Publication of the week: Professor Anthony Glees

Glees, A., “Open Secrecy”, in C. Bjola & S. Murray (eds), Secret Diplomacy: Concepts, Contexts and Cases (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2016), 108-131. ISBN 978-1-138-99935-0.

‘Open Secrecy’ is to be thought of as a discrete concept, describing what happens when a particular public policy (almost always concerned with national security) has been constructed with a significant intelligence input from a secret agency, whether we are speaking of information as a basis for action, or covert action itself (where intelligence officers and special forces may use intelligence to intervene, for example, in Syria or Iraq at the time of writing). Although the public may never get to know the full extent of the secret input into policy, they will, usually informally, know that the work of secret agencies was involved in the policy-making, and must be satisfied, post hoc, that this has been lawfully executed and subject to oversight. Open Secrecy is to be found at the interface between secret intelligence on the one hand and democratically accountable public policy on the other.

The chapter analyses both the theory and practice of secret intelligence activity, looking at examples where diplomats have been ‘spooks’, and ‘spooks’ diplomats, dismissing both as unacceptable in a mature democracy. Instead, accountability is key to proper secret activity and explanation of methods such a big data collection should help secret activity to be accepted rather than demonised as a rational tool for the delivery of the security of our liberty.

Read more about the book on the Routledge website.

Professor Anthony Glees is Professor of Politics at Buckingham and Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS).