Conference on "Intelligence and the
Threat from International Terrorism"

Zagreb, Croatia, November 30 - December 01, 2001
Participants

Section IV

Problems and prospects concerning
international intelligence cooperation
and joint action in counter-terrorism.
Lessons from the EUROPOL-cooperation

Lange:

Now it is our last session and the topic is: Problems and prospects of international intelligence cooperation and joint action in counter-terrorism, and Lessons from EUROPOL-cooperation. I cannot say much about this, because I haven't been involved in police matters, and because thus far there is too little data on EUROPOL to make a judgement. I am approaching this topic a bit cynically, especially in regard to cooperation. Now where do we have real cooperation in intelligence? There are three reasons for the lack of cooperation. We should not be too enthusiastic about short term prospects for meaningful cooperation. The first problem is national interest. What does this mean? It means that in a concrete situation, service A is trying to exchange information with service B, and the guideline is: always give the other one as much junk as you can for as much gold as you can get. This poses a big problem. If intelligence could transcend the boundaries of national interest and if there were a supra-national intelligence structure, then there could be cooperation. I cannot see something like this emerging, so we are still confronted with the trading, where one is trying to cheat the other. The French often point to the American actions during the Bosnian war; that is, modifying satellite images in order to influence political decisions. This is used by French colleagues to argue for an exclusively European intelligence capacity in this area. Then we have a major problem with international intelligence cooperation in the struggle against terrorism. These terrorist networks now entail economic networks. I had the opportunity to look at a list of companies established by Bin Laden cum Al-Qaeda in Sudan alone. There are about 20 companies still active, with contacts outside, and this is just one country. So we have to start from the preposition that there are huge networks, not only Al-Qaeda but others as well.We have to take into account economic networks connected to the regular economy, and if this is the case, then international anti-terrorist cooperation must include economic espionage. But when you throw your net into the ocean of economic information wanting to catch the herring, you also risk killing the dolphin you are supposed to protect. This creates suspicion as well, as one suspects the other of using the pretext of anti-terrorist intelligence to commit economic espionage. The third problem for cooperation is that there exist different intelligence cultures. Just to address one point of view: you know you have a type of intelligence community clearly separated between internal intelligence, counterintelligence, security, and external intelligence; you also have those with closely intertwined internal and external intelligence, and it is extremely difficult for these two types to exchange information in a meaningful way. One will be more driven by domestic interests and have reservations the other type of service doesn't have. So how realistic is meaningful cooperation? What do we have now, and what are the prospects? Or is it just a myth?

Smith:

I think you are wrong when you say that there can't be good intelligence exchanges; there can be. I've been involved in some very good ones, and some very bad ones. It varies. The best are between two services, as opposed to multi-lateral exchanges; the more services involved the more difficult it is. However, the war on terrorism will require multi-lateral exchanges. This was the case in Bosnia because a number of countries were involved in operations there, and there were productive exchanges among services in Bosnia. It is a myth that an intelligence service spends a lot of time trying to fool the service it is having an exchange with. The only reason to have an intelligence exchange is if both sides gain. In short, I think that intelligence exchanges are always useful and are vital in the war against terrorism because they enable services to track terrorists. I think the response from European services, as far as I can tell from news reports, has been excellent following September 11th.

Boyadjiev:

