[Since this paper was given in 2009 there have been major changes in the Committee's intelligence routine and managerial responsibilities]

I have written separately about my reactions to being plucked out of the provinces to be the JIC's Secretary in London from 1972 to 1975. I offer here some additional impressions of the Committee. As I have said, I was thrilled by the whole thing: I became an admirer of the senior Civil Service which politicians and commentators have tried to wreck for the last fifty years. I also came to respect the JIC system. Like democracy, it is the least bad arrangement on offer.

I was told before I went there that I would not be producing intelligence: the Secretary's main job was to sort out intelligence problems. I was in fact secretary not only of what was then called the JIC (A) – really the old Committee – but also the new JIC (B), the economic JIC established as part of the 1968 reorganisation. The JIC (B) had a talented group in the Assessments Staff (including a future Cabinet Secretary, Richard Wilson) but it never seemed to hit the button with economic policy-makers, and it was abolished in an economy cut some years later. Perhaps the prominence of Britain's economic problems in the 1960s and 1970s made people concentrate on seeking intelligence for strategic economic issues rather than improved tactical applications in international negotiations. I was also secretary of two related bodies, one connected with covert action and the other with domestic intelligence, and at the end of my time I also became secretary of the Permanent Secretaries’ Committee which met annually to consider intelligence budgets.

As Secretary I was responsible for the mechanical part of the JIC machinery, which was virtually a publishing house for drafts and product, plus the role of the Duty Intelligence Officers and their twenty-four-hour watch. But much of the mechanics were in the hands of the Cabinet Office regulars to whom I have already paid my tribute. In the senior part of the Secretariat (myself, a Deputy Secretary and two Assistants) we did the minutes of meetings by Cabinet Office rules: always issued before the close of play; never submitted for agreement by participants, and never contested by them; pruned to be the record of decisions taken and reasons for them; and no statements just for the record.