Confronting the Colonies (30 page)

An intangible fourth factor remains—difficult to empirically prove via archival evidence, but worth brief speculation. The early 1970s was not a particularly strong period for the JIC. Consequently, the committee was unable to attempt the levels of involvement witnessed in Aden. Peter Wilkinson had taken over from Dick White as intelligence coordinator in the Cabinet Office in 1972. By this time, it was perceived that the coordinator had responsibility for organisation and management (more so than the chairman), yet hampered by health problems—and caring for a sick wife—Wilkinson was ineffective and lasted only 18 months until 1973. The committee's ability to manage and organise intelligence at home and overseas was thus even more limited than previously. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Arthur arrived as chairman in 1973 but his somewhat chaotic style laid him open to accusations of laziness. The committee was simply not as efficient as it had previously been. Importantly, Burke Trend left the same year. As cabinet secretary, Trend had been immensely interested in intelligence and was a driving force behind the creation of the Assessments Staff and the intelligence coordinator. This contrasts the 1960s when successive chairmen worked alongside Trend to strengthen and improve the JIC, culminating in the 1968 reforms. Such drive, confidence and assertiveness were perhaps demonstrated in attempts at intelligence reform in Aden in a similar manner that military intelligence dominated Oman.

As the empire faded there was, naturally, a declining need for the JIC to have a role in colonial intelligence reform at all. There were simply no more colonies left. Instead the military helped reform and train local intelligence organisations on a case-by-case basis and only when British interests were at stake, as in Oman. Moreover, the empire (informal and otherwise) received less committee attention when compared to the peak of interest in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In terms of colonial intelligence management the committee had effectively come full circle since Malaya.

The year 1968 was a busy one for British intelligence and security actors. In addition to extensive structural reform of the joint intelligence organisation,
authorities had to contend with diverse and evolving threats. Not only did the traditional framework of Cold War politics continue to feature on the intelligence agenda, particularly given the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that August, but a terrorist threat was also fermenting in the form of intensifying Irish Republicanism.
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Meanwhile, the volatilities of the Middle East remained firmly on the JIC's agenda. This encompassed the ongoing Arab-Israeli hostilities, oil security and subversion against British interests in the Persian Gulf. With globally diffuse threats and limited resources, the committee was hard-pressed to efficiently execute its informal warning and monitoring role.

Despite consumer expectations, there still existed no explicit warning function in the committee's charter. Similarly, warning had to rely only on a limited formal structure. The JIC Watch Organisation and tripartite alert system was, however, predominantly (and understandably) focused on the Soviet threat and charged with meeting conventional NATO requirements.
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Consequently, JIC monitoring of subversive or irregular threats to British interests—not directly related to the Cold War or Ireland—was relatively ad hoc, informal and passive. In the British organisational culture, caused in part by a lack of resources, officials had to ‘muddle through' and rely on good judgement and an element of fortune.

The JIC—predominantly at the direction of the Assessments Staff—did commission a number of outlook papers for certain countries in an attempt at monitoring and warning. However, no formal means of choosing the subjects of such output existed. Initiative was key. Furthermore, the years following 1968 were not only the spring time of the Assessments Staff, but also the nascent body's high point in terms of freedom of action and agenda. It was not until after the Falklands review that the Assessments Staff became increasingly tied down to political departmental demands. FCO high fliers John Thomson and Percy Cradock were primarily concerned with Europe and the Soviet Union. These were the big issues of the day which drove the ambitious young men. Having peaked in the late 1950s and early 1960s, imperial and third-world issues did not loom particularly largely on the committee's agenda by the late 1960s. Although various end of empire conflicts did reach JIC discussion, interest generally developed reactively and passively.

