When we talk about Secret Services, the mind evokes many images, the first certainly relate to a famous movie character but then, depending on the generation to which you belong, others appear more or less appealing and more or less "happy".
The Italian Services have long been distant from the extraordinary and almost disarming transparency of the CIA or - for those who distort the nose - at least from its presentation on the web.
It was enough for me to compare the websites of the two agencies at the beginning of last year to ask for this interview with the intention of obtaining explanations.
When the green light came and the communications manager, Dr. Paolo Scotto di Castelbianco, the portal was implemented and updated, in short, no longer attackable.
This is what happens when dealing with "intelligence" ...
Dott. Scotto di Castelbianco, how long have you been a spokesperson for the Services?
The task of "institutional communication" exists from the 124 law of the 2007. With the prefect De Gennaro (director of the Department of Security Information from 2008 to 2012, nda) and then Ambassador Massolo (new director, ed) the task was entrusted first to the prefect Soi and then to me.
You have made great strides in recent years.
Well let's say that the law finally allowed to communicate in a space in which before it was not even possible to disprove. The main tool today is the site www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it
A big evolution happened right there: when last year I asked for this interview, the portal was something extremely simple and essential. Today it is an updated, rich and comprehensive window.
In the past, a mandatory element for the public administration had to be dealt with. We had planted a flag to say "we are here and we are this thing here".
Transforming the communication tool required time and a maturity of the structures in relations with the government, the country system and finally with the public that connected. The 18 June 2013, when the new version of the site was presented, was already an 2.0.
The big difference I have encountered in recent months. Previously, compared to the more famous CIA, the comparison was pitiless in terms of transparency ...
Ours has been updated and the only "opacity" are due to legislative requirements concerning profiles, number of members of the sector and wages that, moreover, are absolutely within the Gaussian compensation of the public administration. This is to deny a fairy tale about "fabulous salaries": they are absolutely comparable to those of the Council Presidency or other State administrations.
Thanks to the site it was possible to intercept a series of targets: young people, the business world and scholars or lovers of intelligence. This net of all those who are intercepted because ... (realizing the potential misunderstanding, my interlocutor precise laughing) "intercepted" in a good way!
I mean people who enter the communication loop to understand our tasks and activities, the laws, the limits of our mandate, the safeguards to protect the privacy of citizens or the operation of services.
An important aspect regards the industrial world that has always had to be measured with security approvals, the NOS (security clearance, note), the export permits. To better serve this function to protect our products - because it is easier to steal an industrial secret than to create a start-up with espionage! - we created a special section with a form that saves time and made us get out of Camilleri's "granting the phone" in favor of a more user-friendly version. After all, if we correctly post questions and procedures, our work is also facilitated.
The site is a means of ... - I do not like the term "recruitment" - let's say "approach" of the world of young people and of professionalism to "work with us".
The requirements are set by the client, the government, which is represented by the ministers of the CISR (Interministerial Committee for the Security of the Republic, nda), called to not be passive but at least "jointly responsible" in the construction of information research priorities.
Once it was perhaps more automatic and predictable that intelligence provided priorities and the government confirmed them. Today it is the government that asks to provide information, otherwise untraceable, on sectors such as the economy, cyber, energy. These were the profiles we looked for. 8.000 people answered us through the site. A few dozen have been left through various creams, which this year will come to work with us.
In addition to these profiles, intelligence also seeks other excellences: if someone speaks Urdu, Dari and Pashtù arouses interest in new grafts. These latter are considered "experts" and not "analysts". Let me explain: if you are an expert on tanks, it does not mean that you have to stay in an office to study the live of cart floats photographed by a satellite. It may be that, if its characteristics of stability, flexibility and adaptability allow it, it can be sent to a country to interface directly with a source.
The young person who wants to get closer to the services should not think of ending up behind a pile of papers or a computer monitor but who could go on the field.
He said "I live by sprint". It is clear that military service did it ... Today it is not easy to find resources that master certain terms.
But maybe they know the live of the sprint but they can't save a file in pdf!
Many parameters have changed. At the time of the old intelligence it was already an operating result to make a difficult photograph in a difficult context with a camera that was not easily manageable.
Today with mobile phones and YouTube you can watch a parade of the Dearest Leader in North Korea and see a hundred things that in the past would have been considered intelligence scoops.