OK, I would like to approach the problem from another angle. I agree entirely with Doug, but he is talking about bilateral cooperation and I would like to speak about multilateral cooperation. As I mentioned previously, for more than 10 years I have been lobbying in Bulgaria and elsewhere for the resurrection of an "old" new slogan, "Spies of the world, unite!" I think one of the active approaches for fighting terrorism is cooperation. I know that it is still utopian to think about an international intelligence community but sooner or later, and I hope sooner, it's going to happen. The enemy is a common enemy for all democratic societies and we ought to find means to work together against the common enemy. I would like to start with two quotations by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, because I found in them answers to some questions we have discussed these past two days. On November 18, 1999, Kofi Annan said in a speech to the General Assembly: "We are all determined to fight terrorism and to do our utmost to banish it from the face of the Earth. But the force we use to fight it should always be proportional and focused on the actual terrorists." The second part of the quotation: "We cannot and must not fight them by using their own methods - by inflicting indiscriminate violence and terror on innocent civilians, including children." I think everyone will agree this ought to be our approach and reaction to terrorism. The second thing I think is important to mention is that when you fight a shadow, because Bin Laden is a shadow, Al-Qaeda is a shadow, the best way to fight the shadow behind the scenes. I am not sure that using all possible military power in the war against the terrorists of September 11th will be more effective than, say, investing 1/100 of the money spent for that war to fight an intelligence war. I personally believe that the American services, with the help of other intelligence services, would have been able to achieve the same results within the same time frame - to catch Bin Laden and the leaders of Al-Qaeda, and to take them to court - by using an intelligence war. But this is my opinion.
Now, let's talk about some problems. With the end of the Cold War, terrorism has become Enemy Number One. A lot of money has been spent not only by the American services but all over the world to fight terrorism, and terrorists have demonstrated the ability to hit any place and anyone. The events on September 11 marked a huge fiasco for international and national security services, and represented a breakdown of the democratic world's immune system. As I said already, I felt responsible for what happened. I didn't have any personal ability to do anything. But if a sound Bulgarian intelligence service had still been in existence, with the abilities it had ten years ago, I am sure that it would have been in a position to detect some preliminary signs. On September 12 I wrote an article in a Bulgarian newspaper saying the next strike would be a biological. Unfortunately, I happened to be right. So biological, chemical, radiological, and ecological attacks are all within the realm of international terrorism. And we cannot rule out terrorists' ability to make a nuclear strike at some point. An attack on global information and communications systems would also be devastating. I recall something Admiral Lacoste said during his first visit in Bulgaria. He gave as an example illegal financial transactions through the Internet and the fact that they represnet more than mere financial transactions on the stock exchange. If the attack is focused here, and it's far from impossible, it can cause horrendous repercussions. How can we protect ourselves from these dangers? I see the solution in broad international cooperation or, as I call it, "Spies of the world, unite!"
I'd like to give some examples from Bulgarian experiences fighting terrorism, and not just on a national level. General Wolf will recall that the backbone of leftist terrorism in West Germany was broken with the arrest of the Baader-Meinhof group in Bulgaria, with the participation of Bulgarian counterintelligence services. That happened in the 1970's, and created problems between the Bulgarian services and the GDR because at that time, we were cooperating in the battle against terrorism with "the enemy", the West German services. The Bulgarian - Austrian agreement on combating international terrorism signed approximately at the same time created another problem with Warsaw Pact members. We were accused of trying to act neutral like Austria and then later seeking to reach an agreement with NATO countries and so on. The third example I would like to mention is the joint operation, Desert Storm. One more thing is important. In Bulgaria on April 8-10, 1992, representatives from 29 intelligence services got together in an unprecedented meeting, held under the auspices of the Bulgarian President. The professionals discussed one topic - "The Cold War is over, what now?" Terrorism was the main issue. So it all began in Sofia. I know of no other official meeting prior to that where these topics were discussed at such a high level. I will finish with the fact that the Bulgarian Foreign Minister (UN General Assembly speech on October 7, 1996) was the first to suggest the need for intelligence sharing in fighting common evils such as terrorism. I will finish with a potential invitation. I hope to have the backing of the Bulgarian government and the new Bulgarian President to hold another such meeting, this time with a different format; that is, gathering together active intelligence officers, politicians, and veterans, to discuss the same topic - international terrorism and how to fight it. My final thought is this: Intelligence is not a force but an instrument used to apply force. We must find common denominators. We need new rules for a game that has no rules. Maybe not official treaties like the Vienna Treaty but, nonetheless, a new code of conduct, new rules, a new kind of control and national and international oversight. I know Dick still disagrees with this, but we'll need international oversight and new level of accountability as well.
Intelligence is the first line of defense. It was relatively easy to count tanks and warheads. Now we need real insight, the ability to analyze emotions and peoples' ways of thinking, and achieve a cross-cultural understanding. This once again means cooperation. Finally, if the intelligence system is not able to warn of catastrophes before they occur, then it is outdated and useless. I hope the intelligence community - national and international - will make changes as result of the tragic events of September 11th. Let's hope this happens sooner rather than later.

Tuđman:

We are faced with a need for international cooperation, intelligence cooperation not only in the field of terrorism but also organized crime, drug trafficking, and smuggling of people. Even in those areas it's much easier to make an agreement than undertaking the joint operation. On the other hand, when we talk about international intelligence cooperation it can be on at least two levels. First of all, it means multilateral cooperation between the services and international organizations. But who will supply the organizations with intelligence? That's not often discussed, but when the functioning of the organization changes, they will share at least the same intelligence. It's irrelevant how it will be collected. I believe that bilateral cooperation is most important. There are examples of effective cooperation but it's often dependent on the quality of the services, not other elements. But the main problem is that there probably will not be multilateral cooperation because of the nature of terrorism. If they plan activities in one country, train the people in another country, finance from a third, and perform activities in a fourth, there is no chance of avoiding multilateral cooperation. A joint operation on a certain problem can be the first step toward multilateral cooperation. Maybe we could begin with a small number of services. One of the issues that we are faced with after September 11 event is multilateral cooperation. I believe there is a dire need for multilateral cooperation; otherwise, terrorist organizations and criminal groups will use the advantages of globalization.

