Five Eyes: The world’s oldest intelligence-sharing network

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the UK and the US faced a new threat from an old ally —Joseph Stalin. Before they had a chance to address this conflict, the Soviet Union had already stolen information from the American and British nuclear programmes. Alarmed, in 1946, the two nations expanded their signals intelligence collaboration. According to Richard Kerbaj, author of The Secret History of the Five Eyes (2025), the agreement functioned like a “marriage contract,” built on mutual “honesty, openness and commitment to the other including a no spy agreement.”

Over the next decade, the alliance expanded to include the Commonwealth countries of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with each assigned intelligence focus areas. Australia was tasked with focusing on South and East Asia, New Zealand on the Pacific, and Canada on Latin America, Eastern Russia, and the North Atlantic. Kerbaj writes, “Their inclusion formed an alliance that could watch the world around the clock,” and with it, the Five Eyes Alliance was born.

Described by professor Andrew O’Neil of the Australian Catholic University in Five Eyes and the Perils of an Asymmetric Alliance (2017), as the “world’s most enduring and robust alliance,” the existence of FVEY was only publicly declared in 2010 in a heavily redacted document with about two-thirds of its pages blank.

Disputes between members

Despite their intelligence cooperation, the Five Eyes countries have had tensions. The revelation of the Soviet-backed Cambridge Five spy ring led Washington to question the integrity of UK intelligence. Canada compromised the alliance when a naval officer was exposed as a Russian spy and previously faced a US intelligence cutoff after refusing to join the Iraq invasion.

New Zealand faced partial exclusion for over two decades after opposing US nuclear policies. Intelligence cut-offs have been a recurring tactic. In 1973, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger suspended intelligence-sharing with the UK over Prime Minister Edward Heath’s pro-European stance. Similarly, Canada was briefly sidelined in 1990 when it hesitated to deploy naval forces in the Gulf War.

The US dominates the alliance, often withholding information from its partners. When Edward Snowden leaked classified intelligence, the National Security Agency (NSA) identified him as the culprit but kept its allies in the dark. A British official remarked, “If the roles were reversed, we’d do everything to reassure the U.S. The U.S. doesn’t feel the need to account to anyone.”

Political tensions have also threatened the alliance. During Donald Trump’s second presidency, White House official Peter Navarro pushed for Canada’s expulsion from the Five Eyes.

These disagreements, however, have not stopped FVEY from impacting a range of international conflicts.

Covert operations

Over fifty years ago, the US played a key role in ending the presidency of Chile’s elected Marxist leader, Salvador Allende.

In 1970, Nixon and Kissinger saw Allende as a threat to US interests. Kissinger, in particular, feared the precedent of a democratically elected socialist in the West. In the months leading up to Chile’s election, the US funnelled hundreds of thousands into a “spoiling operation,” using propaganda and corporate support to back Allende’s opponent. Despite these efforts, Allende narrowly won.

Ousted Chilean President Salvador Allende

However, on September 11, 1973, Chile’s military launched a coup. Army chief Augusto Pinochet took power and unleashed a brutal crackdown on leftists. Over his 17-year rule, more than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared, and 38,000 became political prisoners, many subjected to torture.

Australia also played a role. Its covert spy agency, ASIS, established a base in Santiago to aid the CIA’s efforts to destabilise Allende’s government. Years later, former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam admitted in parliament that Australian intelligence had collaborated with the CIA in Chile.

He said, “It has been written – I cannot deny it – that when my government took office Australian intelligence personnel were still working as proxies and nominees of the CIA in destabilising the government of Chile.”

Interventions in the Middle East

In 1953, the CIA and Britain’s MI6 orchestrated a coup against Iran’s prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, fearing that failed oil negotiations would push Tehran toward Moscow. They incited protests that killed over 200 people, ousted Mosaddegh, and installed the pro-Western Shah. Three years later, the CIA, again with MI6’s help, plotted a coup against Syria’s pro-Soviet regime to curb Moscow’s influence in the Middle East.

