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Volume 3, Number
1
Summer 2003
REVIEWS
Gary Kinsman, Dieter Buse and Mercedes
Steedman, eds. Whose National Security?: Canadian State Surveillance and the
Creation of Enemies. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000. xii, 293 p
This edited collection of essays gathers together and supplements revised
drafts of papers originally presented at a 1996 conference on National Security
at Laurentian University, Sudbury Canada. As such its contents largely reflect
the original three aims of the conference: to exhibits the diverse forms of
critical research on state surveillance and national security within Canada; to
develop "an interdisciplinary focus not only spanning the boundaries of
political science, history, sociology, and cultural studies but also moving
beyond those disciplines by building critical studies of national security"
(viii); and, thirdly, to encourage both greater use of accessible
intelligence-related material and the removal of obstacles to such access. The
book is divided into eights parts: "Origins of the National (In)Security State;
"Defining a Security Threat: Three Examples"; "Education under Cover";
"Redefining a Security Threat: Newer Enemies" (gender aspects and sexual
minorities); "Machinery of State in Action: Means and Consequences"; "Finding
Security in the Archives" (accessing intelligence information); "Old Methods and
Recent Trends" (federal surveillance in Quebec, the RCMP’s monitoring of trade
union activism and of Canadian Arabs during the Gulf War period); and The
Continuing Surveillance State (addressing student protests and a final
theoretical essay on ‘national security as an ideological practice’.
It has been long recognised by intelligence studies scholarship that, within the
confines of regimes that need to justify themselves in terms of classic ‘liberal
democratic’ values, such as the rule of law and respect for both
constitutionality and individual rights, the activities of intelligence agencies
require a complex form of regulation and accountability. Their legitimation must
successfully combine at least two values: instrumental efficiency in
identifying, monitoring and responding decisively to politically-defined threats
to national security (including those posed by terrorist groupings); and respect
for at least national standards of legality and optimum democratic
accountability. These standards of legitimacy may often enter into conflict,
with the tendency for instrumental priorities relating to the successful
realisation of national security interests coming to outweigh respect for
legality, particularly during periods of increased international tension,
geo-political rivalry between nuclear powers and ideological polarisation. Such
prioritisation raises the issue of the extent to which liberal democracies
should, in practice, be willing to sacrifice part of their ‘liberal’ credentials
to combat threats from authoritarian regimes or internal subversion and
terrorism by non-democratic forces. Such dilution, which often takes the form of
Emergency Powers legislation, is sometimes justified on the grounds that to act
otherwise is to run the risk of allowing democratic institutions to be destroyed
in their entirely. Alternatively, if the dilution of traditional
liberal-democratic values, including the qualification of privacy rights through
covert forms of state surveillance, is taken too far, then this prompts the
understandable reproach from civil libertarians that this situation would be
analogous to a successful display of surgery which, unfortunately, also killed
the patient.
The present collection largely avoids developing a viable series of principles
to act as political guidance for how we should formulate and implement a way of
establishing a credible balance between civil liberties and the instrumental
realisation of a national security agenda. Instead, it tackles the question of
state surveillance almost exclusively from within the one-sided agenda of
new-leftist civil libertarianism. This agenda, which recycles some classic
anarchist and natural law assumptions, re-interprets the rights of individuals
not to be subjected to state surveillance as virtually absolute; and – on this
questionable premise – reinterprets all past, present and future interventions
by security services as a form of illegitimate repression of diversity pursued
by ruling political elites concerned primarily to secure their own interests
(pp. 1-3). The adoption of this framework prejudices the interpretative agenda
of discussion to a simplistic opposition between security interventions deemed
to be inherently repressive, homogenising and normalising, and the "resistance"
of non-conformist and dissident groups. The latter includes leftist trade
unionists, and assorted political activists concerned with issues relating to
homosexuality, and the rights of different minority ethnic groups, including
‘first nation’ groupings.
The price paid for the generalisation and superimposition of this one-sided
civil libertarian agenda is the complete inability to recognise that, during the
twentieth century there was even a single example of the national security
interests of the Canadian state being really threatened. On the contrary, the
mass of historical evidence supporting the contention that Communist and related
groupings sought to systematically subvert, demoralise and ultimately overthrow
Western capitalist states with a broadly liberal democratic character and bring
these under the control of Eastern European Communist regimes is simply
dismissed as cold war "paranoia", as little more than "an excuse" (p. 1). In
this way, the issue of how best to strike a viable balance between national
security interests and civil liberties is ‘magically’ resolved by the bizarre
strategy of simply denying that there ever has been any legitimate national
security interests.
