The architecture of community: Intelligence community management in Australia,Canada and New Zealand

Abstract

While many have examined individual intelligence agencies and cooperation between agencies bilaterally, the study of the interdepartmental architecture that is meant to coordinate intelligence communities has been peripheral at best. This is especially true in the case of smaller states, such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. However, this architecture is fundamentally important to our understanding of how the secret state operates; how it impacts, and is impacted by, the open state; and, when taken comparatively, is indicative of differing government cultures towards intelligence. Examination of the development of intelligence community management architecture in Australia, Canada and New Zealand reveals that actors in all three communities recognise networks of interdependency between them. However the extent to which they are able to exploit these interdependencies is dependent on larger dynamics in government, supporting the idea that intelligence communities can only be as cohesive as the governments they serve allow them to be.

Keywords

accountability administrative organisation and structures administrative theory budgeting civil service decision making policy making public management

The management of national intelligence communities (ICs), even within the Anglo-American “Five Eyes” states,¹ has been accurately referred to as the ‘missing dimension’s missing dimension’ (Davies, 2010a). While significant academic attention has been paid to the national intelligence agencies, relatively little attention has been paid to the interagency structures and processes that produce a community in more than name. Within this already small amount of literature, fewer still have subjected IC management architecture to comparative study. This is especially true in the case of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the three smaller partners within the Five Eyes alliance. Yet in all three states, major reviews or commissions have recently highlighted the complex issues of IC management and coordination as key aspects of ensuring effective national intelligence. The Flood and Smith reviews in Australia highlighted the importance of interdepartmental coordination in both foreign and security intelligence across a range of threats (Flood, 2004; Smith, 2008). Similarly, the Murdoch review of the New Zealand IC focused on the ‘ongoing need to integrate the intelligence community’, and the ‘requirement to govern the intelligence system on behalf of Ministers, at a cross agency level’ (Murdoch, 2009: 4). Canada’s Major Commission, which examined the Canadian IC in light of the Air India bombing of 1985, and, more generally, in light of transnational threats, also focused greatly on the ‘increased need to establish strategic policy and priorities and to improve coordination between departments of government as more of them take on national security responsibilities’ (Major, 2010, vol 3: 17).

This lack of attention to an important aspect of government policy making results in several shortcomings in the study of intelligence and public administration. Ultimately, the national intelligence effort is a function of government, yet public administration writing has, often for reasons related to secrecy, overlooked the intelligence community. Likewise, those studying intelligence have not yet made a consistent connection between the secret state and the open state, although there have been increasing efforts to do so in the case of the United States and the United Kingdom (Davies, 2010b; Hennessy, 2010; Gill, 1994). In reality, the architecture linking the intelligence agencies to the rest of government, and indeed to each other, is central to our understanding of how intelligence communities function and how governments writ large view the role of intelligence in policy making. It is within this architecture that, supposedly, resources are managed, strategic direction is provided, and major questions of policy are deliberated to conclusion.

The choice of the term “architecture” is purposeful, as is the focus on the executive level. Martin Smith highlighted that at the heart of the core executive concept was the complexity of Westminster systems (Smith, 1997: 4–37). The exchange of resources between intricate networks of actors happens within common structures and through common processes that are meant to ‘pull the different parts of government together’ (Weller and Bakvis, 1997: 13). The management of particular intelligence programmes in Canada, Australia and New Zealand is commonly centred on individual ministerial responsibility, as departments and agencies under single ministerial portfolios handle parts of the intelligence effort. However, none can manage the entire enterprise, hence the national intelligence effort is managed through the machinery supporting the prime minister and cabinet,² and is dependent on certain core policy processes such as the determination of resources and priorities. It is in this architecture that one finds whether an intelligence community is indeed more than simply the sum of its parts, and it is in comparative study of national systems that trends become apparent that would otherwise have been difficult to see, and particularly difficult to assess, in single-state analysis.

Precedent was set for the academic examination of intelligence community management architecture on a comparative basis by Gill and Herman in 1994 and 1996, respectively (Gill, 1994; Herman, 1996), and extended in 2010, when Davies examined the UK and U.S. communities comparatively, contrasting a core executive dynamic in the UK with that of organisational politics in the United States (Davies, 2010a). As Davies states, ‘both the core executive and neoinstitutional models are systems of inter-organisational bargaining and negotiation, but with profoundly different outcomes’ (Davies, 2010a: 39). While actors in the UK recognise, and in some instances encourage further interdependency, actors in the U.S. context have not recognised interdependence, preferring instead to aggressively pursue departmental interests and capabilities at the expense of collegiality.

In essence they posit two hypotheses: that there is recognised interdependence between actors, or that there is unrecognised interdependence. However there is a third related hypothesis: that the principal actors within the security and intelligence community recognise interdependence between them, but are limited because of larger designs that dull efforts to coordinate the many actors. The idea of the “hollowing out” of the state has been explored in the context of central government (Weller et al., 1997), where actors recognise the need for coherence, but may be inhibited in structure, process, or both. The concept is also useful when discussing a particular sector such as the IC. To what extent are the ICs of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand hollow sectors? What factors contribute to or militate against the formation of a community that is a coherent national asset? What is the relationship of the intelligence community to the centre of government? (Savoie, 1997, addresses central agencies but ignores the intelligence functions.) These are fundamental questions if the role of intelligence is to be fully understood. As will be shown, in all three governments there is recognition of the interdependency between actors, often resulting in machinery that is actually very similar. However, the ability rather than intent of the actors to function as a community differs, often shaped by each government’s view towards the place of intelligence in policy making.

