The Snowden Operation: Inside the West's Greatest Intelligence Disaster

Chapter One: Real Intelligence

Every country with the capability to spy does so. Dictators like to control their subjects and bully their neighbours. Democracies want to stay safe, free and prosperous. In each case, decision-makers like to have the best available information, which includes where possible knowing adversaries’ secrets. Good intelligence minimises surprises, widens choice and strengthens negotiating positions. It can come from inference, from open-source material, from electronic snooping, and from human sources: getting people to break promises and betray secrets.

Intelligence is collected in the full knowledge that the other side is doing just the same thing. Complaining that intelligence officers steal secrets is like complaining that diplomats dissemble, or that journalists simplify and exaggerate: it is what they are paid to do. Big countries do it more than small countries, and America, the richest and most powerful country in the world, does it most of all.

When it comes to collection of electronic information about their own citizens, however, other countries adopt practices which leave America looking like a bunch of milquetoasts. Russia’s extensive and intrusive system of internet monitoring is both widely known and attracts little controversy.[19] France allows surveillance of internet users, in real time and without prior legal authorisation, by public officials including police, intelligence and anti-terrorist agencies as well as government ministries.[20] A law expanding these powers was passed in December 2013, just weeks after France expressed outrage that the NSA had allegedly been engaged in similar activities there. Spying is necessarily conducted in secret, partly for operational reasons but also to save face (among victims and practitioners). Espionage is not glamorous, despite its Hollywood depictions. It is just another government bureaucracy—albeit one which involves behaviour that is always disreputable (telling lies) and often illegal (using false identities, bribing, bullying, breaking into buildings, tapping phones). Ruses, stunts, mischief and gadgets may look rather ridiculous in the cold light of day, so espionage is a tempting target for outside suspicion, investigation, denigration and ridicule.

Any politician or senior official involved in international negotiations knows that spying is routine. You have to be careful what you put in texts or e-mails, and what you say on any kind of phone, unless you have some advanced security measures in place. Even then, electronic communications are vulnerable to a sophisticated attacker. That is why serious governments have special venues for their important meetings. These typically have no windows (which are vulnerable to the use of long-range microphones involving the clever use of lasers). They are usually deep within secure government buildings. Mobile phones and other gadgets must be left outside in lead-lined lockers. This is annoying, but it is a fact of life.

Against this background, the fact that America spies on other countries, and that American allies spy on other countries, that America spies on its allies, and that those allies spy on each other, seems less shocking. Or at least it should. One of the most sensational disclosures in the Snowden material was that America’s NSA spied on Germany, chiefly from a listening post on the roof of the American embassy in the heart of Berlin: part of a network run by the agency’s Special Collection Service, which uses 80 foreign locations to intercept electronic communications. Among the targets was the chancellor, Angela Merkel, chiefly via an insecure old mobile phone which she uses for party and private business. Disclosed by Der Spiegel in October 2013, this caused outrage.[21] The American ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry to be rebuked. Mrs Merkel phoned Barack Obama to complain. Germany cancelled an intelligence-sharing agreement with the United States and Britain.[22] The then justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for the suspension of the deal under which American counter-terrorism officials have limited access to European banking data.

For many Germans, the idea that America was spying on their country epitomised an arrogance and untrustworthiness which had rankled for years. During the Cold War, when the then West Germany needed America to secure its survival against an existential threat from the east, such grievances had to be swallowed. Now they erupt freely.

Yet the idea that American intelligence is active in Germany and other European countries is hardly surprising. Anyone with access to Google could find a pithy commentary in the Wall Street Journal written in March 2000 by James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, called ‘Why we spy on our allies’. It was prompted by a previous row about the Echelon programme, under which America and its close allies search international telecommunications traffic for keywords. A report to the European Parliament had alleged that America was collecting economic intelligence that was specifically used to stop European countries winning international contracts. Woolsey made his case with admirable bluntness:

European companies habitually win contracts by bribery, he maintained. In most cases their products are too backward or costly to win any other way. By disclosing the payment of bribes by Europeans, the American government levels the playing field. He added that America spies on European sales of dual-use technology to rogue states and on other sanctions-busting. And he pointed out that France is a mighty practitioner of industrial espionage.[24]

Woolsey’s points were true in 2000. Nothing has changed since then. On the contrary: America is now far more aware that it faces a grave terrorist threat. And European countries have behaved in ways that make the worries of the 1990s seem mild. Germany in particular has cultivated Russia, adopted a unilateral policy of appeasement towards China, and has repeatedly undermined international sanctions on Iran.

