Leaking from the top
Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn is right to worry about Donald Trump. The man at the top of the Five Eyes intelligence pact is a threat both to its security and to its deeper values.
Trump has already leaked highly classified Israeli intelligence to the Russians, according to news reports. Trump’s Russian connection, and the Russian links of his family and his campaign staff, are now under official investigation in the United States. Each day brings a new source of astonishment or alarm.
It seems like the stuff of fantasy, but the president of the United States is now at least plausibly accused of being in cahoots with a hostile power.
Trump has also spoken out in support of torture such as waterboarding, which was used in the illegal rendition programme, approved by George W Bush, which sent suspected terrorists into foreign prisons to be interrogated and maltreated. Gwyn was already investigating whether any New Zealand officials were involved in this, and now notes that the question is no longer academic. She wants New Zealand spies to have their own rules about how they share intelligence to make sure they are not ‘‘somehow drawn into unlawful activity’’.
Gwyn worries that intelligence supplied by New Zealand could be leaked, in the way that Trump leaked the Israeli-supplied material. Prime Minister Bill English, as usual, sees no problem about the Five Eyes’ vulnerability to leaking from the top.
It is good that the intelligence watchdog takes a more sensible approach. The question is: what can New Zealand do about it? Intelligence is shared on the understanding that it is not leaked, and that it is not revealed to other people without permission from the originating country. Up until the election of Donald Trump, the entire intelligence world would have taken it for granted that the person least likely to leak was the President of the United States.
Gwyn wonders whether the security watchdogs of the Five Eyes could work together to make sure the spies do not misbehave. In theory this seems a promising area of co-operation.
The spies themselves, after all, routinely work together, second staff to sister-agencies, share technology and have regular high-level meetings. So why shouldn’t the watchdogs do the same?
It would be easy to think of many reasons why not. The spies themselves are already wary of those who, like Gwyn, hold them accountable. Would they be prepared to tolerate a foreign watchdog also playing a part?
The politicians, similarly, might well baulk at any such co-operation. This might be seen as taking allied co-operation rather too far.
A politician like Trump, whose devotion to ‘‘America First’’ is loud as well as loutish, is not likely to welcome the attentions of trouble-makers like Gwyn. This was the man who sacked the head of the FBI because he was investigating his shadowy dealings with the Russians.
On the other hand, there might be some scope for informal co-operation.
The intelligence officials, like officials in the wider American bureaucracy, are rightly suspicious of Trump.
That is because Trump himself might be a threat to Western security. Has there ever been another American president of which this could be said?