The impact of intelligence

"I've always been naturally interested in how you understand countries, and politics within countries," says Greg Treverton. It's an interest which has endured. He recently stepped down as chairman of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), a role which capped a long and distinguished career - both inside and outside government.

"If you're trying to understand a place, whether that place is a city or a state or a country, you really need to take a broad and holistic view," he continues. "What drives people to do particular things? Answering that question has always totally fascinated me."

Behind closed doors

As chairman of the NIC, Treverton was privy to classified material large and small, but he was also working at the very heart of a vast and often labyrinthine structure that serves the intelligence and defence needs of the US. This community of 17 organisations - working both independently and collaboratively - includes the well known, such as the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security, along with the less well known, such as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

The NIC itself is the bridge between the intelligence and policy communities, a role that Treverton believes is vital for ensuring the smooth running of the government machine - particularly when politics and bureaucracy are not always in total alignment.

"It almost goes without saying that that bureaucracies act in a political framework," he points out. "What's interesting is the nature of the interaction between bureaucratic politics and the wider political realm, where there is so much variation across countries. You have one extreme, such as the UK's permanent civil service, and then the other extreme, as in some of the worst of the third-world countries, where the bureaucracy can be the more or less corrupt servant of the head of state or the autocrat or the ruling family. That variation in relationships is really enormous - and critical."

The characteristics of a civil service in Europe, for example, also differ from systems and processes in emerging countries. "European bureaucracies are relatively less personalised and more professional," says Treverton. "But in most developing countries, those things are all less true. Some have quite good and meritocratic elements - such as the Central Bank of Peru, for example, which was impressive even 20 years ago - but they tend to be spottier, and personal relationships matter more."

To illustrate his point, he says that who you know still holds much sway in the state organisations of many emerging countries. "Relationships to the seniors matter more," he explains. "There's less sense of required due process - particularly in getting things signed off. Sometimes the private sector has the advantage here because when they go into the country they can hire a whole bunch of locals in a way that the public sector typically can't. I remember Mort Abramowitz, when he was ambassador to Turkey many years ago.  He used to say that he prized the Turkish employees of the embassy in some ways even more than the political officers because they were out there, connected, and had worked for the embassy for 25 or 30 years."

By contrast, the private sector and NGOs deploy a more nuanced approach. "If someone wants their organisation to be and look Turkish from the get-go, they can do so. This option doesn't exist at all for the government. The government is always going be government. NGOs, though, are somewhere in between. Their local offices can be run by local staff, but strategy and direction will be set by headquarters."

Practicalities of the process

Although he was based in Washington, DC for much of his career, Treverton relied hugely on the work of his colleagues around the world for the information and intelligence he would use for briefing his superiors, up to and including President Clinton. When asked for a briefing on a specific country, finding out what was really happening on the street -- away from the headlines and media spin -- depended on a variety of factors.

"The government does this reasonably well, but not very systematically," explains Treverton. "There are hundreds of analysts working on a country like Turkey, doing very different things. Lots of them are focusing on its military, others are interested in what it is up to in Syria and Iraq, but the set interested in what kind of a place Turkey is, including its internal politics, is a much smaller one. Their collective method was an applied social science - not very systematic, but reaching out for what bits of data were available: information from public opinion polls and the press, as well as what we could add from secret sources. It's about putting together a mosaic of sources and ideas to try and understand what was happening and what might happen in the future."

Being able to call on this wide variety of personnel - broad in both number and scope - is something that government can rely on, more so than organisations in the private sector. "An ambassador has to cover a wide range of things - from security to commerce - whereas a business is focused on a far smaller segment, so it is logical that a business has a smaller number of people to call upon. Although government projects need to be implemented from time to time, mostly it's about maintaining relationships and gathering and trading information."

Those working in the private sector do this, too, but they also have a number of different priorities - such as communicating their positive impact on a community, either domestically or overseas. Treverton says that there is no golden rule for how companies tend to conduct such an activity. In doing so, he pinpoints one of the key differences between the public and private sectors - at least when operating overseas. An embassy would be staffed by a public diplomacy team, tasked with precisely this type of messaging and communication. "My impression is that there's a huge variation in how good companies advertise or make public the benefits they bring," he says. “They're much more interested in selling things, but if you really do believe you're adding some value - like new jobs - then you shouldn't be shy about it."

Come together anew

Treverton's career - which has included stints as director of the RAND Center for Global Risk and Security and roles with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the National Security Council - has left him well placed to comment on where government and the private sector can collaborate to increase their respective impact. Their combined resources in emerging countries are particularly acute - they just need to put aside their differences.

"Global corporations focus on their products, markets and profits, whereas the countries want them to be there as a partner for the long run, helping with things like economic development," he says. "My guess is that's something that they give lip service to but nothing more. But it doesn't have to be like that. It comes down to their strategy and what they really do value and really think they can do. Working together they can achieve much more."

Look out for more interviews exploring “corporate diplomacy” coming soon…

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