Intelligence and Security Sector Reforms in Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany and Italy

By Musa Khan Jalalzai

European intelligence cooperation is in crisis as the majority of member states do not share their national secrets. The EU maintains numerous institutions, networks, and databases for collaboration and intelligence sharing with partner services in Europe and beyond, but they are reluctant to share real intelligence information. This book highlights intelligence and security sector reforms within the European Union, radicalization, espionage and the Lone-Wolves attacks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9789389620917

Musa Khan Jalalzai

Musa Khan Jalalzai is a journalist and research scholar. He has written extensively on Afghanistan, terrorism, nuclear and biological terrorism, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and intelligence research and analysis. He was an Executive Editor of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan from 2005-2011, and a permanent contributor in Pakistan's daily The Post, Daily Times, and The Nation, Weekly the Nation, (London). However, in 2004, US Library of Congress in its report for South Asia mentioned him as the biggest and prolific writer. He received Masters in English literature, Diploma in Geospatial Intelligence, University of Maryland, Washington DC, certificate in Surveillance Law from the University of Stanford, USA, and a diploma in Counterterrorism from Pennsylvania State University, California, the United States.

Book preview

Intelligence and Security

Sector Reforms in Greece,

Romania, Bosnia and

Herzegovina, Germany and

Italy

Intelligence and Security

Sector Reforms in Greece,

Romania, Bosnia and

Herzegovina, Germany and

Italy

Musa Khan Jalalzai

Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

New Delhi (India)

Published by

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Copyright © 2020, Author

ISBN: 978-93-89620-89-4 (Hardback)

ISBN: 978-93-89620-91-7 (ebook)

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Greek National Intelligence Services: Political and Bureaucratic Stakeholders, National Security Challenges, Foreign Espionage, and Challenge of Turkish Interference

Chapter 2 Democratization of Intelligence in Romania: Growing Threats of Extremism, Radicalization, Lone Wolves and the War of Strength between old KGB and New Intelligence Stakeholders

Chapter 3 Security-Intelligence Activities at the Time of Covid-19 Pandemic

Chapter 4 Italian Intelligence Services and Accountability

Stefania Ducci

Chapter 5 EU Security Sector Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Reform or Resist?

Ana E. Juncos

Chapter 6 The Key to Intelligence Reform in Germany: Strengthening the G10-Commission’s Role to Authorise Strategic Surveillance

Dr. Thorsten Wetzling

Chapter 7 European Union Law Restraints on Intelligence Activities

Iain Cameron

Chapter 8 The Polish Counterterrorism System and Hybrid Warfare Threats

Aleksandra Gasztold&PrzemyslawGasztold

Chapter 9 The UK National Security Council and Misuse of Intelligence by Policy Makers: Reducing the Risk?

Celia G. Parker

Notes to Chapters

Index

Introduction

The Russian interference story in the UK has been a dominant factor in the country’s political and intellectual discussion since the poisonous death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and KGB, in November 2006. On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in the city of Salisbury with a Novichok nerve agent. On 12 March 2018, the UK accused Russia of attempted murder and announced a series of measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats. The UK’s official assessment of the incident was supported by 27 EU member countries including the US, Canada, and Australia. In August 2020, Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, a German newspaper reported. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said he was a victim of attempted murder and the world would look to Russia for answers.

The UK Intelligence and Security Committee reported Russian interference in the country. Speaking ahead of an urgent question in parliament, the Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Thomas Symonds, said: on every level, the government’s response does not appear to be equal to the threat. This report outlined the scale of the shortcomings of the government’s response to maintaining the country’s national security in the face of what was clearly a growing and significant threat from Russia, he said. However, Director-General of MI5 told the committee: ....there are things that compellingly we must investigate, everybody would expect us to address, where there isn’t actually an obvious criminal offence because of the changing shape of the threat and that for me is fundamentally where this doesn’t make sense. In evidence to the committee, the Home Secretary accepted that the Official Secrets Acts were completely out of date. Director-General of MI5 told Parliamentary Committee: The purpose of [a potential new Espionage Act] is to be able to tighten up on the powers that have become, you know, dusty and largely ineffective since the days of the Official Secrets Act, half of which was drafted for First World War days and was about sketches of naval dockyards, etc., and then there was a 1989 … addition to it, but we are left with something which makes it very hard these days to deal with some of the situations we are talking about today in the realm of the economic sphere, cyber, things that could be, you know, more to do with influence.

