Securing Freedom: The Former Head of MI5 on Freedom, Intelligence, the Rule of Law, Torture and Security.

• Author: Rolfe, Jim
• Position: Book review

SECURING FREEDOM: The Former Head of MI5 on Freedom, Intelligence, the Rule of Law, Torture and Security

Authon Eliza Manningham-Buller

Published by'. Profile Books, London, 2012, 92pp, 6.99 [pounds sterling].

Since the world's response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001 began, there has been a continuing and at times aggressive debate on the legitimate boundaries of that response. Crudely put, on one side has been the argument that we need to do whatever is necessary to remove any threat of terrorism against us, our people or our facilities; on the other, that we must attend to the broad moral precepts of 'the laws of war' because if we do not we become no better than the terrorists themselves. Certainly, in the name of the global war on terror, all states have substantially increased the resources devoted to finding and destroying terrorists, and individual liberties have been reduced in the name of achieving a collective security against the possibility of terrorist activity.

Now, one of the leaders in the United Kingdom's effort to collect intelligence to support the country's response to the terrorist threat, Eliza Manningham-Buller, in an edited volume of her 2011 Reith Lectures first broadcast by the BBC, and supported by the text of a 2010 address to the House of Lords, has published her thoughts on many of the core issues. Manningham-Buller was the deputy director-general of the British Security Service, better known as MI5, in 2001 and acceded to the top position in 2002. Manningham-Buller was in the United States for discussions with her American counterparts within a day of the 2001 attacks and she led much of the United Kingdom's intelligence collection effort from then on. Given her central role in the intelligence-collection effort, her insights are valuable even if some of the final policy directions, in relation to the use of torture, for example, were contrary to her own inclinations.

In four short chapters, Manningham-Buller addresses the big and topical issues of 'terror', security, freedom" and 'the nature of intelligence'. Individually, none of the insights is necessarily particularly profound. Collected together they portray a worldview of liberal ideals combined with an understanding of the legitimate needs for the state to protect itself and its citizens against those who would cause harm. Issues highlighted as of continuing relevance include the nature of terrorism as a crime rather than a...