This issue (n° 25) of the Per Aspera ad Veritatem review marks a further step within the editorial project which has widely represented the SISDE’s strategy for institutional communication since 1995. This issue marks the first time the Review will be for sale at bookshops with the additional possibility of subscription. This initiative – made possible thanks to the Istituto Poligrafico and Zecca dello Stato – is part of a process to open it up to the whole of the community through a cultural instrument, and has already expanded remarkably with the opening of the website www.sisde.it.
We would like to remind our readers, had they not yet had the opportunity to visit the website, that all the volumes are available there and can be downloaded. At present, more than ten thousand and six hundred web pages, corresponding to ten thousand paper pages focussing on intelligence issues, are online on the Per Aspera ad Veritatem website. Fifty-five thousand people a month (a daily average of thousand and seven hundred) visit our website, with a peak when a new issue is published.
Over the last few years, many things have changed, including communication means which, while being essential for public administration in general in the course of different trends, have recently been regulated by legislative provisions. Communication will undoubtedly increase as it is essential for the institutions which are largely investing in terms of information and democratic development. In other words, one could say that this is a focal point within the innovation process, an essential instrument for autonomous reform necessary for a coherent fulfilment of the institutional duties.
Communication, as has been rightly observed in our Review, is much more than a mere distribution of information. It requires a cultural change in such a way that adherence to a participatory model, that is one which is the ‘proprietary’ of public institutions, will as a result lead to profound changes in the management system, or epochal changes from the culture of silence to the culture of dialogue.
It is quite obvious that such key principles of a democratic society - if applied to a a sector of the public administration - contrast with the reality of the intelligence world, whose activity is characterised by confidentiality and secrecy. However, intelligence can be influenced by communication, differing the tout court secret from the necessary secret by distinguishing between the information which may not be disclosed to the public and that which must. In the section devoted to the Bibliographic Reviews, we present the volume Open Secret, by Stella RIMINGTON, who was the Director of the British Security Service in the 1990s. The so called openness is one of the most remarkable features of her management. Anyone who has the opportunity to read the book will easily understand the limits within which intelligence communication is confined.
On the other hand, we live in a globalised era and so even threats to security are found to be globalised.
Among the various lessons learnt from the tragic events of September 11th, there are two relevant facts: global threat can be countered with information being the main instrument. Participatory action, awareness and cohesive actions among all sectors of society are essential to cope with terrorism. But the culture of security is not yet easily comprehensible, as the reality perceived by intelligence bodies substantially differs from the reality perceived by citizens. There is, therefore, a gap between the reality lived by intelligence agencies and the reality communicated to the public.
If this is true, it is clear that the communication process will acquire strategic features for a modern culture of security, in which the traditional dialectic acquires a new conception to embrace freedoms. If the need for more security / less freedom relationship and vice versa has always been contradictory, the events of September 11th – it has authoritatively been stated - have opened up a new world, in which global security has become the condition and the guarantee for freedom.
Security as a right is an essential requirement for other rights to be exercised.
In other words, therefore, perceptions and needs are changing according to the historical contexts. What remain unchanged is the need for ‘super partes’ strong values impartially establishing the foundation for a deeply-rooted civil society oriented towards the future. Such values find their meaning in and belong to the history of the people, embodying different ethical, historical, philosophical and religious principles. Those who are able to voice up such values will also participate in civil society, whose collective role plays an essential function in social pluralism.
Among these, we have chosen to open this issue (n. 25) with an interesting interview with Father Gianpaolo Salvini S.I., director of the magazine La Civiltà Cattolica. Being an exponent of the Catholic church, Father Salvini deals with ethics and values regarding unresolved questions of global development and Italian reality. The opinion expressed by the Catholic Church is extremely important, not only for its moral authority, but also for the influence exercised in the Italian social context, where it holds a position of historical relevance.
We hope our readers will appreciate the interesting forum by well-known journalists and experts (MARGELLETTI, NIRENSTEIN, PEDDE, PELLICANI). On the background of the Iraqi crisis, they exchange their views on international terrorism and new conflicts. The interview with the Author, published in Part VI, deals with the same issue in general and, more specifically, Islamic radicalism related to Al Qaid’a. In fact, Magdi ALLAM again discusses the contents of his book entitled Bin Laden in Italy, which has been widely debated both in the media and Parliament. He provides further information obtained from his survey on the terrorist threat in the Italian territory.
The section devoted to essays and articles includes valuable contributions. Due to the current international situation, most of them focus on international issues. CUCCHI’s article on NATO’s role in the fight against terrorism, MANISCALCO’s article on the perspectives of the Global Compact project, announced in 1999, by the United Nations General Secretary Kofi ANNAN, as well as FIORANI PIACENTINI’s on new fundamentalism, all of which dwell on the complex international balance. These Authors and others will collaborate to develop this subject further in the future.
CALIGIURI, lecturer in public communication at the University of Calabria, has devoted his interesting essay to the relationship between intelligence and universities. This is a topical issue even in the light of future reform allowing intelligence services to acquire new resources from the cultural and scientific world.
In Part IV, for those who are particularly interested in legal issues, we present a judgement of the European Court for Human Rights concerning the application of Article 8 of the Convention. As usual, Part V concisely describes the New Zealand intelligence system.
In addition to the interview with Magdi ALLAM and Stella RIMINGTON’s text, our book review section includes many volumes which have been debated widely over the last few months, as well as other past curiosities and spy stories.
As is customary, issue 25 of the Review ends with a piece of reading from Arthur CONAN DOYLE’s tale entitled His Last Bow. Immediately preceding the First World War, Sherlock Holmes is featured while dismantling the German spy network in Great Britain on behalf of the newly-created British intelligence services.
In order to enrich the aesthetic value of this issue, some drawings by the designer Francesco MOSCATELLI have been included. They were in the past created to represent an allegory of the values of intelligence services.