Australia: growing into a community

While Australia was the first of the three governments to solidify its post-war intelligence agencies (Andrew, 1989), the management of the Australian IC did not start out as a desirable example to others. The conclusion of Justice Robert Hope’s 1976 Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security (RCIS) that ‘the Australian intelligence community is fragmented, poorly coordinated and organized’ has often been used to question the quality of the Australian agencies (Hope, 1976a: para 316). However with the declassification of more historical material, it becomes apparent that it was the interagency structures that were deficient, and that the agencies and departments were already attempting steps towards a more national intelligence capability.

The final volumes of the RCIS, particularly its third report on coordination, stress the interdependence of actors both vertically and horizontally. One of the most pointed recognitions of interdependence comes from a submission by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT),³ which states that ‘the Department does not have the resources to produce the range of expert assessments necessary in support of its function of advising its Minister and the Government on bi-lateral and multi-lateral foreign policy questions’. It continues that ‘it has, therefore, to rely on other departments and agencies’, and ‘would see advantages for itself and the Government as a whole in a greater sharing of specialist expertise and information or intelligence analysis before policy decisions are taken in Cabinet or elsewhere’ (National Archives of Australia [NAA], 1975: 10).

Hope’s recommendations resulted in several key changes to the Australian IC, finally shifting the emphasis in favour of a community dynamic. A standing Cabinet Committee, the National and International Security Committee (NISC), was formed supported by a committee of permanent department heads that would come to be known as the Secretaries’ Committee on Intelligence and Security (SCIS).⁴ The chairing of these committees was national rather than departmental, namely the Prime Minister and the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), respectively (NAA, 1977). These committees ensured that there were standing interagency forums through which ministers and senior officials could exercise collective responsibility for the management of the Australian IC from the centre of government.

The formation of a new statutory agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), to perform national all-source assessment and coordination for foreign intelligence was perhaps the most radical change. While Hope originally envisaged the ONA replacing Defence’s Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO)⁵ almost entirely, it was recommended by SCIS, after significant discussion, that Defence would retain the JIO to focus on military matters (Edwards, 2006: 244–266; NAA, 1977). While at first this appears a messy arrangement, and initially it was, a longer view shows a different story. JIO could provide a repository of defence-related expertise that would be hard to match outside the Defence establishment, and ONA could provide access to a wider consumer base than the defence-specific machinery. As well, the existence of JIO forced ONA to adopt an approach to coordination that was collegial rather than commanding. This is evidenced by the fact that one of ONA’s first acts was to establish elaborate committee structures, including the formal National Intelligence Collection Requirements Committee (NICRC), the informal Heads of Intelligence Agencies’ Meeting (HIAM) for coordination, and the National and Economic Assessments Boards (NAB and EAB, respectively) (Hope, 1984: 107–118).

The new structures led to a more robust effort to define national intelligence requirements and collection priorities. The initial tool used was the National Foreign Intelligence Assessment Priorities (NFIAPs) document, which was formulated by ONA and the major intelligence consumers through the Assessments Boards. With ONA’s analysts also able to define gaps in intelligence, the Assessment Priorities would then be converted into collection plans for the agencies through the NICRC forum. Hope’s second Royal Commission on intelligence in the early 1980s subsequently identified a near-continuous review of the Assessment Priorities taking place daily by ONA, semi-annually through HIAM, annually through SCIS, and every eighteen months to two years by ministers (Hope, 1984: 107–118).

RCIS also sparked subtle yet meaningful change in the way the intelligence community was budgeted. Hope recognised that the budgeting of the agencies was fragmented. Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) estimates were formulated in concert with DFAT but buried within DFAT and DoD votes. “Secret funds” were remitted directly to ASIS by the Treasury once appropriated, while “open funds” were retained by the Treasury for regular expenditure on running costs (salaries, allowances, official travel, et cetera) not associated with operations (Hope, 1976c, vol 2: Appendix 5-J). The budget of the Defence Signals Directorate⁶ and JIO was determined as a function of the overall Defence budget, which could have unintended consequences. Observing the effects of a 1974 reorganisation of the Department of Defence, Hope stated some concern:

I accept that the 1974 change was essentially one relating to internal Defence Department administrative arrangements which had changed significantly, and not out of any designed or deliberate attempt to “downgrade” DSD. At the same time, the fact that the change came about for reasons external to DSD, suggests that insufficient attention may have been given at the time to DSD’s special status and needs. (Hope, 1976d: para 647)

In an attempt to mitigate similar issues, Hope recommended that DSD have its own budget and that final approval of estimates should rest with the ‘higher intelligence machinery and the Treasurer’ (Hope, 1976d, vol 1: para 713–718). The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO)’s estimates were prepared with some reference to Treasury, and had ‘sometimes been seen by the Attorney-General, but [was] primarily a matter for the Prime Minister’ (Hope, 1976b, vol 3: Appendix 4-Q). This is partially understandable given that ASIO, being a security intelligence service, is principally self-tasking and therefore less reliant on other government actors than its foreign intelligence counterparts. Overall however, the fact remained that there was little cross-community rationalisation of the budgets in order to match resources to tasks.

Yet as RCIS stated, ‘coordination of intelligence collection cannot be properly achieved unless the same machinery making the decision on targets and priorities and assigning collection responsibility, also settles the agencies’ estimates and makes recommendations to government as to their budgets’ (Hope, 1976a: para 269). With this in mind, RCIS recommended that the agencies have separate line-item budgets that would be collectively reviewed by ONA and SCIS for rationalisation with national requirements. Subsequently, on an annual basis the estimates of the collection and assessment agencies were reviewed by SCIS as well as the Department of Finance.⁷ Once approved by the officials’ committee, the estimates paper was forwarded to NISC for ministerial review and approval (NAA, 1978, 1980a, 1980b, 1980c).

As we can see, these Royal Commissions helped formulate and cement a community focus that was increasingly accepted by the principal actors. The Director-General of ONA illustrated a sense of interdependence when he wrote, ‘it is to ONA’s advantage for JIO to work in areas of interest to ONA, partly because of JIO’s specific expertise and partly because ONA values “an informed JIO perspective” on matters where ONA has some expertise’. The Director of JIO at the time was also in ‘total agreement’ with a consultative approach (Hope, 1984: 35). Formal mechanisms such as the NICRC and the Assessments Boards⁸ were often matched by semi-formal or informal mechanisms. ASIS and JIO maintained bilateral contact at both management and desk level, and ‘ASIS [found] JIO helpful and responsive to requests for detailed and specific requirements’. While ASIO and JIO operated in differing environments, ASIO was represented at the JIO Director’s weekly briefing (Hope, 1984: 92).

The post-Cold War environment sparked further refinements in the architecture of the Australian IC, particularly in foreign intelligence. The National Foreign Intelligence Assessment Priorities, essentially static lists of targets prioritised in categories from A through D (Heydon, 1996), worked well for technical agencies such as DSD but were unsuited to a HUMINT⁹ agency that preferred ‘tasking to be in the form of a set of questions to which it can pursue answers’ because of the comparatively narrow ability to target HUMINT assets (Samuels and Codd, 1995: 87). These issues resulted in the Foreign Intelligence Planning Document (FIPD), which set a five-year framework for requirements enabling longer-term planning. The NICRC’s status as the central forum for managing the requirements and priorities process was also strengthened when it was found that actors saw the monthly meetings as increasingly useful (Samuels and Codd, 1995: 87–88).

Following these programmatic changes, the committee structures were further enhanced with the creation of the National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSCC) and the supporting Secretaries Committee on National Security (SCNS).¹⁰ As a result of the 2004 Inquiry into Australian Intelligence Agencies (Flood, 2004) and the Review of Homeland and Border Security (Smith, 2008), the National Intelligence Coordination Committee (NICC) was formulated through the 2008 National Security Statement, and brought foreign and security intelligence coordination fully under a single committee by including both ASIO and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) (Rudd, 2008; Department of Defence, 2010). All of this is overseen by a National Security Advisor who receives assistance in overseeing the IC from ONA (for foreign intelligence), ASIO (for security intelligence), and the National Security and International Policy Division (NSIPD) within the DPMC (Rudd, 2008; DPMC, 2011).

The inclusion of the security and criminal intelligence within this strengthened machinery is not simply symbolic. Once National Intelligence Priorities¹¹ have been defined through SCNS, Collection Requirements Papers are prepared, principally by ONA for foreign intelligence, ASIO for security intelligence, and the Australian Crime Commission for something relating to criminal intelligence (ONA, 2010).

Of course, these priorities documents would be of little use if there were not a similarly coherent way of planning for the allocation of resources. In order to consolidate resourcing, capabilities and priorities planning across the national security community, the Combined National Security Budget (CNSB) and National Security Capability Plan (NSCP) were established through 2010 and 2011 (McClelland, 2011; Department of Finance and Deregulation, 2010). These processes are managed by the DPMC, in close coordination with the Treasury and Department of Finance, to provide a cross-portfolio framework for national security planning (Department of Finance and Deregulation, 2010; Shanahan, 2011). While the situation is still not (and never will be) perfect, this is a long way from the fragmented and narrowly focused Australian intelligence community of the 1950s.

What the developments in the Australian IC show cumulatively is an increasing recognition and management of interdependence between intelligence actors, as well as the recognition of the role played by intelligence in national policy making. This trend constitutes not only structures with common memberships, but also shared responsibilities over common processes such as the definition of national requirements and priorities for intelligence and fiscal management across the boundaries of portfolios. The result is recognition of collective responsibility for intelligence, and indeed national security, which extends from the PM and cabinet through to individual agencies and departments.

New Zealand: Strength in fewer numbers?

The New Zealand Intelligence Community began to take shape, in a form recognisable today, in the 1950s. The year 1955 saw the creation of the Government Communications Security Bureau,¹² which brought New Zealand a national SIGINT and COMSEC¹³ capability separate from the increasingly muscular intelligence organisations in Canberra (Hager, 1996: 57–69; Government Communications Security Bureau [GCSB], 2011a). The following year, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS)¹⁴ was created and effectively severed security intelligence from the military or police. In 1969, the organisation was made a statutory body with the passage of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act, 1969 (NZSIS, 2011; NZSIS Act, 1969). New Zealand also has a unified defence intelligence organisation, the Directorate of Defence Intelligence and Security (DDIS), and a central all-source assessments office, the National Assessments Bureau¹⁵ (Domestic and External Security Group [DESG], 2000).

