ABSTRACT
The idea of different police and intelligence agencies collaborating, both within and between nations, is hardly a new one but it has certainly received renewed emphasis since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. There are a number of reasons for this but perhaps the most significant is that the US itself, although involved in twentieth century collaborative arrangements,1 had tended to believe that its post Cold War hegemonic intelligence power, as reflected in budgets and global reach, provided it with some kind of immunity from violent attacks, at least within its own borders. Thus the failure of the “intelligence community” either to predict or prevent 9/11 led to a great deal of soul-searching, of which one part was the obvious need to forge more productive intelligence-sharing arrangements with countries whose location and experience of political violence gave them a much superior understanding of the issue than was apparently the case in the US.