This was certainly true of the insurgency in Oman. It took a combination of two factors to force the remote issue onto the intelligence
agenda in Whitehall. The first was a dramatic event in the formation of the leftist South Yemeni government in 1967. This certainly grabbed attention. It also had damaging repercussions for the security of neighbouring Oman. Enjoying greater aid from the recently installed radical leftists across the border, Dhofari rebels intensified their violent struggle to overthrow Sultan Sa'id and end what they saw as British interference in Oman. The second factor was increased policy relevance. Harold Wilson's influential declaration to withdraw from the Persian Gulf strongly increased the significance of security in the region and focused minds on the various scenarios that could affect British planning.

The low-intensity conflict had rumbled along beneath the Whitehall radar for a number of years. It was therefore highly difficult for the JIC to definitively warn of an impending deterioration in security and the likelihood of a full-blown insurgency. Indeed, incremental analysis often poses problems for intelligence assessments—especially regarding warning. New information was susceptible to being analysed within the context of that which had gone before: it was vulnerable to being understood simply as strengthening the previous piece. As CIA veteran Richard Heuer has argued, incremental analysis ‘facilitates assimilation of this information into the analyst's existing views. No one item of information may be sufficient to prompt the analyst to change a previous view'.
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A higher burden of proof was needed for a source to go against the grain and it was very difficult for intelligence assessments to differentiate continuing low level violence and popular resistance from an impending insurgency.

Despite the innate difficulties of the task, consumers increasingly expected strategic intelligence to perform such a role. Interestingly the JIC came tantalisingly close to an impressive success. In November 1967, the month of South Yemeni independence, the Joint Intelligence Group (Gulf) sent a warning to the JIC in London. The JIG (Gulf) cautioned that whilst ‘less active in recent months', the rebels held links with the new National Liberation Front government in South Yemen. ‘The change in regime in the East Aden Protectorate looks like transforming their [the Dhofari rebels'] ability to obtain supplies of arms, food, and reinforcements'. Although it did not explicitly warn of a recrudescence in Yemeni fuelled violence or of an impending ideological shift within the Dhofari leadership, this remained a prophetic point. Association with the radical leftists in South Yemen altered the nature of the
rebellion, changing it from a nationalist to a Marxist revolution. This proved only a tentative and initial assessment, however, and the JIG (Gulf) continued to broadly characterise the DLF primarily as a nationalist group. Wary of complacency, the JIG (Gulf) did however warn that ‘they continue to be well placed to achieve the assassination of the Sultan by suborning servants in the palace'.
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Building on such local information, the JIC began to warn of the potential dangers in March 1968. Echoing the JIG (Gulf), the committee espoused the predominant nationalist and separatist aims of the Dhofari rebels and noted that there had been a decline in rebel activity in recent years. However, the JIC repeated the warning that ‘since the PRSY [People's Republic of South Yemen] became independent in November 1967, there have been definite indications that the DLF has been receiving assistance from the PRSY'. Moreover, intelligence indicated that the previous decline in rebel activity had been ‘abruptly reversed' in early 1968. Alarmingly, the rebels were ‘operating with greater confidence and effectiveness than ever before'. Indicative of the committee's monitoring role, the JIC affirmed that ‘the situation will need to be watched carefully'.
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By the summer, however, the JIC had grown increasingly optimistic and was unable to provide warning of the increase in violence. With advances in structural reform since the dark days of Malaya and Cyprus, and with Dhofar already on the JIC agenda, cognitive dissonance and political pressures must be considered. Vested departmental interests, particularly those of the military, influenced intelligence assessments.

