ABSTRACT
A consistent theme in British government publications concerning Britain's intelligence system has been the emphasis on its increased overall centralization, and the increasingly central role therein of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The official history British Intelligence In the Second World War, 1 Lord Franks’ Falkland Islands Review, 2 and the recent Central Intelligence Machinery 3 have all stressed the role of the JIC in the coordination of intelligence production, and the dissemination of ‘finished’ intelligence analyses to Whitehall intelligence consumers. However, to a very real degree this view of a centralized British intelligence system has constituted something of an optical illusion. The problems and issues, which have formed the focus of current discussions of intelligence arising out the 1992 Matrix-Churchill Trial and the Scott Inquiry, have all resulted from the fact that the British intelligence system is, in fact, profoundly decentralized. The JIC does, indeed, provide a central requirements-setting, analysis and dissemination mechanism, but in a very special capacity. In the words of Michael Herman, a former intelligence officer, the role of the JIC is to produce ‘high-powered reports for high-powered people’. 4 The vast majority of intelligence production and consumption occurs at far less lofty altitudes of Her Majesty's Government. It will be the task of this essay to examine how this optical illusion of centralization has developed, and how Britain's intelligence machinery has developed such a ‘split personality’.