There are OSINT products (Open Source Intelligence, nda) that make the agent behind a hedge photograph superfluous.
Not to mention Google Earth ...
The intelligence with respect to a "freak" has the advantage of knowing what to look for, qualifying the web sources to draw on and has more powerful tools for processing.
If a time to have the translation of the Friday prayer of the imam of a mosque in a country not really a friend of the West we had to find a source inside that knew the language, today with the open sources I can receive the same information and use a resource to get to something different, for example to "who are the friends of the Imam".
We talk about recruitment, many told me that once the political recommendation was an essential requirement, sometimes to the detriment of the quality of human resources.
"Political recommendation" is a strong term, but it could happen that the "politico-fiduciaria" recommendation - which is not a negative element, because it is not said that the son of a general is necessarily bad, having breathed a certain air for years - in the moment in which he excluded other professionalities he would say "always wins the known".
The "known" in our environment is soothing if, in addition to skills, it also brings with it an "reliability".
The whole of Italy has certainly changed, once it was assumed behind the recommendation of the parish priest, today - with all due respect to the function - it is no longer a relevant element for a position or a career.
Given the theaters in which we operate, the recommendation of an imam will weigh more!
All in all the joke is excellent because more than a Latin-speaking connoisseur is more important than one who mastered Arabic and its dialects.
Outside of irony one thing must be emphasized: we are few. We were also in the past but we had more money.
Today, as for the entire public administration, we must be careful in spending.
Who is applying to work in the Services?
I have been on selection boards and I was fascinated by how many people wanted to approach our world. I have never found myself in front of "losers" but people with maybe a job and skills that could have been used anywhere. Even those who did not find a job with us soon got it elsewhere: the candidates are mainly competitive people.
It is a substantial sign of a wider world than the past that is approaching. In the 70 years if I had used the word "intelligence" many would have run away from the university window rather than having anything to do with us.
Today's challenge is knowing how to measure oneself with modernity without delusions of omnipotence. We know that the threats are geotranslated and of different types: military, economic or cyber. The latter is growing and the risk for a company is not to jump for the loss of market competitiveness, but for the loss of an industrial secret which will then be exploited in areas with lower production costs.
It is a category of young people that we are very interested in, that of "cyber experts".
Of course, being allies of the United States, with the domain of Google and Facebook, we should be favorites ...
We undoubtedly have strong strategic references, but when it comes to economic competition even friends can be competitors. Ours is a cyber defensive doctrine, yet it is advanced and allows us to spot hazards well before they approach.
At the national level we must be able to work at low levels in favor of small and medium-sized enterprises.
For Finmeccanica or Telecom it is easy to have a cyber sensibility developed. Perhaps the smallest company in the north-east has less.
Could it be that a small company may think it cannot afford certain services?
Sometimes it is not so much the costs as the putting together of data.
Everyone has the right to make their own industrial policy choices, but sharing information about attacks or penetration attempts can be extremely useful for protecting the entire system.
Some companies, fearing for misinterpretations of the attacks of hunger or competitiveness, tend not to share information.
Of course, espionage can take place via the internet but also with the old methods. It saves a lot of money.
The awareness of dangers must be built step by step. That of espionage existed, that cyber is not yet widespread as certain viruses were not feared before they were isolated and recognized. Before AIDS, people were less cautious, after precautions were taken.
In recent decades there has been a crisis in HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence), field sources. Is it easy to recruit someone after the cold war?
Paradoxically it is much easier and more difficult. With the Cold War, there were people who spontaneously helped. And this was true for both blocks ... Today in a liquid, complex and asymmetric world, sources no longer report - as in the 50 years - the habits of the Russian ambassador.
The sources today analyze financial movements or emerging figures on the markets.
Osint has made available a market to sources that intelligence can selectively draw from.
With respect to the Cold War of sources at Mitrokhin there are fewer. After all, Osama Bin Laden was eliminated thanks to a source HUMINT.
The figure of the recruiter has evolved. He is an extremely educated person because it was no longer like in the days of the Red Brigades that he was based on ideological criteria: today one "brings on board" someone with whom a high professional dialogue must be possible.
There is therefore not a crisis of HUMINT but a refinement of the instrument with new figures.
