Britain’s heroic spies deserve better
Their achievements are often unsung and the White House must desist from recycling baseless claims of fantasists
great deal of the job of British foreign secretary is in the public eye: The summits, handshakes, press conferences and speeches from every troubled part of the world. But there is also a more secret and less appreciated side to this role, which involves overseeing the work of two of Britain’s intelligence agencies, the Secret Intelligence Service — MI6 — and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). It is the foreign secretary who authorises the most sensitive operations of these agencies. Almost every night, his or her locked red box contains proposals for signature, including the crucial warrants that authorise the interception of the communications of specific individuals.
For obvious reasons, the public cannot see the detail of this work. If they could, I believe they would be immensely reassured. In my own experience of dealing with such warrants for four years, great care is taken over their preparation. The submissions that accompany them sometimes run to dozens of pages, setting out in detail the arguments, risks, justification and legal considerations. By the time the pen of the foreign secretary is poised over the page, he or she will have seen the comments of senior Foreign Office officials as well as those of the agencies seeking the warrant. His private secretary will have added further thoughts. He knows that his decisions, by law, must be necessary and proportionate, and that a judicial commission now reviews the signing of such warrants. Much of the frequent debate about Britain’s intelligence agencies shows little understanding of this process.
Accusations are made about “mass surveillance”, and civil liberties campaigners sometimes have a field day with revelations about the agencies. Yet, at the heart of it all, the key decisions are made within a strong framework of law and accountability, with multiple checks on what is being done. Foreign secretaries can and do refuse to sign particular warrants, or call meetings to discuss them, or place restrictions on them.
Even after an emphatic statement from GCHQ, United States President Donald Trump declined to withdraw the allegation and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said: “I don’t think we regret anything.” These assertions were clearly the result of the complete dismissal of Trump’s claim that former US president Barack Obama had authorised such spying by every authority on these matters in the US. One way to cling on to the fiction that Trump was spied on by intelligence agencies is to switch to arguing that they must have done it with external help — hence the accusation against GCHQ. The result is a completely bogus claim, which reveals a casual attitude to the truth and ignorance of how intelligence gathering is organised. The procedures of the US agencies, the CIA and the National Security Agency, are subject to judicial oversight.
Array of challenges
It seems that people around Trump, including Spicer, are either scrabbling around desperately for distractions for reasons of their own or are living in a fantasy world. Neither possibility is an encouraging beginning to dealing with the array of challenges to western democracies that now have to be faced.
The truth is that in the coming years, Britain is going to need its intelligence agencies as much as ever. The importance and integrity of the work of GCHQ and British agencies also needs to be recognised and appreciated at home. Their task is made more difficult by the revelations of Edward Snowden and recent “WikiLeaks” documents originating from America, which only help foreign espionage services, terrorist cells and crime syndicates to evade detection by changing their own ways of operating.
Lauded by some, those responsible for intentional leaks of intelligence capabilities undermine the defences of free societies. The beneficiaries of Snowden’s leaks, as he now skulks in Russia to evade justice, are those who wish to harm, murder, spy on or steal from the people of Britain and its friends. In my own period at Britain’s Foreign Office, I spent a lot of time with the men and women of MI6 and GCHQ. Among them are some of the United Kingdom’s finest public servants, utterly dedicated to their jobs, to doing them with integrity and in defence of law and democracy. Their achievements are often unsung, and they are rarely able to speak up for themselves. As Britons go about their daily business, they need these people who keep them safe and free. They deserve our support and they deserve something better from the White House than the recycling of the baseless claims of fantasists. William Hague is a former British foreign secretary and a former leader of the Conservative Party.
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