary of Dr Peter Neumann

Dr Neumann is Director of the Centre for Defence Studies. Prior to his appointment, he completed an Early Career Fellowship of the Leverhulme Trust, served as Academic Director of the Club de Madrid’s International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security (the largest ever gathering of terrorism and security experts) in Madrid in March 2005 ( www.safe-democracy.org ), and acted as senior advisor to the National Policy Forum on Terrorism, Security and America’s Purpose, which took place in Washington D.C in September 2005 ( www.americaspurpose.org ). He received an MA in political science from the Free University of Berlin, and a PhD in War Studies from King's College London. Before becoming an academic, he worked as a journalist, serving as the London bureau chief of Germany 's main radio news network, BLR. He comments Andrei Soldatov the problem of terrorism-related intelligence global sharing system:

- Within the limits of Commonwealth axis with the USA five countries: USA, the Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have a long established intelligence coordination system that now includes terrorism databases created system of the incorporated databases on terrorists and an exchange of the intelligence information. As I understand, for these purposes all these countries have created special coordinating centers. In United Kingdom - Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, in the USA - Terrorist Threat Integration Center which later was replaced by National Counterterrorism Center, in Australia - National Threat Assessment Centre (NTAC), in Canada - The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC), in New Zealand - The Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG).  Is it correct?

- To my knowledge, the UK was the first country to establish such a joint analysis centre, resulting from the need to link up different government agencies. Terrorism challenges all kinds of established notions, such as - most fundamentally - the distinction between domestic and foreign. Unlike earlier conventional threats, where one government department (the Ministry of Defence) was responsible, addressing the threat from terrorism requires the communication between, and the involvement, a wide range of different departments. It is very important, therefore, to have ONE point at which to bring all the existing knowledge together. JTAC was the first attempt at doing so, and I think the model will be emulated by many countries, not only the ones you mentioned.

- It seems to be like this system was formed as the development of   UKUSA / ECHELON structure - the same countries and the same number of countries. What do you think about it? 

- I don’t know whether this was a concerted development of the ECHELON countries. Whether it was or not, it makes sense, and the counter-terrorism efforts of the involved countries will be better as a result.

- Do you see any international relations problems of functioning of this global intelligence-sharing structure?

- There is no problem between the countries involved, but certainly between some of the countries and their other allies, which regard this structure with suspicion.

- How do you estimate efficiency of this structure?

- It is very efficient - probably the best-functioning system of international intelligence sharing currently in existence.

- How do you see the cooperation of this system with European countries? As example, in Spain just after Madrid attacks CNI has formed Centro Nacional de   Coordinacion Antiterrorista (CNCA) - similar to JTAC. But this center was not included to the global intelligence-sharing structure. Why?

- The relations between the ECHELON countries are based not on the creation of certain administrative structures, such as CNCA or JTAC, but decades of effective political cooperation and trust. The existence of trust is the ultimate reason why this system works and others don’t. The truth is that countries like France or Spain are not trusted by some of the ECHELON member countries, such as the UK and the US , and that the inclusion of even one of them in the network would make the existing system of exchange impossible.

- What do you think about European response to this system?   

- Very childish.

- What do you think, why European counties have refused to create integrated intelligence? 

- Countries are extremely protective of their intelligence, and getting agencies to cooperate - even with other agencies within their own country - is extremely difficult. It is a problem that cannot be solved by political directives or orders from the top down. Intelligence cooperation develops and is reciprocated on the basis of mutual trust. The imperative, therefore, is to create trust among European intelligence professionals, and this can be done through a variety of mechanisms. Most importantly, though, it will take more time than we think, and while intelligence cooperation is moving in the right direction, it will probably take longer than we all expect until the principle of “availability” becomes a reality.

- What do you think about Russian participation in this system? As I know, after last Putin’s visit in London UK government has decided to improve Russian/UK cooperation in the war on terrorism. Are these reforms likely to touch intelligence exchange field?

- It is likely that intelligence cooperation is part of this package, but I don’t know of any details.