The 1994 inquiry by Lord Justice Scott into the scandal of Britain’s illegal supply of weapons to Saddam Hussein produced memorable moments. The Government will find new ones who will do what they are told.Phillip Knightley is the author of ‘The Second Oldest Profession’ (Pimlico), a history of spies and spying. Then you can give us the material to help make our case to the punters.”If traditional spymasters do not like this, too bad. The Blair government has decided that the intelligence service is just another Whitehall department, there to further government policy. It is as if it is saying to the SIS: “We’ll decide who the monster is.

Former chiefs of the SIS would have been apoplectic.And there we have the answer to Rumsfeld’s question: should intelli-gence shape policy or vice versa? Rumsfeld decided that policy should shape intelligence, that the work of the US’s intelligence community should be directed to furthering administration policy, no matter how loudly the spies squealed.The same thing is happening in Britain. It did not deal with these clients directly but through the Joint Intelligence Committee, which consisted of intelligence professionals and high-ranking civil servants.Before the events of earlier this year that have led to the Hutton inquiry, any idea that intelligence provided by the SIS would be used by the JIC to produce a dossier for public consumption would have been unthinkable. He wanted a subjective judgement, “a connecting of the dots”, which involved “imagining what you would do if you were in the other guy’s shoes”. They often crossed over but Rumsfeld felt that the relationship was too close and that the analysing of intelligence material should be done not by intelligence professionals but by outsiders, preferably politicians.Rumsfeld argued for a more intuitive (feminine, if you like) approach to intelligence analysis. Traditionally, the CIA had two different sorts of officers: collectors and analysts. First, it would answer the fundamental question: should intelligence shape policy or vice versa? Second, it would look for a whole new methodology for evaluating the danger posed by the monster out there.Rumsfeld and his supporters tackled the latter problem first. The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other neo-conservatives in the Bush administration saw no reason why the CIA should not be subjected to the same radical examination as has convulsed all other US government departments The examination had two main aims.

But in attempting to impose certainty on US intelligence-gathering, the administration risks crippling the CIA. And since the CIA is the lead intelligence service in the Western alliance and what happens in Langley sooner or later spreads here, British intelligence is now also at risk.This is how it came about. Since 11 September, Bush and the leading members of his administration have spoken of little other than certainty. Victory against terrorism is certain; the coalition’s moral right to attack Iraq was certain; that weapons of mass destruction will be found is certain; that the US will triumph over all its enemies is certain.This soothing rhetoric is understandable; it counters the fear and uncertainty that Americans have felt since the al-Qa’ida attack on the World Trade Centre.