Until 1975, control of the intelligence community in New Zealand was fragmented. Executive oversight of NZSIS was limited to the Prime Minister and his department, while DDIS and GCSB answered to Defence management (Powles, 1976; GCSB, 2011b). The only recognition of interdependence between actors was the Committee of Controlling Officials (CCO), chaired by the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (NZDPMC) that oversaw GCSB. CCO oversaw GCSB because, as the national source of SIGINT and COMSEC capability, it was a national resource meant to serve multiple customers across government.

In further recognition of the intelligence services as national assets, the interdepartmental machinery was expanded in 1975 with the creation of the New Zealand Intelligence Council (NZIC). NZIC was the officials committee, at the level of Chief Executive, tasked with, among other things, ‘[ensuring] that there is full cooperation and cooperation of effort between Government departments in New Zealand on intelligence matters’ (Powles, 1976: Appendix E). However, the cabinet’s oversight of intelligence matters was still inconsistent, relying on ad hoc committees and “as-needed” meetings in what has been called a ‘laissez-faire approach’ (Controller and Auditor-General, 2003: 31n10; Rolfe, 2003). However, NZIC did represent the first significant move towards collective management of New Zealand’s national intelligence effort, and it provided the foundations for more extensive machinery.

A confluence of factors around 1987 resulted in the next evolutionary step in New Zealand’s refinement of IC management. Gerald Hensley, the Chair of NZIC in 1987, stated that in the later 1980s, ‘the State Services Commission became attracted by the idea of “comprehensive security”’, which took into account both manmade threats and natural hazards (Hensley, 2006: 295). Additionally, New Zealand had been partially severed from its intelligence-sharing arrangements with the United States in 1985 because of disagreements over nuclear policy. Given this context, the 1987 Hensley Review prompted the strengthening of the machinery for national security in order to promote a more proactive approach (Hager, 1996: 181).

The new interdepartmental structures not only incorporated a wider group of actors, but also solidified the vertical interdependence among them. The crowning body was the Domestic and External Security Coordination Committee of Cabinet (DESCC), chaired by the Prime Minister. The membership of DESCC is flexible in order to allow inclusion of the most appropriate ministers (NZDPMC, 2011a: 7). As in Australia, the ministerial committee was supported by a committee of permanent heads, known as the Officials Domestic and External Coordination Committee (ODESC) and chaired by the Chief Executive of the NZDPMC, who also acted as DESC Coordinator. ODESC is mirrored by an executive committee for intelligence policy and coordination named ODESC-Intelligence, or ODESC(I) (Controller and Auditor-General, 2003: 32–33).

Again familiar from the Australian context, ODESC and ODESC(I) are in turn supported by a standing committee on requirements, the Foreign Intelligence Requirements Committee (FIRC), the National Assessments Committee (NAC), and committees on security and communications security (DESG, 2000: 36–40; Controller and Auditor-General, 2003: 32,55). Representation on FIRC consists of a wide range of both intelligence producers and consumers to compose and submit for approval the Foreign Intelligence Requirements. FIRC is supported by a third tier of smaller groups known as Current Intelligence Requirement Groups (CIRGs), which are meant to break down the Foreign Intelligence Requirements into detailed collection plans (DESG, 2000: 38–39; Controller and Audit-General, 2003: 55). NZSIS has a separate consultation process to define its Objects and Requirements Plan (ORP) to guide security intelligence collection. While these processes are technically separated, the membership of NZSIS on FIRC and within CIRGs provides a link between the two collaborative processes, in addition to bilateral discussions between NZSIS and customers (Controller and Auditor-General, 2003: 56).

These committees are supported by the Security Risk Group (SRG), the NAB, and after 2010, the Intelligence Coordination Group (ICG), which are all business units within NZDPMC. The important factor is that, as in Australia, these committees all have overlapping memberships horizontally, and mirrored memberships vertically. The support staff from NZDPMC are also interdependent, and therefore incentivised to work across committees. SRG relies on inputs from NAB that help set the context for options on managing risks. NAB in turn relies on ICG to effectively task the national collection agencies, whose intelligence product feeds into subsequent NAB assessments (NZDPMC, 2011b: 16). Similarly, the national agencies are interdependent on one another. For example, GCSB is tasked with providing foreign intelligence and is evaluated through the government’s satisfaction with the quality of NAB assessments, which represent the cumulative depth of New Zealand’s foreign intelligence collection. However, GCSB is limited by law to collecting on external actors and therefore cannot fully satisfy the government’s foreign intelligence requirements. To meet a larger portion of the foreign intelligence requirements and hence increase the strength of NAB assessments, GCSB must rely on NZSIS’ ability to collect foreign intelligence domestically (GCSB Act 1977; NZSIS Act 1969, Sec. 4A).

These interdependencies are recognised and accepted by the actors involved, resulting in collegial interdepartmental structures. Richard Woods, the former Director of NZSIS, stated that ‘ODESC is a remarkably collegial body, with thorough and unstinting cooperation among its members both bilaterally and as a group’ (NZSIS, 2006: 8). This view is extended to ODESC(I) by the current NZSIS Director and former GCSB Director, Dr. Warren Tucker, who stated that the committee ‘works very well because it operates in a very collegial manner, with all participants well known to each other and with frequent interactions outside the formal ODESC(I) meetings’ (Tucker, 2007). An independent voice, in the form of the Controller and Auditor-General, confirmed that actors who have been critical of the DESCC system have not questioned the overall utility of interdepartmental machinery, but suggested ways that it could be refined (Controller and Auditor-General, 2003: 39).

