The Third Eye: Principles that guide a professional Intelligence organisation

New Delhi: Security by definition is protection against 'covert' offensive of the enemy -- an open military attack is taken care of by our defence forces -- and these can be countered only if information about the hidden plans of the adversary that is described as Intelligence, is made available in advance.

Intelligence is thus the 'anchor' of Security and that is why every country invested on well-trained Intelligence agencies to produce that information.

In the equation between Security and Intelligence -- it is 'information' vs 'action' -- both must succeed in the national interest and this would happen when in professional terms the agencies followed a set of guidelines while discharging their duties and the information they provided leads to an 'integral' response.

First of all, such an agency should determine -- in its 'own judgement' -- what constituted a threat to the security and integrity of the nation and start taking steps to keep track of its origin and further advancement.

This does not exclude the legitimate 'tasking' of the agency by the government of the day.

In the complex geopolitics of our times, the threat might be rooted in a combination of entities and circumstances all of which have to be unearthed to secure complete Intelligence which is always the mission of the agencies.

There is no compromise on some basic points here.

The Intelligence organisation never sends on an information whose reliability is not totally guaranteed.

It has an uncanny sense of 'actionability' of the Intelligence provided by it with the result that an action-taking authority would come to grief if it jumped to the conclusion that Intelligence was not 'specific enough' to be acted upon.

Any Intelligence 'alert' provides the scope for some preventive measures against a threat even if the warning does not indicate the precise time and place of the clandestine 'enemy strike'.

An Intelligence agency should not withhold actionable information in the process of looking for its 'completeness'.

The Intelligence organisation has the professional 'commitment' to ensure that the information on a security threat is promptly communicated -- it also has a legitimate interest in keeping track of how it is responded to, by the action-taking authorities.

Secondly, the Intelligence organisation knows that Security is not a 'one-time event' as it has to measure up to a change in the security scenario.

The agency also tried to constantly improve upon its functioning in the light of its experience.

It endeavoured to meet the expectations of the regime without becoming intrusive towards policy-making or political governance.

Its prime duty of producing timely information of a threat to national security, includes communicating that information to all action-takers without losing time and making sure that it is received by the latter.

Failure of action from the responders can result in a collapse of security and that is not unknown but a security failure attributable to lack of communication of Intelligence to the responders, would be a serious matter indeed -- reflecting on a systemic flaw in the working of the Intelligence organisation.

The Kargil Committee Report noted that many pieces of Intelligence did not move up -- beyond the Brigade headquarters -- possibly because of a disregard of the fundamental point of Security that all Intelligence must travel to a point at the 'apex' where the 'integral response' will be decided upon.

If this did not happen it would amount to depriving the final action -- taking authority of the benefit of looking at the 'total' information available, while responding.

This is in line also with the basic mandate of the Age of Information we live in, that says that in any walk of life, 'knowledge- based decision-making' was required for success and that fuller the knowledge better would be the course of action chosen.

Intelligence is a rare commodity and none of it should be allowed to be 'lost in transit'.

In India national Intelligence agencies primarily handled 'information' and did not exercise Police powers -- it is, therefore, doubly important for them to ensure that relevant information of Intelligence value is carried to the action-takers without delay.

The third professional guideline for Intelligence is linked to the fact that national security is now a multi-dimensional challenge dealing not only with the hardcore threats of espionage, subversion and sabotage -- and the new global terror that banked on faith-based motivation -- but also with the non-traditional dangers of food and water scarcity, economic security and climate change.

The Information Technology revolution of 1991 transformed the world security scene by creating the means of instant communication across geographical boundaries, converting social media into an instrument of combat and throwing up the universal threat of cyber attacks that could destroy the critical infrastructure and strategic systems of the target country.

In the era of 'proxy wars' -- that set in when the Cold War ended -- 'influencing' the system of governance and bringing down a regime through 'narrative building' are in vogue and these should be considered as the new forms of 'covert' offensive.

Further, Economic Intelligence has acquired an unprecedented importance as the doctrine 'National security is inseparable from economic security' is now universally accepted.

Damaging the economic strength of the opponent and in particular, sabotaging the economic assets of strategic value, is part of the new 'warfare' and this made the task of protecting all such establishments a basic requirement of national security.

Moreover, since a combination of human and technical intelligence is now vital for national security, India appropriately created in 2004 the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) as a technical intelligence agency to promote technological innovation for serving the cause of intelligence production.

NTRO reports to National Security Advisor and specialises in disciplines like remote-sensing, Sigint, data processing, cyber security, cryptology, hardware and software development and strategic monitoring.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), the ultimate advance of Information Technology, is strengthening the function of analysis by facilitating quick examination of large data in public domain under various parameters and helping in predicting the enemy behaviour by throwing light on the adversary's modus operandi.

AI applications are unfolding themselves as far as the domains of Intelligence and Security are concerned.

The fourth important working principle of security is that the national intelligence agencies are required to work in coordination with each other and that the country also has to have a strategy of ensuring that intelligence-sharing arrangements with friends in the international community are in place in order to deal with the common geopolitical security concerns.

In the Indian context in particular, it is logical to presume that Intelligence agencies would have occasions to share information with National Intelligence Agency (NIA) probing terrorism-related cases or with an Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) looking into funding of illicit entities.

These organisations in turn, could run into information that would help the national Intelligence agencies in pursuing their work.

Also, diplomacy today is geared to encouraging sharing of information on common security concerns such as terrorism, narcotics trade and human trafficking, with friendly countries -- foreign policy by definition is the product of national security and economic concerns, in that order.

Multi Agency Centre (MAC) run by Intelligence Bureau over the years has proved to be of great value in terms of pooling together intelligence available to the participating organisations on a particular threat or problem area.

Civil-Military intelligence coordination has also constantly improved particularly in areas where Army is engaged in counter- insurgency and counter-terror operations.

Intelligence-based operations of Army and Paramilitary Forces have, in recent times proved to be very successful.

Last but not the least, success of an intelligence organisation greatly depends on its internal management, recruitment methods and training protocols.

India from the very beginning adopted a sound approach of inducting the top order of the Indian Police Service (IPS) officers of the batch every year to provide leadership to Intelligence Bureau which ensured a built-in advantage that IB would enjoy in terms of a close relationship with the state Police.

That is a basic requisite for safeguarding Internal Security.

The officers were selected for their willingness to opt for anonymity, capacity for hard work and an analytical bend of mind.

The agencies also had their direct recruits in adequate numbers.

All entrants high or low has to undergo a full scale 'basic course' on Intelligence tradecraft and then put on a probation before being finally accepted.

There is a healthy exchange of officers between the internal and external intelligence agencies and also provision of lateral induction of area and subject specialists.

All this has worked well -- particularly under the present NSA who is from an intelligence background -- and needs to be kept up.

It may be mentioned that Intelligence Bureau's working is known for internal transparency within the norms of 'need to know', great clarity about credit-sharing as well as a tradition of 'nurtural' leadership.

It promotes professional growth and ensures that an operator retained the initiative to pursue a task with total devotion.

The senior officers of the Intelligence organisation were themselves prepared to work day and night without being asked and were available all the time for giving guidance to people under them whenever it is asked for.

Intelligence Bureau set up by the British in 1888, celebrated its centenary in 1988 establishing the point that its goal is to access and furnish to the regime of the day, information about all that is happening inside the country as well as in the world around that has a security angle -- without getting involved in the regime's political moves.

Intelligence agencies of India have, after Independence, continued to enjoy total trust of the national government -- whatever be its political complexion -- and this perhaps is the biggest testimony to their leadership functioning without any vested interest.

(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal)

Source: IANS