Intelligence services, police and antiterrorism

A lot of books and essays deal with anti-terrorist, or intelligence services (IS) issues. But more than for others subjects, they need a methodological caution, what complicates their use.

The «secret» covering the operations, the activities, the agents and sometimes the credits of these agencies restricts the number of interesting studies. Even more, this «secret» allows numerous phantasms, myths or interpretations that priories hidden facts to visible ones or exceptional events to ordinaries routines. In this way, the style of the majority of the books on these topics oscillates between the arrogance of those supposed to know more than the others - because they have access to IS information - and a kind of paranoiac vision of the world, viewing the IS’ hand behind every political or social fact.

1. Insiders, militants and journalistic sources

An important literature comes from insiders of the intelligence services. Most of the IS former directors have written their memories, or have given a large interview to a well-known journalist. We can find information about the main cases they have had to manage, and how their service has saved, thanks to their own clairvoyance, the «free world».

Some intelligence services directors’ memories

Yves Bonnet, Contre espionnage : mémoires d’un patron de la DST Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 2000.

Marcel Chalet et Thierry Wolton, Les Visiteurs de l’ombre. L’ancien grand patron de la DST témoigne enfin, Paris, Grasset, 1990.

Amiral Pierre Lacoste, Un amiral au secret, Paris, Flammarion, 1997.

Alexandre de Marenches et Christine Ockrent, Dans le secret des princes,Paris, Librairie générale française, 1987.

Pierre Marion, La mission impossible : à la tête des services secrets, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1991.

Jean Rochet Cinq ans à la tête de la DST, Paris, Plon, 1985.

Jean-Emile Vié, Mémoires d’un directeur des renseignements généraux, Paris, Albin Michel, 1988.

Numerous agents of these agencies are also authors of essays. Their statements share their directors’ tendency to show themselves as heroes. At the same time, they insist on the ingratitude shown by their chiefs as by the politicians in regard to their work and sacrifices. See for example Daniel Burdan, DST, neuf ans à la division antiterroriste, Laffont, Paris 1990 ou Jean Marc Dufourg, Section manipulation, de l’antiterrorisme à l’affaire Doucé, Laffont, Paris 1991.

This bitterness and/or IS internal conflicts have also nurtured the literature. Some books are an «internal» denunciation of «dirty» practices done by the IS or by some individuals: colleagues, directors, etc. (for example Patrick Rougelet, RG, la machine à scandales, Albin Michel, Paris 1997). These books support the myth of the huge power of intelligence agencies and ask to be aware of the risks for democracy.

By their meant, they join a leftist literature, which has been very soon interested in this topic. Coming from militant or journalist work’s, these essays try to show the influence and the role of the IS in some «dark affairs». For example, I will quote Zamponi F. Les RG à l’écoute de la France, la Découverte, Paris 1998 ; Plenel E. La part d’ombre, Stock, Paris 1992 ; Guinel J. et Violet B. Services secrets. Le pouvoir et les services de renseignement sous François Mitterrand, La découverte, Paris 1988 or, for a Spanish example Fernando Rueda, La Casa: el CESID : agentes, operaciones secretas y actividades de los espías españoles, Madrid, Temas de hoy, 1993.

The whole of these books is useful to collect formal data as names, main trends and reforms, investigation themes, etc. They are also interesting because behind the exceptional affairs they are dealing with, they allow to understand ordinary practices, internal oppositions as well as political guidelines for the services. Information necessary for the researcher to prepare the interviews he (she) will make with intelligence professionals.

2. Parliamentary sources

Parliamentary reports on IS are very interesting, particularly in countries with control commissions of their activities [1]. We can find useful data on the budgets and sometimes on the way they are functioning.