Nor do the contributors to this collection display any greater respect for the
idea, inherent in any viable conception of sovereignty, that any established
nation has a right to define and protect those specific cultural traditions that
ensure its distinctiveness, e.g., the distinctiveness of what is has come to
mean to be a "Canadian", and that such state-centred protection of sources of
collective identity require a series of institutional policies (including the
control and monitoring of immigration) and the enforcement of criteria for
citizenship which require the interventions of, for example, the security
services. Ironically the contributors largely dismiss this aspect of national
identity in the name of the need for the state to grant respect for liberating
diversity, and insist on the alleged political imperative of resisting
‘oppressive’ homogenisation and normalisation. Yet this very dismissal only
makes sense if the readership have themselves already been mobilised into
conforming to a single value system: that of uncritical celebration of all forms
of cultural, sexual and ethnic diversity that currently pass the test of
‘political correctness’ (which excludes all non-leftist forms of diversity and
extra-parliamentary opposition). Here, we are asked to accept a critique of the
role supposedly played by the RCMP in protecting traditional qualities of
Canadian national identity (Anglophone, heterosexual, white-skinned), which is
interpreted through the lens of a questionable dichotomy between ‘normalisation’
and ‘resistance’. Yet the very criteria the contributors to this collection
deploy to identify and differentiate "healthy diversity" from state-sanctioned
and RCMP monitored "normality" is no less homogenising and normalising than
those employed by the demonised Canadian State and the RCMP themselves.
No less self-contradictory is the critique of how threats to Canadian national
security have been institutional defined in terms of specific ideological
conceptions. Of course, one can accept the contention that the process of
identifying a threat to national security is inherently a political one of
differentiating friends from foes, and that this entails a selective process of
interpretation and reinterpretation. Yet, Klinsman’s final essay, which is
supposed to provide a theoretical summation in some sense, adopts a critique of
the supposedly "ideological" values that underpin this process of selective
interpretation as if these could be simply identified by social scientists in a
politically neutral and non-ideological manner. This assumption, which is
necessary to sustain the rhetorical distinction between the ideological
definition of threats to Canadian national security and the allegedly higher
‘objective’ stance of interdisciplinary academics studying state surveillance,
is simply false. It is empirically falsified by the clearly political
motivations that underpin the interpretative agendas underpinning every
contribution to this collection. It could even be the case that the officials of
the RCMP who are lambasted in this collection were capable of displaying far
greater adherence to values of objectivity and sober, impartial analysis, which
traditionally define the credibility of interdisciplinary methods of academic
analysis, than those which appear in the contributions to this book.
This book may have value as an example of the nature, limits and contradictions
of civil libertarian approaches to the study of intelligence related themes,
which is undoubtedly one of the perspectives that need to be considered in any
balanced consideration of the role of intelligence agencies within supposedly
democratic regimes. However, it would also need to be contrasted with a series
of no less problematic perspectives which omit or simply dismiss civil liberty
considerations with the same lack of self-critical reflection as the authors of
this work deploy with respect to the legitimate interests citizens possess with
respect to what is required to safeguard their individual, group and collective
security. Perhaps it is no less acceptable to prioritise civil liberties over
legitimate national security interests as it is prioritise the latter over the
former, and the value of equally one-sided agendas lies in how they highlight
their own limitations and thereby prompt attempts to devise principles on whose
basis aspects of each could be selectively salvaged in a transcending synthesis
of these two only apparently opposite and mutually exclusive interpretative
agendas.
Michael Salter
Craig G. McKay and Bengt Beckman. Swedish Signal Intelligence 1900-1945.
Frank Cass Publishers, London 2003, 325 p., 4 ill.
This is an important account about signal intelligence or Sigint as it
developed in a medium-sized, neutral country of Europe. The study of Sigint is
still dominated by the successes of the British during the First World War and
the Americans and the British during the Second World War and the Cold War. For
quite some time the research of Sigint developments in smaller countries was
either overlooked, like Kazaczuk’s Polish publication of 1967, or judged to be
peripheral. However not only English or American authors failed quite often to
look beyond the confines of English language archives, the language barrier has
been a limiting factor for authors of other native languages as well. This is
different with the present book. The study of McKay and Beckman about the
Swedish Signal Intelligence 1900-1945 provides a comprehensive and scholarly
treatment of the subject. This definitive, exhaustive and illuminating account
draws on the official archives notably from Sweden and provides new and
surprising results.
The Scandinavian countries appeared in the limelight of world attention for a
few months in 1939/1940. Finland had to fight for its independence during the
Winter War against the Soviet Union in 1939, Norway and Denmark were invaded by
Germany in spring 1940. Only Sweden – at some cost to the doctrine of impartial
neutrality – managed to weather the storm. The centrepiece of the study of McKay
and Beckman is the Sigint contribution to Sweden’s neutrality in two world wars,
particularly in the second. The policy depended on sensitive diplomacy plus a
warning system against neutrality failure. As the authors say, "like prudent
motorists in the countryside at night, governments prefer to drive with the help
of their lights". Effective Sigint gave Sweden some of the illumination needed
for its chosen policy.
