The relationship between mass media and secret intelligence

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASS MEDIA AND SECRET INTELLIGENCE ANUSH SARKISIAN (MA International Relations (Hons), Donetsk National University) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2013 1 Declaration I hereby declare that the thesis is my original work and it has been written by me in its entirely. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information which have been used in the thesis. This thesis has not also been submitted for any degree in any university previously. Anush Sarkisian 20 August 2013 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………4 Summary……………………………………………………………………………….................5 List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..6 List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………..7 Chapter I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………8 Chapter II. The Media…………………………………………………………………………...21 Chapter III. The Intelligence…………………………………………………………………….35 Chapter IV. Media-Intelligence Relationship…………………………………………………...45 Chapter V. Media-Intelligence Relationship in the Russian Federation………………………...60 Chapter VI. Media-Intelligence Relationship in the United Kingdom………………………….78 Chapter VII. Conclusions………………………………………………………………………..95 3 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Karen Jane Winzoski, for her valuable comments, guidance and warm encouragement throughout the research. Without her help, this project would not have been possible. I also thoroughly enjoyed working with my professors at NUS and thank them for widening my horizons. I also would like to thank Mr. Andrei Soldatov for sharing his insightful thoughts during the interview, which was indispensable for this project. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my family and my friend Michelle for their 24/7 love and support that helped me not to give up during this academic journey. 4 SUMMARY Both intelligence and the media operate in the industry of information collection, analysis and dissemination. Therefore some amount of interaction between two actors is inevitable. The inherent problem with this relationship is the tension around the intelligence agencies’ need for secrecy and the citizens’ right to know, which the media aims to fulfill. This study establishes a framework within which the media-intelligence interactions in a given state may be analyzed. A fundamental question is raised: Under which conditions and in whose favor the point of contact between two institutions occurs? Is it the regime type that determines the nature of their relations, as the prevailing literature suggests? I propose that the factors that define the tone of these interactions are the levels of autonomy and penetration of the intelligence services and the media outlets’ commitment to investigative reporting. Based on this assertion, I adopt six models of media-intelligence relationship. The findings are further applied to the case-studies of the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation, which represent a variety of scenarios of the media-intelligence encounter. 5 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Press Freedom in Democracies and Autocracies, 1980 – 2008………………………. 23 Table 2. Typology of Security Intelligence Agencies…………………………………………. 42 Table 3. Models of Media-Intelligence Interaction……………………………………………. 47 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BND – Bundesnachrichtendiens CIA – Central Intelligence Agency DA Notice – Defence Advisory Notice DIB – Domestic Intelligence Bureau DIS – Defence Intelligence Staff FBI – Federal Investigation Bureau FSB – Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters IRGC – Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ISC – Intelligence Security Committee ISS – Independent and Security State JIC – Joint Intelligence Committee JTAC – Joint Terrorism Analysis Center KGB – Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti NSA – National Security Agency MEK – People’s Mujahedin of Iran MIT – Turkish National Intelligence Organization MI5 – Security Service MI6 – Secret Intelligence Service MOIS – Ministry of Intelligence and Security PP – Political Police SIGNIT – Signals Intelligence SRI – Romanian Intelligence Service TECHINT – Technical Intelligence VEVAK - Vezarat-e Ettela'atvaAmniyat-e Keshvar WMD – Weapons of Mass Destruction 7 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION The term ‘information age’ with its 24-hour news cycle on TV and Internet has gained much momentum during the last two decades. Regularly updated news websites, ‘No comments’ channels and the burgeoning ‘new media’ have created an environment, in which the consumers’ demand for a new publication is no less than his need for freshly baked bread. Media companies, whether big or small, printed or online, are involved in a cut-throat competition to be first in information delivery. In such conditions, journalists resort to anything to reveal the most unknown and unique information to their consumers. The media have always been attracted to intelligence issues. Mostly because intelligence services are generally perceived to be mystical and exotic, news reports on this subject are always worthy of public attention. However, media-intelligence interactions are not restricted to just an ‘uncovering the covered’ type of relationship. Intelligence services strategically provide media with secret information to shape public opinion, as well as to reveal some inside information about their activities to prove their political usefulness. On the other side, the media can serve as a powerful instrument of external oversight over the intelligence services’ activities, pointing out on their wrongdoings, failures and perspectives for democratization. My purpose in this study is to establish a framework with which the relationship between the media and intelligence services in a given state may be analyzed. While my initial assumption was that the ‘regime type’ played a major role in determining the nature of this relationship, my preliminary research has revealed that even the categorization of a given state as a ‘democracy’ or ‘autocracy’ does not fully explain how media and intelligence in these regimes interact and manage their power relations. Empirical data reveals that in two states of same political regime type media-intelligence relationships may be structured differently. Conversely, political regime transformations within a given state, for example from autocracy to democracy, may not essentially bring about substantial changes in the way the two actors relate to each other. One reason for this is that even after regime transformations, in most of the cases both intelligence services and media communities remain in their old frames, with the same personnel and institutional arrangements. 8 Therefore, to build a more flexible theory, which is not limited to particular nominal regime types, we will analyze both institutions of the media and intelligence services, the ways they perceive each other and, hence, the relationship they are likely to develop with each other. My argument suggests that it is the level of intelligence services autonomy and penetration, which is not the simple product of the regime type that largely determines the character of the relationship with the media. As for the media, its behavior takes mostly the form of ‘reaction’ rather than ‘action’, and it is the level of journalists’ commitment to investigative reporting that determines the nature of the media’ response to intelligence services’ activities. Accordingly, the inherent problem with their interaction is the tension around the intelligence agencies’ need for secrecy and the citizens’ right to be informed, which the media aims to fulfill. This study hopes to explain under which conditions and in whose favor the point of contact between two actors occurs. A. Hypotheses In this research I will test two hypotheses, which evaluate the nature of the media- intelligence relationship: H1: Media-intelligence relations are based on the qualitative characteristics of both actors H2: Media-intelligence relations are based on factors other than the qualitative characteristics of both actors B. Methodology This study is mainly theory-testing and policy-evaluative. It is based on a literature review of books, academic journal articles, newspaper reports and electronic sources, which offer a general context and necessary insights into the topic. For the purpose of this project, I have also conducted an interview with a journalist Mr. Andrei Soldatov who offered me valuable insights for my case study of Russia. My research contributes to the theory of media-intelligence 9 interactions, which has been previously focused mostly on liberal democracies, and has not offered a general theory applicable for a variety of security intelligence agencies and types of media organizations. While I do not intend to build a policy-prescriptive and predictive study, the summary of findings will nevertheless propose explanations to understand the nature of media-intelligence interactions likely to occur in a given set of circumstances. Two main cases of the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom with a number of examples from other countries will illustrate the practical application of our theory. C. Case Selection On the basis of diverse case selection method1 the cases of the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation, representing two extremes of intelligence openness, are selected to demonstrate the variety of the outcomes of media and intelligence involvement with each other and capture the contrasts addressed by my theory. At the same time, both types of the media are represented in our cases. This will allow me to observe how media behavior varies depending on their interaction with different intelligence services. D. Literature Review The initial impetus and inspiration for current project was given by Robert Dover and Michael Goodman’s Spinning Intelligence2, which consists of a series of essays by experts from government, media and academia, which demonstrate that relationships between mass-media and intelligence services are far too complex to be given an apparent characterization. The authors view these relationships from vastly different angles. For example, Corera and Bowen analyze the Open Source Intelligence strategy, according to which media and intelligence services cooperate in the battlefield of an ‘information war’ against terrorism and in the context of nuclear non-proliferation. Recently, this model of relationships has become even more relevant, as “the information technology revolution continues to present new data storage, search 1 Seawright , Jason, and John Gerring. "Case Selection Techniques in Case Selection Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options." Political Research Quarterly 62, no. 2, p. 300. 2 Dover, Robert, and Michael S. Goodman. Spinning Intelligence: Why Intelligence Needs the Media, Why the Media Needs Intelligence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 10 and information retrieval options,”3 such as social networks, Internet blogs, and mobile news apps with instant access to new information. In the same volume, Richard Aldrich describes how intelligence agencies, which he depicts as being concerned with public perceptions of intelligence work, use the press to reduce the generally suspicious and adverse public attitude toward secret government bodies. Aldrich argues, “Much of what we know about modern intelligence agencies has in fact been placed in the public domain deliberately by the agencies themselves, or through other government departments.”4 For example, the US intelligence services have always enjoyed quite close relationships with its journalist community, which partly explains the remarkable transparency of the American intelligence agencies: “The fact that we know more about the American intelligence community than almost any other is commonly assumed to reflect a written constitution that provides journalists wishing to write about intelligence with a remarkable degree of formal constitutional protection.”5 This exposes perhaps the most common misperception concerning modern intelligence services as hiding from the media and living in the shadows. The actual situation is different. “Over more than fifty years, intelligence agencies have been concerned to shape public perceptions of intelligence, partly because they have substantial budgets to defend.”6 Another reason why the intelligence services maintain a close relationship with the media is the need to keep the latter on the ‘right track’ during times when there is a substantial threat to national security. Aldrich uses the case of the 9/11 attacks to illustrate this relationship. In this situation, the media, perceiving the state of emergency, “adopted a so-called war mentality that was largely supportive of government.”7 This is an important point for our study as well, as we assume that though the media by its nature is a hunter for newsworthy knowledge, it might find it ethically inappropriate to disclose sensitive information in the name of public security. By contrast, as an investigative journalist in the security and defense field in the United Kingdom, Chapman Pincher tells a different story based on his personal experience. Pincher makes reference to a number of reports of false leaks provided by the British intelligence and intended to misinform its enemies. Reflecting on his reporting of intelligence and security issues, 3 Ibid, p 104 Ibid, p. 18 5 Ibid 6 Ibid 7 Ibid, p. 28 4 11 Pincher accepts that “the most cherished professional compliment” he ever received, is that he was known as a “public urinal where Ministers and officials queued up to leak.”8 In a retrospect, Pincher’s example is a classic illustration of the ‘partial’ media and the DIB relationships, which I will elaborate on in later chapters. Rear Admiral Nicholas Wilkinson shows how the media and intelligence can utilize a balancing strategy, such as the DA-Notice Committee, which exists “to provide advice to the media and officials in the United Kingdom about the publication of national security matters.” 9 Wilkinson admits that this balance operates in a ‘gray area’, facing a number of crosscutting issues related to national security: “the right and duty of the media to publish information about what is being done by government in the name of the public, versus the right and duty of the government to conceal pro them certain sensitive information for the protection of the public.”10 However, Wilkinson provides two case-studies of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to illustrate how the balance over this ‘gray area’ was achieved. I, in turn, will use the case of the DA-notice system to explain the ‘gentlemen’s relationship’ between the media and intelligence, which I call ‘self-regulation’ in this study. In sum, the editors of the volume come to a common conclusion that in the era of ‘information age’, thinking of spies and journalists as “blood brothers, separated at birth”11 allows a more extended examination of interaction between them. Both the media and intelligence agencies are knowledge producers. Normally, they operate without consent from people or other actors they are searching information about and they produce knowledge for their own distinct aims.12 This is a crucial insight to understand why the nature of these relationships can be shifted from conflict to cooperation and vice versa. To understand what constitutes the core of the relationship between these two communities and how they work together, I turn to Christopher Andrew’s edited volume “Secret Intelligence.”13 The volume develops a solid discussion on the definitional aspect of intelligence. According to Vernon Walters, “intelligence is information, not always available in the public domain, relating to the strength, resources, capabilities and intentions of a foreign 8 Ibid, p. 152 Ibid, p.133 10 Ibid, p.140 11 Ibid, p. 7 12 Ibid 13 Andrew, Christopher M., Richard J. Aldrich, and Wesley K. Wark. Secret Intelligence: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2009 9 12 country that can affect our lives and the safety of our people.” 14 Lyman Kirkpatrick adds the following: “Intelligence is the knowledge – and, ideally, foreknowledge – sought by nations in response to external threats and to protect their vital interests, especially the well-being of their own people.”15 A study of the American intelligence establishment commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations defines intelligence as “information not publicly available, or analysis based at least in part on such information that has been prepared for policymakers or other actors inside the government.”16 As one can see, these definitions stress the ‘informational’ aspect of the term and sometimes equate ‘information’ and ‘intelligence’. However, such an interpretation is vague and incomplete, as it “does not say who needs information, or what makes the information needed in the first place,”17 i.e. excludes the ‘actor’ from it. This is important for my study, as information is also a key aspect of mass media and the nature of its relationships with intelligence. Lowenthal18 goes further, arguing that intelligence is something more complex than information. It can be also thought of as a process, activity, product and organization. The informational component here is related to “important national security issues”, which are monitored, analyzed and provided to its consumers – policymakers. Nevertheless, Lowenthal’s interpretation may include more areas related to national security or the military, but not essentially mean intelligence activity. “The number of American males of age to bear arms, the weather conditions in Asia, and the age of Politburo member” may also be evaluated as military issues, but not be related to intelligence. 19 The ‘missing ingredient’, which distinguishes intelligence from other intellectual and organizational activities, is presented by Abram Shulsky in his book “Silent Warfare.”20 According to the author, secrecy is what makes intelligence distinct from other governmental and non-government agencies. Secrecy is also the essential component driving mediaintelligence liaisons, either motivating journalists to report intelligence activities, or compelling the latter to intentionally leak a certain amount of secrets in mass media as part of their strategy. 14 ibid, p. 5 Ibid 16 Ibid 17 Ibid, p 7 18 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2000. 19 Andrew, Aldrich, p. 6 20 Shulsky, Abram . Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence. Washington: Brassey's (US), 1991 15 13 Shulsky briefly analyzes some of these secrecy strategies, utilizing the example of Russian intelligence services operations in Japan and their use of propaganda and spread of misinformation to convey certain messages to the target audience. Two models of intelligence services’ media strategies are presented by the former Director of the Israeli Government Ministries Security Unit Shlomo Shpiro in his article ‘The Media Strategies of Intelligence Services.’21 The models of ‘Defensive Openness’ and ‘Controlled Exclusion’ are analyzed within the contexts of Germany and Israel, respectively. The models vary based on the “development of each country’s intelligence community, as well as the level and form of its media freedoms.”22 Thus, the model of ‘Defensive Openness’ means a “limited amount of openness to be maintained toward the media in order to influence media content.”23 In the case of Germany, this strategy was applied in four main directions: “continuous in-house media monitoring; proportionality of response; balancing denial with providing information, and rewarding journalists rather than threatening.”24 This type of relationships falls within my category of ‘symbiotic benefit’, which I explain later in this study. I borrow Shpiro’s insight that within this model intelligence services allow the journalists to receive a certain portion of classified information to influence the media content and when necessary to keep certain issues out of their sight. In contrast, the model of ‘Controlled Exclusion’ presupposes inherent and absolute secrecy of intelligence activities. “According to this view, because intelligence work depends on secrecy for its success, it should be kept out of the media entirely.”25 This model is mainly based on three elements: “suppressing operational revelations, threatening or punishing uncooperative media outlets, and using the media for building up deterrence.”26 Any media coverage of Israeli Intelligence operations is estimated to limit its operational functions, taking into account the regional security conditions in which it operates. The Israeli case supports my argument that the political regime itself does not give a full account of the nature of the relationship between the media and intelligence. A similar case, where this model appears, is that of in Russia, which is 21 Shpiro, Shlomo. "The Media Strategies of Intelligence Services." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (2001). 22 Ibid, 499 23 Ibid, 487 24 Ibid, p. 488 25 Ibid, p. 494 26 Ibid, p. 495 14 one of the two case studies in this paper. In a similar manner, Russian intelligence agencies often set an ‘iron curtain’ to block any kind of media coverage of their activities. Glen Hastedt in his article ‘Public Intelligence: Leaks as Policy Instruments. The Iraqi War’27 analyzes the use of intentional leaks to the media by intelligence services as part of their considered strategy. Hastedt explains that purposeful leaks of secret information to the press can be motivated by a wish “either to draw attention to oneself or to a policy problem, or to defend or distance oneself from a policy failure.” 28 Hastedt distinguishes between four patterns of media leaks which are: promotional, orchestrated, warring, and entrepreneurial, depending on “whether the leaked intelligence emerges in a sustained or episodic fashion and whether or not it is contested [by opponents].”29 Promotional intelligence means that classified information is disclosed in an episodic manner and is not contested by other sources. In this pattern, secret intelligence becomes public without facing any significant barriers, such as alternative information. The initial aim of promotional intelligence leaks is to focus public attention to a certain problem, or “or to defend or distance oneself from a policy failure.”30 Entrepreneurial intelligence leaks happen when secret intelligence becomes public and is contested by other parties, which also use intelligence information to convince the respective audience (policy makers) that their information is strategically more important or relevant than the one offered by their opponent. Orchestrated intelligence leaks emerge when secret intelligence is uncovered on a regular basis and is not contested by other parties. “More often than not orchestrated public intelligence will emanate from the executive branch. It has greater access to the products of the intelligence community and it is responsible for the selection and execution of foreign policy.”31 Finally, warring intelligence leaks are carried out on systematic and contested basis. “Here the opposing sides are involved in a siege in which the objective is to wear challengers down to the point where their opposition is no longer politically significant.”32 The primary 27 Hastedt, Glenn. "Public intelligence: Leaks as policy instruments–the case of the Iraq war." Intelligence & National Security (2005) 28 Ibid, p. 421 29 Ibid 30 Ibid 31 Ibid, p. 423 32 Ibid, p. 425 15 example here is the long episode of Soviet - US warring intelligence competitions during the Cold War. Regardless the dimension the mentioned leaks take, the media side is depicted as a passive actor of the process, the ‘projector’ through which a message is being sent. Naturally, in such conditions reporters do not have any noticeable weight in framing the relationship. Nevertheless, this categorization is important for our study, because it demonstrates that there is no single pattern of intelligence leaks in the media, as different conditions drive them. More power to the media as a political actor is given, or at leastiswished to be given, by Timothy E. Cook in his Governing the News.33 Cook creates a “new model of the reporter as a key participant in decision-making and policy making and of the news media as a central political force in government.”34 Media strategies, according to Cook, are generally used by state authorities to counter the weaknesses of their institutions. Through the press, officials promote ideas quickly and directly to their target audiences. While “politicians dictate conditions and rules of access, and designate certain events and issues as important by providing an arena for them, journalists, in turn, decide whether something is interesting enough to cover, the context in which to place it, and the prominence the story receives.”35 A peculiar type of relationship between the media and intelligence occurs when media reports on intelligence failures. In his article ‘Reports, Politics and Intelligence Failures’36 Robert Jervis brings up the example of American and British intelligence services’ failure concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Intelligence failure is understood as a mismatch between the services’ expectations and what actually was found out during the operation.37 When it was revealed that intelligence estimates did not coincide with the reality faced by US forces in Iraq, the US government found it necessary to feed the public hunger for explanations and clarify the reasons for intelligence failure in the press. Interestingly, while the official reports stressed organizational failures in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - such as ‘groupthink’ dynamic, excessive consensus and analytical errors - the media reports have blamed the post 9/11 environment of high risks of new threats, which forced policymakers to 33 Cook, Timothy E. Governing with the News: The News Media As a Political Institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 34 Ibid, p. 3 35 Ibid, p. 12 36 Jervis, Robert. "Reports, politics, and intelligence failures: The case of Iraq." Journal of Strategic Studies (2006) 37 Ibid, p. 10 16 take preventive deterrence measures without conducting additional cross-checking.38 Thus, the press highlighted the problem of politicization of intelligence, defined as the manipulation and misinterpretation of intelligence information by policymakers to reflect their preferences. We will return to the issue of intelligence manipulation in the case study of the United Kingdom. Intelligence failures and the subsequent reports in the media are also analyzed in Peter Gill’s Intelligence in an Insecure World.39 In Gill’s opinion, in such situations, intelligence agencies tend to minimize their contacts with the press, “apart from planting stories with friendly journalists.”40 Thus, suitable liaisons with media allow intelligence to reveal selective knowledge, draw public attention to a particular agenda or justify its failures in a way that minimizes public dissatisfaction. In Policing Politics: Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State,41 Gill focuses on the issue of the oversight and control of intelligence activities. He uses the Gore Tex state model to categorize the intelligence agencies. His typology, which I later use in this study as well, is based on the level of autonomy of the intelligence service from the rest of the state machine, and its level of penetration into society. Gill proposes three ideal types of intelligence services: Independent Security State (ISS), Political Police (PP), and Domestic Intelligence Bureau (DIB). The main reason I apply this typology is that it illustrates how the intelligence apparatus is positioned within a state and a society and at the same time is not a simple product of regime type. Gill himself sees the ideal security agency as the DIB, which has a statutory mandate and strong institutions of oversight ensuring that the agencies maintain respect for human rights. Though there is some extent of idealization in this category, I will apply this category to my understanding of British intelligence. Important insights on the democratic control of intelligence through a number of effective measures are also provided in Thomas Bruneau’s and Steven Boraz’s volume Reforming Intelligence. Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness.42 The contributors to the book offer a number of means to control intelligence, which is summed up in three basic 38 Badie , Dina. "Groupthink, Iraq, and the War on Terror: Explaining US Policy Shift toward Iraq." Foreign Policy Analysis 6 (2010): 39 Gill, Peter, and Mark Phythian. Intelligence in an Insecure World. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006 40 Ibid, p. 93 41 Gill, Peter. Policing Politics: Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State. London: F. Cass, 1994 42 Bruneau, Thomas C., and Steven C. Boraz. Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007 17 mechanisms: executive, legislative and judicial oversight. The cases of the intelligence practices in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, and Russia are brought into the framework. Mykhail Tsypkin’s chapter on the case of Russia addresses the issue of the civilian control of Russian security services, including the role of the media in keeping the agencies accountable. Tsypkin explains the factors behind the current state of affairs, which reveal how the weak institutions of intelligence oversight let the intelligence community grow into a ‘state within a state’ having minimum legal and public accountability. Another valuable source of information on the Russian case is the book by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan The New Nobility. Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring legacy of the KGB,43 which is a detailed investigation of Russian security services and their activities both at home and overseas. The authors show the dynamic of the agencies’ prestige and legitimacy accumulation since the collapse of the USSR and the rise to power of famous KGB ex-agent Vladimir Putin to the Office of President/Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. The book is even more interesting for me, as it is largely based on the authors’ experience as journalists, who have spent over a decade reporting on Russian security forces, and shed a light on the nature of relationships between the agencies and the media. To sum up, one can observe an increasing attention of scholars to intelligence issues, especially to the aspect of its oversight and democratic control. After the years of academic ‘blackout’ during the Cold War and early 1990-s, intelligence is no longer considered a ‘missing dimension.’44 However, its relationship with the media is still an under-theorized topic in the academia. Certainly, some aspects of it have been given an account, particularly those related to ‘leak scandals’ and revelations of sensitive information by reporters. Another issue area, which receives a growing consideration, is the journalists’ ability to scrutinize intelligence activities and keep them accountable. It is usually discussed in the wider context of intelligence activities in liberal democracies. Yet, there still has not been a systematic account of media-intelligence relationship which would explain under which conditions these actors come into contact and how their relationships are developed, regardless the political regime and the type of 43 Soldatov, Andrei, and Irina Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. New York: Public Affairs, 2010. 44 Andrew, Christopher M., and David Dilks. The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. 18 government. The problem with existing literature on intelligence is not just in their ‘center shift’ on liberal democracies (this is understandable, considering that most of the scholarship on intelligence is coming from British and American schools of social sciences; two prominent journals of the intelligence studies: International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence and Intelligence and National Security are US based). The main fallacy, in my opinion, is in understanding of the intelligence service as an extension of a state, while in fact it can have its own political agenda in relation with the public sector and the media, in particular. My study will fill this gap, offering an analysis of media-intelligence relationship based on the characteristics of both actors and the factors which make them behave the way they do. Organization of the Study In order to understand what the possible scenarios of the media and the intelligence interaction are, I analyze the nature of both actors in the Chapters II and III. First, I will focus on the conditions which allow/make the media perform its investigative function (watchdog media) or carry out a biased coverage of intelligence issues (partial media). I argue that while the media freedom largely depends on the type of the government, its ability to scrutinize the intelligence activity is driven by a number of other factors, which do not depend on regime type. That is why I expect different types of media to exist in the same country. In the chapter on intelligence organizations I provide a framework to understand the intelligence as an institution with fixed functions and activity. I am particularly interested in power relationships across the nexus of state, intelligence and society. Depending on the degree of its autonomy and penetration, three types of the intelligence apparatus (DIB, PP, ISS) are applied. Chapter IV shows how the two types of media behavior and three types of the intelligence interact and proposes six scenarios in which the relationships between these actors are expected to result. In Chapters V and VI I address the nature of the relationship between the intelligence and the domestic media in Russia and the United Kingdom respectively. Analyzing the time period after 1991, I suggest that Russian intelligence can be categorized as ISS, and therefore its 19 interactions with the media result in the ‘media spinning’ (in regards to partial media outlets) and ‘criticism-punishment’ and ‘iron curtain’ (with the watchdog media outlets). In the UK case I cover the same period with a particular focus on the events of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Using the categories offered above, I suggest that British intelligence is best categorized as a DIB and enters into three types of relationship with the media: ‘symbiotic benefit’ and ‘self-regulation’ with the partial media, and ‘media criticism’ when encountering with the watchdog media. 20 CHAPTER II : THE MEDIA Imagine prisoners who have been chained since childhood deep inside a cave. Not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains, their heads are chained as well so that their eyes are fixed on a wall. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised walkway, along which shapes of various animals, plants, and other things are carried. The shapes cast shadows on the wall, which occupy the prisoners' attention. Also, when one of the shape-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images.45 This passage is taken from Plato’s famous myth of the cave, in which he compares people with the prisoners who are looking at the shadows on the wall, naively believing that these images necessarily reflect the reality they live in, and having no clue that somewhere outside the cave there is an alternate world. This classic allegory is often read in terms of the modern information age with its floods of imagery that our minds cannot resist. Whether these shadows reflect reality or just a skewed image of it enormously depends on those who direct the images. Talking in modern terms, the fundamental questions here are: Who in fact broadcasts the information we receive every day? When are the media powerful enough to hold opinion without external interference? In contrast, when is it a mere projector, whose reports serve the interests of other agents (in this case, the intelligence service)? In this chapter, I will first figure out what motivates the media to monitor and criticize government agencies and officials, in other words to act as a ‘watchdog.’ In the second part I will inquire into the conditions under which voluntary or involuntary media bias occurs. A. Watchdog Media Although the idea of the media as the ‘watchdog’ of the society is an old one, it is still hard to give a precise definition to it. Jenifer Whitten-Wooding and Patrick James define a 45 Plato. The Republic, With an English Translation by Paul Shorey. London: W. Heinemann, 1946. P. 272 (book VII) 21 ‘watchdog’ “as the degree to which the news media take the initiative to scrutinize and report critically about government behavior.”46 In this definition, the monitoring role of the media refers to ‘investigative journalism’. Hereby, ‘watchdogging’ is conceptualized as the “extent to which the news media engage in investigative reporting.”47 Mark Hunter, in turn, defines ‘investigative journalism’ as a type of reporting that “involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed – either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents.”48 Lance Bennett and William Serrin define ‘watchdog journalism’ as “independent scrutiny by the press on the activities of government, business, and other public institutions, with an aim toward documenting, questioning, and investigating those activities, in order to provide the public and officials with timely information on issues of public concern.” 49 This process often includes combining both open and closed source information, archive data, official statements and press releases, and conducting interviews and polls, resulting in original analyses that reveal and highlight certain problems to attract public attention to them. It is for this reason that the watchdog role is considered to be the most important contribution of the press to society. In this project, I do not differentiate the media by the means it uses to broadcast information, i.e. the print newspapers, the Internet, TV, radio, etc. The more important aspect here is the reporters’ ability to report without bias, stay impartial and remain dedicated to uncovering hidden information, because only when the media performs as the watchdog of society, when it is able to act as a platform for political debate, it becomes impossible for the officials to hide their wrongdoings. Turning to the preconditions that allow the media to perform its watchdogging function, it would be safe to hypothesize that the higher the democracy-index of a given state, the more the engagement of the press in investigating reporting. This is based on a general axiom that the media is capable to critically report on its government when democratic institutions are present 46 Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer, and Patrick James. "Fourth Estate or Mouthpiece? A Formal Model of Media, Protest, and Government Repression." Political Communication (2012). P. 120 47 Ibid 48 Hunter, Marke Lee. "Story-based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Journalists." Les Publishers. UNESCO (2009). P. 8. 49 Overholser, Geneva, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. The Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. P. 327 22 in a state. In her research, Jenifer Whitten-Woodring50 matches media freedom and regime type: Table 1. Press Freedom in Democracies and Autocracies, 1980 – 200851 Her findings show that “the most common combinations of media and regime type are government-controlled media in autocratic countries, and free media in democratic countries.”52 This brings us to a simple and predictable graph, showing that the higher the level of democracy (D), the more freedom (F) the media enjoys. F 0 D However, before we proceed further, it is necessary to elaborate how media freedom is measured in this study. Freedom House generates an index of press freedom, which takes into account a variety of factors affecting the media. “The criteria which are considered for a free media are: constitutional aspects protecting freedom of the press and freedom of information; the enforcement of the constitutional aspects; whether laws restricting reporting are absent or not; whether the media outlets are free to determine their own content or not; free access to official and unofficial resources by the media; lack of official censorship and journalist self-censorship; freedom of the media from economic control both from the government and private ownership; 50 Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer. "Watchdog or Lapdog? Media Freedom, Regime Type, and Government Respect for Human Rights." International Studies Quarterly (2009) P. 602. 51 Ibid 52 Ibid. 23 and freedom from economic manipulation.”53 Reporters without Borders takes into considerations additional factors affecting media freedom, such as the use or threat of use of violence against journalists. It also includes the level of self-censorship and the journalists’ ability to oversee and openly criticize. “Reporters without Borders have taken into account not only the abuses attributable to the state, but also those by armed militias, clandestine organizations and pressure groups.”54 Hence, there is a positive function between free media (F) and its watchdog behavior (W). Press independence from both the government and commercial pressures increases the degree to which news media act as watchdogs, because in such environments media becomes truly investigative, and has a public-service focus rather than profit-maximizing goals. W 0 F Combining two previous graphs, we presume that there is a positive correlation between the level of democracy and the media’s ability to perform as a watchdog: W 0 53 Ibid, p. 598. Popescu G, Bogdan. “Press Freedom in Non-Democratic Regimes.” Paper presented at the ECPR Graduate Conference in Dublin in 2010. P. 5 54 24 D However, if we go back to the Table 1, we can observe that there are a percentage of states, both democratic and autocratic, that do not fit with the general pattern democracy → freedom of the press → watchdog journalism. That means that the presence of democratic institutions and media freedom do not always result in the media that perform a watchdog role. Similarly, the low index of media freedom does not exclude the possibility of the press criticizing government activities. Indeed, Whitten-Woodring’s empirical studies have found that there are some instances when autocratic regimes would create institutions that allow media freedom and tolerate an independent news media. There are also a few cases where the media in democratic states are unable to function freely or criticize its government. Whitten-Woodring uses the examples of Uganda and Mexico to illustrate the first case, and Greece and Portugal from 1981 to 1995 in the second case. The very existence of such outliers prevents us from arguing that a watchdog media is a feature of democracies only, or that the press in democratic states will necessarily investigate and report on its government. This again supports my earlier point that we need to find out additional reasons that make the media and intelligence communities behave the way they do. It compels us to consider the factors – be these characteristics exhibited by government or the media – that make watchdog reporting possible across different regime types. In exploring those exceptions, Whitten-Woodring suggests that “autocratic leaders might allow some media freedom for the very same reason that they sometimes hold elections: because they want to establish or maintain a facade of legitimacy.” 55 Another explanation to this is that some “dictators might permit media freedom in order to remain informed about the performance of lower level bureaucrats in remote regions.” 56 Whitten-Woodring and James also posit that “watchdog journalism is influenced by whether there is a need for it.” 57 My case studies will suggest that the degree to which the media acts as a watchdog is affected by the degree to which governments are perceived to keep their activities in secrecy, for the forbidden fruit is sweet, the obscured is intriguing. If governments are hiding a large portion of their intelligence activities, watchdogs become suspicious and more motivated to find out the truth. Their motivation is strengthened further by the ‘newsworthiness’ of intelligence stories, which are perceived to be 55 Whitten-Woodring,and James, p. 119 Ibid, p. 118 57 Ibid, p. 120 56 25 full of conflict and drama. Such stories normally lead to a bigger audience, which is one of the main targets of the media companies regardless of their profit orientation. On the other hand, we assume that a reputation for openness and transparency discourage the media to dig in deep. Because if the necessary information is available and easily accessible (i.e. in official reports, statements, press-releases, minutes of meetings, etc.) the media finds itself satisfied with already large amount of knowledge to be analyzed. However, we also assume that when the secrecy (S) reaches its apogee (S2), it becomes almost impossible for the media to get information about governments’ activities. Consequently, while watchdogging is an increasing function of perceived state secrecy, this activity declines, when a great deal of information is kept hidden. In further chapters, my case studies of Israeli and Iranian intelligence service will illustrate this phenomenon. W S2 0 S Another component, which is closely associated with ‘secrecy’, and negatively correlated with press freedom, is state coercion (C). Coercion is defined as “the use of threatened force, including the limited use of actual force to back up the threat, to induce an adversary to behave differently than it otherwise would.”58 I suggest that state coercion can motivate reporters, who are dedicated to their journalist ethic, to perform a watchdog role, despite the danger it presents. Based on the data from nongovernmental organizations that monitor media freedom and attacks on journalists, Whitten-Woodring and James argue that “media workers in states where media are only partly free from government control will sometimes report on government repression even if doing so puts them in great peril.” 59 For example “countries like Sri Lanka, the 58 Byman, Daniel L., and Matthew C. Waxman. "Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate." International Security (2000). P. 9 59 Whitten-Woodring and James, p. 115 26 Philippines, and Russia, where attacks on and murders of media workers are more common, are not necessarily those with the world’s most repressive media environments, but are generally places where private or independent voices do exist and some journalists are willing to pursue dangerous stories.”60 However, as in the case with “secrecy”, when state coercion is severe (C2), the watchdogging is anticipated to decline, because the legitimate fear of prosecution, arrest, murder, or the endangerment of family members, causes journalists to censor themselves. Looking ahead, this is especially relevant in dealing with the ISS – a type of intelligence service, which uses violent measures to suppress domestic opposition. W C2 0 C Another condition that plays an important role in the journalists’ ability to play the watchdog role is the professional environment, in which they operate. Regardless the geography and political regimes, the basis of media professionalism is the journalist’s moral responsibility to its audience, which is to expose information that the public ought to know about. Michael Gurevitch and Jay Blumler emphasize the most important features of media professionalism, such as “surveillance of the sociopolitical environment, reporting developments likely to impinge, positively or negatively, on the welfare of citizens; meaningful agenda-setting, identifying the key issues of the day, including the forces that have formed and may resolve them; dialogue across a diverse range of views, as well as between power holders and mass publics; incentives for citizens to learn, choose and become involved, rather than merely to follow and kibitz the political process; a principal resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence, integrity and ability to serve the audience.” 61 60 61 Ibid, p. 116 Lichtenberg, Judith. Democracy and the Mass Media: A Collection of Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. P. 25 27 According to Whitten-Woodring, reporters’ professionalism has been the crucial characteristic in maintaining a watchdog role of the media in the repressing environments of Uganda and Mexico. In Uganda, regardless of the government’s efforts to oppress the journalistic freedom, the reporters chose “to risk arrests rather than sacrifice their journalistic freedom and ethics.”62 Similarly, in Mexico, the media was inspired with the “disaffection with the political system and exposure to foreign models.”63 Hereby, in our last graph in this section we conclude that watchdog media have a positive relationship with media professionalism (MP): W 0 MP B. Partial Media The general thesis of this camp of media theorists is that the partial media serve the interests of government agencies and officials, giving a favorably biased coverage to them. Partial media can take various manifestations, however they all point to the negation of the fourth estate notion, i.e. the media’s ability to check on the branches of government. In the worst cases, media bias leads to “total submissiveness of authority, total lack of independent power, obliviousness to all interests except those of powerful groups, and framing all issues according to the perspectives of the highest powers in the system.”64 62 Whitten-Woodring, p. 600 Ibid 64 Malikova, Svetlana. “The Role of Mass Media in the Survival Or Failure of Democracies.” MA thesis, State University of New York. P. 20 63 28 In the first rank of the supporters of this assertion we find Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky with their Propaganda Model, which was laid out in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Herman and Chomsky explain bias in the media in liberal democracies, especially the United States. The authors argue that the “media serves ‘political ends’ by mobilizing bias, patterning news choices and marginalizing dissent, and by allowing the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public.”65 Their propaganda model states that there are five filters, which define what is ‘the news’; put differently, what stories are finally presented in newspapers or TV channels. These filters are the following: ownership of the media; funding sources; flak (negative reaction to media statements); the reliance of the media on information provided by government; and because the book was written in a Cold War context, anti-communism. Herman and Chomsky suggest that these filters serve as gates that limit the range of news appearing on TV or in newspapers. There are several possible explanations for why journalists would voluntarily or involuntarily become the advocates of intelligence services. For the purposes of this thesis, we combine them into two general explanations for partial behavior of the media: media sourcing (MS) and media punishment (MP). Firstly, media bias occurs when government agencies provide the media with ready-topublish news. This is more apparent for media companies that are owned either by the state or state-run companies, which allows for limitless favorable coverage or concealing of government activities. A classic example is the case of the Russian Federation, where “51% of the main nationwide television network, First Channel, is owned by the state with the rest in the hands of state enterprises.”66 The state-owned enterprise Gazprom, Russia’s biggest energy company, owns the channels NTV and TNT.67 Ren-TV and Channel 5 are owned by National Media Group (NMG), which again is owned by Bank Rossia. The main shareholders of these companies are the brothers Kovalchuck, said to have close connections to Putin. Channel Rossiya, Channel Kultura and Channel Vesti-24 are directly owned by the state.”68 In such conditions it is hard to 65 Klaehn, Jeffery. Filtering the News: Essays on Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2005. P. 4 66 Nemniy, Vladimir. Elektronim SMI — Polozhitel'ni Zaryad. "The Electronic Media — a Positive Charge." 