When these commissions do not exist, the parliamentary assemblies regularly convene IS high-level officers to answer questions on a specific issue. These auditions can be seen as an interesting presentation of what Erwing Goffman calls institutional façade of the services they represent. These agents indicate to the deputies who are interrogating them - sometimes very roughly - their services’ priorities, and sometimes give precise information about the logics supporting their bureaucratic routines. In France, we can find information on the anti-terrorist services organisation and re-organization in the following reports :

Rapport de la commission d’enquête de l’Assemblée nationale La sécurité : un droit pour les Corses, un devoir pour l’Etat, (n°1918), Assemblée nationale,1999 ; Rapport d’information déposé par la Commission de la défense nationale et des forces armées, en conclusion des travaux d’une mission d’information sur les conséquences pour la France des attentats du 11 septembre 2001, (n° 3460) Assemblée nationale, décembre 2001 ; Rapport d’information déposé par la Délégation de l’Assemblée nationale pour l’Union européenne, sur les mesures prises par l’Union européenne à la suite des attentats terroristes aux Etats-Unis (n° 3332) Assemblée nationale, décembre 2001 ; Rapport de M. Jean-Louis Debré sur la question du port des signes religieux à l’école, (n°1275) Assemblée nationale, décembre 2003.

We have to make a special place to the parliamentary commissions who have investigated the attacks of September 11 2001 in USA and March 11 2004 in Spain. The scale of these attacks and the trauma they represented put into question the role and the efficiency of the IS. As a consequence, the commissions did numerous auditions of IS agents (at all level of the hierarchy), which constitute a precious empirical material. The American report has been published (The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) while the Spanish one is not already finished. But the exhaustive reports of the auditions published by the press permit to know by advance the main conclusions.

3. Institutional and juridical history

The researchers working on IS’ issues will face real difficulties to access to the fieldwork, to observe ordinaries practices and/or to take distance from institutional discourses. This explains why some of them give descriptions that only are academic rationalizations of the institutional histories of the IS. Anyway, these books give helpful elements on the main administrative reforms and the juridical frameworks. See for example Jacques Baud, Encyclopédie du renseignement et des services secrets, Paris Lavauzelle, 2002 ; Jean-Jacques Cécile,Le renseignement français à l’aube du XXIe siècle, Panazol, Lavauzelle, 1998 ; Antonio Diaz, Origen, función y control de los servicios de inteligencia en España, tesis doctoral de ciencia política, universidad de Barcelona, 2003 or Bertrand Warusfel, Contre-espionnage et protection du secret : histoire, droit et organisation de la sécurité nationale en France, Panazol, Lavauzelle, 2000.

In this category, we have to make a special mention for the book of François Thuillier, L’Europe du secret. Mythes et réalités du renseignement politique interne. La documentation française, Paris 2000. It constitutes a very interesting presentation of the German, Italian, Spanish, English and French services. It exposes the distinct services, their organisation and the evolution of their missions in a different way from the institutional one. It is a good introduction to the issue.

We also find here researchers who belong to centres linked to Home office or Defence ministries, and who think intelligence in a prospective way. They are close to the agencies they are talking about (because they belong to them or because they associate their members), and organize numerous meetings and colloquiums or publish lot of articles. They are helpful to understand theoretical and doctrinal evolutions of the intelligence professionals’ small world. See for example the statements of the Centre français de recherche sur le renseignement, and particularly Eric Denécé (dir.) Guerre secrète contre Al-Qaeda, Paris, Ellipses, 2003, or Amiral Pierre Lacoste (dir.), Le renseignement à la française, Paris, Economica, 1998. We will also find updated data on the review Intelligence on-line

4. Academic sources

It is very rare to find academic books or articles dealing with intelligence issues from a political science or sociology perspective. From our point of view, we need to focus more on the organizational routines and the bureaucratic work, rather than on the «affairs». That means that we have to describe these activities in act. And we have also to elucidate how they look for legitimacy, by investigating the interdependence relationship they maintain with political elites and clandestine groups. The activities of the IS - and that of police in general - are not a simple «response» to a determined «problem». Otherwise, the «problem» is a co-production, depending on the balance of power between the whole actors. We have selected some books or articles responding to these criteria. They are presented in alphabetic order.