The 55-pages report which was released after 9-months revealed that Russian spy agencies have been involved in illegal business in the UK-targeting Mr. Putin’s critics. The committee noted: Defending the U.K.’s democratic processes and discourse has appeared to be something of a ‘hot potato,’ the report said. In her well-established analysis in Foreign Police, Amy Mackinnon (21 July 2020) highlighted 4 key takeaways from the Russian interference report:

The 47-page, highly readable report, which has been shelved for over a year, offers a damning assessment of the U.K. government’s failure to examine Russian attempts to influence the course of the Brexit vote and describes Russian interference in the country as the new normal. There has been no assessment of Russian interference in the EU referendum, and this goes back to nobody wanting to touch this issue with a 10-foot pole, said committee member Stewart Hosie of the Scottish National Party during a press conference, raising questions about the British government’s efforts to protect the integrity of its elections. While Russia has long honed it’s hacking and disinformation skills on neighboring countries in Eastern Europe, the report notes that Russia’s efforts to sway voters in Scotland ahead of the 2014 independence referendum marked the first known attempt to interfere in the democratic processes of a Western country. Rachel Ellehuus, the deputy director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was surprising that as far back as 2014, knowing the objectives and the tactics of the Russians, they did not take more decisive steps. It was only after Russian operatives hacked and leaked internal emails from U.S. Democrats during the 2016 election that the Government belatedly realised the level of threat which Russia could pose in this area, the report states, a realization that came one month after the Brexit vote. If an assessment had been conducted before the Brexit referendum, the report adds, it is inconceivable that they would not have reached the same conclusion as to Russian intent, which might then have led them to take action to protect the process. The report makes it clear that the physical process of voting in the United Kingdom is largely secure due to the continued use of paper ballots. But questions of what Russia may have done to try to influence the Brexit vote, and how effective its efforts were, remain unanswered—and most importantly, have not been examined by the British government, according to the report.

The ISC report called for simplification of the ‘plethora of plans and strategies’ and ‘unnecessarily complicated wiring diagrams’ of Russia policy. Security Committee of Parliament Report on Russia admitted the UK Government efforts to effectively counter Russian spy networks: The Government has long recognised there is an enduring and significant threat posed by Russia to the UK and its allies, including conventional military capabilities, disinformation, illicit finance, influence operations, and cyberattacks. As such, Russia remains a top national security priority for the Government. This is why in 2017, the Government implemented the NSC-endorsed Russia Strategy, and established the cross-Government-Russia-Unit which brings together the UK’s diplomatic, intelligence and military capabilities to maximum effect. The Government’s Russia Strategy does not just respond to the here and now; it is a 30-year strategy, designed in the long-term to move from a relationship of confrontation and challenge, which currently threatens our collective security and values, to a relationship where Russia chooses to work alongside the international community.

The Telegraph newspaper on 22 July 2020 reported political and opposition leadership’s standpoint on Russian interference in the UK: The Security services are set to be given extra powers to try to prevent foreign interference in British democracy following a damning report from MPs on the potential threat posed by Russia. It is understood Prime Minister Boris Johnson will strengthen counter-espionage laws in the wake of the bombshell study by the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). The move comes with Labour poised to go on the offensive on the issue of Parliament’s final sitting day before the summer recess. Labour has accused the Government of failing in its response to the security threat posed to UK democracy by Russia after the long-delayed ISC report insisted London was too slow to recognise Moscow’s menace to British democratic processes.

Intelligence conglomeration of the European Union is a complicated system of different cultures of secrecy, collection and information dissemination. Notwithstanding the alliance of 28 secret agencies with their close cooperation with Five-Eyes, and CIA, lonewolves, extremist and terrorist elements are boldly dancing in the streets, markets and towns of the project, and targeting civilians and law enforcement agencies with impunity. In the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Brussels, arrival of radicalised elements, and homegrown jihadists have challenged authority of governments and law enforcement agencies. In the UK, the watchlist of MI5 magnified 43,000 individuals’ links with radicalized and extremist groups.

But intelligence reforms are now extremely mandatory to end the culture of political and bureaucratic stakeholderism within all EU member states. Moreover, in the majority of the EU member states, there are still in place the intelligence cultures and infrastructures of World War I, World War II and Cold War, and their intelligence agencies are still operating, collecting and processing intelligence information in militarised manners, and view each other with military glasses. The Nice, London and Munich attacks exposed the EU national security approach, where political parties and civil society pointed to the incompetency of law enforcement agencies. The issue of security sector reforms in France and Germany, and Eastern European States is often discussed in print and electronic media, but in reality, their zeal and resolve revolved around old mechanisms. In France, there are four cultures of intelligence information gathering which contradict each other. Stakeholderism in French intelligence is also a matter of concern for policymakers that the foreign and domestic intelligence reports have been complicated and weak due to their flawed approach to social colours.

