Abstract from Il Tempo - 9 October 2009

Culture of intelligence

Energies at the service of national interests
Secret services are a resource for the nation and must interact with universities and the economic world
        
For the first time in Italian history, secret services decide to reveal and communicate their image and what they do for the country. This is a new approach, closer to the requirements of Italy’s internal and external security.

In an unprecedented way, five experts of intelligence matters met in front of a group of journalists to highlight the key-points of the reform. The event took place at Palazzo Wedekind, the headquarters of Il Tempo - a major Italian newspaper. The forum focused on the national intelligence reform of 2007, the missions accomplished and to accomplish, the relationship between intelligence and national interests, recruiting and communication.

Adriano Soi
"It is useful to start from one of most innovative elements of the reform law which - among others - entrusts the DIS with two tasks: the promotion of the culture of security and institutional communication. It is no accident that a website of the intelligence services will be launched in the next few days. Yet, if communication is plowed ground, the promotion of the culture of security is a greater task. And the reform law in particular established a system for the security of the Republic, which must be able to defend and secure national interests. The new intelligence must involve Institutions, first of all Parliament, and society to raise awareness about subjects of national interest. The goal is to enhance the quality of the services rendered to the country in terms of agents, activities, and results."

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Giuseppe Caldarola
"In this regard, we have to fight two aspects of a pre-set cultural mainstream. The first is strictly associated to intelligence – we call it culture of separateness. The second aspect involves politics and civil society. We must take stock of decades marked by the culture of suspicion against the State, the notion of security as a place where obscure maneuvers of Italian politics occurred. Now, the point to start from is that these two cultures express the idea of a backward and insecure country. Today, our problem is to put loyalty and effectiveness together in a scenario that has changed, as the issue of security is more global and more national at the same time. It often happens that we have an enormous amount of information providing no orientation – hence the need for an intellectual effort which can select such information. The risk is that there is a large amount of information resulting in little intelligence.

I'd like to make it clear that security, in my opinion, is "the" national issue by definition and must be associated to a more dynamic notion of the country. In the middle there has to be the safeguard of Italy's autonomy, but also the protection of its economic interests. Obviously, I don't think of intelligence as a new item of politics, as a show. I'd rather think of the culture of security intended for the ruling class, then passing to public opinion. We must discuss a scheme which is firmly rooted in the most developed countries – that integrates the efforts of intelligence with those of the ruling class. We are confronted by the need for integration. Finally, there is the major issue of intelligence and politics.

On the one hand, we have the Government and, on the other, Parliament. Over the last few years, some steps forward have been taken with Copasir [Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic], in which I participated. The oversight body must be bipartisan and must commit thoroughly to a national oversight vision."

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Marco Minniti
"We should be aware that as far as intelligence and the notion of security are concerned, everything has changed, for two reasons. September 11, 2001 was a divide and posed us a question which had been unclear until then: internal and external security are no longer clearly divided, they are two sides of the same coin. And the internal security of a country is often the result of the ability to maintain external security. The other point of discontinuity is 1989. We were accustomed to belong to a solid alliance and we were not supposed to have seasoned intelligence agents. The end of the two-block world, however, originated two questions.

The first is that we have a multipolar world, and in such a world there may be foreign intelligence services that are friends but not allied and vice versa. In this regard, I'd like to mention the case involving Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan arrived in Italy: we acted on an international arrest warrant and arrested him. Then, the Court of Appeals in Karlsruhe cancelled the warrant because if Ocalan had remained subject to an international arrest warrant, he would have been extradited to Germany. So the Court cancelled the warrant and Ocalan remained in Italy. Here we can see an example concerning differences in national priorities.

Well, let's talk about the second issue now. We have to become aware that we must overcome a sort of unwritten agreement under which, when faced with risks of deviations in intelligence, Italy decided that it was better to cope with inefficient rather than deviated intelligence services. It's an unwritten agreement involving the whole Italian political system, and has never been completely overcome – as if the notion prevailed that anything involving information secrecy is per se bound to deviation. We do not give due regard to safeguard of national interests and that's the main aspect in which we are lagging behind. An alternating democracy needs a common republican ideal, thus intelligence agencies play a key role in the safeguard of national interests. And the more the country acknowledges the intelligence role, the more loyalty comes in return.

We enacted a law thus reforming intelligence demonstrating that Parliament can deal with extremely delicate issues based a wide majority. We must get used to the idea that we can make systemic reforms, overcoming lazy attitudes and old forms of conservatism. In my opinion, the reform of intelligence opens the door to other security-related reforms, including constitutional reforms, that Italy should not put aside, but rather deal with during the term of office of this legislature.

To follow: the issue of the relationship with our society. All over the world, intelligence has a very lively connection with universities, both in terms of cultural exchange and staff recruiting since the greater part of the activities involve analysis.

We must then face the issue of the relationship between the executive, intelligence and Parliament. The law produces an effort on this specific issue and it is clear: intelligence reports to the Government, while Parliament must perform its oversight function in a defined and separated way. It is essential, however, to go beyond ideologies to function as a System and find a venue in Parliament where confrontation may be even harsh and critical, but clearly identifiable. Copasir can play this role as it happens other countries, like the United States.

When we had to decide about Afghanistan, I'll never forget that the then Defense minister Martino came before Parliament and said, "We have a huge amount of intelligence that tells us to join the US intervention, but I can't give you such information." It's quite odd that a country makes decisions like that. So I told Martino, "Give it to the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate." They quickly gave it back to Martino because they did not have the power to handle it. The natural venue in such a case is the Copasir. Some could say then that Copasir should ensure the impermeability of information. But if there is a functional disorder, you can't make the organ lose its function. That still makes the difference with the US model.

So, I think that in this regard not only have we the potential, but I believe that Italy should claim its role. Obviously, we should develop a full action capability, but also cultivate some specific aspects, such as cooperation in the Mediterranean – a crucial area. Only in such a way, we can have strong intelligence, because in the future the exchange will involve both quality and quantity of information."

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Paolo Savona
"The intelligence service for the security of the State makes us place national interests in the new international scenario. And this is a very difficult task. The challenge is to convince public opinion that information processing and the extended use of universities is of fundamental importance. I would like to give an example: today is essential to understand the intentions of the United States as to the dollar. The future of this currency is a problem, we must collect intelligence and understand what they have in mind because if the dollar collapses, the euro appreciates, and the situation goes out of control. On the other hand, we know that today the dollar is supported by China, but we don’t know what the real intentions behind are.

What’s the risk? That Europe gets crushed. Another example involving our economic and investment problems is immigration. If we go on fighting it on the open sea or through bilateral agreements, we’ll never get out of it. We should get information about who runs illegal immigration services, because we must get to the root of the problem – as probably intelligence services already do – otherwise, like in this case, you risk falling in the whirl of ethical and social debate, with obvious difficulties in solving the problem. In my opinion, however, economic aspects are getting more and more important in the intelligence world. And despite some headway has been made, we are still lagging behind as to the knowledge we need."

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Alfredo Mantovano
"The third episode of a TV Italian miniseries was aired recently, and many people saw it. It gives a misleading contribution to the comprehension of what intelligence services really are. Even if the show is very captivating, it makes intelligence look like something in the middle between military, police or terrorist-like activities. This gives Italians a distorted picture of intelligence. That said (just to make it clear that serious communication efforts are needed), I believe that defeating suspicion on a cultural level is the key to this issue. I have the impression that in Italy the same shadow is cast on intelligence as on the powers of the executive. Just as the executive has a number of limitations and counterbalances, so an organization directly connected to the executive has always been regarded with concern and circumspection. So much so that even when intelligence was given powers, a great number of limitations thwarted its effectiveness.

This suspicion has still heavy repercussions, posing the same problems once again. When Parliament was confronted with the reform of intelligence services, it carried it out with the handbrake on. Together with my colleague Emanuele Fiano at the Copasir we drafted a reform and I must say that I am quite disappointed with how it ended up. The original intent was to create a unified service, but suspicions led to a hybrid solution. And as a result of this shadow of suspicion intelligence competences continue to be limited. The scenarios presented by Professor Savona are strategic, but I would be quite content just with a complete description of the supply chain of counterfeited goods from China. I believe that the issue is to have the intelligence services be regarded as something not to be suspected and not uninvolved in national interests, and therefore useful – to try to understand what the various actors in the country expect from the intelligence. Parliament is an appropriate venue to deal with these considerations, but specialists should not be the only ones to be involved."

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Giuseppe Caldarola
"I believe that we must increase the ambitions of the intelligence, which must talk to the ruling class, in a context of well-defined national interest. There is therefore the need for increasing specializations, as we are now close to a cultural leap forward. And after this debate, I think we’re going in the right direction."

 

Paolo Savona
"The need for knowledge in today’s world is unconfined and the resources to allocate for this goal are scarce. The only way is to mobilize Italy’s resources starting from universities. It is an important aspect, if we succeed, we will win our battle."

 

Alfredo Mantovano
"There are however some structural questions to solve and make sure that the reform gets to completion. I hope that the choice Parliament made two years ago won’t bring about the same disadvantages within the intelligence system as those affecting law enforcement with National Police and Carabinieri. If there are two agencies it is unavoidable that not all information is shared, and that there are overlapping and gaps.

The other structural problem is personnel recruitment. Staff from the police forces are resources with high-level professionalism, but that’s a different line of work. If they see a thief, they try to catch him, while the intelligence agents are not supposed to do that. On the other hand, recruiting in universities poses the problem of loyalty to institutions. These are two major crucial aspects along with the third problem: the commonplace that you can ask intelligence agencies any question and get any answer. This is definitely wrong."

 

Adriano Soi
"Well, if we succeed in overcoming separateness and suspicion, we can make intelligence fit in with the national system."

 

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