State Security Service (Belgium)


The State Security Service is a Belgian intelligence and security agency. Established in 1830, it is the oldest intelligence service except for the Vatican's. The State Security is a civilian agency under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, while the military intelligence agency, the General Information and Security Service, operates under the authority of the Ministry of Defense. The current Administrator-General is Jaak Raes, after his predecessor Alain Winants occupied the position between 2006 and 2014. The VSSE takes part in a number of international intelligence cooperative relationships, such as the Club de Berne and the CTG. It has contacts with over 90 sister services across four continents.

Mission

The main objective of the State Security is the collection, analyzing and processing of all intelligence that might prove relevant to the prevention of any activity that might be a threat against the internal or external security of the state, the democratic and constitutional order and international relations, to carry out security inquiries, and to perform tasks in relation to the protection of certain people. That last mission was transferred to the Belgian Federal Police in 2016. The State Security is also one of the main providers of threat intelligence to Belgium's threat analysis fusion centre, the . In recent years the State Security's activities have focused on the terror threat emanating from Daesh.

History

19th century

Within days of Belgian independence, an "Administration for Public Safety" was installed to protect the fledgling state against attempts by the Dutch king William I to suppress the Belgian rebels. The Public Safety would have two directorates, one being the alien police and security service the other. As security service the Public Safety had to protect the Belgian state against Dutch spies and republicans at first. Intelligence gathering happened only internally: spying abroad was considered a potential breach of the country's neutrality which was imposed by the other European states as a condition for Belgian independence. The service did initiate contacts with foreign intelligence services almost from the outset, building up tight relationships with other European secret services. After peace with The Netherlands the service focused on subversive elements, successfully thwarting an attempted republican coup d'état instigated by Karl Marx in 1848. Other successes include the formation of an impromptu foreign intelligence service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to support the Belgian Army that was standing guard for a potential invasion of Belgium.
From the late 1870s and especially during the 1880s the Public Safety's main concern was the rise of socialist movements. Its freedom from political control - due to the lack of a legal framework and politicians who preferred to keep their secret service at arms' length - led the service to actively engage in provocation operations. In 1886 this led to a scandal when a paid informer was caught planning a bombing attack: the Pourbaix Affair, as it was called, led to a slashing of the Public Safety's budget. Before long funds had to be increased again however, as a wave of terrorist attacks by Russian anarchists struck Europe. During this time the Belgian intelligence service entered into a very close relationship with the Paris office of the Russian Ochrana.

20th century

On the outbreak of the First World War, the Public Safety destroyed its archives to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Of its history during the war nothing is known. At the front a military intelligence service was founded in 1915 which conducted all the intelligence work and coordinated the activity of the resistance. Soon after the end of the war the rivalry between the Public Safety and its military counterpart, known today as the General Information and Security Service, would arise as both services' activities overlapped sometimes. The military intelligence service had been given the counterespionage mission, but after it was suspended in 1923 because of a scandal involving the Belgian occupation of the Rhineland, the Public Safety had to take over again. In 1929 an administrative reform made the alien police an independent department and the Public Safety was given the name it still has today: Security of the State.
In the 1930s the State Security had its hands full on left-wing and right-wing extremism, and a surge in German espionage activity. The German threat caused the Belgian government to reinstate the military intelligence service in 1937. As war became imminent the two services were briefly brought together under the same ministry. After the German invasion, Belgian intelligence followed the government in exile to London to undertake, once again, the coordination of the resistance. This was impeded by the rift between the government and King Leopold III, who had decided to stay in Belgium and thus fall into the hands of the Nazis. The government, unwilling to trust the military intelligence service because of their loyalty to their commander-in-chief made prisoner of war, favoured the State Security. This greatly exacerbated the rivalry between the two services. Their constant squabbling got so bad the government eventually appointed a High Commissioner to coordinate both services.
In 1944, the State Security returned to Belgium with MI6 and the Dutch secret service, which was allowed to install itself in Brussels while waiting for the liberation of The Netherlands. The service would play a substantial part in the tracking and punishing of those who had collaborated with the Germans. Afterwards a severe political crisis ensued, as many Belgians opposed the return from captivity of the discredited Leopold III. The State Security had to monitor the opposing forces, especially the nascent communist movement. The onset of the Cold War shifted the focus almost entirely on communism. Soviet espionage would take priority when Belgium became the host nation of NATO headquarters. With British and American help, Belgian intelligence was significantly expanded to meet the surge of Warshaw Pact spies. As counterespionage took up a lot of time, from the 1970s onwards the spectre of international terrorism would come haunt Europe again. As a convenient transit country, Belgium would often feature in terrorist activity, which made the State Security play a key role in many counterterrorism successes. But starting in 1982, Belgium would itself fall victim to a surge of violence. The attacks by the communist terror group Cellulles Combattantes Communistes coincided with a number of incidents committed by a band of gangsters which gradually intensified in the level of violence used. Whereas the CCC was rolled up within a year, the Brabant killers would continue their bloody activities before literally disappearing into the night in November 1985, after their most violent raid on a supermarket that claimed 28 fatalities. The case remains unsolved, the killers unidentified, to this day.
In the attempts to investigate what was behind the traumatic events the State Security's activities came under scrutiny. Revelations about the deep ties between certain intelligence officers and right wing organisations coincided with hints that the Brabant killers were actually linked to the NATO-led Stay Behind operation, known in Italy as Gladio, and which were coordinated in the participating nations by their secret services. The ensuing parliamentary inquiries found that the Belgian security apparatus was flawed in that it was fragmented and unsupervised. The main recommendation therefore was to provide a legal framework for the intelligence and security services to operate in, and put under parliamentary oversight. The State Security entered the post Cold War era in uncertainty about its future. Despite a widespread demoralisation among the staff because of this, the service still rolled up what was left of the KGB in Belgium. Most of the 1990s the service tried to reorganise and get its act back together.