At least some of the outrage prompted by revelations of America’s spying may stem from envy. European spy agencies (Britain is a partial exception) are unable to match the NSA’s capabilities and are therefore left playing the role of junior partners, offering collection services in exchange for shared intelligence. But the hypocrisy is still striking. I have already mentioned France, but Germany also has well-resourced and effective intelligence and security services which do exactly what such agencies are expected to do, including spying on other countries.[25]

Germany’s electronic intelligence agency is the low-profile Kommando Strategische Aufklärung (Strategic Intelligence Office). A report in Der Spiegel in 2008 admiringly described how this organisation, which is notionally a pure military intelligence agency, can ‘bug the world’.[26] Its targets included calls made on the civilian phone system in Russia, and the communications of drug barons in Kosovo. Some of this intelligence activity is clearly commendable. Some of it may be questionable. But it undermines the recent German outrage.

So too does a further point: that Germany is one of the world’s top intelligence targets—from all directions. Chancellor Merkel’s penchant for using an old-fashioned phone for her private use (she has a cumbersome but highly secure phone for government business) is no secret: it has been a subject of much jocular mention in past years. It is hardly surprising that other countries try to glean what clues they can from her text messages and phone calls. These countries, incidentally, include France, China and Russia—as well as America.

Given that German policymakers, as a rule, read English, have access to the internet, know that their country is often at cross-purposes with America, themselves receive intelligence information based on electronic intercepts, and are not stupid, what exactly is bothering them?[27] The answer is the publicity. Asked privately about espionage, few if any would contest the picture outlined above. But when the details of spying operations are revealed, it is often politically impossible in the targeted country for even seasoned and cynical politicians to remain silent. Faced with an irate media, and demands from opposition parties for action and explanation, they have to feign outrage.

Revelations of even the most justifiable spying create the impression of a scandal exposed. A good exhibit here is the Snowden camp’s attack on Sweden’s FRA electronic intelligence agency for its collaboration with Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA.[28] Glenn Greenwald, the American lawyer in Brazil who is the custodian of at least some of the cache of stolen material, and the most articulate public defender of its release, implies that it is wrong for Sweden to have security, defence or intelligence links with Britain and America.[29]

For anyone familiar with European security, it is hard to see the scandal. Sweden is not a NATO member, but it has excellent if discreet relations with the alliance for entirely understandable reasons. During the Cold War, Sweden experienced frequent intrusions by Soviet submarines. Now it is experiencing dummy air attacks. One of these, on Good Friday 2013, involved Russian warplanes targeting two vital defence installations.[30] Unpublished but well-sourced information suggests that the Russians also jammed Sweden’s air defence radar. A leaked military intelligence report says the drill included launch codes being received to fire nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Most Swedes do not like this, and neither does the government (or the slimmed-down armed forces, which say that in the event of a crisis they would be able to defend only part of Sweden from military attack, and for less than a week).

So Swedish policymakers want to know what Russia is up to. What is the aim of the sabre-rattling? What subversion, mischief and influence peddling are under way in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, just the other side of the Baltic sea? Why is Russia putting nuclear missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave? What state is the Russian Baltic Fleet in? What plans does it have for the two Mistral helicopter carriers it has ordered from France? These are classic national security questions to which espionage provides at least a partial answer.

Sweden, like other small countries, cannot mount the kind of intelligence efforts it needs alone. So it exchanges information with countries that can help. America has satellites, for example, which have extraordinary abilities to look down on Russia from the sky. Sweden does not have spy satellites.[31] But it can benefit from America’s—and it is in America’s interest that Sweden, a vital defence partner in the region, is secure and well informed. In turn, Sweden has intelligence assets that America may lack. These can involve collection of electronic information based on proximity to Russia, or linguistic and cryptographic capabilities. Sweden also has human intelligence assets (spies) in and around Russia which may complement or even exceed those available to American intelligence (especially in its current plight).

Why is this wrong? Not because it breaches Swedish ‘neutrality’: though Sweden was indeed neutral during the Second World War it does not now count itself as a neutral country (it is not part of any military alliance, which is a different status). Whether neutral, non-aligned or independent, the country must be defended: that is the responsibility of Sweden’s government. Intelligence and security cooperation with other states is an entirely normal and legitimate part of that. It also helps the security of others. A recent tip-off from Sweden’s FRA alerted Finland to a sophisticated Russian cyber attack on its foreign ministry.[32]

It would be fair to criticise Sweden if it was heavily engaged in wasteful, unnecessary intelligence cooperation with America, against a distant or irrelevant target. But that is not the case either. Russia’s behaviour in recent years provides ample proof of the problem. Nor can Swedish-American ties be criticised on the principled ground that spying (by human or electronic means) on foreign countries is illegal: it isn’t. Nor does the Swedish public seem bothered by any of this.[33]

Greenwald’s case against Sweden (at least as far as can be discerned and inferred from his interview on Swedish television: he has declined to respond to my requests for comment) rests on America’s wrongdoing. The United States, he repeatedly notes, fought a disastrous and illegal war in Iraq, and now systematically breaches laws and norms in its bulk data collection. SO any country engaged in intelligence cooperation with America is tainted too. He also assumes, but does not prove, that the privacy of Swedish citizens is breached as a result of these ties. He dismisses the utility of such cooperation out of hand, even when aimed at terrorists, on the grounds that they already know the West’s capabilities and take steps to avoid and evade them.

