Golden Days of the Black Arts

Technology and terrorism are unevenly matched. Undoubtedly it is helpful to be in a surveillance aircraft or at a computer terminal tapping terrorists’ telecommunications, encrypted e-mails included. But terrorists have only to revert to pre-modern methods to limit the rewards of SIGINT, the shorthand for signal intelligence gathered by technology. Saddam Hussein had been relying on word of mouth, runners, and cash in hand, and was therefore untraceable through SIGINT. Terrorists in Iraq are organized in small autonomous cells. It is the same in Afghanistan, and in the Palestinian areas. Penetration of the underworld in which these cells form and operate is the surest—perhaps the only—way to defeat such an enemy. This involves HUMINT, or human intelligence, a difficult and dangerous business in the best of times, reaching to every one of the black arts of deception.

British expertise in this field was once proverbial. Principally it was a byproduct of the Empire, and the need to be assessing unrest, but it also had something to do with the British character, with love of adventure and identification with other peoples and their customs. British consuls, soldiers, traders, and eccentrics were in the habit of studying languages and the religion of Islam profoundly enough to be taken for Muslims, adopting Eastern clothing and passing themselves off in the crowd, or as it used to be said, “going native.”

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

Featured Tags

Technology and terrorism are unevenly matched. Undoubtedly it is helpful to be in a surveillance aircraft or at a computer terminal tapping terrorists’ telecommunications, encrypted e-mails included. But terrorists have only to revert to pre-modern methods to limit the rewards of SIGINT, the shorthand for signal intelligence gathered by technology. Saddam Hussein had been relying on word of mouth, runners, and cash in hand, and was therefore untraceable through SIGINT. Terrorists in Iraq are organized in small autonomous cells. It is the same in Afghanistan, and in the Palestinian areas. Penetration of the underworld in which these cells form and operate is the surest—perhaps the only—way to defeat such an enemy. This involves HUMINT, or human intelligence, a difficult and dangerous business in the best of times, reaching to every one of the black arts of deception.

British expertise in this field was once proverbial. Principally it was a byproduct of the Empire, and the need to be assessing unrest, but it also had something to do with the British character, with love of adventure and identification with other peoples and their customs. British consuls, soldiers, traders, and eccentrics were in the habit of studying languages and the religion of Islam profoundly enough to be taken for Muslims, adopting Eastern clothing and passing themselves off in the crowd, or as it used to be said, “going native.”