 Bigo, Didier : Polices en réseaux. L’expérience européenne. Presses de Science Po, Paris 1996, 358 pages.

This book is a decisive contribution to understand the genealogy of the European anti-terrorist cooperation. It shows the processes and the groups at the origin of this cooperation, whereas the visions of the world that they share and produce. This aspect remains central to understand how the 9/11 has activated, or reactivated, some interpretation models that nurtured the IS action.

 Bigo, Didier: «The Globalisation of (In)security and the Ban-Opticon», Traces: a Multilingual Series of Cultural Theory n°4, University of Hong Kong Press, 2004. A central article about the Security professionals’ field and its effects.

 Bigo, Didier : « L’impossible cartographie du terrorisme », Paris, Encyclopédie Hachette, 1998.

 Bonelli, Laurent : « Formation, conservation et reconversion de dispositions antisubversives. L’exemple des renseignements généraux », in Sylvie Tissot (dir.), Reconversions militantes, Limoges, Presses universitaires de Limoges, 2004.

A text about the constitution of IS agents’ specific dispositions, and their effects on the interpretation of issues like Islam.

 Bonelli Laurent : « Les Renseignements généraux et les violences urbaines », Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, n°136-137, mars 2001, pp. 95-103.

This article deals with the reorientation of an IS, threatened to disappeared. In a very particular context, the IS will focus on new missions and targets: the juvenile delinquency. Importing its ordinaries know-how in a new field of activities, this IS will participate in its social definition.

 Brodeur, Jean-Paul : « High Policing and Low Policing : Remarks about the Policing of Political Activities », Social Problems, vol. 30, n°5, juin 1983.

Article still up-to-date about police hierarchy and its effects.

 Brodeur, Jean-Paul, Gill, Peter et Töllborg, Dennis (eds.), Democracy, Law and Security : Internal Security Services in Contemporary Europe, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003.

 Combe, Sonia : Une société sous surveillance : les intellectuels et la STASI, Albin Michel, Paris 1999, 264 pages.

Even if this book seems to be less connected to our subject, it carries a very interesting approach to surveillance activities. Through the study of twenty East-German intellectuals’ files of surveillance, Sonia Combe draws the complex relationship they developed with «their» STASI agent, and the struggles between their different logics.

 Donner, Frank J., The Age of Surveillance : the Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System, New York A. A. Knopf, 1980.

 Dandeker, Christopher : Surveillance, Power and Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990.

 Dewerpe, Alain : Espion. Une anthropologie historique du secret d’Etat contemporain. Gallimard, Paris 1984, 478 pages.

This book offers a very stimulating thinking about surveillance and power. Based on a historical approach, it draws the institutionalisation and bureaucratisation processes of surveillance. It shows how a new knowledge on social world was built and its effects. It describes the construction of the intelligence as a state erudition, and analyses how it works.

 Dobry, Michel : « Le renseignement dans les démocraties occidentales. Quelques pistes pour l’identification d’un objet flou », Cahiers de la Sécurité Intérieure N°30, quatrième trimestre 1997, pp. 53-85.

 Gill, Peter : Security Intelligence And The Liberal Democratic State. Frank Cass, London 1994, 365 pages.

Peter Gill questions in this book the relationship between IS and various Anglo-Saxon governments (United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada and Australia). He intends to understand the relations between State and IS through notions of autonomy and penetration. Autonomy represents the agencies’ independence from external influences on their policies and practises, while penetration concerns the variety of techniques through which they control and monitor other agencies and society in general. The interplay between these two axes allows us to define sets of «pure» relations, ranging from the Independent Security State (strong autonomy and penetration)to the Domestic Intelligence Bureau(weak autonomy and penetration), via the Political Police(medium autonomy and penetration).