2005, available at http://grani.ru/Society/Media/m.96932.html [accessed July 6, 2013] 67 Gazprom Media Holding’s Official Website, www.gazprom-media.com/en/tv.xml [accessed July 6, 2013] 68 Nemniy, 2005 29 argue for the existence of any real objectivity of the news outlets, as they serve the political elites, rather than the needs of their audience. It may seem that this is intrinsic just for non-democratic regimes. However, it would be fair to say that considerable media-sourcing happens in democratic societies as well. Here the “dominant elites routinely facilitate the news gathering process, providing press releases, advance copies of speeches, periodicals, photo opportunities, etc.”69 Klaehn suggests that “government and corporate sources are attractive to the media for purely economic reasons. Such sources are favored and are routinely endorsed and legitimized by the media because they are recognizable and typically viewed as prima facie credible. Information provided to media by corporate and state sources does not require fact checking or costly background research and is typically portrayed as accurate.”70 Chomsky and Herman add, that “the media may feel obligated to carry extremely dubious stories and mute criticism in order not to offend their sources in government and disturb a close relationship.”71 Consequently, such domination by official sources almost always brings to a media bias, because these sources are perceived to be ‘experts’. Hence, we conclude that partial media (P) is in positive functional relation with mediasourcing: P 0 MS Another factor causing partial reporting is punishment for failing to publish the ‘right’ news. Threatening journalists with prosecution for publishing classified intelligence information or any coverage critical of national security officials’ activities is one of the ways to prevent 69 Chomsky, Noam, and Carlos Peregrín Otero. Language and Politics. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004. P. 19 Klaehn, .p.5 71 Chomsky, 1988, p. 22 70 30 them from doing that. In the most severe cases journalists are intimidated and threatened when they gain access to sensitive information or when there is little tolerance for media criticism. Normally in such instances the judicial system fails to protect journalists’ nationally and internationally guaranteed rights (for example, those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), not to mention the public’s right to be informed on certain issues. The main perpetrators of such repression are usually police force and criminal organizations with possible links with government officials. These hidden ties also cause a culture of impunity that discourages an independent and objective press. Under such conditions, dissident reporters often suffer from persistent attacks and are forced to leave the country. Others, under the fear of violence against them and their families, dare not raise their voices in the protection of their constitutional rights. Another means to punish journalists is to boycott them. “Because the press and the government are in a symbiotic relationship - with the press depending on the government, and vice versa, - government officials can temporarily stop returning the phone calls of disfavored journalists. The press can be excluded from a press briefing, denied access to other proceedings, etc.”72 Also, licensing can be a method by which private media outlets can be regulated. A media company may be deprived of its license or threatened with this punishment if it crosses the ‘unwritten’ redlines of admissible coverage. In most cases, the official reason for the suspension of the license, obviously, would not be made clear. One recent example of this punishment comes from Ukraine, where “in August 2010 two independent television companies had a number of their licenses withdrawn due to alleged irregularities in their initial allocation. However, Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, the owner of a rival media group and the head of the Ukrainian Security Service, was accused by one of the stations of influencing the decision”73, the Freedom House report says. A more complex negative consequence of this is that even the outlets that are not subject to such decisions, self-censor their own reports to avoid similar consequences, which in turn erodes the very notion of impartial and diverse media. “Actual shutdowns of media outlets are sometimes processed 72 Papandrea, Mary-Rose. "Lapdogs, Watchdogs, and Scapegoats: The Press and National Security Information." (2008). P. 256 73 A Freedom House. “License to Censor: The Use of Media Regulation to Restrict Press Freedom.” September 2011. P. 8 31 through legal channels but more commonly occur as the result of an extralegal executive decision. While they are often temporary, the closures occasionally become permanent. They are frequently imposed in periods of political or social tension, such as during election campaigns, protest movements, or outbreaks of ethnic or religious violence.”74 In most of the cases, the authorities would justify it by technical infringements, like in the Ukrainian case, while the true reason is to keep unfavorable media or certain reporters silent. Additionally, advertising boycotts can be used against private and perceived antigovernment news outlets, as state-owned companies normally buy advertising space in ‘loyal’ media in exchange for favorable editorial policies. In Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model such ‘disciplining’ is called ‘flak’. “It refers to negative responses to a media statement or program and may be organized centrally or locally, or it may consist of entirely independent actions of individuals.” 75 “This may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, […] and other modes of complaint, threat and punitive action.”76 Flak is, no doubt, costly to the media, mostly because of the loss of advertising income or the costs for numerous legal processes they often have to go through to defend their public image. Besides governments, flak can also be arranged by private influence groups, such as advocacy groups or think tanks. As the authors state, “the prospect of eliciting flak can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.”77 Herewith, we observe a positive correlation between the degree of media punishment (MP) and the partial behavior of the media. P 0 MP 74 Ibid. Klaehn, p. 5. 76 Chomsky and Herman, p. 26 77 Ibid. 75 32 Ultimately, media punishment results in self-censorship. Indeed, intimidation, criminal prosecution, and financial pressure have a combined ‘dehydration’ effect that undermines the development and persistence of a free, objective and professional media. Self-censorship happens when the media outlets pre-select ‘right-thinking’ reporters and adjust their policy not to upset their owners, advertisers, parent companies, or those in political power. In his report ‘Self-censorship: Why We Do the Censors’ Work for them’, Paul Sturges suggests that the feeling of fear is the ultimate and essential reason for self-censorship. He further adds: Dealing with terror first of all, it has to be acknowledged that some people do not reveal what they know or think because they have a very real fear of beatings, confinement, torture, and violent death that has nothing to do with the formal apparatus of the state or any other organization. Clandestine hit squads of off-duty policemen or soldiers, members of political movements or, quite simply, hired thugs exist in many countries. Political dissidents, social individualists, members of marginalized groups, and the journalists who might try to reflect their views are at threat in many countries, particularly those of Asia, Africa and Latin America.78 Sturges highlights the well-known case of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s assassination. Politkovskaya reported critically on Putin’s regime and accused the Federal Security Service (FSB) – Russian domestic secret service - of suppressing civil rights and in order to re-establish another KGB. Following the murder of Politkovskaya, which is widely accepted to have been organized by the FSB, the fear of self-censorship emerged in journalistic circles. The Guardian's Moscow correspondent, Tom Parfitt, said: "My fear is that almost unconsciously one starts to self-censor what one does, because in the back of one's head is the idea that ‘Oh maybe I shouldn't write that potentially damaging or critical thing about prime minister Kadyrov in Chechnya, because I might get some comeback from it.”79 A term that is closely associated with self-censorship, and sometimes misinterpreted as its synonym, is self-regulation. The difference between these two terms is drastic. Self-regulation happens when the media voluntarily choose not to cover certain issues for national security reasons, concerns for territorial integrity, social stability, the rise of xenophobia, etc. In a selfregulatory system, the media industry essentially polices itself through bodies such as a 78 Sturges, Paul. " Self-Censorship: Why We Do The Censors' Work for Them." Delivered at LIBCOM Conference in Russia, 2008 79 "Murder of Russian Journalist Leads to Self-censorship Fear." Press Gazette, October 11, 2006, available at http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/35925 [accessed July 6, 2013] 33 nongovernmental media council or an ombudsman, which monitor compliance with agreed-upon codes of conduct. In contrast with self-censorship, self-regulation has no correlation with government’s coercion or any kind of media punishment. One real world example of such practice is the British invention - Defence Advisory Notice (DA-Notice). It is an official notice sent to media outlets requesting them not to publicize certain issues, such as the details of intelligence operations in the name of national security. “For example, recently, broadcasters were asked not to show live pictures of military aircraft leaving UK bases for Libya, lest it give Gaddafi's forces any clues about targets.”80 I will explore the DA-Notice system in forthcoming chapters, and highlight the contrast between self-censorship and self-regulation in our case studies of the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom, where, I believe, the media-intelligence interactions illustrate the difference between these two practices. At the same time, I do not exclude the self-regulation mechanism from our category of the partial media behavior. Guiding the journalists to apply self-regulative mechanisms still means to putting restrictions on them and urging them to cover sensitive issues in a light that is beneficial to the government’s policy. Overall, this chapter has shown that the media’s motivation and ability to scrutinize the intelligence services’ activities and serve as a check on their behavior depends on a number of factors and institutions, which are not essentially related to certain political regimes. This understanding is more appropriate for my study, because it explains the presence of both watchdog and partial media outlets in my case studies of the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation, though these states fall under different categories of political regimes. 80 Grimley, Naomi. "Does the DA-Notice Inhibit Press Freedom?" The Guardian, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/aug/22/ministry-of-defence-newspapers [accessed July 6, 2013] 34 CHAPTER III: THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE This chapter provides a theoretical framework for our understanding of intelligence as an institution with a hierarchical organization, fixed roles and areas of activity. Because the field of intelligence studies is broad and complicated by the shadow of secrecy surrounding it, we will focus on just a few aspects of intelligence organizations’ activities, and in particular on the power relationships across the nexus of state, intelligence, and society. The logical conclusions drawn from this exploration will help us understand why different intelligence agencies choose a certain type of relationship with media outlets. This chapter also sets a theoretical background for our study of intelligence apparatus in the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation. A. Conceptual framework As I have noted earlier, due to the broad nature of this phenomenon, there is no consensus within intelligence theorists and practitioners on the definition of intelligence. Most of them stress the ‘informational’ aspect of the term and sometimes equate ‘information’ and ‘intelligence.’ In this project I apply Mark Lowenthal’s multidimensional definition of intelligence consisting of three different but interconnected phenomena: first, he defines intelligence as a process: “Intelligence can be thought of as the means by which certain types of information are required and requested, collected, analyzed, and disseminated, and as the way in which certain types of covert action are conceived and conducted.” 81 Second, Lowenthal refers to intelligence as a product: “Intelligence can be thought of as the product of these processes, that is, as the analysis and intelligence operations themselves.”82 And finally, it is the organization: “Intelligence can be thought of as the units that carry out its various functions.”83 I will focus on the third aspect of Lowenthal’s definition, which looks at intelligence as an institution with distinct behavioral codes, policy agenda and ordering effect on how authority and power should be constituted, exercised, and distributed. This definition makes us consider how intelligence organizations relate with other institutions, such as the media, and to what 81 Lowenthal, p.8 Ibid 83 Ibid 82 35 extent intelligence services’ behavior is constrained or enabled by the rest of the state and the society. For the purpose of this study I apply three-partite typology of security intelligence agencies developed by Peter Gill in his Policing Politics. Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State. Gill’s categorization is relevant to this analysis, because it elaborates on preconditions, which affect the formation of a certain type of intelligence organization. Before I proceed to the typology itself, it will be useful to unravel these preconditions in order to be accurate in my categorization of the British and the Russian Intelligence services in our last chapters. At the heart of Gill’s typology are the concepts of ‘autonomy’ and ‘penetration’. “Autonomy encompasses the relationship between internal security agencies and the state.”84 It is measured by the degree of independence the intelligence apparatus enjoys from the rest of the state, which in turn demonstrated results from the mechanisms of external oversight by the executive, legislative and juridical branches of the state. Penetration represents the degree to which intelligence influences society. “Albeit a ‘masculinist’ term, it does convey a sense of security agencies attempting, sometimes against resistance, sometimes unheeded, to gather information and exercise power within a particular context of law and rules which facilitates the state’s efforts to maintain security and order.” 85 Intelligence organizations with low degree of penetration are those with a clear statutory basis, organizational structure and a straightforward designation of its roles and functions. To measure the degree of the intelligence autonomy, we analyze the institution of oversight. Accordingly, the stronger the institutions of intelligence services oversight, the lower their autonomy from the state. 84 85 Gill, 1994, p. 79 Ibid 36 B. Intelligence Services’ Oversight There is general agreement that there are three types of oversight: executive, legislative, and judicial oversight. Each of them plays its specific part in keeping intelligence services accountable. Executive Oversight Executive oversight, represented either by the President or the Cabinet of Ministers, or both, is typically the key mechanism ensuring that intelligence organizations conduct their functions properly, because it is mostly the executive branch that defines the purposes of the intelligence community and organizes it. “Further, the executive branch is the primary consumer of intelligence and therefore provides the greatest direction for the intelligence services on a daily basis.”86 The primary task of the executive is to ensure that intelligence services do not step beyond their responsibilities when they collect and analyze intelligence information. Ideally, executive oversight will also make sure that the intelligence services do not compromise the independence of the media. Another responsibility of the executive branch is to detect intelligence failures and take measures not to let them happen again. Legislative Oversight Legislative branch “creates the key organizational, budgetary, personnel, and legal oversight mechanisms for intelligence services.”87 It may also serve as a check and balance of executive’s control of the intelligence community, ensuring that the executive does not misuse or manipulate the intelligence services for its own parochial ends. The legislative branch may also review intelligence activity more effectively than the Executive, because intelligence services are often part of the executive branch and may receive direction from the Cabinet of Ministers or Head of state. 86 87 Bruneau, Dombroski, p. 14 Ibid, p. 15 37 The secretive nature of intelligence work restricts and hampers parliamentary involvement in oversight. Nevertheless, as the people’s representatives, parliaments need access to intelligence information. A solution to this dilemma is sometimes found in the establishment of special parliamentary committees for intelligence oversight, which “should have the right to request reports, hearings and conduct investigations to expose shortcomings or abuses. In order to be able to perform this task, those parliamentarians must have – besides their integrity - the trust of both the intelligence services and the public.” 88 Ideally, the parliament’s oversight committee should not give any directions on intelligence activities. Simultaneously, it must not speak as an advocate of the intelligence community, because in both cases it may let politics spill over into the world of intelligence, which degrades the intelligence mission and its product. Some of the best examples of such parliamentary oversight committees may be found in Parliamentary Control Panel in Germany, the Intelligence and Security Committee in the United Kingdom, and the Bicameral Commission on Intelligence in Argentina. Judicial Oversight “Judicial control encompasses an independent judiciary empowered to review and interpret the legal framework for which intelligence operations are conducted.”89 However, the judiciary is normally the less involved branch in intelligence oversight. One of the reasons why intelligence-related cases reach the courts rarely is that “judges generally do not see it as their task to supervise the exercise of intelligence functions, but rather to review their constitutionality, legality or compliance with human rights standards.”90 Nevertheless, judicial oversight over the intelligence activities allows the courts to function as a final curb on arbitrary or abusive uses of power by intelligence services. Judicial oversight of security intelligence issues has both its benefits and drawbacks. “On the positive side, in most liberal states judges are perceived to be independent of the government; their detached view lends credibility to the system of oversight in the eyes of the 88 Intelligence Services and Democracy. Working Paper Series No. 13. Geneva: Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2002. P. 12 89 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 15 90 Born, Hans, and Ian Leigh. "Democratic Accountability of Intelligence Services. Policy Paper №19." Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Force (2007): P. 14 38 public.”91 In worst cases, however, the judiciary is generally involved in maintaining the ‘legal’ umbrella for keeping sensitive or potentially sensitive information even more secret and punishing those who violate such state of affair, e.g. leakers, whistle-blowers, independent reporters, etc. C. Penetration. Intelligence Structure The extent to which intelligence is able to penetrate society is one of the major indicators of its accountability. High level of penetration means that the intelligence agency holds an unchecked power in monitoring and carrying out surveillance over citizens to the extent that it prevents their political and social freedoms. This includes illegal phone tapping, monitoring emails, social networks, financial and medical records, etc. I suggest that it is the organizational structure of the intelligence community that affects its ability to transgress the boundaries of their legal authority and abuse the basic principles of human rights. There is a belief both among the theorists and practitioners of the security services that domestic and foreign intelligence should be separated. The rationale is that domestic and foreign operations are conducted with different mechanisms, for different purposes and should not be mixed up. “The mission of domestic intelligence generally is to obtain, correlate and evaluate intelligence relevant to internal security. Internal security aims for protection of the state, territory and society against acts of terrorism, espionage, sabotage, subversion, extremism, organized crime, narcotics production and trafficking, etc.”92 The purpose of foreign intelligence is to collect, analyze of information, which is required for the maintenance of external security. With this aim, foreign intelligence focuses its activity on foreign threats and risks, evaluates the probability of activities overseas and their possible outcome. Thus, “information is needed about intentions, capabilities and activities of 91 Ibid Born, H., and Marina Caparini. Democratic Control of Intelligence Services Containing Rogue Elephants. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. P. 31 92 39 foreign powers, organizations, groups or persons that represent actual or potential threats to the state and its interests.”93 On the other hand, domestic intelligence should be distinguished from law enforcement, as the two services have fundamentally different objectives. While the aim of the both services is to maintain domestic stability, “the law enforcement’s goal is to get a conviction in a specific criminal case, and the task of the intelligence is to collect as much information as possible on potential threats to the state and society.”94 A separation of functions and powers is generally aimed to “prevent any single entity from having a monopoly on the production and use” of information. 95 Some successful examples of separation of powers may be found in the intelligence services in the United Kingdom (MI5 and MI6) the United States (the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation). As for the ‘failed cases’, the general picture is that the functions and responsibilities of domestic and foreign intelligence, and law enforcement organizations overlap or become indistinguishable, and the legislation on which they are based is normally too elusive to solve the issue. Intelligence agencies in such cases are used to “identify domestic opponents, neutralize opposition to the government, and seek to generate domestic apathy or at least acquiescence to the regime’s rule using a variety of means, including control over the media.”96 One example of such security service is the Iranian intelligence community which includes the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) known as VEVAK (Vezarat-e Ettela'atvaAmniyat-e Keshvar). “IRGC is a complex combination of institutions - army forces, intelligence services, undercover and special operations forces, police, paramilitary forces and business groups with implications at a global level […] It is regarded as a military backbone of the state, and at the same time a social, political and business organization, […] produces a large number of political and business leaders and is involved in various domains of the state. […] The security division of the IRGC 93 Intelligence Services and Democracy. Working Paper Series No. 13, p. 3 Ibid, p. 4 95 Bruneau, Dombroski, p. 16 96 Ibid, p. 2 94 40 operates mostly as a unit of domestic intelligence by monitoring and arresting dissidents and separatists and sending them to prisons controlled by IRGC.”97 MOIS operates under the direct supervision of the President. “The minister of intelligence is a member of the Supreme National Security Council and is always a cleric, which means that the Supreme Leader has a great influence in his appointment and closely watches his performances. […] MOIS officers are recruited only from the Shiites, the true believers.” 