This machinery has been used to agree significant New Zealand IC infrastructure programmes. Major upgrades to the NZICNet communications system, and the Communications Inter-operability project, were shared across the budget votes of the ODESC(I) members. The scheme was agreed at a 2009 ODESC(I) meeting and each department transferred a share of their budget to the GCSB’s Vote Communication Security to fund the projects (Mapp, 2009). It is true that the principal actors are budgeted out of separate votes;¹⁶ however the clustering of the NZSIS, GCSB and NAB within the Prime Minister’s portfolio does allow for cross-agency planning and scrutiny in regards to intelligence collection and all-source analysis. Also, the single votes combined with the functional specialisations of the principal agencies ensure that NZSIS and GCSB have ultimate control over their funds, and money cannot be reallocated towards unrelated expenditures as had occurred with DSD in Australia.

At a more macro level, the development of the fiscal provisions framework, which sets a government-wide spending limit that is strictly enforced by a powerful central Treasury, drives continued concerns about efficiency, which forces agencies to better target their expenditures, and where possible share resources collaboratively (Jensen, 2003: 47–49; McKinnon, 2003). For instance, the newly completed GCSB headquarters building, Pipitea House, is home to not only GCSB but also the National Assessments Bureau, Intelligence Coordination Group, Security and Risk Group, and Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG) (NZDPMC, 2011b: p.16). This co-location of agencies was done to promote a community culture by enabling the interdependencies between agencies, but it will also result in efficiencies by unifying “back functions” that will be standardised across the five organisations (NZDPMC, 2011a: 1). This tight fiscal control, a positive recognition amongst actors of the interdependencies between them both horizontally and vertically, and shared responsibility for relatively well-defined processes, have contributed to a New Zealand IC with a shared sense of collective responsibility for the national intelligence effort. One would assume, based on the two preceding cases, that the third Commonwealth government to be examined will have similar results. Yet the Canadian IC has faced a more complex national environment that has not consistently promoted a coherent approach to intelligence.

Canada: A hollow community?

An examination of the Canadian IC reveals interdepartmental machinery that structurally differs very little from that in Australia or New Zealand. National capabilities are nominally the responsibility of their respective ministers. The Minister of Defence portfolio includes the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC, the national SIGINT agency) and the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI) organisation within the Canadian Forces. The Minister of Public Safety¹⁷ oversees the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) with its criminal intelligence and national security enforcement function, as well as the intelligence elements of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), and Immigration Canada. The Minister of Finance has responsibility for FINTRAC, the national financial intelligence unit (Privy Council Office [PCO], 2001).

Prior to 1972, machinery to coordinate the Canadian IC was mainly shared between the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT)¹⁸ and the Department of National Defence (DND), and was quite limited in mandate (Wark, n.d.: chs.1, 2, 3, 6; O’Neill, 1987: 2–7, Annex A and B). This machinery was strengthened in 1960 with the creation of the Intelligence Policy Committee (IPC), principally focused on foreign intelligence, which would exist alongside the Security Panel, which was focused on security policy deliberations. It was not until 1963 however, at the urging of Secretary to the Cabinet Robert Bryce, that the Prime Minister agreed to set up a formal Cabinet Committee on Security and Intelligence (CCSI) (Starnes, 1998: 102–103). While this was an improvement over the preceding largely ad hoc machinery, the IPC quickly fell into disuse as the Security Panel failed to encompass military security issues, leaving this machinery only a half-step towards real integration (Bryden, 1993: 308–309; Isbister, 1970: 36). A major review of the Canadian IC by C.M. Isbister in 1970 concluded, ‘what is lacking is at the core; there is insufficient ability to formulate purposes and objectives on a continuing basis at the governmental (as distinct from the departmental) level’ (Isbister, 1970: 5).

The foundations for a truly central committee system were laid in 1972 with the formation of the Interdepartmental Committee for Security and Intelligence (ICSI) within the Privy Council Office (PCO), which consisted of deputy ministers across the security and intelligence community (O’Neill, 1987:26–27, Appendix E; McDonald, 1979: 89–93). Below ICSI sat two principal subcommittees, the Security Advisory Committee (SAC)¹⁹ to deal with security policy, and the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) to deal with foreign intelligence and national assessment (Solicitor General’s Department, 1991: 28). These subcommittees in turn had a series of more specialised groups working under them (such as Assessment Review Groups and later a Counter Terrorism Committee) (Solicitor General’s Department, 1991: 28).

This structure of officials proved enduring, existing into the post-9/11 environment. ICSI has now widened to become the Deputy Ministers’ Committee on National Security (DMCNS), which serves the new Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) (PCO, 2011; PMO, 2011; Naumetz, 2011). The IAC/SAC pairing gave way through the 1990s to various other groupings such as the Intelligence Policy Group (IPG) and the Interdepartmental Policy Advisory Group (IPAG), which like their predecessors operated in support of ICSI (Fadden and Dickenson, 2001; Milne and Last, 2004: 8-9). Currently, according to its terms of reference, the DMCNS is supported by several sub-committees covering intelligence programmes and policy (PCO, 2011).

