GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 rely heavily on the US, but using intelligence obtained by torture risks breaching international law

Donald Trump’s comment that he believes torture “absolutely works” would present the UK intelligence services, who work closely with US counterparts, with a major dilemma if the US were to resume such interrogation methods.

The bulk of the intelligence being assessed by the UK agencies – especially GCHQ but also the overseas agency MI6 and, to a lesser extent, M15 – comes from the US. None of them would want to contemplate loss of that access, yet if the intelligence had been obtained through torture it would put them in breach of international law.



A former British diplomat who worked closely with UK intelligence in a number of conflict hotspots in the Middle East and central Asia said the agencies would be torn between a moral and legal obligation not to be involved with torture and their heavy dependence on the US.



The UK intelligence agencies – as well as other countries with which the US shares intelligence such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand and, one rung further down, countries such as Germany and France – are on paper opposed to torture and theoretically are supposed to absent themselves from the room if torture is taking place.

A UK source familiar with the intelligence community recalled a conversation with a CIA station chief in the aftermath of 9/11 in which he referred to MI6 officials as “wimps”.



But in reality the position of the UK intelligence agencies is more ambiguous. They take information that they know comes from countries that use torture, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and countries that have done so in the past, such as the US.

They would argue that it is near impossible when sifting through raw data to distinguish what has been freely given and what has been obtained under duress.



Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former head of MI5, when talking about a rendition controversy involving MI6 – its long-time rival, though the two agencies work closer together these days – questioned whether “the UK supped with a sufficiently long spoon”.



The full extent to which MI6 was involved in rendition in the aftermath of 9/11 has still to come out.



Trump qualified his comments in the interview by saying he would defer to his security advisers such as the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, and the defence secretary, James Mattis, who has said that beer and cigarettes are more effective in getting someone to talk than waterboarding.

The former head of MI6 Sir John Sawers described torture as illegal and abhorrent in a 2010 speech and said the agency faced real, constant dilemmas to avoid using intelligence gathered by such methods. After standing down in 2015, he said torture produced “useful information”.



Others argue that information obtained through torture is untrustworthy and, on top of that, the US, the UK and other countries lose any claim to the moral high ground, unable to castigate countries such as China and Russia where torture is commonplace. Revelations of torture also contribute to radicalisation.

The Bush administration sanctioned the use of torture in the aftermath of 9/11 and while it stopped soon after, it was only when Barack Obama became president in 2009 that a formal ban was announced.

Much of what MI6 does overseas is, just by the nature of spying, illegal. Spies are covered by section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, which protects them from prosecution as long as their actions are authorised by the government.