 Jiménez Jaime O., Policía, terrorismo y cambio político en España. Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 2000.

 Katzeinstein, Peter J. West Germany’s Internal Policy : State and Violence in the 1970’s, Cornell University, Occasional Paper, 1990.

 L’Heuillet, Hélène : Basse politique, haute police. Une approche historique et philosophique de la police, Fayard, Paris 2001, 434 pages.

 Marx, Gary T. : Undercover. Police Surveillance in America. University of California Press, Berkeley 1988, 283 pages.

Gary T. Marx works on undercover practices. He tries to understand their origins, their logics and their effects. These practices, not limited only to anti-terrorist services, remain central to understand police action. The author follows its work with European scholars (France, Germany, Holland and Belgium) in an another book : Fijnaut, Cyrille et Marx, Gary T. (Ed.) :Undercover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective, Kluwer Law International, La Hague 1995, 337 pages .

 Reinares Nestares Fernando, Terrorismo y antiterrorismo Barcelona, Paidós Ibérica 1998.

 Reinares Nestares Fernando (ed.), European Democracies Against Terrorism. Governmental Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation, Aldershot, Ashgate, December 2000.

 Rogin, Michaël : Les démons de l’Amérique, Seuil, Paris 1998 et son article « La répression politique aux Etats-Unis », Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales n°120, décembre 1997.

In these papers, M Rogin sets some interesting elements on the designation processes of the «enemy within», by the American IS. The author describes the dual function of their discourse of unease. The diabolisation of its enemies serves to legitimise the use of the same arms it attributes to them, but in the name of a superior need to thwart their subversive plans. This mimetic rivalry explains the systematic over-evaluation of their opponents’ capacities, and the continual advocacy for the restriction of individual and collective liberties, considered to favour their enemy.

Finally, to understand anti-terrorist practices, we have to situate them inside the spectrum of the police practices and knowledge. This means that we must be aware of the standards, the excellence norms, etc. This is the reason why we will also use Monjardet, Dominique : Ce que fait la police. Sociologie de la force publique, La découverte, Paris 1996 ; Palidda, Salvatore : Polizia postmoderna. Etnografia del nuovo controllo sociale, Feltrinelli, Milano 2000, 248 pages ; Brodeur Jean-Paul, Les visages de la police : pratiques et perceptions, Montréal, Presses de l’université de Montréal, 2003 and Lévy René : Du suspect au coupable : le travail de police judiciaire, Genève/Paris : Médecine et Hygiène/Méridiens-Klincksieck, 1987.

5. Sources about Muslim radical groups

An important literature on Oussama Ben Laden, or Al Quaeda has flourished after 9/11 2001 (and sometimes before). It comes from journalists or scholars and remains generally bad.

The spectacular nature of the attacks of 9/11(or of 3/11 2004 in Madrid) has developed a rough competition between the editors to publish books on the subject. Generally, their sensationalism is proportional to the weakness of the information they carry-on... See for example : Jean-Charles Brisard et Guillaume Dasquié, Ben Laden : la vérité interdite,Paris, Denoël, 2001 ; Omar Guendouz, Les soldats perdus de l’islam. les réseaux français de Ben Laden, Paris, Ramsay, novembre 2002 ; Casimiro Garcia-Abadillo, 11-M. La venganza,Madrid, La esfera de los libros, 2004 ; etc.

Even if they need to be used with extreme caution, they give some useful factual elements.