These formal structures alone, while a useful guide, can be misleading. Milne and Last state that

while it might appear that chairs, memberships and secretarial responsibilities leave some room for disconnects … the reality is that this is a very small community and individual members may attend meetings from time to time in different committees. (Milne and Last, 2004: 9)

This type of dynamic is consistent with the mutual dependencies found in the core executive. Indeed, the very nature of the system indicates that actors in the Canadian IC, like their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, recognise the interdependencies between them and have designed the interdepartmental machinery to accommodate these dynamics. The RCMP’s Assistant Commissioner for National Security Investigations, Gilles Michaud, recently told the Senate Anti-Terrorism Committee that agency and departmental mandates

are distinct from, and complimentary to, one another. Cooperation between the Canadian security, intelligence and law enforcement communities is crucial. I echo the comments of my counterpart from CSIS that the relationship between agencies is better than ever. I know you probably hear that and wonder if we would really tell you if it was not. I can assure you it truly is. (Michaud, 2010)

Michaud’s statements are supported by the apparent success of operational-level cooperation between multiple actors on the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams and Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (Special Senate Committee on Anti-Terrorism [SSCAT], 2011: 24; The Street Review; Street, 2007). Also, DND relies on CSIS and RCMP to inform its contingency planning for operations inside Canada (Goldthorp, 2010). The use of CSEC to provide SIGINT capability in counter-terrorism investigations in support of CSIS, the RCMP and other domestic partners provides valuable support to the security agencies and was supported under the 2009 Mosley ruling (Rudner, 2007; Mosley, 2009). There are also historical examples of joint projects at the operational level, such as the Kilderkin and Capricorn SIGINT and cryptographic operations that CSEC mounted in conjunction with the RCMP Security Service in the 1970s, or the “embassy collection” programme run through CSEC-DFAIT cooperation (Frost, 1994).

Given the prolific committee machinery, generally collegial views amongst actors, and an increasing desire for cooperation, one would expect robust processes around requirements and priorities and resource management. However, these central processes have been relatively weak, directly affecting the ability of the Canadian IC to function as a national asset.

Canada’s intelligence agencies have been predominantly budgeted through their parent portfolios as line-items ( Government Expense Plan and Main Estimates 2010–2011 ). While the interdepartmental committees have supposedly reviewed agency estimates across portfolios, the dominant actors have remained the departmental deputy ministers operating within their portfolios.²⁰ Little active work was done centrally to coordinate budget estimates across different portfolios, even with the creation of dedicated programmes (Fadden, 1984; Marchand, 1987; author’s correspondence with former officials of PCO, DND, CSIS). The McDonald Commission observed in 1981 that the RCMP Security Service’s estimates and expenditure were reviewed as part of the RCMP budget by Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) and that TBS had not been able to determine a framework for monitoring expenditure across the security and intelligence agencies (McDonald, 1981b: 848, 876). Additionally, the creation of a Foreign Intelligence Program in 1984 covered resource planning for parts of the foreign intelligence effort, but not all. The 1987 review of foreign intelligence assessment by de Montigny Marchand²¹ highlighted that the Foreign Intelligence Program only covered collection capabilities, and did not extend to the all-source assessment units in Foreign Affairs and National Defence that had, as a result, been greatly rundown in the midst of difficult budgetary choices within their home departments (Marchand, 1987).

It is interesting to note that the Public Security and Anti Terrorism initiative (PSAT) budget, which was formulated in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was negotiated centrally in much the same fashion as the UK’s Single Intelligence Account. The Office of the Auditor General’s report on PSAT found the budget process ‘unusual’ but generally quite effective, noting that departments ‘found the review process rigorous and sometimes intimidating’, concluding that funding had gone towards acknowledged priorities, and that in many cases allocated funds were significantly less than those originally asked for by the departments, supporting the PCO’s warning to departments that they would not tolerate empire-building (OAG, 2004: 9–12).

Even with the successful outcome of the PSAT budget deliberations, the lack of a formal mechanism ensured that the process was short-lived. Indeed the OAG report acknowledges that, the PSAT process aside, the audit ‘found deficiencies in the way intelligence is managed across the government. A lack of co-ordination has led to gaps in intelligence coverage as well as duplication’ (OAG, 2004: 1). Yet this was not a surprising statement. A previous OAG examination of the Canadian community in 1996 stated that there was no continuing process that examined how the community as a whole was being resourced or whether there were gaps or duplication in capabilities (Office of the Auditor General, 1996). In effect, the resourcing for the Canadian IC has been fragmented, with little ability to plan across the community or adequately provide funding for shared capabilities. The budgets and estimates of even the major agencies in the Canadian IC have been treated as part of larger budget portfolios. Hence, agency budgets are planned with minimal reference to other intelligence actors, and always in the face of varying portfolio priorities.

Alongside a fragmented fiscal management structure, the Canadian IC has faced a consistent weakness in defining national requirements and priorities. Actors within the national security establishment point to the existence of a central process that has tried to set intelligence priorities consistently; however, this process has proven problematic (Coulter, 2005; McLellan, 2005). The McDonald Royal Commission stated in 1981 that ‘the mechanisms for determining Canada’s foreign intelligence priorities and requirements were inadequate’, and posed serious questions about security intelligence priorities as well (McDonald, 1981a: 642). The McDonald Commission went on to describe how ICSI had delegated the task of defining requirements and priorities for intelligence to a less senior committee which sat below the IAC, known as the Requirements and Priorities Group (McDonald, 1981b: 845–846, 855). A further PCO review of the Canadian foreign intelligence effort in 1984 stated that the ICSI/IAC machinery provided guidance on priorities ‘only exceptionally’ and that the Canadian IC encompassed a ‘centralised policy system, a decentralised [resource] management system, and a centralised (but in practice decentralised) assessment system’ (Fadden, 1984: 21, 22). The 1996 OAG audit of the Canadian IC confirmed deficiencies in the system for setting strategic requirements and priorities. The OAG report stated that ‘final approval of both foreign and security intelligence priorities has sometimes occurred late in the year to which the priorities are to apply’ (OAG, 1996) and a follow-up report in 1998 stated that the PCO Intelligence Coordinator had only begun to convey the approved foreign intelligence requirements ‘formally in writing’ to ICSI members in 1997–1998 (OAG, 1998). This strongly supports the idea that the priority-setting process had been largely only cosmetic at the national level.

