There’s a great article in today’s Guardian by Nick Davies which looks at how all our intelligence agencies work, or rather, don’t work together.
Over a few thousand words, he details the problems that confront intra-agency initiatives dealing in particular with a terrorist threat in the UK. Some of it is quite shocking:
the Customs officers who intercepted a lorry with three tonnes of smuggled hand-rolling tobacco; who knew that the Real IRA had been raising funds by smuggling tobacco and diesel oil; who knew that the local Special Branch had asked to be informed if any such load was spotted, and who nevertheless seized the tobacco, released the driver and handed over the lorry to its owner without saying a word to the Special Branch.