Dedijer:

Todor, you forget the liberation movements of the world. You've got to look at terrorism in light of liberation movements. The Kurds, the Chechens in Russia, they should be free. The only weapon they had was terrorism. They didn't have tanks, they didn't have F-16s, or anything else; they used what they had. There is a danger in condemning all the liberation movements. The second thing is that I think it's dangerous for the President to start infringing on democracy, introducing new rules, and so forth. Democratization of intelligence is happening going all over the world. There are insight and control committees, parliaments and so on who want to know what the intelligence agencies are doing. What have they achieved? What have they missed? and all these scandals, the press wants to expose that. Half the kids in the world have access to information and they are eager to use it. In that sense, there is a tremendous new wave going on in the world. Senator Goldwater once said that half the intelligence in the United States comes from their multinational cooperations. Now the question is: will Government intelligence supply the multinational cooperations or other cooperations in their country with the intelligence they get from abroad and from other countries. This is big problem. If a German firm finds that Sony is making a new product, will it communicate it to the German firm and say "look what the Sony is doing."

Boyadjiev:

We're talking about the private sector and intelligence agencies. There is a problem, and I do not see how it's going to be solved. The intelligence is paid for by taxpayer's money. You cannot use the information to help one company and not help all the competitors. The only way is to make the information public. I am afraid it is not going to happen soon. About Steven's remarks on liberation movements. I am not talking about liberation movements because that's another topic. But I agree with you. The solution is a definition of terrorism that will point out all the aspects and not leave room for speculation about liberators, freedom fighters, fighters for human rights, and so on. When we are talking about terrorism, we are talking about a crime against humanity. I think that is the answer.

Kerr:

I have a comment on multilateral intelligence. We do need to establish a network and communications among the intelligence services because of the complex problems in the world today. Many of the problems that face us are global. Although the countries involved in a particular crisis will change, you cannot wait for the crisis to develop relationships. If you do not exercise those connections you cannot establish them when you need them. So you do need intelligence relationships, just like you need diplomatic relations and other relationships among countries. There are certain areas, Miro mentioned some, where we can have broad agreements for cooperation: terrorism, crime, narcotics, and a variety of others that often involve law enforcement. There are other areas where those partnerships can fluctuate and involve some but not nations. I don't think a UN intelligence service is a practical idea. They have no assets, they have no resources, they have no ability to keep secrets, and they have no independent capability. Finally, on economic intelligence, the CIA and other US organizations collect macro-economic information. But intelligence organizations do not provide this information to business. The Commerce Department supports US business (not very effectively, in my judgment) but intelligence is concerned primarily with broad economic trends, corruption, and specific issues such as oil. There is macro analysis. For example, analysts do look at international banking, the larger economic situation in important countries, the future price of oil, and the impact of corruption and underground economies. These are legitimate targets for intelligence. Passing information on a foreign company to a US company does not happen. That doesn't mean companies don't go out and try to collect that information, but US intelligence is not involved in supporting one company over another. A US ambassador in a country is obviously trying to support US firms and give them insight and contacts, but intelligence is not a player in that process. Maybe it should be, but it isn't.

Wolf:

I don't know which type of international cooperation exists now. I can only speak about the past. I think the way to cooperate in the fight against terrorism is bilateral cooperation. We have seen the difficulties in European economic cooperation. But this is another question. When intelligence services exchange information, they have to protect their sources and so on. During the last years of my active service, we had a project established by the Soviet Service, SOUD. I don't know how to translate this, but it was a recording done in Moscow, using all possible technologies, of identified members of secret services, intelligence services from Western countries, suspicious persons, terrorists, and others of interest to the services. It took a long time to prepare; eventually, all the members of the Warsaw Pact agreed to contribute information about such persons to the system, but every time we had to decide what to give and what not to give. We had the formal right to use the system to obtain information and answers to certain questions, but this was sometimes a problem because all the members had the right to use it. If we knew, for example, the identity of a member of the American station in India, we would provide the information. The whole thing was an attempt to establish international co-operation. I don't know whether the CIA has agreements with other services about exchange of information of that type. But this can realistically only be done step by step. Todor said it could be done very soon, in terms of fighting terrorism. I think it is necessary to create some form of international monitoring in light of the kind of terrorism we have been confronted with since September 11th. As far as this issue is concerned, I do not see a political problem in recognizing the leadership of the American services; of course, on the basis of bilateral equal rights for collecting, providing, and receiving information.