The authors of the present study are not only highly knowledgeable to describe
the issues, from previous work they knew where and how to draw on the right
archival material. Craig G. McKay specialised in intelligence history,
especially relating to Scandinavia and the Baltic States. He taught at the
university of Uppsala. Bengt Beckman has been a senior official with the Swedish
National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA), which, since its foundation in 1942
has been at the centre of Swedish Sigint activities.
The first chapter illuminates "The Wider Background" of Swedish competence and
engineering ingenuity in communications utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum
for optical signaling and sending and receiving text and voice messages via
cable and wireless radio. In the second chapter the authors focus on "Swedish
Developments 1900-1918", especially on the German-Swedish cooperation in
cryptanalysis of the Russian diplomatic cable traffic. This is followed by a
chapter on "The Interwar Years". With the gathering storm, Swedish Sigint
concentrated on the developments at the Eastern borders towards Finland and the
Baltic States, especially covering in chapter four "The Winter War and the
Chattering Bear". The area of Sigint emphasis quickly changed to the west and
south. On 8 April 1940 the German "Weserübung", the joint operation for
the invasion of Norway and Denmark had started and completely surprised not only
the Swedish government. Neutral Sweden intended not to be surprised again.
Swedish Sigint used the opportunity that German diplomatic and military
telegraph traffic passed through Swedish owned cables, utilized the
cryptanalytic genius of the mathematician Arne Beurling and his team to decipher
the teleprinter messages of the Siemens & Halske Geheimschreiber T 52 and
the Hellschreiber. Chapter five narrates the "Tales of a Secret Writer",
which resulted from the deciphering of the T 52. Work began in spring
1940; by the end of the year 7,100 diplomatic cables were cracked and read. The
numbers rose from 41,400 messages in 1941 to a total of 350,000 out of some
500,000 intercepted cable telegrams by the end of the war 1945. Chapter six
tells how the work of interception, deciphering and distribution of mainly
Soviet and German communications had to be consolidated in "A New Authority". In
1942 the different groups were reorganised into the newly founded FRA, the
National Defence Radio Establishment. The last chapter concentrates on "Security
Matters", namely the German suspicion of summer 1942 that their communications
were read by the Swedes and the issue to which degree foreign powers were able
to read the Swedish secret communications. The book closes with a detailed
appendix of documents and a glossary of technical terms. Extensive footnotes,
which contain many gleaming nuggets of evidence and source, add to the selected
bibliography. It speaks for Cass Publishers that the book is well presented and
thoroughly edited.
After having studied the excellent treatise of Swedish Sigint from the turn of
the century until 1945 two questions remain in the readers mind. Around 1942
some German specialists began to investigate the rumour of the break-in into the
Geheimschreiber T 52, which was a combination of a ten-wheeled cipher-
and teleprinter machine. After confirming the break-in and revealing the
weaknesses of the system this obviously did not trigger a general and sweeping
inquiry into the security of other German machine ciphers, especially the
military enigma-based systems. The comprehensive and detailed study of German
internal crypto security during the Second World War remains to be conducted and
written. Furthermore, after having learnt about the Swedish Sigint successes
until 1945 the reader’s curiosity is aroused to know more about Swedish
intelligence in general and Sigint in particular during the dramatic cold war
years. The Baltic Sea area was an intelligence hodgepodge and from sparse
evidence of investigative journalism we know that Sweden, despite its perceived
neutral status, was right in the middle of it. Who will write as competently the
history of Swedish Sigint during the Cold War as the authors of the present book
did for the preceding period?
Sigurd Hess
David Wise. Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed
America. New York: Random House, 2002, 320 p.
David Wise has written another excellent book on espionage, a subject he is
thoroughly familiar with after years of writing in this area. His subject,
Robert Hanssen, was an FBI agent who spied for both the GRU and KGB
intermittently for approximately twenty-two years. When Hanssen was in the FBI’s
Foreign Intelligence Program, he helped prepare the Bureau’s budget for
presentation to Congress, and this gave him knowledge of the FBI’s entire
intelligence and counterintelligence operations. With this and other
information, Hanssen betrayed the FBI’s double agent, TOPHAT, Lt. General Dmitri
Fedorovich Polyakov, who had sent crucial information to the United States for
seventeen years. TOPHAT was executed by the Soviets. Hanssen also exposed Lt.
