The Joint Intelligence Committee In Perspective 1 ;

The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) is held to epitomize a ‘British way in intelligence’, akin to Liddell Hart’s often-quoted ‘British way of warfare’; but like the British way of warfare it needs critical appraisal. I have suggested elsewhere, tongue-in-cheek, that it was Britain’s last consti-tutional export to the United States and the Old Commonwealth ² , but it now has an even wider salience. For the last half-century other Western counties have admired it while feeling that they could not follow suit, yet its concept of ‘national assessment’ is now central to the intelligence dimension of Europe’s Common Security and Defence Policy. The system needs to be properly understood.