21st century

When in 1998 the Intelligence Services Act came in effect, the State Security finally had a legal framework that determined its remit and its competences to fulfill its missions. The sensitivity of intelligence work, after the scandals of the 1980s, had led the lawmakers to postpone the authorisation to use intrusive technical means to collect intelligence. Instead, the Belgian intelligence services were only authorised to work with human sources. Technical collection of intelligence was not allowed, significantly putting the Belgian intelligence services behind their foreign counterparts in terms of collection and effectiveness. This was rectified only in 2010 through the introduction of the Special Intelligence Methods Act. Until then, the Belgian police had the upper hand, having been allowed to use wiretapping and technical surveillance methods in 2003. Naturally this caused a good deal of discontent with the State Security, which had to give up its place as the international preferred Belgian partner for counterterrorism.
Another cause for frustration was the installation of a threat intelligence fusion centre in 2006, a consequence of a European agreement to establish such centres as a reaction to the terrorist attacks on Madrid and London in 2004-2005. Fearing competition or even being made obsolete, the State Security chief Koenraad Dassen actively tried to scuttle the establishment of the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis. Dassen did however try to lift the State Security's veil of secrecy, by publishing for the first time ever a public activity report in 2005, the same year when the State Security celebrated its 175th anniversary with a conference and a book on its history and activities. However, the service was embarrassed by the escape of a Kurdish terrorist, as VSSE officers had been put to the task of guarding her while under house arrest. Dassen resigned, stating that guarding suspects was not a task fit for intelligence, but a job for the police.
In these years Belgian intelligence was adjusting to being subjected to the oversight of the parliamentary review committee Committee I. Reorganisation and modernisation of the service was happening slowly and a first performance audit by the Committee I found a number of flaws. The root of the problem was however a chronic underfunding and political disinterest in the security services. Substantial reorganisation was needed when the service was finally allowed to conduct technical surveillance operations, requiring not only the equipment to do so, but also the right mindset to meet the demands for proper justification of the use of the methods granted by the 2010 BIM-law.
In the 2010s the VSSE found espionage to be on the rise as never before, due to the important and interesting information present in Brussels, seat of the EU institutions. The CUTA and VSSE were the first security services to warn about the threat of foreign fighters returning to their country in the early days of the Syrian conflict. As the number of foreign fighters grew the service became quickly overwhelmed, but requests for additional financial support were not met by the government, not even after the VSSE provided the information that rolled up a terrorist cell in the border town of Verviers, planning an attack shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The attack on Paris of 13 November 2015 revealed Belgium to be the centre of terrorist activity, a connection given bloody confirmation on 22 March 2016, with the bombing of the Belgian national airport and a metro carriage in the European quarter. The circumstances that led to the failure to prevent the attacks were investigated by a parliamentary commission, that recommended a substantial increase in the security services' manpower and budgets, and a better integration of the different actors as well as improvements of information management and sharing. Since 2016 the VSSE has stepped up its game, helped by some long awaited financial injections. The cooperation with the other security services is also occurring at unseen levels of intensity. To further support public understanding of the work of the intelligence service, the VSSE celebrated the 20th anniversary of its legal framework by launching its and publishing, for the first time in seven years, an activity report.

Directors

The Belgian Security Service has had the following directors :
During the 1980s, a number of incidents including the Brabant supermarket killings, the activities of terrorist groups such as the Combatant Communist Cells and the neo-Nazist Westland New Post brought attention and criticism to the activities and ineffectiveness of the nation's police and intelligence agencies.
In 1991, following two government enquiries, a permanent parliamentary committee, Committee I, was established to bring these agencies, not previously subject to any outside control, under the authority of Belgium's federal parliament. Legislation governing the missions and methods of these agencies was put in place in 1998.

Entitlement

The entitlements of the Security Service were granted by the Intelligence Services Act of 30 November 1998. Belgian intelligence does not have policing power, and is only able to gather and analyse information. In accordance with the 2010 Special Intelligence Methods Act BIM methods make it possible to conduct surveillance with technical means and intercept communications. Their use falls under the strict supervision of the Committee I, during and after the operation, and can be suspended by the supervisory body if the use of the method is deemed unlawful. The most intrusive BIMs have to be approved beforehand by a separate committee of three specially appointed magistrates, called the BIM-Commission, and are again subjected to checks during and after by the Committee I.
The majority of the methods used concern localisations and identifications of cell phone numbers, in connection with counterterrorism.

Literature and sources