Switzerland: new intelligence setup
01 September 1993
In the first week of September it was announced in Switzerland that plans to form a strategic foreign intelligence service separate from the military intelligence service have been cancelled. A parliamentary subcommission (PUK EMD) in 1990 recommended that the pros and cons should be looked at and a working group led by Mr Darius Weber, proposed that an intelligence agency should be set up with responsibility for collecting information not only on military issues, but also on ecological and economic problems. The government rejected the idea and without consulting parliament any further, directed the military department to work out a new concept. Under this new formula the military foreign intelligence service ("Unterabteilung Nachrichten" = Subdivision Intelligence) will operate under a limited brief, collecting and supplying strategic intelligence from abroad only in relation to "a possible deployment of the army". Also the strategic part of the air force intelligence service (Flieger- und Fliegerabwehr- Nachrichtendienst, FFND) will come under supervision of the Unterabteilung Nachrichten . Currently a special working group is developing a model which will improve the flow of security- relevant information in the government's departments. It is believed that implementing such a model will be as efficient and productive as forming a new and costly general strategic intelligence service.
Another element of the reorganization is the relocation of the military "Unterabteilung Abwehr" (Subdivision Defense) from the Untergruppe Nachrichtendienst und Abwehr (Una, Subgroup intelligence and defense) to the "Untergruppe Front", where the department will function under the new name "Militrische Sicherheit" (Military Security). Simultaneously, its brief has been revised. From now on, the Military Security is to refrain from active intelligence gathering as well as from preventive counterespionage and countersabotage operations. In peacetime, the police will hold all prerogatives in this field. Military Security has to turn to the Bundespolizei (Federal Police) to obtain all domestically gathered data, eg: for security vetting. New legislation (the "Staatsschutzgesetz") on the domestic security service (currently the Bundespolizei) is to be announced soon.
Der Bund 8.9.93.