When in the 2012 I was in Afghanistan for a week I received warnings from the embassy with lists of possible targets and dangers. The only day that nothing came was the end of the world with seven simultaneous attacks throughout the country. I said to myself: "Pure losers! They buy information - perhaps at a high price - and then ... "
I must point out two facts: it is not said that all information is paid dearly. In many areas they are exchanged for social and civic operations. Some even work for free. The "expensive price" so I would avoid it.
That much information is inaccurate may depend on the fusion centers. It is not just intelligence that collects information but an exchange network. Then of course, the time a Lince (military transport vehicle, ed) ends up on an IED (Improvised Explosive Device, nda) the controversy comes up.
We are two eyes more, not the eyes of God.
We must live with the knowledge that everything cannot be predicted and thwarted, especially in certain theaters.
It makes a difference between information and intelligence services in the sense that the second represents the ability to process information and predict future moves by some actors to help the top politicians make choices ...
The definition is correct.
In recent years there have been episodes that have upset me if not even shocked. One of these was the war in Libya: a conflict unleashed by the media like Al Jazeera to bring down the Gaddafi regime. It was a precedent and the truth came out only later.
I tell you right away that I am not an analyst but it seems too causalist that it may have been Al Jazeera that brought down the regime.
It was a tool.
Ok, but it would be like claiming that Facebook in Tunisia was the tool for the revolt or that Tahrir Square was the tool for the fall of Mubarak.
There were thrusts that unfortunately then proved to be less adherent to democratic values.
During the first days of the conflict many local sources have often updated a colleague on the non-congruence between the massacres reported by the media and the reality on the ground.
You can tell lies individually but there were so many sources of information to tell the same version that it is impossible that they all lied.
I understand, however, that for many observers, the conspiracy to the trivial solution is more satisfactory.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I always encourage my analysts not to be ...
Andreottiani?
Then, if anything, to be Popperians: to be attached to facts and not to their interpretation.
We must read The black Swan of Taleb.
I always ask not to be dogmatic and, above all, not to have a theorem ready because we are the ones who least of all can afford such an attitude.
We have to keep our feet on the ground, because we give information that could influence the technical choice of a political decision-maker.
However in Libya they have not yet stopped.
We know from today that the situation is complex and that the risk that it degenerates is high.
Situation without hope?
No. Italy has worked to promote the development of the institutional dialogue.
There is a basic fact from which to start: there is a legitimate government, legitimized by the electoral result and there is a series of stakeholders able to influence the situation on the ground. These are the two cornerstones from which to start again.
The international community must consolidate and make its action more authoritative and conclusive through the UN.
The last law of services reform is of 2007. Is there a division between "old school" and the new course?
The law has innovated a lot because, in some way, without wanting to reach a single Service, it has created a rationalized System: unification of human resources, economic resources, strategic analysis, school, communication and security.
Despite the spending review, it was possible to do even more by improving internal efficiency.
The cultures inside the Services are different, not necessarily antagonistic: there is that of the armed forces, of the police forces and that - quite conspicuous - of the civilians.
Strong rivalries were present more in the past. The pride of belonging to certain structures today is more related to folklore and does not attack the operating result.
Before the reform, competitiveness and certain corners were more pronounced. Now everything is blunted and everyone has understood the benefits of working within a single agency.
That there are also small arms or dislikes is as normal as in any state administration.
The 124 law made it possible to pursue strategic objectives in the best possible way by dissolving personalities or arbitrariness.
You are still the "Italian" Information Services.
No structure is saved from aspects of the human soul such as rivalry or envy.
In front of the coffee machine in the corridor we are all the same ...
Right.
Then there are the "forcing": recently, with the investigation "Mafia Capital", we were pulled in by some newspapers. But none of the Services was involved in the investigation.
The only "service man" is a fake "service man": one who credited himself as a colonel of the finance guard ... - and he didn't have to! - and the Services ... - and it didn't have to!
In the dressing room of the five-a-side football I can also shoot it big saying that I am the man of Belen, outside the reality is quite different.
An anecdote?
Undersecretary Minniti and Ambassador Massolo made fifteen meetings in Italian universities to tell intelligence. The aim was communication, research and finally to inform potential candidates.
The surveys give our confidence in us a clear increase compared to just a few years ago.
However, having arrived at the Public Administration Forum, I was offered to give them pendrive, low-cost gadgets with our brand.
I replied
I dream of the moment when I can make that gift without anyone immediately thinking badly.