Decades later, the Five Eyes alliance again pursued covert operations in the region, this time in Libya. Secret documents uncovered during the 2011 Libyan revolution revealed deep US-UK collaboration with Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence agency, the External Security Organisation.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair with Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi (AP)

In 2002, MI6 and the CIA assisted Libyan operatives in kidnapping two prominent opposition figures, one from Hong Kong, the other from Thailand, along with their families. Both men were tortured, and MI6 provided Libya with interrogation questions, leading to further crackdowns on dissidents in exile. As former CIA Director George Tenet said, “The shackles, my friends, have been taken off.”

The collaboration bore a diplomatic win in Gaddafi’s announcement to abandon his Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programmes. Privately, it enabled gross human rights abuses. After his downfall, Libya’s National Transitional Council discovered stockpiles of mustard gas and chemical weapons precursors, proving that Gaddafi had never truly dismantled his arsenal. He had deceived the West while they empowered his regime.

One of Five Eyes’ most significant intelligence failures came with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The invasion was based on erroneous intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMDs. Critics later argued that the alliance’s intelligence agencies were aware of the WMD claims and that the true motive for the invasion was economically driven by Iraq’s oil reserves.

The extent of intelligence manipulation became evident through the actions of whistleblower Katharine Gun. A 27-year-old Mandarin translator in the UK, Gun leaked a classified NSA memo revealing the US and UK efforts to spy on United Nations delegates to pressure them into supporting the Iraq invasion.

Her revelations, published in The Observer just weeks before the invasion, exposed the Five Eyes’ willingness to use espionage not just against adversaries but to manipulate global politics.

Surveillance overreach and global backlash

In 1919, the US Army and State Department jointly established The Black Chamber. This early signals intelligence agency targeted and decrypted diplomatic communications to give America an edge in negotiations. However, a decade later, Secretary of State Henry L Stimson withdrew funding, famously stating that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” This notion of ethical intelligence collection did not last.

The Five Eyes alliance has been monumentally influential and, given the dominance of the US and UK, largely shielded from international criticism. However, it has been reproached by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for economic espionage against Timor-Leste and by its allies for violating state sovereignty.

In 2004, as Timor-Leste fought for a fair share of its offshore oil and gas reserves, Australian intelligence secretly bugged its government offices. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) intercepted high-level discussions, giving Australia an advantage in negotiations over fields worth USD 40-50 billion — resources crucial to lifting Timor-Leste out of poverty.

A decade later, in 2014, Australia became the first Five Eyes nation to be legally challenged for its intelligence operations. The ICJ ruled that Australia must cease spying on East Timor and its legal advisers. The decision, backed by 12 judges, was opposed by four representatives from Australia, the US, Britain, and New Zealand, highlighting the alliance’s resistance to external oversight.

Other allies, including Germany, France, Spain, and Brazil, have also discovered Five Eyes surveillance programmes targeting their leaders and citizens.

The most high-profile revelation came when it emerged that the NSA had tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone. Furious, Merkel confronted President Barack Obama. But the White House’s ambiguous response, denying current and future monitoring but refusing to comment on past actions, only deepened tensions.

Beyond Europe, rising powers like Brazil and South Africa also found themselves subject to FVEY surveillance. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was outraged upon learning that the NSA had intercepted her communications. In response, she cancelled a state visit to Washington and denounced American intelligence activities as violations of Brazilian sovereignty and international law at a speech at the UN General Assembly.

US whistle-blower Edward Snowden (Express File)

But Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks revealed the vast scope of Five Eyes surveillance. The leaks revealed that Australia had attempted to tap the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his inner circle. New Zealand was caught indiscriminately spying on its Pacific allies and sharing intelligence with its Five Eyes partners. Meanwhile, Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) assisted the NSA in monitoring approximately 20 “high-priority” countries and even helped the US spy on the 2010 G20 summit in Ottawa.

Snowden’s documents showed that Five Eyes intelligence agencies had built vast capabilities to intercept global communications with almost no public awareness and little oversight. These agencies coerced companies to hand over customer data under secret orders and access sensitive financial data through SWIFT, the global financial messaging system, even while negotiating regulations to oversee it.

The alliance also used allied intelligence agencies to circumvent domestic surveillance laws. For example, the UK could request the US to spy on British citizens and share the data, effectively bypassing legal restrictions.

Once a covert intelligence-sharing network, Five Eyes has evolved into an expansive global surveillance apparatus, operating with little accountability. While some nations have challenged its overreach, the dominance of the US and UK has ensured that, in most cases, its actions remain shielded from meaningful consequences.