CHAPTER THREE: General Intelligence Presidency
Fate brought me to my next national service role when, in 2004, I was hired to be an assistant to the president of the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), the late Prince Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz. My first mission was to develop the strategy of the presidency, an important task that also gave me an opportunity to familiarize myself with the GIP’s various departments and my new colleagues. It also taught me a lot about building team confidence, which was often tricky given the fact that intelligence work is sensitive and classified in nature. With the help of an external team, we used scientific methods and a clear approach to determine and outline the right structure to achieve our goals. After each GIP department drafted their strategies based on the overall strategy, we determined the needs and outputs of each department and then took a proactive step of holding workshops for their personnel. We also invited specialists, professors and academics, and members of both the public and private sectors to offer their views and feedback. This initiative built and enhanced public trust in the GIP and drove home the fact that it is an organization by the people and for the people. Many could not believe that we managed to accomplish this feat, and it ultimately led to calls to restructure the organization to better meet its new needs. The Institute of Public Administration played a vital role by engaging in the strategy-building process until we arrived at a structure that would adequately serve the GIP’s goals and achieve desired results. Understanding Intelligence A very important GIP department that was in a class of its own was one comprised of skilled personnel who can quickly adapt to modernization and development. It was the vital organ through which information is passed, and it furnishes analysts with the accurate and reliable security date needed to make informed and timely decisions. Intelligence must be processed with the highest level of precision. When I think of the military concept C³, which is a strategic and tactical system of command, control, and communication, I think of M³, which is what would be its counterpart in the intelligence services. I often liken intelligence to a reservoir fed by rivers and springs – an apt metaphor for M 1 , which represents the volume of available intelligence to be gathered without leaving out any detail, however seemingly small or insignificant. M 2 is the process of analyzing that intelligence, akin to deciding whether the reservoir will be used for recreational purposes, a fish farm, or a desalination plant to put the water resource to productive use. M 2 allows the intelligence team to identify the mission and its variables, and come up with solutions based on available options to be presented to decision-makers.
This brings us to M 3 , which relates to the benefit that decision-makers see in the mission, and how it serves the apparatus’ overall goals and objectives.
Somewhat related to this, I have a fond memory of Prince Muqrin, the Governor of Madinah, when I was working under him. He used to remind me of the number 6,363 – the number of personnel that we determined the GIP would need to carry out its mission. At that time, the GIP had more than double that figure. During my first week at the GIP, an expert who had a long-standing relationship with Saudi intelligence visited me in my office. Eager to learn from his expertise in intelligence, I asked: “What is intelligence? Is it wha t we see? Is Agent 007 an accurate depiction of this work?”
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