Lacoste:

A Secret Service is essentially at the service of its own country and is one of the main symbols of the sovereignty of the state.
However, a national Secret Service may share intelligence with other foreign or Secret Services whenever its government has given it a formal agreement to do so. But it not necessary to share all one's intelligence; it is normal and legitimate that a country keep its national secrets to itself.
In wartime, within a military alliance against a common enemy, military intelligence is usually fully integrated between the allies, because operational objectives are well-defined. It is not often so clear with political and strategic intelligence when, for example, war goals are different.
In peacetime, alliances are much looser; many other factors can also affect political co-operation, not to mention the sharing of secret Intelligence.
After September 11, 2001, many countries declared themselves ready to join the United States in their fight against "international terrorism". What does this mean exactly for the Secret Services ? We need to be aware of the difficulties and limits of such cooperation.
Let me raise three points .
What exactly does the expression "international terrorism mean" ? It ultimately depends upon the context and, moreover, terrorism is expressed in a variety of causes, forms, degrees, and participants.
In some situations it is limited to a single country; i.e., the Irish IRA in the U.K., and the revolutionary Red Brigades in Italy. In other situations it involves two or three countries simultaneously: the Basque ETA in Spain and France; the Kurdish PKK in Turkey and Germany.
Patriots fighting against an occupation army on their national territory are designated "terrorists" by that army, and "resistance fighters" by themselves and their friends. Many terrorist actions occurred during colonial wars, and were qualified as such by the former colonial powers. The liberated people called them liberation fighters.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada, Israel has been fighting against Palestinian terrorists; however, 50 years ago the founders of Israel practised brutal terrorism against the British army. From one point of view terrorists are criminals, and from the opposite heroes!
When the spiral of violence and hatred is in motion, words have no real significance on either side. After the World Trade Center attack, the enemy was first designated by Americans as "Islamic terrorism". But this expression encompasses many different models, such as Philippine terrorists, Hamas or Hezbollah, Palestinian FPLP or FPLP-CG, Algerian GIA, Egyptian Muslim Brothers, and so on.
It is necessary to designate precisely which form of international terrorism we are speaking of in order to fight against it. Today we should state that our objective for the coalition is " Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network".
2 ) Several rules must be observed to achieve cooperation between intelligence services.
First of all, one must take into account that there are differences in traditions and behavior between criminal police investigators, foreign Secret Service agents, and customs officers. Even when there is a national "Intelligence Community", it is often difficult to achieve open and full co-operation between those services (an example of this is the FBI, CIA, and State Department investigations of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia prior to September 11th).
In Western Europe we have had good co-operation in criminal and terrorist affairs for quite some time. France initiated the TREVI group among the police of several countries to deal specifically with terrorism, the "Schengeningen" protocols to fight trans-national crime, and the EUROPOL system to share police intelligence.
I think it is sometimes easier to share intelligence between specialists of the same branches from different countries than between different services of the same country. But again it is not necessary to share all criminal or terrorist intelligence; in joint European organisations only what is of common interest is shared; for example, when criminals are using open borders to operate in several countries.
But intelligence is not the only issue; the justice systems are also involved. There are many difficulties because of the differences between national legal systems, procedures, and so on. There might be some progress on this in Europe since the New York and Washington attacks, as European governments have agreed to determine "Judiciary European Space". However, it will take years to become fully operational.
3- "Politicization" of intelligence
When threatened by internal terrorism, many states prefer to "export" the dangerous proponents to foreign "battlefields" rather than keep them inside the country. The King of Jordan did this when he expelled the Palestinian extremists (the infamous "Black September"). The Saudis preferred to send their fundamentalists to Afghanistan. The Syrian leader has been brutal against his own extremists, and they now realize it is impossible for them to survive in Syria.

