UK spy boss: Nukes a wider threat than terrorism

Photo: John Sawers

UK spy boss: Nukes a wider threat than terrorism
LONDON, Oct 28 (breakingnews99.com) - Britain's top spy, in the first public speech by a serving UK espionage chief, said on Thursday terrorists might hit the West again "at huge human cost" but nuclear proliferation by states was a more far-reaching danger.

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) chief John Sawers, in a address to the Society of Editors media group hosted at Thomson Reuters London offices, said the risks of failure in tackling proliferation by countries like Iran "are grim."

"Terrorism is difficult enough, and despite our collective efforts, an attack may well get through. The human cost would be huge. But our country, our democratic system, will not be brought down by a typical terrorist attack," he said.

"The dangers of proliferation of nuclear weapons and chemical and biological weapons are more far-reaching. It can alter the whole balance of power in a region," said Sawers, whose century-old service is popularly known as MI6.

He added that intelligence failings on Iraq before the 2003 invasion showed "politicians and officials alike" how important it was that sources of information were rigorously evaluated.

Improving intelligence collection, coordination and analysis has been a major focus for Western governments since the September 11, 2001, attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion, events involving profound faults in preparedness.

A British inquiry in 2004 by a former top civil servant, Lord Butler, said it was a "serious weakness" that caveats from intelligence chiefs were not spelt out in a September 2002 dossier which set out the government's case for disarming Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush launched the Iraq invasion citing a threat of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's government. No such weapons were ever found.

Sawers said: "The Butler Review following Iraq was a clear reminder, to both the agencies and the center of government, politicians and officials alike, of how intelligence needs to be handled.

"Sources of intelligence have to be rigorously evaluated and their reports have to be honestly weighed alongside all other information. Those who produce it, and those who want to use it have to put intelligence in a wider context."

The Butler report urged steps to ensure "effective scrutiny and validation of human intelligence sources" and to make sure this was properly resourced and organized.

Sawers, a career diplomat, had previously been the ambassador to the United Nations, the Foreign Office's political director, and also worked as an envoy in Baghdad and as foreign affairs adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Sawers said al Qaeda was unlikely to achieve its goals of weakening Western power and toppling moderate Arab governments.

But the threat of "Islamic terrorism" was unlikely to fade away soon and reading reports of what militants were plotting was the most draining part of his job.

The move to more public accountability and openness at SIS is a big cultural shift for a service that 20 years ago was so secret the government would not publicly avow its existence, even if it still enjoys more anonymity than its close US ally, the Central Intelligence Agency.

The pressure on intelligence officials to be more transparent has many roots -- pressure from lawmakers to prevent abuses and improve performance, public concern over surveillance by police and local government, and a need by all arms of the intelligence community to make their work known so as to widen the avenues of recruitment.

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said: "Wherever possible the public should be told what is being done in their name. The default switch should be set to release information unless there is an extremely good reason for withholding it."

SIS, which gathers secret intelligence overseas, was first publicly acknowledged by the government in the 1990s.

The opening up of Britain's intelligence community gathered pace in 2006 when the then-head of the MI5 domestic security service, Eliza Manningham-Buller, appeared in public to make a speech to academics and journalists at a university campus.