The trauma produced by these attacks has also opened an editorial window for publications theorizing the «new terror networks», the «hyper-terrorism» or reactivating the «clash of civilisation» ideas. They come from authors very closed from IS (if not members) which have a bureaucratic interest in redefining a «new global threat». These apocalyptic visions are generally based on real facts, but the interpretation and the way to link the events are more an ideological program rather than a scientific one. See for example : Alain Bauer et Xavier Raufer, La guerre ne fait que commencer, Paris, JC Lattès, 2002 ; Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, Columbia University Press, 1999 ; Roland Jacquard, Au nom d’Oussama Ben Laden, Paris, Le Livre de Poche 2003 ; Roland Jacquard,Les Archives secrètes d’Al Qaida, Jean Picollec, 2002 ; François Heisbourg, L’Hyperterrorisme Paris, Odile Jacob, 2002 ; Uriarte Edurne, Terrorismo y democracia tras el 11-M, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe 2004 ; etc.

These analyses have a real success inside the world of politicians and control agencies agents. They give very simple and operational interpretation schemes to the firsts and legitimate the practices of the seconds. That means that we need to analyse them and that they must be considered as a full part of our study.

We find books or articles better than the previous ones. They have generally been written later, but the majority doesn’t escape of an intentional or personalist bias. Focusing the analysis on Oussama Ben Laden - or on the mimetic rivalry he has with Georges W. Bush - they tend to reduce the explanation to the personals links he has with members of Al Quaeda. Even if sometimes these books give interesting information, their authors are incapable to see how Ben Laden functions as a convergence point between heterogeneous groups with different goals. See for example Peter L Bergen, « The Bin Laden trial : what did we learn ? », Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (2001-11/12) vol.24, n°6, p.429-434, Michael Collins Dunn, «Usama Bin Laden : the nature of the challenge,» Middle East Policy(1998-10) vol.6 n°2, p.23-28 ; Peter L. Bergen, Guerre sainte multinationale, Paris, Gallimard, 2002 ; Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: the Man who Declared War on America,Rocklin, California, Forum, 1999, etc.

The main problem is that is it quite impossible yet to know in a serious and independent manner what is going on with Al Quaeda or the groups belonging to its network. We know quite nothing on the sociology of the members of these clandestine groups, nor the dynamics that carry them to clandestine/violent action. That means that we are to enlarge the focus. We have selected the following contributions.

 Stéphane Beaud et Olivier Masclet, « Un passage à l’acte improbable ? Notes de recherche sur la trajectoire sociale de Zacarias Moussaoui », French Politics, Culture and Society, vol. 20, n°2, Summer 2002. Basing their investigation on Zacarias Moussaoui biographic elements, the authors try to understand the dynamics of radicalisation that have driven this young French people to participate to the 9/11 attacks.

 Jocelyne Césari, Musulmans et républicains. Les jeunes, l’islam et la France, Bruxelles, Complexe 1998. J. Cesari draws in this book a complete panorama of the French Islam; with all its heterogeneity and diversity. She identifies modal trajectories of adhesion, which allow situating the radicalisation in a «space of possible», historically and sociologically informed.

 Farhad Khosrokhavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, Paris, Flammarion, 2003.

The author links the failure of different Islam political experiences in the Arab world to the raise of movements characterised by hatred of the West, the mythification of communities of Islamic origin, the desire to restore Islam to its former splendour, and the sponsoring of martyred death in the Jihad.

 Abderrahim Lamchichi, « Al Qaïda, internationale islamiste ? », Confluences Méditerranée(2001/2002,hiver) n°40, p.41-56.

 Fernando Reinares Nestares Terrorismo global, Barcelona, Taurus 2003.

 Fernando Reinares, Antonio Elorza, El nuevo terrorismo islamista. Del 11-S al 11-M, Madrid, Temas de hoy 2004.

 Olivier Roy, L’Islam mondialisé, Paris, Seuil 2002.

 Olivier Roy, Les Illusions du 11-Septembre : le débat stratégique face au terrorisme, Paris, Seuil 2002.

 Mary Jo White, « Prosecuting terrorism in New York », Middle East Quarterly(2001,Spring) vol.8 n°2, p.11-18. This article reproduces the testimony of a Judge from New York, involved in the procedure against the authors of the attack against the World Trade Centre, in February 1993.

Bibliography established in February 2004