98 Some of the responsibilities of the MOIS include supervision of ethnic minorities, such as “Balochi, Kurds, Azeri and Arabs, in which they try to identify dissidents and protesters.”99 This case demonstrates that internal opposition can be treated as an alleged foreign enemy or at least having links with foreign enemies, which indicates that despite their different purposes, there can be a lot of overlap between the practices of domestic, foreign intelligence and police service. This results in an apparent focus of the intelligence service on domestic opposition, not foreign threats. Under such conditions, certain media outlets or reporters can be easily identified as ‘enemies’ of the state and be closed down, especially during the times of social tensions. D. Typology of Intelligent Services Gill creates a three-by-three table categorizing the different possible types of relationships between security intelligence agencies and states, according to the level of autonomy enjoyed by the intelligence service, and the scale of penetration into the state and society. His analysis focuses on three main types of relationships, these being, ‘Independent Security State’ (ISS), ‘Political Police’ (PP), and ‘Domestic Intelligence Bureau’ (DIB) 97 Dumitrescu, Octavian. "The Intelligence and Security Services of Iran." World Security Network, November 20, 2010, available at http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/Iran/Dumitrescu-Octavian/The-Intelligence-and-SecurityServices-of-Iran [accessed July 6, 2013] 98 Ibid 99 Ibid 41 Table 2. Typology of Security Intelligence Agencies100 High High Medium Low A B C E F Independent state Medium D security Political police Low G H I Domestic intelligence bureau The DIB category refers to the type of the intelligence with low degree of penetration and autonomy. It has a limited ability to act as an independent agent. The DIB depicts intelligence agencies as having limited powers and functions, which are generally limited to information collection and analysis, “relying primarily on open source material” and rarely “engaging in countering activities.”101 The DIB is “subject to firm ministerial control and is not permitted to penetrate far into society.”102 Agencies of this type tend to respect human rights and civil liberties, including media freedom. Although the DIB is an ideal type, the British MI5 is represented as a close fit in this category, which we will demonstrate in our case study of the British intelligence. On the other end of the table there is the ISS, which is distinguished by low levels of external control and oversight, i.e. high degree of autonomy from the state machine, and high degree of penetration into society. This type of security services “keeps its funding and policies hidden from the governmental policy-making process, and its targets and countering activities 100 Gill, 1994, p. 82 Ibid 102 Ibid 101 42 are authorized by the service itself, not elected officials.”103 Some real world examples of such type of intelligence agencies are those in Iran and Russia. In the middle of the two extremes there is the Political Police. This type of security intelligence service disperses in the political elites in power, and responds to their needs. It “enjoys greater autonomy than the bureau [DIB] from ministerial control and the freedom to employ more extensive information and countering techniques, but is still subject to greater external control than the independent security state.”104 Normally, the PP focuses on domestic opposition to the existing regimes, often collecting intelligence data “usually unrelated to specific criminal offenses.”105 Such tactics are demonstrated by Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT), which illegally keeps watch over the minorities, such as Kurds, Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, mainly in order to prevent them from being employed in public service and taking part in significant business tenders.106 Taraf Daily claims that MİT has conducted agreements with Turkish Airlines and the Ministry of Education, and other public institutions, which enable the intelligence agency to robustly collect personal information on anyone receiving services from these institutions.107 As Gill admits, “same agency may be found at different points at different times’, depending on respective changes in its level of autonomy and penetration. As for the empty boxes, to Gill it seems unlikely that agencies would locate at C or G, however he does not exclude that “an autonomous agency which exercises high self-restraint or one which is subject to strict ministerial control and is highly penetrative”108 could possibly exist. The value of Gill’s typology is that it suggests ‘bottom-up’ reasoning behind certain intelligence agency type, which are the level of its autonomy and penetration. As with the media categories, this typology is more capacious than simply ‘democratic’ and ‘non-democratic’ intelligence. It is flexible enough to help us observe changes and transformations over a time, or 103 Bruneau, Thomas C., and Scott D. Tollefson. Who Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. P. 154 104 Gill, 1994, p. 82 105 Bruneau, Tollefson, p. 154 106 Ibid 107 Albayrak, Aydin. "Exposed MIT Plan Hints Turkey Moving toward ‘Intelligence State’." Sunday's Zaman (Ankara), June 16, 2013, available at http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action? newsId=318370 [accessed July 6, 2013] 108 Gill, 1994, p. 82 43 when any intervening variables, like an external threat to national security, occurs. Having Gill’s classification in mind, we propose a deductive analysis of intelligence services relationships with the media in the next chapter. 44 CHAPTER IV: MEDIA-INTELLIGENCE RELATIONSHIP Figuratively, both intelligence services and the media outlets do the same job: they collect, analyze and disseminate information and knowledge. Often they both act without the permission of the people about whom they are searching information. One can observe a kind of intelligence collection cycle within journalistic activity and also clarity of method in journalism that is similar to government intelligence gathering.109 However, as Tony Campbell puts “there are fundamental differences between the institutions, notably their distinct ‘ownership’: public versus private; customer focus (government decision-makers versus the public) and modus operandi (closed versus open).”110 These differences naturally cause “an inherent conflict between the open media, that wish to publish security-related information as part of their responsibility to their audience, and intelligence services, which work on the basis of secrecy and often attempt to prevent the publication of information on their activities and sources.”111 We should therefore expect these institutions to sometimes have troubled relationship. This study adopts six models of media-intelligence interaction. In these models we bring into play different types of actors we introduced in the previous chapters: two media types that vary according to their ability to perform an investigative function, these being the watchdog media and the partial media; and three types of the intelligence which vary according to the level of their autonomy and penetration, these being Domestic Intelligence Bureau, Political Police and Independent Security State. For the design of the models, we rely on the action-reaction (reciprocity) model, according to which “the behavior of one actor is conditioned by the behavior of another actor in a given social system.”112 Sandberg defines reciprocity as a “communication of pertinent type between the various parties and that ‘reactions’ tend to be reciprocated.” 113 Reciprocity is distinguished from symmetry according to Kegley, Richardson and Andrew, who argue that 109 Dover, Goodman, p. 9 Ibid, p. 167 111 Shpiro, p. 485 112 Moore, Will H. "Action-Reaction or Rational Expectations?Reciprocity and the Domestic-International Conflict Nexus during the “Rhodesia Problem”." Journal of Conflict Resolution (1995). P. 133 113 Sandberg, I. W. "On the Mathematical Theory of Social Processes Characterized by Weak Reciprocity." Conflict Management and Peace Science (1978). P. 1 110 45 “quantitative equivalence is not required to establish affective content interaction.”114 This is an important insight for our models, as the direction of the relationship is primarily set by the intelligence agencies, while the media is the one to take the position of the responder or reactor. Furthermore, because our typology of intelligence services is not a simple product of a regime type, media-intelligence relations are also not driven by regime type. While Joshua Goldstein and John Freeman115 assume that in reciprocity model actors are stuck in an endless spiral of static relations. Moore116 specifies that this spiral can be abandoned if exogenous shocks occur. For my models, the action-reaction pattern can be changed due to modifications of the attributes of the actors, for example reformation of the intelligence apparatus, change of the policy orientation of the media outlet, or due to changes in the external environment, e.g. a threat to national security, under which we expect more cooperation between our actors than during peaceful times. Based on two categories of the media (the partial and the watchdog) and three types of the intelligence (DIB, PP and ISS), we create a table of the six possible scenarios of their interaction (Table 2). Several types of relationships can exist in the same state, when the intelligence community interacts with different types of media outlets. Moreover, there can be a temporary replacement of certain scenario under critical circumstances, such as wars, revolutions, terrorist attacks, etc. 114 Richardson, Neil R., and Ann C. Agnew. "Symmetry and Reciprocity as Characteristics of Dyadic Foreign Policy behavior." Social Quarterly 62, no. 1 (1981). P. 128-38 115 Goldstein, Joshua S., and John R. Freeman. Three-Way Street: Strategic Reciprocity in World Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. P. 23 116 Moore, p. 134 46 Table 3. Models of Media-Intelligence Interaction Partial media DIB Watchdog media Symbiotic benefit Self-regulation Media Criticism PP Media spinning Criticism-punishment ISS Media spinning Criticism-punishment Iron curtain In the first scenario, when the DIB and the partial media enter a relationship we expect that two types of interaction models may occur: ‘symbiotic benefit, ‘and ‘self-regulation’. A. Symbiotic Benefit Within this model, the intelligence services maintain an extensive level of openness toward the media. This is done to discourage the media from negative coverage, which can harm the public legitimacy of the institution. Indeed, public perceptions of the intelligence services are of considerable concern for the DIB, partly because it has substantial budgets to defend. Understanding that effective relations with the media sector should be a two-way street, the DIB allows the journalists to receive certain portion of information in order to discourage them from digging deeper and when necessary to keep certain issues out of public sight. On the other side of the relationship, the partial media take the advantage of the open intelligence policy, first of all because media coverage on intelligence issues is always newsworthy and in high demand among the media audience. As a reward, the partial media does not tend to question the reliability and objectivity of the information provided, “in order not to offend its sources and disturb a close relationship”, as Noam Chomsky would say. This type of relationship can be best characterized as quasi-pluralist117 which means that the openness is maintained not “for the sake of civic responsibility or public service”, but to ensure the intelligence service’s political standing and the future of the service per se. Respectively, the 117 An analogy taken from the state-church relations. 47 partial media’s rationale is not to break the rules set by their powerful sources, as it can result in the denial of access to their vital product – an exclusive information. One variation of the ‘symbiotic benefit’ model of interaction is a strategy of long-term and continuous collaboration with selected journalists, aiming to promote the agency’s public image and prevent negative media coverage. It is clear that intelligence agencies would not reveal information which could put them in a bad light; therefore some extent of story planting is inevitable here. A case to demonstrate this is the strategy adopted by the German Federal Intelligence Service, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) since 1972, which Shlomo Shpiro labels as a model of ‘Defensive Openness’.118 The BND press office, whose main function was “the building of a positive picture of the BND in German public opinion”, has maintained regular ‘intimate’ contacts with an extensive number of journalists across Germany.119 This strategy was employed to influence the public opinion toward German intelligence, which had been adverse. The feelings about clandestine services among ordinary Germans “were based on the legacy of the Nazi regime, where numerous secret organizations played a key role in the Third Reich’s horrendous crimes.”120 The public legitimacy of the BND was also affected by the Stasi, East Germany’s state security service, which was an important fraction of the Communist party of the German Democratic Republic.121 In order to improve its negative public image, the BND has carried out continuous inhouse media monitoring, routinely examining various German newspapers for critical coverage of the BND. In addition to this, the BND press office “developed close relations with journalists and newspaper editors who could alert it to upcoming articles and investigative reports.”122 “When the press office received word about an upcoming article or investigative report that would show the BND in a negative light, attempts were made to prevent or delay its 118 Shpiro, p. 487 Ibid, p. 488 120 Ibid 121 Ibid 122 Ibid, p. 489 119 48 publication”, Shpiro reveals.123 This was sometimes done by “contacting editors and providing them with information that would contradict the planned article.”124 As a reward, journalists could get direct payments or regular salary. 125 Otherwise, as BND officer Heinz Felfe acknowledged, “the most important reward for journalists working with the service was information for their articles and books.”126 For journalists, especially the young, contacts with intelligence and exclusive information flow coming from them, meant an important level up for their career. Another strategy of ‘symbiotic benefit’ model of interaction, which usually takes an adhoc character, is the practice of ‘embedded reporting’. It refers to a partnership between the military intelligence and the journalists who are attached to a specific military unit in a conflict zone. However, before being attached to their troops, the reporters normally sign a contract defining what they can write about and when, such as “the details of military actions, [which] can be reported only in general terms.” 127 Also they have to “agree not to write at all about possible future missions or about classified weapons and information they might find.”128 In such state of an affair, the war narrative is controlled, contrived, manipulated and sanitized. As a US military spokesman phrased it, “Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment. Embedding journalists honorably served that end.”129 Moreover, the embedded journalist cannot avoid reflecting to some extent the standpoint of the soldiers with whom they share their food and couch. As Robert Thompson warns, "When you are part of the troops that you're going in with, these are your fellow human beings. You are 123 Ibid, Ibid, p. 490 125 Ibid, p. 492 126 Ibid 127 PBS: Public Broadcasting Service (blog). "News Hour Extra: Pros and Cons of Embedded Journalism -- March 27, 2003", available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june03/embed_3-27.html [accessed July 6, 2013] 128 Ibid 129 Kahn, Jaffrey. "Postmortem: Iraq War Media Coverage Dazzled but it also Obscured." UC Berkley News, March 18, 2004, available at http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/03/18_iraqmedia.shtml [accessed July 6, 2013] 124 49 being potentially shot at together, and I think there is a sense that you become part of that group in a way that a journalist doesn't necessarily want to be."130 Nevertheless, reporters give up some of their journalistic freedom because embedding has its incontestable advantages for both parties. “The reporter burnishes his credentials as a war correspondent, the media employer reaffirms its privileged access to sources of power and the military frames the representation of conflict in narrowly constructed, sympathetic terms.”131 The practice of the ‘embed’ traces back to the Second World War and Vietnam, however the term of embedded journalism was first used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq to describe the coverage provided by the US and UK journalists (numbering around 900 reporters) attached to their military forces.132 The practice proved to be an effective instrument in the hands of the military intelligence of the coalition forces, because it provided them with the power to feed the journalists with their own stories to be told. Merely being present in the battalions and feeling of ‘us vis-à-vis them’ increased the journalists’ willingness to provide a favorable coverage. "Those correspondents who drive around in tanks and armored personnel carriers," said journalist Gay Talese, "who are spoon-fed what the military gives them, become mascots for the military. I wouldn't have journalists embedded if I had any power!”133 This strategy was also employed in Afghanistan in 2007, “to the point that in some journalistic circles in the country became known as ‘Embedistan’. 134 In both instances of continuous in-house collaboration and the ad-hoc embedded reporting, the relationship between the actors is built and maintained on mutual benefit and the self-interest of both. It is voluntary and may be withdrawn by either of the parties. In other words, it is a two-way interaction, which distinguishes it from the PP/ISS-partial media relationships, where the media is spun because of the fear of punishment. 130 PBS: Public Broadcasting Service (blog). "News Hour Extra: Pros and Cons of Embedded Journalism -- March 27, 2003", available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june03/embed_3-27.html [accessed July 6, 2013] 131 Buchanan, Paul G. "Facilitated News as Controlled Information Flows: the Origins, Rationale and Dilemmas of ‘Embedded’ Journalism." Pacific Journalism Review 17, no. 1 (2011). P. 105 132 Freedman, p. 67-8 133 Jacobson, Colin. "Enemy Within." British Journal of Photography, December 23, 2009, available at http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/report/1645945/enemy [accessed July 6, 2013] 134 Buchanan, p. 110 50 B. Self-regulation The second model of relationship that may emerge between the DIB and a partial media is ‘self-regulation’. As with ‘symbiotic benefit’ relationship, a certain amount of secret information is left open to the media's eyes. However, in its reporting the media is governed by the logic of appropriateness rather than by self-interest, and therefore finds it ethically inappropriate to disclose certain sensitive information that may divulge operational intelligence to the enemy or endanger the lives of ordinary people and intelligent officers on duty. “Selfregulation refers to means that the industry or profession rather than the government is doing the regulation.”135 The term is not interchangeable with self-censorship, as the latter is done out of fear of being punished by higher authorities, while self-regulation means a voluntary commitment to a certain code of ethics. This model may take the form of an established ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with intelligence agencies or have an ad-hoc character. An example of the first instance is the Defence Advisory Notice (DA-Notice) in the United Kingdom, which is an official notice, sent to media organizations requesting them not to publicize certain issues for reasons of national security. I will expand on this case more detailed in my second case-study. As for the ad-hoc self-regulation, it may replace the ‘spiral’ of the previous model of relationship, if an exogenous shock, for example war, revolution, or a terrorist attack occurs. Normally it terminates at the end of the crisis. One possible case of this can be the general media behavior of the media in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada after the 9/11 attacks. In the United States when former President George Bush proclaimed that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,”136 the press adopted the so-called war-mentality. Perceiving a state of emergency, news editors were eager to play a helpful role accepting the official account of events and responding to the high level of public nervousness and demand for security related information. Nevertheless, in her book No Questions Asked: News Coverage Since 9/1 Lisa Finnegan argues that in the Unites States this relationship has led to disastrous results. Finnegan highlights numerous problems that the overly loyal media did not pay attention 135 Campbell, Angela J. "Self-regulation and the Media." Federal Communications Law Journal 51, no. 3 (1999) Bush, George. Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People. United States Capitol, Washington DC. September 20, 2001. 136 51 to, such as “the arrest and detention of 1,200 Arab men following the terror attacks; the curtailment of the Freedom of Information act; threats to civil liberties under the USA Patriot Act;” or even the simple inquiry: why the United States was the target of such vicious attacks and hatred.137 Looking ahead, we note that in the United States this model of relationship was replaced by the ‘media criticism’ model after invasion of Iraq in 2003. In Canada intelligence services responded to the unprecedented level of public and media interest in the aftermath of 9/11 by taking a much more open policy than ever before. Tony Campbell, the former head of intelligence analysis in Canada’s Privy Council explains that “the traditional Canadian media ‘default position’ of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, especially from a human rights point of view, had given away at least temporarily after 9/11 to a much broader view of Canada’s security interests, including the social ramifications of national security.”138 C. Media Criticism A ‘media criticism’ relationship is expected to emerge when the DIB and the watchdog interact. Here the media use every possible tool to expose intelligence issues to public scrutiny. It treats the intelligence as an institution, which by its nature is prone to work against the public interest, human rights, freedom of speech. Here the media believe that behind the secrecy, official wrongdoing is hidden, and it needs to be uncovered by the watchful media. A strong example of the watchdog – DIB relationships can be the case of the media behavior in the USA after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. For approximately two years following the 9/11 attacks, the American press arguably adopted a war mentality that was largely supportive of the government. As we have mentioned earlier, this was a case of ‘self-regulation’. Thereafter, prior to the invasion of Iraq, the press remained in ‘war mode’ and was initially reluctant to operate as an overt critic during the public debates that explored the policy options and the arguments about Iraqi WMD (weapons of mass destruction). Overall, the American press was remarkably uncritical of the intelligence-based assertions of the Bush administration 137 138 Finnegan, Lisa. No Questions Asked: News Coverage Since 9/11. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers, 2007. P. 89 Dover, Goodman, p. 173 52 about WMD and the decision regarding the invasion of Iraq. In retrospect, both the New York Times and the Washington Post reviewed their own activities in 2001 and 2003 and “were openly critical of their own stance, admitting that they had failed to probe the intelligence case for war vigorously and act as an independent source of oversight.”139 However, beyond 2003, as more journalists began to recognize the problematic nature of events in Iraq, the media corrective often took the form of investigative watchdog. The first important example of the new relationship was the case of Valeria Plame Wilson, a covert CIA operations officer. At various times she had operated abroad under non-official cover, typically as an ‘energy consultant’. She retired in 2005 after 20 years with the CIA, as a result of her classified cover being compromised by an American journalist in the summer of 2003, when she was named as a CIA covert operative in the Washington Post column.140 The context was the growing debate over claims that the White House had exaggerated the evidence that Saddam Hussein intended to get uranium yellowcake from Niger to enhance its case for pre-emptive war in Iraq.141 This is a graphic example of a case when the watchdog media in its ambition to feed the public’s ‘right to know’ pursued sensationalist reporting and neglected the consequences of revealing of what is supposed to be secret, including the danger to operatives’ lives that such revelations might result in. D. Media Spinning The term ‘spin’ is commonly used in the sphere of public relations and mass communications and defines “a heavily biased portrayal in one’s own favor of an event or situation. While traditional public relations may also rely on creative presentation on the facts, spin often, though not always, implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics.”142 ‘Spin’ covers a wide range of techniques used by the PP and ISS intelligence services to penetrate and exploit the media. While PP and ISS differ in the level of their institutional 139 Ibid, p. 28 Ibid 141 Novak, Robert. "Mission to Niger." The Washington Post, July 14, 2003, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000874.html [accessed 19 July, 2013] 142 Leshan, Davis. Strategic Communication. London: Pangpang. P. 36 140 53 autonomy from the state, there are no substantial distinctions in their spinning tactics, which lie in extensive sourcing of reporters to highlight or conceal certain aspects of intelligence activities. One of the tools of media spinning strategy is disinformation. In this case the press intentionally spreads false or inaccurate information to manipulate the audience by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions. A straightforward case for this can be the disinformation campaign carried out by the Iranian Intelligence (also known as VEVAK): “Although a government ministry, because of its secret budget and lack of accountability to either the cabinet or the Majlis (Parliament), VEVAK remains above the law, being accountable only to the Supreme Leader.”143 VEVAK hence fits clearly into our definition of the ISS, which is characterized by a lack of external controls and oversight, i.e. high degree of autonomy from the state, and high degree of penetration into society. “The largest directorate within the Ministry of Intelligence and Security is the Department of Disinformation (in Farsi, Nefaq) which is charged with the task of waging psychological warfare and misinformation about enemies of the regime.” 144 One of the outlets of the Department of Disinformation is the Mehr News Agency, which is used to plant false stories about opposition groups such as the MeK (People’s Mujahedin of Iran) to damage their reputation, for example incriminating them in “terrorist attacks, such as Iran's IRGC [the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and blow up the Saudi Embassy [in the United States].” 145 VEVAK has also planted false stories in the media, alleging that US documents show MEK’s involvement in terrorism planning. 146 143 Zucker, Daniel M. "Disinformation Campaign in Overdrive: Iran’s Vevak in High Gear." Global Politician, available at http://www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=3386 [accessed July 6, 2013] 144 Ibid 145 Tanter, Raymond. "Tehran’s anti-MEK Propaganda Machine." National Interest, October 27, 2011, available at http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/tehrans-anti-mek-propaganda-machine-6097%3Fpage%3D2?page=1 [accessed July 6, 2013] 146 Ibid 54 E. Criticism-punishment The criticism-punishment nexus is expected to appear when the PP/ISS and the watchdog media encounter each other. In response to its exposure of intelligence services’ problems, the media is punished by the latter in various ways: intelligence officials may choose to stop returning phone calls of out-of-favor journalists. Some of them can be excluded or denied access to other proceedings. In more severe cases it takes the form of using the threat of physical violence against journalists as a mechanism of control, and even the actual use of physical violence or murder. A case to illustrate this model is the episode of media-intelligence interaction in Romania since the end of the Communist regime in 1989. Here the media continuously scrutinized the security service, highlighting its flaws and mistakes to national and international audiences, and thereby “ensuring that the intelligence apparatus did not regress into the former oppressive service” [under communism], and that the NATO and EU guidelines for intelligence apparatus democratization were fulfilled. First, the Romanian media, along with Western governments and NGOs, questioned the need for so many intelligence agencies and asked the officials to reduce their number; pointing out the legal framework that would allow such reductions.147 Second, the media frequently accused the intelligence services of “meddling in politics and reviving Securitate-type148 methods and mentality.”149 The press also covered cases of corruption and the service’s collaboration with organized crime. One of the most criticized issues regarding intelligence services was the presence of former security service officers in key positions within the government and the difficulties in removing them from those services. In response to these stories, the Wall Street Journal published an article warning that NATO could be unwilling to share classified information with former security officers. Shortly after this, parliamentary committees initiated internal investigations and inquiries that resulted in removal of most of the intelligence personnel. 150 147 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 231 Securitate was the secret police agency in Communist Romania 149 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 233 150 Ibid 148 55 In response to the negative media coverage, the intelligence community made a few attempts to curb the watchdogs. For example, the first Director of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) Virgil Magureanu closed the newspaper Ziua which was famous for its open criticism of the agency.151 In 2004, former defense minister Ioan Mircea Pascu tried to make a newspaper journalist to restrain his investigative reporting threatening him that the “minister of defense knows all he [the journalist] is doing, where he is going, what and with whom he is talking”, implying that the reporter was under surveillance by the intelligence directorate within the Ministry of Defense.152 Overall, the media’s unofficial supervision of intelligence agencies in Romania has been estimated to be more efficient than the external oversight. It facilitated the reformation of the intelligence service so that the new agencies have rid themselves of their communist past in a significant way. Romania’s accession to NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007 have shown that Romania’s reforms have succeeded in developing transparency and that it has become a trusted partner in security affairs.153 F. Iron Curtain This model assumes the absence of any relationship between the two actors. The intelligence services are closed to any kind of media coverage, mostly under the pretext of national security matters. It treats reporters with hostility, and the journalist community is perceived as the number one enemy due to the inherent secrecy of intelligence work. This model can be adopted as a durable strategy, as well as a short-term program, when agencies choose not to encounter with the press at all. To ensure its secrecy, the intelligence service may use double-secrecy tactics within its own apparatus to prevent the leaking of secret information to the media. For example, different versions of classified documents may be disseminated among officers with inconspicuous 151 Gallagher, Tom. Theft of a Nation: Romania Since Communism. London: Hurst & Co, 2005. P. 296 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 240 153 Ibid, p. 236 152 56 differences, such as different punctuation or a typo. If the paper is leaked to a reporter, these slight distinctions help to identify the person who has done that. One possible real world example of this model can be the media strategy applied by the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad). “Constant threats to Israel’s security have always placed its intelligence services at the forefront of national security policy.”154 Due to this, “the intelligence community has enjoyed a very high level of public legitimacy and political freedom of action.”155 Thus, Mossad is little concerned about the need to use the media to influence public opinion on it. This is also feasible because there is little public demand for intelligence stories in Israel. On the contrary, there is general understanding that in order to be efficient, intelligence services need to keep their operations in secrecy. Successive Israeli governments granted Mossad great freedom of action in intelligence gathering at home and abroad, engaging in counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations. Mossad thus developed an ‘iron curtain’ model, based on three main elements: “suppressing operational revelations; threatening or punishing uncooperative media outlets; using the media for building up deterrence.”156 “A similarly broad freedom of action has been awarded to the Shabak, Israel’s internal security service.”157 Consequently, it is no wonder that the heads of Israeli intelligence would consider “any media coverage of their organization as restricting their operational freedom”158 and therefore endangering the whole nation. Interestingly, “for many years, the Israeli press was prohibited from even printing the word Mossad in its reports, referring instead to nameless ‘security forces.’”159 Mossad’s director in 1998-2002, Efraim Halevi, made a statement that sums up this model: “Our ethos is not to be in contact with the media. Anyone who thinks that way [that the Mossad should take possible media coverage into account when planning operations] cannot be the Head of the Mossad.”160 To summarize the argument I made in this chapter, this shows that certain categories of intelligence combined with different types of media behavior tend to result in certain types of relationship. This categorization is useful, since it does not depend on the type of political 154 Shpiro, p. 493 Ibid 156 Ibid, p. 495 157 Ibid, p. 494 158 Ibid, p. 499 159 Ibid, p. 494 160 Ibid, p. 499 155 57 regime, as for example, the ‘iron curtain’ in Israel case illustrates. It also accounts for possible transformations and replacements in relationships as a result of changing circumstances (e.g. during the threat to national security), and the corresponding changes in the behavior of one or both actors. The models also imply that the media-intelligence relations cannot be seen as a necessary corollary reflection of other media-government relationships, because the intelligence agencies have certain degree of autonomy in a state, and therefore it may have its own media policy that is different from other government agencies’ media strategies. Likewise, in comparison with other government agencies, the media treats intelligence services differently, simply because the interaction happens between them in a ‘black and white’ area, where secrecy and transparency will always be opposed, so their relationship will never be perfectly amicable. This table lacks a ‘middle ground’ in which a balanced or neutral model of relationship could occur. Theoretically, a ‘neutral’ model would suggest quite a distance between the media and the intelligence services and a maximum of independence between them. Peter Gill in his Intelligence in Insecure World suggests that the problem with intelligence and its oversight is in the “balancing of security and rights.”161 However, for Gill, the whole idea of this ‘balance’ is misunderstood, since “rights and security cannot simply be traded off against each other.”162 The principles of human rights and freedoms, and especially the freedom of the press, are opposed rather than included in the principles of security intelligence. That is why, unless this understanding is changed and unless the intelligence services do not exclude human rights (let us leave it in a wide sense) from their long-term notion of security, we would hardly observe ‘neutrality’ of the intelligence towards the press. On the other hand, the media rarely covers intelligence issues without any bias. Media as an institution is supposed to serve as a fourth estate, a body that exists apart from government, the clandestine services, and large interest groups. It should pursue facts, distrust value bias and be able to distinguish them. This may happen if the media do not perceive intelligence issues as more valuable than any other, and present them in a more neutral manner. In the next chapters, I will apply this framework to two case-studies to understand whether the media-intelligence interactions in the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation 161 162 Gill, Phythian, p. 155 Ibid 58 follow the expected models. My background research indicates that the British intelligence services represent the DIB category of the intelligence, and the Russian intelligence falls under the ISS type. In both countries the watchdog and partial media operate at the same time, which gives us a ‘space’ to expand on possible outcomes of their correlation. CHAPTER V: MEDIA – INTELLIGENCE RELATIONSHIP IN RUSSIA In this chapter I address the nature of the relationship between the Russian intelligence apparatus and the domestic mass media. I intend to cover the time frame after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day, with a particular eye on the developments following Vladimir Putin’s ascension to power in 2000. 59 This chapter suggests that the Russian intelligence is both highly autonomous and penetrative, and can be therefore categorized as an Independent Security State under the Peter Gill’s typology of the intelligence services (Table 2). Using the theoretical framework provided in the previous chapter (summarized in Table 3), I propose that the types of the mediaintelligence interactions most likely to occur here are the following: media spinning (involving the partial media), criticism-punishment and iron curtain (involving the watchdog media). This case was chosen to demonstrate the variety of outcomes of media-intelligence interactions in a state with an extremely closed and penetrative intelligence community. Interestingly, while there has been some shift toward democratic development coming from government structures after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, especially during Boris Yeltsin’s rule in 1990s,163 this does not apply to Russian intelligence services. On the contrary, in this case study I argue that the post-Soviet incarnation of the intelligence service did not adopt even the rhetoric towards democratic transition, let alone its actual implementation. In result, the contemporary Russian intelligence service has grown in power, making it perhaps the most influential political force in the state. At the same time, there are certain limits to the extent to which Russian intelligence services drive their relations with the media. Though the services have been placed on a high pedestal in the state, they did not prove to be efficient in their fight against terrorism and extremism, which was subsequently exposed in some watchdog media reports. As for the latter, despite the danger that reporting on security forces posits, there is a number of journalists who overtly criticize various aspects of Russian intelligence activity. Their motivation to do so is primarily driven by the excessive secrecy of the service itself and its unwillingness to find points of contact with the public sector and the media, in particular. A. Background The Russian Intelligence service was created from the wreck of the Committee of State Security (KGB), the Soviet intelligence apparatus, which was publicly disgraced during the last 163 Ryabkov, Andrey. "Obstacles to Democratic Transition in Contemporary Russia." Chatham House Roundtable Summary (2008). P. 3 60 months of the USSR’s existence in 1991. The most important act symbolizing the end of communism and the promise of forthcoming transformations was the removal of the statue of the secret police founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky, from the square in the front of the KGB building, and the cheering crowd’s response: “This was, for sure, a backhanded compliment to the KGB, recognition of its centrality to the survival of the communist regime – no monument to Lenin was removed or destroyed in Moscow at that time.”164 The following years were marked by further chaos and humiliation for the Russian security apparatus. It went through seemingly endless name changes and reorganizations, and its public standing was an all-time low. In hindsight, we can say that this was the period of the greatest openness for Russian intelligence. “KGB officers welcomed human rights activists searching for files on those who had been repressed during the Soviet years. KGB generals became guests on TV shows, and the leadership of the secret service invited dissidents to visit Lubyanka [headquarters of KGB].” 165 It would be naïve, however, to claim that this was an elaborated disclosure policy. The lack of organization umbrella and centrality in the intelligence apparatus, caused by the overall uncertainty and open rivalry for power in the government, could be a more reasonable explanation. However, things started to change in 1995 when the FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti), known as the Federal Security Service was established as the legal successor of the KGB. Since then the FSB has been responsible for the domestic security of the Russian state, border patrol, counterespionage, counterterrorism, and drug smuggling. “All law enforcement agencies in Russia work under the guidance of FSB, if needed.”166 The FSB has absorbed the lion’s share of KGB’s organizational structure. Most of the former KGB staff was re-hired by the FSB. Most of the Russians still use the KGB acronym though they mean FSB. However, I believe that despite the similarities, the two organizations differ significantly in the point of control and oversight. Although the KGB was all-powerful, all of its departments were under the direct control and tight supervision of the Communist Party, which “presided over every KGB section, department, and division.”167 Sometimes it was even 164 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 274 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 12 166 Sakwa, Richard. Russian Politics and Society. London: Routledge, 2008. P. 98 167 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 4 165 61 called the ‘advance regiment’ of the Communist Party.168 This relative lack of autonomy of the KGB from the state apparatus gives me a reason to argue that it fell under the category of PP, rather than ISS. The FSB, in contrast, has been granted more independence from the external control, especially after Vladimir Putin came to power. It has a negligible parliamentary oversight, which was not the case with the KGB, and answers directly to Putin, whose regime it is assigned to protect. B. Penetration and Autonomy The high level of the FSB penetration can be demonstrated by the scope of resources it wields for its activities. It is a massive organization. The FSB personnel is limited to 77,640, but this does not include the support staff, also known as the ‘active reserve’, which numbers up to 130,000, according to the rough estimates.169 The ‘active reserve’ often works entirely undercover in civilian organizations (banks, academic institutions, business companies, etc.) “while sending reports to FSB leadership and actively recruiting members.” 170 Hence, it is hard to know precisely how many officers are working in the agency. However, even if we rely on the legal limit of 77, 640, and assuming a population of the Russian Federation of 147 million, there is one FSB employee for every 1,893 citizens. For the rough comparison, one of the world’s oldest intelligence agencies, the United Kingdom’s MI5, has 1 employee for every 0,016 citizens. The Front Page Magazine claims that since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the number of the FSB personnel rose to 1 for every 297 Russian citizens.171 These numbers are roughly similar to those during the KGB era. The existence of the ‘active reserve’ is another manifestation of the extent of penetration in Russian society. An anecdote illustrating this is the appointment of Alexander Zdanovich as 168 Ibid Galeotti, Mark. Heirs of the KGB: Russia's Intelligence and Security Services. Coulsdon, U.K.: Jane's Information Group, 1998. 170 Fedor, Julie. Russia and the Cult of State Security: The Chekist Tradition, from Lenin to Putin. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011. P. 128 171 Ehrenfeld, Rachel, and Akyssa A. Lappen. "Risky Russky Business." Front Page Magazine, June 28, 2006, available at http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=3785 [accessed on May 26, 2013] 169 62 the “deputy director general of the state-owned Russian Television and Radio, which owns several TV and radio stations including the Second Channel, considered the country’s main official station.”172 Alexander Zdanovich was a former FSB spokesperson and had also been an officer in military counterintelligence, and the main FSB official historian.173 Though Zdanovich was said to be responsible for the company’s security, soon afterward it became clear that his powers were much wider. For instance, when the hostages were captured by Chechen rebels in the Dubrovka Theatre during the musical show Nord-Ost in October 2002174 “Zdanovich essentially told newscasters how to cover the event. At the peak of the crisis, Zdanovich was an official member of the operations staff, with one hand in both the security agency and the other in the news media.” 175 In September 2004, when hostages were taken in the school in Beslan, North Ossetia (an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation), 176 Zdanovich was seen there just two hours before the school was stormed. 177 It is clear that Zdanovich was invited to the scene of a crisis by the security agencies – even though he was appointed to the media division. In December 2004, Zdanovich’s role in defining how television would handle hot topics for the Kremlin was confirmed by Vladimir Putin, who personally congratulated Zdanovich with his “active participation in information support of the Presidential elections in Chechnya’.178 In the years following, Zdanovich was responsible for supervising the creation of television programs highlighting the FSB’s successes. In 2005-2006, the serial Secret Guards about FSB agents carrying out surveillance on the streets was broadcast. The show, aired on the 172 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 28 Ibid 174 Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost sledge when some 40-50 Chechens took 850 hostages, the Russian forces flooded the theater with gas. During the raid, all 40 of the attackers were killed by Russian forces, and about 130 hostages died due to adverse reactions to the gas. The use of the gas was widely condemned as heavy-handed, but Moscow insisted it had little room for maneuvers, as they were faced with the prospect of 50 heavily armed rebels prepared to kill themselves and their hostages (See Krechetnikov, Artem. “Moscow Theatre Siefe: Questions Remain Unanswered.” BBC, October 26, 2005. available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20067384 [accessed on 10 July, 2013]) 175 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 29 176 Known as the Beslan school siege, the crisis involved the capture of over 1100 people as hostages (including 777 children) ending with the death of over 380 people. (See “Beslan – Two Years On.” UNICEF, August 31, 2006, available at http://web.archive.org/web/20090404112922/http:/www.unicef.org/russia/media_4875.html, [accessed on 10 July, 2013]) 173 177 178 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 29 Ibid 63 Second Channel, was produced with the help of the FSB.179 What makes this case so worrisome is the way FSB penetrates society and media – that is, indirectly, strategically and systematically, which makes it difficult for an ordinary citizen to detect the collusion. Another aspect of Russian public life which the FSB continuously interferes is, curiously enough, spirituality. “Spiritual security is treated as an important subset of national security in a number of official policy documents adopted by Putin, including the National Security Concept of the Russian Federation, [adopted in January 2000], and the Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation, [adopted in September 2000].”180 The concept of spiritual security has an interesting background in Russia. First mentioned in the 1992 Russian Federal Law on Security, it “intended to flag a shift away from Soviet militant atheism and from state persecution of religious believers.” 