Syria intervention: the 5 questions MPs should ask | Frank Ledwidge
Both David Cameron and the intelligence community know they have to get this right. MPs can help by asking these questions
The miserable ghost of Iraq hangs over us, and once again the reliability of intelligence assessments on chemical weapons may provide the foundation for another controversial decision to go to war. During Thursday’s debate in parliament, the prime minister will base his case for intervention in Syria on an assessment agreed by the joint intelligence committee. He may not call it that, but when he refers to “intelligence”, that is what he will mean.
Sounds familiar? It is. Whilst the procedures have been tightened up, this was the process that brought us the Iraq war and its various dossiers. What Cameron will present will be the results of hundreds of hours of debate and argument by intelligence collectors (spies of one kind or another), analysts and their managers. The intelligence community is well aware that this time they need to get it right.
The job of intelligence analysts is to turn information gained (“collected”) into assessed intelligence. They work a bit like journalists except that they never, or should never, cross the line into recommending policy. Their analysis of any given piece of information will comprise two main elements. There will be an assessment of the reliability of the source of the information. There will also be an assessment of the accuracy of the information itself, based on what the analysts know, or what can be confirmed.
The government seems clear that it has evidence of Assad government responsibility for the attack on eastern Ghouta near Damascus. We do not yet know what this evidence is. Some of it may be “open source” intelligence (known as Osint), meaning essentially media reports which have been analysed by government experts. In the absence of agents (human intelligence or Humint) within the Damascus regime, it is likely that the bulk of secret intelligence relied on will be sourced from signals intelligence (listening to phone calls, radio messages and so on), known as Sigint. The problem with Sigint is that whilst collecting and decrypting it is fairly straightforward, what it actually means (analysis) is rather more challenging.
It was the misinterpretation of Sigint that sank Colin Powell’s career when he presented it as evidence of Iraqi possession of WMD. A complicating feature here is that much of the relevant Sigint seems to be coming not from British, French or US intelligence assets, but from Israel, specifically the elite 8,200 signals unit. This need not invalidate the intelligence, but we should know.
So what questions should MPs ask about this intelligence? Here are five lines of approach:
1. What is the exact nature of the intelligence the government is relying on to support its conclusions?
What does it say? How specific is it, for example, with respect to orders given, and personnel involved in the attacks of 21 August?