In yesteryears, some intelligence reforms were introduced in France, Germany, Poland and Romania, but they are still struggling to bring their intelligence agencies under democratic control. After that initiative, in 2015, an intelligence act was adopted in French, but after the terror attacks in 2015 and 2016, the country’s parliamentary investigation identified multiple failures within the French intelligence infrastructure. The investigation inquiry, later on, recommended a fusion of all six intelligence agencies. Socialist lawmaker Sebastian Pietrasanta told journalists that two intelligence chiefs admitted intelligence failure. Tobias Bunde and Sophie Eisentraut, (Munich Security Brief, July 2020) noted some aspects of the EU security crisis, and their approach to conflict management:

For about a decade, the EU has been in constant crisis mode. The financial and economic crisis put the architecture of the euro to the test and triggered enduring debates about national fiscal responsibility and European solidarity. The war in Syria demonstrated Europe’s inability to put an end to a serious conflict at Europe’s doorstep–a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and strained relations among European nations due to the arrival of increasing numbers of refugees in Europe. The war in Ukraine revealed that the use of military force was still an option on the European continent and exposed the poor state of European Intelligence and Security Sector Reforms in EU defense. It also highlighted the fact that, without the support of the United States, Europeans would be unable to defend themselves against major military aggression. The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU showed that European integration had ceased to be a one-way street towards ever-closer union. In most EU member states, nationalist and populist forces have entered parliaments and shifted the contours of political discourse. In some countries, where they have entered government, illiberal forces have eroded European core values and undermined the rule of law – and the EU has been struggling to respond.

In my recent visit to Switzerland, Italy and France (August 2020), I learned important lessons of their security crisis. Russia is an important partner of the EU but efforts to foster practical cooperation with Russia for promoting security, stability and perhaps even the incremental democratisation of Russia have failed to produce the desired results. In Eastern European states, Communist culture of intelligence is yet so strongly rooted in society and resists all new efforts of bringing intelligence under democratic control. In Greece, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Germany and France private, political, and bureaucratic stakeholders have generated numerous problems. By law, all EU member states need to regulate organisations of their country’s intelligence services and establish different units to divide responsibilities between military and civilian agencies. The failure of French intelligence agencies before the 14 July 2016 terrorist attacks in Nice was mainly due to the lack of coordination with law enforcement agencies to prevent the truck runner.

The consecutive failure of German intelligence agencies to intercept the lone wolves and religiously motivated Muslim extremists before they translated their ferments and resentment into a violent action, raised an important question that reforms within the operational mechanism of its secret agencies was mandatory. The Crisis of intelligence sharing still exists with the EU project where political and bureaucratic stakeholders protect their own interests. German Parliament, politicians, security experts and the Cabinet have been discussing the intelligence reforms package for more than one year to bring the BND under democratic control. The reform set new rules for intelligence information gathering and surveillance. It was a great victory for politicians and the security and intelligence establishment who addressed flaws of the operational mechanism of all intelligence infrastructures. They expanded the BND’s digital powers despite careless disclosure of German and European strategic interests to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance by the country’s intelligence. The DW New report (15 May 2020) noted a revised bill on reform of German domestic intelligence agency to boost liaison with regional authorities. Electronic Frontier Foundation (14 January 2020) in its comprehensive report noted legal developments on the evaluating of intelligence act that entrust BND wide-ranging surveillance authority:

In 2016, Germany’s Bundestag passed intelligence reform that many argued did not go far enough. Under the post-2016 order, an independent panel oversees the BND and any foreign intelligence collected from international communications networks must be authorized by the chancellor. However, the new reform explicitly allowed surveillance to be conducted on EU states and institutions for the purpose of foreign policy and security, and permitted the BND to collaborate with the NSA—both of which allow for the privacy of foreign individuals to be invaded. It is worth noting that part of what allows a case like this to move forward is the ability of German citizens to know more about the surveillance programs their nation operates. In the United States, our lawsuit against NSA mass surveillance is being held up by the government argument that it cannot submit into evidence any of the requisite documents necessary to adjudicate the case. In Germany, both the BND Act and its sibling, the G10 Act, as well as their technological underpinnings, are both openly discussed making it easier to confront their legality.

