Greg Treverton Interview, Senior Analyst at RAND Cooperation

Gregory Trevertonis a senior policy analyst at RAND, where he formerly directed the International Security and Defense Policy Center and is currently associate dean of the RAND Graduate School. His recent work has examined terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement, with a special interest in new forms of public-private partnership. He has served in government for the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, handling Europe for the National Security Council and as vice chair of the National Intelligence Council, overseeing the writing of America 's National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). His most recent book is Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information (2001).

- As I understand, the U.S. , Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have a long established system of intelligence sharing and exchange. How have their coordinating efforts changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001?

- I think those particular arrangements, which are long-standing and relatively formalized, have continued and probably intensified, have been much more specific as we have looked at particular terrorist groups and terrorist leads. My sense is they’ve also, at the police and magistrate level, those contacts have also increased naturally as we look at particular groups. I suppose there has been less change there. What’s happened is, more generally, the set of partners of friends or even not particular friends with which the United States has shared intelligence, after 9/11 has exploded.

- For example, what are some countries…

- The former CIA Director George Tenet said we were sharing intelligence with some 20 odd countries, including places like Syria and Somalia, where the arrangement was specifically a little information about this and a little information about that -- not the kind of broad relationship with traditional friends. But what struck me was that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, all of the intelligence agencies needed to reach out. So we went from our kind of usual, fairly grudging ‘crown-jewels’ approach to it before 9/11, to the kind of sharing, for instance, that had gone on with, say, Germany.

- Was the creation of centers such as the UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Center or the U.S.’s National Counterterrorism Center the direct result of 9/11, or did they already exist before that?

- On both sides, we had had a counter terrorism center for a long time, but it had been mostly a CIA center, mostly involved in operations and some operational support; afterwards, because of 9/11, we created first the Terrorism Integration Center, and then it morphed into the National Counterterrorism Center. I think that reflected not any particular sharing arrangements, but just simply the increased salience of the threat; so too, for arrangements on the British side. Traditionally, there has been, oddly, much less sharing of intelligence at the level of analysis than at collection. Mostly it’s been collection that gets shared. I suppose if you think about the war on terror a lot of the information [shared] is somewhere in between pure collection and analysis.

- How official are these connections between the countries I mentioned in my first question…Is it a loose affiliation?

- The traditional sharing happened not between intelligence analysis centers like the UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Center or the U.S.’s National Counterterrorism Center, but between the collection services. For years, the National Security Agency and it’s British counterpart, GCHQ, sort of divided up the world in terms of signals intelligence and read it very closely, basically operated as a joint enterprise, so that kind of close cooperation between us and the Brits had been characteristic particularly in the signals area. But that’s where the relationship has been most long-standing, most formalized. What’s happening now as everybody’s created new institutions to do analysis and support operations in the war on terror…there the cooperation is still much less formal.

- How efficient has this collective terrorism tracking become since 9/11?

- It’s a good question. I’m not sure what the answer would be if you ask the question how well we are doing in the United States with compiling a single watch list, amalgamating all our various watch lists into a single one. My guess is that the answer wouldn’t yet be terrific. And that’s sharing with ourselves. So, is it a lot better? Yes, it’s a lot better internationally. Is there a long way to go? I think there is a long way to go, and obviously all of us are worried about the civil liberties implications of things we do nationally, also with respect to international cooperation.

- How are these countries coordinating their terrorism intelligence efforts with other European countries that aren’t Anglophone and don’t have the same kind of intelligence-sharing tradition? (For instance, with Spain)

- Two things are significant here. One is that the Europeans through the EU and various organizations of the EU have actually beefed up their cooperation a lot within Europe. And then, simply operationally, the cooperation between us and the Spaniards has, my guess is, increased dramatically. (You read the stories about the NY Police Department - they actually sent people to Spain after the bombings to see what they could learn for New York…. In that sense, it’s my sense that the cooperation at the level of police sharing, leads, and intelligence sharing information has, it’s my guess, mushroomed with countries like Spain as well.

- What do you believe Russia’s role should be within such an international intelligence sharing system?

- Obviously, it has an important role to play and my guess is that sharing with it too has increased dramatically. It probably also illustrates the limits. Every country obviously has its own self-interests in any particular sharing arrangement. And since for the Russians their definition doesn’t extend much beyond the Chechens, that obviously poses some problems for us and other would-be collaborators. But I think what will happen with countries like Russia , and even countries that are in the “less friends” category, is that there will be cooperation in those areas where there is a common interest in particular terrorist groups and terrorist threats. But that will be limited in area.

Thanks to Washington Profile for help