On one side of the Situation Room of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), known as the intelligence cathedral, hang photographs of the situations that have been successfully managed between those hermetic walls in recent decades: the release of the Basque tuna boat Alakrana in 2009, the release of the Spanish aid workers from Doctors Without Borders kidnapped in Kenya in 2011 or the arrival in Spain of the journalist Javier Espinosa after 194 days held by the Islamic State.
The doors of that room – in which all the alarms go off when there is a major crisis – were opened yesterday for the first time to the media with the aim of transferring the work carried out "in extremely complicated matters" by the workers of the center . Its director, Esperanza Casteleiro, announced that she has reorganized the structure of the CNI, as other intelligence services of allied countries are doing. To this end, she has created "mission centers", specific units adapted to the objectives that the Government – through the intelligence directive – has entrusted to her.
At a time when the geopolitical panorama is marked by the war in Ukraine, the displacement of the center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the destabilization of the Sahel, these priorities set by Moncloa on which the CNI's work revolves are four: . Irregular immigration, focused on networks that traffic people; counterterrorism, to prevent attacks in Spain; counterintelligence, trying to identify hostile agents in national territory; and cybersecurity, the field in which the next conflicts will be resolved.
To this end, the operational and technical personnel dedicated to obtaining information and the expert staff in advanced analysis have increased. Of the 3,000 people that make up the CNI, 76% are civilian personnel, 18% belong to the armed forces and 5% to the State security forces and bodies. “The main obligation is to know, with the highest degree of accuracy, the threats that must be combated in order to reduce vulnerability to them,” Casteleiro explained.
The director of Intelligence revealed that, for example, the CNI has collaborators in areas of concentration of immigrants close to Ceuta and Melilla –such as Mount Gurugú– to anticipate possible jumps to the fences of border cities. He described the current collaboration with Morocco as “intense”.
The director of the CNI, who has been in office since the Pegasus espionage crisis wiped out her predecessor, Paz Estaban, was escorted yesterday by Defense Minister Margarita Robles, who criticized the "smear campaigns" against the CNI by people who "violate the law", in a clear allusion to the pro-independence leaders who denounced having been victims of the attack with the spyware that allows access to all the information on the mobile phone.
The head of Defense, since the espionage scandal came to light, has always thought that the secrecy required by the CNI's activities has prevented it from defending itself on equal terms. And yesterday she verbalized it again: "We must avoid misinformation and ignorance."