Col. Valery Martynov and Major Sergei Motorin, two of the FBI’s KGB resources in
Washington, and they were recalled to the Soviet Union and executed. Robert
Hanssen also sent a TOP SECRET report to the KGB, "The FBI’s Double Agent
Program," which gave a detailed description of its ten-year activity, including
its joint programs with other American intelligence services. Twice or more,
Hanssen gave the KGB a complete list of the FBI’s double agents, and some of
these people were probablykilled by the Soviets. When the FBI built a tunnel
under the new Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., Hanssen "blew" its cover so
that, in spite of the huge amount of money spent on this project, it remained an
antique from the start. Hanssen also warned the Soviets that their agent in the
U.S. State Department, Felix Bloch, was under surveillance, enabling Bloch to
take measures to evade prosecution. Altogether Hanssen delivered an estimated
6,000 pages of secret documents for which he received hundreds of thousand
dollars.
There was another side to Hanssen’s personality, his strongly religious
compartment, which is perceived as sincere by most of his close friends and Dr.
David L. Charney, a Washington psychiatrist who spent more than thirty hours
interviewing him in jail. A strongly anti-Communist convert to Catholicism,
Hanssen went to mass nearly every day and took his children to church on Sunday.
He belonged to the very conservative Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei, and
sent his children to their schools. He constantly discussed religion with
friends and colleagues, urging lapsed Catholics to return to the Church. Having
taken his stripper girl friend with him to Hong Kong on FBI business, he bought
her a used Mercedes with KGB money and also encouraged her to go to Church. He
confessed his spying to various priests before receiving Holy Communion, but the
Church with its emphasis on penance was a necessary, but not sufficient help for
Robert Hanssen, an extremely sick and compartmentalized person. He was in
serious need of extensive psychotherapy.
The relationship between Robert Hanssen and his boyhood friend, Jack Hoschouer,
a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, is interesting. According to Wise, Jack
phoned Hanssen every day (p. 5), no matter where either one was. Robert Hanssen
gave his friend gifts, such as a Rolex watch, which at the time probably cost
$7,500 (pp. 134-35). When Jack was fighting in Vietnam, Hanssen sent nude
pictures of his wife to his friend, a favor she did not know about until after
his arrest. After Jack left the Army and periodically visited the Hanssen home,
Robert enabled him to watch his wife and himself making love, later allowing
Jack to see the proceedings by TV in the Hanssen family den. Amazingly, Hanssen
suggested to Jack that they give his wife, Bonnie Rohypnol, the "date-rape" drug
so that she would become unconscious and Jack could impregnate her. Then they
would have a three-person family. Hoschouer, however, rejected this strange
proposal. One of the many bonds between Robert and Jack was their mutual
fascination with pornography and strip clubs.
Which factor, or factors, motivated Robert Hanssen to betray his wife, his
country, and his Church? Hanssen claimed that he initially began spying for the
Soviets in order to support a growing family on a modest FBI salary, when he was
stationed in New York. If this explanation is credible, why didn’t he simply
change jobs, which should not have been a difficult task for a man with an MBA
in Accounting and Information Systems from Northwestern University? Dr. Charney
believed that Hanssen’s betrayal was influenced primarily by his relationship to
his father. Robert’s father, a policeman, constantly belittled him when he was a
child and young man, continuing the attack even in front of Robert’s children.
Robert’s father was hardly a mentor to his son, failing to introduce him into
manhood, which may account for Robert’s difficulties in relating to his FBI
colleagues. Dr. Charney considers Hanssen’s experience with the FBI, where he
was generally regarded as a "nerd," as a "replay" of his relationship to his
father (p. 276). Co-workers at the FBI excluded him from the inner circle of
counter-intelligence officers, and Hanssen felt that he did not get the respect,
which he deserved. One of Hanssen’s psychological defenses in this situation was
to consider himself as intellectually superior to his colleagues, which further
isolated him from their camaraderie. This reviewer’s impression of Robert
Hanssen is that he was determined to make a fool out of the COP, his father and
the FBI, both of whom perceived him as a "loser." However, such a complex man
may never be sufficiently understood.
David Wise asks whether or not Hanssen could have been caught by the FBI sooner?
The author lists several warning signs which should have alerted his superiors
at the Bureau: Hanssen did his own xeroxing instead of utilizing secretarial
help, his physical attack on a woman employee at the FBI, and the fact that he
had never taken a polygraph test. However, the Bureau is a very large
organization, which basically means that such failures can be expected.
Furthermore, as a professional intelligence officer, Hanssen knew how to "cover
his tracks," making it difficult for him to be unmasked. David Wise’s
explanation for this FBI lapse is noteworthy in that he claims: "... the bureau
may have failed to detect Hanssen sooner because it was in love with its own
image, carefully orchestrated over the years by J. Edgar Hoover, the cereal
boxes with Junior G-Man badges, and the flood of movies, television dramas ...
glorifying the bureau ...(p. 283)."
There is only one problem with Wise’s evaluation of the Bureau; he offers no
evidence for this sweeping generalization. On the whole, this book shows careful
research and balanced analysis and it can be recommended to academics and
intelligence officers.
Ken Campbell |