Other nations, for example Great Britain, have a tradition of political asylum, and allow many well-known Arab extremists to live freely in London, under the condition that they stay away from trouble inside the UK. It is a "gentlemen's agreement".
In other places, the terrorists may have friends or "fellow travellers" in neighbouring countries. Some members of the Italian Red Brigades received support in the early 1980s from leftist radical groups in France, and the socialist government looked the other way.
But it is not sufficient to have co-operation between just intelligence and law enforcement services; the judiciary systems must be involved as well. This is a big problem, because, of the 15 countries of the European Union, several observe "Roman Law", others British, and a third Scandinavian, notwithstanding their specific procedural customs or legal limitations (e.g. the present arguments about death sentence).
In conclusion, I strongly recommend that co-operation between Intelligence Services against international terrorism be organised under the principle of specific "task forces", and not through new bureaucratic, multinational structures. Pragmatism is the rule here, and bilateral or trilateral teams are more efficient than large organisations.

Gömbös:

I'd like to make some comments. I believe there are two wars going on simultaneously: a military war and an intelligence war led by the United States. Despite the anti-terrorist coalition, responsibility for the intelligence war ultimately cannot be shared. It is an American duty. An important issue is the control of the movement of money. Access to private banking information would be important. But this level of information would give American intelligence services significant commercial information. So some countries will be hesitant to provide unfiltered information. The information filtered by a state can tainted in many ways. There is the question of what to do with secret accounts and covert corporations that provide a primary source of income for some countries. These countries will lose a source of income and will therefore resist. There are many countries ready to co-operate in the war against the terrorism; for example, Russia and Israel. But these countries are also tring to use the war for their own interests. They are trying to influence the United States to gain maximum benefits. Israel would like the main thrust of the operation to be against Palestinian movements. The Russians would like it to be directed against anti-Russian movements such as the Chechens. The next issue is - Because this is not only a military war but also an intelligence war, the next issue is American operations upon partner territory. They will want to limit American activities on their soil. The partners will skew data, so the Americans will have to take into account the laws of the host nation.

Ćosić:

International intelligence cooperation is important, but we have to be aware of practical limitations coming from conflict of interests in multinational international missions and the particular interests of each state. The failure of the UN in Bosnia, and the problems of IFOR, SFOR and KFOR were the result of disintegrated intelligence systems and the inability to successfully integrate intelligence cooperation, since there existed different interests and political attitudes among the key international players in the multi-national missions. When you have multinational missions, the games among the players can get intense. Different political interests limit intelligence cooperation. Valuable conclusions can be drawn out from the lessons learned in BiH.

Ferš:

I agree with Mr. Ćosić that multilateral cooperation is different than bilateral cooperation. Who will lead it, what is the main task and so on are some of the questions we have to answer. But multilateral cooperation is necessary, and must support it. Everything must be codified, but not a formal act but by a "gentlemen's agreement". We heard today that we are playing a game; in multilateral cooperation, we do play games but not a game of who will win or lose. It is a game of trust. Without trust and clearly-defined tasks, multilateral cooperation cannot exist. So we first identify the targets, problems, and tasks, and then we select the priorities. For somebody with good multilateral cooperation, the priorities might be terrorism or money laundering. Some services are more effective in one area and others in another, but we never divulge our sources. We then perform the concrete task. We try to create a partnership because a partnership is better than simple cooperation.

Međimorec:

As far as I know, the Mediterranean countries are cooperating multilaterally in the field of intelligence. A group of European countries, members of NATO, have also formed an intelligence community. Our service was not yet ready to enter either of these organizations. We lacked the experience for such a multilateral cooperation. But from the bilateral ties we formed, especially working with Bosnia and Herzegovina's intelligence service, we learned many lessons, the most important being that when both the common individual interests of the state and the mutual interests of the two countries were fulfilled, cooperation was successful. If there were no such interests, intelligence cooperation was unsuccessful. The best example is the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. After Dayton, foreign fighters and mujahedeens were forced to leave the country. The Croatian and Bosnia and Herzegovina services had both collected a lot of valuable information about them. Later on, we shared this documentation on the mujahedeen with European and overseas services, and even with some Arab countries, all of whom were happy to have information important for natio-nal security and the struggle against terrorism. This was a prelude to the events of September 11th. The spread of terrorism from Afghanistan to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and back to the Middle East and Afghanistan marked the beginning of the process, which culminated in the attacks on the US. I repeat, when mutual interests are satisfied, cooperation is possible. If there is trust between intelligence services and a high degree of professionalism, multinational cooperation can be successful.

Lange:

Tell me what would have to happen for mankind to unite and heal this rift. Maybe if dangerous aliens were to land on earth. But as far as I know, the September 11 terrorists are not alien enough to bring about this international cooperation.