The almost accidental discovery, in the heart of London, of two car bombs capable of causing massive carnage, and the attack on Glasgow airport, have in a way marked the beginning of the tenure of the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He has called on British citizens to remain particularly “vigilant” and even, in accordance with the words of the new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, to increase their level of “suspicion”. This is especially true since the British press punctuated its immediate commentary with unsettling revelations: since the suicide bombings of July 2005 that bloodied the capital of the United Kingdom, the police would have thwarted many other attempts, all potentially deadly. These assertions seem plausible since the public confirmation by the domestic security service, the famous MI5, of the existence on British soil of “200 terrorist groups, comprising 1600 identified individuals committed to organizing or facilitating terrorist acts.” Its former Director further specified in 2006 that she estimated at 100,000 the number of British citizens who considered the July 2005 attacks “justifiable.”
When asked about threats concerning France, the President of the Republic reminded, rather laconically, that their level “remained ‘high’”. It is not unthinkable that, similar to the London situation, French security services could have also uncovered plans for an imminent attack, or even narrowly averted an attack at the heart of a major national city. If this indeed was the case, the public wouldn’t have known about it. In light of the events in London, one cannot help but wonder whether or not the Nation should be substantially informed about the terrorist risks and threats that weigh on its everyday life at the moment when the State seeks its cooperation.
One can quickly discern the advantages and disadvantages of both options. Making previously unknown facts accessible to the public has the merit of transparency, as in Great Britain. This can only enhance trust in a political power itself serene enough in the exercise of its responsibilities to face the shock of these revelations. However, several reasons also argue in the opposite direction: the cost of this “publicity,” in terms of operational efficiency of investigations, the political price to pay in return for a breach in the human need—known since Freud—for an “avoidance of displeasure,” and finally, the illusory satisfaction of a better national cohesion at the risk of ostracism towards a part of the population, as seen in America after September 11, 2001. Not to mention, as intelligence experts know, a possible trivialization of the threat by constantly hammering its inevitability.
Moreover, it must be acknowledged that a lack of information hampers the aims of terrorism: the climate of panic that it seeks to spread is countered by the silent but beneficial resistances of democratic institutions. In this shadow war that opposes terrorists and specialized services, the advantage remains unevenly distributed: in the attack that succeeds against the one that fails, publicity serves the interests of the former and scarcely rewards the efforts of the latter.