Intelligence and Security Sector Reforms in EU 28 since the Snowden elucidation about the US illegal surveillance operations across the globe, several European and Asian states introduced new reforms to make their agencies fit to the fight against terrorism. Electrospace.net (A perspective on the new Dutch intelligence law December 2018) in its report described the evolution of Netherlands intelligence infrastructure. While AIVD or MIVD intend to intercept the communications between law firms and their clients or between journalists and their sources, this is mandatory to retrieve the order of the district court of The Hague: "In the Netherlands, there are two secret services, which were both created during a major reorganisation in 2002: General Intelligence and Security Service (Dutch: AlgemeneInlichtingenenVeiligheidsdienst, or AIVD), which falls under the Interior Ministry and is mainly responsible for domestic security issues, but also has a small branch that gathers intelligence information from and about foreign countries. In 2015, AIVD had over 1300 employees and a budget of 213 million euros. Military Intelligence and Security Service (Dutch: MilitaireInlichtingenenVeiligheidsdienst, or MIVD), which falls under the Defence Ministry and is mainly responsible for military intelligence related to peacekeeping missions and military operations overseas.

They also have to provide security for the armed forces. In 2015, MIVD had over 800 employees and a budget of approximately 85 million euros. The Netherlands has no separate signals intelligence agency, but in 2014, the Joint Sigint Cyber Unit (JSCU) was created as a joint venture of AIVD and MIVD. The fact that the Dutch secret services combine both domestic security and foreign intelligence tasks, also means that there’s just one legal framework for both, and that authorisations are not only required for domestic operations, but also for foreign ones. Therefore, the Dutch services don’t have to separate foreign and domestic communications, which proved to be such a painful job for NSA and the German BND".

Relationship of the National Intelligence Services of Greece with EU intelligence agencies helps it in maintaining a culture of professional operations intact. This relationship further strengthened resolve of the NIS management to adopt offensive mood of operation against lone wolves, extremist and jihadist groups. Recent reform and restructuring of the intelligence community in Greece further expanded the role of NIS to include both domestic and foreign intelligence operations, but most of the current intelligence problems within the country whether they relate to questions of ethics and privacy, are old dilemmas. After the London, Madrid, Paris, Munich and Nice attacks, the NIS was facing internal threats of extremism and foreign espionage networks and their relationship with local religious and ethnic groups, but the agency successfully intercepted, undermined and identified these elements within immigrants before they carried out attacks against civilian and military installations.

Romania’s new intelligence infrastructure and its stakeholders faced back-breaking and laborious resistance from its former communist precursors’ who wanted to push the reform convoy of democratic forces to the brink. The intelligence and security sector reforms received mixed messages from the international community. The persisting complications in Romanian intelligence are corruption, stakeholderism, and the operational mood of former Security agents. Democratization of secret services and the policing forces in Romania has been a complicated issue since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when the old communist intelligence infrastructure refused to allow democratic reforms. The agency was also accused in the press of illegally investigating journalists, media agencies, and politicians.

Often, the political struggle between parties or within parties to obtain the leadership of ministries that control the spy agencies is acute. Poland and Balkan’s States are facing the same challenges where the process Intelligence and Security Sector Reforms are in danger due to the intransigence of former communist stakeholders and networks. National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland was approved on 12 May 2020 by the President of the Republic, which spotlighted and asserted the adoption of different restructuring strategies:

Integrating national security management, including state defence management and building of adaptation capabilities, integrate the national security management system, including state defence management, enabling the unification of processes, procedures and working practices by merging the so-far existing systems, in particular, national security management, crisis management and cybersecurity. Provide the ability of swift adaptation to new challenges and threats as well as identification of opportunities. Create an interagency coordination mechanism for the management of national security through setting up a committee of the Council of Ministers, responsible, at the strategic level, for dealing with issues in the field of policies, strategies and programmes pertaining to national security management, in a manner ensuring their consistent and coherent implementation and linking the committee with the new role and competence of the Government Crisis Management Team and the Government Centre for Security.

Interconnectedness between internal and external security threats might possibly become closer in near future due to the weak global villages across Asia and Europe. The European destabilization crisis and new wave of radicalization and extremism are causing precarious security threats. The integrated international security strategy (Working Worldwide for the Security of the Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs-2018-2022) of the Netherlands has diverted the attention