Negative intelligence appreciations of the Dhofar situation reflected poorly on the performance of the SAF, which was directed by seconded and contracted British military personnel. Discussing conventional warfare, leading scholar Richard Betts has persuasively argued that ‘intelligence officers linked to operational agencies (primarily military) tend to indulge a propensity for justifying service performance by issuing optimistic assessments'.
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A similar phenomenon can be seen in countering irregular or low-intensity threats. Interestingly this remains the case even when such officials were only indirectly involved. Ministry of Defence officials were seemingly reluctant to criticise the SAF's performance in Dhofar. Instead they over-emphasised their erstwhile colleagues' counterinsurgency achievements. Consequently, such officials questioned the JIC's warnings about a potential deterioration of security in Dhofar.
They queried, for example, whether ‘the existence of “guerrilla warfare” maybe rather over-stat[ed] the case'. Defence officials criticised the JIC's assertion that Dhofar was the most vulnerable area in the Gulf as it gave ‘the impression that the DLF's efforts have the upper hand and are dominating SAF which is, in fact, far from the case'. Similarly, the JIG (Gulf) joined the Ministry of Defence in strongly emphasising SAF's successes when commenting on the draft JIC report: the DLF ‘have received such a bloody nose from SAF that they are now almost inactive'.
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As a result of such input into the centralised intelligence machine, JIC output became increasingly sanguine. Earlier predictions of increased violence subsided and despite monitoring the situation, the committee missed an opportunity to provide accurate and explicit warning. For example, the JIC calmly explained that ‘stability in Muscat and Oman depends largely upon the wisdom and perhaps the speed with which the Sultan apportions his oil revenues' and that ‘if the development programme proceeds as he [Sa'id] plans, the prospects are reasonably good'. This is surprisingly optimistic given Whitehall's severe lack of faith in Sa'id's non-existent civil aid projects. Revealing Ministry of Defence influence, the JIC further stated that ‘the strong security forces which he has built up can probably deal effectively with any internal trouble'.
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Again this proved hopelessly idealistic. Violence spiralled and British forces, including the SAS, swiftly became covertly embroiled in a counter-insurgency campaign. This episode illustrates the more dangerous flip-side relating to closer producer-consumer relations. By giving policy-making departments an input into JIC assessments, the system runs the risk of producing skewed intelligence assessments falsely vindicating institutional mindsets. It is indicative of the drawbacks of an intelligence system that brings together analysts from different departments with different lines of command who will naturally push forward their own departmental interests.

It took increasing FCO anxiety about the deteriorating security situation for the misplaced confidence in the SAF's performance to be questioned. In November 1969, Walter Allinson, the FCO's representative on the JIC, informed the committee that his diplomatic colleagues were ‘becoming increasingly concerned at the inability of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman to end the rebellion in Dhofar'. The Assessments Staff was accordingly requested to provide an intelligence assessment on the political and military situation.
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As Antony Acland of the FCO's Arabian
Department quietly cautioned, ‘While it would be wrong to exaggerate the scale of rebel activity in Dhofar or the dangers of the present situation, there is enough evidence to show that the situation is steadily deteriorating'.
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FCO intervention in late 1969 and early 1970 countered Ministry of Defence confidence in the SAF. It caused the JIC to take the conflict seriously and issue a first comprehensive assessment.

Released in April 1970, the JIC's first intelligence assessment solely on Oman offered a more sombre output. It warned that ‘rebel tactics have become more aggressive and effective' and that the ‘majority of Dhofaris appear at least passively to support the rebels in preference to any attractive alternative'. In stark contrast to earlier confidence espoused by the Ministry of Defence, the JIC asserted that SAF had ‘little prospect of dominating the rebels who now operate freely in the western third of the province' and further warned that ‘time is on their [the rebels'] side, and the morale of SAF will inevitably suffer in the long run if the present stalemate is allowed to continue'.
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Once the pattern of violence was established, strategic intelligence continued to monitor developments for the duration of the conflict. The JIC maintained ‘a regular flow of assessments on particular aspects of development in this area'.
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Such output however, predominantly took the form of JIC notes or special assessments released in conjunction with weekly intelligence surveys, as opposed to long-term assessments. Illustrating a development in the JIC's product from previous insurgencies, the committee now disseminated detailed and regular current intelligence driven by the Current Intelligence Groups and Assessments Staff. These assessments were complemented by medium- and longer-term appreciations and each aided the relevant policy considerations accordingly.