181 However, in subsequent years, the security-spirituality nexus was and still is being used for ends which were quite distant from the original principles of the 1990s legislation. The essential vagueness of the category of ‘spiritual security’ makes it broad and flexible term that could be put to all kinds of uses. For its part, the FSB is evidently very keen to proclaim the importance of the ‘spiritual’ component underlying and guiding the FSB’s work. This tactic represents a paradigm shift in state-society relations, namely, the return to the primacy of the state over the individual and his ‘spiritual privacy’, which is the main condition for the effective operation of the Russian secret service. Many FSB’s activities have been conducted with the cooperation of sections of the Russian Orthodox Church. Such cooperation is comprised of, though not limited to, “providing the FSB and other state bodies with advice on non-traditional religious organizations and restricting foreign missionary activities for spiritual security reasons.”182 However, as Andrei Soldatov points out, the alliance between the Church and the FSB is not as surprising as it may seem. Rather it is quite logical: “the FSB helps to protect the Orthodox sphere of influence 179 Ibid Fedor, p. 161 181 Elkner, Julie. "Spiritual security in Putin's Russia." History and Policy, 2005. available at http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-26.html [accessed July 6, 2013] 182 Ibid, 168-169 180 64 against Western proselytizing; in return the Church blessed the secret service in its struggle with enemies of the state.”183 An emblematic image associated with this is the “opening of the Cathedral of St. Sophia of God’s Wisdom in 2002 just off Lubyanka Square - a block away from the FSB headquarters. Patriarch Aleksey II himself blessed the opening of the cathedral in a ceremony attended by then FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev.”184 The notion of spiritual security is also used by those who advocate the restoration of censorship and the increased control of the media outlets. For instance, the Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation adopted in 2000 warned that: The greatest danger in the sphere of spiritual life is posed by the following threats to the Russian Federation’s information security: deformation of the mass information system… deterioration of… Russia’s cultural inheritance… the possibility of violation of social stability, the inflicting of harm to the health and life of citizens as a result of the activities of religious associations preaching religious fundamentalism and also of totalitarian religious sects.185 Calls for the reinstatement of censorship for the sake of the spiritual security are not always made openly. More often, the term ‘information security’ is applied. For example, in 2003 the then head of the Committee on Public Affairs and Religious Associations Viktor Zorkaltsev stated that “One of the key roles in preserving public security is played by spiritual security […]. Spiritual security is closely linked to other forms of public security and, first and foremost, with information security.”186 Hereby, linking the concepts of information security with spiritual security, which in turn is tied up with the public security, implies the need to restore the control of the medium of the press and the way it transmits knowledge. In sum, this record indicates the highly penetrative nature of the security service in Russian society, notably in the fields of public life that it is not supposed to cover. For being an embodiment of ISS, it determines its own political goals and required activities to achieve its goals. Predictably, the agency invokes the justification that its activity is critical for the security of society. 183 Soldatov, Andrei. "The Mindset of Russia’s Security services." Agentura, December 29, 2010, available at http://www.agentura.ru/english/dossier/mindset/ [accessed May 26, 2013) 184 Ibid 185 Doktrina Informatsionnoy Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii, adopted by Presidential Decree on September 9, 2000. 186 Fedor, p. 180 65 Another issue that needs to be evaluated is the agency’s level of autonomy within the state. The FSB is characterized by a lack of external oversight and checks on its power. In the following section I will explain that a system of checks and balances that could keep the FSB under the minimum necessary control is absent in the Russian Federation. Parliamentary oversight of the intelligence service in Russia can be fairly described as nonexistent. The two-chamber parliament – the Federal Assembly – has been progressively weakened since 1993, both under Boris Yeltsin and especially under Putin. The upper chamber, the Federation Council, consists of representatives of regional bureaucracies that have become completely dependent on Putin under the classic center-periphery pattern. Though it has a Committee on Defense and Security, its activities are vaguely documented. The documentation that is available suggests that the committee deals primarily with the issues of salaries and benefits for the personnel of the military, uniformed police, and intelligence and security services.187 When members of the Federation Council address issues of intelligence services, the dominant themes are the need to strengthen the intelligence service to fight the threat of Chechen terrorism, in particular to help extradite Chechen activists, who find refuge in the West, to Russia.188 The members of the Federation Council seem to be less interested in issues of democratic civilian control of the service. For instance, in 2007 it was proposed that the Sovietera body for surveillance of religious associations be formed in the FSB, and that “special expert councils within it evaluate whether pronouncements by clergy in mass media contribute to the rise of Islamic extremism.”189 This is a very graphic example of the ‘special’ relationship between the FSB and the Federation Council where there is little room for appropriate oversight and scrutiny. In contrast, the lower house of Parliament regularly encourages the expansion of the administrative power of the FSB. Judicial Oversight 187 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 280 Ibid 189 Ibid 188 66 The laws on external intelligence and the FSB’s founding documents assign the duties for overseeing the agency to the state prosecutor’s office. The institution of state prosecutor is part of the executive branch. “Prosecutorial oversight as practiced in Russia means that the prosecutor’s office monitors government’s agencies’ observance of laws; if prosecutors believe the law has been violated, they either pass the case to a court or inform an appropriate government body.”190 However, the main issue here is that there is a noticeable gap between the written law and their actual implementation. Frequently, they are drafted in a very ad-hoc manner to resolve urgent problems or curb opponents, as it has been, for example, with the homophobic anti-gay bill or the Internet content restriction bill, both being adopted in 2013. There is little doubt that the judicial oversight of the agencies in Russia is a farce. The law on the FSB makes it clear that the prosecutorial oversight is limited: the identities of FSB informers and any information regarding the “organization, tactics, methods, and means of the work of the FSB.”191 do not come under prosecutorial oversight. The Law on Foreign Intelligence has the similar language. Executive Oversight The president of the Russian Federation is directly in charge of the ‘presidential block’, “a collection of twenty-one ministries and other agencies dealing with external and internal aspects of the security of the Russian state.”192 On the face of it intelligence agencies are supposed to communicate the results of their work directly to the president. However, the irony of the situation is that the Russian president Vladimir Putin himself served for sixteen years as a KGB officer and later as the head of the FSB. Putin has placed trusted people in the governing positions, and evidently, the most trustworthy human resources for him to draw from has been the former KGB staff. They were put on high-ranking political positions, including the post supervising state broadcast media, as I mentioned earlier. Putin’s inner circle also includes Sergei Ivanov, who was also a former KGB officer. From 2001 to 2007 he served as the Defence 190 Ibid, 286 191 On Organs of the Federal Security Service in the Russian Federation. Russian Federation Federal Law No. 40-FZ Adopted by the State Duma on February 22, 1995 192 Bruneau, Boraz, p. 276 67 Minister of Russian Federation. At the moment, Sergei Ivanov is the Chief of Staff of Presidential Administration of Russian Federation. Another former KGB official, Igor Sechin, served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Russian Federation until 2012. Currently, Sechin is the Executive Chairman of Rosneft, Russia’s leading oil company. The presence of such protégés in the key governmental positions has increased the intelligence apparatus hostility to the idea of checks and balances, and fostered a desire for minimal transparency in its operations. Olga Kryshatnovskaya, the head of the Center for the Study of Elites at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences explains this way of thinking: “This whole social group [the FSB] was summoned to re-establish order. Order as they understand it. Their understanding is simple and harsh: order means a strong state, and a strong state means one not separated into branches, a state where all power is concentrated”.193 The ‘mind-set’ of the FSB is resistant to oversight, especially because it enjoys, in the words of General Yuri Kobaladze, an excessively good self-image: “we are the salt of the earth, and only we know what the state is, what its interests are, and how to defend them. Because we are special services, we are above reproach, we are not corrupt, and we are exceptional.” The problem with this is that ordinary Russians feel the same way about the FSB. They might not look with favor on the FSB, but in their minds Russians have the image of the FSB as the ‘higher cast’, and this image is accepted as something inevitable and irresistible. Thus, there is little doubt that Russian Intelligence is a perfect match to the concept of the ISS. It is probably the only sphere of the Russian government that has not been reformed since the fall of communism, even in the rhetoric of the officials. The agency realizes the privilege of being a ‘state within a state’ it has been granted, and it is mostly the appreciation of its privilege that encourages it to exercise its freedom to neutralize and exploit the press. Based on the theoretical assumptions on ISS-media relations, proposed in the previous chapter, we expect that in its interactions with the partial media the FSB will carry out deliberate spinning of the content to advance its ideas. In dealing with the watchdog media, we expect the FSB to turn to the practice of non-involvement, that is, the ‘iron curtain’ model. In more severe cases, the 193 Krastev, Ivan, Mark Leonard, and Andrew Wilson. What Does Russia Think?. London: European Council of Foreign Relations, 2009. P. 30 68 FSB, as a classical ISS, is expected to punish the disfavored reporters with threatening, intimidation, and use of physical violence. C. Relationship with the Media Media Spinning The FSB has successfully planted a stream of stories in the media, which have several clearly observable goals. One is to improve the reputation of the FSB by whitewashing the past of its KGB predecessor. This involves securing the publication of laudatory articles, replete with quotes from retired KGB officers, with figures such as Yuri Andropov, the longtime KGB chairman who ran the Soviet Union from 1982 until his death in 1984.194 Another goal of the FSB's media spinning is to present an uncritical view of its current operations. A good example of this was the avalanche of ‘exclusive’ interviews given by FSB veterans and active-duty officers alike in the wake of the Moscow theatre hostage crisis. They formed a chorus of expert voices seeking to convince the public that while 130 innocent people died, the FSB was absolutely above reproach. Most Russians get their news from television. Because all major channels are stateowned, and, as we mentioned before, the deputy director general of Russian Television and Radio Company is a former FSB spokesperson, any negative information on Russian intelligence would never be broadcasted. On the contrary, TV is being actively used to handle “the tension between past and present [of FSB] through propaganda films broadcast on TV, which portray security services as they [FSB officers] want to see themselves – as special agents performing heroic deeds.”195 In 2001, the series The Special Department, appeared on the First TV channel. In it, FSB officers, having a background in Special Forces in Afghanistan, prevent the smuggling of museum artworks from the Hermitage. Secret Watch, a TV series about the FSB’s indispensable role in preventing terrorist attacks was shown in 2005. In 2007, Special Group, another movie 194 195 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 98 Ibid, p. 101 69 about FSB agents tracking down criminals and terrorists, came into the air. In all cases, the FSB was behind the broadcast providing script supervision. 196 Following the hit of the fictional movies, the FSB turned to the documentary genre. As Soldatov and Borogan argue, “documentaries are fairly considered the best propaganda vehicle, because they are cheaper, can be produced faster, and can be displayed as an independent journalistic investigation, thereby relieving the FSB of any suspicious connections.”197 In 2006, Shpiony (The Spies), a documentary about British spies operating in Russia was broadcasted. In it, the FSB surveillance officers “claimed that the British diplomat, identified as Marc Doe, was trying to retrieve data from a spy communications device disguised as a rock, later widely known as the ‘spy rock.’”198 Moreover, some respectable Russian NGOs were accused to have secret ties with the British government, and Doe was identified as the ‘handler’ of the NGOs. 199 This plot had a reason behind it: the documentary appeared “two weeks after Putin signed legislation toughening the rules for NGOs, and was used to show that the largest such organizations working in Russia were in cahoots with British intelligence.” 200 Another documentary, Plan Kavkaz (Caucasus Plan), claimed that the CIA was involved in the first Chechen war. 201 In order to maintain the FSB’s prestige, a deliberate strategy on glorifying Yuri Andropov, portraying the brute head of KGB as a “competent, effective leader, with an excellent understanding of national and global economics.”202 The purpose of the campaign was to promote Andropov’s legacy, as a testimony that the security services could get Russia out of any evils. As part of this strategy, some creditable books were published, such as “Unknown Andropov, Team of Andropov, Yuri Andropov: Unknown about Known, etc.”203 Similar rhetoric was planted in the news media: Nikolai Patrushev, Director of the FSB from 1999 to 2008, wrote a major article in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russian Newspaper) titled ‘The Mystery of Andropov’, in which he stated that the officers of the FSB tend “to keep the best professional, 196 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 102 Ibid, p. 104 198 Soldatov, Andrei. "The British did not lose the rock." Novaya Gazeta, January 26, 2006. 199 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 104 200 Ibid., p. 105 201 Ibid 202 Ibid, p. 91 203 Ibid., p. 94 197 70 patriotic values, formed by this uncommon person [Andropov], the professional politicianintellectual who created a structure appropriate to the needs of the [his] times.”204 As for current issues, even cases of great significance receive little objective press coverage, because the voice of the free media is overwhelmed by the deliberately filtered media. Such a state of affairs has not been difficult to achieve due to the wide presence of the FSB officers in the state propaganda machine. Normally, the FSB controlled media utilizes the standard propaganda techniques of stereotyping, flag-waving, and quoting out of context. For example, the state-owned agency ITAR-TASS is known for its excessive use of the phrase “‘the Chechen Trail’ in a variety of contexts, but primarily in the context of condemnation.” 205 Often it is used in cases when there is no need to refer to Chechens. For instance, in a criminal context, it may be mentioned that “no ‘Chechen trail’ is discovered.”206 There are a number of other phrases which have same subtext as ‘the Chechen trail’: ‘the traces lead to Chechnya’, ‘the Caucasian trail’, and ‘the Wahhabi trail.’ 207 Criticism-Punishment and Iron Curtain Despite the systemic failures that erode free press and expression in Russia, not all media outlets are partial. While the mainstream TV channels and print media have been turned to mere projectors of the official line of the state, a number of alternative media outlets – online and print newspapers, radio, and even a few TV channels – manage to adhere to relatively impartial editorial policies. These outlets endeavor to expose wrongdoings and abuses of the Russian government and the FSB, in particular. However, the intelligence service responds to investigative reporting on its activities by punishing the authors in various ways, including intimidation of journalists, closing down disobedient media, conviction and subsequent jailing of the journalists, and assassinations. 204 Patrushev, Nikolai. “Taina Andropova” [The Mystery of Andropov]. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, June 15, 2004. Panfilov, Oleg. Putin and the Press: The Revival of Soviet-Style Propaganda. London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2005. P. 26 206 Ibid 207 Ibid 205 71 Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, the editors of the information hub on Russian intelligence Agentura.ru, are two investigative journalists and Russian security service experts who report on the FSB’s efforts to restrict freedoms of the press, follow espionage cases, interview defectors, and chronicle organizational rearrangements of FSB. In February 2010, for example, the website revealed that the same FSB office that issued official accreditation to journalists in Moscow was now officially authorized to monitor and oversee them. As Andrei Soldatov revealed in the Index of Censorship, Order no. 343, signed by FSB director Alexander Bortnikov on July 15, 2009, “expanded the list of FSB generals allowed to initiate a petition to conduct counterintelligence measures that restrict the constitutional rights of citizens,”208 such as the inherent right for privacy of communications and correspondence. The list now includes the FSB’s Directorate for Assistance Programs, the same one that is responsible for relations with reporters and the Center for Public Communications – the FSB’s press office.209 However, soon after the launch of the website, both reporters were fired from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. They have been the focus of FSB interest on many occasions, especially for their coverage of the Beslan school siege and the Moscow theatre siege, which revealed major shortcomings in the way the FSB dealt with both tragedies. On these matters, “Soldatov has been interrogated four times by the Investigative Department of the FSB based in Lefortovo,”formerly a KGB prison.210 Furthermore, when an article by Soldatov was set to be published on the Nord-Ost siege in Versiya newspaper, a group of FSB officers arrived at the editorial offices and began a search, claiming they were looking for information published in an article by Soldatov the previous May. A few computers, including the editorial server, were seized, and a number of journalists were ordered to visit the FSB for interrogation. 211 In general, the Kremlin was explicitly intolerant of any bifurcation of opinions during the Nord-Ost crisis. As the siege progressed, the FSB made various efforts to control reporting of the situation. Those who expressed any distrust in FSB’s efficiency were punished. The radio station Echo Moskvy received an official warning from the Media Ministry as requested by the FSB that it would be shut down for conducting interviews with the terrorists. “The television 208 Soldatov, Andrei. "Russia: Security Agents Talks Press Freedom." Index on Censorship, October 12, 2009, available at http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/10/russia-security-agent-talks-press-freedom/ [accessed July 6, 2013] 209 Ibid 210 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 151 211 Ibid, p. 125 72 channel Moskovia’s broadcasts were temporarily halted. The NTV coverage of the crisis was personally criticized by Vladimir Putin.”212 At the same time, all the sources of information were denied access to. The hospitals treating the injured were not allowed to answer to any of journalists’ questions, especially on exact numbers of the hostages. Two years later, the Russian government appeared to be more prepared for the news coverage of the Beslan hostage crisis. After the storming, a number of Russian and foreign reporters were searched, and some of the recorded materials were confiscated. They were forced to do that under the pressure of the police and security forces.213 As Elena Milashina, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, narrates, “when journalists were stopped and asked to show their passports and accreditation cards, the militiamen unexpectedly started asking for certificates of temporary registration in North Ossetia.”214 Because they could not produce such credentials, Anna Gorbatova and Oksana Semyonova, correspondents from Novye Izvestia, were kept at the police station. “Madina Shavlokhova from Moskovskiy Komsomolets and Elena Milashina from Novaya Gazeta were also detained.” 215 Following the storming, even the attitude of those responsible for sharing information changed. Normally they would hold a press conference to announce the ‘filtered’ official line of what had happened. However, this time “the chief of the local FSB office, Valeriy Andreev, Deputy General Prosecutor, Sergey Fridinski, and the official from the Presidential Administration, Dmitriy Peskov, offered information only to the government-controlled Russian press.”216 Another journalist from Novaya Gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya, intended to fly to Beslan with Doctor Leonid Roshal, who was chosen as a negotiator by the terrorists. However she was not let on Roshal’s plane. Neither could she get on other planes flying to North Ossetia.217 “She only managed to get on a Karat Airlines flight to Rostov-on-Don, which is far from North Ossetia. Politkovskaya did not eat anything on the plane. She just asked a stewardess for a cup of 212 Ibid, p. 150 Ibid, p. 125 214 Report on Russian Media Coverage of the Beslan Tragedy: Access to Information and Journalists’ Working Conditions. OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, 2004. P. 8 215 Ibid 216 Ibid 217 Ibid, p. 9 213 73 tea. Right after landing, Politkovskaya felt very ill. She was taken to the intensive care unit of the central hospital clinic in Rostov-on-Don. The Novaya Gazeta’s editorial office said that she may have intentionally been poisoned. Politkovskaya was then transported back to Moscow.”218 In 2005, during the conference on freedom of the press held by Reporters Without Borders Politkovskaya said: “People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it.”219 Politkovskaya was often anonymously threatened with rape and death, several times she has experienced a mockery when arrested by the militia in Chechnya. A year later after this speech, “Politkovskaya was found shot dead in the elevator of her apartment block in central Moscow.”220 In 2006, soon after the terrorist attacks, a new legislature put excessive restrictions for journalists wishing to enter areas of counterintelligence operations. In addition, a sort of brainwashing camp for reporters, the ‘Bastion’ was established. Formally, the courses provide specific knowledge on the coverage of conflicts, anti-terrorist and humanitarian operations. Interestingly, one of the tactics is not to speak with locals and members of rebel groups. 221 “If reporters have not attended the courses they might be not allowed to get to the area, as the number of press accreditations is limited and the preference would be for those participating in the ‘Bastion.’”222 Furthermore, the set of amendments to the anti-extremism law, signed by Putin in 2006, “expanded the definition of ‘extremism’ to include the public discussion of such activity, including media criticism of state officials.”223 These amendments, as expected, do not specify “what constitutes such material, and introduce new penalties for journalists, media outlets, and 218 Ibid "Three Journalists Killed on the Opening Day in Bayeux Memorial deferrals." Reporters Without Borders, October 7, 2006, available at http://web.archive.org/web/20061029220955/http://www.rsf.org/article.php3? id_article=19098 [accessed May 26, 2013] 220 "Chechen War Reporter Found Dead." BBC News, October 7, 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5416218.stm [accessed May 26, 2013] 221 Boltunov, Oleg. “Radi Neskolkix Strochek iz goryachix tochek. Zhurnalistov Uchat na kursax “Bastion” v Podmoskovye” (For a Couple of Lines from ‘Hot Spots’. Journalists are trained at ‘Bastion’ courses in Podmoskovye), available at http://www.rg.ru/2010/06/25/bastion.html [accessed May 26, 2013] 222 Soldatov, Andrei. "Russia: Security agent talks press freedom." Index on Censorship, 2009, available at http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/10/russia-security-agent-talks-press-freedom/ [accessed May 26, 2013] 223 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 65 219 74 printers found guilty of the offense. Penalties range from fines and confiscation of production equipment to the outright suspension of media outlets for up to ninety days.”224 Russia’s Criminal Code explains the definition of ‘extremism’ to that of a “crime motivated by hatred or hostility toward a certain social group” without clarifying the term “social group.”225 Under this law, “in March 2009 Dmitri Soloviev, leader of the youth opposition group Oborona in Kemerovo, Siberia, faced criminal charges for criticizing the FSB in his LiveJournal blog.”226 Two of the offending headlines on his blog were ‘FSB kills Russian children’ and ‘Arbitrary behavior of the FSB and military conscription center.’ According to the report of the prosecution expert group, Soloviev “incited hatred, hostility and degrades a social group of people – the police and the FSB”. The prosecution eventually started.227 In 2012 the social media network Vkontakte, which has more than 43 million members, also found itself in the government spotlight. The founder and executive director of the website, Pavel Durov, was told by the FSB official to close down 7 opposition groups during the presidential elections in 2012. “Up to 185,000 users were subscribed to protest-organizing groups,” which helped to coordinate the protesters during the Bolotnaya-Sakharov opposition protests in May, 2012.228“A spokesman for Vkontakte said publicly that the site would not practice censorship and would not carry out the FSB order. Following the statement, Durov was summoned to appear before prosecutors in Saint Petersburg on 9 December.”229 However, besides the recommendation to block the opposition groups, no pressure was put on Durov. While this is far from the whole list of press freedom violations carried out by the FSB and other high-rank officials, it provides the general image of the conditions under which the journalists in Russia operate as both partial and watchdog media. The desire to portray the security service in a positive light and to maintain strict control over what could and could not be investigated and published, has established the types of media-intelligence relationships when the media is being excessively spun, punished or denied an access to any information depending 224 Ibid "In Russia, legislation on ‘extremism’ poses new press freedom threat." Committee to Protect Journalists, July 11, 2007, available at http://cpj.org/2007/07/in-russia-legislation-on-extremism-poses-new-press.php [accessed May 26, 1013) 226 Soldatov, Borogan, p. 67 227 Ibid 228 Written Submission by Reporters Without Borders on the State of Freedom of Information in the Russian Federation. Reporters Without Borders. UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review, 16-th session, p. 3 229 Ibid 225 75 on the type of the media it encounters. In sum, it is difficult to assume how persistent any of these relationships is, but it is safe to conclude that there would hardly be any substantial changes in the way the FSB deals with the media, and the media reacts to it, unless structural changes in the Russian government, followed by reforms in FSB take place. It is also worth to note that these changes cannot occur when the society remains apathetic and fragmented. There is little confidence among Russians that they can be the force to hold the security forces accountable. The report of the Committee to Protect Journalists on freedom of the press in Russia claims: The journalists, lawyers, or public activists who stand up to violations of justice and human rights or the abuse of office by government officials are on their own. Their effort is hardly appreciated by their fellow countrymen. If they get in trouble with government authorities, they can hardly count on public support or legal protection.230 In my interview with Andrei Soldatov, similar notion was expressed: Our readers are not so interested in security issues. Terrorism related topics make them feel unsafe and unprotected. They simply don't want to hear about the problems of, say, North Caucasians, because they don't want to know that there are people in much bigger trouble than they. They don't want to read big investigative stories about the FSB, because they are quite fine with conspiracy theories, which are more popular in Russia than real policy analyses. An average Russian is convinced that he knows everything. For example, the ubiquitous reaction in Russia to Edward Snowden's leaks on mass surveillance was that there was nothing new in it. Because of such apathy, there is no reason for the editorials to spend financial and human resources to investigate on Russian intelligence services. On the contrary, problems caused by such reports are normally quite serious, while the appreciation and support from the society is very low. That is why the journalists in Russia are merely not motivated to cover the FSB’s activities. In the next chapter, I will illustrate media-intelligence interactions in the United Kingdom, which will demonstrate how the power relations between the DIB and the media outlets are being managed. While it will contrast the Russian case in numerous aspects, the common feature between them is that the both countries have occasional cases when the mediaintelligence relationships cannot be explained by their regime types. In Russia, these abnormal ‘fragments’ are the presence of alternative media outlets, which do not skimp on criticism of the security forces, and the FSB’s transition towards an uncontrollable ‘state within state’, which 230 Lipman, Maria. "The Anatomy of Injustice: Public Apathy Hampers Press." Committee to Protect Journalist, September 15, 2009, available at http://cpj.org/reports/2009/09/anatomy-injustice-public-apathy-hampers-press.php [accessed on July 10, 2013] 76 does not comply with the general process of democratization (though, slow and imperfect) in Russia. CHAPTER VI: MEDIA-INTELLIGENCE RELATIONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM This chapter addresses the nature of the relationship between British intelligence and the mass media. It covers the period after the end of the Cold War with a particular focus on the events of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when British intelligence passed through a grave testing of its reliability and efficiency both in the public and government eyes. Based on our typology, in this section we suggest that the British intelligence apparatus lacks autonomy from the state (to be elaborated in the ‘Oversight’ section), and has medium-tolow level of penetration into society. Consequently, we assume that it falls under the category of the Domestic Intelligence Bureau and therefore enters into three types of interactions with the media: symbiotic benefit, self-regulation and media criticism. 77 This case is chosen in order to illustrate the variety of interaction models with the media, which the most publicly exposed intelligence service in our typology, the DIB, has. A. Organizational Structure The intelligence organizations in the United Kingdom – the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) – trace their origins back to 1909. However, their existence was not given a statutory footing until the late 1980s in the case of MI5, and the early 1990s in the case of MI6.231 Another agency within the Intelligence branch, granted a statuary charter in 1994, is the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The GCHQ provides signals intelligence (SIGINT) and is responsible for information security. In relation to SIGINT, it includes all types of signals interception, disruption, and decryption. 232 The second function is that of “providing technical advice on communications and information-technology security to government departments.”233 The time when the agencies were granted a formal status was also the time when they had to contend with a challenging international environment at the end the Cold War. While for the rest of the world this meant the end of the dreadful tension between the super-powers, for British intelligence it brought an urgent need to replace the previous focus from the Soviet threat to new ‘issue-areas’, and to deal with shrinking budgets and accommodate the early stages of external oversight. Additionally, in 2003 the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center (JTAC) was created. It is housed within the MI5 and is responsible for analyzing and assessing the intelligence relating to terrorism, whether domestic or abroad, and for producing threat assessments for other government departments and agencies. 234 There is a clear division of power between the agencies, framed in their statuses. In brief, MI5 is a domestic security agency, MI6 is responsible for external intelligence, and GCHQ for 231 Leigh, Ian. “Intelligence and Law in the United Kingdom.” In The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, edited by Loch K. Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010. P. 640 232 Ibid, p. 643 233 Ibid 234 Ibid, p. 653 78 signals intelligence. All three agencies have the common aim of “protection of national security and the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.”235 They also assist the police or Customs in preventing and detecting serious crime.236 Two agencies of the intelligence community are not established in the same legislative documents – the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). DIS is part of the Ministry of Defence and supports the armed forces by analyzing intelligence information from open and covert sources, and provides assessments for JIC.237 JIC, in turn, is the part of the British Cabinet Office and is responsible for overseeing and setting of priorities for MI5, MI6, and GCHQ. “It assesses and coordinates all intelligence so that government can be best informed as to the issues involved.”238 In terms of the agencies’ openness, MI5 is far more exposed to public scrutiny than MI6 and GCHQ, partly because, as a domestic security agency, it needs to do much more to maintain public trust and confidence. MI6 and GCHQ have been more relaxed about their ‘branding,’ because their operations do not raise the same kinds of civil liberties concerns as the domestic activities of MI5 may do. Nevertheless, all three agencies are bound by multiple levels of external oversight to ensure that they do not transgress their mandated responsibilities, but still ensure a high level of effectiveness and credibility. B. Autonomy Executive Oversight The founding legislation of the intelligence services establishes executive oversight for the agencies, according to which the services’ accountability in these matters remains mainly under the Prime Minister as head of the government.239 “This is reflected in the provisions that 235 Ibid Ibid, p. 642 237 Official Website of the DIS - https://www.gov.uk/defence-intelligence, [accessed July 10, 2013] 238 Gibbs, Timothy. “Studying Intelligence: A British Perspective.” In The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence. edited by Loch K. Johnson New York: Oxford University Press. 2010. P. 41 239 Leigh, p. 644 236 79 are unique in UK legislation, giving the heads of the agencies a right of direct access to the Prime Minister.”240 Moreover, unlike normal civil-service departments, where frequency of meetings is not vital to their functions, the Director-General of MI5, the Chief of MI6, and the Director of GCHQ are assigned to have a day-to-day responsibility. 241 The reason is to prevent the services’ bias in terms of party politics. “Indeed, political neutrality is explicitly addressed by provisions that require the heads of all three agencies to provide an annual report to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State and ensure that the agencies do not take any steps to further the interests of any UK political party.”242 Previously, there was a mechanism, which ensured some level of detachment from the agencies of the executive: “the Secretary of State would receive advice from the head of the agency but would not see the intelligence on which it was based.”243 However, in the changed climate after 9/11 attacks, the Cabinet is more regularly and closely involved with the agencies. Intelligence has visibly become more central to government decision-making, and direct briefings from MI5 to other ministers have become commonplace.244 Some of the services’ routine actions also require an approval from the Secretary of State. Unlike many other countries, in which judicial authorization for public surveillance is required, in the United Kingdom it is the Home Secretary who issues the warrant to MI5 to tap a telephone or open mail “for reasons relating to national security, serious crime or the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.”245Also, the executive branch is given specific authority “to detain suspected international terrorists without trial.”246 The Home Secretary requires clear supporting evidences from the agencies before any actions are approved. 247 240 Ibid Ibid, p. 644 242 Ibid 243 Ibid, p. 644 244 Ibid 245 Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Telephone Tapping, available at http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/wales/consumer_w/phones_tv_internet_and_computers_index_e/consumer_staying _safe_tv_phones_internet_e/telephone_tapping.htm [accessed July 10, 2013] 246 “Article 9: Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest.” BBC World Service, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/ihavearightto/four_b/casestudy_art09.shtml[accessed July 10, 2013] 247 Leigh, p. 645 241 80 However, there is a noticeable side effect to these ‘special’ relations, which is the growing manipulation of British intelligence, which reached its apogee during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. To ensure that the public accepted the necessity of war with Iraq, in 2002 and 2003 the Cabinet of Ministers released two dossiers of intelligence-related material concerning Saddam Hussein’s attempts to acquire and develop WMD. However, subsequent investigations found out that the 2003 dossier (the so called “dodgy dossier”) “was found to have been plagiarized from a PhD thesis written eleven years earlier.”248 The dossier presented the hypotheses from the paper as intelligence-based facts. Thus the official report of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) investigating on this matter commented that the agencies should have been consulted before any of this material was published, and that this process was not fully followed with the 2003 dossier.249 In other words, the opinion of the intelligence service on intelligence matters was neglected. A second case reflecting the same problem was the misleading emphasis Tony Blair placed on the 2002 dossier arguing that Iraqi WMD could have been deployed within forty-five minutes. Shortly after the document’s release, The Sun, carried the headline ‘Brits 45 mins from Doom’, and the Daily Star reported ‘Mad Saddam Ready to Attack: 45 Minutes from a Chemical War’,250 which reinforced the public confidence that the Iraqi WMD were a direct threat to national security of the United Kingdom. However, a later report by former cabinet secretary, Lord Butler, largely affirmed that the 45-minute statement had been made “at a level of certainty quite unheard of intelligence assessments.”251 One of the reasons for this tendency is that in contrast to the 1990s, the government can no longer pursue a ‘no comment’ strategy, which compelled the British government to publish intelligence-related materials in order to persuade the public that the government has solid reasons for its actions. In such situations, some extent of ‘power dispersion’ or overlap of roles takes place, because as the dossier cases show, the policies of the agencies and the government may differ drastically. This also demonstrates that British intelligence as a DIB stays under a 248 Born, Caparini, p. 190 Intelligence & Security Committee. Intelligence and Scurity Committee - Annual Report 2002-2003. London: Stationery Office Books, 2003 250 “Timeline: the 45-minute Claim.” BBC News, October 13, 2004. available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3466005.stm [accessed July 10, 2013] 251 Gill, 2005, p. 20 249 81 tight ministerial oversight, and nevertheless it is able to act independently of the government. Here we see the apparent difference between the DIB and the PP/ISS types of intelligence, where the actions of both the intelligence and the government always act in chime, and the former first of all is responsible to the regimes in power. Legislative oversight Legislative oversight of British intelligence is carried out by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which was established under the Intelligence Services Act in 1994. “The ISC examines the expenditure, policy, and administration of all three security and intelligence services and is composed of nine members drawn from both Houses of the Parliament.” 252 “Members of the ISC are appointed by Parliament and the Committee reports directly to Parliament, and have access to highly classified material in carrying out their duties. The Committee may also make reports to the Prime Minister on matters which are national security sensitive. The Committee takes evidence from Cabinet Ministers and senior officials – all of which is used to formulate its reports,” the Committees website explains. The Committee’s work is conducted confidentially, though it is assigned to issue a report to the Parliament and government ministers every year. The members of the Committee may also produce ad-hoc reports on urgent matters of particular concern, as it did during the invasion of Iraq and the 7 July, 2005 London Underground bombings. 253 The ISC has taken on investigations of the Kosovo campaign, WMD proliferation, and Bali bombings, during which it has not skimped on criticism of intelligence agencies. For example, undertaking “an inquiry into the adequacy of warnings prior to the Bali bombings in 2002, which killed 190 people including 24 Britons, the ISC concluded that MI5 failed to assess the threat correctly.”254 252 Leigh, p. 645 Leigh, p. 646 254 Phythian, Mark. “A Very British Institution: The Intelligence and Security Committee and Intelligence Accountability in the United Kingdom.” In The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence. edited by Loch K. Johnson New York: Oxford University Press. 2010. P. 702 253 82 There is a general agreement that the Committee has succeeded in behaving in a nonpolitical manner, even though its members are all members of the House of Commons and Lords. Equally, it has proved a safe environment for disclosure of classified information. There have been no cases of leaks from the members of the Committee to the media – something that would surely spoil the relations with the services. It is also certain that the very existence of the Committee has given the agencies a ground to be more considerate in their activities and think over a variety of possible options before undertaking any of them. Hence, the ISC keeps the agencies accountable merely by making them “ask what the ISC would think if they embarked on a certain course of action.”255 Judicial oversight The judicial oversight is implemented by the Judicial Commissioners, who are “responsible for reviewing and reporting upon the issue of warrants for operations by the agencies.”256 Each Commissioner is required to be the holder or past holder of high judicial office. The rationale behind this requirement is that a holder of high judicial office is independent of Government and likely to form his own disinterested judgment. By virtue of Commissioner’s judicial position he or she may be seen to carry high and impartial authority. There is also an Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is “established to investigate public complaints against the agencies or their interception.”257 The Commissioners issue official reports to the Prime Minister every year, which are in turn brought into the attention of the Parliament. To assist the Intelligence Services Commissioner in his or her reviews, a duty is imposed on every member of an intelligence agency, every member of the armed forces and every departmental official to disclose or provide to the Commissioner all such documents and information as he or she may require. This conforms to our earlier notion that the DIB’s low 255 Ibid, p. 704 Leigh, p. 648 257 “Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The National Archives. 2000, available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents [accessed July 10, 2013] 256 83 autonomy from the rest of the state is ensured by keeping it under a watchful scrutiny of the courts. C. Penetration One of the reasons that British intelligence agencies were granted statutory charters was the concern that their use of surveillance and personal information violated the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 of the Convention, which refers to a right to respect for an individual’s private life and their home correspondence,258 has had an important influence on the intelligence services’ activity, both in regards to the collection and handling of personal information, and concerning the interception of communications and other forms of surveillance. Hence, the need to comply with European jurisprudence led in 2000 to the introduction of an umbrella legislative regime for covert surveillance by the services and police – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The Act provides for the authorization of ‘intrusive surveillance’ 259 in the case of suspected serious offence.260 The Secretary of State authorizes the surveillance and the Intelligence Services Commissioners to provide oversight for the authorization process. At present this is the only safeguard to prevent the British intelligence from overstepping the law to penetrate into the privacy of its citizens. In comparison with the Russian case, the UK arrangements display a low level of penetration and abuse of civil rights. However, there are also a number of possible improvements with regard to the storage, handling, access to, transfer, deletion, and retention of personal data that the UK could introduce. For example, in Norway, the Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Commission is under a legal duty to carry out six general inspections per year of the Norwegian Police Security Service, involving at least ten random checks in archives during each inspection, and a review of all current surveillance cases at least twice yearly. 261 In Denmark the Wamberg Committee – a politically neutral expert body 258 European Convention on Human Rights. November 4, 1950, Rome Intrusive surveillance is covert surveillance that is carried out in relation to anything taking place on residential premises or in any private vehicle (and that involves the presence of an individual on the premises or in the vehicle or is carried out by a means of a surveillance device. (See Covert Surveillance and Property Interference Revised Code of Practice, Home Office) 260 Covert Surveillance and Property Interference. Revised Code of Practice. Pursuant to Section 71 of the Regulation Investigatory Act 2000 261 Wills, Aidan and Born, Hans. “Overseeing Intelligence Services: A Toolkit.” DCAF: Geneva, 2012. p. 120 259 84 – checks and supervises the procedures for collection and use of intelligence information. In a number of countries an individual can complain to an independent body or ombudsman with powers to check the files of a security and intelligence agency about that agency’s use of his or her personal data. Under Swedish law, for example, the Commission on Security and Integrity Protection checks the legality of security activities relating to personal data, following a complaint from an individual. The Commission also has oversight of decisions regarding the collection of data from various police and security registers to ensure these are in accordance with law. The test of legality for this purpose includes not only the relevant specific legislation but also constitutional and human rights standards and the principle of proportionality, which ensures that certain measures are taken reasonably and have a legitimate aim.262 The lack of comparably tight legal basis in United Kingdom stands out as a glaring omission and does allow me to conclude that the level of penetration into society is maintained at a higher level as compared to Scandinavian states. Nevertheless, in opposition to PP and ISS, where the level of penetration is much higher, in the United Kingdom such interceptions are proportionate, that is, they do not go transgress the boundaries of their roles and responsibilities to achieve their stated mission. D. Relationship with the Media Symbiotic benefit British intelligence agencies, similar to other government bodies in the UK, rely on formalized institutional links with the press, through which they disseminate the information to their respective audiences. Prior to the 1990s MI5 and MI6 had no official interest in entering the public sphere, mostly because they did not attract much public or media attention. However, after the Cold War there was growing pressure for freedom of information, transparency and accountability in the British government. At the beginning of the 1990s, MI6 supported by the then-Prime Minister John Major, decided that the time had come for the agencies to develop more formal (if still 262 Ibid 85 anonymous and opaque) relationships with some major media organizations.263 The wartime ‘old boys’ network’ of a relationship, when the intelligence information was provided solely to a very narrow journalistic circle, faded away (though did not totally disappear).264 There is a consensus that these changes were necessitated by the need for modernization and getting access to the public sphere to influence debate. As a trial, in 1992 MI6 considered talking to one ‘linked’ reporter in each of a small number of major UK media organizations. David Rose, then-Home Affairs editor of The Observer described the process. He was proposed by MI6 to be its intermediary with the newspaper. Rose recollects that over lunch, his new MI6 contact (whom he gives the pseudonym Tom Bourgeois) told him that MI6 “had always had a few, very limited contacts with journalists and editors, but it now felt the need to put these arrangements on a broader and more formal basis.”265 As Rose later explains, “Our conversations would not merely be off-the-record, and hence attributable in print to an unnamed MI6 official. In public I would have to pretend they had never happened, and if I wanted to quote or paraphrase anything Bourgeois said, I would have to use a circumlocution so vague as to make it impossible for any reader to realize that I had spoken to someone from the Office at all. Should I breach these conditions, Bourgeois made clear, I could expect instant outer darkness: the refusal of all future access.” 266 Rose says he had had stories leaked to him by MI6. This clearly shows that the intelligence services were keen to take the opportunity to be proactive in the public sphere and on occasion shape the news agenda. This experiment was deemed a success, so it extended to a wider range of news organizations for succeeding years. Under the new arrangements the agencies were not to ‘plant’ stories, at least not to the new intake of accredited journalists. Rather, in exchange for a wider set of institutional links, the agencies were responding to stories but were able to retain some control over their shape. Later, the Intelligence and Security Committee Report for 2004-2005described the arrangement publicly: “Currently, a number of media outlets have a journalist ‘accredited’ by the MI5 and/or MI6; these journalists are able to contact the Services for guidance. In turn, they are briefed by the Security Service or the SIS about matters relevant to the Services. Agencies 263 Lashmar, p. 6 Ibid 265 Rose, David. “Spies and their Lies.” New Statesman, September 27, 2007, available at http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/mi6-mi5-intelligence-briefings 266 Ibid 264 86 and journalists agree that all of their contacts’ comments are made off-the-record and must not be quoted directly.”267 In regards to the extent of media bias this new relationship may have resulted, Martin Bright, who was then-Home Affairs editor of The Observer and its link to MI5, wrote a critical article on the accredited journalist relationship: “Most journalists feel that, on balance, it is better to report what the intelligence services are saying, but whenever the readers see the words ‘Whitehall sources’ they should have no illusions about where the information comes from.”268 While there is some extent of media-spin in this model of relationship, it differs from the Russian case in a major point: the media provide a partial coverage not because it is compelled to do so, but finds such coverage to be in accordance with its self-interest and professional goals. Another form of ‘symbiotic benefit’, embedded reporting, found its practical application in the United Kingdom during the 2003 invasion in Iraq. The embedded relationship carried out during it ‘filtered’ the image of the war in various ways: “following the modus operandi established during the Falklands War, journalists from countries not involved in the fighting were denied access to the conflict zone almost completely. Of the 136 journalists embedded with British forces, only eight came from outside of the United Kingdom.”269 Second, embedded journalists had to sign an agreement with their ‘hosts’ in military bases, accepting a number of ground rules. Central to this contract was the requirement that journalists “follow the direction and orders of the Government related to such participation … The media employee [had to acknowledge] that failure to follow any direction, order, regulation or ground rule [could] result in the termination of the media employee's participation in the embedding process.”270 These ground rules also included a list of stories and categories of information that were always out of bounds (principally those that would “endanger operational security”) and the procedures that were to govern journalist-troop relations. For example, the agreement stated that “Unit commanders may impose temporary restrictions on electronic transmissions for operational security reasons.”271 During the Iraqi campaign this resulted in journalists having 267 Intelligence & Security Committee. Intelligence and Scurity Committee - Annual Report 2004-2005. London: Stationery Office Books, 2005. P. 81 268 Bright, Martin. “Terror, Security and the Media.” The Guardian, July 21, 2002, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/21/humanrights.comment [accessed July 10, 2013] 269 Franklin, Bob. "Key Concepts in Journalism Studies." SAGE Publications (2005). P. 72 270 Ibid 271 Ibid, p. 73 87 their mobile phones blocked, which ensured that, if necessary, the journalists would be unable to report on what was going on.272 Clearly, these rules compelled the journalists to understand that their presence in Iraq depended on their leaving out ‘the wrong kind of details.’ In order to ensure that they weren't ejected, some journalists practically integrated themselves with the military command structure. Miller confirms that, “in exchange for access to the fighting, the use of transport, accommodation, and military protection, embedded journalists agree to give up most of their autonomy.273 Richard Gaisford, a BBC embedded journalist in Iraq adds: “We have to check each story we have with them [the military]… The Captain who's our media liaison officer – he will check with the Colonel who is obviously above him and then they will check with Brigade headquarters as well.”274 Caroline Wyatt, a BBC correspondent embedded in British forces, tells a similar story: On day one in the desert, in the heat and the sand, we quickly realized where the power lay - and it wasn’t with us. We knew that as embedded journalists our lives were in the forces' hands. British forces cooked our meals, dug our shelters, gave us information, and controlled where we could go - and that was an uncomfortable position for any journalist to be in… And all those embedded journalists, wherever they were, knew that they had become a tool in the military toolbox, willingly or not, which the military and governments on both sides would seek to use to send messages to each other and to the wider watching public around the globe. It was hard not to feel an instinctive sympathy and indeed empathy with the troops looking after us. A benign form of 'Stockholm syndrome', if you like.275 Self-regulation A form of guided media-regulation system that flourishes in Britain is the DA-Notice or Defense Advisory Notice (D-Notice until 1993), which is a formal advice to reporters and news 272 Ibid Miller, David. “Embed With the Military”, ZCommunications, April 3, 2003, available at http://www.zcommunications.org/embed-with-the-military-by-david-miller [accessed July 10, 2013] 274 Ibid 275 Wyatt, Caroline. “Embedded in Iraq: A Tool in Military Box, Willingly or Not.” BBC Academy, March 19, 2013, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogcollegeofjournalism/posts/Embedded-in-Iraq-a-tool-in-the-militarytool-box-willingly-or-not [accessed July 10, 2013] 273 88 editors not to publicize certain topics and operation details for reasons of national security. As stated on the DA-notice official website, “the objective of the DA-Notice System is to prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods, or put at risk the safety of those involved in such operations, or lead to attacks that would damage the critical national infrastructure and/or endanger lives.”276 The rationalization for the DA-Notice is that the intelligence and security services personnel, as well as those who are the potential targets in counterespionage and counterterrorism operations, are stated to be under threat if their identities are disclosed in the news stories. “Security and intelligence operations and contacts are easily compromised, and therefore need to be pursued in conditions of secrecy.”277 Disclosure of any information about intelligence activities that are currently in operation finishes them immediately. “Even inaccurate speculation about the source of information on a given issue can put intelligence operations, and, in the worst cases, lives, at risk and/or lead to the loss of information which is important in the interests of national security.”278 The DA-notice has no legislative status; its use is voluntary for both sides, and may be ignored by reporters. It is independent in that it answers to no government department or media board, and the Committee that issues the DA-Notice includes thirteen senior press and broadcasting representatives, which reflects the neutrality. 279 Thus, its voluntary nature suggests that it is more a ‘gentlemen’s agreement,’280 than a self-censorship measure. Nevertheless, “though it is very rare for any of the mainstream media organizations to ignore the Committee's requests,”281 some cases of this do happen. In May 2013 Edward Snowden, a former technical contractor for the United States National Security Agency (NSA), leaked top-secret files on mass surveillance programs carried out by US And UK intelligence services to the Guardian. In June the Guardian published the first exclusive, revealing “a secret 276 Official Website of the DA-Notice - www.dnotice.org.uk [accessed July 10, 2013] Ibid 278 Ibid 279 Ibid 280 Grimley, Naomi. “D for Discretion: Can the Modern Media Keep the Secret?”, The BBC News, August 23, 2011, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14572768 [accessed July 10, 2013] 281 Ibid 277 89 court order showing that the US government had forced the telecoms giant Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of Americans.”282 The second story unfolds “the existence of the previously undisclosed program PRISM, which internal NSA documents claim gives the agency ‘direct access’ to data held by Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants.”283 A few weeks later the Guardian reports that “GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at the 2009 G20 summit.”284 This publication neglected the DA Notice 5, according to which the editors are encouraged to seek advice from the DA Notice Secretary before publishing details of “specific covert operations, sources and methods of the Security Service, SIS and GCHQ, Defence Intelligence Units, Special Forces and those involved with them, the application of those methods, including the interception of communications, and their targets.”285 One of the reasons that made the Guardian break the rules of the DA Notice club can be the fact that Snowden chose almost exclusively to work with the Guardian, therefore subsequent silence from the newspaper would be quite illogical. Secondly, it is worth to mention that for a media corporation with two-thirds of its audience abroad, serving the national security interest of the United Kingdom may be of less significance than serving the needs of its readers. However, even with this exception, the system proved to be efficient, considering that the Financial Times, the BBC and the Times chose not to cover the GCHQ story. The DA-Notice system’s practices can be easily checked in the minutes of meetings available on the DA-Notice website. For example, it is stated that in 2012 there were 50 media inquiries to the Committee regarding continued controversies over alleged MI6 and MI5 collusion in extraordinary rendition, MI6 involvement in the repatriation of Abdelhakim Belhadj to Gadaffi’s Libya, the reporting of personal details about Sir Mark Allen, who was the former Head of MI6’s counterterrorism unit, and the opening of the Inquiry into the death of the former MI6/GCHQ officer Gareth Williams. These matters had all attracted a great deal of media coverage. In all cases DA Notice advice had been followed.286 282 Gidda, Mirren. “Edward Snowden and the NSA Files – Timeline.” The Guardian, July 26, 2013, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-nsa-files-timeline [accessed on July 27, 2013] 283 Ibid 284 MacAskill, Ewen, et al. “GCHQ Intercepted Foreign Politicians’ Communications at G20 Summits.”The Guardian, June 17, 2013, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/16/gchq-interceptedcommunications-g20-summits [accessed on July 27, 2013] 285 Ponsford, Dominic. “Guardian Spying Revelation were in Breach of DA-Notice Guidance.” Press Gazette, 19 June 2013, available at http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/guardian-g8-spying-revelations-were-breach-danotice-guidance-doesnt-explain-lack-follow, [accessed on July 27, 2013] 286 Official Website of the DA-Notice - www.dnotice.org.uk [accessed July 10, 2013] 90 Media Criticism One might expect that in Britain, as an established democracy, reasonable media criticism of intelligence activities is a ubiquitous phenomenon. However, the opaque nature of the intelligence services themselves makes it difficult for the media to offer an informed and coherent critique of the performance of the intelligence agencies. It appears that most of the times, in their desire to blame the culprits, journalists do not differentiate intelligence failure and policy failure. The first happens when the intelligence findings do not coincide with their estimates. Policy failure in this context is the inappropriate use of intelligence information to fit certain political ends. As Christopher Andrew explains, “the ‘under-theorization’ of intelligence studies… degrades much public discussion of the role of intelligence. Since September 11, 2001, the media and even some learned journals have been full of claims of ‘intelligence failure’. But the majority of those who use the phrase seem to have no coherent idea of what it means. Clearly, a lack of a 100 per cent success rate does not constitute failure.”287 Most of the news media are tangled in a ‘success’ and ‘failure’ dichotomy that does not explain the nature of the intelligence problems. As the Iraqi invasion campaign demonstrates, instead of asking the same question – “why we invaded in Iraq when there were no WMD?” it would have been more reasonable to ask – “how could such a consensus among the best intelligence agencies in the world as to the existence of WMD be so wrong?” In their sensationalist race both the American and British media failed to address the issues of the intelligence services’ over-reliance on raw technical intelligence (TECHINT), failed to report on the problem of defectors as human sources or mismatch between the intelligence findings with their prior assumptions. These were the main reasons for the intelligence inaccuracy. Additionally, because there was little understanding of the role of policy makers in intelligence consumption, the policy failure, i.e. invading in Iraq which did not possess WMD, caused what the media and the public perceived to be an intelligence failure. In reality, the intelligence community in numerous claims had stated that Iraq had no WMD capabilities. The closest 287 Andrew, Christopher. 2004, p. 181 91 sources to Saddam Hussein who produced the intelligence, one of whom was his son-on-law Husayn Kamil, “confirmed that Iraq’s WMD had been destroyed and its programs dismantled in 1991 following the Gulf War.”288 In the aftermath of the invasion, the narrative on intelligence failure both within the US and the UK policymakers and attempts to shift the blame onto intelligence analysts, who did not make correct assessments, was a common practice. Unfortunately, the “mainstream media uncritically parroted the government’s claims and reported such deceptions as fact.”289 More deliberate media inquiries on intelligence failures (not policy-failure) were raised after the 7/7 London bombings, when four home-grown Islamist terrorists detonated bombs in the London Underground and the upper deck of a London bus, killing fifty-two people. The attacks inevitably raised questions as to whether they could have been prevented, especially when it surfaced that two of the bombers - Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer came to the attention of MI5 and police some time before the attacks. 290 In the aftermath of the bombings some news outlets highlighted reasons for “intelligence gaps in the security services’ monitoring of potential terrorist threats,” such as the lack of resources, a failure to anticipate homegrown Jihads, and “inappropriate reassurance about the level of threat”.291 Particularly, the media called for more transparency in the calculation of the level of threat and state alert systems, in general. One conclusion that can be drawn from this case is that media-intelligence relations in established democracies have difficulties that are distinct from those experienced in PP and ISS states. These differences unfortunately have received little sustained analysis. In contrast with the PP and ISS, in the DIB-type services often have to struggle to defend themselves, especially if the ‘knowledge’ they offer is ambiguous or inconsistent with the policy preferences of those in power. The latter is always more interested in action and demand precise answers, which intelligence services are not always able to provide. As a result, as the British case reveals, the 288 Hammond, Jeremy. "The Lies that Led to the Iraq War and the Persistent Myth of ‘Intelligence Failure’." Foreign Policy Journal, September 8, 2012, available at http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/09/08/the-lies-that-ledto-the-iraq-war-and-the-persistent-myth-of-intelligence-failure/view-all/ [accessed 10 July, 2013] 289 Ibid 290 Phythian, Mark. 2010, p. 411 291 Batty, David. “Two 7/7 Bombers were under Surveillance. “ The Guardian, 11 May, 2006, available at http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/11/july7.uksecurity [accessed on July 27, 2013] 92 credibility of the intelligence services, slowly emerging from the Cold War cocoon of secrecy, has been much damaged by their relationship with policy makers. This, in turn, has harmed its relationships with the media, which is often too immersed in its sensationalism to perform as a neutral watchdog. On the positive side, the British case shows how the balance between secrecy and the public interest can be maintained. The system of the DA - Notice is a unique invention which allows senior security officials and media representatives to regularly meet over tea and discuss practical issues which the current national and international security circumstances throw up. Spreading awareness among the media of what is likely to be harmful, an adequate degree of self-regulation takes place. This is a possible model to be considered in other mature societies too. CONCLUSIONS This thesis raised the issue of the relationship between mass media and intelligence services and analyzed the preconditions under which two actors encounter with each other. The complexity of their relationship stems from the inherent conflict of interests involved. Intelligence services for their efficient operation claim for secrecy and nondisclosure. The media, assuming the role of the public eyes, insists on having access to intelligence information as part of its responsibility to keep the citizens informed. The array of interaction models, derived by this clash, can take numerous forms and manifestations, most typical of which we covered in this research. To build my theory, which is not limited to particular regime types, I highlighted the attributes of both actors, namely media’s commitment to investigative reporting and the levels of autonomy and penetration of intelligence services. My argument proposed that these characteristics mainly determine the character of the relationship to occur between two actors. The regime type variable is thereby excluded from this research, because in two states of same political regime type media and intelligence may be found in different interrelations. Otherwise, transformations in political regimes not always bring changes in the ways the two actors relate to each other. 93 Based on this understanding, I proposed six models of media-intelligence interaction: symbiotic benefit, self-regulation, media criticism, media spinning, criticism-punishment, and iron curtain. Importantly, two or more of the above mentioned models can exist in the same state, when intelligence services encounter with different types of media outlets. Moreover, as our case studies demonstrated, there can be a temporary replacement of models under critical circumstances, such as wars, revolutions, terrorist attacks, etc. To demonstrate this variation of interaction models, the cases of the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation, representing two extremes in our intelligence services typology, were selected for this research. An interesting revelation of the Russian case is that while the government officials regularly assure their commitment to a more liberal and democratic state, vow wars against ‘legal nihilism’292 and corruption, this rhetoric never includes Russian security forces, which in point of fact have different direction to move in. Considering themselves to be the elites of the state and above criticism, they restored KGB-style intelligence, keeping it even more closed and free from parliamentary and party control than its Soviet predecessor. Surely, in such conditions the media are being excessively spun, punished or denied access to valuable information. The British case highlighted another problem, which relatively open intelligence services face: often they are spun and manipulated by their governments if the knowledge they offer is ambiguous or inconsistent with the policy preferences of those in power. As the episode with invasion in Iraq in 2003 displayed, the credibility of the intelligence services was much damaged in the media, which failed to distinguish between ‘intelligence failure’ and ‘policy failure’. 292 Barber, Lionel et al. “Laying down the Law: Medvedev Vows War on Russia’s ‘Legal Nihilism.’” The Financial Times, December 24, 2008, available at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e46ea1d8-c6c8-11dd-97a5000077b07658.html#axzz2bexZqxjw [accessed on July 27, 2013] 94 [...]... Chapters V and VI I address the nature of the relationship between the intelligence and the domestic media in Russia and the United Kingdom respectively Analyzing the time period after 1991, I suggest that Russian intelligence can be categorized as ISS, and therefore its 19 interactions with the media result in the media spinning’ (in regards to partial media outlets) and ‘criticism-punishment’ and ‘iron... people or other actors they are searching information about and they produce knowledge for their own distinct aims.12 This is a crucial insight to understand why the nature of these relationships can be shifted from conflict to cooperation and vice versa To understand what constitutes the core of the relationship between these two communities and how they work together, I turn to Christopher Andrew’s... come into contact and how their relationships are developed, regardless the political regime and the type of 43 Soldatov, Andrei, and Irina Borogan The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB New York: Public Affairs, 2010 44 Andrew, Christopher M., and David Dilks The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century... Organization of the Study In order to understand what the possible scenarios of the media and the intelligence interaction are, I analyze the nature of both actors in the Chapters II and III First, I will focus on the conditions which allow/make the media perform its investigative function (watchdog media) or carry out a biased coverage of intelligence issues (partial media) I argue that while the media freedom... information on the Russian case is the book by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan The New Nobility Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring legacy of the KGB,43 which is a detailed investigation of Russian security services and their activities both at home and overseas The authors show the dynamic of the agencies’ prestige and legitimacy accumulation since the collapse of the USSR and the rise... particularly interested in power relationships across the nexus of state, intelligence and society Depending on the degree of its autonomy and penetration, three types of the intelligence apparatus (DIB, PP, ISS) are applied Chapter IV shows how the two types of media behavior and three types of the intelligence interact and proposes six scenarios in which the relationships between these actors are expected... type of relationship between the media and intelligence occurs when media reports on intelligence failures In his article ‘Reports, Politics and Intelligence Failures’36 Robert Jervis brings up the example of American and British intelligence services’ failure concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) Intelligence failure is understood as a mismatch between the services’ expectations and what... Svetlana The Role of Mass Media in the Survival Or Failure of Democracies.” MA thesis, State University of New York P 20 63 28 In the first rank of the supporters of this assertion we find Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky with their Propaganda Model, which was laid out in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Herman and Chomsky explain bias in the media in liberal... explore the DA-Notice system in forthcoming chapters, and highlight the contrast between self-censorship and self-regulation in our case studies of the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom, where, I believe, the media- intelligence interactions illustrate the difference between these two practices At the same time, I do not exclude the self-regulation mechanism from our category of the partial media. .. The main fallacy, in my opinion, is in understanding of the intelligence service as an extension of a state, while in fact it can have its own political agenda in relation with the public sector and the media, in particular My study will fill this gap, offering an analysis of media- intelligence relationship based on the characteristics of both actors and the factors which make them behave the way they ... function, these being the watchdog media and the partial media; and three types of the intelligence which vary according to the level of their autonomy and penetration, these being Domestic Intelligence. .. address the nature of the relationship between the intelligence and the domestic media in Russia and the United Kingdom respectively Analyzing the time period after 1991, I suggest that Russian intelligence. .. analysis of intelligence services relationships with the media in the next chapter 44 CHAPTER IV: MEDIA- INTELLIGENCE RELATIONSHIP Figuratively, both intelligence services and the media outlets the same