The trouble with TESSOC: the coming crisis in British and allied military counterintelligence doctrine

ABSTRACT

This article examines the evolution of UK military doctrine on counterintelligence (CI), one of the more consistently troubled aspects of military doctrine in general and intelligence doctrine in particular. We argue that current UK and NATO CI doctrine are in thrall to a deeply problematic defining concept in TESSOC (Terrorism, Espionage, Sabotage, Subversion and Organised Crime) that conflates an intractably diverse assortment of security threats under CI. Furthermore, TESSOC is the latest embodiment of a slow, century-long oscillation between two different basic concepts of CI. The first focuses purely on human threat vectors (referred to here as Human Threat CI or HTCI) while the latter entails a more comprehensive, all-source range of adversary technical and open as well as human source intelligence activities (designated Multidisciplinary CI or MDCI in US doctrine). That oscillation is driven largely by the balance between conventional and asymmetrical operations in defence priorities and recent campaign experience. TESSOC is a legacy of the recent, pre-Russo-Ukraine War emphasis on counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. Consequently, UK and allied military counterintelligence doctrine are entering the second quarter of the 21^st Century fundamentally ill-equipped to cope with strategic peers and their use of full-spectrum and hybrid strategies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We are deeply indebted to the valuable comments and suggestions from the journal’s peer reviewers as well as to colleagues at the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies (BCISS), the UK Ministry of Defence, and attendees at the North American Society for Intelligence History conference in Calgary in July 2023 for comments on earlier versions of this article.

2. Their usage of MDCI was somewhat different from that in US intelligence doctrine because, as will become apparent below, Shulsky and Schmitt used MDCI only to countermeasures against the technical collection disciplines while actual US doctrine used it to refer to all collection disciplines, human, technical and open source.

3. This was, of course, well before the UK adoption of the French version of the Continental command staff model and its numbered branches with “G2” as intelligence.

4. The term “MI6” was not employed during the First World War but was adopted in late 1939/early 1940. During Mackenzie’s time the preferred circumlocution was MI1c. See Davies (2004) p.109.

5. I am deeply indebted to Dr Jim Beach at the University of Northampton for bringing this item to my attention.

6. This is almost certainly a reference to MI5 despite that agency’s status being both much reduced and in flux with the brief rise and fall of Basil Thompson’s Directorate of Intelligence.

7. Unlike War Office and Admiralty files in The National Archive (TNA), counterintelligence makes no appearance in AIR intelligence papers at TNA.

8. A substantial body of alliance CI materials and the work of the SHAEF CI War Room can be found in the WO 208 series at The National Archive, especially, inter alia. W0 208/5198 and WO 208/4701).

9. G Branch was originally an omnibus counterterrorism branch then focused purely on foreign terrorism after T Branch was established to focus on Irish and other domestic terrorism.

10. Others also raised concern about the HUMINT focus. Jennifer Sims, for example, proposed what might be termed a discipline-agnostic approach to CI through the notion of “mission-based” CI, although her substantive examples were largely counter-HUMINT. Robert Wallace argued for attention to technical surveillance but this was mainly in the investigatory sense of covert physical and technical surveillance rather than the military ISR sense, with a similar case by James Gosler focusing on cyber and computer network security rather. See, variously, Sims and Gerber (2009) Wallace and Gerber (2009), 112–115 and Gosler and Gerber (2009), 181–185.

11. Material and Personnel Exploitation is a multi-int discipline combining, essentially document exploitation, physical and digital forensic analysis and detainee interrogation.

12. For example on Russian use of capital asset military electronic warfare systems in the Donbas so-called “frozen war,” see Fish (2017).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported in part by a 2019-2020 Chief of the Air Staff Trenchard Fellowship awarded to Wing Commander Toby Steward.

Notes on contributors

Philip H.J. Davies

Professor Philip H. J. Davies is Professor of Intelligence Studies at Brunel University and Director of the Brunel University Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies (BCISS). He was an author on both the third and fourth (current) editions of the UK military joint intelligence doctrine and the first edition of the joint doctrine on ‘understanding’ for operational commanders.

Toby J. Steward

Wing Commander Toby J. Steward is an RAF officer with a broad professional background in security liaison, special investigations and military Space operations. He is a previous recipient of a Chief of the Air Staff’s Trenchard Fellowship, a graduate of United States Air War College and is a BCISS Honorary Research Fellow.