Intelligence communities defined by differing national audiences

Based on the preceding comparative analysis, some important conclusions can be drawn regarding each state’s approach to intelligence as a function of government. First, it is necessary to make a general conclusion regarding all three cases; there will be no such thing as perfect coherence within an IC, nor should there be. Limits to agency powers are necessary within democracies, and with these limits come corresponding limits to coherence. The requirement then becomes to explore the foundations and dimensions of these limitations that are shaped by organisations, actors, processes and cultures and to ‘distinguish between unrealistic expectations about performance … and reasonably avoidable weaknesses’ (Major, 2010, vol 2: 132). Of course, these cultures will differ across states, and it is here that we find the most telling differences in our three cases.

The formal machinery for interdepartmental management of the ICs in each of the three governments has grown up along very similar lines. Cases often cited as examples of marked differences between the three states, such as the existence of ONA in Australia, are far less compelling upon closer inspection of the interdepartmental architecture.

Where differences do occur however is in the rate and scope of reforms, as well as the strength of core processes. In Australia and New Zealand, civilianisation of security intelligence occurred in the immediate post-war decade.²² Yet, in Canada, the creation of a civilian security service did not occur until nearly the end of the Cold War, even though strong arguments had been made for civilianisation as early as 1969 (Mackenzie, 1969). Perhaps more importantly, in both Australia and New Zealand intelligence assessment was moved out of departments and into the centre of government in 1977 and 1975, respectively, with the intent to support a wider range of government consumers.²³ National assessment in Canada was left in the hands of departments,²⁴ even after the Marchand review of 1987 highlighted that this arrangement was stretching the assessment units almost to a breaking point trying to satisfy both departmental and national demands for assessment products (Marchand, 1987). It was only in 1993 that the bulk of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau was transferred to PCO, somewhat haphazardly, to become the International Assessments Staff, with the express mandate to support the cabinet system and the prime minister. Also, the creation of the position of Director General of ONA in 1977 provided a focal point of leadership for the Australian IC in both programme management and assessment. No similar position existed at the centre of government in Canada or New Zealand until the mid-1980s, with the creation of the DESCC Coordinator in New Zealand and the PCO Intelligence and Security Coordinator in Canada (Archives New Zealand, 1989; Kroeger, 1984; Marchand, 1987). Indeed the creation of a dedicated Intelligence Coordinator within PCO was shown to provide significant benefits for relatively little investment (Marchand, 1987); however, the gains made in central leadership were inconsistent when taken in a larger context.

At the ministerial level, cabinet and cabinet committees are designed to provide cross-portfolio strategic coordination, and because of the sensitivity of the intelligence sector this is a particularly important aspect of the machinery. It is not uncommon for intelligence matters to be of lesser concern to busy ministers except in cases of major policy decisions or crises. Yet Canada’s ministers have shown a tendency to minimise their collective involvement with intelligence at the cabinet level; a tendency that is not shared to the same extent in Australia and New Zealand. Canada is the only one of the three countries to have abandoned its formal cabinet committee dealing with intelligence in favour of a minimalist ad hoc body. CCSI was abolished in 1993 as part of a wider cull of cabinet committees by the Chretien government (Farson, 1999: 23; Milne and Last, 2004: 5). Instead it was replaced by the ad hoc and very minimalist Ministers’ Meeting on Security and Intelligence (MMSI) that met only annually to formally bless intelligence requirements and priorities (Office of the Auditor General, 1996; Fadden and Dickenson, 2001). In the same period, Australia and New Zealand were solidifying ministerial attention through the formation of the NSCC and DESCC machinery, respectively. By way of comparison, while the MMSI was meeting for the most part annually through the 1990s, Australia’s NSCC was meeting on a monthly basis (Oatley, 2000: 24). A PCO official stated that intelligence matters were also handled within cabinet or bilaterally (Bilodeau, 2003), but with only four cabinet committees, none of which had an explicit intelligence, defence or foreign affairs component, it is unsurprising that these issues were dealt with in an increasingly ad hoc manner (Milne and Last, 2004: 5). With the creation in 2011 of the Cabinet Committee on National Security, Canada again has a dedicated cabinet committee addressing security and intelligence matters (Naumetz, 2011), yet it remains to be seen whether this will be an innovation that survives past the current government.

As in machinery, there have also been subtle, but telling, differences in key processes such as fiscal management. In Australia, the central review of estimates has included all intelligence collection agencies²⁵ and the national assessment organisations (NAA, 1978, 1980a, 1980b, 1980c).²⁶ Australia’s current CNSB process attempts to coordinate estimates across the national security community, and is centrally driven by the DPMC in close consultation with the Treasury and Department of Finance. In New Zealand, the fact that the votes for both national collection agencies²⁷ fall under the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet combines with the positioning of NAB within NZDPMC to produce a de facto intelligence portfolio directly under the prime minister and their chief executive. The fact that NZSIS and GCSB also have their own budget votes ensures that they are not in competition with any other actors. Formation of the Public Safety Canada portfolio was a step towards more unified resource management in the Canadian system; however, principal foreign intelligence actors are still spread across several portfolios, such as CSE²⁸ and parts of DFAIT such as the Global Security Reporting Program.

