On January 2, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of former police officials Eerik Heldna, Elmar Vaher and Aivar Alavere in a criminal case concerning the awarding of a police pension to Heldna. On January 5, Minister of Justice Liisa Pakosta (Eesti 200) issued an apology to them on behalf of the Estonian state and the Office of the Prosecutor General publicly admitted that their interpretation had been incorrect.

The third link in the law enforcement chain — the Internal Security Service — has not yet reached the same point in its public communications. In a lengthy interview with Delfi journalist Vilja Kiisler, ISS Director General Margo Palloson emphasized that launching the investigation had been "an extremely complex dilemma" and questioned, "what should the ISS be apologizing for?" At the same time, he described the falsely accused individuals as "very skilled in demagoguery."

Intelligence and security agencies inevitably operate under conditions of information asymmetry: the public sees less, knows less and is therefore forced to trust more. Over a century ago, German sociologist Georg Simmel wrote in his essay "The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies" that secrecy doesn't merely create a "lack of information" in the public sphere, but alters social relationships; it fosters hierarchies, "inner circles" and "outer circles" and enhances the aura of those in power precisely because knowledge is being withheld.

Classified information doesn't just protect national defense systems or intelligence operations — it also creates a scarcity of information and like any form of scarcity, it triggers hungry projections from the public. Security services become the subject of projections involving both fear and fascination — projections of heroism, mastery and intrigue. One of the most famous embodiments of this kind of projection is the exaggerated figure of James Bond.

"Myths are depoliticized speech," wrote cultural theorist Roland Barthes, suggesting that modern myths help us resolve ideological tensions. The myth of the "cool spy," crystallized in James Bond's pop-culture persona, has helped Western publics come to terms with the exception that some public institutions must operate beyond the usual bounds of transparency and that such an exception is necessary to keep the state safe.

The result is a resilient narrative template: the security officer as the community's watchman, operating in the shadows so that ordinary citizens can remain ordinary with peace of mind. Intelligence agencies become glamorous partly due to this visibility in the shadows — their "night vision," so to speak. They are portrayed as prophets who "see" hidden threats first and who therefore are also granted a "license to kill" and occasionally a license to lie (but only when telling the truth would be unusually dangerous at that moment).

In his 1906 essay, Simmel also explored the social weight of a lie: when a person in power who controls secrets lies, it's not merely a factual mistake — it's a deliberate distortion of power relations, with far-reaching effects, especially in complex and "credit-based" trust relationships between authority and citizen. Attitudes toward security agencies are often shaped by assumptions, trust and indirect knowledge.

In democratic societies governed by the rule of law, it is expected that even those operating in the shadows abide by the law and that no one receives privileged treatment that could be seen as an abuse of power for narrow bureaucratic interests.

In other words, if a security agency is granted certain special powers, democracy should also provide for sufficient x-ray vision into its workings. What constitutes adequate oversight of intelligence services is always open to debate and for that very reason, public trust and the way a security agency's leadership communicates during crises are crucial to that debate.

Admitting mistakes is one of the few public tools a security agency has to rebuild trust when it has erred or caused unwarranted harm. An apology need not mean that "suspicions can never be investigated," it can also mean acknowledging that people's lives and reputations were damaged in a process that ended with acquittals in three levels of the court system.

If an institution addresses the public in a tone that suggests "we never make mistakes" and that critics are primarily demagogues, then the legitimacy of the "cool spy" image — something the ISS appears to have invested in through its recent communications — begins to erode. Exceptional power must not be accompanied by exceptional morality and complete opacity. In a democracy, the "cool spy" narrative only works as long as trust holds.

The current trust gap surrounding the ISS is deepened by the fact that questions of double standards have been convincingly raised in the public arena. According to the March 20, 2024, episode of ETV's investigative program "Pealtnägija," similar manipulations of pension eligibility and questionable appointments have occurred elsewhere in the public sector, including within the Internal Security Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General. If this background goes unacknowledged in public communication, the ISS's refusal to apologize appears not as a principled stance but as a mechanism for protecting insiders.

This impression has also been reinforced by the Sakala Corporation event, where ISS officials allegedly attended under false names and which has prompted questions about whether this constituted unauthorized "covert work" (which the ISS has denied). Even if no laws were broken, public trust is undermined by the fact that the explanation lacks plausibility.

In his interview with Vilja Kiisler, Palloson said that the ISS had done everything it could to prevent the criminal case involving the police officials. But if the agency had truly wanted to "measure nine times before cutting," the logical step would have been to initiate an internal audit or disciplinary procedure within the Ministry of the Interior first and, based on the results, decide how to proceed.

Interior Minister Lauri Läänemets (SDE) told me that he first heard about the dispute when then-ISS Director Arnold Sinisalu informed him after the criminal case had already been launched. Yet this was an old dispute and there had been no pressing need to bypass the usual escalation ladder.

In the end, Palloson's chosen communication strategy boils down to a simple question: what kind of rule of law do we want?

If a security agency rightly emphasizes its responsibility and authority to investigate credible suspicions, it must also be able to demonstrate to the public that its own institutional self-protection is not more important than public trust. Admitting mistakes is not a sign of weakness. In the case of a security agency, it is more like a test of professionalism.

P.S. In the second part of his essay, the aforementioned German sociologist analyzes the logic of secret societies: when secrecy becomes the organizing principle of a group's activity, it creates a specific system of internal trust, loyalty and protection mechanisms, which also produces hierarchies, rituals and thick, picture-laden tapestries separating the "initiated" from the "uninitiated."

What sets secret societies apart from security agencies is the primacy of internal loyalty over external oversight. The abuses of power seen in both domestic and foreign intelligence operations in American history show that the risk of sectarianism is far from theoretical — even in a democratic republic. Especially in today's tense climate, preferring a sectarian communication style over openness is doubly harmful.

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