Greenwald makes much of the fact that the espionage links include economic targets. This, he argues, is hypocritical. America complains about Chinese spying on big US companies. So why is America—with Swedish help—spying on Russian energy companies? The answers would fill a book. (Readers may find mine, The New Cold War, useful.) But the brief and simple point is that Russia’s energy companies are essentially political entities. Their senior managers are Kremlin appointees and cronies. They spin money off into to ‘black cash’ for the use of the Russian authorities in off-the-books projects at home and abroad. They are part of Russian foreign policy. If you worry about Russia, you worry about Gazprom.

The Snowdenistas’ attack on Sweden was not an aberration. Looking at the pattern of disclosures, a shift is visible from those that involve ‘evidence’ of mass surveillance, which is a matter of genuine public controversy (although the operations described so far are all legal and in my view justified) and of the controversial hacking techniques used by the NSA (which may be legal, but are more arguably unwise), towards material that affects only the national security of the countries concerned.

Brazil, for example, reacted with an appearance of fury to revelations that America and Canada were spying on it.[34] It is now organising a conference on curbing foreign espionage.[35] Revelations of Australia’s spying on Indonesia infuriated the leadership in Jakarta and seriously damaged Australia’s relations with its Asian neighbours. Indonesia recalled its ambassador and cancelled an intelligence sharing agreement. Yet it is obvious that Australia would be interested in the political, economic and security thinking of a neighbouring country of 250m people, which presents a potential military threat and has been the source of terrorist attacks which have killed Australian citizens.

A few days after the Swedish disclosures, another leak revealed Norwegian cooperation with the NSA. It showed that the Norwegian intelligence services have good sources within Russia, that they benefit from American help in dealing with Russian spies in Norway, and that areas of mutual interest include the Kola peninsular (a border area strewn with nuclear facilities) and the Russian energy industry.[36]

It is hard to see how such disclosures can be justified by an appeal to the public interest. Russian bombers make regular intrusions or near-intrusions into Norwegian airspace. In December 2007 Russia sailed a naval flotilla into the middle of Norwegian oil and gas fields in the North Sea and conducted an unannounced exercise there, disrupting their operations and endangering lives by forcing a suspension of the helicopter flights which supply the rigs.

To regard Russia as an illegitimate or unfair target reveals a strange view of international politics. Someone with a wider vision of the world might recall the cyber attack on Estonia in 2007, the war in Georgia in 2008, or the death of a British citizen (Alexander Litvinenko) murdered with a nuclear weapon in the centre of London in 2006. Also noteworthy is the story of the whistleblowing accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered a $230m fraud perpetrated against the Russian taxpayer by senior officials, and died in prison in 2009 after abuse and a beating. So too are the steps Russia has taken to prevent its ex-Soviet neighbours such as Ukraine and Armenia signing free-trade and cooperation deals with the European Union. A fair-minded outsider might also note the soaring Russian defence budget, its development of advanced weapons, and its arms sales to countries such as Syria.

To be sure, all these cases are open to multiple interpretations: Russia is not necessarily wrong to defend itself and pursue its national interests. But if you believe that democracies have the right to spy on anyone at all, Russia must be high up the target list. Similarly, anyone concerned with bringing abuses to light should regard Russia (and China and Iran) as major targets. Established international human rights organisations and civil liberties outfits certainly do. They berate Western countries for their many failings, and rightly so. But the bulk of the work of outfits such as Amnesty International, Article 19, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders is on abuses in non-Western countries.

The priorities of the Snowden camp are rather different. Nothing so far in their revelations has cast non-Western, authoritarian regimes in a bad light. Was Snowden really unable to find anything in the NSA’s files that reveals abuses in such countries—perhaps collected by the agency but ignored by politicians for cynical reasons of Realpolitik? It would be easy to imagine some intercepts on how the Communist slave-masters of Beijing regard with glee the repeated kow-tows of Western governments on the issue of Tibet. The NSA doubtless has some insights into what the Kremlin thinks of the British government’s trade-focused and amnesiac policy towards Russia. A true whistleblower might be expected to seek out such material. It would highlight Western cynicism and cowardice on human rights issues, and make the Snowden camp’s case far more effectively than spurious scandals about Swedish security.

This inconsistency, I believe, is the result not just of a blinkered world outlook but of something more troubling.