In addition to fiscal arrangements, there are significant legal limitations to coherence. Most notably, the existence of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures individual privacy rights and limits to search and seizure powers are inalienable within the Canadian system (Lefebvre, 2010). Stringent privacy laws impacted the ability of the Canadian IC to act across mandates, by actively limiting the ability of agencies to share information. In the case of the Privacy Act, the Office of the Auditor General found that information-sharing was significantly hindered by legal limitations. Departments had noted sixteen areas where legal barriers potentially precluded sharing information with other organisations (Office of the Auditor General, 2004: 22–23, 2009: 16–17). Often times, these barriers were due to restrictively written legislation. For instance, the Proceeds of Crime, Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act had restricted FINTRAC’s ability to disclose its analytic product to partners, which meant that raw data had to be re-analysed by other agencies (Capra International, 2010; SSCAT, 2011: 38). Some legal barriers, much more complex to resolve, have arisen because of decisions made completely outside the realm of the IC, such as the R v. Stinchcombe ruling, which guaranteed full disclosure of prosecutorial information to defence counsel in criminal trials. Wesley Wark admirably illustrates that, contrary to popular opinion, the CSIS–RCMP relationship was being successfully managed by the early 1990s but was made infinitely more complex because of the Stinchcombe ruling, which put at odds fundamental aspects of each agency’s mandate (Wark, 2010).²⁹ By contrast, New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act is ‘neither entrenched or supreme’, and Australia does not have any equivalent federal human rights code (Conte, 2010), leaving executives in both states more legal manoeuvrability in security matters than exists in Canada.

The key factor here is not that legal barriers to intelligence community coherence exist; indeed this is a limit to coherence that must exist. What is important is a paradox that exists within the Canadian system to a greater degree than in Australia or New Zealand. The “delicate balance”³⁰ between the need for an effective intelligence community and the protection of democratic rights requires particularly careful and consistent political management in Canada because of an entrenched code of rights that can have significant impact on both statute and policy. At the same time, however, this balance greatly increases the potential political risk of engaging in security and intelligence matters at the political level. Indeed one comparative study of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws notes that ‘the political costs of enacting new anti-terrorism laws or renewing existing ones … have been high for Canadian governments’, while the costs have been significantly lower in Australia (Roach, 2007: 84). While increased risk can lead to more considered and nuanced policy when political engagement occurs, it can also ensure that political engagement is avoided until absolutely necessary, sometimes leaving needed reforms unaddressed, affecting coherence and eventually capabilities.

Of course, Canada’s Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not mark the beginning of political aversion to intelligence matters, as this trend has been noted historically (Jensen, 2008). The Canadian constitution itself was a product of a larger political culture, a culture that ultimately eschewed intelligence as a function of government in all but the most minimalist terms except in times of crisis. Canada’s perceived geographic removal from the world’s crises, and abutment to the United States, led to passivity towards national security in general, and intelligence in particular. Conversely, Australia’s geographic position has made it acutely aware of national security considerations through consistent and significant military deployments (Connery, 2010), proven susceptibility of Australia’s citizens to transnational terrorism (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2004), and staunch treaty commitments, particularly to ANZUS (Hensley, 2003: 35). Interestingly, Australia’s more proactive stance is not limited to national security, as its “politics of initiative” have been contrasted with Canada’s “politics of accommodation” in trade policy (Cooper, 1997). Ultimately, Australia’s definition of national interests as material-based contrasts Canada’s value-based definition (Lefebvre, 2009; Rostek, 2006) and leaves one with the unavoidable sense that Australia has a more defined sense of its role on the global stage, while Canada’s principle concern has been maintaining cohesion domestically. Outwardly, one might expect similar trends in the case of New Zealand as in Canada. Yet the DESCC system in Wellington reflected a far greater disposition towards collective ministerial involvement than was the case in Ottawa. Part of the reason for this is that the DESCC structures were formed to not only deal with manmade threats, but also natural hazards, and the recent Christchurch earthquakes and Rena tanker disaster are stark reminders of the number of events that the New Zealand government has to respond to (Officials’ Committee on Domestic and External Security Coordination, 2007). More directly related to intelligence however is the sense that, because of its geographic location and size, New Zealand must work harder to protect its economic interests directly through intelligence and counter-intelligence or indirectly through its increased involvement with allies. The most telling sign of this was the passage of the NZSIS Amendment Bill No.2 in 1996, which widened the definition of security in the NZSIS Act 1969 to include ‘ensuring New Zealand’s international well-being or economic well-being’ (Privacy Commissioner, 1996). Ultimately, as Catalinac suggests, New Zealand, like Australia, has wished to chart an independent course in foreign policy based on its national interests (Catalinac, 2010). Intelligence is therefore a means closely connected to larger ends.

In summation, while actors within all three intelligence communities recognise the networks of interdependency between them and approach these networks for the most part collegially, the ability of the actors to work in concert with one another differs rather than the intent. Ultimately, this exploration shows that the management and coordination of intelligence communities is not simply a question of how well the core agencies work together. The ability of actors to work together in a particular sector is enabled or hindered by larger dynamics in government that have their roots in the political culture toward intelligence as a function of policy making.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Bill Robinson for providing a copy of the declassified document History of the CBNRC: Volume 1 (O’Neill, 1987).

Notes

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